Free Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel by James Carlson

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.
    The emergency vehicle clipped several parked cars, then veered back across the road and mounted the grass directly in front of him. Muz dived out of its path just in time, as it smashed hard into a tree directly behind where he had been stood.
    With the realisation that he had been mere inches from death ringing alarm bells in his head, Muz scrambled back to his feet. The blue lights on top of the em ergency vehicle were still pulsing but the noise the sirens were now making sounded like the last pitiful wail of a dying cat. He stumbled up to the front of the vehicle and looked in through the driver’s window.
    “Oh , Jesus,” he gasped.
    The driver’s airbag had deployed but it hadn’t saved her. A thick, low-lying tree branch had first pierced the windscreen and then plunged through her skull, causing the woman’s face to implode around it. Muz staggered back, retching in disgust.
    The ambulan ce rocked slightly and there came a clattering crash from inside the back. There was someone alive in there, Muz realised. He ran round to the rear of the vehicle and opened the back door. Instantly, a man, wearing nothing but a pair of shabby underpants, burst out past him and landed in a heap of limbs on the grass.
    “You alright, mate? ” Muz asked, approaching him.
    Despite the crash and having all but fallen out of the back of the ambulance, the man was getting to his feet. He seemed completely unconcerned that his right ankle was clearly broken, causing his foot to point outward at an unnaturally wayward and sickening angle. He also had a deep, four-fingered scratch across his chest that had bled profusely.
    “Don’t try to get up,” Muz advised him.
    The barely dressed man lifted his head and stared with terrible eyes at the police officer in front of him. Muz immediately recognised the inhuman glare as bearing the same madness as the Herts officers had displayed. It was a look that meant in no uncertain terms that the man was about to attack. Remembering the savagery of the other men, Muz didn’t fancy his chances in a one-on-one fight.
    He held out the tiny canister of CS spray, as the man took a step towards him, and fired the noxious liquid