She was stunned by the scene in front of her. Her eyes took in the visual information, but her brain refused to accept it. On the floor, at the far end of the carriage, a screaming woman was lying in a pool of blood. A man was kneeling over her, tearing at the soft flesh of her belly with his teeth. He was drenched in blood. Some of it was the woman's, but most of it was bubbling from a wound on his own neck, where a huge flap of flesh had been torn away to reveal bone and cartilage underneath.
All around the couple, other attacks were taking place. Blood and gore spurted, sprayed and splattered. The air was filled with a metallic stench and the sounds of ripping flesh and crunching bone. Again, she thought she must still be asleep, and was just having a terrible nightmare.
People were screaming and shouting, pushing and shoving, clambering over seats, stepping on the dead, the dying and the living, in their frenzy to get away. Closest to her, a lifeless young man in a green hoodie was sprawled on his back. He had to be dead. He couldn't possibly have survived his terrible injuries, but, as she watched, he twitched, opened his eyes and struggled to his feet. His skin was grey-green and his eyes opaque and completely devoid of consciousness. He fixed her in a milky gaze and his features distorted into an expression she could only describe as rage, before he staggered towards her. She turned and ran.
Nothing she had seen could be rationally explained. She had no point of reference. She was a problem solver by nature and intention. Facts were her friends. They were the only thing that could be trusted and believed in an increasingly complex and challenging world. Every day, she separated fact from fiction, analysed and drew conclusions to develop foolproof plans and strategies. But here, today, some of the facts were so implausible that even they couldn't be believed. She had seen people attack and kill each other with their bare hands and teeth, and that was horrifying. But there would be a reason for that. It would eventually be explained somehow. What could never be explained, because it was scientifically impossible and totally and utterly inexplicable, was that she had seen a dead boy get up and walk.
She retched as a surge of bile rose in her throat. Her chest tightened again, and she took another couple of puffs from her inhaler.
Anita squeezed her hand. "Are you ok?"
"Asthma. I'll be fine in a minute."
The rasp of the inhaler and the sound of their voices prompted more banging and moaning from outside. Brian's eyes snapped open and he flapped his hand towards them in a downwards movement.
"Keep it down," he mouthed.
"Piss off." Anita mouthed back. She looked anxiously at Lisa.
"It's just … they were killing each other. Biting and tearing." Lisa whispered.
"I know, I saw." Anita's reply was barely audible.
"And … and … "
"… the dead were coming back." Anita finished her sentence for her.
"But … it can't be … it doesn't ..."
"I know … shh … " Anita placed a finger over her lips as the moaning outside grew louder.
The two women huddled closer together.
Brian closed his eyes again.
Lisa's brain continued to process. Piecing together information, examining it from all angles. The activity outside reduced when they were quiet, but quickly resumed when one of them spoke or changed position to relieve stiff limbs. It was odd that their pursuers hadn't followed them into the toilet. The door had been unlocked long enough for them to have got in. The illuminated OPEN button would have been in plain sight. The boy and a couple of others had been close behind, as they had scrambled inside. Anita had frantically banged the CLOSE button again and again, as if it would make the door close faster. Lisa had watched, knowing it would make no difference. The few seconds it had taken for the curved door to slide shut had felt like the longest of her life.
But she had something to work with. It was small, but it was potentially important. She recalled the boy's milky gaze. Whatever had happened to them, had affected their mental ability. They hadn't been able to work a simple door mechanism. It was a start, something to bank for later, but now the only thing she did know for certain, was that they were in serious trouble, and it didn't look like help was coming anytime soon. If they were going to survive, they would have to think very carefully about every single decision they made, and every action they took. And already, it felt as though she was going to have to take the lead on that. Anita seemed a bit impulsive, reckless even, and Brian … well, Brian … didn't seem to be coping very well, and that was putting it politely.
She ran back through the rest of the day, looking for signs that might help explain what was happening. Anything she might have missed. Her day had begun in the Park Plaza Hotel, near Victoria Station, where she'd been at a two-day business meeting. The meeting rooms were all in the lower basement level, where there were no windows and no phone signal. They'd been in there all day, effectively cut-off from the outside world, apart from occasional visits from hotel staff with meals and refreshments. And, they were all pretty groggy from
