Seeing Eric and Sammy’s glassy stares, Rebecca looked back at the archway and let out a gasp when she saw them. There were too many for them to fight – at least a dozen and still more coming.
As they fled the shopping centre and more snappers tottered out of the shops on both sides of the plaza to join the marching undead, the realisation struck Eric cold.
This was a trap, he thought. Somebody led the snappers here with that trail.
5.
It was Kara who broke the silence. Kingsley was content to not speak at all, to put all of his focus toward looking threatening enough to sway the policewoman from trying anything. Though he didn’t know what she could do with her wrist cuffed to the seat.
“Shouldn’t they be back by now?”
Kingsley said nothing, thought, Shit, I don’t even know.
After another minute of quiet, Kara spoke again. “I’m worried about Rebecca. We should go and look for them... This isn’t about the bus anymore. We’ll share the bus. You’re right – we stand a better chance of surviving if we stick together. But that’s why we have to go and make sure our friends aren’t dead already.”
Kingsley still said nothing, staring out the window at Kara’s back as though he was barely listening. But the nervous flicker of his eyes contradicted him.
“You can put that machete down. You won’t have to use it, and I know you don’t want to. I’ve met people who enjoy hurting others. Bad people. It’s part of my job. I can tell you’re not one of them. You’ll hesitate when it comes to using it and that hesitation will get you killed.”
“Just stop,” Kingsley said.
“Stop what?”
“Stop talking. I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not working on me.”
“What am I trying to do? Get you to uncuff me?”
Kingsley shook his head. “Get me to talk.”
“Isn’t it working, then?” A half-smile appeared on Kara’s face.
“No. You want me to empathise with you, to see you as a person rather than an enemy, so that I’ll loosen up and let my guard down. Works on most people. We’re emotional creatures, not logical ones.”
“And it isn’t working on you because you’re... what? Emotionless?”
Kingsley scoffed and shook his head. Then he realised that he had lowered his machete while talking, his knuckles white from squeezing the handle. He raised the blade and continued to peer out the window. He had already said too much.
“Fine.” Kara sighed, looking tired. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to work together at some point if we are to share this bus. I mean, you can’t keep me as your hostage forever.”
“When we tried to take this bus, you said it was yours because you found it first – as if there’s some kind of order, some kind of law still left in this world that makes it so.” Kingsley didn’t know why he was talking, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You believe in law and order. Don’t you? That’s why you joined the police force, isn’t it? I bet you think the military are going to swoop in and save the world from this mess and scientists are going to find a cure.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing: I do think we’re going to survive this. After all, the dead will rot, won’t they? Or they’ll starve to death or something. That’s why all the horror movies are unrealistic. Zombies are still only human bodies. We just need to find a safe place, gather loads of supplies, and wait for the dead to die again…”
Kara’s words trailed off as she noticed Kingsley staring with obvious alarm at something outside the window to her back. She twisted in her seat to see what it was.
The sight of Rebecca, Sammy and Eric all alive was a relief. But the fact that they were pelting towards the bus was worrying. What were they running from?
Kara stood up and slipped her hand out of the suddenly loose handcuffs. Kingsley spared a second to gawk in astonishment, as she showed him the spare handcuff key she had been hiding in her other hand. “I unlocked them five minutes ago while you were staring out the window.”
If Kara’s cuffs had really been unlocked for that long, that meant she’d had an opportunity to try something. She could have attacked Kingsley, stolen his machete and held him hostage, demanded that his friends let her and Rebecca take the bus for themselves. But she hadn’t.
Kingsley didn’t have time to think about it.
They both spun toward the bus door when they heard Eric yelling. “Start the bus!”
They rushed to the front of the vehicle, Kingsley jumping into the driver’s seat and turning the ignition without question. There was far too much urgency in Eric’s voice for hesitation.
The vehicle trembled awake and Rebecca, Sammy and Eric spilled into the bus. No sooner had Eric slung his baggage down on a seat than the first snapper stumbled around the corner where they had run from – this one a boy no more than ten years old, bites all over the body. It seemed to Kingsley that the snapper was leering at him, it’s broken arm twisted in some kind of malign gesture.
The snappers poured into the bus park in a fiendish current, building until there were more of them than Kingsley had ever seen before in one place – at least forty or so, and more drifting into view.
“How did you get so many of them after you?” Kingsley asked as he wrenched the wheel to the left, aiming for the exit at the back of the bus park.
“Shit,” Sammy said. “Hurry up. They’ll swarm us.”
The first snapper was only a few feet away from the bus.
“It was a trap,” Eric said, breathless.
As Kingsley accelerated to turn, he ran
