Free No Zombies Please We Are British by Alex Laybourne Page B

Pakistani family watched from behind the walls of their shop. When Jack’s gaze made contact with them, they disappeared from view.
    Others followed suit, hiding or pulling something across their field of vision as soon as they realized they had been spotted.
    There was something else too. A tapping sound. Something that had something more behind it than the mindless thump of the hungry dead.
    Jack looked around, but there was nobody on the street. Nobody alive, at least.
    That was when his eyes returned to the bus. Sitting in the rear, her face pressed to the glass, was a woman. She stared at him, tapping away on the window. Every tap her hand made seemed to further agitate the creatures who were along with her for the ride.
    Jack looked at her, and as soon as she realized he had seen her, a smile spread across her face. The relief that washed over her in the moment was so strong Jack could feel it.
    He was stuck. He couldn’t turn away and leave her.
    Bending down, he picked up his battle-hardened fire iron and walked towards the bus. The choice was a simple one. Take out the driver first. It was not as though he would have floored it and driven away with Jack as his new prisoner, but Jack didn’t want to get on the bus with that snarling mess still alive.
    The driver was a large man in life, and the bloating brought on by the decay had seen him lodged behind the wheel. He strained and snarled as Jack approached, his head crashing against the glass window.
    The closer Jack drew, the more agitated the thing became. The glass cracked and split under the pressure of the blows. Softened clumps of rotting flesh smeared the inside, and came close to obscuring the view completely.
    Then, with a final strike, the undead bus driver threw his head through the window. Glass shards dug into its flesh, digging deep gouges as the creature shoved its head farther and farther. Jack watched it, a strange, cold fascination growing within him.
    He then raised his iron and drove it through the man’s head. A single, fluid jab, in one ear and out the other.
    What freaked Jack out the most was that from all of the dead he had laid to rest, none of them screamed, or gave any sign of pain. He knew they were dead. That had been a worryingly simple thing to get used to. Yet, their complete silence at the moment of death, not even a gasp as the blow came. That made him shiver.
    Moving around the front of the bus, he held the iron at the ready. Adrenaline surging through his body, pushing away the fatigue and muscle ache. There was one other death-walker, but its attention was directed towards the window of the laundrette, which was the building hidden behind the bus. Numerous scared faces looked out at him.
    Jack did the decent thing and caved the thing’s skull in from behind. He could not do anything to help the people trapped inside. There were three other undead figures making their way through from the laundrette’s back room.
    “I’m sorry,” he mouthed to them.
    He knew they couldn’t have heard him, unless they were part bat or some other weird shit, so he reasoned that the creatures must have growled at the same moment, for everybody turned around and screamed. They ran around like headless chickens, and before he even had the chance to consider smashing the windows to set them free, it was all over. They had barricaded the front door, but left the rear unguarded.
    Turning his attention back to the bus, Jack climbed on board. The stench was atrocious. The odour of piss, shit, and vomit all rolled into one. The high temperature made the aroma all the more stomach-churning.
    “Help me,” the woman wailed as she saw Jack appear. Above him, he heard the stomping of feet as the undead were driven wild by the temptations below them.
    Jack saw why. There was a closed door that ran across the end of the stairwell. A means of keeping the upper deck off limits at certain times, or so he assumed. Not being a bus aficionado.
    Then he realized