The Jon Lymonday Teaser: Free sample of The Zombie Cop

A free sample of The Zombie Cop? What is this, Christmas come early?

The Duke’s eyes flicked open. Rodwell already at the window, security lights back on.

‘Is it them?’ The Duke asked, searching for his club.

Rodwell shook his head. The Duke joined him by the window.

‘That’s even worse,’ The Duke whispered, peering over Rodwell’s shoulder. A minute later both men were standing on the doorstep watching DCI Carl Bannen struggle out of the lead car. He was early-sixties, way out of shape for over thirty years now.

‘Jake,’ he called out brightly. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Rodwell asked.

‘I’ve got to take you in.’

‘What?’

‘Quarantine. Emily too. We have to do all we can to contain this. Whoever’s in the house with you will need to come too.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Dolores declared, looking down from a first floor window.

Then the window of the last of the three cars that had pulled into the mansion’s driveway smashed. A scream followed. Bannen turned to see movement in the trees either side of the entrance. The doors of the last car flung open. Rapid flashes lit the bitter air as shots were fired.

‘What’s going on?’ Bannen called.

Bodies fell from the trees surrounding the front of the property. More shots were fired. More walking bodies appeared. One sunk its teeth into the exposed neck of a police officer as she emerged from the vehicle.

Rodwell recognised Nathan, the US Army officer who’d helped him escape from Bluff Cove turn and let loose a round which took down two, maybe three undead. It was hard to see much except for more staggering shapes emerging from the shadows.

Bannen drew his gun.

‘No,’ Rodwell shouted. ‘You’ll only attract more. Get in here.’

‘No way,’ Dolores shouted, ‘I’m not having more filth in the house.’

‘They can’t stay out there. They’ll die.’

‘The same fate awaits ‘em in here. Trust me.’

Rodwell looked to The Duke. ‘Come on, Dol,’ The Duke called up. ‘This is an emergency.’

Dolores slammed shut the upper floor window she was leaning out of.

The second police car was now surrounded by undead clawing at its windows. Two WPCs Rodwell recognised as Strickland and Nestor who worked with him in Turpenton, exited the back of the car Bannen had arrived in and ran up the steps.

‘Get inside, all of you,’ Rodwell ordered as he edged down the steps.

None of the undead surrounding the second police car registered his presence. He pulled a dagger from his lapel and jammed it into the head of the nearest walking corpse, another smartly dressed Christmas reveller whose party  was over. Two more police officers in the car were fumbling for their tasers. Rodwell took another dead walker down trying to reach them. Heard another window smash. Saw undead frantically dive into the rear of the vehicle, the inside of the windscreen then stained with blood, like a morbid interior screenwash.

Rodwell took two more down, their blurred outlines difficult for him to make out, the twin pinpoints of their yellow eyes his only reliable targets.

He heard a taser discharge in the car followed by screams. He glanced at the third car, invisible now under a mass of writhing, feeding undead.

‘Jake!’

Rodwell turned to see Bannen imploring him to return to the house. He had the look of a man who’d been shouting for ages. Rodwell simply hadn’t heard him such was his focus. But now he turned and hobbled back to the house, all three cars on the driveway now overwhelmed, their occupants destined to join the legions of the dead.

Bannen dragged him up the steps.

‘There was nothing I could do,’ said Rodwell.

‘I know. Get in. We can’t afford to lose you as well.’

Feasting on the occupants of the police vehicles kept the dead busy for ten minutes, during which time those sheltering in the mansion armed themselves.

‘Not that one,’ The Duke cried as Strickland reached into his golf bag and pulled out his cherished driver. He sized up Strickland and offered her a seven-iron instead, handing Nestor a nine, watching her rehearse a chip.

‘You play?’ he asked.

‘Off nine,’ Nestor answered.

The Duke nodded. ‘Head shots only.’

‘Yeah, we know, thanks.’ Nestor told him. ‘How you doing, Jake?’ Nestor asked, turning to him.

‘This good,’ he said pointing to his face.

‘Got to say I hardly recognised the station’s pin-up boy.’

‘Got to be pretty sick to want to pin-up anything looking like this,’ he replied.

‘I don’t know. It could be interesting’ She smiled at him. Rodwell nodded at Bannen standing behind her.

‘Are we fighting or flirting?’ Bannen asked.

Nestor’s light mood evaporated. ‘Fighting sir, definitely fighting.’

