Dead Frost - 02 (23 page)

The snow on the
windscreen pushed aside and fell off onto bonnet.

Through the frosty
glass, though, was a face staring back at them.

Shane gasped as he
realised who the man standing in front of the bus was; dripping with
blood, missing an arm, an eye hanging down his cheek and flailing in
the howling wind...

Victor Lord looked
more pissed off then ever before.

*

The Captain shambled
forward a few steps and launched himself onto the bonnet. The bus
rocked and creaked as Victor tried to drag himself up to the
windscreen, but he was like a fish out of water and flailed aimlessly
around on the snow-covered bonnet before slipping back down and
hitting the ground with a thud.

Marla was on her
feet, now. 'Drive over him!' she screeched.

Shane tried to find
the gearstick; when he found there was nothing to his right, he
realised that the bus was lever-controlled, the gears were on the
dashboard.

'He's getting up!'
Terry said, glancing through the side door. 'And he does not look
happy.'

Of course he didn't
loo happy; he'd been a miserable prick when he was alive. Now that
he had an eye hanging out and a missing arm, he was hardly going to
be the life and soul of the party.

Shane
rammed the bus into first gear with a crunch and stuck his foot down
on the accelerator. The bus moved, only an inch or so, but it was
enough to knock the
lurker
formerly known as Victor Lord back onto his ass.

'Did I get him?'
Shane said, trying to peer over the bonnet. He couldn't see a thing,
so his reliance on Terry's vision was paramount. 'Talk to me,
Terry.'

Terry could see a
broken and torn hand, reaching up to the wing-mirror. 'No,' he said.
'He's still down there.'

Shane needed no
further encouragement and began to roll forward and back. The bus
was relatively simple to control now that he had discovered the
gears, and he was surprised at just how responsive it was, despite
the inches of snow and frost beneath the wheels.

At the side of the
bus, Victor's hand disappeared. 'I think you got the bastard,' Terry
said, alternating his gaze between Shane and the exterior.

'Don't suppose you
want to take a closer look?' Shane said, already knowing the answer.

'Let's just get the
fuck out of here,' Marla said.

Shane put the bus
into Reverse and was about to hit the pedal when the door in front
slammed open.

Victor
had been a problem; the steady swarm of
costumed
children piling from the rear-entrance, slavering maws and bloodied
garments, would prove to be something else entirely.

Shane hit the pedal
and the wheels began to turn. The only trouble was, the bus didn't
move.

'Take it steady!'
Terry said, clinging onto the centre-rail as if Shane was Sandra
Bullock and they were about to hit a ramp. 'They can't get in, so
just take your time.'

Terry's words of
advice did very little in the way of comforting the driver. If
anything, Shane panicked further as he realised two winged monkeys
were making their way around to the rear of the bus, where there was,
due to safety regulations, probably a fucking emergency exit.

'What are they?!'
Marla gasped, wiping the window to her left with the sleeve of her
coat. It made no difference; the frost on the outside prevented her
from getting a good look.

'You
ever see The Wizard Of Oz?' Terry said. Of course she had, everybody
had seen it. Every Christmas
for
the past fifty years, some channel would bang it on, next to
It's
a Wonderful Life
or
Mary fucking Poppins.

'
The
one with all the midgets?' Marla said, the confusion in her voice
palpable.

'That's
the one,' Terry replied. He began to make his way down the aisle of
the bus. 'Only, they were
munchkins
,
not midgets.'

'Whatever,'
Marla said. 'That doesn't explain what they're doing trying to
cannibalise
us.'

Shane gave the
order to hold tight, and this time the bus did move. Something
thumped the underside as the bus rolled steadily backwards. The
tyres met something, which lifted them a few inches into the air.

'Fucking winged
monkey!' Terry said, and then realised the preposterousness of his
words. He had never, in all of his days, expected to use the words
Fucking Winged Monkey in a serious sentence. It was all he could do
not to burst out laughing.

Shane
couldn't see out of the windows, so the wing-mirrors were rendered
obsolete. He was relying on Terry to tell him if he was about to hit
anything, although
the
visibility out the rear of the bus was just as limited.

A female lurker,
dressed in a pink frock and a tiara, had clambered up onto the
side-step and was clawing at the window. Her tongue trailed across
the glass, leaving a snail-trail of black goo in its wake. She was,
by far, the least fair princess in all the land.

Marla switched
sides so that she didn't have to look into the creature's listless
eyes anymore. 'Freaks me out,' she said, feigning a shudder.

The bus was picking
up speed, now, and the prom-dress wearing lurker was clinging on as
if her life depended on it. Shane paid no attention to its ceaseless
scratching, and instead occupied himself with getting the bus out
onto the unlit road.

'Keep going!' Terry
called from the rear of the bus. 'I can see the gate.'

Shane turned back
just in time to see the female lurker drop off the side, do a few
rolls in the snow, and come to a grinding halt.

'I
thought she'd never take the hint,' Marla said, rubbing her eyes as
if a few hours sleep were not
unwelcome.

