“Please,” the woman said. “We can help you gather supplies and stuff.”
“We don’t need help,” Eric persisted. “We need to get going, so you best move on. There’s an abandoned SUV not far down the road from here. It’s got a bit of diesel in it, keys inside. If you want a ride, take that.”
The man raised his eyebrows, surprised, then a grateful smile formed on his face. “Really? Thank you.” The woman also smiled and nodded, though the smile wavered on her lips as if she didn’t fully trust them.
“I know it’s pushing our luck, but do you kind people have any water to spare? We’re pretty thirsty. We’ve walked all the way from Colchester and we only had one bottle.”
“Colchester?” Kingsley repeated. “That’s where we’re headed. What’s it like there?” he asked, already knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
Eric retrieved an unopened bottle of water from beside the driver’s seat and handed it to the man, who nodded his thanks. “Well, it was pretty fucked last we saw. Just as fucked as every other town probably is now. I would stay away from towns as much as possible if I were you. That’s what we’re doing.”
5.
One day earlier
When Emma realised she’d spent the night in a corner shop with a homeless man and his dog while zombies lumbered through the streets outside, she knew she was exhausted. Of course she was – she had barely slept the night before. It had been one of those nights where random memories regurgitated themselves from every last synapse of her brain and kept her awake better than caffeine ever could. She hadn’t had one of those sleepless spells in a long time before that, and it just so happened that the dead started to walk the next day.
Her life was full of coincidences like that. Maybe that was why it was so easy for her to believe they were more than just coincidences, that they were caused by her.
Emma glanced at the homeless man – Terry, he’d introduced himself as in the few words they had exchanged – sleeping on a bed of collapsed cardboard boxes in the corner of the stockroom they were cooped up in. She wondered whether she ought to try waking him. The only conversation they’d had so far had been unproductive, him answering her questions with grunts, shrugs and short, one-word replies before rolling over and going to sleep.
Terry seemed to value sleep more than discussing their predicament and figuring out what the hell was going on. Emma supposed the man was used to sleeping in a lot worse places on the streets and was taking advantage of the roof over his head, the warmth and security.
He was kind; he had comforted Emma yesterday when she began having a panic attack after realising she’d left her phone at her house and was unable to communicate with Leena.
She should let Terry sleep, she decided. She would feel guilty disturbing him after the kindness he’d shown her.
They had left the stockroom door open a crack and Emma could see the sun swelling up behind the houses on the opposite side of the street when she looked out the front window. Early morning.
The infected that had been thumping on the window had eventually wandered off, losing sight of Emma and Terry once they retreated into the back and kept quiet for a while.
Emma had pondered all night trying to come up with a plan.
On the phone yesterday, Leena had said before she hung up that Dave was going to take her and the kids to his uncle’s place. Leena had also said she would call back, but since Emma had left her phone at home, caught up in her determination and haste to help Terry and his dog, she didn’t have a clue whether her sister had tried to get hold of her again. She didn’t know whether they’d made it to Dave’s uncle’s place, or run into trouble on the way.
Luckily, Emma knew where Dave’s uncle lived. She had visited his home – a spacious, six-bedroom detached house on a quiet lane between Stanway and Beacon End, complete with stables, vegetable patches and a chicken coop – when he’d hosted a gathering for Dave’s thirtieth birthday.
Being far enough from town to avoid the mayhem, and built for a self-sufficient lifestyle, it was clear why Dave wanted his family to spend the apocalypse there.
Emma vaguely remembered the directions to get there. She could do it. But she would feel much safer travelling in her car. She would only have to walk through the suburbs and across the green, but the thought of being outside even for five minutes amidst the horrors she’d seen made her heart race.
It would be quicker and safer in her car. Emma just needed to get back to her house first, then she could get the car (and grab her phone while she was there) and be there in ten minutes assuming nothing held her up.
That was her plan.
The rising sun peeled past the chimneys of the houses and shone in Emma’s eyes. Using this annoyance as her cue to get moving, she stood and walked to the door next to the stockroom that opened onto a small space with two other doors – the toilet on the right and the fire exit straight ahead.
She peered into the toilet as she passed, shuddering when she caught sight of the drops of blood on the floor. That was where they’d found the shopkeeper who must have opened the store yesterday. He’d turned, a bite mark on his hand, on the soft tissue between thumb and forefinger.
It was the bites that did it, Emma knew. Although she had never seen a zombie movie in her life, pop culture had made her aware of that one piece of universally accepted zombie lore: when a zombie bites you, you become one of them. And it seemed to hold true in real life. She’d spotted bite marks on most of the infected she had encountered so far.
Pushing through the fire exit, Emma averted her eyes from the corner of the yard where the shopkeeper’s body was. After Terry had put the man out of his misery with a hammer he’d found in the stockroom, the two of them had then carried the body outside so that the store wouldn’t start to smell of rotting flesh.
As she walked around to the alleyway at the side of the shop, she felt a tug of hesitation at leaving Terry on his own without even telling him where she was going.
At least that’s what she told herself was causing her hesitation; in truth, she hadn’t even known the man for a full day and the slight companionship she felt toward him was a result of his unexpected warmth toward her, and the struggle they’d endured together.
Maybe the hesitation was also because Emma was scared. Scared to make decisions. Scared to be completely alone.
She stood by the gate at the end of the alleyway, scanning the street. There were four zombies lurking out there. Not the same ones that had been hammering on the shop window. Those had all moved on, hunting for more people, Emma guessed.
