But there also had to be a large part of the population that had ignored the broadcast and not stayed put. The neighbours of this couple, for instance. And where were those people?
There were a fair few snappers in the streets, but Kingsley was pretty sure there would be a lot more if all the people who’d left their homes had been infected. That meant a lot of the residents fleeing from Colchester had escaped.
Remembering how bad the A120 was, Kingsley couldn’t imagine many of them would have made it to another town even if they’d tried. With their options limited, most people would have dispersed into the countryside, seeking shelter in farmhouses and any other buildings they could find in the rural areas.
It seemed Kingsley wouldn’t be as alone as he had thought out there amidst the trees and hills. Fuck.
Where could he go to get away from people?
The woman started arguing with the man, her voice getting a little louder than was wise for an outdoor conversation. The man looked over his shoulders, wary of the racket she was making. Then his eyes fell on Kingsley and he shushed the woman. He drew her behind him and his face hardened as he stood protectively in front of her, brandishing a length of wood.
The two men said nothing, their stares communicating an equal distrust towards one another.
Squeezing his crossbow, Kingsley walked on past the couple.
*
“Hey!” someone called, pulling Kingsley out of a daydream. “Hey, wait!”
He turned his head and saw a homeless man striding his way across the road, a rottweiler padding along next to him with it’s tongue out, panting.
Kingsley had seen this guy with his dog plenty of times before, sitting outside shops on the high street and asking for change. He remembered how Emma had once given the man some money, and afterwards, he’d told her the man probably wasn’t even homeless and was likely faking it for a bit of easy cash. He remembered Emma getting this expression on her face that was somewhat forlorn, and he felt guilty for robbing her of the pleasure that acts of kindness gave her.
Afterwards, every time they passed the homeless man again Emma wouldn’t even look at the guy.
Now Kingsley felt a fresh wave of guilt as he realised the homeless man was almost certainly not a con artist; the zombie apocalypse had come and he was still out here with his dog, wearing the same old clothes. If he was a fake, he was a very dedicated one.
“Do you have any water to spare for my dog?” the man asked, stopping in front of Kingsley. “Please. He’s proper thirsty.”
If it wasn’t for the dog, Kingsley wouldn’t have stopped. The rottweiler grinned up at him. He couldn’t say no to those shiny amber eyes.
He slid his backpack off and rooted through its contents for the bottle of water he’d half finished, clutching the crossbow to his chest with one hand and keeping an eye on the man in case he tried something sneaky.
Kingsley found the bottle and held it out for the man to take. But instead the man took off his own backpack, pulled out a dull metal dog’s bowl and placed it on the ground between them. Kingsley knelt and poured a generous amount of water into the bowl.
The dog inched forward, sniffing at the bowl, then began lapping the water up aggressively. It looked almost as though it was trying to eat the liquid. Kingsley checked up and down the road to make sure no snappers were creeping up on them. When the dog was finished, the homeless man lifted the bowl to his lips and drained the rest of the water with a few large gulps. “Thank you, kind sir,” he gasped, packing the bowl back into his bag.
Kingsley nodded and started to walk away.
“Wait! One more thing.”
He turned back.
“Have you seen a woman out here with dark, wavy hair, fairly tall? And freckles on her face? She has a lot of them, I think. Her name is Ellie… or Emily. I can’t remember. I’m awful with names, to be honest.”
It was the name that planted a seed of curiosity in his mind. The description, while it matched Emma’s appearance, was vague enough that it could have fit any woman with similar features, of which there were doubtless several in Colchester. But the ambiguous name that started with the letter E, together with that description, was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
“Err… no. I haven’t seen anyone like that. Sorry,” Kingsley replied. Furrowing his brow, he added, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you looking for her?”
“She helped me. She saved me and my dog when the zombies were on us. Other people were just staring at us from their windows, but she came running outside to help. We ran from the zombies and barricaded ourselves inside a shop to hide from them. I wanted to repay her by helping her out, but she left while I was asleep and I never got the chance.”
Helping a stranger in their time of need – something Emma would do.
Maybe it was a longshot, but he had to try.
Kingsley cleared his throat. “Did she mention where she was going?”
“Not specifically,” the man said. “She was very concerned about her sister, and she mentioned her sister’s husband had an uncle with a huge house where the rest of her family were going. She kept saying she needed to go there. But she didn’t say where it was. I asked her about it but she got proper worked up over it and then started to hyperventilate. I managed to calm her down, and eventually we both went to sleep without saying another word. When I woke up, she was gone. I wanted to help her look for her sister.”
“What was her sister’s husband called? Did she tell you?”
The man sighed. “It began with a D… Dan? Something like that. Why?”
Kingsley turned away
