TATTOOED GUY [3]

It was a big, heavily tattooed guy with facial piercings and green hair. He was slathered in blood, some of it fresh, especially around his mouth, but much of it black and stiff on his white Kurt Cobain T-shirt and ripped jeans.

Jin screamed as he ran at them, snarling like a particularly ferocious guard dog. Almost unhurriedly, Purna raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, the blast hitting him square in the jaw and all but tearing his face away.

He went down so heavily that Sam fancied he felt the ground shake beneath his feet.

'This is not a good idea,' said Purna.

'Maybe you're right,' Sam conceded reluctantly. He turned and was shocked to see three more of the infected break cover behind them, emerging from the bushes and trees flanking the gate.

There was a middle-aged man and woman – they might even have been husband and wife – dressed in the loud shirts and shorts of the typical western holidaymaker, and a younger, bearded man wearing khaki shorts, whose naked upper torso was covered in bite-marks.

The trio of zombies ran at them, their faces bestial. The woman stumbled and fell but picked herself up immediately, her chubby knees scuffed and bloodied.

Purna raised the shotgun again and took out the bearded guy who was drawing ahead of the older man but succeeded only in wounding him. Quickly assessing their odds, knowing that she wouldn't have time to reload before the zombies were on them, she gestured towards the church and shouted, 'Run!'

Although he didn't like turning his back on the snarling trio behind them, Sam knew that – for now at least – discretion was the better part of valor. Even so, he deliberately dropped to the back of the group, urging Xian Mei and especially Jin ahead of him.

Fortunately, he and his companions were younger and fitter than the animated cadavers chasing them, and they quickly drew away from their pursuers.

The only dangers with moving so quickly, of course, were that they were more prone to losing their footing, and they didn't have time to assess their surroundings or the terrain ahead of them.

This drawback almost proved Purna's undoing when another of the infected leaped from the clump of bushes she was running past and hit her side on, knocking her over.

The shotgun flew from her hands as she fell, the zombie on top of her, its hands and teeth already trying to tear at her body. It was a teenage boy, a ghetto kid, his clothes frayed and threadbare, almost colorless from having been washed too many times.

As he and Purna hit the ground, the impact knocked them apart, but the boy was up quickly and flying at her again.

Taken by surprise and momentarily stunned, Purna could only flail at him, yelling in anger and pain as he bit into the side of her arm.

Sam ran forward to help her, already raising his machete, but it was Jin and Xian Mei, ahead of him, who reached Purna first. Acting instinctively, Jin raised the crowbar she was carrying and brought it down on the boy's back. Although it barely injured him, it was enough, at least, to distract him for a moment.

His head snapped up and round, his face a screeching mask of white eyes and bared, blood-slicked teeth. Pushing Jin unceremoniously out of the way, Xian Mei sprang forward and decapitated him with one sweeping blow of the machete.

As the head flew into the bushes, the boy's body crumpled, his hands grotesquely clenching and unclenching.

Hearing snarls and heavy breathing behind him, Sam whirled around. The delay had enabled the middle-aged couple and the wounded man to catch up with them.

Sam raised the flare pistol and fired it directly into the middle-aged man's twisted, bespectacled face. His head flared like a struck match, his hair igniting. As he staggered to one side, Sam jumped forward and finished him off with the machete.