Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel

by James Carlson

  Muz nodded, unable verbally to thank him, as a knot formed in his throat. He refused to accept this was the end though. There had to be something he could do. There had to be some way out of this.

  Raj opened the door for him and together, they walked back into the living room, just as Amy came in from the balcony.

  “We have to get out of here,” the little woman said with fresh fear etched into the lines around her eyes. “It’s followed us.”

  “What follow us?” Tom asked her.

  “That jelly, it’s outside the block,” Amy stated. “It saw me. I’m sorry. It tried to grab me with a tentacle, but it couldn’t reach.”

  With so little food left to be found in the streets, the amoeboid mass had refused to let the survivors escape. Tracking them by tasting the tyre trails in the road as it dragged itself along, it had found what the survivors had come to think of as their place of safety.

  The men in the room stood staring at Amy in disbelief that their luck could be that bad. Tom ran past her to look out over the balcony briefly, before coming back in and nodding in grim confirmation.

  “Aren’t you listening? We have to escape,” Amy yelled, becoming panicked.

  “And just where do you suggest we might go?” Raj asked her.

  “Other block?” Tom suggested.

  “That thing has our scent now,” Raj stated. “It followed us here. It’ll follow us again. That’s assuming we could get past it.”

  “We should try for the cordon again,” Muz said, somehow finding the willpower to snap out of his apathy and be concerned enough to take part in what was being said.

  “But we’ve just tried that,” Amy squealed.

  “We try again,” Muz told her. “It’s make or break now. We get out of Barnet or we die. Maybe whatever chemical weapons they’re going to spray the borough with won’t reach up here, but that will only be the beginning of the clean-up operation. Eventually, they’ll send ground troops to mop up whatever’s left. We don’t have a choice.”

  “But the soldiers will just shoot at us again,” Amy cried.

  “This time we head over the fields to that forward command centre,” Muz told her. “It’s further to go and we’ll have to do it on foot, but there’ll be people of rank there, not just fuck-whit Marines. There might be someone who might actually listen to what we have to say.”

  Muz knew that his only slim hope of survival now was to get to some kind of medical centre as quickly as he could. He prayed that there was one inside that compound and the doctors there would be able to offer him something, once he gave them Raj. He tried not to think that he was clutching at straws.

  “Yes,” Amy agreed. “That’s a good idea,” she added with over enthusiasm.

  The woman had enough. She felt like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and needed proper medical attention for her arm. With the people around her dying one by one, she knew her chances of survival were diminishing rapidly.

  “I think we stay,” Tom said. “Wait longer.”

  “And hope the blob down there will just go away?” Muz asked.

  “Tak.”

  “Look where that got us,” Amy yelled at the stocky man. “Look at how many people we’ve lost while waiting for things to get better.”

  “What do you two think?” Muz asked Raj and Sam.

  Raj didn’t respond, his mind extrapolating all the possible outcomes to their options and weighing up the odds of their survival in each one. Sam shook his head and burbled his discontent at the thought of braving the streets again.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Muz spat back at the deformed man. “You’re out of the woods. You’re going to be okay.”

  The copper found himself becoming unduly angry at Sam. Even though he knew it was due to the fear of his impending death hanging over him, he couldn’t help himself.

  “You need to remain calm,” Raj reminded Muz in a soothing tone.

  “Come on then, Mr Big Words Lazarus, what have you got to say?” Muz asked the doctor. “You’re clearly the brains of our sorry group.”

  Everyone looked expectantly at Raj. After a long, contemplative pause, he responded.

  “Constable Dogan is right,” he told them. “We should try for the compound.”

  “Shipthp,” Sam burbled an almost intelligible expletive.

  “Your best chance – ultimately your only real hope – at avoiding infection is to escape beyond the perimeter cordon,” Raj said.

  “I still not think is good plan,” Tom murmured sulkily.

