Kingsley felt a hand on one of his shoulders and flinched at the touch. Then one settled on his other shoulder. Eric and Sammy stood at his sides, looking down at the undead girl.
Eric bent down and ended the snapper’s squirming with a knife to the temple.
“We killed a man. We… we fucking murdered him.”
“No,” Sammy said. Her tone was flat. “You didn’t kill him, Kingsley. It was me, and me alone. I pushed the knife into his neck.”
“Why didn’t we listen to James? He wanted us to leave him.” Kingsley’s anger was subsiding into remorse now. “It could have all been avoided if we had just listened to him.”
“Kingsley – look at me.” Eric was facing him, tear trails framing the hard, straight line of his mouth. “Remember what I said to you in the woods two days ago? That dwelling on the things you can’t change only makes it harder to plan ahead for the things you can change?
“The second I stabbed Darren in the leg I regretted it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I was thinking about it when we left James’ body to rot in the flat. I was thinking about it when I went to sleep last night. I was thinking about it while you were looting the shop. But at the same time, I’ve been thinking about how we can move on, what we can do to avoid something like that happening again.”
Eric was right. Of course he was. That was why Kingsley enjoyed his company so much. The man was always telling the truth in a world where everyone was scared of reality and chose to deny what was right in front of them.
He turned to Eric and clutched him tight in a hug. “I suppose it’s a good thing you don’t dwell on all the stupid shit we’ve done in the past.” A smile quivered on his lips. “If I talk like that again, just slap me in the face.”
They finished embracing and Sammy cleared her throat. “Speaking of planning ahead…” She wandered over to a bus stop at the side of the road and began poring over a map of the town pinned to the wall of the shelter. “I wonder if there are any car dealers or garages nearby. We could be out here for hours looking for a car, and it’s going to start getting dark soon.”
Kingsley and Eric joined her and the three of them studied the web of lines and icons that filled the street map. They searched for several minutes before Kingsley shrugged and turned to Sammy. “I don’t see anything on the map, but there must be garages in the industrial estate. We could try there next.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Sammy agreed. “I can’t find anything either.”
But she must have had a sudden spark of inspiration; she squinted at the map again, muttering, “Wait a second…” Holding her finger over an area near the shopping centre where they had stayed last night in a camping store, Sammy straightened and said, “What about this?”
They looked over her shoulder to see what she was pointing at. It was a blue bus icon.
“The bus park?” Kingsley asked.
Sammy nodded. “I know it’s a bit bigger than what we’re looking for but a bus is better than nothing, isn’t it? Do you reckon it’s worth a shot?”
“Yeah, better than nothing I suppose.”
*
Luckily, they hadn’t ventured too far from the shopping centre after finally plucking up the courage to leave the camping store earlier, as it was now getting toward evening and they didn’t want to be outside when it got dark. But they also didn’t want to have to spend another night in this wretched town full of snapping teeth and blood-soaked memories.
The bus park was an open area with parking spaces for multiple buses and a few sheltered waiting benches. It was behind the career centre, a nondescript, dun building that appeared to gape dolefully with its broken front door like a crooked mouth at the cinema across the road. Outside of which a snapper squatted, gnawing on the ribcage of a pigeon that had been flattened in the road.
The three survivors kept to the wall of the career centre and walked slowly as they turned into the street between the two buildings, not only to keep their distance from the snapper but also because they were anxious that they would find the bus park empty and almost couldn't bear to have their worries confirmed.
As they moved along the wall and, metre by metre, the parking area came into view, Kingsley's heart began to sink. Vacant grey filled his vision, split only by the faded white lines that divided the parking spaces.
They were almost at the end of the wall. They could see no buses. Only a sliver of the bus park remained out of view behind the wall now and Kingsley wasn’t hopeful.
They reached the edge and turned their heads almost in unison toward the last corner of the bus park…
And there it was – as if the collective power of their wishes had willed it into existence – a single remaining bus, dazzling white and blue in the lonely grey space.
Kingsley looked to his friends, all wide-eyed and beaming. The three of them stood there on the corner silently celebrating for a pause. Then Kingsley reminded himself that this was just one victory.
What were the chances of the bus being left unlocked, no driver around, keys in the ignition? He started toward the bus, Sammy and Eric scurrying behind.
Either the chances were higher than he thought, or it was just an unusual stroke of luck; the door was folded open, and when he stepped inside and approached the driver’s seat, he spotted the keys dangling beside the steering wheel and exhaled a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.
Kingsley knew there would be a decent amount of fuel in the tank because there were no pumps at the bus park, meaning all of the buses would have to be fuelled up and ready to go before they stopped here. Though that didn’t stop his smile from growing bigger as he pressed the clutch, turned the key and felt the vehicle rumble to life.
He turned to face his friends and share another moment of celebration.
But as he turned, there was a wild flurry of movement that stole his attention.
A person rushed at Eric from behind, a black object in their hand. Held like a weapon. The person must have been hiding at the back of the bus when they entered.
Kingsley’s alarm showed on his face; Eric spun around, clocking the danger just in time to duck below the swinging weapon.
