Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (7 page)

“You lot are a bloody joke. No wonder everyone hates you,” he snarled at them and sped off with a short screech from his tyres.

“Another satisfied customer,” Muz remarked dryly.

A sudden thump came from behind them and they spun round to see, about forty metres along Engel Park, near the junction with Bittacy Rise, a man slumped over the bonnet of a parked car. As they watched, the man tried to push himself up off the car, but his strength failed him and he instead collapsed in the road.

“He looks injured,” Muz said.

“Yeah, we should help him,” Kieran agreed. “I’ll go.”

“Okay
. I’ll wait here in case anyone else tries to get through the cordon.”

Kieran nodded and ducked under the tape.

“I’ll call out if I need you,” he said, as he broke into a run.

Muz paced up and down along the line of tape uneasily, as he watched his colleague run to the man’s aid.
Kieran knelt beside the unmoving member of the public, tilted his head back, opened his mouth and checked for signs of life.

“Mate, he’
s breathing,” Kieran called back over his shoulder at Muz. “But he’s bleeding quite badly and I can’t see where from. Sierra X-ray from Two Four Five, I need LAS at Bittacy...”

“LAS are just as strapped as we are right now,” the CCC operator snapped in response, cutting over Kieran’s transmission.

Though he was sat in the safe, air-conditioned environment of the Control Centre in Hendon, he was feeling the stress of dealing with this ongoing incident. He was becoming annoyed at having to say the same thing to every officer calling up and requesting an ambulance. He wasn’t annoyed at them for not having been listening and therefore being unaware that LAS had no units, but annoyed that he had no help to send to the officers at the scene when they sounded so desperate.

“Every ambulance they can offer us is already at th
e scene dealing with casualties,” he told Kieran.

Muz ducked under the tape. The cordon would have to be unmanned for a few minutes; someone’
s life could be on the line. Besides, they’d only seen one person in the half hour they had been stood there.

“No, stay on the cordon,” Kieran called out. “There’s a couple of coppers down there that can help. Hey, over here.”

As Muz continued to watch from a distance, he saw Kieran stand and shout down Bittacy Rise. He himself could not see down the adjoining road from where he was stood.

“No, you idiots. Over here,” Kieran shouted again, waving his arms around.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Hey, I’ve got an injured man here. I need you to help me stop the bleeding.”

Before Muz could shout and tell him not to, Kieran ran into the junction with
the other road and out of his line of sight. Maybe thirty long seconds passed, with Muz staring expectantly at the junction. Then there came a horrible shriek of pain. It was unmistakably Kieran’s voice.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Muz panted, as he sprinted along Engel Park as fast as his badly unfit lungs would allow.

As he ran, he tried to call up on his radio but couldn’t get in on the channel
, due to the still constant radio traffic. He pressed his PR’s emergency button, giving him momentary priority over everyone else.

“
X-ray, I think Two Four Five is being attacked at the junction of Engel Park and Bittacy Rise,” he blurted out.

“We’ll get a
nother police unit to assist you as soon as we can,” was the only response he got from the CCC operator, before there was another emergency PR activation from another officer elsewhere.

By the time he got to the junction where he had last seen his colleague
, he was already out of breath. Looking into Bittacy Rise now, he could not believe what he was seeing. Kieran was attempting to fight off three other police officers, who were rapidly overwhelming him. He swung wildly at them with the baton he held in one hand, while clutching tightly at a wound in his neck that was readily pouring copious amounts of blood down his yellow jacket and pooling around his feet.

Was this
really happening, Muz asked himself, standing there in momentary stunned immobility. What was going on? Why were those other officers attacking Kieran? Though both his common sense and training told him not to rush into a situation that he didn’t understand, he knew he had to help his oppo’.

The three men, all Herts police officers, were actually growling
, as they repeatedly lunged at Kieran, who was still managing to put up a valiant though failing fight. Every time one of the men got near enough, he smacked him hard round the head with the bulbous metal tip of his baton, with a sickening crack. In a normal situation, a blow to the head like that would instantly drop any man, possibly permanently. But, though this caused the Herts officers to stagger back momentarily and shake their head, unfazed by what should have been debilitating pain, they instantly returned to their savage attack.

Kieran’s
legs were beginning to buckle now, as the rapid loss of blood gushing from the bite wound in his neck was beginning to take effect.

Muz ran over.
He hoped that the attacking officers would keep their attentions focused on Kieran and not realise he was behind them, long enough for him to get in a few hits from the rear with his own baton.

Before he reached the small group though, Kieran’s knees tremb
led and he collapsed. Though their attack was uncoordinated, this was all the opportunity the other men needed. They were on him with the speed and ferocity of a pack of hyenas on a floundering deer. Pinned to the ground, Kieran could no longer put up any fight, as all three men began to feed on him. Snarling and snapping at each other, with the vicious eyes of half-starved wild dogs, they furiously tore chunks from the exposed skin of his face, while ripping at his clothes to reveal more of his flesh. One of the men grabbed Kieran’s hand and gnawed on the fingers, teeth crunching against the bones of the digits.

Muz
stopped running to his colleague’s aid now, terrified by the brutality of the men’s attack. He had been to many violent incidents in his time, some involving people with mental health issues, who when they attacked, did so with an animal-like strength and ferocity. Despite this, never had he imagined men could behave in this way, greedily feeding on the raw flesh of another living human.

