Maybe it was that she missed him. Or maybe it was the fact that Kingsley had always seemed to come alive in chaotic situations – up until the accident, that was – and she craved the comfort of his grounded energy.
Whatever it was, Emma needed to get a grip. She was alone now, and she needed to deal with that. She had put herself in that position, after all, by choosing to cut ties with Kingsley.
Emma paced around the living room again and again, a goldfish in a bowl, trying to make a plan from her scrambled thoughts and emotions, whilst itching to open the kitchen cupboards and make sure the labels of every jar and tin of food were facing the cupboard doors (another one of her compulsions).
I need to get out of here. The thought came unbidden and Emma knew it came from somewhere rational because it kept floating back to the surface of her mind, even as her obsessions began to create a tumult. And because it was true; she needed to get out of the house or she would go positively insane.
Then – a shout.
It came from the street again. The edge of desperation in the noise stopped Emma in her tracks and pulled her toward the window.
The sight of another human being in danger was naturally a distressing one. Humans are social creatures, evolved to band together for survival, empathy an evolutionary trait.
Still, when Emma saw the man fending off an infected woman in the road, the tug of empathy she felt for him surprised her. Not because it was unusual of her to empathise with strangers – quite the opposite was true – but because she recognised the man as one of the homeless from the town centre. And every time she had walked past him sitting cross-legged outside a convenience store and begging for change, Emma had forced herself to ignore the man’s pleas, averting her eyes and speeding up, convinced that he was a con artist pretending to be homeless.
But Emma couldn’t simply ignore him now. She couldn’t ignore his fearful yells as he tried to hold the infected back while keeping his hands away from it’s gnashing teeth.
At first, Emma didn’t understand why the homeless man was trying to fight the infected instead of running away.
Then she spotted his dog, the rottweiler that always accompanied him on the streets. The dog was defending him from another of the infected, jaw locked around the zombie’s wrist, pulling it by the arm in staggering circles.
The two infected were both unrelenting. Apparently unphased by the efforts of the homeless guy and his dog. Neither of the infected gave grunts of pain or screwed up their faces in hurt.
That was when Emma noticed a third infected tottering toward the dog, heard the homeless man’s cries get more desperate as he also spotted the third one approaching.
It wasn’t a very hard decision; for a few heartbeats, Emma watched the rabid shell of a human hobble closer to the vulnerable pair. Then she rushed to the front door and flung it open. Charged outside.
“Hey!” Emma’s shout was lost in the hubbub of yells, dog growls and snapping teeth. Only the third infected twisted it’s head toward her.
A wide-eyed face ogled at her from a window in the house across the street, and she wondered why nobody else had come out to help. Then she thought of the emergency broadcast and the mention of infection, the warning to remain indoors; Emma was either crazy or stupid to have come out here.
Definitely crazy, she thought as she ran past the struggling man and his dog, intent on luring the third infected away from them. But the homeless man’s yells suddenly changed tone and Emma realised he was speaking to her.
“Help me, please!” he called. She turned to face him and saw that he was pointing with one hand at something on the ground by her feet. “Pass me one of those!”
Looking down, Emma hadn’t the foggiest what he was talking about – there was nothing there.
“Pass me one of the bricks! Please!”
Her eyes went to the red bricks that lay at the foot of the crumbling wall of her neighbour’s front garden. She snatched one up and placed it in the man’s outstretched palm. Adjusting the brick so that he had a decent grip, his face tightened and he swung it at the undead woman’s temple.
Dark blood spritzed his mucky coat sleeve, and the infected reeled from the blow. But that didn’t stop it from lurching back, forcing him to clop it on the head a second time before it collapsed.
The man turned to help his dog just as the rottweiler’s jaw slid down the arm of the infected it was biting and tore off a finger. Tossing his brick to the side, the man whistled at the dog, then spun and fled. The dog gave no indication that it had heard it’s master’s call, growling and steadily backing away from the ceaseless infected. Then, abruptly, it whirled and dashed away after the man.
Emma had no intention of locking herself in her home and waiting, hoping that help came. Especially not with the infected out there banging on her door.
So she followed the homeless man.
She caught up with him as he turned the corner onto a busier street. More zombies shuffling across the road. Emma counted eight of them.
It disturbed Emma how quickly she had begun to think of the infected as inhuman, as monsters, but when you came into close contact with them, it was hard to think of them as anything but malevolent. Demons with a corroded human appearance. Emma understood now why Leena had asked her if she’d seen one up close.
The homeless man made a run for a corner shop halfway up the street, the dog at his heels barking at the infected as they staggered after the pair. Following, Emma was able to dart past the infected while
