Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (12 page)

Jen
na’s scrawny legs dangled down in front of him then and he distracted himself by taking her weight and lowering her down.

“Oh God,” she said, covering her mouth and nose with one hand
.

The sight of the knife handle protruding from the man’s eye socket, along with the stench of the man having defecated in his death throws, made her wretch.

Cautiously Muz trod down the stairs, stooping to get the best view of the hallway through the bannister, Jenna close behind him. As they walked through to the living room and Muz was closing the curtains, with nervous glances outside, Jenna broke their silence.

“What did you say your name was, officer?” she asked.

“Muz,” he responded curtly.

He wished she’d shut up. She was talking far too loudly for his liking.

“That’s a strange name.”

“Keep your voice down,” Muz repriman
ded her. “It’s short for Mustafa.”

“Where are you from?” Jenna whispered.

“I live in Herts, but I’m originally from Hackney.”

“Where are your parents from?”

“Hackney,” Muz sighed.

Jenna looked a little confused by this.

“My grandparents originate from Turkey,” Muz said, finally conceding to give her the answer she’d been digging for.

“Exotic,” Jenna said with a smile and a lingering look.

Muz regarded her with disbelief. Was this walking skeleton actually flirting with him?

He found the remote control and turned on the TV.
As it burst into life, the volume was set far too high and he fumbled, in sudden panic, to turn it down to all but a whisper. He switched the channel over to BBC News and was instantly presented with aerial images of the streets he had patrolled for so long.

“A large area of
Barnet Borough is now a cordoned off containment zone,” said the voice of a disembodied reporter.

“Holy shit,” Muz responded.

In the top right corner of the screen were the words ‘live images’, as the helicopter-bourn camera swept over the streets of Mill Hill. There was complete disarray everywhere. Cars had been abandoned in the roads, left where they had crashed or become blocked in by other abandoned vehicles. Even police cars, ambulances, and the occasional fire truck could be seen littering the streets.

All around, there laid the remains of cannibalised people, stripped of their f
lesh. It was a sickening sight. There were a large number of people down there on the streets, simply standing around or wandering aimlessly, even though they too looked as though they should have been lying with the dead. Many had suffered horrific injuries but appeared unconcerned by their mutilations.

“We again apologise for the disturbing nature of these images,” the reporter went on. “The authorities have still not disclosed the initial cause of this atrocity. This may be because, at this time, no
one knows.”

The camera swept over buildings to focus on someone running out of a café on The Broadway. He had probably taken refuge in there overnight, Muz guessed. Immediately, all the other people in the crowded high street began to converge on him, sprinting around and clambering over the various vehicles that cluttered the road and pavements.

Muz realised that his heart was racing, as he willed the man on, tensing further every time a grasping hand almost took hold of the desperate runner. The man managed to get a fair distance, before finding himself trapped amid the mess of cars blocking Mill Hill Circus. He was soon surrounded and the deranged horde set upon him. Though there was no sound to accompany the images Muz was watching, the copper imagined he could hear the man’s screams. He looked away from the screen in disgust.

“This is terrible, just terrible,” the reporter said, genuine anguish in his voice. “Once again, for the benefit of those trapped within the containment area
, who might be viewing this, the police advise you to stay at home. Lock all doors and windows, close curtains and blinds and stay away from the windows. If possible, stay in a room where you cannot be seen from outside and keep all noise to a minimum. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has stressed that help will come for you.

“If your home, or wherever you currently are, is no longer safe and you have no other option, you are advised to find another place of safety or failing this, make your way towards the borough borders, where you will be met by quarantine staff. This however – and I r
eally cannot stress this enough – has proven extremely dangerous.”

No, Muz thought, he had to get back to the nick. He felt impotent stuck here and frankly embarrassed to be caught up in this. He should be helping
at the cordons, assisting in the rescue efforts. He would just have to plan his route back very carefully. If he avoided areas of dense population, God willing, he would avoid the same fate as the man at Mill Hill Circus.

“There is a dedicated emergency helpline for those with family members or…” the reporter went on, as Muz heard a noise from an adjacent room and turned off the TV.

Holding his breath, so as to hear as best as he could, he leaned round the living room door and looked through the hall into the kitchen, from where the sound had come. There, with a sigh of relief, he saw Jenna going through the fridge. He had been so transfixed by the TV that he hadn’t even noticed her wander off.

The scrawny woman took a large block of cheese and started gnawing on it hungrily
. The sickness she had suffered during the night had passed for the time being and she now felt half-starved.

She was able to sleep and eat? Muz couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t slept or eaten in well over thirty hours
, and yet, he still did not feel hungry and despite his obvious fatigue, he was wide awake. That had to be the stress he was under, something which Jenna seemed to be coping with far better than he was. Seeing Muz watching her, she held out the orange block, offering it to him. He shook his head.

Leaving her to it, Muz returned to the living room and picked up the landline handset. Pressing the ‘on’ button, he was immensely grateful to hear a dial tone and punched in the numbers of his home phone.
It rang and rang.

“Come on,” Muz growled.

“Hello?” his wife answered at last. Even from hearing just that single word, Muz could tell she had been crying.

“Farah, it’s me,
” he said.

“Mustaf
a? Oh, thank God,” Farah gasped, starting to cry all over again. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Listen to me,” Muz said sternly. “I’m in the containment zone.”

“Oh God, no. It’s all over the news. There’s…”

“Baby, please try not to cry,” he begged her. “I spent the night safe in a house. I’m not injured. I’m okay.”

