by Casey, Ryan
You’ve got this. You can do this. You can do this.
He dragged himself further along, then. His leg burned. His whole body ached. He didn’t know what’d happened. Why it’d happened.
But that didn’t matter. Not right now.
He dragged himself out from under the bus. Tried his best not to catch any other pieces of glass in his body. Tried his best not to stab himself again.
He clung to the front of the bus. Pulled himself from under it.
And then he stood.
The first thing that hit him was the blinding pain just under his knee. He pulled his trousers up, looked at the wound. Bleeding badly. He needed medical attention. Needed to see someone urgently.
And then he became aware of his surroundings.
A bus had ploughed right through the front window of the Job Centre, just as he remembered. Flames crept up the sides of the bus. Some of the people in there were crying out, screaming. Others had got out and were fleeing from the broken glass.
Others were totally silent. Totally still.
The driver lay against the steering wheel, head resting on the blaring horn, covered in blood.
He looked around the Job Centre. Saw the guy from the desk lying on the floor, staring up, frothing at the mouth.
He saw bodies everywhere. Some of these people alive. Some of them, harder to tell.
He saw this horrifying scene, and he stumbled to the open glass, felt the warm breeze from outside.
And that’s when he realised something.
The incident at the Job Centre wasn’t an isolated event.
There was something happening.
People abandoning their cars.
People lying on the street.
Ambulances racing past.
He stood there in the warmth of the breeze, and he turned around and looked back into the Job Centre.
Over at the television. Smashed. Hanging on its side.
Half of it just about visible.
And on the news, he saw the reports.
BREAKING NEWS: MYSTERY OUTBREAK SWEEPS BRITA—
And then it cut off into static.
Chapter Fifteen
Jasmine kept on ringing Lisa’s Doggy Day Care, but she just couldn’t get through.
She rushed down the side of the road. Outside the centre of the city, the situation seemed a lot calmer. The traffic was a little heavier than normal, but not gridlocked. In the distance, she heard sirens and closer by, the honking of car horns, but again, nowhere near as bad as it was in the middle of Preston.
She thought about having to head back towards the centre, towards her flat, and the thought made her stomach sink. She didn’t want to go back there. She wanted to stay out of what seemed to be the epicentre of chaos.
An epicentre she still didn’t understand.
Because there was only thing that mattered.
Getting to Barney. Making sure he was okay.
And then getting to safety while the authorities dealt with whatever the hell this was.
She tried Lisa again. She never usually had to wait too long for Lisa to answer. She usually picked up after about three rings. Strange.
But then there were logical explanations. Explanations that didn’t link Lisa not answering with whatever was going down in the middle of the city. Perhaps she’d left her phone at home when she’d taken the dogs out for a walk. She was human, after all.
But at the same time, she couldn’t shake the pervading sense that something else was going on here.
She lowered her phone. Looked up. A couple of people walking a dog, as normal. A few kids in uniforms, cheering at being released from school early. It seemed like an ordinary day in many ways.
But then there’d be a reminder of just how unordinary things actually were.
Like an empty, abandoned car in the middle of the road. Blood smeared across the windscreen.
She looked back at her phone. Opened up BBC News. She remembered what her mum said. Something about a virus. An outbreak.
She saw the headline, and her stomach sank.
BREAKING: MYSTERY VIRUS SWEEPS NATION.
She gulped. Kept walking down the road on her bare feet. Opened that article.
A mysterious virus is sweeping across the nation.
The virus appears to have a range of symptoms, from respiratory problems, vomiting and haemorrhaging. Cases of acute delusion and psychosis have also been rumoured, but these are unconfirmed at this stage.
It is currently unknown how the virus—if it is indeed a virus—spreads, or how long it takes to display symptoms. Reports vary wildly.
Earliest cases were in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Preston, but more cases have since been reported across social media nationwide.
It is unknown whether this is the same rumoured virus reported across Europe and the rest of the world over the last two days.
The government is due to make a statement.
For now, we have been advised to inform you to remain indoors and wait for further instruction.
And then the article ended, just like that.
Jasmine stood there. Stared at the page. A few things struck her. First, the sheer confusion in that article. The sense that it was written by someone who genuinely didn’t know what was happening. The conversational tone. The panic she could imagine behind those words, not the usual composed tone of a journalist.
Stay indoors and wait for further instruction.
She looked back. Towards the mounting traffic. Towards the sirens. Towards the city centre.
She thought about heading back home. Riding this out. Waiting for further instruction, just like the news was advising.
And then she shoved her phone into her pocket. Looked ahead. She wasn’t far from Lisa’s now. She had to keep going. Now wasn’t the time to turn around and give up.
She walked quicker down this warm street. As she walked, she couldn’t shake the cacophony of questions spiralling around her mind. Her mum. Her dad. Were they okay? They lived in Manchester. The news mentioned the outbreak being reported there. Was Manchester the same?
