One of the bodies suddenly burst into life.
Though the man had been lying slack in apathy, half his brain beaten to a mush, the agony the flames now caused him gave him a renewed vitality. With his hair already burnt away and his skin raw, blistered and blackened, he dragged himself free of the pile. Barely able to coordinate his actions, he came at the group of survivors.
Before anyone else could react, Margaret stepped forward and rammed her hatchet
with one efficient blow firmly into the burning man’s forehead, midway between his eyes. As the blackened carcass dropped to the ground, she tore the weapon loose.
“
Bloody rotter. I don’t think he has any fight left now,” she stated coldly.
“Seriously, Margaret. You’re starting to scare me,” Carl told her.
“Now is not the time to be squeamish,” the woman said without any show of remorse. She had transformed from the weak link of the group to a veritable killing machine.
The direction of what gentle breeze there was shifted then, carrying the smouldering smoke into the faces of the group. As the flames ate into the fat and muscles of the dead, the smell was now not dissimilar to that of cooking pork. Choking against the stench, they turned to head back inside but Muz stopped, something having caught his eye.
“Wait, what’s that?” he asked of no one in particular.
Standing in a partially
obscured car park, almost hidden by a line of garages and one corner of Straton House, he could just see the front end of a vehicle. The huge chrome bull bars and the metal sheeting covering the bonnet made it stand out from all the other cars and vans left in the street. He began to walk over to it.
“Hey,” Chuck called out after him. “We can’t afford to be walking around outside unnecessarily.”
Muz ignored the man. Amy ran after him, and one by one, so did the others. Walking through the gap between the block and the garages, Muz found that his suspicion had been correct. The vehicle was a Met Police Jankel, a four-by-four armour-plated truck. He had only ever seen the things before during his yearly riot training scenarios down at Grave’s End.
“Wow,” Carl gasped.
“Is nice,” Tom agreed.
Muz walked over to the open driver’s door. A police officer was still sat at the wheel, wearing the tattered remnants of riot gear. Though he twitched weakly in response to Muz’s approach, Muz was in no way concerned. Unable to fathom
how to undo his seatbelt, the Jankel’s driver had been unable to get free and defend himself from the brutal attack he had undergone. He had been stripped to the bone. Even his femurs and a humorous had been snapped in order to allow his attackers to suck out the marrow from within.
Muz reached in, unclipped the seatbelt and pulled the remains of the man out, letting him slap hard against the concrete of the ground. He
thought it would be too much to find the truck’s keys in the ignition and he was right.
“Shit,” Muz said, banging his head against the wheel.
“They’re on his belt,” Amy told him.
Lifting his head off the wheel and looking down, Muz saw she was right. Hanging from the skeleton police officer’s utility belt was a car key. He bent down and unclipped it, the other copper hissing pathetically in response. Muz then jumped into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition and turned it.
The Jankel’s powerful engine roared into life and the gauge on the dash showed three quarters of a tank of petrol.
“Oh fucking yes!” Muz yelled. “About time.”
“Keep your voice down,” Chuck warned him. “And turn the engine off before it attracts unwanted attention.”
Muz ignored him and switched on the truck’s main-set radio, switching it to SX Despatch One, Barnet borough’s main working channel. Listening intently, he found that radio traffic was minimal now. Virtually nothing of note was been said over the airwaves. All that was being discussed was how to affect control of the utter bedlam of the traffic on those roads southeast of the borough that didn’t fall within the current boarders of the quarantine.
“Sierra X-ray receiving?” Muz said into the radio’s handset.
“Unit calling, go ahead,” the CCC operator at the other end replied.
“It’s Six Two One. I’m on the Stonegrove. I need…”
“You can’t be on the Stonegrove,” the operator cut over him. “That’s inside the containment zone.”
“Yes, it is. Well done,” Muz replied sarcastically. “I’m inside the cordon. I have a number of sur…”
“You’re going to have to switch channels,” the operator cut over
him again. “SX Event One is the channel dedicated to anything inside the quarantine.”
“Fuck you,” Muz transmitted back furiously.
“Give me your shoulder number again, officer,” the operator now demanded by way of a threat.
“Fuck you,” Muz reiterated.
“I’m going to report…”
Muz cut him off and changed the channel. “Sierra X-ray receiving, Six Two One?”
“Unit calling, this is a dedicated channel.”
“Yes, I know,” Muz sighed in exasperation, shaking his head in disdain at the others
who were stood around watching him. “This is Six Two One Sierra X-ray. I’m inside the cordon, on the Stonegrove estate. I have several other survivors here with me and we need to get out.”
There was a long empty pause.
“Six Two One, extraction is not possible at this time. You are advised to find somewhere safe and await eventual recovery.”
“I told you,” Chuck told him.
“Bollocks to this,” Muz said with frustration.
He thought for a moment, struggling to remember the private radio number for his friend, Sam
, who worked in the IBO. Keying in the digits, he heard it ringing at the other end.
“Hello?” a weary female voice said.
“Sam. Thank God. It’s Muz.”
“Muz? You’re still alive?” the woman blurted out without thinking, stunned to hear from him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I’ve got six hours off between shifts and I was trying to get some sleep in one of the cells at Wembley nick. I’ve done nineteen hours on and I feel knackered.”
“You’re knackered?” Muz asked with acidity.
“Sorry,” Sam replied mee
kly, chastising herself for having put her foot in it twice in the space of ten seconds.
Muz explained to the female officer what his current situation was as succinctly as possible.
