Ponytail screamed again. The Dead yanked her backwards and she fell to the ground, taking the girl down with her. The girl screamed. She cracked her head on the side of the bus and went silent and still, out cold, while Ponytail struggled against the grabbing hands and biting jaws until the Dead swamped both her and the unconscious girl, hiding their bodies from Kate’s sight.
Kate spotted the teenage boy pop his head out the emergency exit. He glanced down at the Dead below as they feasted on Ponytail and the girl, their hideous ravaged bodies writing like sewer rats as they tore the two women apart. The boy glanced up at Kate, back down at the carnage below him and back up to Kate.
Come on
,
come on
, thought Kate, willing the boy to go now while the mass of Dead were busy feeding.
The boy leapt from the bus, but one of the Dead, what had been a lady with grey bobbed hair, wearing a floral blouse, turned, snarled and grasped his elbow. The boy screamed and struggled. He thrust his hand out and caught the creature by the throat, managing to hold its bloody, snapping jaws away from his flesh.
‘Shit,’ said Kate and she darted back towards the bus.
At the same time, BG managed to wrestle his briefcase out of the fingers of the dead man. He lifted it and brought it down onto the Dead’s head. As its body hit the floor, BG turned and sped towards the boy.
Three Dead emerged from under the truck. They rose to their feet and lumbered past the feeding mob and the struggling boy, towards Kate. She raised the umbrella and roared as she used its tip to stab of one them through the eye, surprised and a little scared with how easily she managed to inflict violence on what had, only moments before, been human. She skewered the next creature through its ear before pulling the tip out of the bloodied mess and, holding the umbrella across her body with both hands, she used it to shove a Dead back as she made her way towards the boy.
Before she or BG could get to him, dead hands grasped the boy’s legs and pulled him from the grip of the grey-bobbed Dead. The boy fell flat on his face on the tarmac and the Dead dragged him beneath the truck, like a caiman dragging its prey back into the lake, the boy screaming and clawing at the ground as he went.
‘It’s too late,’ said BG, putting his free arm out to halt Kate from going under there after them.
‘But–’
‘We’ll die too if we go after him.’
Kate spotted a few of the Dead that had been busy feeding on the two women had staggered to their feet and now lumbered towards her and BG. On the ground in their wake, Ponytail’s body twitched. Her head shot up. Her glazed eyes fixed on Kate and she began hauling her ravaged body to its feet.
‘Come on,’ said BG, ‘let’s get off the streets.’
Kate knew he was right but it didn’t help the guilt at not being able to save the other passengers. She was about to move off to follow BG when she glanced up to the bus. The young man in the sharp suit stood at the emergency door, his eyes wide as he stared down at the horrors below.
‘Come on, jump,’ said Kate. ‘We have to go!’
But he didn’t move. At that moment dead hands grabbed him from behind. Kate saw his mouth open to scream, and then he was gone, pulled back inside the bus as the ones inside caught up with him.
‘Fuck!’ said Kate.
The Dead began flopping down out of the emergency exit, while more Dead approached from the front of the bus. ‘Fuck!’ She glanced to the right to see more lumbering through the gridlocked vehicles that way.
‘Come on!’ Kate heard BG yell back at her.
‘I’m coming!’
Kate gave the umbrella an almighty swing at the Dead closest to her and then she darted after BG. He stood at an open car door and she allowed him to shove her inside and into the passenger seat. He dived inside next, landing across Kate’s lap, while she reached forwards and grasped the door, pulling it shut just as the bloodied hands of the Dead grabbed at it. They swarmed the side of the vehicle and slammed the palms of their hands against the windows, their torn, ruined bodies blocking out some of the daylight.
‘What now?’ came a voice from somewhere in the car.
Kate glanced around herself to see she was inside the SUV she’d shoved the old lady into earlier. BG hauled his legs off Kate and eased himself over to the driver’s side, while in the back, the old lady, Linen and Screamer huddled together. It had been Linen who spoke, and she looked deep into Kate’s eyes.
