The Poison Factory Read Free

like a traffic light, she ran across and slid in behind Gaz. Damo skidded in beside them a moment later.
    ‘Right,’ Gaz panted. ‘I think … eh, let’s go, then.’
    The conveyor belt rattled over their heads as they crawled quickly along the floor. A zombie lurched past them and something suddenly dropped onto the floor and bounced under the belt – right beside Hayley. It was a half-rotten ear. She jammed her mouth into Gaz’s back to muffle her scream, andgrabbed hold of his leg so tightly he nearly let out a yelp. It was a good thing she had hardly any fingernails. The zombie grunted and bent down, fumbling around in the shadows under the belt. Hayley’s grip on Gaz’s calf muscle tightened and he winced at the pain. The zombie’s clawing hand came closer to her knees. She shuffled back as far as she could go, but they were right up against the wall. The hand was inches from her.

    Gaz reached back with the toe of his trainer and pushed the zombie’s ear into the path of its searching fingers. The hand came upon the missing body part and grabbed at it. There was a moan of relief, the arm disappeared, and the zombie continued on its way.
    ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Hayley gulped.
    ‘You can’t,’ Gaz told her. ‘They’ll hear you.’
    She decided she’d be all right after all. They crawled on, reaching the door on the other side of the factory room. In a frantic dash, they sprinted through the open door. Jets of gas hit them as they rushed in and they had to hold their noses as they stumbled through a tiled room filled with clouds of steam and into the corridor beyond. They were in a long, narrow hallway with big lockers against the walls. Their skin and clothes were damp from the gas, which smelled like disinfectant.
    ‘S’like the stuff Momma uses to clean the toilet,’ Damo sniffed. ‘Suppose with all the zombies rotting like that, there must be loads of germs around.’
    ‘Well, I think it’s stained my trainers,’ Gaz complained. ‘Mam’ll kill me. These were almost brand new. I was at her for weeks to buy them!’
    Hayley bent down and picked something up off a bench by the side of the lockers. It was a remote control for a television.

    ‘What’s that doing here?’ Damo asked.
    She didn’t have time to reply. A siren was going off out on the factory floor. Staggering through the clouds of disinfectant steam was a huge, groaning zombie. The three children froze. There was nowhere to run. They would never make it to the other end of the corridor before it saw them. Gaz did the only thing he could; there was an open locker right next to him, and he jumped into it. No sooner was he inside, than Damo and Hayley piled in beside him. They pulled the door over just as the undead creature lurched out of the clouds of gas. They cowered in the tight space, watching through theslits in the metal door as it waddled down the corridor, followed by a second lumbering figure and then another.
    ‘Must be break-time,’ Gaz muttered.
    One by one, all the zombies trudged past. None of them were coming near the lockers. There was nothing for the Root Street Gang to do but stay in hiding and wait.

 
    4
Total Loss Of Control
    S quashed into the locker, Gaz shivered as he thought about his brother. What if Molars was a zombie? Didn’t zombies eat people? They did in all the horror films he wasn’t supposed to watch. Joey was a pain in the bum, but he didn’t deserve to become zombie food.

    Thinking of food, Gaz felt the bulge of the bag of sweets in his pocket. Jammed in the closed metal space of the locker, he could smell them too. He pulled them out. Thesmell was sweet and tingly. Almost irresistible. Cornelius had said they could take some – there were plenty in the bag. Gaz knew he shouldn’t … there were loads of reasons why he shouldn’t …
    Opening the bag, he peeked inside. They were jellies. He loved jellies. He took one out, just to look at it. He’d put it right back. He