“You’ve done well to keep it together in there, Muz,” she praised him.
“So, what do you advise I do now?” Muz asked.
“Mate, the official line is to tell you wait it out.”
“I know.”
“But to be honest with you, it doesn’t look good. The military haven’t announced to us any plans, as yet, for recovering survivors. If I were you, I’d try and find a way…”
At that
moment, the radio went completely dead. Muz pressed the transmit button again and again, even switched the radio off and back on. Nothing. It wasn’t the car battery. The engine was still running and the instrument panels were still lit.
“Bastards,” he shouted.
It was clear to him what had happened. Someone had been listening in on their private call and had obviously decided Sam had been giving out too much classified information. They had remotely stunned his radio and probably hers as well. The thing wouldn’t work again until it was taken back to a nick and reset.
“We need to get back inside,” Chuck said,
as the copper beat the handset repeatedly against the dash.
Over the past few days, Muz had almost forgotten he was a police officer. He had been just another desperate survivor
, but now he felt his ability to take control return.
“No,” he told Chuck sternly. “I’m taking this thing to the cordon.”
“You can’t,” Chuck told him. “You’re mad. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“The truck is more than enough protection against cannibals, even against those cows,” Muz said, sticking to his guns.
“Tell that to the driver. And what about the snipers? You think that windscreen can withstand a shot from a high velocity round?”
Muz stared back at him defiantly. “Who’s coming with me?” he asked the others.
“Can Digby come?” Amy asked, stepping forward hopefully.
“Jump in,” Muz told her. “There’s plenty of room in this thing, even for that furry lump.”
More excited than nervous at the idea of going to the cordon, Amy ran around to the back of the truck and threw open one of the doors. Tom helped her lift the dog’s heavy rump into the back and then jumped in after them. Just as eager, Carl raced around the bonnet and jumped in the front passenger seat. In a matter of moments, only Chuck remained stood on the concrete of the car park, while the others jostled around noisily in the rear of the Jankel.
“So, you coming or what?” Muz asked him.
For a second, the large African man looked as though he were about to reach in and snatch the keys from the ignition. Instead, he just growled and clambered into the rear of the armoured wagon with the rest.
“Look what I’ve found,” Amy declared, thrusting what looked like a bright yellow handgun between the two front seats for Muz to see.
She was holding the weapon in a pinch between her thumb and forefinger and looked eager for the copper to take it from her.
“Today keeps getting better,” Muz replied, taking the Taser from her. It was no MP-5 but it was still a welcome find.
He put the gear lever into first and lifted the clutch. The truck lurched forward dramatically, causing everyone in the back to fall out of their rudimentary seats that ran down each side.
“Hey! Careful,” Chuck shouted.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Muz called back over his shoulder and tried again to pull away in a more sedate manner.
“I still think we should do as your colleagues told us,” Chuck grumbled, as they drove out of the car park and past the front entrance to their block. “They
must have a better idea of what’s going on and have to therefore be in a better position to make decisions on our behalf.”
No
one responded to his attempt at reason and Muz continued to drive through the streets, heading for the nearby A5. Chuck slumped forcefully back against his hessian back rest, hitting his head against the canister of a NBC respirator that was dangling just above him.
Muz took a sharp right onto Orchard Drive. It was a pleasant street of Tudor style semidetached houses, lined with small trees – a stark contrast to the estate they had just left behind.
Drawn by the sound of the truck’s roaring engine, a man half climbed half fell out of an open ground floor window of one of the houses. Dragging himself back to his feet, he lurched feebly across the premises’ front yard and out onto the pavement.
The previous day, the
afflicted man had had the dubious fortune to happen across a cadaver covered in fat blue bottles. With no one else around to fight him for the prize, he had fed well. His stomach was gorged to the point where, had he needed to, he would have been incapable of breathing. The flies’ eggs had hatched within him and his gut now itched with the vile sensation of the countless wriggling maggots he had become host to. He snarled in irritation, as he lumbered out into the road from between a line of parked cars.
Muz didn’t have a chance to break. The Jankel’
s bull bars slammed hard into the man in the road and the force of the impact carried him up the huge bonnet, as his abdomen burst open. Live maggots in a soup of bile spilled everywhere. As the man’s face pressed against the windscreen, he moaned deeply with pleasure, the painful pressure and churning in his gut having finally stopped.
“Oh, that is disgusting,” Carl declared.
He looked out the side window to avoid the view but, as Muz activated the wipers, maggots were flung this way and that and some tumbled in their yellow slime along the door window right in front of Carl’s eyes.
Muz tugged on the stee
ring wheel hard, left then right, causing the man to slide off the bonnet and tumble along the road behind them.
“I know that bloke,” he said, as the vehicle’s vents drew in the rank odour of maggot-infested flesh
and stomach acid. “He was Jason Hergrove, a prolific shoplifter and vagrant street drinker. Believe it or not, he smelled just as bad when he was alive.”
Several other rotting victims emerged from more buildin
gs along the road and Muz swerved this way and that to hit as many of them as he could, as they lunged at the truck.
“There’s no need actually
to aim for them,” Margaret complained from the back.
“I’m putting them out of their misery,” Muz told her.
“Of course you are. I can clearly see the compassion in your eyes.”
Muz at that moment realised the woman was right. He was actually drawing grim pleasure from seeing each body bounce off the bonnet. What had he become in the short space of a few days?
“Have you noticed that there seems to be far fewer women zombies than men now?” Carl asked.