Cat’s legs were starting to tire as she drew close to the Tottenham Hotspur soccer stadium. She had worked out a lot more these last few months than she ever had before, and was in the best condition of her life, but she’d never had to endure a sustained sprint like this. She could have jogged for hours without pause, but the zombies were running, not jogging, so she had to match their pace.
The undead were slower than they’d been in life, lacking the fluid coordination of the living. But since they didn’t use their lungs, they didn’t get tired the way humans did. They could maintain this speed indefinitely, whereas Cat was quickly running out of steam.
She was worrying about that as she drew abreast of the stadium, but that worry was swiftly wiped away when she saw another horde of zombies coming at her from the top end of the High Road.
Cat drew to a fearful halt and stared at the advancing zombies. She glanced over her shoulder—there was an army of the undead behind her, closing in. A quick look left and right—more zombies racing at her from the side streets.
She was caught in the middle, no way out.
Cat pulled down her mask and started to moan, a long, loud wailing sound. How could this have happened? She was always so careful. If soldiers were at large, shepherding the zombies into a kill zone, she should have spotted signs. She wasn’t blind, deaf or stupid.
As zombies closed on her from all sides, Cat stopped moaning. If this was to be her finale, so be it. She drew her gun, gazed at it glumly, then got ready to rid the zombies of their chance to kill her.
Before Cat could raise the gun, a whistle blew, sharp and sustained. She looked around with surprise. This time the blast had come from a place much closer to her, within the net of encroaching zombies. But she couldn’t see anyone.
Then she spotted an opening into the stadium. All of the turnstiles, which fans of the club had passed through over the decades, had been blocked off with heavy steel doors, but there was one exception. A single door, close to where she was standing, hung ajar.
Cat couldn’t be sure that the whistle had come from there. And she had no idea what lay beyond—maybe the corridor was home to even more zombies than those chasing her out here. If she ducked inside and slammed the door shut and the stadium turned out to be infested with the living dead, she was damned.
But what other choice did she have? This was a chance to get away, and she had dedicated her whole life, especially since the zombie outbreak, to seizing every chance that came her way.
So, putting her gun away, Cat raced for the door. She nearly didn’t make it–the zombies up the side street almost beat her to the punch–but she swung in just ahead of her savage hunters. Grabbing hold of the heavy door, she heaved with all her strength and it began to swing shut.
One of the zombies got to the door before it could close and slipped a hand through the gap. The door jammed on the foul creature’s forearm. If Cat had hesitated, the others would have been able to slide their own hands in and force the door open, and the game would have been lost.
But it had been a long time since Cat Ward hesitated. Sliding free a knife, she lashed out at the hand and cut it clean off at the wrist. The fingers twitched wildly as the hand dropped. Cat kicked the hand away–the kick would have drawn admiring comments if she’d done it on the field in the old days–then slammed the door shut. There were several bolts, and she slotted them all home, one after another, in rapid succession, like a machine.
She heard the zombies howling and thumping on the door, but it held, and as she stepped back from it, shivering and gasping, she realized with surprise and delight that she had made it. They couldn’t get to her now. She was safe.
Cat whooped and punched the air. She couldn’t believe it. That had been so close. For a second there she was sure that she was doomed.
Then a whistle sounded in the corridor behind her, and as Cat fell silent again and slowly turned to face the gloom of the unknown, she had to concede to herself that maybe she had celebrated too soon.
All of the zombies appeared to be locked outside the stadium.
But what was locked inside here with her?