Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (54 page)

Re
membering all too vividly how he had come under fire the last time he had gotten close to that road, up by Mackie D’s, Muz drove down Orchard Drive at no more than four miles an hour. When he drew level with the Hillersdon Avenue junction to his left, no more than forty metres from the A5, he hit the brake and brought the truck to a standstill.

It was deathly quiet at the end of the road ahead. The A5 looked just as it had the last time they had come here, other than that there were now the blackened bones of a horse and two cows lying amid the human skeletons in the road. They couldn’t see any snipers on the rooftops but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

“What are you doing?” Amy asked Muz from the back.

“I’m just giving the soldiers a minute or two to get to grips with us being here,” the copper said over his shoulder. “I don’t want them making any hasty decisions.”

Just then, the loud roar of four Sea King helicopters appearing over the roofs caused everyone in the truck to jump with fright. The choppers passed by overhead no more than sixty feet off the ground.

“What are those drums they’re carrying for?” Muz asked, peering up through the top of the windscreen. “They look like they’ve got lawn sprinklers attached to them.”

He looked at Chuck then, who just sat in silence.

“What do you know, Chuck?” Amy asked
, as the choppers disappeared from view, heading south-east over the houses. “What are those helicopters going to do?”

“Well, they’re not crop spraying,” Chuck told her.

“So they’ve finally conceded that a purge is their only option,” Raj stated.

“What is purge?” Tom asked.

“Oh God, no,” Amy gasped.

“With what? What’s in those canisters, Chuck?” Muz demanded to know.

Chuck shrugged. “Napalm? Sarin? Cyanide? Maybe even mustard gas. Who knows?”

“It’s not likely to be sarin,” Raj stated. “Not if they have any idea what they’re trying to fight. Sarin attacks the muscles that control breathing, and we know that the infected do not breathe.”

“Whatever it is, we’re fucked,” Chuck said, cutting off the scientist’s speculation.

They continued to wait,
even more tense now, looking out through the windscreen and straining to make out any tell-tale signs of the soldiers’ presence over on the A5.

“I think we should leave the truck here and walk the rest of the way,” Muz
said to Chuck.

“What?” Amy cried out nervously from the back.

“You sure you don’t want to try and ram your way through again?” Chuck replied sarcastically.

“That’s exactly what I don’t want them to think we’re going to do,” Muz told him.

“No, of course not,” Chuck said. “That would just be stupid.”

“You ready?” Muz asked the African man, ignoring his comment.

“I guess so.”

“You lot wait in here for the minute until I call you forward,” Muz said to the others.

Cautiously, he then opened his door and dropped down to the road. Chuck did the same. Holding their open hands out, so as to show they weren’t brandishing weapons, they took one slow step after another towards the junction at the end of the street.

“Stop there,” a voice shouted out through a loudhailer, after they had taken no more than ten steps.

Simultaneously, the two men stopped in their tracks, fearing that they might not be given a second warning.

“We’ve got something important to show you,” Muz called back at the top of his lungs, hoping his words weren’t drowned by the falling rain.

When he got no response from the soldier, he turned to look at Chuck. The big man just shrugged back at him in indecision. Muz started walking forward again.

“Do not come any closer,” the artificially enhanced voice bellowed again.

“Listen to me. My name is Colour Sergeant Chijioke,” Chuck shouted, stepping forward in line with the copper. “We have people here who have recovered from the infection. We want to hand them over to you. They need to be examined.”

Again,
there was no response.

“Are you listening to me?” Chuck called out as loud as he could manage without succumbing to a coughing fit. “They may be the key to a cure.”

Still nothing.

Chuck dared to step further forward now and Muz followed him. As they did so, they looked down at their chests and at the ground around them, trying to see whether there were any laser sights trained on them.
In the bright light of the day though, it wasn’t possible to tell at this range. They kept walking, hoping for the best.

Then there came a shot. Chuck heard something unseen buzz through the air by his right ear, instantly followed by the crack of a rifle.

“Don’t shoot,” Muz pleaded, putting his hands up in the air.

“Fuck this,” Chuck growled, turning and running back to the truck.

Inspired by the first, more and more shots rained past Muz, sparking and giving of high-pitched whirring sounds, as they ricocheted off cars and road signs. Muz needed no further warning. He too span on his heels and ran.

“Get in the sodding truck,” Chuck yelled frantically at him, leaning out of his door, as bullets continued to wiz through the air.

Muz literally dove into his seat, his face landing in Chuck’s lap. Pulling himself together, rather than reversing all the way back up the long straight road, he spun the wheel hard left and screeched into the junction.

Hillersdon Avenue, running parallel with the A5,
hid the Jankel from the soldier’s sight for the most part with a stretch of semi-detached houses. Only the reports of a few rounds continued to cut the air, as one or two soldiers tried to sneak bullets between the tightly packed buildings.

“Well, at least we tried,” Chuck said, coughing into his dirty hanky.
“Drive to the far end of the road and do a left. We’ll have to make a wide loop back round to the block.”

“No. If the army are going to use chemical weapons, we have to get out of the quarantine somehow,”
Amy demanded, her voice shrill with fear.

“Chemical weapons are usually heavier than air,” Raj told her calmly. “Otherwise
, they would simply float away and therefore be of little use. So long as the helicopters aren’t carrying napalm, we should be okay high up in the tower.”

“He’s right,” Chuck agreed.

Amy wasn’t happy though and slumped back into her seat, whining to herself.

Feeling more than a little shaken, Muz did as Chuck suggested. He had almost reached the end of the road when what he saw caused him to stamp on the break so hard that those in the rear were thrown forwards, bashing heads with each other and slamming into the hard steel partition.

