about to start hurrying for anyone or anything. With a total lack of urgency or any visible emotion he continued to inch forward, craning his neck and lifting himself up on his seat to be sure the farthest forward corner of the bus didn’t clip the fence. He seemed oblivious to all other distractions—to Stokes and Webb, who cursed and mumbled incessantly behind him, to the endless stream of cadavers which had caught up with the bus and began hammering against the back of it, and to the rattle and whip of the coils of barbwire which were scraped off the sides of the vehicle by the tall fence on one side and the brick wall on the other. Many of the bodies immediately became entangled in the spools of vicious wire. Their flesh, already ravaged by decay, was lacerated, virtually stripped from their bones by countless, pin-sharp metal spikes.
Hollis had turned the van full-circle as soon as he’d reached the loading area. Face-to-face with the oncoming bus now, he waited for it to complete its short journey, ready for the crowd of corpses which would no doubt be close behind.
“You get out,” he told Lorna. “I’ll plug the gap.”
Having driven with before him on numerous occasions, Lorna knew exactly what he was planning. She grabbed her weapon—a claw hammer—then jumped out of the van and ran across the tarmac toward Harte and Jas. Hollis gripped the steering wheel tightly as the bus thundered past him. The moment his view of the track was clear he powered forward again, hurtling back down the narrow alleyway and annihilating the few pathetic carcasses which had somehow managed to avoid the barbwire and stagger closer. He slammed on the brakes when he had almost reached the front of the building, and the wet remains of several bodies slid to the ground with the sudden stop. The track was a foot wider than the van on either side, maybe a little more. Hollis steered to the right and edged forward, wedging the vehicle across the full width of the road and preventing any more of the dead from getting through to disrupt their precious looting time.
Hollis scrambled over the back of his seat, then climbed out of the van and sprinted down the track.
“Watch yourself,” he heard Harte shout as a solitary body slipped out from behind an overflowing, rat-infested Dumpster in the farthest corner of the enclosed area. He watched it as it moved toward them with inexplicable intent. Just two months ago it had been a night worker here at the warehouse, a happily married father of four. Now it was a pitiful, bedraggled, bloodstained shell of a human being. A fall on the first day after reanimation had shattered the bones in its right arm, leaving the useless limb hanging heavily at its side, swinging like a pendulum with every uncoordinated trip and stumble.
“I’ll do it,” Lorna volunteered, striding toward the body with confidence. She took a step back with surprise as it lurched angrily toward her, arm flapping, then moved forward again and caved in its head with her hammer. The corpse dropped motionless at her feet, the contents of its shattered skull slowly leaking out over the ground, glistening in the sunlight. She nonchalantly shook the hammer clean and returned to the others.
“We ready then, ladies?” Jas asked as Stokes and Webb finally emerged from the bus. Driver remained in his cab, door closed, reading his newspaper.
Everyone carried their weapon of choice. Hollis unsheathed a machete he’d brought with him from the van. Jas also had a machete, Webb his trusty spiked baseball bat, Harte a hand ax and Stokes, bizarrely, a garden spade.
“Just do it,” Stokes said. “I need a drink.”
Jas pushed the door open and waited for a second before entering the dark building. He held his breath and listened. Nothing at first … then the sound of something moving close by … sliding, shuffling footsteps. He took another step forward and heard a clatter and crash just ahead. Several bodies at least. Impossible to tell how many.
“Anything?” Harte yelled from outside.
“There’s something in here,” Jas replied, inching forward slowly. “Can’t see very much…”
“Be careful, mate.”
Sensing movement in the darkness to his right, Jas glanced up and, with a single well-aimed flash of his blade, sliced through the neck of a cadaver which had been about to attack. It fell at his feet and he stepped over it to reach a second door. He could definitely hear movement on the other side. He banged his fist against the wood and, almost immediately, felt something thump back against it in angry response. Taking another deep breath he pushed it open and shoved a body back as it immediately launched itself at him from the gloom. Ignoring the unwanted attentions of the corpse he propped the second door open with a fire extinguisher and began making as much noise as he could.
