“Alright! Alright! Go! All three of you!” The clowns looked to each other. “I said go! He’s going to kill me unless you all leave! Go back! Now!”
The clowns rescinded, backing away before turning and walking the way they had arrived. They turned to look back, but continued walking. Lawro kept the blade inside Stank’s neck the whole time. Soon they had vanished, leaving the once strong lunatic all on his own.
“What are you going to do?”
“Shut up!” Lawro yelled, silencing Miss Greene with immediate effect. “Now, tell me,” he growled, turning his attention to Stank, “how far are we from the football stadium?”
“The football stadium?” the clown sighed.
Lawro jammed the knife further into his neck. “Don’t mess with me. I won’t ask you again.”
“Seven miles. About seven miles. Ten at most. Follow the dual carriageway, it’s signposted.”
Lawro turned his attention back to the school team. Bucky noticed Lawro’s aura change. He somehow appeared more chaotic, crazier, even. Had he been pushed over the edge?
“All of you, back in the van. Miss Greene, you drive.”
“Wait, wait,” the clown blurted, “you can’t leave in your van.”
“Why the hell not?” Lawro asked, still embracing the lunatic.
“Your tires. We slashed them.”
Bucky closed his eyes. They were done for. There’s no way they’d make it ten miles with a population of crazies haunting the area. He looked to Lawro. His fellow pupil and cricket assistant had turned into something far worse than a zombie. He grimaced.
“Asshole!” he yelled before plunging the knife fully into the clown’s neck. Stank cried out, piercing the silence with a scream. The knife repeatedly plunged into his body. The sound of slicing flesh engulfed the silent area. Again and again the blade entered the clown’s body. Stank lurched to the floor and yet still Lawro continued. The knife plunged into his abdomen and dragged down toward his pelvis, again and again. Lawro’s anger finally vented, he stood upright, kicking the lifeless corpse of the clown to the side. The clown’s digestive system slumped onto the tarmac.
“Oh, God,” Aaron blurted. Johnny hacked then vomited onto the road.
“What? What the hell is wrong with you?” Lawro shouted. His face contained the erratic splatter of blood. “He’d have done the same thing to us!”
“I know. I know,” Miss Greene began, reaching out to him. “Give me the knife, Peter. You did what you needed to do. It’s done now. Come on.” Lawro looked to the knife in his hand, then back to his teacher. “Come on. We need to find somewhere to stop for the night, now. Look, the daylight is fading.”
The moment had been so intense that Bucky hadn’t even acknowledged the change in lighting.
“Yeah, and I guess we’re not going to be on our own for too long,” Aaron added. He was right. Bucky knew that in situations like this, in the movies anyway, the area would soon be crawling with infected.
“Peter, let’s go,” Miss Greene ordered. He reached out and offered the knife. She took it, placed it in her tracksuit pocket and used her leg to wipe the blood from her hand. “Are you okay?”
Lawro nodded. “Yeah. I did what I had to do.”
“You did. Now come on. All of you. We need to get going.”
“Where to?” Lacey asked.
“Anywhere. Right now, I think it’s important we just keep moving. Come on. This way.”
Miss Greene headed the kids as they walked past the van. Bucky paused a moment.
“What?” Johnny said, noticing he’d stopped.
“I’ll just be a moment.”
He wandered across to the brutalised clown, noticing that the sword hilt still lay intact. Holding his breath, Bucky pulled the leather strap down the body, through the innards and past the legs which had fallen together. He removed the leather sheath, and even though bloody, threw it over his shoulder, marking his cricket jumper. He then jogged across to the sword and placed it inside the hilt with a swift move, first time. Its handle jutted out just above his right shoulder.
Johnny looked to him. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Protect myself,” he replied.
“Think you can take on a crowd of crazies?”
Bucky shook his head. “It’s not the crazies I’m worried about.”
Two
Miss Greene led them across country where human contact would be minimal. They’d bumped into a few infected and managed to dispatch of them with ease. Bucky had taken a few down, much to the dismay of Lawro, who at one point demanded Bucky release the sword to him but, ever cautious, Bucky declined. Lawro had been pissed off, threatening this and threatening that, but the look his teacher flashed at him during these episodes told him his decision had been the correct one.
“Over there. What’s that?” Johnny stated, pointing to a large barn of some kind in the middle of a field. The light had dwindled even more during their journey, and now stars twinkled in the dying blue sky.
“That has to be our place,” Bucky said. “We can’t stay out here any longer.”
“Agreed. Let’s go and see,” Miss Greene added.
“What if it’s occupied and they say no?” Lawro asked. “What then?”
Miss Greene shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s jump that bridge when we get to it.”
The kids followed her through a field full of vibrant coloured rape yellow. The warm breeze felt pleasant against Bucky’s skin. If the world hadn’t gone to hell, this would have been one of those perfect summer evenings, the ones on a Friday night after school where you walked the dog through the fields behind your house not caring a shit about anything because school was out for two days.
“Be careful in case anyone is around,” Miss Greene ordered as they approached the structure. Its bottom half had been constructed of breeze blocks, above them wooden slats ran vertical towards its roof.
“We must be on some kind of farm,” Johnny guessed.
“How long did it take you to figure that out, genius?” Lawro quipped.
Bucky noticed Johnny about to offer some kind of witty comeback and