  Just then, there was a sudden loud crash, as the living room window came shattering inward. Everyone in the room instinctively covered their head and dropped to the floor, as shards of glass flew everywhere. Through the open frame, in snaked a huge wet arm of nerves wrapped in transparent jelly. It thrashed this way and that, knocking over the lamp and ornaments, while it blindly felt around the room. Scurrying on hands and knees, the group pulled the sofa away from the wall and cowered behind it. With his tail between his legs, Digby ran into Amy’s arms.

  “Okay, is moot point,” Tom declared. “We leave.”

  How on earth did the Pole, who could barely string sentences together in broken English, know a word like ‘moot’, Muz found himself briefly wondering, despite the powerful tendril thrashing around above his head.

  The sticky acidic snaking limb hit the TV and knocked it to the floor. Though the already shattered screen remained devoid of a picture, the thing wasn’t completely broken. The jolt caused the sound to burst into life.

  “… have unconfirmed reports of several separate outbreaks in Western Europe. The French Secretary of Defence said today…” the machine said, before it crackled and finally gave up the ghost with one last dramatic spark.

  “I thought you said it couldn’t reach this high up,” Muz complained to Amy, while the semi-liquid limb felt around under the sofa cushions.

  “It couldn’t. It must be climbing up the block,” the woman responded.

  “Follow me,” Tom shouted.

  He dove across the floor and scrambled commando-style into the hall as rapidly as was humanly possible. In one leap from four limbs, Raj sprang over him. Muz, Amy, Sam, and the dog followed. As Muz took the door keys from his trouser pocket, running for the front door, Digby got under his feet. He tripped over the animal and the keys went sailing from his hand, between the bars of the locked cage and landed in the communal hallway.

  “Shit,” Muz yelled.

  “You idiot stupid,” Tom bellowed at him.

  The copper dropped to the floor and tried to grab the keys, reaching his arm through the bars. The tentacle was still thrashing wildly and overturned the sofa, flipping it over as though it weighed nothing at all.

  “Move,” Amy told Muz. “Let me try.”

  “Get off.”

  “My shoulders are thinner,” Amy persisted. “My arm will go through further.”

  Muz moved aside from the door. The little woman was right; she was able to reach her arm through the bars right up to her neck, but her arm was shorter than Muz’s, so she was still unable to reach any further.

  “Where’s that golf club?” Amy asked, frustrated.

  “By the sofa,” Raj told her.

  “Bollocks,” she cursed.

  As though on cue, the slimy tendril stopped slapping around the room then and retracted itself back out the window. Without waiting for any further invitation, Amy ran back into the living room and searched frantically through the disarray of thrown objects, where the sofa had originally been. Shoving aside a flimsy chipboard bookshelf, she found the nine iron just as a second tentacle entered the flat in place of the first.

  Unlike that first invader, this limb possessed a human skull with inset eyes, encased in its tip at the extremity of the main nerve rope. Other eyeballs from various animals were suspended in the goo along its length, all connected via knotted nerves.

  Amy froze and the tentacle reared up directly in front of he
r, its multiple eyes rotating to scrutinize the woman. Then, with incredible speed and precision, it struck her in the chest, knocking her to the floor. Amy lay on her back, her lower lip quivering, looking up at the eyes of the snotty tendril, as it hung over her, examining her.

  Digby snapped at Tom, nipping the bones of his hand, and the man released his collar. The dog raced over from where the humans cowered in the hall, to his friend’s side, gnashing his teeth frenziedly at the whipping wet arm of the monster.

  The limb reared up again, then whipped out at the dog, wrapping itself tight around one of his hind legs. Its acidic compounds burned through his fur and into his skin, the stink of burning meat and hair filling the room. Digby squealed in agony.

  “No!” Amy screamed.

  She leapt to her feet, and taking hold of the writhing tentacle with her small delicate hands, pathetically tried to pull it loose. Though the acid burned her palms and fingers, and tears of seething pain coursed down her cheeks, she refused to let go.

