We moved quickly away from the supermarket. Only I had collected supplies and after the trauma of Mina being taken at knife point, and my own trauma of killing two people in cold blood, I regretted us ever stepping across its threshold.
London had pockets of garden squares throughout the city, and we moved through another one now. Overhead I could hear the raucous cry of ring necked parakeets that had established themselves as part of the landscape of the city over the last fifty years. With the sun shining down on us too this could have felt like a very different kind of morning, but both myself and Mina wore the glazed thousand yard stares of people who had retreated inside themselves.
I was aware of what was happening, and why it was happening as a way of processing my emotions and thoughts, but for the moment I could not break free from its hold.
As we exited the garden square I became aware of a rising hubbub of noise somewhere distant to our left. Blocks of flats surrounded this garden square and there was a path that ran between the blocks. My preservation instincts kicked in and the haze muddying my thoughts fell away.
As I watched I saw a large group of lads, perhaps as many as fifty or more, all armed with bats, clubs, machetes and knives all marching through their estate. They looked across at us, and I tensed, thinking perhaps they were friends of the two lads from the store seeking retribution. But then one within their group spotted a zombie and en masse the group ran towards it.
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The lone zombie was not a runner. It had clearly suffered devastating injuries before turning. It shuffled towards the group with one useless arm at its side, while the other outstretched before it.
The group arrived and in a frenzy beat the thing to the ground. Me and Mina departed quickly fearful of their screams and shouts attracting fast zombies to the area. I wondered how long this mob could last against this other kind of enemy, and how soon until each of them would roam the streets of London with a different kind of thirst for blood.
We rounded the corner and saw ahead of us a junction that was an intersection for Grays Inn Road, York Way and Euston Road. It was one of the busiest junctions in the whole of London. On its corner was Kings Cross railway station. Both myself and Mina gasped. At this junction a hundred metres away we could see and hear a crowd of zombies thousands strong.
I could hear something loud and fast approaching from behind us, and turned to look up at the sky. A pair of RAF fighter bombers came in fast and low. We saw the bombs fall from their fuselage and then the incendiary explosion of light and heat as the whole of this junction erupted in flames.
Even from our distance we could feel a concussive blast blow our way, and along with it the acrid smell of seared meat. Me and Mina held hands as we watched the roiling mass of zombies explode in the initial blast and then stumble around on fire as the wall of flames consumed them.