‘Good.’

‘Please don’t say headshots only, sir.’

‘OK, I won’t.’

They watched the shadows outside.

‘The kid needs to be upstairs,’ Bannen ordered. ‘Can you take her?’ He nodded at Dolores.

‘You can sod right off mate,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never ran from a fight in my life, and I ain’t about to change that for a load of dead people.’

Bannen was taken aback by the ferocity of her reply. He turned to Rodwell ‘Jake, we need to get Emily away.’

Rodwell nodded at the stairs and Emily resumed her front row seat on the top step.

‘All other entrances have been secured,’ Rodwell told Bannen. ‘Windows across the ground floor boarded.’

‘Good.’

‘So the front and side doors are the only feasible entry points.’

A bony fist shorn of skin sporting a fake Rolex on its wrist smashed through the frosted glass window that ran the full height of the front door. The shower of sharp debris hit Rodwell full in the face. He felt no pain. Saw no blood. Just yanked glass shards out of his forehead and cheeks and carried on the fight. The spindly forearm belonging to the fist snaked through the jagged hole. Rodwell brutally brought his club crashing down on the quivering digits, sending them falling to the bloodstained welcome mat.

More arms reached through. The door creaked under the pressure of the weight of bodies leaning against it.

‘It’s a good door,’ Dolores called out. ‘Several thousand quid. Five lever mortice deadlock.’

‘Fall back, Jake. We’ve got this,’ Bannen shouted.

Rodwell feigned deafness. Brought the golf club crashing down again, this time on the arm of the now fingerless hand, the force separating forearm from upper arm. A follow-up blow separated upper arm from shoulder. Still the zombie attacked.

‘I’m serious, Jake,’ Bannen urged. ‘Move away. That’s an order.’

Nestor pulled Rodwell away from the door and took his place on the front line, her feet crunching on the glass that had missed Rodwell’s face.

Rodwell attempted to re-take his position, but this time Bannen pulled him back and glared at him. ‘You’ve never disobeyed me before, Jake. Don’t start now.’  

Nestor plunged a kitchen knife into the soft marrow of the brain of the now armless undead assailant, a former colleague she no longer recognised, sporting a bloodstained police uniform. The speed of rotting had set in fast with this one, the stench of death from the head wound almost overpowering.

Rodwell turned to The Duke who was crouching on the floor by the side door, beating reanimated dead limbs with the thick end of a three-iron as they reached in through the cat flap trying to drag him out.

‘What gets me is we don’t even have a bloody cat anymore,’ The Duke spluttered as silhouettes of dead hands thumped against the window, threatening to shatter the glass.

Further down the hallway, Strickland struck out at undead trying to enter the kitchen from the garden. Rodwell ambled over to The Duke, running no longer an option. He drew his club again, the dried blood of previous kills already forming a crust on its smooth face.

‘Away,’ Bannen shouted, seeing Rodwell preparing to return to the battlefront.

‘I’m needed here,’ Rodwell shouted.

‘You’re not. We’ve got this.’

Rodwell couldn’t work out why Bannen was being so protective. It wasn’t like him.

‘Get Emily out of here,’ Bannen ordered. ‘That’s another order.’ It was even less like Bannen to give two hoots about a kid.

Emily stood as Rodwell beckoned to her to come down the stairs.

‘I need him,’ The Duke shouted, crashing his club against a deep purple hand with broken green nails. Dolores crossed the hallway to join her husband, jabbing her Bowie at the invaders.

‘I’m in charge here,’ Bannen shouted back, tiring now as he battled to keep undead invaders from the front door alongside Nestor. ‘If this house didn’t have so many ways in, our task would be a lot easier. Now, Jake, go!’

Rodwell picked up Emily and carried her across the hall.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ The Duke snarled at Rodwell. ‘Can’t you think for yourself? Are you going to blindly follow his orders? Surely you can see what’s happening here?’

‘Daddy!’ Emily screamed as a face crashed through the remains of the front door, bloodstained teeth sinking into Nestor’s shoulder.

Rodwell and Emily both saw Nestor’s look of fear, witnessed her fall, clutching her wound, saw Strickland rush to her and drag her away from the door as Bannen stood dumbfounded. Rodwell administered a savage blow with his club to the temple of the undead assailant who’d got Nestor.

‘Go, Jake,’ Bannen shouted.