He let out a deep sigh.
Maybe Sammy was right about there being no hope for the future. Maybe there was little chance they would find Emma alive.
But fuck chance. So what if Kingsley was a hopeless romantic? He had never let the world define him before, and he wasn’t about to start.
Standing and stretching, Kingsley realised he’d lost track of time and began to wonder what Sammy was doing. How long had she been outside? She had probably gone out to cry, he thought. In which case there was nothing to worry about.
Still, Kingsley paced up and down the bus. If she wasn’t back in five minutes, he would go out and check, make sure nothing had happened to her.
The folded piece of paper Sammy had left on her seat caught his eye again, and he hesitated for all of six seconds before curiosity got the better of him. Kingsley picked it up and unfolded it, revealing a short message written in large capital letters. He tilted the paper towards the moonlight so he could read it.
Three words; at first, they confused him.
Then he understood and panic set in.
*
Sammy walked.
She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wanted to get away.
Although leaving her friends was not the smartest idea in a time like this, there was no way of avoiding more heartbreak and loss if she stayed with them. And if she ever had to go through that pain again, she would crumble.
Part of her had already crumbled along with the loved ones she’d lost over the past two days. Kingsley was right – her friends were her family. Her only family now, and that was exactly why Sammy couldn’t stick around to watch them die, one by one. It was going to happen. This world was fucked.
She walked, and walked, and walked, keeping to the verge. She was ready to squat in the bushes and hide if snappers came traipsing down the road. They were slow and dumb. She was quick and smart. Avoiding encounters with the dead was easy enough most of the time, and Sammy could kill them if it came to it. She hadn’t taken any of the supplies from the bus. She didn’t need them. All she needed was her knife and her wits.
Every fifty steps she took, Sammy would stop and hesitate, on the brink of turning and heading back. She’d only left about five minutes ago. There was a good chance that Kingsley wasn’t even worried yet, and that he hadn’t found the note she had left on the seat.
DON’T FOLLOW ME, it said. Big and bold in capital letters, a note as decisive and assured as Sammy wished she was herself.
Well, this was a start, she guessed. It was the first big decision she had made without consulting anyone else, probably in her whole life.
Sammy paused again, but this time it was because she heard movement nearby – footsteps on the road. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but it was still difficult to make out anything other than ill-defined shapes and the black silhouettes of the trees and bushes that hemmed her in on both sides.
There was a figure moving drunkenly down the road towards her. Before she could decide whether it was living or dead, the sound of snapping teeth eliminated any doubts Sammy had and she crouched down in the bracken, entangling herself in thorns.
As Sammy listened to the snapper’s feet scuffing on the tarmac, she became aware of a burning desire in her chest – a desire to destroy things, to hit, stab, burn, impale, and kill. She wondered how many snappers she could rid the world of by herself, if she really put her mind to it.
It then struck her that the snapper walking past her now was heading toward the bus. One of them wouldn’t be much trouble for her friends. Kingsley would take care of it. However, he would then realise Sammy was still out there while snappers were wandering dangerously close to the bus, and he would go looking for her. If he wasn’t looking already.
She crept out of her hiding place and started towards the oblivious snapper, ready with her knife.
Unable to look at the ungainly figure without thinking of her mum and dad again, Sammy’s emotions swelled and she seized the snapper by the hair, bringing her knife up to push it into the soft spot at the base of the skull. Rage did not work in her favour in the low visibility, though; the blade of her knife hit too high and met a solid clump of bone.
Sammy didn’t panic. Not at first. But as she readjusted her grip on the knife, the snapper spun whilst flailing it’s arms – one of which hit Sammy’s wrist with the force of a tree branch caught in a hurricane, causing her to let go of the knife. Her only weapon fell to the ground and skittered into the grass that bordered the road.
Now she panicked.
Struggling to keep the snapper at arm’s length, Sammy stumbled over a prodding foot and went down on her back, still grappling with the snapper. The impact drove the air from Sammy’s lungs and, gasping for breath, it was almost impossible to summon the strength to fend off the gnashing mouth now inches from her face.
I’m dead, Sammy thought, bracing for the feel of cold teeth perforating her skin. I should have stayed.
When most people picture their own deaths, they often imagine their final moments to be dramatic and profound, like the death of a character in a film. But knowing her life was about to end, Sammy was struck by how insignificant a moment this was. The life would seep from her body in the night while she lay alone on a cracked, unlit back road, her flesh becoming the food of a mindless creature; she was an ant about to be squashed under a child’s shoe.
As much as
