BARE NECESSITIES [4]

"Wave your worries goodbye," murmured Purna. "Very appropriate."

"I like to think of it as an omen," said Sam.

From their vantage point, they could see a couple of hundred meters along the street in either direction.

At this moment, only two of the infected were visible – a white guy of medium build in his early thirties wearing a black E Street Band tour T-shirt and cut-off jeans, and a pretty dark-haired girl of about eighteen in white shorts and a floral-print vest.

The girl had brightly colored plastic bangles on her wrists and a small shoulder bag on a long thin strap jouncing perkily on her hip.

The man's hands and face were slathered in blood. The girl was chewing on what looked like a human liver, burying her face in it and snuffling like a pig.

"Those were the two I saw earlier," whispered Xian Mei.

"If we're quick, they'll hopefully be the only two we'll have to contend with," said Purna.

Quickly, she outlined her plan, and Sam and Xian Mei nodded their agreement. Without further preamble, she said, "Let's go." Then the three of them stood up and began to run across the street.

They had covered almost half the distance before they were spotted. It was the girl who saw them first, her head snapping up as if she had caught their scent on the air.

She let loose a snarling roar, dropped the lump of meat she was holding, and started running towards them, the bag looped around her shoulder flying behind her.

She converged with them when they were around ten meters from the van. Ignoring Purna, who was in the lead, she targeted Sam.

"I got it!" he shouted, slowing just enough to raise the flare pistol and fire at the girl. The flare exploded against her chest in a flash of light, blackening her clothes. She screeched in rage and staggered slightly but didn't go down.

"Fuck!" Sam shouted and veered to meet her head-on, swinging the machete. When she reached for him, he hacked at her arm, almost severing it with one blow and knocking her off-balance.

As she stumbled, her badly wounded arm gushing blood, he raised the machete again, stepping to one side so he could get a good swing at her head.

The first blow buried itself deep in the side of her skull, lopping off the top part of her ear. As she fell, he wrenched the machete free and followed up with two more savage blows, silencing her forever. The adrenaline was pounding in his ears, and so he didn't immediately register that Xian Mei was screaming for help. When he did, he turned to see her on the ground, the male zombie clinging to her kicking right leg, trying to bite it.

Her machete was lying several meters away from her, and she was simultaneously trying to scrabble towards it and avoid getting bitten.

She pistoned her left leg out, hitting the zombie in the face with the sole of her foot and breaking his nose with a crunch. However, although the kick snapped his head back, it didn't loosen his grip on her leg.

Hearing a crash and registering in his peripheral vision that Purna was focused on kicking in the door of Wave Your Worries Goodbye, Sam ran across to Xian Mei, raising his machete once again.

He brought it down with all his force on the back of the zombie's head, cleaving its skull. The creature fell forward onto its face, its body spasming and jerking as its dying brain short-circuited.

As it died in a spreading pool of its own blood, Xian Mei scooted backward away from it and scrambled to her feet. Her right leg was scratched and a little bloody, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

"You OK?" Sam asked.

"Fine," she said, snatching up her machete.

The two of them glanced around, then hurried across to the van parked outside Wave Your Worries Goodbye. Purna had succeeded in kicking the door open now and had gone inside.

Before Sam could even think about going in after her, she was running back out, left hand raised triumphantly, keys jangling on the loop of a keyring around her finger.

"You see anyone?" Sam asked.

She shook her head. "Neither dead nor alive." Then her eyes flickered beyond him and widened. "Shit."

Sam and Xian Mei turned to see a zombie running towards them. It was a fat, bald white man of about sixty, with a grey beard and fuzzy blue tattoos on his hairy arms.

Unlike the other zombies they had seen, he was not drenched with the messy remains of a recent meal. The cause of his infection, however, was clear.

His left leg was badly bitten, and he was missing the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

The man's face was as blue as a heart attack victim's, and his pendulous belly swung beneath a yellow T-shirt bearing the legend "World's Greatest Lover."

His bottom half was clad only in a pair of black Speedos, and he was wearing an open-toed sandal on his right foot; his other was bare.

Purna pressed a button on the key fob, and the van chirruped and flashed its lights as its doors unlocked.

They ran across to it and got in, Purna diving into the driver's seat, Sam and Xian Mei running around to the passenger door.

Sam glanced at the approaching zombie as Xian Mei climbed into the van ahead of him. Though it was running as fast as it could, its steps were lumbering, its weight slowing it down.

It made Sam think of an old lion that was getting too slow to hunt; he almost felt sorry for it.