Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (6 page)

Chapter Six

That last screw had somehow managed to defeat every tool in Kevin’s modeling box. Even the butter knife that he found under his bed was no match for the stubborn bastard. In the end, he just lost his head and battered the fucker off the wall with the end of a never-worn ice-skating boot. To make things worse, the noise he made got those things outside his door all worked up.

Kevin had thought, or had at least hoped, that they had gotten bored with waiting and left the house, but no, they were still there. To make matters worse, if that was fucking possible, he heard three different moans. It appeared that Thom wasn’t as dead as Kevin had first thought. Bloody hell! What did you have to do to kill the bastards?

He gazed down at the genuine piece of war memorabilia and wondered if this would stop them. It was sharp enough to cut through flesh, he had no doubts about that. He had made a right mess of his Star Wars wallpaper while practicing his stabbing techniques.

His bayonet wasn’t really the issue. Kevin knew, deep down, that he could be armed with an assault rifle and grenades and still be in the same position. The problem was with him. He had never been the confrontational type, which was ironic considering the vast amount of military junk that littered his room. It was doubly ironic considering where he lived.

Ever since he was young, he had negotiated or tricked his way out of potential fights and arguments, and if that didn’t work then he just ran as far and as fast as his legs could take him. Kevin was very good at running away. He’d had plenty of practice.

He almost jumped out of his skin when one of those dead things banged against the door. Those tactics weren’t going to work with those things though, were they? Oh Jesus, just where the hell could he go? Kevin was trapped in his bedroom. He hurried over to his window and peered out. He might have a chance out there on the street. He spun around as they banged on the door yet again. This time, he actually saw the doorframe shake.

His gut dropped when he saw a pair of mottled grey hands appear under the door. The fuckers were trying to find a way in. How long would it take them to burst in here and launch into his poor body? He guessed maybe an hour, and if he was really lucky, maybe two hours. He shook his head and pressed his back against the door, knowing that even with the blade he’d be hard pressed to stop one, never mind three of the bastards.

How long would it take them to realize that his door wasn’t as solid as it looked? His dad had once put his fist through his sister’s door during one of their drunken arguments. The fingers disappeared, and the banging resumed. They were going to be through that bloody door as if it was made from paper maché. He let out a hysterical giggle; it probably was.

The door handle began to turn and Kevin screamed.

“No you flipping don’t!”

He raced over, grabbed the foot of his bed, and pushed it across the door. Bloody hell! He was such an idiot! He should have done that in the first place! Why didn’t he run into Claire’s bedroom? Her door had a massive lock and bolt on it. The handle swung down and flipped back up again. Were they learning or remembering? Why was he even asking? If he didn’t do something, he would soon be their dinner; even with the bed blocking the door, it wouldn’t hold them forever.

The light from the full moon shone through the window. He heard no sounds at all from outside. There had been a few screams earlier, but nothing for a good few minutes since. He picked his bayonet off the bed and opened the window to get a better view. Breakspear looked deserted. He looked up and saw the telltale flashing light of an aircraft slowly descending.

“Maybe it’s just happened in the estate. I bet the rest of England is still OK ...”

The handle turned, and this time it stayed down. He leaned out. It was a fair way to drop, but the ground should be soft. If he stayed in the middle of the road and ran like fuck, he’d be out of this godforsaken estate and back on the main road in five minutes.

“And back to normality.”

He threw the bayonet out, looked up and down the street one last time, and climbed onto the windowsill. When he saw those things pushing open the door a couple of inches, sliding the bed away from the wall, he screamed again and nearly jumped there and then.

They still couldn’t get in, not yet anyway. Kevin turned, his eyes fixed on that door. Two pairs of hands reached around and inched up and down the edge. He was pretty sure one pair belonged to his sister.

Maybe there was a cure for this already. Maybe it still wasn’t too late to save the ones affected.

“I’ll come back, Claire,” he whispered. “I promise.” He eased his legs and body out into the warm night air. He doubted that the drop would hurt him if he hung from the window and dropped to the ground; it should only be a few feet.

As he clung to the outside window ledge, preparing to let go, his boot was grabbed. He jerked his head down and saw Thom’s head leaning out of the open living room window, the boy’s hand guiding his foot towards his snapping jaws. He felt his fingers slipping. Oh fuck. If he let go now, he would break his bastard neck when he hit the ground.

He swung his other foot into Thom’s face and felt the crunch of broken teeth, but the grip on his boot still remained firm. Kevin booted him again. This time he managed to find the spot he’d already hit with the binoculars. His foot sank into Thom’s head. It felt like he’d just booted a watermelon. The hand released his foot just as both of Kevin’s hands slipped off the wooden sill. He instinctively brought up his knees when his feet crashed into the lawn.

Kevin rolled away from the window, and then shakily got back on his feet. He had done it! He couldn’t believe that he’d just jumped out of his own pissing window. Kevin reached down, snatched his bayonet out of the lawn, and looked over at the downstairs window.

He managed a strangled laugh. “Got you that time, didn’t I?”

Thom half sprawled out of the window, and he wasn’t moving. Kevin tapped Thom’s head with the flat of his blade, then jumped back. He still didn’t move.

“Yeah, I got you that time,” he repeated. He used the deep grass to wipe off the thick mess coating the front of his boot. Events would have been so much different if Kevin had opted to wear his comfortable fabric trainers when he changed out of his school uniform tonight. His stomach suddenly rebelled.

“Oh Jesus!” Kevin fell to his knees and threw up his last meal into his dad’s flowerbed.

The sound of moaning made him look up towards his bedroom window. He wiped his chin on the back of his hand, then let out a small moan of his own. His sister had managed to get into his bedroom. Claire’s hungry eyes viewed him much as a dog looked at a rabbit. She slowly blinked before turning around and disappearing from view.