‘What the fuck are we going to do now?’ she asked again. ‘Out of one doomed vehicle and into the next.’
As they sat in the surrounded car, Kate tried to figure out an escape plan. She glanced across BG and out the right of the car – another car, a red Peugeot 205, had smashed into the Vauxhall on that side. BG tried the driver’s door anyway and, unsurprisingly, it wouldn’t budge. Kate turned to look out of the passenger side window as the Dead pounded against the glass.
‘They’re going to get in!’ cried Screamer. ‘They’re going to break the windows!’
‘The sunroof!’ said Kate.
BG glanced up at the sunroof. He raised a leg and kicked at it with a tan brogue until he knocked it free. ‘GO!’ he yelled.
Kate stood and thrust up and out through the hole in the roof. Hoisting up her skirt to give her legs more room for movement, she sat on the edge furthest from the Dead and swung her legs up and over the vehicle and let them dangle down the side. A few of the Dead noticed Kate’s new position on top of the SUV and reached for her across the roof, groaning when their bloodied fingers fell just short. She noticed that, just like the ones earlier that struggled to raise their legs high enough to get up the step into the bus, these Dead couldn’t manage to climb up onto the vehicles themselves. Their ravaged, stiffening bodies didn’t have the agility required for climbing.
‘Come on!’ Kate called back inside the vehicle. She reached down a hand and Screamer grasped it.
Kate pulled the young girl through the army of grabbing hands, beating them back with her free hand. As Screamer dived down, head first, onto the bonnet of the Peugeot, she kicked out at the Dead behind her with a booted foot. Kate could hear the crack of finger bones breaking in the girl’s wake.
The old lady went next. With BG shoving her from below and Kate and Screamer pulling from above, she slipped through the groping hands of the Dead and Screamer was able to ease her safely down onto the bonnet of the Peugeot.
‘I can manage,’ said Linen as Kate offered her a hand, and she stood and swung her bag at the Dead, forcing them backwards. Linen sat on the roof beside Kate, swung her long legs over in one elegant movement and shimmied down onto the next car.
Once Linen was out of the way, Kate slid down to join the others, followed by BG.
Not to be outdone, the Dead eased themselves through the gaps between the gridlocked vehicles in pursuit.
‘Shit – the umbrella,’ said Kate as she stepped up onto the Peugeot’s roof.
‘Forget it,’ said BG.
‘It’s our only decent weapon.’
‘Let me get it.’
‘No. You go. Carry on ahead with the others. I won’t be a sec,’ said Kate.
She jumped back down onto the car’s bonnet and lowered her upper body down inside the Vauxhall. She could feel dead fingers groping and pinching her back but she ignored them and grasped the umbrella from the front of the SUV before pulling away from them and sliding back down onto the Peugeot’s crumpled bonnet, just as the first of the Dead staggered around the back of the Vauxhall.
She was about to jump up onto the Peugeot’s roof when a Dead lurched forwards and grasped her right ankle, pulling the leg from beneath her. Kate went down hard, her chest slamming onto the windscreen. She slid down the smooth surface as the creature pulled her. She grabbed hold of one of the windscreen wipers with her free hand to stop herself being yanked off the car but it came away in her fingers. She rolled so that she lay on her back on the bonnet, threw the windscreen wiper at the Dead, where it merely bounced off its temple, and, with both hands gripping the umbrella’s handle, she swung it into the side of the creature’s head. It let go but grabbed for her again. This time Kate jabbed the tip of the umbrella into its eye, pushing hard to bury it deep into the soft insides. The Dead fell to the ground with a thump.
Two more Dead had reached her. Kate shuffled backwards but before she could have another go at getting over the car, one gripped her arms and pinned her back against the windscreen. Yellow drool dripped onto the lapels of Kate’s jacket as it lent in to bite.
‘Arrraggghhhh!’ Kate couldn’t move to use the umbrella and it lay beside her on the car bonnet, gripped in her right hand. As she struggled against the creature, another one grasped hold of her hair, making movement even more difficult.