In the split-second shift of momentum as the attacker missed and had to quickly adjust their course of action, Kingsley saw that it was a woman – dark hair, olive skin, police uniform, the weapon a black police baton.
Then Eric’s foot shot up into her stomach and sent her flying back, striking the armrest of a seat as she fell.
Before Eric had time to straighten up, a second woman darted out from behind a seat on the left. She floored him with a kick to the face and was about to strike Kingsley with the spanner she was holding when Sammy shouted, “Don’t you dare!”
The woman froze, glaring over Kingsley’s shoulder at Sammy. He turned to see the crossbow level with the woman’s face, shaking slightly in Sammy's hands.
“Move another muscle, and…” Sammy didn’t finish the threat.
There was no need. The woman's spanner clattered to the floor and, still glaring at them, she said in a small voice wet with spite, “This is our bus.”
3.
“What makes it your bus any more than ours?” Kingsley asked, returning the woman’s angry stare.
“We found it first. It’s ours.” Her eyes were small but intense, like the rest of the features on her round, mousy face.
“I don’t think it works like that anymore,” Sammy said. The woman in the police uniform gave her a quizzical look at that.
Eric picked himself up off the floor, groaning, and snatched the police baton from the woman’s side where she sat lax against one of the bus seats. Kingsley saw the red mark of a bruise beginning to form on the right side of Eric’s face where he had been kicked, spreading from cheekbone to temple. As he bent down to retrieve the spanner, he gave Kingsley a disgruntled smile that said, I’m fine – worry about those two, not me.
“Where did you get those weapons?” the policewoman asked;
of course she would be interested in their illegal weaponry.
“The dark web,” Kingsley said, remembering what Darren had told them and not wanting to go into more detail.
The women both looked like they didn’t quite believe him but also had no idea where else you could obtain those sort of weapons.
Kingsley changed the subject. “Look – I don’t know about you, but we really need this bus. Now, there’s more than enough room for all of us, and I would be happy to share. Only it doesn’t seem like you two are quite as willing.”
“We don’t know you,” the mousy one said. “You might try something, try to backstab us.”
“True,” Kingsley admitted, thinking the women might do the same to them. “But why don’t we get to know each other? I’ll start: my name’s Kingsley and my friends here are Sammy and Eric. We’re trying to get to Kelvedon to find Sammy’s parents, and we came here looking for a vehicle. Will you tell me your names?”
The mousy one stayed silent, glaring. But her friend spoke up. “I’m Kara and she’s Rebecca.” Kingsley nodded, and then was surprised when Kara continued. “We’re just trying to get out of Braintree. There are too many infected people in this town. We have no plan other than that. My parents are on a cruise in the Caribbean, and I have no partner or children. Rebecca has family here but… well, she had family here.”
Kingsley looked at Rebecca with sympathy. “You… saw it happen?”
Rebecca shut her eyes. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. And neither am I. I hated them.”
Kingsley didn’t know how to respond to that. Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything because Eric spoke.
“Let’s make this easy for all of us. We still need to pick up some supplies we left in a camping store at the shopping centre before we leave. So here’s what we’ll do: me and Sammy will run back there now and you’ll come with us, Rebecca, while Kingsley stays here with Kara in the bus. It would be stupid to drive further into town when the noise could attract snappers and get us swarmed. And we can’t drive through the shopping centre, anyway.”
“How is that supposed to make things easier for everyone?” Kara asked.
“Because neither you or Kingsley are gonna try to steal the bus when you’re both waiting for us to return.”
“Right. So we’re supposed to just agree that we’re sharing the bus now?”
“I didn’t say that. But, like it or not, we’re the ones with the weapons and we are taking this bus with or without you.”
The crossbow in Sammy’s hands had lowered slightly, no longer aiming at the women’s heads. However, when Eric said those last words she raised the crossbow to head height once again.
“I’m not sure I can agree to share, Eric,” Sammy protested.
Kingsley knew that Eric was trying his best to avoid more senseless violence after yesterday’s chaos, and he voiced his support for him. “It’s the dead we should be worried about. The dead are already trying to kill us. There’s no need to antagonise the living as well.”
But he also knew where Sammy’s hostility came from; even as he spoke, the image of a crossbow bolt sticking out of James’ eye surged through his mind.
4.
Jogging through the shopping centre, Eric, Sammy and Rebecca took care not to attract a trail of snappers that might get them cornered in the plaza as terraced buildings hemmed them in on both sides. They took out every undead that noticed them and snuck past the rest.
Eric swung the chain mace at a snapper that lurched out from behind a souvenir stand before they could pass it. The spiked mace head ripped open the snapper’s neck and shoulder, flinging gore in its wake, the force throwing the undead to the ground and leaving it in a temporary struggle to pick itself back up.
Eric was beginning to get the hang of swinging the chain mace around. He found that it was all about moving in synchronicity with the weapon, leaning into the arcs and not fighting the velocity of the mace head. You had to be certain that you wanted to do damage before swinging it.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t killed the snapper because they slipped out of sight around a corner just ahead before it could pick itself back up.
