Free Flu by Wayne Simmons

again. He slipped the rather pungent balaclava back over his face.
        A noise outside startled him. Ducking to the side wall, he peeked, gingerly, through the curtains of the bedroom. Down below, he saw a couple of men struggling with the door of the car he had parked by the house. The one the girl had clung onto, earlier in the day, with groceries in its boot. One of the men held a small handgun and was aiming it, nervously, at a pack of dead that were moving, slowly, towards them from further down the street. McFall moved to change his view, still taking care to duck behind the curtains. From the other end of the street, he could see the couple of meandering dead he'd spotted earlier. They were wandering back towards the commotion, as if worried they might miss out on something really wonderful. It looked like the two men were hemmed in.
        McFall watched as the two men continued to force the door of the car, eventually giving up. As the dead drew closer, both men jumped onto the car's roof. The man with the gun fired at some of them. His aim was poor, however, several shots flying wide of the incoming targets. Then he struck lucky, McFall noticing how one shot connected with the chest of a dead woman. She hit the ground almost immediately. To the surprise of both men, as well as McFall, though, she wasted little time before climbing back onto her feet.
        Before long, the dead had surrounded the car and were grasping at the legs of the two men. They kicked and lunged out in panic. The one with the gun fired a couple more random shots, to little effect. Those who were shot looked stunned for a while, before moving back in for the kill.
        One of the men was compromised, falling flat on the car roof as the dead managed to grasp hold of his leg. As McFall watched on, the poor bastard was dragged into the pack and onto the road. All the surrounding dead immediately closed in on him, hungrily, leaving the other man firing his gun and screaming the name of his friend - both in vain. Finally, as a last ditch attempt, he jumped off the roof of the car, grabbing his friend's arms and trying to rescue him from the closing quarters, but they grabbed him too, dragging both men to the ground and surrounding them like a pack of hyenas around prey.
        But there was something new happening, here. Something McFall hadn't noticed before. Something that almost made him gag with disgust, despite the minty fresh feel of balaclava on his face. Sure, he'd known the dead to be aggressive. He'd even known them to tear at people with their hardened, rigor mortis fingers, or snap at them, like wild dogs, like feral beasts using every part of themselves to fell their prey.
        But this was new. This was terrifying.
        "Jesus…" McFall whispered to himself, unable to take his eyes from the gruesome scene. "They're fucking eating them…"

Chapter Five
        
        Karen sat the pot of tea down on the coaster beside the milk and sugar. She set one empty cup where Pat was sitting, also laid out on a coaster, then another for herself. She then poured Pat a cup of tea. Only then did she sit down beside him at the table.
        "It's the head," Pat said, staring into space. "You have to shoot them in the head."
        "Uh-huh." She said, smiling. "Would you like a biscuit?" He looked up, as if to peruse the biscuits. Karen immediately jumped up, scrambling to throw some onto a plate for him to inspect. "Chocolate or Jammie Dodgers?" she said, setting the plate on yet another coaster at the table.
        "Any plain digestives?" he asked, frowning at the choice on the table, "I'm watching my cholesterol, you see."
        "No, but I could-"
        "I wonder why it didn't fall when I hit its heart," he said, forgetting all about the biscuits. "I mean pretty much everything dies when you take out the heart… what's driving the thing if it isn't the heart?"
        "Well, I -"
        "And another thing;