*
“That might get infected,” Kingsley said. He was staring at James’ wrist. “Looks like he bit you pretty hard. You’re gonna have to get it cleaned, and you’ll probably need to be put on antibiotics.”
“That bloke wasn’t normal,” Eric said, almost whispering. “He was like a... a zombie. Sounds crazy, I know, but he just kept coming back.”
Kingsley frowned. It was obvious that something had been wrong with the man – he had been trying to eat a woman’s stomach, after all. But the way that Eric was acting right now was also strange. He would normally have devised some kind of plan in his head to deal with the situation by now. Something about the man had disturbed him. Disturbed them all.
Then again, Eric had just killed a guy in defence of his friends. Anyone would be weighed down by that.
Kingsley had watched everything from a distance, peering at the confrontation from behind the barbed wire fence, still disoriented from the traumatic memory triggered by the sight of the wreckage. But he was freaked out by what he had seen.
He came to the realisation then that they had to do something if there was any chance that the mutilated woman on the ground was still alive. And it seemed that he was the only one who wasn’t busy recovering from shock. His distance from the scene, his detachment from reality in that moment, had allowed him to observe it all without the same horror that Eric, James and Sammy had experienced.
There was also the matter of James’ arm. He needed medical attention to make sure that he wouldn’t contract any diseases from the bite or get an infection.
None of them had their phones with them. They were all zipped away in their tents back at the camp.
“Eric, can you run back to the tents and grab your phone?” Kingsley asked. “We need to call an ambulance, and the police. We need to alert them that there’s been a crash and two people are seriously injured, possibly dead.” He knew that Eric worked best when he had a specific goal to complete. Give him something to do, distract him.
Eric raised his eyes from the man’s body on the road and met Kingsley’s stare. After a brief few seconds, he nodded, turned and raced off toward the trees.
Kingsley eyed the mutilated woman with apprehension, knowing what he had to do next. He tried to ignore how dead she looked as he knelt beside her. Her eyes were so wide they seemed to bulge out of her skull, and they had a glassy sheen to them.
First, he pressed two fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse in her jugular. He waited a few seconds with his fingers resting on the spot. Felt nothing.
He moved on to her wrist and searched for a pulse there... Still nothing.
Her skin was starting to go cold. It was looking more and more likely that the woman was already dead. Kingsley shifted his focus to the wound in her belly. The dark blue blouse she wore was ripped and soaked with blood where the man had bitten her, and beneath it, the jagged depression of the wound still wept red. However, the bite was not gushing blood as fast as it had been when the guy was gnawing on her.
He applied pressure to the wound with two hands, but he was pretty sure there was no point as she didn't seem to be bleeding at all anymore. Kingsley had no idea what else to do. He tried chest compressions for a couple minutes, but he was almost certain the woman had died by now.
He heard the splatter of vomit on the road behind him. Sammy was throwing up, and he felt like he might be sick himself.
Kingsley stood, glanced at the trees just in time to see Eric rushing back to the road, his phone in hand, watching the screen as he ran. When he reached the crash site, he shook his head and swore under his breath.
Kingsley went to him and asked what was wrong.
“I tried calling 9-9-9,” Eric huffed. “But it didn’t connect. It just dialled for a few seconds then stopped and told me the number couldn’t be reached. I tried it twice, same thing happened both times. And I’m getting no signal anywhere, had to use an emergency network to make the call.”
“It wouldn’t connect? To the emergency services? What the actual fuck is going on?”
“This is bad,” James said. “This is really fucking bad.” He stared at Kingsley and Eric. “My arm is killing me. We’re going to have to go back and get the cars, then we can drive to the nearest town. Braintree’s not that far from here; I can go to the hospital, and we can report the accident either straight from the hospital or go to the police station.”
Kingsley thought about James’ idea. Eric eyed the rugged man’s body, clearly pondering again on what he’d done to the guy.
“Oh my god.” Sammy’s voice behind them was tremulous. “Guys. Look.”
They all faced Sammy. She was standing over the dead woman’s body – there was no doubt in Kingsley’s mind that she was dead now – pointing with a shaky hand at the woman’s head.
“Look at her eyes.”
They all walked over to the body and gawped at the pale, lifeless face. Kingsley didn’t understand what he was seeing.
The dead woman’s eyeballs had taken on a grey-blue tinge, the pupils fading into a murky cornea. And the rims of her eyes were a watery red colour.
Kingsley was pretty sure her eyes had not looked like that a few minutes ago. They must have changed just now, within the small space of time that he’d been talking to Eric and James. They looked exactly like the crazed man’s eyes. The rugged, zombie-of-a-man who had killed her.
Then the woman’s arm twitched.
Her jaw opened and closed.
Those grey eyes rolled and shifted in her skull, seeming to look directly at
