5.
One day earlier
When Emma realised she’d spent the night in a corner shop with a homeless man and his dog while zombies lumbered through the streets outside, she knew she was exhausted. Of course she was – she had barely slept the night before. It had been one of those nights where random memories regurgitated themselves from every last synapse of her brain and kept her awake better than caffeine ever could. She hadn’t had one of those sleepless spells in a long time before that, and it just so happened that the dead started to walk the next day.
Her life was full of coincidences like that. Maybe that was why it was so easy for her to believe they were more than just coincidences, that they were caused by her.
Emma glanced at the homeless man – Terry, he’d introduced himself as in the few words they had exchanged – sleeping on a bed of collapsed cardboard boxes in the corner of the stockroom they were cooped up in. She wondered whether she ought to try waking him. The only conversation they’d had so far had been unproductive, him answering her questions with grunts, shrugs and short, one-word replies before rolling over and going to sleep.
Terry seemed to value sleep more than discussing their predicament and figuring out what the hell was going on. Emma supposed the man was used to sleeping in a lot worse places on the streets and was taking advantage of the roof over his head, the warmth and security.
He was kind; he had comforted Emma yesterday when she began having a panic attack after realising she’d left her phone at her house and was unable to communicate with Leena.
She should let Terry sleep, she decided. She would feel guilty disturbing him after the kindness he’d shown her.
They had left the stockroom door open a crack and Emma could see the sun swelling up behind the houses on the opposite side of the street when she looked out the front window. Early morning.
The infected that had been thumping on the window had eventually wandered off, losing sight of Emma and Terry once they retreated into the back and kept quiet for a while.
Emma had pondered all night trying to come up with a plan.
On the phone yesterday, Leena had said before she hung up that Dave was going to take her and the kids to his uncle’s place. Leena had also said she would call back, but since Emma had left her phone at home, caught up in her determination and haste to help Terry and his dog, she didn’t have a clue whether her sister had tried to get hold of her again. She didn’t know whether they’d made it to Dave’s uncle’s place, or run into trouble on the way.
Luckily, Emma knew where Dave’s uncle lived. She had visited his home – a spacious, six-bedroom detached house on a quiet lane between Stanway and Beacon End, complete with stables, vegetable patches and a chicken coop – when he’d hosted a gathering for Dave’s thirtieth birthday.
Being far enough from town to avoid the mayhem, and built for a self-sufficient lifestyle, it was clear why Dave wanted his family to spend the apocalypse there.
Emma vaguely remembered the directions to get there. She could do it. But she would feel much safer travelling in her car. She would only have to walk through the suburbs and across the green, but the thought of being outside even for five minutes amidst the horrors she’d seen made her heart race.
It would be quicker and safer in her car. Emma just needed to get back to her house first, then she could get the car (and grab her phone while she was there) and be there in ten minutes assuming nothing held her up.
That was her plan.
The rising sun peeled past the chimneys of the houses and shone in Emma’s eyes. Using this annoyance as her cue to get moving, she stood and walked to the door next to the stockroom that opened onto a small space with two other doors – the toilet on the right and the fire exit straight ahead.
She peered into the toilet as she passed, shuddering when she caught sight of the drops of blood on the floor. That was where they’d found the shopkeeper who must have opened the store yesterday. He’d turned, a bite mark on his hand, on the soft tissue between thumb and forefinger.
It was the bites that did it, Emma knew. Although she had never seen a zombie movie in her life, pop culture had made her aware of that one piece of universally accepted zombie lore: when a zombie bites you, you become one of them. And it seemed to hold true in real life. She’d spotted bite marks on most of the infected she had encountered so far.
Pushing through the fire exit, Emma averted her eyes from the corner of the yard where the shopkeeper’s body was. After Terry had put the man out of his misery with a hammer he’d found in the stockroom, the two of them had then carried the body outside so that the store wouldn’t start to smell of rotting flesh.
As she walked around to the alleyway at the side of the shop, she felt a tug of hesitation at leaving Terry on his own without even telling him where she was going.
At least that’s what she told herself was causing her hesitation; in truth, she hadn’t even known the man for a full day and the slight companionship she felt toward him was a result of his unexpected warmth toward her, and the struggle they’d endured together.
Maybe the hesitation was also because Emma was scared. Scared to make decisions. Scared to be completely alone.
She stood by the gate at the end of the