“What? Who’s house? Where? I’ll phone the police and get them to…” Farah began to babble.

“Honey, listen,” Muz cut her off. “I’m going to get out of here. I’m going to make my way to the cordons and get out. Okay?”

“Okay,” Farah said, trying so hard to take control of herself.

“Now, mum and dad are going to be worried too, so I need you to c
all them and tell them I’m okay,” Muz instructed.

“Okay,” Farah sniffled.

“I’m going to have to go now…”

“Oh Mustaf
a, please take care of yourself,” Farah begged.

“I will. I’ll see you soon,” Muz tried to convince her, putting as much conviction in his voice as he was able to muster.

“I’m so sorry for shouting at you when you left,” Farah wailed down the line, losing all composure.

“That’s okay, baby. It’s fine. I love you,” Muz said, the sound of his wife’s distress causing a tight lump to form in his throat
again.

“I love you too.”

Muz hung up the phone and struggled to hold back the tears. He noticed Jenna now, watching him from the doorway. Her expression was one of deep sadness, which Muz took to be empathy for him and his wife. He was wrong. The expression on her face was born of self-pity. She had no one to phone, no real friends or family who might be wondering where she was right now.

“Right,” Muz said decisively. “Let’s get out of here. We need to stay off the streets as much as we can and avoid the epicentre, where this all started. I’m guessing that’s where the largest number of those cannibal psychos will be.”

After checking the garden from a rear window, the two of them stepped outside. The day was grey and cold and a heavy morning mist hung in the air.

“If I’ve still got my bearings and my knowledge of the ground is what it should be, these gardens should back onto
Mill Hill Cemetery,” Muz said, more to himself than for Jenna’s benefit.

Jenna nodded, unable to speak with her mouth stuffed full of cheese.

“It was the early hours of the morning when this all kicked off,” Muz went on. “The gates to the cemetery would have been locked at the time and so probably still are. As far as I’m aware, the whole graveyard is surrounded by a high fence. From what I’ve seen of these deranged people, they no longer seem to have the mental co-ordination to figure out how to climb. So, the cemetery should be clear.”

Muz knew he could easily be wrong on any one of those points
, but he needed to believe that the graveyard beyond this garden fence was safe, to give himself enough nerve to get going. He clambered onto and straddled the fence, peering into the misty gloom on the other side. He wasn’t able to see much at all, due to the heavy moisture in the air and the nearby line of trees. Having pulled Jenna up, they both dropped down onto the other side.

If there had been anyone in the cemetery, any noise they might have made was muted by the cloying vapour. Only the most local of sounds, which Muz and Jenna themselves made could be heard. Unable to see or hear for more than thirty fee
t all around them was unnerving.

The unlikely pair stooped
, as they pushed their way through the densely set trees, being as careful as they could not to snap any branches. After only a few feet, they emerged from the wood line and trod tentatively between the numerous gravestones.

“We need to head to the northern end,” Muz whispered to Jenna, reluctant to break the dead silence that enveloped them. “When we get there, we can cut across to the ot
her side of Milespit Hill. That’ll be a bit risky, but then it’ll be fields and trees, all the way to the far western end of Wise Lane. All being well, we shouldn’t bump into anyone.”

“I hope you know this area as well as you think you do,” Jenna grumbled quietly, all
the while nervously scanning around herself with wide eyes.

So do I, Muz thought to himself.

They soon found themselves on one of the several intersecting roads that cut through these expansive grounds and decided to follow it. Their confidence began to grow, as there were no noises whatsoever to suggest there was anyone else in this enclosed graveyard with them, no one living anyway.

Passing row after row of headstones, they saw relatively new plots, with fresh flowers decorating many a grave. There were also plots so old they had clearly
long since been forgotten and could barely even be seen, hidden as they were among the trees and brambles that had overwhelmed them.

“I don’t like this place,” Jenna stated flatly.

She was clearly beginning to suffer from withdrawal again, her face a sallow yellow. Wincing in pain, she clutched her stomach.

A rustling through the grass
, just to their right, alerted them to something moving there and both their hearts began to pound in their chests. Muz tried to beckon Jenna away in the other direction but she wasn’t looking at him. She just stood there, her eyes transfixed on the long grass.

A cat broke the cover of the undergrowth and darted into the road. Jenna literally jumped, holding her hands up to her face. On seeing them, the cat froze and stared back. It was clearly in a state of distress, arching its back, the fur down its spine and covering its tail standing on end. The tabby was only there a second
, before it sprinted off for the safety of new cover.

Carrying on, t
hey followed the road through this morbid place for so long that Muz began to wonder whether it looped around and they had been walking in a huge circle. At that point, however, the mist cleared a little. Up ahead, through the wooded area they were walking towards, and at the top of the hill, he saw the unmistakable green copper roof of Arkley Medical Research Facility. They were heading in the right direction after all.

“Okay, we need to make our way over to the left and…” Muz began to say.

Jenna however interrupted him by doubling over, bracing herself with her hands on her knees and vomiting up a puddle of bright orange, snotty, lumpy goo. She made a horrible retching sound, as her stomach heaved repeatedly.

There then came, from the
gravestones to their right and just beyond the limit of view the mist afforded, a chilling moan. Muz stopped dead, not daring to move. This was no cat.

Equally as startled, Jenna lifted her head, a slippery orange tendril dangling from her chin, and cupped a hand over her mouth to stem any further vomiting. Muz glared intently at her
, with a finger over his lips, and she looked back apologetically.