For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Read Online Free PDF Page A

here.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I
don’t know, but look at the crowd. See that person there?’ I pointed to the man
I meant. ‘And that one there? Look how they’re acting! I think they’re
infected.’
    ‘Shit!’ Tom eyes darted across the crowd. ‘Are you sure?
    Before
I could say anything, the man seized an elderly woman and pulled her to the
ground. As the pair struggled, they disappeared from sight amongst the crowd,
but soon the attacker was back on his feet and had chased down someone else.
    ‘Frickin’ hell!’ Tom ran his hands through his hair. ‘Ben, what’re we going to
do?’
    I
glanced round. At the top of the steps was a series of doors; I knew we had to
get off the street and we had to do it now.
    ‘Let’s
get inside.’ I ran up the steps. Behind me, Tom grabbed his case and followed.
The first door I tried wouldn’t move, nor would the second. I kept going,
eventually finding one on the far right which opened. Once inside, I locked the
door behind us and looked round to find a flight of stairs leading upwards. We
raced up them, all the time glancing back over our shoulders. At the top, we
emerged into a restaurant filled with empty tables set for lunch.
    A
blonde waitress in her mid-twenties appeared through what I presumed was the
door to the kitchen and hurried towards us, shouting. ‘Hey, we’re not open yet.
You need to leave.’
    I
pushed past her and ran up to the windows which stretched from floor to ceiling.
From there, I had a clear view down the length of Buchanan Street. 
    ‘I
said: we’re not open yet.’ The waitress strode towards us. ‘Are you deaf or
something?’ Finally, she reached a point where she could see the street below.
‘Hey, what’s going on out there?’
    The
stampeding crowd had now reached the entrance to the underground station. I
searched for the people who were chasing the others, but I couldn’t find them. I
wondered where the infected had gone; maybe I’d got it wrong. Then I realised it
wasn’t that they’d disappeared, it was that almost all of them were now
infected.
    I
tried to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I just stared,
paralysed by fear and disbelief at what I was witnessing.
    As the
crowd reached the statue in front of the steps, the people lingering there,
watching the aftermath of the crash further up the next street, finally realised
what was happening around them and they scattered. Some ran up to the locked
doors, while others sprinted along the street to the right. As I watched, the
first of the infected reached the steps and raced up them, while the rest
followed those who’d fled up the next street. One man climbed up onto the
statue’s plinth and started to pull a woman up after him, but before she was
beyond its reach, an infected grabbed her legs. There was a tug of war between
the two, with the woman screaming in the middle. Then another infected grabbed
hold, then another. The man refused to let go of the woman even though I could
now see her guts spilling out onto the street. He tried to keep his footing, but
there wasn’t enough space and he slipped, falling into the mass of infected
people which were now feeding on the woman’s remains. They set upon him, clawing
and tearing at him until he’d been pulled apart and scattered across the street.
    There
was a noise behind us and I turned to find the waitress talking rapidly into a
mobile phone. I didn’t recognise the language, but from the way she spoke, I
could tell she was as confused and horrified by what was happening outside as I
was.
    I
returned my attention to the window: the crowd was starting to thin as the main
mass passed us and headed away up the next street, those who had the disease
pursuing those who didn’t. Here and there, small knots of infected squabbled
over bodies, pulling at them with their hands and teeth, feasting on those
they’d killed. After a while, even those