‘Help me!’ she cried, struggling to shirk the snapping jaws. One of the Dead grabbed the flesh of her cheek and Kate gagged as two of its crusty fingers slipped inside her mouth. The creature’s flesh reminded Kate of touching raw chicken with its skin still on – cold and clammy and very dead – only very much worse.
The next thing she saw was a heavy duty briefcase sail through the air from behind her. It slammed into the head of the Dead that pinned her down. With the weight lifted as the creature flew off her to the left, Kate slid her fingers down the length of the umbrella so that she held it halfway down and she thrust it upwards, using the tip to skewer the other Dead through its open mouth. She pulled the umbrella free, turned so that she was on her hands and knees and grabbed the hand of BG. He pulled her up onto the car’s roof.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘No worries.’
The pair scrambled over the car and jumped onto the bonnet of the next, leaving Dead to grab thin air in their wake.
They caught up with Linen, Screamer and the old lady as they clambered over and between the cars in the opposite two lanes. Dead people weaved their way through the gaps between the cars towards them but their progress was slow in the limited space. Kate’s eyes scanned the area for a good hiding place, wishing as she went, that she hadn’t decided to wear a pencil skirt to work that morning. With her free hand, she pulled the restricting skirt up a bit to give herself more movement.
As Kate squeezed through the gap between two cars, she saw a woman still inside. She sat, her hands gripping the steering wheel, with her eyes fixed on the dense mob of Dead not far off, heading their way.
‘Get out,’ said Kate. ‘Come with us!’
But the woman didn’t respond; she didn’t even seem to notice Kate and the others at all. Kate lent over the car’s bonnet and slammed her hands against the windscreen.
‘Get out!’ she repeated. The woman jumped at the sound of flesh against glass and she caught Kate’s eyes. But she didn’t make any effort to move.
Kate glanced around and saw a few other people still in their vehicles, watching the Dead approach.
‘GET OUT!’ she yelled at them.
‘Come on!’ said BG, shoving her through the vehicles as the ravaged horde drew closer. ‘Leave them.’
They had cleared Upper Bridge Street but they found the way ahead blocked by a row of three buses that had crashed into each other as they came out of the road from the bus station to the left. Kate saw the Dead inside slamming their bloodied palms against the windows of two of the buses, while in the last one, its blood splattered windows blocked all view of its interior.
‘Round that way,’ said Kate, and the small group of survivors staggered towards the small white van that had been squashed between the first bus and a bigger blue transit van in front.
BG and Screamer helped the old lady up onto the crumpled bonnet of the van, while Kate and Linen went up and over first in order to start clearing the Dead that had gathered on the other side of the pile up. While Linen swung her bag at their heads to push them back, Kate jabbed the tip of the umbrella into their skulls. Sometimes it would take a couple of goes to ram the metal tip through their flesh, but between them, Linen and Kate managed to thin the crowd of the Dead. Once the old lady was safely on the vehicle, BG jumped down to the other side and began slamming his briefcase into the heads of the remaining Dead, moving out to clear a path while the others followed after him.
‘That way,’ said Kate, nodding towards the first building ahead of them –Carluccio’s, a restaurant on the corner, with the road out of the bus station on its left and the High Street to its right.
Kate saw a woman running towards them from further up the High Street, a group of the Dead pursuing her. Seeing this woman running from death from a different location suddenly drove it home to Kate that this problem, this dead-people-devouring-live-people situation that she found herself in was not just localised to the street they’d fled from. It was elsewhere in the city – the sick man they’d seen earlier…?
Could this be happening back home… in Folkestone… Andrew… Her parents… Meg… but her parents and sister were in Manchester, miles away. They would be safe, right?
She had to push thoughts of home and loved ones out of her mind. She didn’t need distractions or she could get pulled under by these things. She glanced around her, the Dead, slower than the living, but only just, were everywhere.
‘Help me!’ screamed the woman as she approached. But she lost her footing and sprawled to the ground where the Dead caught up with her and fell onto her. Her screams merged with the distant sounds of sirens, other screams and the occasional bang of explosions.
