But he didn’t. Just then, Kara grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed to some scaffolding that stood against a house across the road. “We’ll be safe up there. They can’t climb.”
The three of them rushed over to the scaffolding, reaching the ladder right as the first snapper from the bend lurched towards Eric and he swung the chain mace round in a blow that almost took the snapper’s head off it’s shoulders.
Rebecca scrambled up the ladder first while Kara clobbered another snapper to death with her police baton. Then Kara was up, kicking at a pair of dead hands that had gotten hold of her left boot on the fourth rung. Seeing this, Eric threw his arms around the waist of the snapper holding Kara’s foot, pulled it off of her and launched it bodily at the other encroaching undead.
Then Kara was safely up on the wooden platform and it was Eric’s turn.
Hurry. Five snappers encircling him, drawing in on the ladder as he leapt onto the rungs. The duffel bag and chain mace weighed him down considerably and he struggled to climb the ladder as fast as Rebecca and Kara had.
Halfway up, he suddenly felt his feet being tugged toward the ground. When he looked down he saw that two of them had latched onto him.
With a blow of fear, he watched as the snappers tried to bite through his boots. Their teeth failed to penetrate his footwear but it was a startling sight, an unnerving sensation to feel the pressure of something that, without the protection of his boots, would have spelt his doom.
But he was doomed anyway; he couldn’t climb any higher with them pulling on his legs, and sooner or later more would join in. The combined strength of the hungry mass would drag him off the ladder and tear the flesh from his bones.
Eric looked up at the women on the platform. Sorrow in his eyes, he lifted the duffel and the chain mace so they could reach down and take them from him before the horde ravaged him.
But the women didn’t reach for the bag or the weapon. Instead, they each leaned over the edge with bricks in their hands and tossed them down at the snappers grappling onto Eric’s feet.
One brick hit the snapper holding his left leg square between it’s marbled eyes with a horrible clunk, sending it to the ground. The second brick fell on the other snapper’s shoulder which caused it to loosen it’s grip enough for Eric to yank his leg free and climb the rest of the way up to safety.
Collapsing on the platform in exhaustion, Eric’s relief at surviving the ordeal lasted all of thirty seconds.
Because their problems had just doubled; not only had Sammy been kidnapped, but now they were stranded up here on the scaffolding.
For the third time in the past ten minutes, Eric was out of solutions.
4.
A thousand fears, thoughts and questions tornadoed through Emma’s mind as they sped away in the butcher’s van.
Sammy and Eric were both here in Colchester – two of Kingsley’s closest friends. Was he here too? If so, why wasn’t he with Eric? Had something happened to him? Could she help Sammy? And what about Leena? If she was going to be of any help to anybody, she needed to do something about her knee. Oh god, her knee! A throbbing ache wracked her leg whenever she bent it, and she could barely stand. How was she supposed to do anything in this state?
When Emma had been out in the streets running from the dead, it had elicited a fight-or-flight reaction in her that seemed to stop her from spiralling, the external danger more pressing than her internal anxiety. But, although Emma didn’t feel safe here exactly, there was no immediate threat inside the van to distract her from obsessive thoughts.
A few drops of blood had gotten on her hands when she’d stabbed the zombie on the road after falling over. All of a sudden she could think of little else but the blood.
If you don’t wash the blood off your hands, Leena will die.
If you don’t wash the blood off, everyone you love will die.
Emma wasn’t a germaphobe. Some OCD sufferers had the urge to scrub their hands raw every time they touched a door handle in a public space. That wasn’t Emma. But she did hate, hate, hate uncomfortable textures on her hands. Sometimes when it was cold and her hands were dry and chapped, the crusty feeling it gave her skin made her feel physically sick and she would have to lather her hands with moisturiser.
The blood had dried in sticky smears between Emma’s fingers and on her palms. It took a lot of effort not to gag every time her fingers glued themselves together.
It was all she could do to focus on more pressing matters.
They’d lost the bus several blocks back after it nearly hit them, Mark skillfully dodging the other vehicle at the last second. Emma had watched the bus plough through a fence at the side of the road and disappear between two buildings. They hadn’t seen it since.
She didn’t know what had happened to Eric and the other two women on the bus, or whether they were still following the van. She didn’t want Eric, Sammy or any of them to get hurt, but the only way she could think to help them was by coaxing Mark into letting Sammy go.
The issue was that Mark didn’t seem like a person whose mind could be changed about anything. Especially not by someone as thin-skinned as Emma.
No. She would have to accept the fact that there was nothing she could do for Eric and Sammy. She wasn’t supposed to be here, getting involved in this mess. She was supposed to be with Leena, Dave and her
