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was, he wasn’t proud of himself for it.  But he still dialled the station.
    All he got was a busy tone.  He tried dialling Inspector Parker’s private number.  Busy again.  He got the same result from every number he tried, including his parents and brother.  It wasn’t the people, it was the signal.  He wished he had a landline to try, but phone boxes were a dying breed now.  Maybe so many people were calling their loved ones that the networks couldn’t handle it. 
    Whatever, there was nothing else for it.  He would have do this by himself.
    He turned back to the injured man and almost jumped out of his skin when he twitched.  He was coming around.  If he didn’t do this now, the man would be awake.  Alex shuddered at the thought of having to do it looking him in the eye.  He raised his pistol.
    The man’s eyes snapped open and Alex drew in a sharp breath.  The irises were white, like his.  He opened his mouth and moaned, sitting up.  Blood pumped from his wounds, but he didn’t seem to notice. 
    Alex took a step back, attempting to process what he was seeing.  It just wasn’t possible.  It took five days for someone to turn and it had barely been ten minutes for this man.  How could that be possible?
    The new eater moaned again and started to push to its feet.  Alex took aim and fired a single round into its head.  It slumped back to the ground and didn’t move again.
    Alex stared at it for a while.  Ten minutes.  People were turning within ten minutes.  How could they fight that?  No wonder there were so many eaters on the streets.  And there would be more.  This was becoming a full blown outbreak.  He needed to get back to the station.
    The rumbling of rotor blades caught his attention and he looked up.  Flying low above the rooftops, a military helicopter passed overhead and disappeared beyond the surrounding buildings.  Alex waited for a full minute for anything else to appear, but that was it.  Had the army been sent in to help?  Was the chopper scouting the area before they sent in the troops?  He hoped so.  Sarcester’s emergency services were being overwhelmed.  There was no way they could contain the outbreak by themselves.
    Feeling a little more hopeful that they weren’t alone, Alex holstered his gun and took off at a run.
    The station was only about a mile and a half away and it should have taken him three minutes at full speed.  Unfortunately, his journey wasn’t without incident.  He shot eleven eaters, including two who had a woman trapped in a red phone box (which had no phone and was now a tiny art gallery).  Alex dispatched the eaters and made sure the attractive young blonde woman, whose name was Cassandra, got home safely.  She even gave him her number, which was almost unheard of for him since he’d become a Survivor. But she was extremely grateful.  And so was he.
    By the time Alex reached the station he was almost out of ammunition, it was forty-five minutes later and he was seeing more eaters wandering around than he’d seen in total in his entire life.
    He had expected chaos at the police station, people looking for safety and shelter, police officers wrangling the panicked crowd.  What he found was nothing.  The building looked deserted from the outside.  There were plenty of cars in the car park, but no people.  Drawing his pistol, he crept through the front doors. 
    He needn’t have bothered trying to keep quiet.  The first five bodies lay in the waiting area beyond the doors. 

6
     
     
     
     
    All five of the people lying still on the tiled floor had died from bullet wounds to the head. 
    Three had visible bite marks.  They were all members of the public.  The smell of copper was stifling.  Blood swathed the floor with drops and streaks leading to the door through to the rest of the station.  Heart thumping in his chest, Alex headed in that direction.
    Although it was unlocked, on first try the door didn’t budge.  Alex