Ultimate Undead Collection: The Zombie Apocalypse Best Sellers Boxed Set (10 Books)

by Joe McKinney

  ‘It might be someone like you,’ Caron whispered, indignant. The person outside – the thing – had continued to hammer against the door. ‘I didn’t leave you standing out on the doorstep, did I?’

  ‘I know, but the dead were still dead back then, remember?’

  Caron thought she knew best. She went to open the door but Lorna had managed to slide the chain across just in time. The door had opened a few inches inwards, and a greenish, blood-stained hand shot through the gap and began to swipe at the air clumsily. It stretched out, clawing at nothing. Lorna caught it and held the creature’s greasy palm up close to Caron’s face. Caron had stared at the discoloured flesh, a fingernail hanging off, a deep cut that didn’t bleed… and the stench… it made her gag. ‘Let it go. Get it away from here.’

  ‘Thought you wanted to let it in,’ Lorna had sneered. She’d shoved the corpse back out and kicked the door shut.

  #

  In the morning, the house was surrounded. Lorna had tried again to tell them it would happen, but the rest of Caron’s house guests were making too much noise to listen. They were either too stupid to understand, she decided, or they simply just didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t until the dead had crowded Caron’s dining room window to such an extent that they’d blocked out all the light, that they began to realise the implications.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ Lorna explained.

  ‘I’m not leaving my home,’ Caron protested, indignant.

  ‘Fair enough. I am.’

  ‘We could get rid of them,’ Webb suggested.

  ‘How?’

  He didn’t have an answer. Ellie turned her doll’s face away from the window, shielding her. Webb walked up to the glass, and the bodies on the other side immediately began to react. The bay window was a mass of dead faces gazing into the house, pawing endlessly at the grease-stained glass with claw-like hands. Lorna pulled him back out of view.

  ‘They’re showing more interest in us by the hour. We’re going to need to get out of here soon.’

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ Caron said again. The thought of leaving her home was somehow harder than trying to come to terms with everything else.

  ‘We won’t have any choice if this carries on,’ Lorna said. ‘I think we should get out of here now and find somewhere better to wait this out.’

  ‘Like where?’ Anita asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere stronger. Somewhere with fewer windows. A decent fence…’

  ‘There’s the community centre on Long Nuke Road,’ Ellie suggested, rocking her baby.

  ‘I thought of that, but it’s too exposed. The clue’s in the name. Community centres are designed to be accessible, aren’t they? They’re the last places you’d want to get stuck. Fuck, they were the last places I’d have gone before all this kicked off.’

  ‘Where then?’

  They were all looking to Lorna for an answer, but she didn’t have one. ‘Don’t know yet. Just get ready to go is all I’m saying.’

  When Webb started pissing around with Anita again, ignoring everything she’d just said, antagonising the bodies at the window and moaning at Caron because she’d run out of alcohol, Lorna turned her back on the lot of them and went upstairs. Fucking morons.

  #

  She watched the empty world from Caron’s dead son’s bedroom. She thought it funny that this one room had been left untouched; a shrine to the corpse in the garage. When there was so much death outside, why they all remained so respectful towards one dead teenager bemused her. Whatever the reason – and she thought it more than likely due to the fact the corpse in question was under the same roof as them – she was glad of the space. The idea of climbing out of the window, shimmying down the drainpipe and making a run for it was tempting. She might have done it too, had the prospect of a long run home to an empty house not been so unappealing. The people downstairs might all have been idiots, but at least they were idiots with a pulse.

  Lorna did what she could to shut everything else out and focus. Standing in front of Matthew’s window she looked out over the world, watching for any signs of life. Apart from the listless bodies in the streets, not a damn thing moved. No traffic. No lights. No noise. It felt alien, like she was the one who was out of place, like it was she who no longer belonged.

  She could see a church. A strong building, standing defiant, but that was about all it had going for it. Inside it would be cold and uncomfortable, and not at all suited to their needs. A fire station? She liked the idea of cruising the streets in a fire engine – obliterating anything that got in her way – but the station building itself didn’t look like it would offer much in the way of protection: large glass doors, easily accessible. A school? The idea of spending time where hundreds of kids might have died made her skin crawl. She hadn’t much cared for schools at the best of times… And what about the hospital, the roof of which she could just about see? Just the thought of wards filled with the remains of dead patients made her go cold.

  Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places? Maybe I need to think about the places people didn’t used to go?

  The problem was, she decided, she didn’t know enough about this locality. She’d never been that interested in what went on outside the immediate area where she’d lived and the places she needed. Her world had been restricted to a few streets and a few faces, and that was how she’d liked it. She’d never had any aspirations to see the world or to… Her train of thought was interrupted by a flash of light. It was gone in a second and could have been caused by anything, just a brief glint of sunshine on metal. She watched for a while longer, but it didn’t happen again.

  This house is like a cocoon, she thought, and that might not be a good thing. Between Caron’s double-glazing, the bodies outside and the morons downstairs, the rest of the world had effectively been blocked out.