  Someone in the hall threw her a large knife, which landed at her feet. Snatching it up, she hacked furiously and the amoeboid arm. Each time she carved a deep slice into it however, the goo simply reformed, closing the hole as soon as she retracted the blade. All the while, Digby continued to yelp and squeal, attempting to bite Amy in his confusion.

  Still the paramedic refused to give up. She stabbed faster and harder, managing to dig deeper into the slime before it could reshape. Eventually, the blade drove deep enough to sever the main cord of nerves buried within. The eyes set in the skull rolled upward and the arm instantly released the dog, thrashed around the room a moment in agony, smashing yet more items of furniture, then snapped back out the window.

  Amy ushered the badly limping dog back into the hall. Muz had already used Amy’s fight with the tendril to dash into the living room and grab the golf club. Reaching out through the bars with it, he retrieved the keys and unlocked the cage.

  The group spilled out into the communal hallway and hurried through the fire doors into the stairwell. Feeling a little safer there, they paused a moment, while Raj checked Amy’s injuries. He had to coax the woman’s hands out from where she had tucked them into her armpits protectively. When he unfurled her fists, he saw deep raw welts.

  “Christ,” Muz gasped, wincing in sympathy.

  “What about Digby?” Amy asked.

  Raj stooped and examined the dog’s leg, while the animal growled at him under his breath. His burns were even worse. In places, his skin had been completely eaten away, exposing areas of muscle tissue. At least the acid had served to cauterise any bleeding.

  “Are we infected now?” Amy asked, her chin trembling.

  “Don’t worry,” Raj told her. “The gelatinous proteins are not themselves contagious.”

  “Are you sure?” Muz asked.

  “Quite sure,” the doctor confirmed. “They have suffered too much cellular collapse to be capable of passing on any recoding.”

  “But… but what about Carl?” Amy wanted to know. “He was attacked by one of those… things… and he turned.”

  “The man must have ingested cells from the amoeboid’s nervous system,” Raj postulated. “That does not appear to be the case with you two though.”

  With Amy leaning on Muz for support and the dog limping badly, the group made their way down to the ground floor. The men slid aside the furniture from the doors as quietly as they could. Raj then dropped to all fours and with all the stealth of a cat, skulked outside.

  “The mass is still two thirds the way up the side of the building,” he said moments later, upon his return.

  “Everyone, straight in the truck,” Muz told the others.

  “Will it even start?” Amy wanted to know.

  “If not, we’ll have to make a run for it,” Muz said and ducked through the doors.

  As the copper ran around the Jankel for the driver’s door, he dared to steal a glance over his shoulder up at the tower. The jellified mass was clinging to the wall about nine or ten floors up. With its tentacles gripping the balcony’s rails, it was laboriously dragging itself upwards, still attempting to reach their flat.

  He jumped in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition, while the others clambered in around him. The starter motor juddered loudly but failed.

  “It’s seen us,” Raj informed Muz.

  As he continued to turn the key, the copper looked up through the windscreen. In response to the truck’s noisy protestations, all the skulls and free-floating eyes within the amoeboid lump had turned to look down.

  “Come on, you soddin’ piece of crap,” Muz snarled at the dash.

  There then came an almighty wet thud, as having let go with its tendrils, the blob fell and slammed into the ground. Unfortunately, it did not appear to be injured by the impact, and fluid arms flicking forward, it began to ooze its way over to the truck.

  “We run now?” Tom suggested.

  Thankfully though, the engine finally conceded and coughed into life, rattling and hissing in distaste at being brought back from the dead. Muz stepped hard on the accelerator pedal and the tyres span rapidly in the rain-soaked soft dirt, digging little trenches.

  “Slow,” Tom shouted at him.

  As the whipping tendrils drew dangerously close, Muz forced himself to be gentle with the pedal and the truck edged forward. Looking nervously back in his wing mirrors at the closing sopping mess, he kept the speed low until he dropped over the kerb and hit the road. He then accelerated as much as he dared, fighting with the steering wheel. He took off along Kings Drive, in the opposite direction to the way they had previously tried, heading for Green Lane.

