Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (42 page)

“It’s ’cos they physically weaker, innit,” Jay told him.

“Hey,” Amy responded.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Margaret asked the youth.

“No, he’s right,” Carl said in Jay’s defence. “When the zombies get desperate and turn on each other, the females are less able to defend themselves. Most of the women have probably been eaten until there’s nothing left but bone.”

If either of the two women in the truck had felt inclined to challenge that as a chauvinistic remark, they were distracted from doing so by the images of such brutal suffering Carl’s words had given them.

They couldn’t have been more than seventy metres from the junction with the A5 when they came across something truly horrible. Judging by the lone animal’s protective visor, shin guards, and florescent body cover, it was a police horse. With its biology having been consumed by the spread of amoeboid cells, it craved meat just as badly as all the afflicted human victims.

In its
mouth, it held the severed head of a man. Just as the horse was trying to crack open the cranium with teeth not designed for the job, so too was the head attempting to eat the horse. The severed head chewed feverishly on the animal’s fat upper lip. The man had clearly not been the horse’s only recent meal. It had swallowed a cat virtually whole and the animated corpse of the feline had since eaten its way out through the horse’s neck. The festering cat’s head and one paw could be seen emerging from a hole in the throat.

“Oh, that is it,” Muz said as he applied the brakes. “It doesn’t get any more twisted than that.”

“Keep driving,” Chuck told him. “If we just drive past, maybe it won’t work out this truck is full of food.”

Muz reapplied the accelerator and edged the vehicle towards the horse.
The animal was completely preoccupied by the head in its mouth, and it seemed totally disinterested by the approaching Jankel. Just as Muz was beginning to think Chuck had been right though, the horse allowed the head to fall to the road with a thud and launched itself at the truck.

Muz jumped on the brake, bringing them to a screeching stop just as the horse mounted the bonnet. It beat wildly at the cage that covered the windscreen with the hooves of its front feet and gnawed
at the metal bars. Digby in the rear went crazy then, barking furiously with fear. It was all everyone could do to hold him down.

Transfixed by the crazed beast’s eyes no more than a couple of feet from his face, Muz was for a moment incapable of figuring out what to do. He then threw the gear lever into reverse and sped off backwards. With its teeth locked on the bars of the cage though, the horse just came with them. The copper braked hard, causing the horse to slide further up the bonnet
, and with a shrill equine scream, its head slammed so hard into the cage that it buckled the bars and cracked the window.

“Go forwards,” Chuck bellowed at him.

Muz did as he was told and accelerated hard. The whole body of the horse now pressed against the windscreen, causing the cracks to spread and obscuring Muz’s view.

“Brake now,” Chuck yelled. “Hard.”

Muz stomped on the pedal with all the strength of his right leg. The people in the back slammed into each other and cried out in pain as they were flung forward.

The horse flew forwards off the truck and rolled in the road ahead of them. Not enjoying this activity in the slightest, the cat in its neck was wriggling with all its might now, trying to work its way out through the wound.
The horse however, was straight back up on its feet and came at the truck again, its hooves beating loudly against the bodywork as it clambered up the bonnet once more.

“Again,” Chuck said. “You’ve got to hit it while it’s down.”

Muz accelerated hard again and then slammed on the brake. The horse tumbled into the road once more, its legs kicking powerfully at the air while its head slammed against the tarmac.

“Now,” Chuck commanded.

“I am. I am,” Muz yelled back, both anxious and annoyed. That sodding dog barking wasn’t helping matters.

He drove at the horse, the engine racing with high revs. As the beast was already clambering back to its feet, the truck slammed into it. One of the front wheels drove straight over its pelvis and everyone inside f
elt the jolt, as the bone broke into several pieces with a series of loud cracks. Muz backed the Jankel up once more and the wheel came loose.

Though the horse was squealing in agony, its nostrils flaring and its lips peeled back from its teeth
, it again started to get up. Its crushed and broken back end lay immobile while it dragged itself up by its front legs, eyes trained furiously on the driver of the police truck.

“Again,” Chuck said. The word was no more than a grave whisper though.

Eyes wide and panting heavily, due to the amount of adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, Muz drove forward again. This time he angled the wheels so that the truck drove straight over the horse’s head. His eyes watered as he felt the bones crunch and cave under his wheel but he kept driving straight ahead. As the rear wheels thumped over the huge carcass, he glanced in a side mirror to see the cat, expelled by the sudden increase of internal pressure, pop free of the neck cavity and squirt across the road. The horse wasn’t moving any more.

At the end of Orchard Drive, they came to a T-junction with the A5. Directly ahead was a line of terraced houses. Just as they had seen from up in the block, all the windows of the buildings had been boarded up from the inside.
No more than a few metres to their left however, on the opposite side of the road, there was another junction. Blocking the entrance to the new road, there stood a line of solid concrete blocks that reached up to the first floor windows of the adjacent houses. From the coils of razor wire that had been unfurled at their feet, there hung scraps of clothing and still twitching lumps of meat.

Lying motionless in the road were numerous charred corpses. The blackened bodies were stick thin, their muscles and fat having been devoured by flames. Most had no heads, courtesy of the snipers on the roofs either side of the junction. Several of the cars here had been thrown onto their sides and burnt down to their skeletal frames by hand grenades. It looked like a war zone.
Unlike the police cordons though, this much more substantial military barrier had held up against the crowds of afflicted and those unaffected who had attempted to escape this hell.

Muz drove cautiously onto the main road, wheels crunching over the dead, while he wove between cars, heading for the barred junction.