  Lorna kept watching and, just over an hour later, she saw movement again, in the same place as before. She was half-asleep, eyelids drooping, and she didn’t fully realise it was there until it had gone. Sat upright, immediately wide awake, she saw a flood of slow-moving corpses following in the wake of whatever it was she’d just missed.

  The next time around, watching from another window this time, she saw exactly what it was. It was hard to believe. It was its normality which made it so surreal. She walked back downstairs, not sure how to tell the others.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Caron asked, stopping in the hallway on her way to deliver a cup of tea to Webb. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Not a ghost,’ she said. ‘A bus.’

  #

  Almost time. The bus was due around again. She’d left Ellie upstairs watching for another couple of hours (figuring that, for some bizarre reason, whoever was driving the bus seemed to be following an established route) while the rest of them stripped Caron’s house of anything of value. Lorna had pacified Caron by lying to her, telling her they’d come back later and that everything was going to be okay, when the truth was she had no intention of coming back, and she didn’t know if anything was going to be okay anymore. The nervousness was palpable, and even though they outwardly continued to bicker and moan, they all knew this was the right thing to do. They waited by the front door, all loaded up.

  ‘What are those?’ Lorna asked, looking down at Caron’s feet.

  ‘Shoes,’ she answered. Trick question?

  ‘You’re wearing heels? Bloody hell, Caron. We’re about to sprint through a crowd of corpses, and you’re wearing heels?’

  ‘I’ve nothing else that goes with this jacket.’

  Lorna just looked at her. A combination of her own nerves and a genuine affection for the stereotypically middle-class woman kept her from yelling. In a way she envied her naivety. She wished things like fashion sense still mattered. Caron grumbled to herself as Anita berated her and forced her to change into more sensible, flat shoes, even though they clashed.

  Lorna checked the time on her phone. They needed to move. ‘Right,
once we’re out there, we just run for it, understand? They’re still slow enough. They won’t know we’re there until we’ve gone.’

  ‘You’re having a fucking laugh, ain’t you?’ Webb said, his uncertainty clear. ‘There’s fucking hundreds of them.’

  She quickly corrected him. ‘Less than eighty. I counted.’

  ‘Where are we going, Lor?’ Ellie asked, plastic baby held close.

  ‘I already told you.’

  ‘No you didn’t. You said about the bus, that’s all. You never said where we’re going.’

  ‘We want to get on a bus, so where do you think we’re going? The bloody bus stop.’

  Someone asked another pointless question, but she’d had enough now. They were just delaying tactics. And the thing was, if that bus continued driving the same route all day, missing it this time around would give them at least another hour to wind themselves up still further. Christ knows what state they’d be in by then.

  But the bus might not come back around.

  It might be one of those things behind the wheel, somehow driving on instinct.

  It might go a different way this time.

  It might have run out of fuel…

  Too many questions. Too many ifs and buts.

  Lorna shoved Caron’s front door open and started running. The nearest of the dead immediately turned towards her and began to advance. She pushed the first few away, then dropped her shoulder and charged through the rest of them like a rugby player. The others followed behind her, though she gave them little thought. Caron stopped to lock the door before Webb dragged her away.

  Thankfully the dead were as slow and useless as they’d appeared from the upstairs window. It was almost as if they were operating on a time delay of a few seconds. Lorna almost laughed as she ran. Down here at ground level, their lethargy was bordering on comical.

  Quickly free from the bulk of the foul-smelling crowd, she allowed herself to glance back and check on the others. What she saw was what she expected: the four of them running at varying speeds, three with their heads down sprinting, Caron struggling to keep up, all arms and legs and panic. But even she was having no problem outrunning the corpses. The dead followed in an unruly, ragged mass, occasionally colliding with each other, arms outstretched as they reached for the gaps where the survivors had just been.

  At the end of the street, Lorna took a right. There was a bus stop about another fifty metres ahead. There were also more bodies, too; a couple of them on this side of the road, several more crossing from the opposite pavement. One fell as it stumbled down the kerb, hitting the tarmac face-first with a nauseating wet thud.

  She was at the bus stop in seconds, the others catching up within a minute or so. The nearest of the dead weren’t far behind, and it was then that the obvious limitation of Lorna’s plan became painfully apparent. ‘So what now?’ Anita demanded, panic all too evident in her voice. Lorna didn’t answer, because she didn’t know. Maybe try and get into another house so they could see the bus coming? Just fight off the dead until it arrived?

  ‘Let’s go back,’ Caron wailed. ‘This was a mistake. Let’s go back to my house and I’ll cook us something nice. I’ll make some tea and we can think again about what we should…’

  Her words trailed away as both Lorna and Webb sprang into action. Three corpses were close. Lorna grabbed the extended right arm of the first and swung the dead woman around. She offered surprisingly little resistance. Webb did the same with the corpse of a small boy, hurling the ragdoll body into another dead woman who collapsed near Caron’s feet. Caron looked down at the miserable creature. ‘Joan?’ she said, bemused and appalled in equal measure. ‘Joan Deeley, is that you?’

  More of them now. Anita joined in the fight as the creatures began to swarm around them. Their miserable speed and lack of strength was laughable, but their relentless intent was truly terrifying. There seemed to be nothing else left in the world to distract these hideous things…

  Except the bus.