Shane smiled.
'How'm I doing Terry? I can't see a thing.'

'Okay,' Terry said,
straining to see through the tiniest hole in the frost in the
rear-window. 'Slow her down, now. You can spin it round here, and
we're out on the road.'

Shane discovered
that he could breathe again; he'd spent the last few minutes doing
very little of it.

He brought the bus
around slowly, still unsure of the controls and more than wary of the
poor road-conditions. Just ahead, the female lurker was on her feet
and shambling towards the bus. Just behind her, lying inert on the
driveway, were several twitching shapes, their paper-mache wings
flapping in the wind. Some of them were trying to get up, but they
were too broken to make it and fell back down into the snow.

Shane
lugged the massive steering-wheel all the way to the left as he
reversed. He kept expecting a robotic voice to announce the the
vehicle he was operating was reversing, but there was nothing.
Apparently, safety
regulations had come a long way, but not far enough.

'That little fucker
just won't quit,' Marla said as she noticed the approaching lurker in
the pretty pink dress. 'She'd have been a real catch in a few years
time.'

There was something
inappropriate about Marla's sense of humour, but Shane remained
silent; it was all he could do to keep his concentration on the job
in hand.

'You're
good to go,' Terry said, giving a thumbs-up at the rear of the bus.
'Just take her steady, Shane. It's slippery as
fuck
out there, and we can hardly hope for clear roads the farther we
get.'

Shane slipped the
bus into first and began to crawl forward. Through his side-window –
which was now relatively free of collected snow – he gave the
female lurker one last look before she started to get smaller and
smaller.

The
road was, as Terry put it,
slippery
as fuck
, but it was a
lot safer than the schoolyard, and a helluva lot more appealing than
seeing the night through in a building filled with enough costumed
freaks to throw a
decent
Halloween party.

'Right,' Marla
said, turning to Terry. 'Do you mind explaining what just happened?'

Terry ambled up
through the centre-aisle and sat a few seats behind Marla.

'I'll tell you what
I know,' he said.

And the bus rolled
on.

TWENTY-SIX

She took a deep
breath and pushed the door slowly open. Her heart was racing so fast
that she thought, despite her age, she was about to have a
heart-attack.

They were gone;
the creatures, all of them, had left the dinosaur-room. The scary
thing was – and she had to keep reminding herself of this –
they were probably not far, maybe in the next room, perhaps
destroying some ancient Roman artefacts or bleeding all over a
priceless tome.

It didn't
matter.

What mattered
was she was out of the cupboard, her machete ready. She had begun to
think she might die in there, cowering like a mouse behind a
skirting-board, hiding from an inexorably patient cat.

She moved across
the room, slowly, listening for any movements. If they were nearby,
they were certainly being quiet about it.

She couldn't
hear anything other than her own heartbeat, which in itself was
pretty unnerving.

The storm
rattled the windows, as it had done all night long. She could
determine the difference now, however, between the howl of the wind
and the moaning creatures.

The creatures
usually growled at the end, whereas the wind simply trailed off.

She knew that
she was no longer safe in the museum, that she had to get out before
the place was crawling with the undead. The night was almost at an
end, though; was it possible to bug out at first light?

Could she last
that long?

She was
terrified to move, just in case they heard her and came back. If she
were to accidentally knock something – or god forbid she should
sneeze or cough – then there would only be one outcome, and it
was something that she didn't want to think about.

She slipped
behind a display-cabinet and crouched; if one of them came into the
room now, they wouldn't immediately see her.

Still, she
wasn't comfortable with the thought that they would find her within a
few seconds of shambling around. She stood, once again, and exhaled
with frustration.

She might as
well crawl back into the store-cupboard with the mop-bucket and
cleaning products; being free from the place simply gave her a
hundred new things to worry about. At least in there she only had
the problem of starving to death.

No.

She wouldn't go
down like that. She had made a promise to herself, and she would
fight, just as she had sworn, to the very end.

She swung the
machete and strode across the room, ignoring the gigantic skeletal
remains of some long-extinct creature. As if they could smell her
determination, a trio of zombies came crashing through the door,
falling over each other to get to her.

Adrenaline, she
hoped, would be enough to get her through. They were slow,
impossibly awkward, and easy to finish, provided she didn't get
cocky, provided she didn't find herself outnumbered.

There were
three; she had fought more than that at once before, but that had
been outside. The dinosaur-room was cramped, claustrophobic.
Outside she had the freedom to run in any direction that wasn't
blocked by creatures. Inside the museum, she was caged, trapped with
the zombies. If she was forced against a wall, she would be royally
fucked, and she knew it.

The creatures
all went for her at once, as if they hadn't eaten in weeks –
maybe they hadn't.

She dived to the
right, using her free hand to send a pillar crashing to keep them at
bay. The pillar she thought was made of stone was, in fact, nothing
more than polystyrene, and landed harmlessly a few feet away, where
it began to roll back and forth, silently.