“Hey, Cheeseburger, we’ve got movement inside the zone,” a Marine said from atop one of the roofs.

“I see them,” Corporal Cheeseburger called back, the driver of the police truck already in the sights of his rifle.

His real name was Jacob Ackerman, but on joining the Marines, he had swiftly acquired the nickname, due to his religious dietary habits. Jews didn’t eat both meat and dairy together.

“Don’t come any closer,” Cheeseburger called out through his loudhailer. “You are currently under quarantine.”

“We need help,” Muz called back up at him, having cracked open his door because the side window wasn’t designed to roll down.

“We insist you let us out,” Carl also shouted. His voice held the same air of demanding affected superiority he had tried on Muz when they had first met.

Muz told him to be quiet. That kind of attitude hadn’t worked on him and it sure as hell wasn’t going to work on these soldiers.

Looking up at the men lying across
the tiles above, Tom fought against a rage that began to well within him. Flashbacks of his wife and son being shot by such men cut through his mind like electric shocks.

“I repeat,” Cheeseburger called down
, “you have been quarantined to contain the spread of an unknown threat.”

“But for how long?” Muz asked earnestly.

“The period of the containment has not yet been determined.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Muz yelled.

“I sympathise with your situation,” the Marine Corporal replied coldly. “But I must inform you that snipers are situated all around the perimeter and any attempt to…”

“Yo man, fuck your snipers,” Jay shouted, leaning out the back of the Jankel.

“Don’t be stupid,” Margaret told him, trying to drag him back inside.

“There must be something you can do to help us,” Muz pleaded.

“Please, return to your homes or another place of safety and await…”

“Place of safety?” Jay yelled. “I swear, if I get zombified, I’m gonna come back and eat you. You get me? Believe.”

“Jay,” Margaret hissed.

“This is as bad as the Berlin wall,” Carl shouted, angrily gesturing at the concrete barrier.

Corporal Cheesebuger looked at the men lying some distance either side of him. They were getting jumpy, shifting their positions slightly and hooking their fingers over the triggers of their rifles.

“I told you this was bloody pointless,” Chuck grumbled, as he leant forward between Muz and Carl’s seats. “Let’s just get back to the block.”

“No,” Muz told him curtly.

“Look around us,” Chuck said sternly now. “Do you really want to end up like all these bodies
?”

“Come on, let’s just go,” Carl said, frightened by Chuck’s words.

Muz put the truck in reverse and began to back them away from the concrete wall.

Cheeseburger actually heard, even from this distance, the Marine to his right moan with disappointment, as the truck began to back away. He motioned for the man to lower his rifle. Those people down there didn’t know how lucky they were. He and his men had orders to shoot civilians only if they exhibited clear signs of being infected or if they made any serious attempt to breach the cordon. Many of his men were of the opinion though that they should just completely purge the entire zone and cut their collateral losses. They presented a good image of being hard men
, but that was clearly fear talking.

T
hough Cheeseburger didn’t share their fear (he knew that God would protect him in this dark time) he wasn’t entirely sure he agreed with the tactics currently being employed either. The Top Brass had been listening to the science geeks who had probably caused all this in the first place. The scientists had managed to convince the Brigadier in command on the ground that there may yet be hope that some people in the zone would prove immune and could therefore hold a potential cure. Wishful thinking, he thought.

Muz continued to reverse across the road, up onto the pavement and across the grass area in front of the houses. Only when the spiked branches of the privet hedges bordering the lawns screeched against the rear of the Jankel did he stop. The
n he just sat there, staring intently at the concrete blocks barring the junction.

“What are you doing?” Chuck asked.

“This thing has got to weigh about four ton,” Muz responded, still looking fixedly at the wall. “And it’s armour plated.”

“And?” Carl now asked nervously.

“Look at that right hand edge of the junction, where the concrete barrier meets the wall of the house,” Muz said. “There’s a gap of about two inches. I reckon that if we ram that block hard enough we could knock it back a foot or two, creating a gap large enough for us to squeeze through.” His voice was eerily calm. He was deadly serious.

“Oh shit,” Carl said, fumbling in his hast
e to put on his seatbelt.

“You’re mad,” Chuck protested. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Buckle up,” Muz called over his shoulder to those in the back, as he put the gear into first and revved the engine loudly.

He was about to lift the clutch when he felt the cold hard press of what could only be the muzzle of Chuck’s handgun against his left temple.

“I said, don’t even think about it,” Chuck told him, his words as cold as the gun metal. “I can’t let you breach the cordon.”

Everyone in the truck was now motionless and silent, unable to look at anything but the weapon in Chuck’s hand.

“Why the hell not?” Muz dared to ask, his anger overriding his common sense.

“Because any one of us may well be contaminated,” Chuck stated. “The threat we pose to the surrounding populace is not acceptable.”

“Not acceptable?” Muz repeated incredulously. “Chuck, none of us are showing any signs of having been infected and you know as well as I do that if we stay in here, we’re all eventually going to die.”

“If it’s a question of keeping this thing contained – which it is – I can deal with that,” Chuck said. “I’m sorry
, but given the bigger picture, we’re all expendable.”

“Expendable?” Muz blurted back, his anger building, daring to turn his head to face the barrel of the gun. “Okay, cut the shit, Chuck. Just who the fuck are you?”

“What do you mean?” Chuck asked, the innocence in his voice a little too fabricated.

“Yeah, what do you mean?” Carl echoed.

“I said, cut the shit,” Muz spat. “I mean the way you handle that gun, the way you talk sometimes. You’re no more a banker than I am. Isn’t that right?”