His mind went completely numb and he was rooted to the ground, a r
abbit caught in headlights. His eyes were locked on Kieran’s, who was staring back at him with a silent plea. There was nothing he could do for him now though. His wounds were too grievous to survive and Muz knew he had little hope of beating back the deranged men. If he even tried, he would surely end up as dead as Kieran soon would be.

He remained
standing there, watching in horror, the panic coursing through his mind making even the simple decision to turn and run impossible to formulate. As he failed to react, one of the Herts officers noticed his presence.

Looking over his shoulder, the officer glared at Muz with open malice and uttered a low, guttural growl. The only thing that saved Muz from the man then launching at him was the sudden wafting smell
of Kieran’s hot intestines, which another of the men had now exposed, tearing open the police officer’s abdominal wall with his bare hands. Deciding that Muz posed no threat to him enjoying his meal, the man turned back to Kieran’s juddering body, hunkered over him, and bit into the writhing, wet entrails.

With a badly trembling hand, Muz popped open the holster attached to his belt and pulled out the cylinder of CS spray. He had no intention of attacking the mad men
, but he wanted the canister in hand as a defence, just in case. His hand was shaking so badly however that he fumbled and dropped the CS, causing it to clatter on the road.

The blood racing through his veins suddenly ran cold with fear, as he thought the men would react to
the sound and come at him. Thankfully, they didn’t. It seemed that nothing was about to distract them, so long as they were feeding.

Muz
snatched up the canister and began treading backwards now, increasing the distance between himself and the unbelievable carnage. He walked backwards all the way up to the junction with Engel Park, too scared to take his eyes off the demented coppers.

As he was still witnessing the murder
, two of the men got in each other’s way, as they frenziedly fed, face down in Kieran’s open stomach. The two officers immediately began to fight each other, while the third simply ignored them and continued to eat.

It was like no fight Muz had ever seen. There was no posturing, no bravado, no insulting or antagonising words, no pacing around as they weighed each other up.
The men instead attacked with the obvious sole intention of killing. They clawed at each other so violently that they tore their own nails from their fingers. One sunk his teeth into the other officer’s throat and biting down hard, tugged back with his entire bodyweight repeatedly. Despite the effort involved, he didn’t tire until the man’s trachea and larynx tore away from the rest of the neck.

Muz ducked around the hedge at the end of the road. His chest was rising and falling in rapid succession and he felt dizzy with the amount of oxygen in his blood. He had been so transfixed and ho
rrified by what he had seen, that he had he neglected to perform such a basic bodily function as swallowing, and now a thick trail of saliva slid from his chin and down his met-vest.

He took control of his breathing, wiped his face
, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now. Along Engel Park, to his left, there was the cordon he was meant to be controlling. He really didn’t see that he could manage that though, not without some serious backup.
The injured man who Kieran had tried to help was now nowhere to be seen. Where he had dragged himself off to, Muz had no idea. To his right was the quickest route back to the nick, to safety.

He was already beginning to jog
to the right, as he switched his PR to the IBO channel. There was no use in even attempting to transmit on Despatch One, or even the Support channel. There was just too much constant radio traffic. He was dismayed to hear that the IBO channel was just the same. Cursing, he pressed his emergency button again, cutting over the man who was already speaking.

“Ops, I need help,” he said. It was almost a plea.

“Go on. Where are you? What have you got?”

“Engel Park. Kieran, Two Four Five, is dead. He... he was at
tacked by three Herts officers,” Muz told the man.

There was a
long pause of radio silence. Muz was about to call up again and check the IBO officer had received him, when the man at last responded.

“We’v
e got no units to assist you at this time,” was all the officer said.

“What?” Muz almost choked out. “Did you not hear me? Kieran is dead.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry. There’s nobody,” the IBO officer
said with resignation and fatigue in his voice.

Was he crying, Muz wondered.

“Muz, it’s Sam,” a female voice now spoke over the radio.

She
was a core team officer but also worked in the IBO sometimes. Unlike her colleague, she seemed still to be managing to maintain a level of professionalism and control.

“We’ve got
more units running to assist from south of the river but they’re a while off yet,” she told him.

“Shit,” Muz replied. “Well, I can’t control this cordon. I’m on foot, returning back to the nick.”

“I know you really don’t want to hear this, but orders are that you are to stay where you are and maintain the cordons.”

“What? Are you kidding me?”
Muz snapped back at the woman.

“Straight from the top,” Sam replied, sounding apologetic. “The Commissioner has order
ed that no one leaves the cordon points; the situation has to be contained at all costs.”

“Fuck that!” Muz bellowed. “There are people eating each other out here. You can tell the Commissioner from me, he can come down here and stand on the cordon himself if he’s that fucking bothered.”

“I’m just passing on what I’m told,” Sam said defensively. “But, to be honest, if I was in your shoes, I’d be getting out of there as quick as I could as well.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Muz replied bitterly.

Muz continued to head in the direction of the police station. As the road began to slope downhill, the two opposing lanes split around a small area of grass and trees, which gave the residential street a more rural look than most in the area.

Tearing up the hill towards him now, lights flashing and sirens blaring, Muz saw an ambulance. Despite them being on a blue light run, Muz hoped that, given the current chaos, they would stop and pick him up. He ran out into the grassy area in the middle of the road, so he was directly in their line of sight, and waved his arms wildly.

The ambulance drew closer
and showing no signs of having seen him, was actually gathering speed up the steep incline. Approaching the point where the road split, the vehicle began to swerve from side to side and Muz now realised that the driver was not in full control. He managed to glimpse the woman at the wheel, struggling desperately with another figure who was leaning over her.