Great Bitten: Outbreak Read Online Free

over and scrambled away on my hands and knees, yanking the drawstrap open and scrabbling for the handle of the hatchet. I could hear McHoody behind me. Still no groans, but apparently he was still chewing on whatever he had managed to mulch off that poor breakdown.
    Gratefully my hands closed around the pockled silver handle and I shook it free of its bundle. I turned, and McHoody was still gently ambling to me as if there was all the time in the world. I carried on scurrying backwards on my hands and feet, like a crab being approached by a rabid gull. I knew I had to stand and bring the cleaver round, that was all. But my heart hammered halfway up my throat and adrenalin was turning my muscles to nothing at all. I could barely move, let along give a killing blow.
    I thought I would be sick all over my front when I was saved by a taxi.
    I don’t know who wasn’t looking and I don’t care. They didn’t save my life, I can’t say that for sure, but they saved me there and then as their black cab, that solid mini-tank of the London streets slammed into McHoody. It was a built up area so the cab can’t have been going more than forty. As a result, McHoody slid under the car and into the path of its rear tyres. As the cab screeched to a halt, I saw a bloody fragmented mess of mulch in place of what used to be a head, and was eternally grateful. The cabby screamed in an unidentified language and drove off at speed. I hadn’t been seen.
    As the engine roared off in to the distance and a dog belatedly started rasping at the tumult in the street, I looked around, bemused at the silence. And then, I vomited.
    +++

 
    I wasn’t too far away from my destination – somewhere around the top of the A27 – when Carla called me.
    I pulled over in a hurry and grabbed the phone, rabbiting down it in a panic.
    “Carla, hey, what’s up?” I panted. I had been going on a quick downhill and was mildly resentful of the interruption. “The news, it’s started. You were right big brother, it’s turning in to a storm up there.”
    I switched the phone from one ear to the other to get more comfortable, and asked what she meant.
    “London is a no go zome. All trains in and out have been cancelled and the tubes have been stopped. All flights have been cancelled. In fact, they’re grounding all flights for the UK, from what I can gather.”
    “They just declared this?”
    “No, it’s been gradual. There were reports of violent rioting – ha, riots – and they were trying to give it the same media gloss as last time. That’s probably why it’s gone so wrong, they didn’t have your expert hand on the front line.”
    “Ha, funny as Carla, what changed it?”
    “There was a live reporter by Euston. It was gross I’ve never seen anything like it. She… the rioters were apparently near the station and they were trying to figure out why. All that cutting edge reporting you lot like to do. In with the people and all that shit. And she went up to the edge of the rioters, so she said, to try to interview and…” Carla broke off, sniffing, clearly crying at what she had seen.
    “Car? I don’t need details hun just tell me what happened?”
    “They fucking ate her, dammit! Live on camera! The fuckers leapt on her and ripped her to pieces! And the cameraman? The dumb fuck just kept on rolling! I heard him scream, then the camera dropped, and… all you saw was a hand. His hand, just jerking backwards and forwards in front of the screen. But just behind it, between the fingers, you could see them swarming her… it was… I was sick. It was sick.”
    There was nothing I could say to that. Clearly McHoody was the tip of a very messed up iceberg going meltdown all over the capital.
    “Warren?” Carla’s voice shook down the phone. “I’m scared.”
    “Is Rick there with you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And did you get what I asked you to get?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then start making the house safe. Board up the windows, make sure your back gate