“What do you need me to do?” Dan asks, looking at the dead guy moving around the trailer, following the girl while snarling and reaching for her with his broken hand.
“You’ll have to lure him away,” the girl says, nodding in the direction of her grandfather without looking at him. “I need to open the back hatch and lower this thing down.”
“Can you do that on your own?” Dan asks, looking at the jet ski which must weigh around the same as a motorbike.
“Yes!” the girl snaps, sending him a fiery look. “But not unless you get him away from here!”
The last strap gives way with a whoosh, and the jet ski is suddenly free to roll. The girl grabs the handlebar and stops it. And Dan jumps down from the trailer, landing a few paces away from the grandfather—who immediately senses the accessible prey and turns his attention to Dan.
Dan moves away from the trailer, spotting a movement out of the corner of his eye and sees the three zombies who just killed Åsaa. Except now they’ve doubled in numbers as three more have joined them. And they’re all coming this way.
This is a bad idea, Dan thinks to himself as he faces the maze of vehicles. Moving away from the trailer might mean losing it from sight. There’s also the risk of bumping into more zombies lurking between the cars.
As though the thought itself has produced it, a little girl comes crawling out from under the bumper of a car right in front of him, and Dan makes a sharp turn to the right.
He only manages a few steps farther away before a skinny arm shoots out from a half-open window and grabs him by the shoulder. Dan screams and rips free, checking his sleeve to make sure the nails didn’t penetrate the fabric. They didn’t; at least he can’t see any holes in his shirt. The old woman grabs at him eagerly, trying in vain to squeeze out of the opening which is just too narrow.
A groan from behind makes him turn again, and he sees two other zombies coming around the car to get at him.
Dan makes a quick decision and jumps up onto the hood of the car, then onto the roof. The car is just tall enough that the dead people won’t be able to reach him, but as he looks out over the area, that fact brings him little comfort.
The entire harbor is coming alive. Everywhere he sees the dead appearing and moving this way. It’s like someone stuck a stick into an anthill—and Dan is that stick.
This is even worse than back at the highway … in two minutes, we’ll be overrun.
He looks back towards the trailer—and to his relief, he sees the jet ski already on the ground. The girl is pulling the trolley around, headed for the ramp. There are no dead people around her—at least not that Dan can see from here—but they could crop up at any second.
He looks down to see the zombies surrounding the car, like mad groupies at a rock concert, all moaning and trying to reach his shoes. There’s already too many of them for him to jump down anywhere. Instead, he looks over at the neighboring car. It’s a jump of maybe two yards. With a little running start, he should be able to do it.
Dan steps back as far as he can, takes a deep breath, and then he runs before the thoughts can get to him. He lunges himself out over the heads of the clambering zombies—none of them react fast enough to grab for him while he’s in the air—and he lands on the roof of the other car, almost slipping but regaining his balance. He wastes no time but immediately jumps to the next. From here, he can’t reach any other cars, but there are no dead people around yet, so he jumps instead to the ground and makes a run back towards the trailer and the girl—carefully keeping his distance to any open windows and slowing down to turn every corner, so as to not get surprised.
Behind him, he notices the choir of moans and groans growing into a collective cry of hunger as the zombies form a giant mob and move in closer.
TWENTY-THREE
Liv’s hands are shaking so badly, she can hardly operate the trolley. Luckily, though, it’s very straightforward, and it follows along willingly as she makes her way around Grandpa’s car and towards the ramp.
Everything feels like a dream. Things are happening so fast she can barely process them. Yet to her surprise, she finds herself acting with an inexplicable sense of clarity. It’s almost like her brain has switched to an emergency system she didn’t know it had, cutting off anything nonessential and narrowing her senses to focus on just what needs to be done: moving her legs, pulling the trolley, getting the jet ski to the ramp. Nothing else.
No thoughts of Grandpa.
No worries about the woman who just got eaten.
Not even any concern about whether the boy who helped her get off the trailer is still alive.
None of that is of any use to Liv in this moment. And it’s handily blocked off from her awareness.
This must be what people experience in life-threatening situations, Liv realizes as she reaches the ramp and turns the trolley so that the rear end faces the water.
She pulls the handbrake, then kneels down and begins turning the handle, lowering the trolley’s leg, bringing the jet ski closer to the ground.
She’s only managed four or five inches before her left ear picks up a scraping noise from behind. She snaps her head around just in time to see a one-armed guy in a ripped-up T-shirt lunge himself at her.
Liv screams out and twists her body sideways. It’s the only move she has time to perform in the split-second before the zombie closes the distance between them,
