by Casey, Ryan
Noah couldn’t suppress his laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“The fact that you can sit there and claim you actually liked me.”
“Trust me,” Kelly said. “If I didn’t like you, you would’ve known about it.”
Noah puffed his lips out. He didn’t want to imagine what Kelly not liking him was like if the treatment he’d got was generous.
“Yeah, well, it looks like whatever we both thought of each other, we both got swallowed up and spat out by Jasmine.”
“Bit graphic,” Kelly said, cringing.
Noah blushed. “You know what I mean.”
Kelly slowed down the car. A few cars were lined up, right up ahead. The lights were on green. Horns honking. The road, totally gridlocked.
“It’s gonna be like this all the way back to yours,” she said.
Noah nodded. “Yeah, well, I’d run if I could, but this frigging stab wound in my leg might have a thing or two to say about it.”
“Still feeling okay?”
Noah shrugged. “Not started bleeding from my ears yet. I guess that’s something. You?”
Kelly tilted her head either side. “Bit of a sore neck.”
Noah felt himself recoil.
“But that could be from yoga. Went a bit hard.”
She glanced at him. Smirked. Like she knew she was toying with his emotions. Like she was getting a kick out of this.
“I’m starting to wish I’d got in the boot after all.”
“There’s still time,” Kelly said.
She looked at Noah. Smirked again.
Noah couldn’t resist smirking back.
And then he jolted forward in his seat.
“Shit,” Kelly said.
“What the hell?”
“This jam. It’s not...”
She stopped speaking, then.
Noah didn’t realise why. Not at first.
Not until he saw the woman.
She walked alongside the cars. Walked amidst the traffic. Intertwined between the cars that honked at her, urged her to get out of the way.
She held on to a baby.
But the baby wasn’t moving a muscle.
The baby was dead.
The woman walked with tears streaming down her cheeks. A slight bloodiness to her nostrils. A paleness to her skin.
Her eyes set right on Noah and Kelly’s car.
And then solely on Noah.
She walked towards the car. Made a beeline for it.
“Why the hell did you have to look at her?” Kelly shouted.
“Look at her? What the bloody hell else was I supposed to do?”
“I remember what you were like. Always attracted the weirdos on nights out and holidays. You just couldn’t resist for one damned infected minute, could you?”
“Do we have to do this now?” Noah said. “Really?”
Kelly sighed.
Looked back around at that woman.
She planted a hand on the hood of the car.
And then she clambered on to it.
“What in the name of hell is she—”
“My baby,” she said. “My sweet, sweet baby. You did this. You did this!”
And then she slammed a bloody hand against the glass.
“Shit,” Noah said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Kelly unclipped her seatbelt.
“What’re you doing?”
“What am I doing?” she said. “We can’t just stay here, can we?”
“But I—”
“Look after my car if you do. But I’d appreciate it if you gave me your flat keys.”
She grabbed the door handle. Opened it, as that woman kept on smacking her fist at the glass.
“Kelly!” Noah shouted.
But it was too late.
Kelly stepped out of the car.
Slammed the door shut.
Left him alone in here.
Noah turned around. Looked into this poor woman’s eyes. At the baby beside her, totally still.
“Fucking hell,” he said.
And then he unclipped his belt and jumped out of the car, onto the road.
His knee hurt more than ever. He smelled something to the air. A rustiness. A bloodiness.
And then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and his whole body went numb.
“You did this,” the woman said. “You did this!”
And Noah had no choice.
No choice but to punch back.
No choice but to wrestle himself free.
And no choice but to go rushing after Kelly, as quickly as he goddamned could.
He stumbled along the road. Gritted his teeth as the pain got stronger. Behind, he heard the woman crying, then running after him. He heard horns all around him. He saw cars reversing, smashing into one another, people trying to get away, people trying to escape.
And then he stumbled down and hit the road.
His nose cracked. His teeth loosened. A splitting pain spread right across his head, the kind of which he’d grown unfamiliar with, something that reminded him of a fall when he was in Primary School, the kind that was more commonplace back in those days.
He turned around. Went to push himself up. Pain under his knee intense. Body in agony. Gripped by terror.
He looked around at the chaos. At the fighting. At the confusion. He looked at all of it, and he knew this wasn’t going to just get better. This genie wasn’t going to be stuffed back in any bottle. This was it.
And then he saw something awful.
A bus slammed against the woman with the baby, knocking her to the road.
The panicked driver crying behind the wheel.
Heading straight towards him.
He closed his eyes. Shook his head.
And at that moment, he actually found himself laughing.
Hit by two buses and a car.
Three damned vehicles in the space of a couple of days.
What were the odds?
What were the goddamned odds?
He squeezed his eyes shut, and he thought of his younger brother lying there in that hospital bed.
