Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (19 page)

“Stay,” Muz told her, making a joke of her puppy-like eyes.

He closed the door on her, disregarding the pleading look. She would be safe enough with the other two men and, though it was flattering, he was concerned about how dependant on him she was becoming.

A second or two after the door had closed
, it made a loud click as the electronic locks fell into place. Carl and Chuck stood there awkwardly, uncomfortably silent in each other’ company, while Jenna gnawed at the stubs of her fingernails and stared down the long stretch of the straight corridor behind them.

“What do you think his plan is now?” Chuck asked of neither of the other two in particular.

“If he’s anything like me, he’ll want to keep pushing on until he reaches a cordon,” Carl deemed to answer. “That’s certainly what I plan to do anyway.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Chuck said.

“I don’t care,” Carl blurted back. “I’ve had the feeling of death breathing down the back of my neck for longer than I can take. I’ll admit it; my nerves are shot. I need to get to safety.”

“But it’
s far too dangerous,” Chuck urged him. “We need to find somewhere secure and defendable to hold up and ride this whole thing out. This place would have been ideal if it wasn’t for that glass-fronted reception. Reinforced glass or not, I don’t think it would hold for long against a large, frenzied crowd like we’ve seen.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Carl now responded. “I don’t relish the idea of walking the streets out there
, but if that’s what I have to do to get to safety, then that’s what I have to do.”

“
Well, whatever the police officer decides to do, I’m going with him,” Jenna cut in defiantly.

“Whatever he decides to do? You’re just going to blindly put your life in his hands?” Chuck asked her incredulously.

“He’s kept me alive so far,” Jenna said.

“And you both think that if by some miracle you make it to the cordon, the authorities controlling it will just let you out?” Chuck asked them both, giving the very notion a snort of derision.

“Why not?” Jenna asked, appalled at the notion that she might not be let through the barriers.

“Because as far as far as anyone on the outside is concerned,” Chuck explained, “we’re all compromised, potentially infected, and therefore represent a threat
to their safety.”

“But they can’t just leave us to die,” Jenna said, her chin crinkling up and her bottom lip becoming fat.

“Can’t they?” Chuck now asked rhetorically.

“Stop scaring her,” Carl barked. “They will probably have treatment facilities in special
quarantine buildings set up.”

Chuck shook his head and sighed. “They can only do that once they know what it is they’re trying to treat.”

Again, the three of them stood in silence, the tension between Carl and Chuck now even higher than before, and Jenna exhibiting even stronger signs of being on the edge of falling apart. Muz seemed to have been gone for an inordinate amount of time before, with a sudden loud click, the door flung open, causing Jenna actually to yelp in fright.

Muz stood in the doorway, his arms laden in front of him. Stepping forward and to his right, he entered the small kitchenette there and
spilled the contents of his arms onto the metal work surface by the sink. Looking over his shoulders, the others saw that he had brought a first aid box and several items of grey and white clothes, folded and sealed in clear plastic bags.

The first thing he did then
was wash his head and arms in the sink, relishing the feel of the clean water rinsing away the accumulated sweat and dirt. Having dried himself off with the paper towels he ripped from a dispenser on the wall, he opened the red box with the white cross on the front.

Delving through the tightly packed contents, he picked out a handful of individual packets of anti-bacterial wipes. Ripping a couple open, he tended to his many scrapes, scratches
, and friction burns.

“I thought you blokes might appreciate a change of attire,” he said to Carl and Chuck, nodding at the piles of clothes.

Chuck’s suit was utterly filthy and Carl had previously implied that his own pants might be dirty on the inside.

“They’re pretty basic,” Muz said.
“Custody jumpers and jogging bottoms that we give to the prisoners whenever we need to seize their own clothes as evidence. Don’t worry; they’re brand new.”

Chuck nodded in gratitude. Though the morning air had been slightly chilly on their way here, all his exertions had left him feeling sweaty and damp.

“Cheers,” Carl said. “But before I change, is there any chance of getting a little something to eat.” As he asked this, he was looking up at the many shelves, stacked high with microwave meals, stored here in order to feed the prisoners.

“Yeah, of course. We should all try and eat,” Muz replied. “Take your pick. There’s not much of a choice though.”

After more deliberation than the selection warranted, both Carl and Chuck opted for the ‘All Day Breakfast’ and slung the two plastic containers in the microwave.

“Throw one in for me as well,” Muz said, finally giving
in to his hunger for the first time since this had all started. “How about you, Jenna?”

“No way,” the woman replied, turning her nose up in disgust.
“I’m not eating that crap. I’ve had too many custody meals in my time. If we’re heading back out, I’ll get something from the Tesco down the road.”

She’d probably spent a fair bit of money in that branch
of the store over the years. Rarely able to stomach the food offered to her in the cells while locked up at Colindale, upon her release, she would stagger half-starved and suffering withdrawal, over to the mini-supermarket for nourishment.

“You do realise
that the shop will have been left locked up since the day before this all kicked off?” Muz told her.

“
Then I’ll smash a window,” Jenna responded with a casual shrug.

Carl and Chuck looked over at her with new eyes, a barely concealed expression of distaste on their faces. Muz however was completely used to the complete and utter disregard for the law from people like her and he actually laughed. The woman was growing on him. Pic
king up another packet of anti-bacterial wipes, he threw it at her. Jenna caught it as it hit her in the chest.

“Clean yourself up,” he said with a grin.

“Thanks,” Jenna replied.

