Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel by James Carlson Page A

water, or did it spread only through direct contact with an infected person? The most pressing question Muz now found himself asking, was would he too, soon succumb to this insanity? He imagined himself gnawing on the body a still living person and a cold shudder raced down his spine, bile welling up in his throat.
    It was then that he heard a faint noise from downstairs. Listening intently, he could hear a low moaning. Someone was in the house. As quietly as he could manage, he crawled over to the opening in the floor, cringing at every creak of the beams, fearing they would give him away.
    Peering tentativ ely over the edge of the hatch, he heard whimpering, as a woman appeared at the foot of the stairs. She slumped down to sit on the bottom three steps, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She appeared distraught, her ponytail bobbing in response to the shaking of her body.
    How had she managed to get into the house without making any noise, Muz asked himself. He would have certainly heard anyone forcing entry through the front door and the front ground floor windows had also been closed. She must have approached the house through the rear gardens, to avoid the chaos on the streets, and come in through the unlocked back door or a rear window. Muz cursed his hastiness to find this hiding place. Why hadn’t he taken just a few seconds to lock the back door?
    He continued to watch the woman from above, h is knees already hurting from kneeling on the beams. Assessing her mental state wasn’t easy, as he couldn’t see much of her from his position. She was moaning quietly into her crossed arms. The sound was the same as that the cannibals had made when they were painfully full to bursting, but it could equally be the sound of despair. She stopped her moaning momentarily, to sniff up a load of snot that had accumulated in her nasal passage. The rest that hung over her top lip, along with abundant tears, she wiped away with the long sleeve of her white hooded top. She was crying then, Muz realised.
    The police officer was trying to summon up the courage to call down to her, still not certain that she hadn’t been affected by the spread of dementia, when there came an almighty crash. The sound, which could have only been that of someone throwing themselves at the front door from outside, caused the woman to scream and scurry backwards halfway up the stairs. Someone out on the street had obviously either seen her through a window or heard her miserable moaning.
    There came another loud slam at the door and the woman continued to scream even louder. Her hands, held in front of her face, shook violently. Again, someone’s bodyweight rammed against the door and Muz heard a crack, as the frame began to give.
    “Stop screaming,” Muz shouted down at the woman.
    The distressed woman in her late twenties, by the look of her, froze for a second, not understanding where the voice had come from. Then she looked up and saw Muz’s wide-eyed face glowering down at her from within the blackness of the loft hatch. She screamed with such a level of fear now, her throat so tight that hardly any sound escaped her mouth. Snot bubbles erupted from her nostrils and she desperately tried to blink away tears, to stare back up at Muz. Still there came the relentless bashing against the door and the resulting splintering sounds, as it buckled under the onslaught.
    “Get up here,” Muz yelled. “Quick.”
    The woman didn’t respond, looking up at him with open suspicion and then over at the rapidly weakening front door.
    “Come on!” he yelled insistently.
    He heard a snarling then from inside the house. The person forcing the door had at least managed to get their head through to stare at their next meal. The woman came to her senses and clambered up the stairs, losing her footing twice in her blind panic. The door rattled in its frame and the snarling became more frenzied.
    “ Climb on the bannister and grab