He thought of holding his cold hand as his body got skinnier, bonier.
He thought of promising he’d watch him. Promising nothing would happen to him.
Then the sound.
That ear-piercing sound cutting through the ward.
He thought about all of it, and in what he was sure was his final moment, he swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m sorry.”
He waited for the bus to slam into him, horn blaring in his ears.
And then he heard a voice.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jasmine walked down the street, Barney by her side, and she wanted to get home more than anything.
The sun felt burning. Intense. Her heart raced. She kept getting knotting sensations, right in the middle of her stomach. Acute bursts of anxiety that reminded her of how she used to feel before nights out at university. Doing her hair in her room and crying, wishing she could avoid going out, even if she knew damn well going out was good for her, and that avoiding the problem was only going to make things worse in the long run.
She walked down one of the side streets. She wanted to stay away from the more direct routes for as long as she possibly could. She saw terraced houses lining the road. Saw people standing outside, leaning against their cars, phones to their ears. Some people were shutting their doors, locking themselves away. Doing exactly what the government ordered.
And Jasmine wanted to lock herself away too. Wait all this out.
But what she’d seen at Lisa’s place had shaken her to her core.
She thought about Lisa, standing at that window.
That pitiful infected man holding on to her. Clutching her like she was someone he loved. Someone he’d known for years. Someone he thought he’d lost.
And the sight of those dogs running around her, jumping up at her. Caring for her, just as much as she cared for them.
And as Jasmine kept her head down and walked down the street, she realised that as sad as it was, Lisa wouldn’t have chosen any other way to go out. She felt a sense of duty to her dogs, and that was admirable. She wouldn’t have chosen any other way to go out.
It didn’t exactly make things better. But it made Jasmine realise there were more to things than met the eye.
And she felt less guilty about walking away.
Because in the end, what else could she have done?
What other decision could she have made?
She walked further down the road when she realised she was going to have to take a turn onto the main road if she wanted to get home soon.
She lifted her phone from her pocket. Battery draining right now. 41% already. She knew she needed to get a new one, but she just kept putting it off. This would be a lesson to her. She just hoped it was a lesson she could put into practice, when—and if—all this settled.
She saw she had no signal. Went to open the internet, but nothing loaded. Weird. She always usually got signal around Preston. This wasn’t normal.
She stuffed her phone back into her pocket when she saw something breaking out up ahead.
A man had hold of another bloke. He threw him onto the road, turned away, headed back towards his house.
“You can’t just kick me out, Todd,” the man on the road begged. “Please!”
“I can. It’s my damned house. I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”
Jasmine kept her head down. She didn’t want to get caught up in any drama. She didn’t want to draw any attention to herself, either.
But she realised something about the man in the road.
He had a nosebleed.
No other signs. No other symptoms. A nosebleed. That’s all it was.
He lay in the road, tears rolling down his face.
And Jasmine knew she should go over to him. She knew she should help him up.
But then there was that risk.
The risk he was infected.
The not knowing.
The hardest thing of all.
She reached the end of the road when she saw something else that made her heart sink.
The lights were on green, but the road was at a total standstill. Cars honked against one another. People got out of their cars, leaving them in the road to manoeuvre past the blockage.
And there was a woman.
It looked like she was holding onto something. A baby.
Walking towards a blue Toyota.
Then climbing on to the front of it.
Bashing against the window.
Eager to get inside.
Jasmine went to turn away. It didn’t look good towards town. But what other choice did she have?
She glanced once more at the middle of the road when she saw something that brought her to a standstill.
A girl jumped out of the car. Blonde. Slim. And not long after, a guy. Tall. Dark-haired. Limping after her. Then falling into the street. That woman clambering after him.
And as Jasmine stood there, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She couldn’t accept it was true. It was too much of a coincidence. And the chances of the pair of them being together?
No.
Just no.
She saw him look around. Up at the bus, which accelerated into the woman with the baby, then towards him.
And she found herself wanting to rush towards him.
Rush towards him and help him.
Because she couldn’t just leave him.
She couldn’t just leave either of them.
Because up ahead, running down the street, she saw her old best friend, Kelly.
And then she saw her ex-boyfriend—the only guy she’d ever really loved—lying there in the middle of the road, on the brink of death.
“Noah?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Noah waited for the bus to slam into him, horn blaring in his ears, when he heard a voice.
“Noah?”
He thought he was imagining things at first. Didn’t really have time to start contemplating it.
But that voice. That familiar voice. A voice he hadn’t heard for a long time, sure, but a voice he definitely recognised.
A figment of his imagination in his dying moments?
Why the hell would he think of her? She’d ruined his life.
Sure, he’d loved her. But she’d still ruined his life.
But at that instant, Noah found himself opening his eyes.
