It'll Come Back... Read Online Free Page A

lady sheltered. ‘Get inside!’
    Kate glanced back towards the bus. She saw the bleached blonde girl with the earphones emerge and jump down onto the tarmac. She stood on the street, her eyes wide and staring like a new kid in the school playground before she made any friends. She gripped the hammer in her trembling fingers. One of the Dead lunged at her. She tried to dodge it like she was trying to dodge a wasp in the park on a hot summer’s day; she screamed and ducked and dived and forgot all about the little hammer in her hand. The creature caught her by the arm. She struggled against it and tried to tug her arm free. She remembered the hammer and used it to strike the Dead in the side of the head but another one grabbed that hand and she became stuck between the two of them. Kate saw Balding Guy not far from the girl but he was busy wrestling with a man with half his face missing that had grasped the other side of his briefcase. They performed a sort of dance as BG did his best to hold the creature back while avoiding its snapping jaws.
    Kate was about to head back to help the girl, but that’s when Ponytail launched herself out of the bus and belly-flopped into the dead people that surrounded her.
    ‘Bog off, you bloody fucking shits!’ yelled Ponytail as she used her amble body weight to flatten as many as she could. Only, there were so many and they groped at her with their stiff fingers, grabbing hold of her hair and her leggings and sweatshirt.
    ‘Come on!’ Kate yelled at the two women. She swung the umbrella at a couple of the Dead as they lurched dangerously close to her, Screamer and Linen as they paused beside the SUV. ‘COME ON!’
    ‘Coming love,’ said Ponytail, wrestling her way free of the grabbing hands. She clasped hold of the girl’s shoulders and shoved her ahead of her. More dead hands grabbed Ponytail from behind. One sank its teeth into her shoulder, causing Ponytail to stop and scream out with pain.
    ‘No!’ cried Kate, watching helplessly as more of the Dead pulled Ponytail back towards the bus, biting into her juicy flesh. ‘NOOOO!’
    Ponytail screamed again. The Dead yanked her backwards and she fell to the ground, taking the girl down with her. The girl screamed. She cracked her head on the side of the bus and went silent and still, out cold, while Ponytail struggled against the grabbing hands and biting jaws until the Dead swamped both her and the unconscious girl, hiding their bodies from Kate’s sight.
    Kate spotted the teenage boy pop his head out the emergency exit. He glanced down at the Dead below as they feasted on Ponytail and the girl, their hideous ravaged bodies writing like sewer rats as they tore the two women apart. The boy glanced up at Kate, back down at the carnage below him and back up to Kate.
    Come on , come on , thought Kate, willing the boy to go now while the mass of Dead were busy feeding.
    The boy leapt from the bus, but one of the Dead, what had been a lady with grey bobbed hair, wearing a floral blouse, turned, snarled and grasped his elbow. The boy screamed and struggled. He thrust his hand out and caught the creature by the throat, managing to hold its bloody, snapping jaws away from his flesh.
    ‘Shit,’ said Kate and she darted back towards the bus.
    At the same time, BG managed to wrestle his briefcase out of the fingers of the dead man. He lifted it and brought it down onto the Dead’s head. As its body hit the floor, BG turned and sped towards the boy.
    Three Dead emerged from under the truck. They rose to their feet and lumbered past the feeding mob and the struggling boy, towards Kate. She raised the umbrella and roared as she used its tip to stab of one them through the eye, surprised and a little scared with how easily she managed to inflict violence on what had, only moments before, been human. She skewered the next creature through its ear before pulling the tip out of the bloodied mess and, holding the umbrella across her body with