Dead Stop (12 page)

That creature looked up at me, but it was not Melissa who looked out of that familiar face. It was something animalistic, with slack pupils in bloodshot eyes, and skin that looked both pallid and bruised, tinted with jaundice.

It jerked forward and up, bringing its knees together, dragging its legs across the floor as it tried to stand. I took one corner of the fire blanket in my left hand, and prepared to throw it over zombie Melissa before she could move further.

I then realised that the cupboard was too narrow to do what I needed to do—I’d be too tightly wedged in to get her on her front and use the cuffs. Loath as I was to let her stand, I needed her out into the server room.

I shook out the fire blanket like a cartoon matador, waving it in zombie Melissa’s direction.

‘What the fuck are you—’ ghost Melissa began, but I shushed her, watching her corporeal counterpart shuffle forward, half standing. I backed away a little, a step at a time, eyes fixed on the zombie version of Melissa, hoping that I didn’t slip on any of those bloodstains behind me.

That would be bloody typical. Get all this way and fall on my arse, suffering a fatal blow to the back of the skull.

As I stepped back into the server room, the zombie Melissa charged, and the ghost version screamed in terror and disappeared through the wall.

I ignored her, and as her zombie version crashed into me I threw the fire blanket over her head and brought my arms down to her shoulder level, trying to grip her upper arms through the insulated fabric and stop her clawing at me.

We staggered backwards, wrestling like that, and I bumped into one of the servers. Under the blanket came a chomping growl, and Melissa’s head flailed back and forth beneath the fabric, searching for a way out.

Rather than try and push her back—she was incredibly strong, even with her unshod feet slipping and scraping against the smooth tiled floor beneath us—I instead got an elbow on to her head and forced it downwards and under my arm, quickly whipping her under me and spinning around behind her.

I was glad Melissa’s ghost form wasn’t there to see me slam her body head first into the server, hopefully hard enough to stun her a little bit.

It seemed to work, as the wrestling creature went briefly limp. I scrabbled to grab her wrists beneath the fire blanket, dragging them behind her back and holding her jacket sleeves together in one hand as I scrabbled with my right hand for a wrist tie.

As I struggled to cuff her, zombie Melissa began to flail again, the sleeves tearing and stretching in my gloved grip.

I mentally apologised as I kicked her hard in the back of one knee, bringing her down slightly and giving me a second to get the plastic tag on and pull it tight.

The broken, bloody nails of Melissa’s hands were clawing at me, and I let go, letting the zombie roll to the floor, blanket slowly slipping off its head. Hands shaking, I removed the black hood from my trouser pocket and quickly stretched it out. There was a loose drawstring around the open part—the neck, I suppose—like a washbag, and I pulled that loose.

Melissa the zombie, hands cuffed behind her back, had shaken off the fire blanket and was scraping around the floor on her knees, face down, trying to push herself up, almost chewing at the floor.

I pulled the bag wide and, ready to pull my wrist away the moment she went for it, pulled the bag over her head as fast as I could.

The bagged head lunged for where my arm was but I pulled it away, jumping back. The zombie flailed sightlessly, and I quietly leaned in and pulled the drawstring tight.

I staggered back, leaving the zombie to sightlessly kick around on the floor, hands cuffed and unable to freely move. A wet dribble patch was already beginning to form on the front of the thin black hood as zombie Melissa tried to chew her way out.

‘Fucking hell,’ said ghost Melissa, who had come up alongside me without me noticing. She was staring at her other self ferally thrashing back and forth.

‘Yep,’ I said, wheezing and out of breath.

CHAPTER TEN

I
MAGINE TWELVE WILD,
hooded dogs on leads. Imagine trying to walk those dogs. Imagine trying to walk those dogs while they’re hungry, and drunk. Imagine trying not to get bitten or scratched by those dogs while keeping them moving in a straight line.

You are now imagining something about half as impossible as marching a handcuffed, hooded zombie through an underground lab facility.

The first part was relatively—note
relatively—
simple, as Ghost Melissa—I’m going to have to refer to her that way while two Melissas are in the same place—led me to a narrow maintenance corridor that connected the underground sections of the admin block with the other sub-levels.

It was tricky, but guiding a flailing, blind zombie down a narrow corridor wasn’t impossible, my undead captive ricocheting off the walls and moving in the general direction I wanted, provided I nudged her in the back now and then. I held on to the back of Zombie Melissa’s jacket, or the tag that tied her wrists together, allowing me to guide her while also pulling her back if she was about to fall over or crash face first into the wall.

I found myself thinking of the zombie as ‘her’. Partially that was because I knew Melissa, while I hadn’t known any of the other zombies I’d encountered. It also helped that with the head bagged it was harder to tell Zombie Melissa was undead, and wasn’t just a normal woman I had tied up and was manhandling down a corridor.

So she seemed more like a person, but I felt unbelievably horrible, creepy and guilty about the whole business, which seemed slightly unfair as Zombie Melissa would happily eat me if given the freedom to do so.

Soon we emerged into an underground car park, and that was where the real problems began. Not only was it a more open space, but the floor was slightly skiddy with oil and other liquids I didn’t want to think about.

