As the van’s ignition came on, Eric, Kara and Rebecca snatched their things up off the ground and made for the bus at Eric’s insistence, despite the fact that they didn’t have time to turn the bus around before the snappers reached them, meaning they would have to run a bunch of them over.
Eric jumped in the driver’s seat and jerked the key. The engine juddered on and he wrenched it into reverse.
The van took a left turn into a side road as the rear of the bus hit the first snapper with a bump and a tremor. Another bump as the second snapper threw itself at the side of the bus and bounced off, leaving a splotch of blood on the window.
They ran over at least five more before they’d reversed far enough to turn into the road that the van had gone down. Fingers squeaked on the glass of the rear window as rigorous hands pawed at it. Eric thrust the gear back into drive and floored the pedal while hauling the steering wheel to the left.
Another snapper caught the front left headlight as they swung into the road, crushing squirming bodies under their wheels, the bus wobbling on the uneven surface created by the fallen snappers.
Besides a smattering of blood and a few dents, the bus was unscathed.
The van was faster and more nimble than their vehicle. But Sammy needed their help, and Eric wasn’t going to let them slip through his fingers.
2.
Kingsley didn’t know where he was going, only that he was heading for the rolling fields and trees of the countryside.
He pictured himself stumbling upon a beautiful country manor with a well for water, an apple orchard and a vegetable garden. He pictured himself going out into the woods to shoot rabbits and squirrels; as much as he hated the thought of hunting animals to feed himself, snuffing out innocent life just to continue his own drab existence, he knew that hunger and desperation would sharpen his survival instincts and take over when hunting became necessary.
Mostly he craved solitude. The kind that couldn’t be found in these haunted streets.
A brisk wind propelled the clouds across the steely sky. Somewhere close by, a forgotten wind chime stirred outside someone’s home, the tuneless bells attracting a snapper that loped ahead toward the sound.
Hearing his footsteps as he trailed behind, the snapper twisted to face Kingsley. Killing them had gotten easier. He’d discovered that the best way was to plunge a knife through the eye or temple and pierce the brain – one push and they were dead. Sure, it was nauseating. But less so than smacking them several times in the skull with something heavy or trying to break their neck to paralyse them.
Kingsley pulled out his knife, waited for the snapper to come near, and was about to ram it into the snapper’s murky eye when he noticed the pair of glasses sitting on it’s nose.
The lenses shielded it’s eyes. Kingsley had to grasp the snapper by the top of the head and, holding it back, press his blade instead to the bottom of it’s wagging jaw and drive it upwards with a grunt, rupturing through soft flesh, terse cartilage and then brain tissue. He yanked the blade out and the body crumpled to the ground.
At some point in the past two days, Kingsley had stopped paying attention to their faces, to the people they used to be.
But the minor hindrance of the glasses had made him take a second look at this one. The body in front of him had once belonged to a man presumably in his late forties. Lank brown hair, a bald spot on the crest of his head. The polo shirt, knitted vest and chinos he wore suggested he’d been a golfer, or maybe he’d just had an outdated sense of fashion.
Kingsley looked away from the body. How fast was the world changing him if already he had stopped seeing the dead as people?
He’d left his best friend – his only remaining friend… and he felt less human.
Responsibility. Purpose. That’s what made people human; that’s what he lacked.
Hearing a voice, Kingsley scanned his surroundings for survivors. He caught movement at the front of a house ahead and to his left. Saw two people, a man and a woman with their backs to him, standing by a window and talking in low voices.
The man picked up a board from a pile of scrap wood and held it against the window. Sizing up boards to make a barricade with, Kingsley guessed.
The couple hadn’t seen him, and he stopped to listen to their conversation.
“Forget it,” the man said in response to a suggestion from the woman that Kingsley hadn’t heard. “We have everything we need here.”
“I know, it’s just, all our neighbours have gone and everyone else is infected—”
“Yes, everyone is leaving. Which is why we’ll be safer here. People are only gonna get more desperate as time goes on, and desperate people are dangerous. We need to keep ourselves to ourselves. If everyone’s going to the countryside, we’re safer here. Away from them.”
Kingsley stopped listening.
Everyone’s going to the countryside, he thought. Of course they are.
Why had it only just occurred to him? The couple they’d met on the road had told them they were staying away from towns and cities and advised them to do the same; he knew many people would have listened to the emergency broadcast and locked themselves in their homes with all the food and supplies they could carry from their local convenience store or supermarket,