“Ow,” Amy cried out and Digby yelped, more in shock than pain.

“You drive like child,” Tom protested angrily.

Muz, staring ahead of the truck, didn’t hear the people in the back. It had been several days since they had seen that strange and dangerous goo that had killed Carl back in the tower. Muz had begun to hope that the thing had dried up and died, yet, here it was again.

The blob slowly emerged, expanding and contracting in a crude form of locomotion, from around one of the houses that sat by the T-junction, until it blocked the street ahead of them. Huge now, it contained the
complete and incomplete skeletons of numerous people and what looked like the remains of a badger. It was so massive that it even held within its mucus-like form a semi-consumed bovine carcass. The bones and the nervous system were the only parts of the cow not being dissolved by the acid. The thin cords of nerves could clearly be seen being gathered up by the combined human nerve bundles. The dead animal was thus being assimilated into the communal network. Still at the very centre of the amoeboid mass were the original two human skeletons, their hands bonded together by an enveloping web of nerve clusters.

“No fucking way is that real,” Muz gasped.

“Not good,” Tom whispered.

Raj scrambled forwards in the rear and leant between the two front seats.

“Incredible. It’s an integrated community,” he said, his voice filled with awe. “Never in my wildest dreams…”

“It’s a legion,” Chuck stated ominously.

“Beautiful,” Raj said in admiration.

“Get back in the rear,” Muz said angrily, slapping Raj on the head and forcing
him backward.

Inside the jellified mass, there were many eyes, some still seated within skulls, some free-floating in the goo, attached by their optic nerves to the collective core. As extensions of the brain, the cell
ular metamorphosis had left them alone. As one, the eyes turned to regard the truck.

“It’s looking
right at us,” Raj gasped, eyes filled with wonder, as though he were looking at his own child for the first time.

“Not good,” Tom reiterated.

“Other than the useless calcium of the skeletal remains, it appears to be comprised primarily of basic protein compounds,” Raj said, more to himself than anyone around him, as though he were attempting to mentally deconstruct the strange organism.

“Just so you’re aware, this pile of protein compounds eats people,” Amy told him.

“Not eats. Absorbs,” Raj corrected her. “And in doing so, it links whatever neural tissue it salvages to its own via its increasing nerve web. It would therefore be logical to assume that the more organisms it assimilates, the more intelligent it becomes.”

“Great,” Muz barked.

Raj’s contemplation became so intense then that he ceased to vocalise his thoughts, as they came too thick and fast for mere words to keep up with.

“I think you should back up,” Chuck told Muz.

“Er… yeah.” The sight of the impossible creature had caused the copper’s brain to stall.

The seeing thinking amoeba quivered in anticipation and edged forward.

“It’s coming for us,” Chuck warned.

“Yes. I know,” Muz said, fumbling with the gear stick.

“Not good,” Tom said.

In his haste and nervousness, Muz seemed incapable of finding reverse gear.

“Okay, calm down,” Chuck told him. “Look how slow it’s moving. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“But don’t forget how it killed Carl,” Amy added.

No sooner had the woman said this than several semi-liquid tentacles shot out from the main body of the massive lump, snapping through the air towards the truck. They fell short of their target but then instead wrapped themselves around cars and lampposts, contracting to drag the mass towards the survivors at a much accelerated rate.

“Reverse. Now. Hurry up,” Chuck told Muz.

“Shit,” Muz yelled and fought with the gear stick until it crunched into gear.

He floored the accelerator and spun the steering wheel. The Jankel arced backwards, mounted the pavement and slammed into a lamppost, buckling the rear doors.

“Get your fucking head in gear,” Chuck shouted at Muz, “or we’re going to be eaten by a zombie-filled lump of snot.”

Shaking like a leaf, Muz engaged first and sped off in the opposite direction, back the way they had come. Tom unlocked the damaged rear doors and repeatedly kicked at them until they reluctantly flung open. Taking one of the cocktails from his bag, he lit it and threw it out, back at the blob.

The bottle shattered directly in front of the huge mass and the spraying alcohol instantly ignited. Although the sudden burst of flames caused the pile of mucus to pause its advance, the flames quickly died and it appeared unharmed. It flicked out more and more tendrils, continuing after the truck but the Jankel had by far the superior speed.

As the truck drew near to the junction with Orchard Drive though, oozing over the roof of a house in front of them, they were
dismayed to see a second amoeboid mass. Its weight caused the beams of the roof to bow and the tiles to shatter and fall, until it slumped forward and fell to the ground. It rolled out the front garden, over the low wall and into the road.

Muz hit the brake hard to avoid driving straight into it. The Jankel’s r
ear end swung out to one side and it threatened to tip over before coming to a stop. The multiple eyes encased in this second jelly immediately locked on the truck and it began to drag itself forward with hungry urgency. With one giant carnivorous amoeba to their rear and one at their front, the group were trapped.

The pulsing gooey masses began to close in on the survivors. Rifle bullets cut between the houses, as the giant amoeboid creatures intermittently came within the Marines’ lines of sight. The blobs absorbed the rounds that struck them, like ballistic gelatine, without so much as a quiver. Only when a bullet penetrated deep enough to touch a nerve cluster did one of the blob’s so much as flinch.

“What the hell do I do now?” Muz asked, hoping that someone in the truck would propose a way out of the situation.

“Muz, please, just get us out of here,” Amy pleaded.

“And how am I supposed to do that exactly,” Muz spat back angrily.

Tom continued to throw burning bot
tles out the rear, laying a flaming barrier in the road between them and the massive pile of snot that was coming from that direction.