“Come and get us,” he shouted, his voice echoing through the vast, mausoleum-like building. There was an almost instant reaction to his words. From the shadows all around cadavers began to appear, all gravitating toward him. He quickly backed out through the open door.
“Any idea how many?” Lorna asked.
“Nah,” he replied, “couldn’t see much.” He cleared his throat and shouted again, “Come on, you fuckers! Get a move on! Get yourselves out here!”
The first two bodies appeared quickly, almost fighting with each other to get through the door. A dead security guard tried to push past the awkward bulk of a badly decayed but still grossly overweight female shopper. The shopper’s slobbering mass prevailed and it heaved itself forward, sending the smaller corpse crashing to the ground then trampling over it as it moved toward the survivors.
“Fuck me,” said Stokes, “look at the size of that thing!”
The group stood together in silence and watched the body as it waddled toward them. Its massively distended, discolored belly hung heavy over the top of a pair of brown-stained leggings, little shock waves running up through its saggy, curiously lumpy flesh with every ungainly step it took. Huge, pendulous breasts swung down like bags of grain, almost reaching its waist, a tear in its shapeless T-shirt revealing dark-veined skin like blue cheese. For a moment no one moved, everyone waiting for someone else to take the lead and dispatch the enormous cadaver. The appearance of another six bodies from the building in quick succession forced them all into action.
“Watch yourselves,” Hollis warned as his colleagues lifted their weapons and began to attack.
Harte was first to strike, grunting with satisfaction as he sunk the blade of his ax into the neck of the body of a teenage girl, the force of the strike knocking it to the ground. It reached up for him and he hauled it back to its feet, then yanked the ax free and swung it down again at its now lopsided head, this time managing to hit the back of its neck and almost completely cut through its spinal cord. Suddenly limp, the body slumped against him and he tossed it away as if he was throwing out a bag of rubbish. He stepped back, almost falling over the legs of the huge corpse which Stokes was now doing his best to destroy. The other man was ramming his shovel repeatedly into the creature’s grotesquely swollen stomach, slicing through its flesh and splattering its rancid guts everywhere. The damn thing continued to fight, its arms and legs thrashing.
“Go for its head, you moron,” Harte suggested, looking around for his next kill. Stokes was too engrossed in his work to hear him.
Lorna dragged another body into space in the middle of the tarmac, spun it around and slammed it down on its back. Keeping a tight grip on its neck, she dropped down onto its exposed rib cage, feeling bones crack and rotten flesh slide beneath her leather-clad knees. With her gloved left hand she grabbed hold of the corpse’s chin and shoved its face over to the side before smacking the hammer down onto its temple, causing enough damage to its putrefying brain to immediately and permanently incapacitate it.
Still more of the hellish things dragged themselves out of the darkness and into the open, drawn out of hiding by the noise. In the time that Harte and Lorna had taken to deal with one body each, both Jas and Hollis had disposed of several more. The two men were now stepping cautiously through the bloody carnage, dragging the dismembered remains of their kills out of the way and dumping them against the back fence. Hollis was watching Stokes struggling with his obese victim when he was distracted by a sudden yelp of surprise from Webb.
“What’s the problem?” Hollis yelled. The idiot had managed to get himself backed into a corner by two of them. He swung his baseball bat wildly but wasn’t making contact. It was almost as if they were keeping their distance.
“Nothing,” he shouted back breathlessly. “I’m all right.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Jas said angrily as he marched across the loading bay and grabbed hold of one of the bodies by its shoulder, dragging it over. It kicked and flailed on the ground furiously. Without a flicker of emotion he raised his machete and chopped down just above the creature’s vacant eyes, hitting it with such force that the blade sliced right through the skull, taking the top of its head off. Taking advantage of the distraction,