Yes, there were other zombies there, as well as the remains of people who had been torn apart without getting the chance to rise again. Thankfully, they were quite far away, and Ghost Melissa alerted me to their presence in advance. I tried to keep Zombie Melissa quiet as we began to cross the space.

I was surprised by how big it was. A cavernous, high-ceilinged concrete space lit by a small number of electric lights, the car park contained a large selection of civilian cars, a row of anonymous black vans, and a couple of high-end sporty vehicles that I presumed belonged to the most senior staff. There was a lot of empty space, and I could see zombies staggering around between the cars.

There was an exit ramp at the far end, in which half a dozen cars had collided, blocking the exit. A queue of cars were abandoned behind the crashed cars, and human remains were scattered around the floor on that side of the car park.

The crashed cars still had lights on, and it was easy to see how the chaotic attempt at escaping the facility had gone badly, badly wrong. In the light from the cars, a large group of zombies bustled around each other at that end of the car park, though there were a few nearer to us too.

‘How do we get past that?’ I hissed to Ghost Melissa. She had indicated the door we were heading towards, but had now come back to join her corpse as we—rather, I—tried not to draw the attention of the horde.

‘We don’t,’ Ghost Melissa said, using a normal tone of voice as only I could hear her anyway. ‘We take a vehicle from the next level down, the secure loading bay, and take the other ramp. The specimen transports are armoured, so they should smash through anything we need to get through.’

I nodded. Ghost Melissa had had me check the pockets of her zombie self before we left the server room, and I presumed the keycard and ring of random keys were related to getting into the relevant area and stealing the vehicle we needed. I certainly didn’t want to have more of a conversation than I needed to, not with so many undead lurking nearby. Though I suppose, strictly speaking, they were going about their business and it was I who was doing the lurking.

One of the zombies in the horde let out an exceptionally high moan, and another returned the same noise, like the worst call and response birdsong you ever heard. Zombie Melissa started to try and steer herself towards the rest of the group, and I had to drag her back on course.

Shit, could they communicate? If so, I needed to get Zombie Melissa away from the rest before she could call for help.

From beneath her hood, Zombie Melissa let out a low, keening moan.

Across the car park, in the lights from the crashed cars, I could see the large group of zombies turn towards us.

‘Shit,’ I said out loud. There seemed little point in pretending I wasn’t there anymore.

The horde began to move towards us, spreading out as they did so. Meanwhile, we were only halfway across the breadth of the car park. Even with their jerky, clumsy movements, some of them were going to get between me and the door I needed to reach.

I began to shove Zombie Melissa with more urgency. We were just passing behind an abandoned sedan car when she tripped, falling clumsily sideways and taking me with her.

I rolled on to my back, letting go of Zombie Melissa, who had ended up on her front, legs kicking aimlessly.

It was then I saw that zombies were emerging from the shadows nearby, far closer to me than the approaching horde.

Ghost Melissa stood there looking between me and her zombie self stuck on the floor, the handful of zombies nearby, and the larger group moving in from the end of the car park.

The look on her transparent face said it all. We were screwed, she couldn’t see a way out in time.

Then a bullet passed through her chest, hitting a zombie a couple of feet behind her.

The zombie, which I hadn’t even noticed before, was knocked back. A second shot took its head clean off.

They were followed by more shots, thin red laser lines cutting through the darkness, gunshots echoing in the large concrete box of a car park, accompanied by muffled orders and the static bark of close range radio communication.

I squeezed myself close to the floor, and shuffled forward to see past where Zombie Melissa was lying. The other end of the car park was sufficiently far away that I could see up to about waist height from this low angle, and I could make out figures moving purposefully in the darkness, military boots and fatigued legs.

The clean-up crew. Zombie Melissa’s stumble, which had seemed to doom us a moment ago, had just saved us from a gunshot each to the head.

The figures were moving in on the horde at the other end of the car park, and switched to what, to my untrained ear, sounded like automatic weapons, guns that let out cacophonous short bursts of gunfire. I could see bodies dropping as the clean-up crew tore into the large group of zombies.

I rolled over and looked around. There didn’t seem to be any shots coming down this end of the car park now.

That was my chance. Staying low, I pulled myself up to a crouch, then dragged Zombie Melissa up on to her knees. As she made a muffled noise of what could have been complaint but probably wasn’t, I glanced up at the violence at the other end of the car park.

The clean-up crew looked like a stereotypical SWAT team, all body armour and goggles and helmets. They were busy with the main group of zombies, but it wouldn’t take them long to finish them off. Behind the heavily armed group I could see a couple of men in suits and gas masks following, along with similarly masked men in lab coats or hazmat suits.

It was getting crowded. Once that zombie mob was dealt with, they would no doubt sweep the area, and all it would take would be for one of the execs or scientists to glance my way as I got up and all that firepower would be aimed at me.

I dragged Zombie Melissa to her feet and ran, half-dragging her with me, across the open space between the car and a row of vans.

There was a zombie that had managed to stay out of the line of sight of the clean-up crew wandering around near the first van, just where I was running towards. As I pulled Zombie Melissa behind the van I let go of her, letting her stagger the rest of the way herself, and shoulder charged the other zombie.