“No,” Chuck replied. “What if, on the way back, we need to get into the church fast and he’s blocking our way?”
It was a fair point, Muz conceded, and holding the crowbar up to his shoulder, his heart beginning to race wildly, he trod down the stone steps and into the road towards the man.
Watching Muz’s advance with Chuck close in tow, Raj still just stood there. Though he gave off the outward appearance of apathy, inside he was struggling with the burning desire not to attack the men. It was the same inner turmoil he had been fighting the whole time he had been following them along the tube line.
Losing his nerve, Muz stopped in his tracks about ten feet from where Raj stood. They stared at each other in the rain, rage in Raj’s eyes, confusion growing in Muz’s.
“Do it,” Chuck urged over Muz’s shoulder, causing him to jump.
“Hang on,” Muz said, angry at the sudden shock. “Can you understand me?” he asked the man in front of him. “Are you okay?”
“Just do it,” Chuck demanded. “He looks dead to me.”
With a sudden rush of mental clarity that lifted Raj from the fog of his broken thoughts, he looked at the iron bar Muz was brandishing and recognised it for what it was – a weapon. As the image of Kate’s pleading face flashed before his eyes, Raj stepped towards Muz, dropped to his knees on the wet tarmac and bowed his head.
Muz lifted the bar higher, so as to bring it down on the man’s head with greater force, but instead, just held it aloft. Despite the number of people he had killed over the last couple of days, he couldn’t bring himself to murder this man who appeared to be no threat to them.
Having not felt the life-ending blow, Raj looked up at Muz. For the moment, the fury in the Indian man’s eyes was gone and all that remained, was a dejected sadness.
“Go on then,” Chuck said, frustrated now.
“I can’t,” Muz choked out. “He’s not like the others.”
“You sure about that? Look at the blood around his mouth and down his shirt. He’s a killer.”
“He’s not trying to kill us now though… and I swear there’s still a spark of intelligence in the way he’s looking at me.”
“He looks like he couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow to me,” Chuck replied. “Stand back. I’ll do it.”
As Chuck tried to move around Muz, the copper put a hand on the big man’s chest.
“Let’s just leave him,” Muz said.
Chuck continued to push him out of the way.
“If you kill him, I’ll see you in the dock for murder when all this is over,” Muz now told him firmly. The words came from his mouth in a calm matter-of-fact manner, but they carried a weight Chuck didn’t like.
The bigger man strode off towards the shops, leaving Muz to stare down at the man kneeling in the water coursing down the road before him. Unable to take Raj’s imploring stare any longer, he too turned and walked after Chuck.
Raj went limp and collapsed into the gutter at the side of the road. Hearing the resulting splash, Muz looked back over his shoulder. Was the afflicted Indian man actually crying? He couldn’t be. It had to be the accumulated water droplets of the thin rain trickling down his face.
Muz and Chuck crested the brow of the road and were thus afforded a view of the rest of Watling Avenue. It was a shitty looking street at the best of times, one that Muz had always habitually avoided driving down, due to it instantly ruining his mood. A haven for robbers, shoplifters, and junkie scumbags, the road was lined with competing convenience stores and fast food shops, which Muz wouldn’t buy food from even if he were half starved. Most of the storefronts had their metal shutters rolled down, shutters which were emblazoned with spray-painted gang tags and random obscenities.
Surprisingly, there were no massing hordes to be seen. The length of the road before the two men appeared empty of any other people, other than skeletal cadavres. Those afflicted who may have been hanging around here had apparently moved off elsewhere in search of prey.
“Aren’t you curious why that man behaved so differently from all the rest towards us?” Muz asked Chuck.
“Couldn’t care less, just so long as he leaves me alone,” Chuck replied, as he weaved his way among the abandoned vehicles.
They reached a dip in the road, a trough in the lay of the land before it rose once more to meet the A5 at the road’s end. Here they found a general store, which had been broken into. The lock holding the shutter in place had been somehow wrenched off and the metal slats pushed back up into the overhead roller. The glass of the shop’s door had then been shattered in order to gain entry.
With a last scan of the deserted street, the men clambered through the broken door into the relative darkness within. As they had expected, the place had been ransacked, the contents of many of the shelves flung onto the floor. Despite the store having been looted though, there was still plenty of stock left still to be thieved. Chuck saw that hanging from hooks high on the wall above the counter, there was a selection of cheap sports bags and rucksacks. Shoving aside the little racks of chewing gum, he clambered onto the wooden counter top. Reaching up, he then grabbed two of the rucksacks, throwing one down to Muz.
“Fill it with whatever you think might come in handy,” Chuck said. “But don’t take all day about it.”
Placing the crowbar down against a wall, Muz worked his way along the narrow aisles between the tightly arranged shelves and fridges, filling the bag with mainly bottles of water and various items of food. Chuck did the same, hurriedly looking for items of worth, with the occasional look back at the front door.
“Okay, I’m done,” Chuck said, to Muz’s surprise, as his own bag was as yet only half full.
“Hang on, give me a minute,” Muz replied, feeling flustered at having to decide so rapidly as to what to take and what to discard.
