Surviving The Evacuation (Book 6): Harvest by Frank Tayell Page B

she couldn’t, and the noise didn’t stop.
    It was almost a relief, twenty yards further on, when a set of doors on their right flew open and a zombie stumbled out. It managed two lurching steps before the doors swung closed, hitting it in the face and pitching it back into the room. It was like a scene from one of those bad sitcoms broadcast late at night for an audience too tired, drunk, or indifferent to change the channel. And with that image, the flash of fear vanished.
    The doors pushed open again, and the creature staggered out into the corridor. And it did so with a metallic scrape. Attached to its right ankle was a handcuff. The other end of the ‘cuffs was attached to a twisted section of metal tubing belonging to Nilda didn’t know what. Calmly, she stepped forward and swiped the sword at the zombie’s out-flung hand, severing three of its fingers as it clawed towards her. As she brought her sword arm back, she ducked, and then struck again, slicing the blade through the tendons at the back of its knees. She cut through stained fabric and desiccated flesh, and as it tried to snap its mouth down on her outstretched wrist, it toppled sideways. Its head hit the double doors, knocking them inward. Before they could swing closed again, she’d stabbed the sword down, spearing the point through the zombie’s temple. It stopped moving. Pitiful, she thought, truly pitiful.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Chester said.
    “Yeah. I’ve had—” She stopped. There it was again. That metallic scraping sound. And it seemed to be coming from every direction at once.
    “Now!” he barked, but she didn’t need any encouragement.
    They jogged to the junction where the corridor met the one that led outside. At the far end she could make out the double doors, silhouetted by a faint halo of daylight. She managed one step towards the light when that sound grew, suddenly amplified tenfold. She looked left and right and back and forth and saw nothing. Then she realised why. She looked up.
    “It’s above us!” she screamed, grabbing Chester’s arm, pulling him back, just as the false ceiling above them collapsed.
    Zombies fell to the floor. Blue coats. White coats. A man. Two women. A child. Those facts vaguely registered as she kept backing away. Four more fell, and then another section of ceiling and a score tumbled out. Some hit the ground with the soft crack of rotting bone, others with a crunch of plaster and Styrofoam as they found their feet and moved towards the light. As one, Nilda and Chester turned and ran.
    Behind them, she could hear more falling thumps, more crunching of plaster, and then a harsher metallic jangling as the light fittings and ventilation that the false ceiling had been built to hide were torn loose. Just run, she told herself, because they couldn’t. All she had to do was keep moving, but before she could seek any comfort in that thought, the ceiling ahead of them collapsed. Plaster and dust erupted in a thick cloud, turning visibility to nothing. Coughing, spluttering, retching, she could make out the squirming forms of the undead thrashing on the ground, all struggling to stand.
    Chester bellowed and sprang, his mace cleaving up and down, up and down. He wasn’t aiming at heads; there was too much dust to aim at anything. He just hacked and hewed with furious abandon, metal smashing into the floor as often as it crushed necrotic flesh. Nilda ran, swinging the lamp back and forth in one hand, the sword stabbing and slicing in the other. She screamed a bellow of incandescent fury and fear as fingers clawed at her legs and tugged at her feet. Cold pain ran up from her calf, and she danced sideways, half-tripping as a hand caught at her ankle. Then there was a hand at her shoulder, yanking her forward. It was Chester, grunting with the effort as he pulled her free of that heaving heap of death.
    As her eyes cleared and her brain focused, she saw the corridor ahead was clear. She tried to run, but