He noticed two things.
First, the bus.
It had slammed into a car right to his side. The car was in ruins. The side was caved in. The bus unable to shake it free.
But it’d missed him.
It’d swerved at the death, and it’d missed him.
He brushed his fingers through his hair. He was lucky. So frigging lucky. He knelt there in the road, and as awful as this whole situation was, he laughed. Shook his head and laughed. Because this was mad. It was completely fucking mad.
The whole city was going to shit, and he should be dead.
But he was still here.
He heard footsteps, then. Something racing towards him.
He swung around, his senses suddenly heightened. His knee ached like mad, but he had to be ready for whatever came his way.
When he turned around, he saw a dog running at him.
It was a Rottweiler. Bloody huge thing. Racing right at him.
He lifted his hands. Covered his face. Braced himself for a miserable death by dog. If he’d had a choice, he might’ve opted for the bus after all.
And then he felt something.
Slobber.
Slobber and drool, all over his hands, all over his face.
He opened his eyes. Lowered his hands, admittedly a little hesitantly. “Hello, lad,” he said. “Are you… are you on your own?”
He heard something else, then. Footsteps to his left. Kelly standing there, eyes wide, looking down at him.
For a moment, Noah wondered if he was showing signs of infection, judging by the look on her face.
“Shit,” Kelly said.
“What?”
“That’s Barney.”
Noah frowned. “You know this dog.”
“If it’s Barney, that means…”
She looked to her left, and her face dropped even more.
“Kelly? What’s…”
He followed her gaze, and his whole world froze.
Because standing opposite him, in the middle of this chaos, Noah saw someone standing there.
Tall. Slim. Long, dark hair. And those gorgeous green eyes.
She looked down at him, fiddling with the bottom of her white shirt.
And then she looked at Kelly, and back to Noah again.
“Um… hi guys,” Jasmine said.
His ex-girlfriend.
The girl he’d loved.
And that’s when the awkwardness truly began.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jasmine stared at her ex-boyfriend and her ex-best friend and wondered whether this whole frigging mental day was some kind of dream.
Sirens still rang up and down the street. People jumped out of their cars, realising the traffic wasn’t budging, and made for the pavements, taking their chances on foot. All around, Jasmine could hear desperate cries. She could smell the metallic stench of blood.
But it drifted into the background of significance, all because of the people standing before her.
“Well, this isn’t awkward,” Kelly said.
Jasmine wished she hadn’t said anything. Kelly had a bloody awkward way of making awkward situations even more awkward. It was a talent of hers. A talent that wound Jasmine up no end.
But a talent she realised she was going to miss if this really was the end for her and her friend.
But it was Noah who held Jasmine’s attention the most. He hadn’t changed much over the years. A little bulkier, perhaps, but it was hard to tell. Looked kind of healthi
er. Colour in his cheeks.
But at the same time, beyond that rosy exterior, he looked like shit.
“I, um—”
“Yeah,” Jasmine said. “You... your leg. It looks—”
“Got a shard of glass wedged into it. It’s manageable. Just not as quick a jogger as I used to be.”
Jasmine couldn’t help smirking just for a moment at that. She always used to wind him up for running like a girl. It was cruel, in a way. He got really self-conscious about it. Even bought a treadmill, so he didn’t have to show off his girlish run to the rest of the world.
But it was one of their little jokes. It was one of their little things. And it was something she knew deep down, Noah enjoyed her teasing about.
How rapidly things had fallen apart.
“I’m good too, by the way,” Kelly said. “Watched your ex here kill one of those nutters. Almost watched him get decapitated by a bus. But I’m good. Really. Not that you care.”
Jasmine shook her head. “Kelly, you know I care. I’m so sorry about—”
“Leave it,” Kelly said.
Jasmine saw it in the way Kelly turned her head. She heard the uncertainty in her voice. The anger. The sadness.
She’d heard Kelly speak about other people in that way before, and Jasmine knew it was going to be a while before she forgave her.
If she forgave her at all.
She looked at Noah again. Saw him staring back at her. Wordless.
And it felt like rewinding to the good times they’d had together. And then to the bad times. The arguments. The day they’d broken up.
A breakup Jasmine instigated. But one of the hardest decisions she’d ever had to make in her life.
To this day.
Kelly cleared her throat. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re standing right in the frigging middle of a busy road. As much as you two might have some weird kind of death wish, I’d rather get out of this alive, if that’s not too much bother for you guys.”
Jasmine nodded. She reached down, went to give Noah a hand to help him to his feet.
The coldness of his fingers. Something else she used to tease him about. He’d press them against her back in the night and make her squeal.
And she used to tell him to stop. She used to tell him she’d run away with some warm handed personal trainer if he weren’t careful.