“Hurry up,” Chuck told him. “I’m going to wait by the door and keep an eye on the street.”
Chuck stepped outside, leaving Muz to work his way towards the rear of the store. Just then, Muz heard a noise. It was the faintest of sounds, so quiet that he couldn’t even begin to guess what it had been, but he had definitely heard something and it had come from the back room.
The copper froze, not even breathing, staring at the nearby door that stood ajar. Just beyond, a strip light flickered defectively, providing only intermittent glimpses of the storage room. Straining his eyes, Muz tried to make sense of the images that the flashes of light teasingly illuminated.
“Shit, we’ve got movement out here,” he heard Chuck whisper back into the building as loud as he dared.
Still, Muz couldn’t bring himself to move and he continued to listen as intently as he could for any further tell-tale sounds. It was then that his eyes at last made some sense of the strobing picture of the back room. Amid the stacked boxes and crates there stood the motionless silhouette of what was indisputably the head and shoulders of a man.
“Get out here now. We’ve got to go,” Chuck now growled from outside.
Muz could tell from the man’s tone of voice that things were not good out on the street, and they needed to get back to the church, but still, he couldn’t bring himself to move, fearful that even the slightest flinch from him would bring that ominous figure in the adjacent room running out to attack him. Indecision gripped him. He had to do something and do it fast.
It was a menacing snarl emanating for the shadowed figure that finally jolted him into motion. Though he wanted to bolt for the front door of the shop, contrary to this instinct, he instead ran for the door to the backroom. As he had expected, his movement caused the figure under the flickering bulb to spring into something resembling life. The other man crashed through the crates and had almost reached the door when Muz grabbed the handle and pulled it shut with a slam. A split second later, the flimsy chipboard panels of the door bounced in the frame with the weight of heavy man ramming them. Muz stepped back and watched the door handle. Just as he had prayed, though the door con
tinued to rattle precariously in its frame, the handle didn’t move. The deranged man on the other side simply no longer had the intellect to use the lever to open the door.
Muz picked up the half-filled rucksack and now ran for the front door. Emerging into the street, he saw Chuck was no longer there. In his place, converging on where Muz was stood, a number of people regarded him with hungry eyes. Where they had all come from Muz did not know, and did not care. His only concern was that they were coming at him from all directions; they had him surrounded. Looking over to his left, up the rise of the road, he was just in time to see Chuck’s fat arse running out of sight, over the brow of the hill.
Panic welling within him, Muz desperately looked for a gap in the gathering masses, a route between them through which to escape. There had to be at least thirty men, women, and children though, and already they were gathered so close that there was no hope of dodging his way past them. The loud rattling of the door behind him, in the back of the shop, served as a reminder that there was no safety to be found in running back inside. If he were to pull down the metal barrier between him and the crowd though, that would leave him with only one mad man to contend with. He would however potentially be trapped, unless he could find an escape route out the back.
As his mind franticly raced through his poor selection of options, the crowd pressed tighter towards him, the people beginning to attack each other now, fighting for the chance to be the first to sink their teeth into his warm meat. The sour sink of death began to clog the air.
Realising dejectedly that he had left the crowbar inside the shop, Muz reached into the bag and pulled out a can of beans. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it and the others like it was all he had. The bar wouldn’t have been much use against the crowd anyway. He would have only managed to get in a couple of good swings before he was overwhelmed. Assessing the weight of the can in his hand, he then pitched it at the nearest person.
It was a good throw, striking the man square in the temple. The impact of the missile’s edge left a dent in the mad man’s head and the insane hunger immediately fell from the man’s eyes. With a now tragically blank expression, he wobbled on his feet, staggering this way and that, bumping into others of the crowd, until he eventually fell over.
As he was pulling a second can from the rucksack, Muz saw, at the rear of the crowd, people were being tossed aside like rag dolls, lifted clean off their feet and slammed violently into cars. He was unable to see who, or what, possessed such strength as to hurl these people aside with ease. They were however rapidly working their way forward through the densely gathered numbers.
At that very moment, two of the people closest to Muz lunged for him and he cowered back against the shop window. Before the two men reached him however, both were caught around the neck by a wedge of a fist. The eyes of both men bulged in their sockets, as the huge fingers of the spade-like hands tightened around their throats. The heads of the two men were then flung together again and again, cracking their skulls. Hanging limp now, the bodies were tossed aside, revealing the owner of those huge fists and Muz’s saviour.
Before Muz now, elbowing and punching at the cannibals who came too near, there stood a man no more than five feet seven inches tall. He had clearly been an avid bodybuilder though, weighing at least twenty stone of lean muscle. A deep scratch down the right side of his face had left one eye ruptured and useless. The other one regarded Muz with a crazed rage.
Opening his mouth wide, revealing tiny yellow teeth, the muscled man roared with a ferocity that caused Muz’s knees to buckle. He gave out the bellowing cry with such intensity that every muscle in his huge mass tightened hard, the bulging lumps threatening to tear through the tight white bloodied T-shirt he wore. His fists tightened in a challenge that caused his knuckles to crack.
Knowing that this was the end, as the monster of a man came at him, Muz closed his eyes in fear and resignation. For the moment, death did not come however, and hearing the hefty man cry out in pain, Muz again opened his eyes.