Eric could see the sign of the camping store they had slept in last night halfway up the next stretch of the plaza.
There was only an armful of food supplies in there, meat left in a cooler box in the stockroom where they had shut themselves away for the night. But it was important because it was the only meat they had.
Getting the right nutrients to stay healthy and functioning from a plant-based diet had been tricky enough before the apocalypse. With the limited food options in the world they now lived in, it would be much harder. They would need meat in their diets, no way around it. The only problem was that the undead also had an insatiable hunger for meat, flesh and blood.
The snappers were a drain on the meat supply. They needed to take as much as they could get before they had none left.
The camping store was in front of them now, and two snappers jittered toward them as they approached it, coming from the entrance of the store. Did we leave the door open? Eric wondered as Sammy and Rebecca stepped forward to deal with the snappers.
Sammy fired the crossbow at the farthest one, but her aim was too low and the bolt lodged in it’s chest. Fighting her nerves, she managed to reload and aim the weapon without shooting too quickly and missing again. The second shot speared through the snapper’s grey forehead and it fell flat on it’s back.
Rebecca was less lucky with her knife, going for the eye of the other snapper but instead getting her blade stuck in it’s jaw, just below the cheekbone. She gritted her teeth and slammed her foot uselessly into the dead man’s crotch.
Sammy was tugging the bolts from the dead one’s body when she noticed the other woman’s struggle and looked up at her. “Go for the back of the neck! Stab it in the spine!”
Rebecca cast an angry glare her way – but nonetheless followed Sammy’s instructions, ripping her knife from the bloody, snapping face in front of her and stabbing madly at the back of the snapper’s neck.
“No, not like that,” Sammy began. “You have to push it—”
She stopped when one of Rebecca’s wild stabs hit the right spot and severed the spinal cord. The snapper’s body slumped in her arms and she let it crash on the paving.
Eric would have interfered and killed the snapper himself while Rebecca was struggling with it if he hadn’t been distracted by the trail of blood leading into the shop. And the pieces of meat scattered along it.
“Look,” he said to the others, nodding at the blood. “Be alert. There might be some of them in there.”
There was even a severed pig’s trotter laying in the trail. Something about that sent a shiver up Eric’s spine.
They went in quietly. Rebecca stopped at the front and turned around to peer out the windows at the empty plaza. Sammy kept an eye on her while Eric crept to the back of the store, toward the stockroom, nudging a bit of fleshy debris with his foot and noting with unease that the trail led right up to stockroom. The door was half open, and he was pretty sure he could hear movement in there as he got closer.
It was definitely not in the same state as they had left it this morning; they had stacked a few boxes in front of the stockroom door before leaving to make it harder for anyone or anything to get in there and find their food. But those boxes had been toppled over.
Eric hadn’t thought that a snapper would be capable of pushing the boxes as they were fairly heavy, containing tent heaters and other camping equipment. Then again, the undead could be very persistent when they knew there was fresh meat nearby.
Pressing his back to the wall, Eric leaned into the door frame, trying to see inside. But the lights were off and it was pretty dark in there. He could hear something, though – a wet, sloppy sound.
His hand inched along the wall and found the light switch. He kicked the door the rest of the
way open as the room burst into light, and the snapper that hunched over the cooler box tearing into their meat supplies straightened up, twisted it’s head toward him. Blood was smeared over it’s sagging face and matted in the ends of it’s ragged hair.
The blood wasn’t from the snapper’s body, but from the raw pork chops it had been feasting on.
It stood and came at Eric, who pulled out his knife and rammed it up through the snapper’s chin and all the way into the brain.
Those pork chops had been the bulk of their meat supplies. Eric walked up to the cooler box and looked inside. The pack of bacon Kingsley had brought with him when they went camping was missing. Glancing around, he spotted the torn, empty pack on the floor next to the cooler.
Not wanting their trip to have been for nothing, Eric decided he would find something else useful to take back to the bus.
He slung a bagged tent over his shoulder, then scooped up a few sleeping bags in one arm. While he was looking for a new portable cooler that hadn’t been touched by infected hands, he heard Sammy call out.
“Rebecca! Come back!”
He ducked back into the shop and saw that the women were both outside in the plaza, the front door swinging closed in their wake. Stumbling after them, he halted in the plaza beside Sammy who had suddenly stopped chasing the other woman after realising what she was doing.
Rebecca ran at a snapper that had emerged from the shadow of an archway directly across from the camping store, following the strange trail of blood and littered flesh that led into the shop. There was fury and grit in Rebecca’s stride, in the white-knuckled grip that clutched her knife.
She shoved her blade through it’s eye, this time hitting the brain in one go. But as she walked, jaw clenched, back towards Eric and Sammy, a second snapper came out from the archway behind her… then a third. Then a fourth. Then more and more of them, all staggering towards the survivors, teeth snapping like piranhas.
Seeing Eric and Sammy’s glassy stares, Rebecca looked back at the archway and let out a gasp when she saw them. There were too many for them to fight – at least a dozen and still more coming.
Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5 Page 6