Bay of the Dead

rows like. . like bloody soldiers or something.

Andy shivered. What were they doing? Massing to attack? Waiting to beam up to the mothership? Or was this some kind of war of attrition? Were the creatures going to wait until the people inside became hungry or desperate enough to take a chance at confronting them, trying to break through their massed ranks?

Whatever the reason, one thing was certain: Andy was not going to get any medical help for Dawn here. He reached for the gear lever, intending to put the car into reverse — and something slammed into the driver's window mere centimetres from his head, making him jump out of his skin.

His head snapped round. A hand, the fingernails purple-black and peeling away, the skin like old green leather, was pressed against the glass. The owner of the hand bent down to peer in at him, and suddenly Andy found himself face to face with a Halloween mask come to life. The flesh of the cheeks was torn and green, the wounds wriggling with maggots. One eye, a withered orb on a thread of tendon, dangled from the socket; the other stared upwards, the pupil only just visible, as if the creature was trying to gaze into its own rotting skull.

As Andy stared in revulsion at the maggoty face, the car lurched violently. Tearing his gaze away from the monstrosity separated from him by nothing more than a thin sheet of glass, he glanced into his rear-view mirror. Dark, ragged figures were milling at the back of the car, shoving and jolting, as if trying to turn the vehicle over.

Terrified, Andy slammed the car into first and stamped on the accelerator, causing the creatures that had gathered around the vehicle to stagger and reel and fall as he sped away. He bumped down to the next level of the car park and turned right into the entrance, knowing that there was an exit at the far end.

A fat female zombie in a purple dress stepped out of the bushes on his left, right into the path of the car. Andy jerked the wheel and the car screeched past her, clipping her leg and sending her spinning away. Immediately another zombie — a thin man in a stained white lab coat — lurched into view from behind a parked van, hands raised, fingers hooked into talons. Andy clenched his teeth as he hit the man head on. There was an almighty bang and the body was thrown across the bonnet and into the air, disappearing in a mass of whirling arms and legs.

The car skidded and spun. Andy wrenched at the wheel, desperately trying to keep control. For an awful second he thought the vehicle was going to flip over, or at the very least hit a tree or another parked car, but then it steadied itself, enabling Andy to drive out of the upraised exit gate and high-tail it out of there.

999 wasn't working. At first Sophie thought it was just her, that she was shaking so much she kept mis- hitting the buttons. But after a dozen attempts, following which she was still receiving an engaged signal, she was forced to conclude that, for the time being at least, the emergency services were out of her reach.

In light of what had just happened, the pink fascia of her phone, imprinted with green bubble-letters spelling out the words 'Party Grrrl', suddenly struck her as hideously inappropriate. Sophie dropped the phone with a clatter on the formica-topped kitchen table, then she pulled out a chair and slumped into it. Still shaking uncontrollably, she leaned forward, propped her elbows on the table, and lowered her head into her hands. Loudly and lustily, she began to cry.

She still couldn't believe what she had seen less than half an hour ago. Every time she recalled it, trying to focus on the details, her mind veered away like a startled deer. Physically, though, she was still reacting to it; her body was close to going into shock. Her hands and feet were freezing and, if she had happened to look in a mirror at that moment, Sophie would have been alarmed by how deathly pale she was, how blue her lips had become.

She had run all the way home, a distance of two miles, and, by the time she had arrived at the front door of the house she shared with her lodger — a graphic design student called Kate, who Sophie had never really developed much of a bond with — her stockinged feet were bleeding and embedded with gravel.

Sophie hadn't even noticed. Even now she didn't feel the pain. She sat at the kitchen table, the sobs tearing out of her, her body heaving with tears. She cried for a long time, and when she was done she felt dizzy, sick and drained. Almost subconsciously she crossed to the kettle and flicked it on, took a mug down from the cupboard and spooned instant coffee into it.

