Free Demise of the Living by Iain McKinnon

something.
Karen pulled down hard with both hands and the resistance waned.
She tugged, dropping her whole weight into the effort. The shutter
swung up high, flooding the garage with light.
    The hands had her before she
could react—cold, waxy things with a claw-like grip.
    Karen screamed. The
motorbike behind her screeched and her friend blurred past
her.
    Karen shrieked, “Shan!”
but the bike had whipped round and sped from view.
    Karen pushed back at the
attacker, a man a good foot taller than her. His hair was dark and
matted, his flesh drained of colour, but his lips were red with the
lustre of fresh blood.
    “ No!” she
cried.
    She slapped at the man, trying
to push him off, but he held fast. A pink froth trickled from his
open mouth as he lent in for the bite.
    There was a shrill whine and
the man lunged forward, falling on top of her.
    Karen hit the concrete floor
hard, knocking the breath out of her chest. The man landed with his
face buried deep into her neck. Karen twisted and kicked, trying to
free herself when the man flopped off her.
    “Get up!” Shan screamed.
    Karen looked up at her friend
to see a clump of tangled hair dangling from the face of the
hammer.
    Shan offered her free hand.
    “ Come on! The street’s
full of them!”
    Karen scrabbled to her
feet.
    “ Hold the front of the
bike,” Shan said as she hurried to the back tyre. “On three, you
pull the front end round this way.” She indicated the direction
with a tilt of her head.
    Placing her hands on the
handlebars close to the steering column, Karen nodded she was
ready.
    “One, two, three!”
    The two girls lifted and
twirled the heavy bike round to face back out of the garage.
    “Get on and hold on,” Shan said
as she vaulted onto the saddle.
    Karen did the same. “The
helmet?”
    “Fuck that.”
    Shan wrenched the throttle and
the bike was in the brilliant daylight of the street.
    The wind threw Karen’s hair
back in billowing sheets. Some of it whipped round to be caught in
her mouth. Too scared to let go of Shan’s waist, Karen tried in
vain to blow the hair away.
    As they hurtled along, Karen
peered through the fluttering locks of hair at the roads they sped
down. The bike would slow down, twist, and zigzag, and then speed
up again at seemingly random moments as her driver swerved to avoid
unexpected obstacles.
    The racing wind stung her eyes
and made her gulp down breaths tainted with strands of her own
hair. Karen gave up trying to see what was going on. She buried her
head tight up against Shan’s shoulder and fought back the urge to
cry.
     
    ***
     
    “Do you believe that?!” Gary
shouted at no one in particular.
    “ Keep your voice down,”
Liz scolded. “You’re frightening my children.”
    “ I mean, come on —a
flu epidemic?” Gary said, gesturing at the car radio.
    “Last time I had flu I spent a
week laid up in bed. I didn’t go around looting the place,” Stephen
said.
    “Then you didn’t have flu,”
Gary said.
    “What? You do loot?”
    “ No, the in bed for a week . My sister caught flu a few years back. She spent six
weeks in bed and dropped nearly thirty pounds. No, this ain’t no
flu.” Gary wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
“I’m burning up in here. Can we have the AC on?”
    “Yeah, sure.” Stephen fiddled
with the controls on the dashboard and a fan started up.
    “I don’t feel well,” Grant said
pitifully to his mother.
    Liz hugged the boy close,
stroking his damp hair. “It’s okay. We’ll be at the hospital
soon.”
    “ Look. A cop down there.”
Gary said, pointing at the white and blue squad car on an adjoining
street.
    “We’ll ask him if he knows how
we can get to the hospital,” Stephen said.
    He checked his mirrors out of
habit, indicated, and pulled on to the road where the police car
and its driver were parked.
    The police officer stood
propped up by his cruiser. His arms were on top of the roof, his
head buried deep in their folds, the