No Zombies Please We Are British Read Free Page B

walked out into the hall. Several other doors opened and people appeared. Their eyes were wide with fear, and as soon as Jack turned to look, they shrank away. Mrs. Gloucester from the apartment opposite him actually jumped back inside and slammed the door. Jack heard the double deadbolts slam. Nobody would be getting her out any time soon.
    “What’s going on?” a voice asked.
    Jack turned around and saw a woman, whose name he did not know, standing in an open door. She was holding a young child in her arms.
    “I don’t know,” Jack told her.
    “Is it the riots?” she asked, her voice shrouded by a heavy Eastern European accent.
    “No, no it’s not. It is something else.” Jack didn’t know what to say to her. “Are you okay, you and your family?”
    “It’s just us. We are fine,” she replied. She was a young woman, not long out of her teens. She looked tired, but it could not hide her pretty features.
    Her long auburn hair was pulled back into a rough ponytail, and her make-up free face had a natural beauty to it. She was wearing a white tank top and a pair of black trousers that definitely showed off her shapely legs. She wasn’t wearing a bra, a fact that Jack tried hard not to notice.
    The child who clung to her was a girl, dressed in a delicate pink dress and a pair of white tights. The child had been crying. Her eyes were red and her cheeks streaked with the stains of her tears.
    “Are you sure? You can … you can come to my apartment if you want. I’m alone and, well … I think it is going to get dangerous around here.” Jack stared at the woman and hoped she realized he was just as eager to have her over for some company as he believed she was.
    “Thank you,” she said, stepping out of her flat and into the hall.
    A few more doors opened and more people came into the hall. They all shared the same look of fear and confusion.
    “Eric,” Jack called out when the door to the apartment at the end of the hall opened.
    Eric was an acquaintance of Jack’s. They knew each other through their choice of lodgings and the fact that neither had a regular job.
    The main difference was that while Jack still worked and made more than pretty much anybody he knew, Eric was a stoner. He came from a rich family and spent his days sitting in the weed-infused haze that fogged his flat like a supernatural mist.
    “Jack, what’s happening, man? I was having a nap and just, fuck, this screaming and shit started. I looked outside and this dude was eating another dude’s face. I don’t mean like in a gay way but like in a pass-the-bath-salts-I’m-getting-fucking-hungry way. It’s all just messed up, man. I don’t know what’s going on.” At some point during his rant, which saw his voice move from a whisper into a scream and back to a whisper, Eric began to cry.
    “It’s all okay, man. It’s just–”
    “It’s the dead. The dead have risen,” a voice called, and an old woman appeared in the hall.
    Jack didn’t know her name, but he had seen her around. She was well into her eighties, and lived with her son. A single man who had lived at home since the day he was born. Jack had met him once. Queer sort of man, but he certainly left an impression.
    “What did she say?” A single voice clarified the sentiment murmured by most of the people milling around on the floor.
    “The dead have risen. They crave flesh. Can’t you see?” The woman leaned on her walking frame, and took a deep breath. The oxygen tubes that extended from her nose wound around her large frame and connected with the canister that was attached to the wheel-driven walker.
    “I don’t think–” someone else began to contest, but a scream rang out from the floor above them and everybody was sent scurrying.
    The scream was one filled with terror. It lacked the guttural straining of pain, but hit all the right notes for utter, desperate fear.
    It brought the nervous chatter to a halt. Everybody froze, and some disappeared back into