Bay of the Dead

car. Instantly Trys realised his mistake, realised that all he had achieved was to deflect the zombies' attention away from him and onto his wife. Whether it was her screams or the baby inside her which attracted them, Trys had no idea, but suddenly he felt himself released, pushed aside, like a bag of rubbish.

He tried to stay on his feet, determined to defend his wife and unborn child to his last breath, but his body wouldn't respond. As consciousness slipped away, he felt his legs folding under him, felt himself sliding down the side of the car, his hands squeaking as he tried vainly to get a grip on the wet metal. Then he was lying in the gutter, the drizzle speckling his upturned face. The last thing he heard as he lay there, as the searing pain of his injuries seemed to exude a darkness which threatened to overwhelm him, was Sarah's voice, raggedly screaming his name over and over again.

SEVEN

'We've got to help them, Rhys,' Gwen said, producing her gun for the second time that night.

'How?' Rhys wanted to know. 'There's dozens of the buggers.'

Gwen's eyes were blazing. 'We have to try.'

Rhys gave a short nod, knowing she was right, and put his foot down.

The car shot forward, towards the crumpled police car and the knot of zombies converging on it. Gwen could see that the driver of the vehicle was still unconscious, his head resting on the steering wheel, blood running down his face. However, his partner was starting to come to, lifting his head groggily, looking around. All at once Gwen saw him snap alert as he took in the true nature of the creatures surrounding him. She saw him trying frantically to extricate himself from the smashed-up vehicle. She saw the first of the zombies — a purple-faced woman in a floral-patterned dress who was dragging one leg behind her — arrive at the car and reach in through the shattered passenger window. She heard the man scream-

— and it was then that another zombie leaped from between two parked cars on their left and crashed onto their bonnet.

Rhys swore, the car slewing from left to right. The zombie spread-eagled on their bonnet snarled at them, pressing its face to the window. It was a young man with blond streaks in his spiky hair and skin like black-veined marble. His eyes were completely white, and black, tar-like drool was spilling from his open mouth.

Rhys couldn't see where he was going. The zombie slapped the windscreen with a hand from which two of the fingers had rotted away, leaving a smeary mark.

Gwen unclipped her seatbelt, wound down her window and leaned out, levelling her gun, intending to blast the zombie off the car. Then she saw that they were veering towards a tree on the pavement and ducked back inside.

'Rhys!' she screamed.

Too late he slammed on the brakes. The zombie on their bonnet slithered off in a tangle of arms and legs. There was a sickening crunch and a sideways lurch as they ran over it. Gwen and Rhys both yelled, as if on a fairground ride, as the car skidded, out of control. Gwen managed to clip her seatbelt back into place a split second before they slewed sideways into a line of parked cars. There was a crunching, jolting impact, and then silence.

Gwen's head was ringing. She opened her mouth, rotating her jaw. Already her brain was working, assessing the damage to her body. She'd whacked her hip and her shoulder badly enough to bruise, but she'd be all right. Trying to blink her vision back into some sort of equilibrium, she glanced across at Rhys. He was sitting upright, eyes closed.

'Rhys? Are you OK?'

He opened his eyes. 'Have we stopped?'

'Are you OK?' she repeated urgently.

'Yeah, I'm fine. You?'

She nodded, then wished she hadn't as a sharp but momentary pain lanced through her neck. 'Start the car again,' she said. 'We're sitting targets here.'

Rhys tried the ignition. The car wheezed and coughed, then died. He waited a few seconds, and then tried again, with the same result. The third time nothing happened at all.

'It's knackered,' he said. 'Bloody company car an' all.'

'Oh, that's brilliant, that is,' Gwen exclaimed. She glanced out through the cracked windscreen. The majority of zombies were still milling around the police car, from which the terrified screams of its occupant had now ominously ceased. One or two, though, were shuffling towards them.

'We have to get out,' she said.

Rhys tried his door, but it was buckled and jammed up hard against the vehicle they had collided with. 'I'll have to get out your side,' he said.

Gwen threw her door open and scrambled out, clutching her gun and gritting her teeth against the pain in her hip. She looked around, and was horrified to see that the front doors of houses were now opening up and down the street, and that local residents were venturing out to see what the commotion was. Even as she watched, Gwen saw two zombies go blundering up a garden path towards an old lady who was silhouetted in her doorway. Wearing a pink nightgown, the lady held a cat in her arms, and seemed to be rooted to the spot in terror.

'Back inside, all of you!' Gwen yelled. 'And lock your doors! This is an emergency situation! '

As if to emphasise the fact, the zombies reached the old lady and grabbed her. The cat fell yowling from her arms and streaked away as one of the zombies, a fat man in a blood and grime-stained traffic warden's uniform, tore her throat out. People began to scream. Some fled inside and slammed their doors. Just as many, however, ran away from their houses, as if intending to rush to the old lady's aid.

Gwen fired her gun into the air. The sound was shockingly loud in the suburban street.

'Go back inside!' she shouted again. 'Secure your doors and windows, and stay there until you're told it's safe to come out!'

Behind her, Rhys had scrambled across the front seats of the car and was now sliding forward out of the passenger door, hands reaching down to the ground to support his weight.

'Er. . Gwen,' he said.

She turned and saw a zombie appear around the back of the car, a tall, thin woman with an untidy beehive of black hair, wearing what appeared to be a silk ball gown. Part of the woman's bottom lip had been torn away, which made her look as though she was baring her teeth like a dog. Another three steps and she would have been close enough to Rhys to grab him.

Without hesitation, Gwen raised her gun and fired. The woman was thrown backwards as a hole, leaking thick, blackish blood, appeared in the centre of her chest. As Gwen pulled Rhys out of the car and helped him to his feet, the woman pushed herself awkwardly upright once more. Gwen shot her a second time. This time the bullet hit her in the shoulder and spun her around. Once again, however, like a boxer that keeps getting hit but won't stay down, she clambered to her feet.

'You have to shoot them in the head,' Rhys said.

Gwen blinked at him. 'What?'

'That's what they always do in the movies. To kill them you have to shoot them in the head, destroy their brains.'

'This isn't the movies, Rhys,' Gwen snapped.

'Just try it,' he ordered.

She made an exasperated sound, but as the woman lurched towards them again, she raised her gun, aiming higher this time, and pulled the trigger.

The top half of the woman's head blew away, taking a good chunk of her beehive hairdo with it. With a look almost of surprise, she crumpled to the ground, a dead weight. Her body twitched for a moment and then was still.

'See,' Rhys said smugly.

'Don't gloat, Rhys,' Gwen replied. 'It's not attractive.'