And if she was being honest… Emma was slightly scared of this man she had never met before.
“Okay,” Emma said at last. “Thank you.”
The young one slung her arm around his neck and helped her hobble over to the van. She climbed in and sat stiffly in the middle seat, the young guy getting in behind her and sandwiching her between himself and the leader who took the driver’s seat. As there were only three seats in the van, the third man got in the back.
They took off down the road, Emma beginning to wonder what she had just gotten herself into.
7.
Kingsley had been expecting it. But that didn’t make the sight of Colchester's streets – populated by snappers, signs everywhere of abandonment and the crumbling of society – any easier to bear.
Driving into town perhaps wasn’t the smartest idea. When there were only one or two snappers in the road, they could simply run them over. But if there were too many standing in their way at once it would be dangerous to plough into them. Not only could enough impact damage the bus, but a couple of bodies piled up could become an obstruction, lodge one of the wheels and stop them from moving.
However, they didn’t want to leave the bus unattended on the outskirts of town. So they were risking it.
Eric was driving again. Besides Kingsley, he was the only one who knew Colchester intimately, Kara and Rebecca both being from Braintree. And since the incident in the bus park, there was an unspoken understanding among the group that Kingsley wasn’t to drive unless it was absolutely necessary.
They were now heading through the inner residential area where Emma lived. The turn into her road was coming up.
A short distance ahead there were two crashed cars blocking the way. By the look of it, one of them had hit a lamppost and swivelled, the rear of the vehicle swinging round into the opposite lane and colliding with the front of the other car.
Stopping behind the crashed cars, they killed the ignition; the bus engine was like a dinner bell in the ghostly town, which wasn’t much of a problem while they were moving as the snappers couldn’t keep up, but leaving the engine on while idle was asking to be eaten.
Three snappers hunched over a body on the other side of the cars, feeding. Presumably, they had discovered the corpse of an unfortunate driver. The snappers took no notice of the survivors.
Walking the route in his mind, Kingsley pondered the length of the walk from where they were now to Emma’s house. It wasn’t far.
“We might as well walk from here,” he said to the others. “It’s only a couple of minutes away. Saves us having to take any narrow roads on the bus.”
They considered his idea in silence for a moment. Sensing their hesitancy, Kingsley added, “We won’t be long. We’re just going to get Emma, if she’s there, and come straight back here with her.”
There was another contemplative pause. Then, one by one, the three of them nodded and murmured their agreement.
*
He hates his life. The dull grind of it, waiting tables for six hours a day with a plastic smile on his face, the suppressed frequent urge to throttle someone leaving him so drained at the end of the day that it hurts. And he knows he’ll be fired sooner or later and he’ll be forced to find another job that he hates just as much. That’s Kingsley’s life now.
She’s his new colleague. Kieth, the manager, leaves it to him to help get her acquainted with the job. Kingsley knows this is Keith’s way of testing him. Seeing if a little extra responsibility will bring out his pride and make him more dedicated to his work or something. It won’t.
But Emma, his new colleague, does bring something else out of him. And he likes it. He likes her.
Maybe it’s because she’s great to talk to despite her quiet, reserved nature, always showing an interest in his life and what he is doing, even though there isn’t much to tell.
Maybe it’s the way she makes him enjoy being at the restaurant, if only because he gets to see her.
Maybe it’s her inclination to see the good in people and give everyone a chance – how she makes Kingsley want to do the same.
Whatever it is, he finds himself falling in love with Emma over the couple weeks he spends working with her. So he asks her out just before he gets fired.
They date, and it is the most fun Kingsley has had in a long time. Life is still a dull grind most of the time, but she makes it more bearable; she makes it worth something.
Then the pregnancy happens.
He sees his life in a new light, starts to get his shit together—
Then the crash. Their child, gone…
As he stands by her hospital bed, a little concussed but otherwise unhurt, he has no idea what to say to her. Not only because there is no apology that will help mend what he has done to her – to them – but also because she has seen this coming for a while; she has been trying to get him to pull his act together since they started dating, knowing that his negligent nature and tendency toward nihilism would bite him in the arse one day. She was angelically patient… But in the end, his flawed nature won out. Kingsley watches as she comes to the conclusion that people never really change.
And he knows that he has failed her.
*
You failed her, was all Kingsley could think as they approached Emma’s house.
He felt a pang of despondence as he noticed that her car wasn’t in the driveway; there was little chance she would be home. He had no idea where she would have gone, and no way of contacting her. The likelihood of
