The middle aged man, slightly overweight and wide eyed with terror, stood with his shaking hands still clinging to the handle. Sweat trickled down his brow and his lips trembled as he struggled to form the words to explain himself.
“I… I just… I thought…” He stammered, releasing his grip on the axe. He seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere, swinging that dangerous thing, with no pause for consideration.
The room erupted into screams from both Molly and one other, noise that would most definitely attract attention. Rachel covered Molly’s eyes and mouth, but it was already too late, Molly had seen more than enough to scar her forever. As for Tyler, he stood hypnotised by the grisly scene, unable to even so much as flinch.
“Shit, Darren! What the fuck? What… the… fuck!” A woman snapped at the shaking and stuttering man.
“I thought he was one of those things, I thought… I… I didn’t know he was…” the man responsible for killing Lori and Rachel’s male companion, only known as Darren, replied.
“Who's fucking great idea was it to give the guy with a nervous disposition the fire axe? That guy could have been useful to us for fuck sake, Darren!”
“Fuck! Shut that door quick!” Another man shouted and sprang to action with others’ help. They could hear the wild screams and stampeding footsteps of alerted crazies, before they slammed the door shut. “We need to barricade it now, fast!” He yelled.
The others proceeded to find something or several objects to place in front of the door, but not before the loud slam of people crashing against the other side of the door.
There were eleven of them altogether, including the new arrivals and excluding the corpse that would have been the twelfth; the mood wasn't exactly welcoming to say the least.
As the others barricaded the door, the two women and children huddled into a corner, terrified of this new group; it had been less than a few hours into the outbreak and already they were turning against each other.
A man approached them and opened his hands and arms submissively.
“I won’t hurt you, you have my word. I apologise for what Darren did to your friend or family member. Everyone, as you can imagine, is on tenterhooks and unfortunately we trusted the worst possible person with the axe we found for breaking down doors and obstacles in an emergency. My name is Adam, what are your names?”
CHAPTER 21 - EDWARD, ADAM & MARTHA
3:45pm - 8 hours, 58 minutes since outbreak in London.
2 hours, 35 minutes since outbreak aboard MS HotS.
. . .
. . .
Edward placed his arm out to keep Christine back, as they came to the remaining corridors leading to the cabin where Martha resided. It was a good thing though that Edward had switched his mobile to vibrate only, because with the way Martha insisted on calling every few minutes, despite getting no answer, that iconic tPhone ringtone would have alerted those twitchers on several occasions to their presence.
The sprinklers were going off and the corridor was drenched, no doubt because of the fire he had started earlier, but at the rate he was starting fires with just this canister of deodorant and a lighter, sprinklers would have to have been going off all over the ship. Effective though it was, it certainly wouldn’t last forever, sooner or later one or the other would run out and then they’d all be seriously fucking screwed. Before that could become a possibility, they needed to rescue Martha and get the fuck off of this ship.
Not only was traversing the soaked ground noisy, but substantially sluggish too.
Edward decided to take precautions and pre-emptively text Martha to open the cabin door. She likely wouldn’t reply by text, so he could only trust that she had read it and wouldn’t attempt to fruitlessly call him yet again.
Reaching and waiting at the end of the corridor leading to the cabin door where Martha resided, they waited there for the door to open, it left them less exposed and with the option of three directions to run in, instead of two if they found themselves facing adversaries.
“Where is she?” Edward whispered after several minutes of waiting, “We’re helpless out here, she might as well be signing our death warrant!”
“She’ll open it, we can trust her. Be patient”, Christine whispered back, but as calm as she attempted to be, her trembling hand squeezing his own was a clear indication that her words were paper thin.
With a sigh of relief, a beep signified the opening of the cabin door and the two wasted little time making for it, as Martha peered out and gestured them to come in. That door shut very quickly behind them and the two hunched over in the middle of the cabin panting.
“Where on Earth were you for so damn long?” Martha demanded. Edward remained silent, instead pointing towards the bathroom.
All huddled inside the bathroom with the door shut behind them, Edward turned to them both.
“Okay, and then there were three. Sorry Martha, those things are swarming the place and not attracting too much attention meant a great deal of biding my time and hiding. On top of that I had to locate your daughter, who I only found by sheer chance and could have just as easily missed, but I managed to get her and we’re both safe and well”.
“What exactly is going on?” Martha enquired.
“Everyone’s fucking lost it. It’s probably better you stay ignorant, besides, I couldn’t explain what I saw and encountered if you gave me all day”.
“Okay, are we safe here?”
“No”, Christine replied.
“What are we going to do about it then?” Martha asked.
“It’s less about how safe we are and more about how
