“Oh my god.”
Kingsley turned towards the voice. A man stood on the roof of his car, his eyes flicking across the road ahead.
“We’re stuck here!” The man looked down at the other people, stabbing a finger in the direction of the traffic. “Everyone, the road is blocked! There are tons of abandoned cars. No one is getting around that, no one is moving. You should all leave now; run away while you still can, before those zombies get here!” The man leapt off his car and strode down the carriageway, shouting at everyone to leave.
A coldness crept up Kingsley’s spine. Zombies. His mind flashed back to the crash site and the crazed man chewing on that woman's stomach, as he snuck another glance at James. His skin was still sickly pale and his movements were slow, his feet dragging on the concrete when he walked.
Kingsley needed to check if there was any possible way around the blockage. He needed to be certain there was no way out before they abandoned the vehicles and went on foot, because he wasn’t sure if James could cope with it.
There was an empty sports car to his left, its white paintwork scratched, presumably from the driver squeezing it through a tight gap in desperation to get past. Kingsley clambered onto the bonnet of the sports car, stood and squinted at the road ahead.
The man hadn’t been bullshitting. The way ahead was well and truly clogged; every vehicle in the far reaches of the traffic line had been left, doors ajar. There was even a lorry sitting diagonally in the middle of the lanes, its driver long gone. Cars had spilled onto the shoulder in a vain effort to get around.
But that wasn’t all. There was movement, people shuffling between the congested lanes. And it was clear from the stiff, shambling way they moved that there was something wrong with them.
The same thing that had been wrong with the man who had attacked them at the crash site, and the woman whose flesh he’d been chomping on.
“Shit, they’re here already!”
Kingsley dropped his gaze to one of the drivers a few vehicles ahead. He was screaming at anyone who would listen. “The hungry ones, they’re coming! Run!”
He was right. Just then, Kingsley spotted the stumbling figure moving towards an unsuspecting blonde woman at the front of the queue. Too late to warn her.
The thing lurched at her and pulled one of her arms toward it’s mouth. The blonde woman shrieked and flailed as the teeth sunk into her bicep.
Kingsley had seen enough. He jumped back down to his friends, yelling, “We have to get back to the cars. Right now.”
5.
They started to rush back, barging past other milling drivers in their path. Eric noticed James’ weakness and supported him with one arm. Kingsley and Sammy frantically searched for their vehicles, forgetting where they had left them in the queue.
They were unable to find them after a full minute of looking.
Kingsley’s heart hammered against his ribcage. The panic set in like a balloon expanding inside his chest. What were they going to do?
Then Sammy’s gaze settled on a battered old minivan.
She thought she recognised it... Yes, the one that had stopped next to them.
Her eyes travelled to the car in the first lane directly across from the minivan – and there was Eric’s pickup, James’ SUV right in front of it.
“There.” She pointed out the cars to the others, and they raced over to them.
Eric opened the SUVs passenger door and threw James inside. But when he turned to run back to his own car, an old man limped out from behind the boot, blocking Eric’s way. The old man’s eyes were grey and marble-like.
Eric didn’t want to hurt anyone else today. He jumped into the rear of the SUV, Sammy climbing in after him and slamming the door shut.
For a moment the four of them just sat there, gawping at the zombie of an old man – as strange as it sounded, that’s what they were, zombies – pounding on the back window.
James was the only one who wasn’t watching. He was slumped in the passenger seat with his head down, and it took them a minute to realise he was unconscious. He was still breathing though, and Kingsley could feel a strong pulse in his neck. But he also had a high temperature.
With static vehicles enveloping them, they couldn’t drive away. Outside, the zombies gnawed on the limbs of unlucky drivers and passengers or meandered from car to car, trying to get to the few survivors hiding inside them.
It dawned on Kingsley that they hadn’t really thought this through. Not that they’d had time to. But they probably would have been better off sprinting into the woods at the side of the carriageway and hiding out there.
At a loss for what to do next, Kingsley began to fiddle with the radio. While he had been occupied with getting to Braintree and reliving the terrible events of the morning over and over again in his mind, he hadn’t even thought about turning on the radio.
There might be something helpful on the radio stations – perhaps some information on what the fuck was happening.
But as he switched through the channels, dread filled his gut once again. Most of them were down, playing nothing but loud static. However, some were broadcasting a message.
“Emergency notice. Attention all British citizens: for your own safety, and the safety of those around you, you are advised to remain indoors indefinitely, awaiting further orders from military personnel. Please avoid contact with anyone who is showing the following symptoms: sweating, fever, high temperature, general weakness, headache, coughing, muscle twitches, loss of consciousness, loss of vision, hallucinations.”
“It was the same on my radio,” Eric said.
“What does it mean?” Sammy asked. “Stay indoors? Great fucking help that is. Just tell us what’s going
