Off With Their Heads Read Online Free Page A

already died, and God alone knew how many more would die before it was all over. Her heart pounding, she took a step back. ‘Young man, I have no doubt you could take this from me, but I will not hand it to you.’
    The next thing Protima knew, she was on the ground, her head splitting with pain and warm blood flowing down the side of her face. The man raised his gun again.
    ‘Look, lady, I don’t take any pleasure in hitting old women, but I do need to do this.’
    He leaned down to grab the package from Protima’s hand. That was when his partner screamed from inside the SUV.
    ‘Greg, they’re coming. Hurry up!’
    *
    Protima looked beyond the man in front of her to see a crowd of at least twenty of the infected converging on the car. A couple of men in bloodied and tattered suits were mixed up with men and women wearing the rags of slum dwellers. They all had that vacant expression and many of them had blood from other victims running down the sides of their mouths. The man inside the car fired again and again, and three or four men went down, only to get back up within seconds. The man inside the car was screaming as he was pulled out and the crowd tore into him, clawing at him and biting into his face.
    ‘Goddamn Biters!’ the man in front of Protima growled. He shouted into his earpiece. ‘We’re under attack by Biters. Are there any other Zeus units nearby who could help?’
    Zeus. Protima had heard that name before somewhere, but she had no time to think as some of the infected now came around the car towards her. The man in front of her pointed his gun at the approaching crowd, shooting several times till his magazine emptied. All he did was enrage them further, and they began to emit a high-pitched screech as they surrounded him. Protima took advantage of the situation to get back on her bike, and she pedaled away, forcing herself not to look back even when she heard the man’s screams and cries for mercy.
    Now all around her she saw signs of the infection spreading. There were several dead bodies littering the street, and two of the infected wrestled down and killed a large man who had tried to fight back. She realized that while they first tried to infect others by biting them, any significant resistance led them to kill their prey.
    Tears were freely streaming down Protima’s face as the world fell apart. When people at the highest levels of government had brought about such a catastrophe, what hope did a frail old woman like her have of fighting back?
    Two more of the infected crossed her path, and she turned her bicycle sharply to the right to avoid them. Biters. That was what the man who had attacked her had called them. She wondered, as the infection spread around the world and more and more people fell to it, would people give it a name? Some terrible infections in the past had been trivialized by the names they had been given – bird flu, swine flu. What would this scourge be called? Would there even be enough people left to give it a name?
    Now, further away from the open spaces around the Embassy, she had entered a congested market. Khan Market, if her memory served. The closely packed shops and cars parked in front of them had made it a deathtrap. Hundreds of Biters milled around and a few corpses lay around the front of the shops. A small group of policemen had tried to make a stand and Protima almost gagged at what remained of them – little more than the bloody shreds of their khaki uniforms.
    The front wheel of her bicycle caught on something and her bike buckled under her. She was thrown forward, landing hard on the ground. The wind knocked out of her, Protima scrambled to get up, but slipped and fell again. She had attracted the attention of a few Biters and they were converging on her. She felt around and found a rock the size of her fist. The nearest Biter was now no more than a dozen feet away, a thin man with half his face ripped off wearing a bloodied and torn suit. Protima threw