Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel by James Carlson Page A

call.
    Disregarding the woman and her poor child as clearly being a lost cause, he looked down the hill, intending to continue heading in that direction , back towards Colindale police station. Heading up the long stretch of the road towards him however, he could see a gang of youths. They looked like the usual worthless scum that hung around the parade of shops a couple of streets over from here.
    Behaving more like a pack of dogs than usual, snapping and snarling at each other, they were coming this way. Despite the distance, they had already seen Muz.
    Observing their advance for a moment, he saw that they suffered various injuries , evident from their blood-stained clothes and broken, lurching gaits. A boy of about twelve years was causing a loud grating sound, as with one foot missing, he walked on exposed bone, scraping the end of his leg against the tarmac surface of the road.
    One of lads at the front of the group of about fifteen boys and girls broke into a run and the others immediately followed suit. Despite his terrible injury, even the boy with the missing foot was frighteningly fast, sprinting rapidly up the hill in a series of off-balance lunges, hissing through clenched teeth at the excruciating pain.
    “Oh shit,” Muz gasped.
    To his right, behind the railings where the woman sat feeding, there was a cut-through between the houses, a footpath that led to the adjacent street. Breaking into a run, Muz passed the woman who snarled at him and held what remained of her baby possessively close to her chest.
    He had barely got half way along the path though when he saw , in the next road, a brawling mass of people. They were gathered around a slowly rolling car, dragging the driver and passengers out of their seats. The man who had been in the driver’s seat was lashing out at the crowd with his fists, vainly trying to defend his nine year old twin daughters, who were screaming as they were pulled through the windows by clawing hands.
    “Bollocks,” Muz said and turned on his heels.
    Rapidly doubling back on himself, he passed the infant eating woman again. Though Muz tried hard not to look at her, he couldn’t stop himself, throwing a sideways glance her way. Her nose was reddened and swollen from where her baby had been frenziedly gnawing on it with his toothless mouth. Although the mother had eaten all the way through her son’s plump belly to the spine, he was still conscious, waving his fat little arms and squealing.
    Turning eyes away in disgust, Muz saw the youths were very close now, no more than fifty metres down the hill. Still , they seemed unfazed by their wounds and showed no signs of beginning to tire. There was no way he could outrun them, he knew. Starting to panic, he ran to the front door of the nearest house and tried the handle. It was locked. Clambering over the low wall between this and the next house, he tried again. Thankfully, this time the door swung inwards and he threw himself inside, slamming the door in place behind him.
    There was no key in the lock, he realised despondently, as he heard a clatter of feet and the snarling of the youths outside. Pressing his back to the door, he leaned over to the adjacent window and twitched the net curtain aside. The gang of kids ran past the gate to this house and converged on the woman a little further along. He heard her crying out in pain, as the savage group tore into her. Muz felt almost nothing for her, so overwhelmed was he by the relief that the youths had passed him by.
    Crouching low, so as not to be spotted through the windows, he moved towards the rear of the house where he was less likely to be seen from the road outside. As he warily shuffled through the hall to the kitchen, he listened intently for any telltale sounds of there being anyone else in the house with him.
    “Hello?” he dared to call out softly, his voice trembling.
    Why had the front door been unlocked if there was no one home, he wondered. Maybe whoever had been