She opened up social media as she walked shakily down the street. She passed by people. People standing in their doorways. Suspicious glances towards her. Everyone on edge. But a weird sense of novelty to the air, too. A sense of confusion sending everyone delirious. A sense that the government would have things under control in no time.
Which they would.
Right?
She scrolled through Twitter. #Virus was the top trend. She scrolled down the feed. Saw reports from all over the world.
Just seen a woman tear a bloke’s throat out!!! #Virus
People dropping dead everywhere. It’s the end times. #Virus
I don’t buy it. Idiots finding excuses to act like savages. #Virus
And then she saw the video.
It was a video taken in Paris. Right under the Eiffel Tower.
Three people lying on the ground, faces covered in blood.
A man standing over them, trying to see to them.
And then the woman in the middle lunging up and leaping on the man like an animal.
She turned away. Stuffed her phone into her pocket. Because if one thing was clear, it’s that this was no hoax.
And it wasn’t just limited to Britain, either.
This was widespread, and it was serious.
She ran a little further down the street when she saw the van up ahead.
Lisa’s Doggy Day Care. The white van with the cartoon paws on the front that she took the dogs out in.
And then her house.
It was a nice place she had. Large. Detached. Loads of well-fenced garden space for the dogs to enjoy. Always looked welcoming and well-maintained.
Jasmine stood at the bottom of the footpath and stared towards the door.
As she walked towards it, holding her breath, she noticed something.
The freshly painted white front door was ajar.
And o
n the door, she saw a handprint.
A bloody handprint.
And then behind the door, she heard a dog yelp.
Chapter Sixteen
Noah stood at the entrance to the Job Centre and tried to wrap his aching head around everything he was witnessing.
It was a warm day, but everywhere felt cool compared to the inside of that Job Centre, trapped under that bus. His body ached. His right knee throbbed with pain as blood pooled down from it. Every moment, a reminder, not only of the turmoil he was in but of the turmoil the rest of the city was going through, too.
Sirens blaring down the gridlocked main road.
People on the pavements. Lying motionless.
And people losing control. Out of their minds.
As he stood there, all Noah could see were the final words on that television screen, before it froze.
BREAKING NEWS: MYSTERY OUTBREAK SWEEPS BRITAIN
He thought about the news last night. Sitting there in his flat with Eddie. Eddie banging on about some conspiracies he’d read about this mystery virus in Europe and the rest of the world. The sense that his friend was just exaggerating, or at least wildly off the mark.
But if this was the virus he was witnessing—if this chaos and disorder was a sign of what Eddie was talking about—then he’d been dramatically understating the situation.
He wiped a speck of blood from his mouth. Lifted his phone out of his pocket.
Smashed.
Totally broken.
“Shit.”
He stuffed it back in his pocket, rubbed a hand through his hair. He’d never been one to believe in good or bad luck, but this took the piss. Losing his job. A rent hike. A frigging bus flying through the Job Centre window, and now what looked like some kind of mad virus running havoc on the streets.
And now his phone was knackered, just to top it all off.
Someone up there really had it in for him.
He took a step forward and felt pain surge down his right leg. When he looked down, he saw he was bleeding badly. That wound under his knee. It really needed seeing to. He needed to get to a doctor’s ASAP. There was an emergency surgery just around the corner from here, as far as he was aware. As fearful as he was about doctors and hospitals and anything medically related, he knew there was no dodging the inevitable right now.
The memory.
That pale face.
That icy cold hand.
“It’s going to be okay, Kyle. It’s going to be…”
No. Don’t think about that. Not now.
He looked back at that bus wedged into the Job Centre. Saw a few more people scampering and limping out of it. Faces covered in blood.
Every now and then, he heard shouts and cries up the street. Glass smashing. Society shaking.
He didn’t even want to think what it might mean.
He limped down the street. Kept his head down. If he wasn’t already in shock, God knows how he might react to the things he was seeing right now. The panic on people’s faces. The look of terror in their eyes.
Dead bodies.
So many dead bodies.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. Tasted vomit and blood. He forced himself to focus ahead. Don’t look to the side. Just keep walking. Just keep—
“Help!”
A desperate male voice somewhere to his right.
He didn’t want to look around. He didn’t want to see.
He just wanted to keep walking.
“Mate. You. Yeah, you. Give us a hand here. Please!”
Noah didn’t want to turn. He didn’t want to help. Because helping was acknowledging something was seriously wrong.
When he turned around, he saw something he didn’t expect.
There were two men down the narrow alleyway-style road to his side.
One was a homeless guy, quite clearly. Scruffy grey hair. Big bushy beard. Dirty clothes.
And leaning against the wall opposite him, in a reversal of roles, a police officer.
He wore a standard police hat. Navy uniform.
But something was wrong with him.
The homeless guy waved Noah over. “He’s sick, mate. We need to get him seen to.”