  They heard it before they saw it through the chaos, trundling steadily down the road towards them, its paintwork smeared with reds, browns and black. It was immediately obvious why: the dead were literally throwing themselves at the huge vehicle. Some simply bounced off and landed in the road, others were dragged under its wheels and crushed. Lorna hadn’t noticed it before – she’d had enough to deal with – but much of the road was coated in a layer of tyre-track streaked gore.

  She stopped fighting and ran out into the road and began waving her arms furiously, slipping in the foul sludge under her boots. Had the driver seen her? Had he seen her? The bus just kept on coming, closer and closer, the driver’s view obscured by the constant stream of corpses criss-crossing in front. Lorna didn’t know what else to do. She stood her ground and screamed at the driver to stop. She thought she could see two men inside the bus, their faces obscured by the wipers which smeared blood and grease across the windscreen rather than clearing it.

  She screwed up her face with effort and heaved another insipid body out of the way, then screamed out loud again. ‘Stop the fucking bus!’

  A hiss of air brakes. Doors opening. Warm air. Strong hands dragging her inside.

  ‘That was a bit stupid, love,’ a balding, large-bellied man said as he helped her up the step. His hands lingered on her too long and she angrily batted them away.

  ‘Four more out there,’ she said, but she didn’t need to explain as Caron, Ellie, Anita and Webb were already pushing past, desperate to get to safety. They buffeted Lorna further down the bus, which was filled with loose supplies and all kinds of other rubbish. She found an empty seat as far away as she could from everybody else and sat down heavily. The bus began to move, and the rough, rattling, stop-start movement was immediately familiar and reassuring. She leant her head against the glass and watched the dead world go by, not knowing where she was going, and not caring either. Outside looked like a place she used to know, but it wasn’t home. Not anymore.

  Webb was standing at the front between the fat man, whose name was Stokes, and the driver, offering all manner of useless advice. He was telling them how he’d looked after these four girls, kept them safe from the dead outside. Stokes seemed suckered in. He leant across and rapped on the Perspex window of the driver’s cab with his knuckles. ‘Told you we’d find someone else if we kept driving, didn’t I?’ he said. Driver didn’t say anything.

  PENELOPE STREET

  Penelope Street is nearing the end of her life. She’s very weak now and it’s an effort for her just to keep her eyes open. It’s easier to stay head bowed and eyes shut because she doesn’t want to see what’s happening around her. There’s nothing she can do about any of it. Penelope wants the end to come quick, but every single second seems to take a cruel eternity to pass. She just wants it to be over now.

  #

  One hundred and thirty-three.

  I’ve been here for one hundred and thirty-three hours now. How much longer will I last? Will I reach one hundred and thirty-four or one hundred and thirty-five? Christ, I hope not. I can’t take much more of this. I wish I could make the end come faster. The frustration’s worse than the fear now.

  I feel so weak. I haven’t got my medication and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since first thing Tuesday morning. That’s more than five and a half days, surely I can’t last much longer, can I? I can’t do anything but sit here with my head hanging down, looking into my lap. Sometimes I look up and around but it’s all too much. Everything has changed and I don’t know how or why.

  Arthur’s body is just in front of me. I can see his feet sticking out from behind the sofa we were here to buy. He’s still, but they move all around me, oblivious to the fact I’m here. They are the dark, decaying shadows of dead people. They are cold, empty, emotionless bodies. When I look up I see the streets outside are full of them. I can’t move so they don’t see me, but if I make any noise they stop. I screamed and shouted at them to begin with because I thought th
ey’d be able to help, but now I know they can’t. When they hear me they stop and bang on the glass, then even more of them come. I’m used to being stared at so I don’t move. I don’t react. After a couple of hours they start to drift away.

  Arthur brought me here on Tuesday to choose a new sofa, not that he needed me to come. There wasn’t any point in me getting involved in the decision. It was down to him to choose one and try it out and decide whether or not we were going to have it. We got here early to avoid the crowds. If there are too many people then my chair just gets in the way. We’d just got through the door when it happened. I watched it get him and everyone else. I watched them all die and I wish it had taken me too. I kept waiting for it to come, hoping and praying it would, hoping and praying this impossible life would soon be over. I can’t stand being alone like this. It makes me feel more helpless and vulnerable than ever.

  I’m so hungry. Thirsty too. My mouth’s dry and I’m so dehydrated that it feels like my tongue’s swollen to ten times its normal size. I can’t talk properly now, not that there’s anyone left to talk to. There must have been a fire near here, and people must have been trapped inside. I smelled the smoke first, then the burning bodies. It was like sitting in the middle of a damn barbecue, the whole world stinking of roast meat. Every so often I can still smell it and even though I know what’s burning, it still makes the hunger pains worse.

  The very worst part of all of this is not having any control. I’ve not had much control for a long time, but now I don’t have any. I can’t do a bloody thing about the situation I’m in. I can’t do anything to help myself or to bring the end any closer. Help might be just around the corner, but I can’t even get myself out of this damn building, never mind anywhere else. An inch might as well be a hundred bloody miles for all the good it’ll do me now.