Read For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak for Free Online

door with only moments to spare and we slammed it shut, but before we could get
the lock turned, the infected hit the door like a freight train. The force threw
us backwards and clawing fingers appeared around the edges. Tom and I pushed as
hard as we could against the door, but it wouldn’t move: the fingers of the
infected were stopping it from closing. 
    Shaking with fear, I turned to Tom, ‘What the hell d’we do now?’
    He
looked at me, terrified. ‘Use the machetes?’
    I felt
the weight of the long metal weapon in my hand, and I gripped it tightly,
wondering how things could have changed so fast. I swung the blade and sliced
off half a dozen fingers; blood spurted across the walls and the floor. I swung
it again and again until the door was clear and we could finally get it closed
and locked.
    Tom
and I sank to the floor, both of us breathing heavily. Iliana had her phone out
again and was desperately tapping away, while the man was sitting on the bottom
of the stairs with his eyes fixed firmly on the door behind me. I felt it move,
but the lock seemed to be holding. I surveyed the severed fingers that lay
strewn across the floor. Suddenly, I felt sick.
    ‘How’d
you end up with that lot chasing you?’ Tom’s voice trembled with fear. I looked
at the man properly for the first time: his face was ashen and he couldn’t have
been more than eighteen at the most. He turned to Tom. ‘What?’
    Rather
than push him to relive what he’d just been through, I held out my hand. ‘I’m
Ben. This is Tom, and that’s Iliana.’
    The
teenager stared blankly at me for a second before taking it. ‘I’m Daz. Well,
Darren really, but everyone calls me Daz.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You guys got
any idea what’s happenin’ out there?’
    ‘Did
you see what went down in Miami last night?’ Tom got to his feet and glanced
through the window in the door. The infected could sense we were inside and were
still clawing at it, blood from the stumps of their fingers smearing the glass:
even their injuries didn’t slow them down.
    Daz’s
eyes drifted towards the floor. ‘Yeah.’
    Tom
avoided making eye contact, too. ‘We think the virus which caused that is here.’
    ‘Fuck!’ A puzzled expression appeared on Daz’s face. ‘I thought they’d closed
the borders or somethin’, so that couldn’t happen.’
    ‘I
guess they were too late.’ I thought about this. It was odd. Of all the places
for the virus to suddenly appear, the centre of Glasgow seemed one of the most
unlikely. I could see it happening at Heathrow, or Gatwick, or even somewhere
like Manchester Airport: they all had plenty of connections to the US, but as
far as I knew Glasgow only had two direct flights: one to Newark, and the other
to Miami. That’s when it struck me: the morning flight from Miami would have
arrived just before the borders had been closed; someone on that flight must
have been infected and they must have made it as far as the city centre before
they turned.
    ‘So
how’d you end up being chased by our friends out there?’ Tom nodded his head
towards the door as he looked at Daz.
    ‘I
stayed over at a pal’s last night in the West End an’ was just headin’ into town
for a bit before goin’ home. I got on at Hillhead an’ sat down in the first
carriage. I was just textin’ this girl I met the other night, tryin’ to get her
to go out for a few drinks later when we pulled into the next station. There was
this young boy lying on the platform with people crowdin’ round him. Before I
could see what was goin’ on, the train had moved past. Looking through the doors
which connect all the carriages, I could see a fight breakin’ out at the far
end. I thought it was just a bunch of Neds messing’ around, an’ I went back to
my phone. At the next station, I looked up again and saw the fightin’ had spread
to the next carriage. I could see people strugglin’ with each