Noah felt caught at a crossroads. On the one hand, he was terrified. Absolutely fucking terrified. He feared for his life. He feared what he couldn’t understand—and he didn’t understand a thing right now.
And he feared what might happen if he didn’t get this wound seen to ASAP.
“Come on, man. Don’t just stand there. Give us a hand!”
And on the other hand, Noah felt guilty.
He’d seen this guy.
And the police officer was struggling.
There had to be something he could do to help.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he stood there in the warmth of the morning sun.
And then he walked down that road, towards the homeless man, towards the police officer.
The closer he got, the direr the situation appeared to be.
The police officer’s face was turning blue.
His tongue dangled down his face, longer than Noah thought possible.
His eyes were rolled right back into his skull, only the whites on show.
Thick green snot dripped down from his nostrils.
Specks of blood smeared through it.
“What—what happened?”
“He came running up here. Guessing he was on the way to help out in the city. And then he just started saying something about his mum. And he dropped. Almost fell on me. We need to get him seen to. We need to…”
The homeless man didn’t finish what he was saying.
Or maybe he did.
But Noah didn’t hear it.
Because the police officer’s teeth clamped down around his own tongue.
Bit down. Hard.
“Shit!” the homeless man shouted.
He grabbed the police officer. Tried to shake him as Noah backed away. Tried to stop him from biting, as blood pooled down from his tongue, as it came looser, dangling off from just a thread.
And then Noah heard the worst sound imaginable.
The cracking of teeth against one another.
The police officer’s tongue dropping to the road, thumping against the pavement like a chunk of meat.
Noah stood there and stared. It was all he could do.
The homeless man stood beside him. “Shit. Shit!” Shaking his head. Punching the wall.
And then he looked at Noah. Tears in his eyes.
“The world’s going to shit,” he said. “It’s going to shit. And I…”
A drop.
A drop of blood from the homeless man’s nose.
A sudden paleness to his face.
And then his tears grew a diluted, pale red.
He looked up at Noah. Stretched out a hand.
“Lydia?”
He stumbled towards Noah. The closer he got, the more blood dripped from his eyes, his nostrils, and his mouth.
“I’m not—”
“Lydia!” the homeless man shouted. “Is that you?”
He stumbled faster towards Noah.
Then his stumbles became a fast walk, and that fast walk became a jog.
And Noah knew he needed to run. He knew he needed to get away.
He went to spin around when he felt something under his foot.
A stabbing sensation, right through his leg.
And then he tumbled to the pavement.
He tried to scramble to his feet. Tried to leap up.
And then he felt it.
The man’s hands grabbing his shoulders. Digging right in, bony as knives.
Blood dripping from his mouth, all over Noah’s face.
“Lydia?” he said. “You’re not fucking going anywhere!”
And then he slammed Noah’s head back against the concrete, and everything went fuzzy.
Chapter Seventeen
Jasmine walked down the pathway towards Lisa’s Doggy Day Care, an
d towards that bloody handprint on the pristine white door.
The front garden looked beautiful. A real thing of envy. All kinds of bright, beautiful flowers lined the luscious green lawn, their scents fragrant and intoxicating. Birds flew between the abundance of feeders, singing at the top of their lungs. On any other morning, this would be a perfect scene. Totally idyllic.
But then Jasmine heard the sirens in the distance, and right away she found herself jolted back to reality.
She inched further down that pathway, towards the bloody handprint on the white door, towards the sound of yelping and whining inside. Every instinct told her to turn away. Not to take another damned step. Because she didn’t want to find what was inside that house. She didn’t want to discover what she already feared was in there.
But Barney.
She couldn’t just turn her back on him.
Her dog had been there for her, time and again. She’d comforted her when she was at her lowest. When work grew stressful. When the loneliness took hold. When she knew her old friends were out in the pub, catching up with one another, having a laugh, together without her.
And when she’d swallowed the pills.
She recoiled at the memory of that awful night. She didn’t like to think about it too much. Didn’t like dwelling on it. It seemed out of character for her, even to herself. She’d never self-harmed. She’d never been suicidal. Didn’t even think of herself as someone who got down or depressed.
But there was just something about that night.
A combination of an awful few days at work, bumping into two old best friends of hers having coffee together, babies in their prams beside them. False promises of reuniting, of getting back in touch. Sad glances when she told them she was “still” single.
And then the conversation with her mum.
Telling Jasmine she needed to grow up. She needed to start getting on in life. Because if she didn’t, she was going to grow sad and lonely.
That she needed someone by her side.
Someone to keep her strong.
No interest in her advancing career.
No interest in just how much of a success of herself she was making.
The narrative of Jasmine’s perceived life already written.
She’d flicked open the sleeping pills she had from a bout of insomnia a few months back—something she’d conquered—and she took a bunch of them. Far more of them than she should’ve.