Kate saw more people running, trying to get off the streets. Some disappeared from sight, while others, like a man in black jogging bottoms, whose big belly suggested he’d never jogged in his life, weren’t so lucky. Kate watched as he got trapped in the doorway of an art shop by a group of the Dead who wrestled his struggling form to the ground. Five Dead grasped him by the arms, while four others held onto his legs and they all pulled in different directions until – BANG! – he exploded like a big, messy Christmas cracker, the prize, gooey innards. Kate fought the urge to throw up.
No distractions
, thought Kate.
Focus
–
keep your focus
.
A man dressed in a French blue suit jacket that was fashionably snug to his slender frame and with half his face missing so that Kate could see his jaw, lunged at her. She used the umbrella like a spear, the tip burying deep within his eye socket. He slumped to the ground in front of her and Kate leapt over his legs on her way towards the restaurant. She saw the old lady hook one of her sensible sandaled feet around the back of a Dead’s leg and yank her lag backwards, causing the creature to fall on its dead butt. Then, like a tag team, Screamer brought her biker boot down on its head, once, twice, third time’s a charm and its head split open.
Linen swung her bag at a Dead. Only it swiped out and caught its arm through the long handle. It pulled and Linen went tumbling forwards. They head butted each other unintentionally, and unfortunately, it was the Dead that had the advantage, smacking Linen in the soft area of her nose with its hard forehead. Linen, dazed, tried to straighten up but the Dead grasped her shoulder and reeled her in, sinking its teeth into her cheek and splattering her white jacket with vibrant red. Linen screamed and the old lady tried to pull the Dead off her.
‘No!’ yelled Kate on seeing one of the Dead wrap its bloodied hands around the old lady’s throat. ‘NOOO!’
More Dead had hold of Linen and they bit into her arm, her throat; one ripped her left ear off with its teeth. It used clumsy, stiffened fingers to shove the ear all the way into its mouth. Linen fell to her knees, blood loss making her weak, while the creatures continued to feed from her. The old lady went down with her, the action yanking her out of the sticky, blood soaked fingers of the Dead that had hold of her. She may have literarily slipped through its fingers but it wasn’t about to let her go so easily and it bent down to the top of her candy floss head.
Kate used the umbrella to whack dead people aside, trying to clear a path to the old lady. Before she could get there, Screamer rugby tackled the creature that had been about to bite the old lady. The Dead landed on its side with Screamer on top of it. Being a slight girl, petite and skinny, the Dead was able to roll so that Screamer was pinned beneath its blood soaked body. Its jaws headed for her throat.
‘No you don’t!’ yelled BG and he swung his briefcase, hitting the Dead in the side of its head. It fell to the ground and Screamer leapt to her feet.
‘Thanks,’ she said breathlessly.
Kate helped the old lady to her feet. But there was nothing she could do for Linen. What had been an attractive young woman moments before, had already begun to rise, half her face missing. She staggered towards them.
‘GO GO GO!’ yelled Kate.
The coffee shop was only a few metres up ahead. Bodies littered the street; some had begun to stir, ready to rise, while others had been so severely torn apart that not enough remained to reanimate. As she jogged, supporting the old lady under the arm, the old lady doing her best to keep pace with her, Kate caught a glimpse of a woman screaming as three Dead feasted on her flesh while they pinned her up against the window of Fenwicks department store. Their eyes met and Kate longed for a way to put the woman out of her misery. She had nothing. All she could do was carry on and get her fellow passengers to safety.
‘Get inside!’ she yelled at the others ahead of her.
BG reached the doors first. They swung open – electric-bloody-doors!
‘We can’t hide in there,’ said BG. ‘The doors will swing open every time one of those bloody things comes along!’
With the High Street to the right swarming with the Dead, Kate continued round to the left.
‘This way. Quick!’ she said, and the group staggered down towards the bus station, past the crashed buses, past the bike shop across the road. She had no idea where she was headed – she just hoped inspiration would strike.