When the coffee was ready she re-took her seat at the kitchen table, stared into space and smoked a cigarette. She lit a second from the butt of the first, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. Recently she'd been trying to give up, and she'd been doing so well too; she'd got down to three a day. But after what she'd seen tonight, all those things like cutting out smoking and eating healthily and going to the gym suddenly seemed so pointless, like trying to deflect a hurricane with an umbrella. Because sooner or later death would come, whatever you did to try and prevent it. It was an unstoppable force: massive, ruthless and unpredictable. Tonight it had taken Winston and Kirsty, and it had nearly taken her too. And, although she had escaped, she felt as if it had the measure of her now, as if she was living on borrowed time.

Sitting in the kitchen, smoking and drinking coffee, her mind drifting haphazardly from one crazy thought to another, Sophie felt a kind of numbness setting in. It was almost comforting in a way. She wished she could sit here for ever, not thinking about anything, cut off from the world. She had always known the world was cruel and unforgiving, but until tonight she had never realised quite how cruel, how unforgiving, it could be. But now she did know, and she wanted no further part of it. It could go on without her as far as she was concerned. She was happy just sitting here, doing nothing.

It was the creak on the stairs which eventually roused her from her torpor. She raised her head slowly, looking across at the kitchen door, willing it not to open. The last thing she wanted right now was Kate babbling on about what a stressful day she'd had at work. Sophie heard the plod of descending footsteps, and braced herself for the inevitable. Just as she'd feared, the door to the kitchen swung wide.

Kate was there, all right, but not the whole of her. There was just her head, eyes and mouth wide open, as if she'd been caught by surprise. The head was hanging by its hair from the clenched fist of a recently dead Asian man in a dark suit, whose wire-framed spectacles dangled from one blackening ear.

The man growled like a dog confronted by a stranger, his slack and stupid gaze fixing on her. As Sophie rose from her seat, thinking almost wearily, Oh no, not again, the zombie opened its hand and Kate's head dropped to the floor with a dull, squishy thump.

With a cry of fury and despair, Sophie snatched up her half-empty coffee mug and hurled it with all her strength. Coffee sprayed in an arc across the kitchen as the mug shattered against the zombie's forehead, opening up a wound which trickled with blackish blood.

The zombie didn't flinch, or even blink, from the impact. It just kept shuffling forward, raising its bloodied hands towards her.

'Why can't you just leave me alone!' Sophie screeched at it. She rounded the table and ran towards the kitchen window.

The window was above the sink, and Sophie had to scramble up onto the draining board to reach it, dislodging crockery and pans, which crashed and clanged on the tiled floor. The window itself was divided into three sections. The main picture window in the middle didn't open, but the two side windows did. Sophie groped for the levered catch halfway up the frame and wrenched it upwards, then stooped to lift the bar at the bottom. Her hand closed around the bar at the precise instant that the zombie's hand closed around her ankle.

Immediately the creature began to tighten its grip, grinding her ankle bones beneath its fingers. Sophie screamed, grabbing the window frame as the zombie tried to wrench her from her perch. Half-turning, still clinging to the frame, she drew back her right leg and pistoned it forward. Her foot slammed into the zombie's face with such force that she heard a loud crack as its jaw broke.

The creature didn't seem to feel any pain as such, but it was certainly knocked off balance by the blow. Releasing her ankle, it staggered and dropped to one knee. It was all Sophie needed to turn back to the window and shove it open. Even as the zombie began to rise sluggishly to its feet behind her, she climbed onto the sill and jumped.

It was only a short drop, onto a patch of grass too tiny to be called a lawn at the back of the house, but it was wet and slippery, and as Sophie landed she felt her right leg slide out from under her. She cried out as her knee twisted, flaring with white-hot pain. Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to stand, and then, barefoot and whimpering with agony, she hobbled away.

'Sorry about the loud bangs, boys and girls,' Jack grinned, opening the back door of the SUV. His eyes alighted