Free Great Bitten: Outbreak by Warren Fielding Page A

preparing the house in shifts, when the bloody body of Alan staggered in to view.
    Think of a drunkard staggering down the street. The drunkard’s probably been to a DIY store and fallen in the paint section, because almost head to toe he’s covered in red. It’s not the false fun red of a fast food outlet, it’s the dark luscious red of a brothel wall, heavy and hot and full of potency. The drunkard must have been at it all day because he can’t really talk. His chest doesn’t heave but what’s left of his throat – dear God, what happened to his throat – bubbles as part of the adam’s apple bounces up and down in mimicry of speech. You look down at the drunkard’s chest to see why he can’t talk and aside from the torn shirt exposing a strip of ripped flesh from the collarbone to the navel, you can see that his chest isn’t moving. Why isn’t his chest moving if he’s trying to talk? Perhaps the lungs have been damaged – you can’t see them for the muscle and sinew and the bloody cage protecting his internal organs, but there’s every chance a finger has slipped in between those narrow slats and punctured a hole where there never used to be one before. But then you’d think there would be wheezing, and there’s not a single sound of escaping air anywhere.
    If you can tear your eyes away from the horrific wounds on the torso, you see from the drunkard’s eyes that whatever he has done to himself today, it’s a massive step away from normality. His brow is fevered, and small droplets of sweat still remain pooled at the temples, collecting blood and flavouring his skin a tempered red. His forehead is frozen in a shock concertina of wrinkles and his eyes looked surprised before the bloodshot flecks took over, painting everything that popular shade of red the man seems to have taken to. He takes another staggering step forward lurching, his arms coming forward to try to maintain some semblance of balance and giving him a shambling forward momentum, swinging backwards at the last possible moment and swinging the pendulum of his body back to an upright position, a few precious feet closer to where his bloodshot eyes are focusing. And when those eyes come to bear on you and you realise that it’s you that he wants, your own blood becomes frozen. Eyes that looked shocked and confused, perhaps even lost at my first quick glance, aren’t dead. I’d always expected zombies to have those stereotypically dead movie eyes, glazed over and devoid of the soul that the religiously inclined claim dwells within every human body. Perhaps there is no soul, and it’s all to do with the brain which at this point is clearly still alive and very vigorously kicking. Perhaps there is a soul after all, and the taint of the infection mutates it in to a dark and predatory core. Because Alan’s eyes are anything but absent. They are full of malevolence and hatred. Bloodshot, and with pupils dilated so far that much of the eye is ink black with the fury of a midnight storm, he takes drunken steps towards me and as far away from his toying around with me earlier as possible, there is no mistaking his inhuman intent.
    I let out a strangled cry of warning; Carla and Rick were between us and I didn’t want Ass tearing his way through them to get to me – I had no doubt at all that he’d try. They turned and Carla let out a full-blooded scream. Rick pushed her to one side and she crumpled to the side of the room, scurrying behind a chair. Ass ignored her. Some part of his barely-functioning brain must have still been registering her as a favourite. He didn’t seem that interested in Rick, either. I must have really pissed him off about the guns. I raised my hand to heft my trusty hammer again, thinking myself a nouveaux apocalyptic Thor, and instead a dribble of damp squeezed out of the sponge I was still holding, slipping down the side of my wrist. I looked at it, both horrified and mystified, as Ass charged me. Well, if you