Read Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch for Free Online

along the grass but stopped when she
was distracted by movement. The two infected still banging against the patio
door hadn’t spotted them, but the rogue one had. He (had it been a he? She
thought so, but it was difficult to say with any authority) was heading
straight for her.
    At speed.
    Gary grabbed a garden fork
he’d left in a flowerbed overnight. The infected was focusing on Jody and she
looked past it towards her ex-husband for help, hoping he’d come to her rescue
( that’d be a first ). Her lack of faith in Gary was well-placed. He was
frozen to the spot, feet rooted to the ground like the trees and shrubs he was
now doing his best to hide among. He threw the fork over to her like a javelin,
shouting ‘ here! ’ so she knew it was coming.
    Not a bad effort. It
landed a metre or so in front of her feet.
    The infected’s mode of
movement changed. It appeared almost insect-like now, on all fours and face up,
scuttling. And then it launched itself into the air. Jody grabbed the handle of
the garden fork and lifted its sharp tines skyward, just in the nick of time.
The creature landed on top of it and was skewered through the groin.
    Jody dropped the fork
and stepped away.
    The infected monster
still fought, still tried to scratch at her, but it was struggling to work out
why it could no longer get about with the same degree of freedom as before. It
was like having an inflexible extra leg, an unwanted extension. Such was its
angle that whenever it tried to take a step forward, the handle of the fork dug
into the ground and pivoted the whole body around, at the same time driving the
spikes deeper into its diseased flesh.
    Gary was already in the
shed. Jody followed him into the cluttered little wooden building. She pulled
her scarf down to berate him. ‘This place is a fucking pigsty.’
    ‘You can stop nagging me
now,’ he said as he began to ferret through a mountain of crap. ‘We’re
divorced, remember? I’ve got Charlie to moan at me now.’
    ‘So I guess there’s
still plenty to moan about then?’
    ‘Shut up, Jody,’ he
said, and he passed two bottles of barbecue lighter fluid to her, carrying two
more himself.
    ‘Why so many?’
    ‘Because we have –
we had – a lot of barbecues. We’re not all bitter and twisted and
antisocial like you.’
    ‘I’m not antisocial.
Some of us have responsibilities.’
    ‘We both have
responsibilities, now let’s get this over with and get back inside.’
    ‘Fine. You got a match?’
    He scavenged about on
another cobwebby shelf and found a barbecue lighter: a long, bizarre-looking
gas-fuelled thing like a cigarette lighter with a barrel. ‘This’ll do it.’
    ‘Hardly standard
zombie-killing kit, is it?’
    He laughed at that. Was
he laughing with her or at her? She wasn’t sure. ‘Zombies,’ he repeated,
shaking his head.
    ‘Well what else are we
supposed to call them?’ she asked as she squeezed past him to get back outside.
‘They’re dead and they’re infected and they want to kill us. Therefore, they’re
zombies.’
    ‘You really could turn
anything into an argument.’
    ‘That’s because your
default setting is to pick holes in everything I say.’
    He was about to correct
her, but she’d already gone. She was halfway up the garden, heading for the
impaled creature which was on its back now, unable to get up. She doused it
with lighter fluid then stepped back and watched with satisfaction as Gary lit
it up. Typical bloke , she thought, always got to be in control of the
fire .
    Between them they then
drenched the figures at the window from behind with the flammable liquid, Jody
tried gesturing to the kids and Charlie to avert their gaze, but the frantic,
random movements of the infected corpses got in the way. The dumb things didn’t
notice the liquid splashing against their backs, didn’t react at all. They
didn’t react when Gary lit them up like scarecrows either. The one that still
had a head did eventually turn around, though,