Thanks for nothing.
With no other obvious option, Nick performed, for the first time in his life, a head butt. His forehead connected firmly with his attacker’s nose and something stiff cracked and became soft, but the bigger man did not release his grip. Nick’s arms continued to grow weak as his attacker’s jaws got closer and closer.
After the head butt, the bigger man’s features had become a mashed-up canvas of blood and pus. It was then that Nick realised that whatever had taken a hold of the man’s senses was the same thing that had seized Deana and James. The man was beyond reason or retreat. The man was suffering with the same sickness as Nick’s family.
“Let go of me,” Nick pleaded, knowing it would do no good as his arms began to bend at the elbows. Jagged teeth snapped shut mere inches from his face. The smell of rancid breath became nauseating. But, just when he expected to feel the agonising crunch of being bitten, the weight in his arms fell away. He was once again free.
“You can’t mess around with these people,” someone said. It was the cankerous old man that lived in the detached bungalow at the end of the road. The one who was always complaining about people parking on the curb in front of his house. “You got to beat ‘em down, right away, before they get their teeth into you.”
Nick was doubled over and gasping for breath. He noticed the blood-soaked golf club clutched in the old man’s gnarled fists. The wood was clumped with hair and what might have been brain matter.
“You…you can’t just cave people’s skulls in like that. That man was sick. He needed our help.”
“You’re a na?ve fool. These people aren’t sick. Don’t you understand? They’re goddamn zomb-”
The elderly man lurched forward, the golf club falling from his hands and clattering on the tarmac. Nick hopped out of the way just in time to see that two more of his neighbours had appeared out of the dawn shadows. The two of them were snarling and spitting like a pair of wolves and they took the old man down like a winded fox.
Nick stepped back, unable to take his eyes off what was happening. How is this possible? How has everybody gone insane?
He looked down at his elderly neighbour and saw that it was already too late to help him. The old man’s throat had been torn free of his neck and the tubular mass of his windpipe was hanging to one side like a loose tie. The two neighbours that had attacked him were now crouched over the body and doing the unthinkable.
Christ, they’re eating him.
Nick fought to keep his stomach under control. His mind turned to action. He grabbed the driver’s side door of his car and swung it open as hard as he could. It caught the nearest neighbour square in their face and sent him reeling backwards.
Nick wasted no time and leapt in behind the steering wheel, slammed shut the door, and engaged the central locking.
Click! It was the sound of safety.
His neighbours rose to their feet, discarding the remains of the old man and beating their bloody fists against the car’s windows. The vehicle rocked back and forth. Nick keyed the ignition and put the engine in gear. The automatic headlights flicked on and bathed the road in their harsh glare. It was then that he saw the full scale of horror taking hold of his neighbourhood.
This can’t be real. I’m in a twisted nightmare and any second Deana is going to wake me up with a nice cup of tea and let me know that it’s time for work. This has to be a dream. It has to be…
Ten feet ahead, a woman lay dead and mangled in the centre of the road while, several feet beyond her, was a desperate man battling with a group of attackers. They seemed to be eating him alive, tearing chunks of flesh from his flailing arms and wrists as he wearily fought them off.