He rushed over to the garden gate, unlatched it, and ran out into the still-deserted street. Kevin glanced behind him, and he could see Claire through the kitchen window making her way towards the open front door. Oh fucking hell! The bitch was following him.

Yeah, well let her. It’s not like she’d be able to catch him. Kevin ran into the middle of the road and sprinted to the end of the street. He then stopped and turned around. Claire had reached the gate. She paused, too, then slipped out of the garden and lurched away in the opposite direction.

Kevin turned onto Breaks Road and walked over to the white lines. He stopped in the middle and slowly turned in a tight circle. It felt like he was the last person on the estate still alive. Nothing moved. The main road leading out of the estate was at the end of this street. He consoled himself knowing that in a few moments his nightmare would be over.

He started to jog. There was no point in knackering himself out by going hell for leather. He passed an upturned pram in the middle of the road and turned away when he saw the lumpy mess spattered all over the tarmac, not wanting to dwell upon the horror that must have happened on this spot earlier tonight. Jesus, the whole of Breakspear had descended to hell. He continued on, his mind conjuring images of a zombie infant crawling towards him, clacking its jaws like a set of comedy teeth.

“Is the situation not bad enough without you thinking up disturbing shite like that?” muttered Kevin.

In a house a few doors from where he stood, an upstairs light flicked on. His hope surged knowing that he wasn’t the only person in the estate still alive. No dead person would turn on a bloody light unless they leaned on it. He altered course and jogged towards the house, already planning on what he would say to the occupants.

As he approached, a high-pitched scream blasted out from the house. Kevin shuddered to a halt and fell to his knees. He couldn’t take any more of this. It was just too much.

The screaming abruptly stopped, and Kevin spared a single thought for the poor bastard who had just been got. He didn’t have a clue who lived there. Unlike the rest of his family, he had kept to himself. He guessed he’d feel a lot bloody worse if he actually knew who had lived at that house.

It was bad enough when his sister turned into one of them, and they hadn’t liked each other for years. It was like having a stranger living in the house. Kevin had always preferred his own company, and yet for the first time in his life, he craved the company of another living person.

The silence was broken when he heard a frantic tapping on glass. He automatically looked over to the house before realizing that the noise came from an estate car parked on the other side of the road. Through tear-soaked eyes, he saw a round, pink blur pressed against the rear window of the car.

Kevin heard the door open as he wiped his eyes. He got ready to run, just in case the figure turned out to be one of those things.

He watched a young girl, possibly a year older than him, approach him. He didn’t have a clue who she was. He didn’t recognize her from school.

“Oh my God!” she gasped. “Are you really alive?”

Kevin nodded.

The girl sobbed and ran up to him. She wrapped her arms around his body, hugged him tight, and then buried her face into his shoulder. Her brown hair smelled of strawberries and honey.

“Oh my God, I thought I was the only one left.”

Kevin didn’t know whether he should hug her back or not; he’d never hugged a girl before. He decided to risk it.

“My mum’s dead.” She peeled her face off his shoulder and nodded over to the house next to them. “We only came to drop off my gran’s birthday present. Everything was normal, and then all of a sudden my dad dropped the paper he was reading and jumped on my mum.”

She put her head back on his shoulder and quietly sobbed.

“What the hell is going …” the girl stopped in mid-sentence; her body went rigid and she began to moan.

“What’s wrong?” he said, fearing the worst. Kevin tried to release her grip, but she wouldn’t let go.

“There’s one behind you.”

She finally let him go, then grabbed his hand, and dragged him to the car. Kevin spun his head to see a woman with no arms staggering towards them.

He was so focused on her that he failed to notice the thudding sound of approaching boots until it was too late. The bayonet was snatched from Kevin’s grasp.

“Give me that knife, you fucking useless clown.”

He watched, shocked into inaction, as a gangly youth wearing a biker’s jacket and sporting a blonde crew cut ran forwards and pushed the blade through the woman’s eye. The youth then lifted his leg high and booted her to the ground.

“How the fucking hell have you two managed to stay alive for so long?”

He walked up to the corpse and pulled the bayonet out of her head, wiped both sides of the blade on the woman’s coat, and tucked it under his belt.

“I mean, just how dangerous can this bitch be? She’s got no fucking arms, and yet you still piss your pants and cringe away.”

Kevin tried to place the boy’s face as he swaggered up to them. He’d seen him around the estate but didn’t know his name. He did know that the lad hung around with Ashton Naylor, so obviously the bastard was going to be trouble.

“Is this your girlfriend, big nose? She’s cute, far too pretty for an ugly bitch like you.”

The boy pushed past him and tried to place his arm around the girl’s shoulder. She whimpered, ran behind him, and got hold of Kevin’s hand.

Her clinging to him made him feel strange, but in a good way. His mother had been the last female to hold his hand—when he was about nine.

The tall lad sneered. “Suit yourself, you weird bitch. I’m Darren, by the way. I expect to hear you scream my name when the next dead freak wants to scoff you and your queer boyfriend.”

He spun around and stormed away.

“Good riddance,” muttered the girl.

Kevin wished he knew what this girl’s name was, but he was too scared to ask her. He watched the tall boy getting further and further away and began to panic.

“Wait on!” he shouted.

The girl squeezed his hand. He felt the same way, but Darren knew Ashton, and that meant that the fucker was tough. It might only be about half a mile to the edge of the estate, but Christ alone knew what could jump out on them between here and the edge. He was sure that he could swallow his pride for the next few minutes. The girl would understand his reasoning, he was sure of it. He wouldn’t be able to protect her; Darren had stolen his bayonet.