The bodybuilder was stood directly over him, but his attention was no longer directed at Muz. Instead, he was focused on dislodging the man who was clinging to his back, legs wrapped around his waist and riding him like a bucking mule. Though this second man was a little taller than the bodybuilder, he had to be almost half his weight. Despite this, he put up a good fight, refusing to torn free of his unwilling mount, while biting deep into the man’s sinuous thick neck.
As the two men wrestled wildly, Muz scuttled back from underneath them, just in time to escape being crushed by their combined weight, as the muscular man’s legs went suddenly limp and he hit the ground. The man on top of him continued to bite into his neck, swallowing lump after lump of muscle. In seconds, Muz was able to see the exposed vertebrae of the bigger man’s neck. With the numerous nerves that served as communication between the brain and the rest of the body severed, the obscenely muscled man was unable to put up any further fight and his body simply floundered now without any conscious control.
Only now did the skinny attacker lift his head from the deep cavity in the other’s neck to look at Muz. It was the man from the crossroads by the church, the copper realised, the same man who had seemed incapable of any further violence.
Another of the crowd now took his opportunity and came running on all fours at Muz, peeled teeth biting at the air. The gaunt Indian man again came to his aid however, leaping from the bodybuilder’s prostrate form and throwing himself on top of the new attacker. Raj fought with a wild strength but so too did the disabled quadruped who managed to pull him close and bite deep between his neck and shoulder.
Struggling to comprehend what was happening, Muz got to his feet. Seeing this, the afflicted man, who was apparently not like the others, ceased his beating and biting of the wailing man beneath him and threw himself at the crowd in front of Muz. The force of Raj’s forward motion caused three of those he slammed into to fall back against the others of the crowd. Trying not to question this unlikely good fortune, Muz ran through the gap his rescuer had created.
His legs were weak with fear and he stumbled several times, running a weaving path up the car-littered road. Only when he was a considerable distance from the shop he had looted, did he dare to glance back over his shoulder. Those of the massing people the Indian man had bowled over were now back on their feet and chasing after Muz. Still, his unlikely saviour was fighting his corner, pulling the others back and dragging them off their feet.
Turning his attention again to his front, Muz now saw a straggler ahead of him, a boy of about fifteen years, whose nose had been bitten clean off, leaving nothing but a hole in the centre of his young face. Muz snatched up a traffic cone from where it lay at the side of the road and continued to sprint headlong at the boy. At the moment the teenager lunged for him, he thrust the cone down over his head and used his own superior bodyweight to thrust him aside.
Lungs protesting pathetically, he crested the hill and now saw ahead of him, Chuck, beating furiously at the doors of the church. Seconds later, he joined him, his legs trembling like jelly as he climbed the stone steps.
“Prick,” Muz simply said, as he joined the big man in thumping at the door.
“I thought you were behind me,” Chuck said, himself still out of breath. “If you can’t keep up, that’s not my problem.”
“Why aren’t they opening the door?” Muz asked.
The first of the crowd, who had managed to evade Raj’s efforts at holding them back, came racing over the hump of the road now. Seeing this, the two men beat harder at the large wooden doors.
“Let us in,” Chuck bellowed.
In response to this demand, they heard the clunk of the bolts being pulled aside and the door edged open. Muz and Chuck wasted no time in squeezing through the crack and slammed the door back into place behind them.
“What the fuck?” Chuck shouted angrily at Amy and Carl.
Neither of them responded, as they hastily reapplied the b
olts. Only when the door was once again secure, did Amy turn guiltily to face the large man who was glaring angrily at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “About five minutes ago, I had my ear pressed to the door and was sure I could hear someone just outside. They were moaning. When you banged on the door, I wasn’t sure it was you until I heard you shout.”
“You had one simple job...,” Chuck shouted back in her face, causing the woman to wince.
“Leave her alone,” Muz told the man in passing, as he walked over to and collapsed on one of the pews.
“We were beginning to get worried,” Carl said to him.
“You were right to,” Muz responded, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling.
“Where’s my crowbar, officer,” Carl asked.
“Lost it. Sorry,” Muz replied.
Though he was upset by this, having grown quite attached to the iron shaft, he didn’t say anything, not wanting to sound ungrateful for what both Muz and Chuck had done.
After a brief rest, Muz and Chuck set about emptying their bags, while Carl and Amy watched avidly. Muz placed the several bottles of water and cans of food on the bench beside him.
Picking one of the latter up, Carl read the label. “Beans and sausage. Excellent,” he said excitedly.
“You didn’t forget my things, did you?” Amy asked.
Muz rooted around in the bottom of the bag and produced a small box, which he passed to her. Amy eyed her present. The tampons were not the right ones for her but they would do.
“Thank you,” she said sheepishly and hurried off to the toilets.
Muz’s concerned eyes followed her. He remembered all too vividly, what had happened to poor Jenna.
“Er… tin opener?” Carl asked Muz, leaning over and peering into the rucksack.
Muz froze for a moment then slumped forward, cradling his head in his hands with despair.
“Idiot,” the copper said, as he repeatedly hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 22
