LOW-LIFE [2]

"Instead of speeding up, she slowed down a little, allowing the infected to get closer, but not close enough to catch up.

Ignoring the white building that Dani had pointed out to them, she kept going, heading along the street for another hundred meters or so before taking a right at the intersection.

Checking that the infected were still following, she took the next right and hit the accelerator.

By the time she had completed a circuit that brought them back onto the main street, most of their pursuers had been left far behind.

The instant the van screeched to a halt at the bottom of the white stone steps outside the police station, Purna and Sam threw open their doors.

Two seconds later, all five of them were running up the steps towards the main door. Although many of the infected had been lured away, there were still enough of them wandering around to cause trouble.

The moment Purna, Sam, and the rest emerged from the van, zombies began to swarm towards them, like wasps attracted to a picnic.

Xian Mei and Jin ran up the steps with Dani while Purna and Sam turned to fight a rearguard action. Calmly Purna picked off the closest and most agile zombies with the shotgun, swiftly and unfussily reloading after each double blast, while Sam held the stragglers at bay with his flare pistol, distracting them by igniting their clothes or hair.

'We're in,' Xian Mei shouted a few seconds later. Abandoning their positions, Purna and Sam turned and bounded up the steps, taking them three at a time.

Xian Mei was waiting anxiously at the top, holding the door of the station open with one hand whilst urging them on with the other.

Seconds later, with the infected just meters behind them, Sam and Purna reached her. All three of them slipped into the building, Sam, at the rear, slamming the door behind them.

They stood for a moment, recovering their composure and their breath. They could hear the infected outside, not exactly pounding on the door, but blundering against it, as if unable to work out why there was suddenly a barrier between themselves and their meal.

The police station was a modern, clinical building, the vestibule area with its reception desk, low sofas, and potted plants more like the waiting room of a private hospital than a law enforcement agency.

The cop shops back in Sam's old New Orleans neighborhood had been run-down grimy places with wire mesh over the bulletproof glass in the windows and a constant procession of low-life streaming in and out.

Sam guessed that the cops here in the resort area of Banoi, however, had a much easier time of it.

The worst they probably had to contend with were traffic violations, the odd public order offense, maybe an occasional bout of shoplifting.

He doubted the cells – if they even had them – were ever full and that before today there had ever been much (if any) call to break out the heavy artillery.

It was clear, from the fact the station appeared to be deserted, that the local authorities had been totally ill-equipped to deal with the events of the past twenty-four hours.

The only cop they had seen had been the one in the graveyard – infected and mutilated, his right leg nothing but a bleeding stump."