  As he rounded a sharp ninety-degree bend in the narrow road, he was confronted by that hunting pack of decaying cows. There was a dishevelled horse among them too, apparently having joined their number for the benefits of hunting as a group. Compared to those that remained of the human victims, the animals for the most part still looked fairly fresh. Being physically dominant and acting as a unified pack, they must still have been managing to catch enough food to stave off the majority of their cellular decay, Raj found himself musing.

  “Seriously?” Muz whispered forlornly to himself, unable to believe their bad luck.

  The beasts that were blocking the road turned their heads and lifted their ears at the sounds of the busted truck. Those that still had eyes stared the length of the road, right at Muz, predatory confidence evident in their stances, as they prepared to charge.

  “Brace yourselves,” the copper called back over his shoulder.

  He was starting to feel groggy and distant from all that was happening. Shaking his head, he tried to focus.

  As the hellish heifers broke into a headlong sprint, Muz drove at them, white-hot sparks spraying up in his wake. Picking up more and more speed, the truck began to weave out of his control. Crashing repeatedly against the lines of parked cars on either side of the road kept him heading in roughly the right direction though.

  Muz slammed into the heavy beasts with such momentum that the bull bars actually buckled. Raj at his side, and those huddled in the rear were bounced around violently, the lengths of their seatbelts constricting against their chest and cutting into their neck. Cows’ heads slammed against the bonnet and they wailed, as they were thrown aside or crushed between the racing truck and the parked cars.

  To Muz’s right, the head of the nightmarish horse butted his window, attempting to break the glass to chew on him. He ignored its wild eyes and pushed onward. Intestinal fluids and congealed blood splashed and spattered up the windscreen, and Muz had to pull at the screen wash lever furiously to try to clear a line of sight.

  With the weight of so many large animals blocking their way, the truck slowed dramatically with each impact and the engine growled more angrily. Just as Muz lost hope and thought they were about to be brought to a standstill by the enveloping mass of bovine bodies, the truck burst out the other side of the crowd. He actually laughed
aloud with relief. Though the cows continued to come after them, the half-dead animals were no competition for the speeding truck.

  Green Lane was completely blocked with cars and Muz had to drive cautiously along the grass at the front of the blocks of flats. Several times the wheels span beneath him, losing all traction, and he had to ease off the speed, while watching the carnivorous cows in his mirrors.

  Finally reaching the roundabout that brought them to the A41, Edgware Way, Muz wove between the jammed vehicles, having to use the truck’s superior weight to slam many aside. Driving straight over the major junction, he continued north up the wrong side of the dual carriageway. He didn’t get much farther though.

  Stinger strips had been laid out and actually fixed in place by bolts that had been driven into the tarmac. Just beyond them, several rows of waist high concrete barriers blocked the road. Some two hundred metres further north up the road, Muz could see the taller barriers and the coils of razor wire that formed the cordon perimeter. The forward command compound lay off across the fields to their right however.

  The group jumped out of the truck and stood at the side of the road, staring out at the land that stretched between them and that potential haven. The ploughed fields were soft and muddy with the recent heavy rains. Even with its huge chunky tyres, its four-wheel drive and its high chassis clearance, there was no way the truck would make it over such sodden terrain, not in its current condition. They would have to make their way on foot.

  Tom was the first to step off the verge and he sunk shin deep into the sludge. It was not going to be easy going.

  “Is this really our best option?” Amy asked.

  As though in reply to the question, there came the bellows of several hungry mad cows from back by the roundabout, and the beasts could be seen trampling over cars in their desperation to catch up to their prey.

  Without another word, the others followed Tom out into the field. Amy fell forward instantly, her hands slapping into the mud. The impact brought tears to her eyes, as her shoulder throbbed with burning pain. The cold sludge that coated her hands actually felt soothing though, cooling her burns. Digby struggled the most. Having such short legs and limping badly, each step was a leap that caused him to sink almost up to his chest.