Free The Screaming (Book 1): Dead City by Matthew Warwick Page A

pieces. To the left of the station was a row of small shops.  An orchestra of burglar alarms wailed along the length of the shop fronts and a bulk of discarded lootings littered the doorways.
                  A high pitched scream snapped Zac’s attention to his right. A broken lamp post rested on the bonnet of a small blue Mini and a blood stained hand was freely hanging from the driver side window. The screaming sharply stopped. Zac cautiously edged to the crashed car. As he inched closer he saw what remained of a young woman crushed between the seat and the collapsed dash board. Patches of flesh had been stripped from her body and her head and shoulders were bare to the bone. What was left of her innards hung from her shredded torso and nestled on her masticated thighs!
                  Zac stepped back, it was all too much. Sickness exploded in his empty stomach, and he began to gag, but little more than bile found its way into his mouth. He spat it out, coughed and wiped his face with his soiled t-shirt. Suddenly movement on the back seat of the Mini caught his attention. He moved to the back of the car and cupped his hands to the tinted window. Inside, a baby wriggled in a child seat. Securely held in by strong safety straps. Zac strained to make out detail through the blackened glass. He quickly stepped back and opened the door.
                  The small baby girl was no more than a year old, with short brown hair and wearing a tiny pink tracksuit. He had found the source of the scream. The poor child was one of them. Blood stained her feet as they hung over the edge of the seat. But other than that she was largely unharmed. The attackers must have been leaning in over the woman to get to the child. A thin solution of blood and tears rolled down the girls face from her lifeless red eyes.
                  Zac started to sob. He reached out his hands to try and pick up the child, suddenly struck by some sort of caring instinct. The child repaid his gesture by snapping her toothless mouth at his fingers, desperate for a taste of his flesh. His hands just out of reach, frustrated the child, who took a deep breath and shrieked with all her might. So much louder with the door open. He jumped back, slamming the car door shut, muffling the squawking child’s cry.
                  Zac abruptly zoned back into his own personal predicament. A feeling of vulnerability again shrouded him, as he snapped his head around, scanning for approaching flesh hungry beasts. It was time to move, time to find help.
     
    “FUCKING RUN.”
     
                  The man had sprinted around the corner out of nowhere, yelling at the top of his voice. Zac threw himself against the car, stunned at the man’s sudden appearance. The male bounded up to Zac and grabbed him by both shoulders.
     
    “Move it, they’re coming.”
     
                  Sweat was dripping down the breathless mans face as he struggled to speak. Pungent body odour seeped from under his council parking attendant’s uniform. Zac looked the man up and down for signs of blood leaking from his face, and quickly concluded that he was normal. A pin badge on his uniform hung from a ripped shirt pocket.
     
    It read, “TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL,” and the name “CLIVE.”
     
                  Clive looked back fearfully in the direction from which he’d run. Zac turned his head and followed his anxious gaze, as a surge of people sprinted around the corner, towards the two men. The masks of blood on each of their faces instantly apparent.
     
    “Fuck! Go, go.” Zac roared, as the two men took to their toes and started to run for their lives.
     
                  Zac weaved his way around discarded cars, closely followed by Clive. The tidal wave of blood thirsty hunters streamed into the street, filling the wide road from kerb to kerb. A cocktail of exasperated grunts and deafening