Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] by Ian Woodhead

didn’t live too far from the Horse and Jockey. It made sense to check out his place first. The boy had stayed with the girl while Ernest had searched through every room. The permanent stench of a slaughterhouse hung in every room, and there were bits of flesh everywhere. The state of the kitchen had been a shock to his hardened stomach. It looked as though a dozen people had swallowed grenades before having a big group hug, whilst standing on a worktop.
    He found no living person in the house, but his expert eyes did see the damage that a boot had done to the pebble-dashed wall just above the living room window. Judging by the fact that the window above was wide open, it looked as though somebody in Adrian’s family had managed to escape. The lad was relieved when he relayed that information, although Ernest kept what he’d seen in the kitchen to himself.
    Emily had flatly refused to go back to her home, saying that she lived with just her dad, and she couldn’t give a fuck what happened to that drunken bastard. A subtle warning glance from Adrian told Ernest everything he needed to know.
    Mrs. Watson had already explained what had happened at her house. That just left Ernest.
    He slowly wound the end of the sock tight around his fingers, took another deep breath, and then pushed open his garden gate. The evidence of Darren’s not-so-secret party was all around him. He saw crushed lager cans thrown around the front garden and a couple of smashed beer bottles under the window. The house was in darkness, but the door was wide open. Ernest wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad sign. His house hadn’t been spared from the mayhem that had blighted the rest of the estate. He saw evidence of that too.
    The front porch lights shone on the ropes of wet gore that hung down from Brenda’s rose bushes in the middle of the front lawn, and the ground around the flowers was soaked in blood. On the freshly dug earth running parallel to the path were a pair of bright orange trainers with the feet still in them. Ernest had been planning to plant potatoes in that patch of dirt next Friday.
    He stopped by his door and looked behind him, wondering if he really should be doing this. What if his Brenda or Darren was in the house? What if they had become deadies? Did he really have the strength to put an end to their suffering?
    “Oh Jesus, please forgive me for what I may have to do.”
    He placed his hand upon the door and pushed it open. Nothing jumped out on him, and there were no bodies. The hallway was deserted. He leaned over the threshold, looked to the right and up the stairs where he saw a young girl lying sprawled about halfway up the steps. It was difficult to judge whether she was still alive or had become one of them.
    There was no way of knowing whether his kitchen contained any of those horrors as the door was shut. He could nip round the back and peek through the window, but he knew that Darren had turned the yard and the back garden into a junk yard for his bikes, so there were way too many concealed areas back there. Ernest stepped to the side and peered through the living room window. He saw two bodies lying beside the sofa, but he didn’t know either of them. He stepped into the hallway and checked to make sure the living room door was shut tight. He started to swing the weighted sock around his head before he coughed loudly.
    Just as he thought, the girl lifted her head, fixed him with a pair of blank eyes, and began to groan. As she moved he saw that her stomach had been ripped open; it had only been her body pressed against the stairs keeping her guts from bursting out. Her insides spilled out and splattered down the stairs, and his carpet now resembled a gutter from an abattoir. The girl hadn’t even noticed that she had just lost half of her body weight and continued to moan. He knew her noise would attract the attention of any others in the house, so Ernest ran up, ducked to avoid her grasping fingers,