As he ate th
e microwaved food in its tray using a plastic fork that threatened to break every time he stabbed at a sausage, Muz watched the woman clean the cuts and grazes on her face with the alcohol-laced disposable cloth. Noticing she had missed an area of dirty scratches on her forehead, he opened another packet and helped her clean herself. Jenna smiled an almost bashful and thankful smile up at him, as he wiped her face, holding her head still with her chin in his hand. Muz held her gaze a moment and smiled back.

“She definitely had the right idea,” Carl said, gesturing at Jenna. “This stuff is revolting.”

Despite his blunt critique of the food, both he and Chuck finished their meals in less than thirty seconds. Muz too finished his own meagre meal and threw the packaging in the bin.

“We should head upstairs and see what we can see,” Muz suggested.
“There’s a balcony on the third floor where we can get a decent view of the surrounding area.”

Jenna realised that this meant they had been right in guessing that Muz would want to head back out again and press on to try and find the cordon. The resolve
, with which she had told the other two men that she would follow the police officer wherever he decided to go, faltered a little now at the thought of venturing back outside.

“Can’t we just barricade ourselves in the police station and wait for help?” she almost pleaded, as they all walked back down the corridor towards the door to the stairwell.

“Are you kidding me? Other than the custody area, the glass fronted reception makes this place possibly the most insecure building on the borough,” Muz responded, backing up what Chuck had already told her.

“Can’t we shut ourselves in the custody area then?”

“No,” Muz sighed. He completely empathised with the woman’s reticence to chance the street again but he didn’t see that they had any choice. “I can’t find any keys for the external caged door to the rear yard and as you’ve seen, the internal door to the rest of the building has an electronic lock. We can’t guarantee that the power’s going to stay on and if it goes down, we’d be locked in.”

Listening to what the officer was saying
, Chuck nodded to himself. Generally, from his experience with them, he didn’t hold the police in very high regard, but for a lowly constable, the man was keeping his head together enough to think things through logically, and in a situation as life-threatening as this, that’s exactly what they all needed to do.

They stood in silence at the bottom of the stairs, as they had on first entering the police station, looking and listening up the several flights for any signs of life
, or more importantly, as Chuck believed, for any signs of the undead.

“So where do you keep all the gun
s, officer?” Carl asked in a whisper.

“Guns?” Muz said, almost laughing out loud. “Be serious.”

“What?” Carl responded, feeling a little hurt by Muz’s derisive tone. “This is a police station. There must be guns.”

“Seriously, mate,” Muz said. “This isn’t America.”

With Carl’s TV cop drama illusions shattered, they headed upstairs, the business man brooding sulkily at the rear. Emerging through the double fire doors on the third floor, they turned left and entered the canteen. It was a fairly large room that arced round the internal curving wall, with the outer wall being made entirely of glass panels. A potted fern by the pillar as they walked in was the only item in the room that softened the otherwise starkly modern décor. Upon the many tables and strewn around the floor, there was the remaining debris from countless meals that had been eaten here very recently.

“You know, I really did expect police stations to be a little tidier than this,” Chuck said with revulsion.

“Fair enough with the writing room downstairs,” Muz said, “but the canteen’s not normally like this. Looks like there must have been hundreds of people gathered in here, maybe using it as an initial operation command centre, before they all evacuated.”

In the far left corner of the room, surrounded by dusty and moth-eaten cheap armchairs, a television was attached to the wal
l. It was still switched on. The group immediately gravitated towards it and saw that it was portraying scenes of devastation in the local area. Just as Muz and Jenna had seen on the TV in the house in which they had first sought refuge, there were pictures of the carnage at Mill Hill Circus. As well as that area though, the footage also showed aerial images of Finchley Central, Hendon Central and Holders Hill Circus.

“Oh God,” Muz gasped.

He stared at the screen and at the masses of dead bodies littering the streets, all stripped of the vast majority of their flesh, their open chest cavities nothing but empty bowls, devoid of any internal organs. Around them, staggered those afflicted with the terrible madness, still clinging to life, though they looked as though should be lying motionless in death with their victims.

“That’s West Hendon Broadway,” Jenna announced with horror, as the next scene emerged on the screen.

“This has spread at least as far as the A5 then,” Muz said solemnly.

“At least,” Chuck said.

Suddenly feeling sickened to the degree that he began to break out in a cold sweat, Muz felt the need for fresh air. He pushed his way through the door onto the external balcony that overlooked the front of the building. A couple of years ago, this third floor vantage point would have afforded a panoramic view. Now though, with the recent development of the new blocks of Beaufort Park that stood looming over the nick, the view of the surroundings was greatly reduced.

As Muz repeatedly filled his lungs with the cool air
, in an effort to dispel his nausea, Carl and Chuck emerged out onto the balcony to join him, leaving Jenna alone to stare transfixed in mortified despair at the TV screen inside.

“The zombies are everywhere,” Chuck said, looking out over the road at the figures that could be seen lurching between the gaps of the aging blocks of
the Grahame Park estate.

“You’re really sticking with calling them that?” Carl asked, feeling the need to make someone else look stupid, as he stil
l sulked over the issue of there being guns in a police station. He thought it had been a perfectly valid question.

Chuck just shrugged.

“I think you’re losing it,” Carl said with a dismissive snort.

“I turned the sound up,” Jenna said, joining the rest of them when she fearfully realised they had left her alone. “This morning, the telly said we could try and make our way to the edges of the quarantine zone
, but now it’s not saying anything about it. It’s just saying to stay at home. It’s not even saying where the cordons are.”