Tugging his blade free, Kingsley looked up to see Sammy standing with the others, her eyes red from crying. He hated himself for having nothing better to say to her than, “I’m sorry.” Sammy stumbled forward and dropped to her knees, clinging to the arm of the sofa as if it was a life raft on the sea of turmoil she had fallen into.
7.
Silence in the bus again.
They had pulled over on the verge of a back lane that skirted the village to catch a few hours of rest for the night. One person watched for danger on the road while the rest of them slept…
Don’t fall asleep…
Don’t fall asleep…
You’re supposed to be…
Shit!
Kingsley shot upright, squinting at his surroundings, feeling dazed and vulnerable. He was supposed to be keeping a lookout but had dozed off in his seat. He must not have realised how exhausted he was. How do I let these things happen?
His eyes were bleary as he tried to make out the shapes around him, the sleeping forms of his friends. His heart began to calm as he saw they were all still there, slumped across the seats, chests slowly rising and falling. A glance out the window showed no snappers lurking on the road; no movement outside except for the rustle of bushes in the wind.
Sammy moved in her seat across from Kingsley’s and he noticed then that her eyes were open and she was awake.
She watched Kingsley for a moment, then spoke in a hushed voice. “Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping watch. I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see it all again… everything that’s happened.”
Kingsley rubbed his eyes. “You know, sleep is important when you’re grieving. It doesn’t just rest your body. It allows your mind to organise your thoughts, emotions and memories, to process them.” He yawned. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but getting some decent sleep will help you deal with it all. I promise.”
“My whole life I’ve been focusing on the wrong things,” Sammy said, apparently ignoring Kingsley’s words. “I’ve never known what I’m working towards, what I want my life to be. I’ve done a lot of things purely because people told me I should do them, not because they mattered to me… What matters to me are the things that have been right in front of me all along: friends. Family.” That last word almost choked her.
“Your friends are your family now, Sammy. We’re here for you whenever you need us.”
She turned to face the window. Kingsley saw that she had a folded piece of paper in her hand and was rotating it between her fingers, contemplatively.
“But it won’t last,” Sammy said. “Will it?”
“What won’t?”
“This. Us. How long will we last, realistically?”
Kingsley shrugged in the darkness. “We can’t think like that. It’s pointless, and it doesn’t help.
“So many people are dead already. The world is falling apart and no one is coming to pick up the pieces. Where’s the military? Where’s the government?”
Kingsley wanted to reassure her. He wanted to tell her that the government had plans in place to deal with catastrophes like this and they were probably putting them into action as they spoke. But how many days had it been since the infection started spreading? If things were already this chaotic, it must have begun spreading at least a few days ago; yet people were dying in the streets and there was no army, no law enforcement here to save them.
“I need some fresh air,” Sammy said, getting up and walking out into the night without another word.
On his own in the dark and the quiet, Emma stole into Kingsley’s thoughts again.
What would happen if they got to Colchester and she wasn’t there? Or she was dead? Or worse, she had met the same fate as Sammy’s parents? Could he deal with that? He hadn’t really taken the time to consider the possibilities. There was a part of him that believed he was following a fantasy and it was unlikely he would ever see Emma again.
Before Emma had told him she was pregnant with his child, Kingsley had never held a job for longer than eight months without getting fired for “attitude problems”. Before Emma’s pregnancy, he had never made much of an effort to get to know her friends or show up to their special occasions. Before Emma’s pregnancy, he hadn’t realised he wanted a kid.
But he did. And things had started to work out after she gave him the news; he began to put in more effort at work and actually got promoted to Assistant Manager at the clothes shop where he was employed. He stopped criticising and judging other people, stopped dismissing them as nothing more than pathetic slaves to society. He had more empathy for those around him.
Kingsley knew that if he wanted to raise a child in this world, he would have to be a better citizen – so he had become one.
What went wrong?
Fast forward a few months to that fateful afternoon, driving to their anniversary dinner at a lavish restaurant in Chelmsford. Kingsley at the wheel, anxious because he was planning to propose to her that evening. The stress. The anticipation.
It was not that Kingsley had a habit of self-sabotage. He used to think that was the case, but no; he knew now that there was a part of him that craved chaos, a part of him that thrived in the buzzing alertness which came moments before something terrible was about to happen.
He’d needed a release from the stress he was feeling over the proposal.
So Kingsley had allowed the chaos-craving side of him to take over and before he knew it, his foot was laying a little too heavy on the accelerator… Relinquishing his self-control for that one moment had ended up costing him everything. No marriage. No
