Eric had always thought when the time came for him to die he would embrace his fate and finally stop fighting. Rest, for once and for all.
Yet here he was in the thick of it, death quite literally closing in on him, and he was reaching for the tile that had come off the awning, intending to use it to defend himself; here he was, flailing at their arms, shrugging and pushing their mouths away as teeth made contact with his jacket sleeves, smashing the tile to splinters on their skulls, screaming at the top of his lungs.
In his hysteria, Eric didn’t even notice the first snapper go down with the tip of a crossbow bolt protruding from it’s eye. It was only when he heard the bark of a dog that he realised someone else was there.
A man appeared with a hammer and began caving undead skulls in. A snapper stumbled backwards and Eric saw the dog tugging it by the belt around it’s waist, growling. Then another snapper collapsed with a bolt in it’s neck – straight through the spine – and Eric spotted Kingsley through a gap between the encroaching zombies, lowering the crossbow and whipping out his knife.
Somehow Eric hadn’t been bitten yet. Both Kingsley and the man with the hammer were yelling at the snappers to get them to turn around, maybe because Kingsley had seen Eric struggling against them. Whatever the case, it was helping. The undead were diverting.
Maybe he wouldn’t die today.
Still clutching a thin shard of broken tile, Eric drove it into the nearest snapper’s eye socket. Then he crouched over the one with a crossbow bolt in it’s neck and tore it out, spinning to plunge the reclaimed bolt up through the chin of another.
“Eric!” He was surprised to hear Kara’s voice, and before he could even spot her in the chaos her police baton dropped out of the sky onto the chest of the snapper he had just killed with a meaty thunk.
He seized the proffered weapon and took to clubbing them down with a new fury, this one edged with hope.
There they all were – Eric, Kingsley, Kara, Rebecca, the guy with the hammer, and a dog – slaughtering the snappers from all sides, dividing the strength of the pack. Kara took up the chain mace and swiped out their legs, stomping on their heads to finish them off as they squirmed on the ground. Kingsley picked them off one at a time with his knife. Rebecca chopped at their necks with the machete, leaving them half decapitated and paralysed from spinal trauma. The hammer-wielding man held them back by the chest as he brought his weapon down in fatal blows, heaving in exertion.
Every square centimetre of skin on Eric’s hands was coated in blood by the time they’d killed the last of the snappers. Specks of crimson dotted his whole face and the front of his shirt.
Still, he was unbitten.
The survivors all took a few moments to catch their breath, wordlessly surveying the bodies piled around them with wide eyes. Rebecca avoided looking at Eric, and guilt emanated from Kara’s weary face.
He ignored them and went to Kingsley. “Sammy’s here,” Eric said.
Kingsley stared at him, his face blank as though he hadn’t heard. Then he swallowed, frowned and said, “What? Where?”
“She’s here in Colchester. But she’s in trouble, Kingsley. Remember how I told you I was pretty sure Darren’s friends tried to trap us at the shopping centre in Braintree? Well, I wasn’t wrong.”
Eric explained to him how Darren’s friends had followed them to Kelvedon, how they had found Sammy alone and kidnapped her, how they’d continued to follow their group all the way here. He told Kingsley about Mark waiting for them by the bus with Sammy, holding a blade to her throat and demanding they hand over everything they took from Darren’s flat. And how their first interaction had been cut short by the dead.
Then he told him of the conversation they’d had over the radio, Mark laying out his terms.
“You need to help us rescue Sammy,” Eric finished. “You can go back to isolating yourself afterwards, but right now she needs us.”
Kingsley stared at the crossbow introspectively, turning it over in his hands. He spoke without taking his eyes off the slick hunting weapon.
“Until three days ago I hadn’t seen you, Sammy or James in almost two years. I thought things might be different between us after all this time, and I didn’t want that. But when the four of us got together again, being there at the campsite with you guys felt so… normal. Like coming home. Our group and the bond we all share is pretty much the only thing in my life that feels concrete, that I know will never change. We always seem to find our way back to each other.” Kingsley half-smiled, lifting his eyes from the crossbow. “You only needed to tell me Sammy’s in trouble. I’m here for her, as I am for you.”
Eric matched his friend’s half-smile with a shaky one of his own.
“Do you have a plan?” Kingsley asked.
“When do I not? Come on, we should start walking. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
The survivors began to trudge toward the cycle lane that led through the opening in the wall at the end of the cul-de-sac, where they had entered the street after ditching the bus.
However, the man with the hammer, whom Eric thought he recognised as one of the local homeless, didn’t follow them. With everything going on, Eric hadn’t