These four were milling about in the middle of the road to her left. Far enough from the gate that they probably wouldn’t notice her slipping off in the opposite direction.
Closing the gate quietly behind her, she set off.
Yesterday, when she had run through the streets following Terry, they had reached the shop in about two minutes. Going back took a lot longer, however, Emma skulking in the cool shadows of the houses behind which the sun still climbed toward noon, often stopping and crouching behind the low stone walls of driveways, hiding from a zombie in the road until it drifted a safe distance away.
At one point, a battered woman who was alive but looked as sickly as one of the dead came down the road in Emma’s direction on the opposite side of the street. Her arms were covered in angry red scratches. One of the straps of her dress had been torn and the garment sagged lopsided on her body, her hair knotted and straggly. And there was a wound on her shoulder near the base of her neck that was almost certainly a bite.
The woman looked as though she would have hissed at Emma had she tried to cross the road and come near her. They passed one another in silence, the woman glowering and not taking her eyes off her until they were out of sight of each other.
Maybe Emma should have tried to find a weapon before coming out here; if a zombie started chasing her, she would have to run and hope she didn’t attract the attention of a whole group of
them. She had visions of fumbling with her car keys, accidentally dropping them in the footwell as a pack of zombies jostled closer and closer, like a scene from a horror film.
In the end, she made it to her road without a throng of the undead on her heels.
But the undead weren’t her only problem.
Emma heard them before she saw them – voices disturbing the apocalyptic hush that had settled over the neighbourhood. Deep, male voices. At first she thought they sounded panicked. But as she neared the place where the voices were coming from, it dawned on her that what she was hearing was something closer to excitement than fear.
Nearing her home, Emma saw movement in her driveway and realised then that the people she could hear were trying to get into her car.
No – they were getting into her car. They had obviously just been inside the house and gotten hold of her keys because they were opening the doors and climbing in. Four men. The ignition came on.
Emma started to run towards her driveway when she saw this, but quickly stopped herself. They were already reversing out into the road and there wasn’t much she could do to stop them. And she didn’t know these men; it was the end of the world, they were stealing her car, and chances were they wouldn’t hold back from other crimes. Worse ones. Rape and murder.
Ducking behind an overgrown bush in the front garden of the nearest house, Emma watched her car speed away down the road with a growing feeling of unease.
It was a feeling that reminded her of when she was eleven years old, on a swimming trip at a local indoor pool – when she went up to the diving board because her friends were jumping off it and she wanted to prove she could do it too. But she wasn’t quite ready. And as she climbed the ladder, the jagged rubber grips digging into the water-softened soles of her feet, she began to think she had made a terrible decision. I’m going to jump wrong and hurt myself. I’ll go too far under the water and I won’t be able to swim back up. But it was too late to turn back.
None of those things actually happened. She just flopped unimpressively into the pool and went back to playing around on the floats.
But those moments of questioning her decision, of being aware of her own fragility and feeling like she was the only one who could see how vulnerable people really were, had stuck with her.
Emma’s car turned out of sight at the corner and she stared blankly in its direction for an unnecessary amount of time after it had disappeared.
Was she stupid? Was there any chance of her seeing her sister again when the world as she knew it and the rules that governed it were crumbling too fast for her to keep up with?
She was suddenly aware that her hand had travelled to her mouth while she was staring, and now she was unconsciously nibbling her thumbnail. An anxious tick. She never chewed her nails down, just teethed on them; they always had to be neatly trimmed. It was one of the many things she was religiously precise about.
Time to move, Emma, she ordered herself.
The front door was open, as she had left it when she ran to Terry’s aid yesterday. That was how the men had been able to walk in and snatch her car keys. Putting her self-berating thoughts to the back of mind, Emma went to the living room.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Immediately she noticed that her laptop was gone. Why they had taken it was anybody’s guess. Maybe they were opportunistic thieves who thought they might be able to sell it if the world ever got back to normal. She snapped her gaze around the room, searching for her phone, only seeing it as she stooped low and noticed the glimmer of broken glass on the carpet; it was on the floor, screen shattered.
Racing over to it, she picked the phone up and pressed the home button. The fractured screen lit up but showed nothing except a blank grey background, split by a web of cracks.
Emma now had no way of getting hold of Leena. Fuck.
The potted plant on the coffee table had been knocked to the floor, shoeprints tracking spilled compost across the cream carpet. Through the kitchen doorway, she could see open cupboards and drawers pulled out, and when she went in there, she saw that there were also knives missing from her set. Her cupboards were considerably barer than she had left them.
She took the last two oaty breakfast bars, unwrapped one and scarfed it where she stood, tucked the other into her jean pocket. Then she filled a glass of water and gulped it down at the sink.
Emma went back into the living room and fell into a chair at her dining table. Started doing the breathing exercises her therapist had shown her.
It wasn’t the fact that they’d stolen things from her, broken things, messed the place up – although any of that would, under usual circumstances, be enough to bring on a panic attack.
No, it was the fact that these strangers had invaded her personal space. And they had done it so easily. And there was nothing Emma could do about it.
Despite many sleepless nights full of irrational worries about the possibility of a home invasion happening, most of the time she felt safe and comfortable here. It was the one place in the world where she had order, and nothing could disrupt that order.
She couldn’t stop her obsessive thoughts or control her compulsions. But she could organise her space.
So the fact that a group of men she didn’t know had entered her house and done as they pleased – the thing she’d fretted about during all those nights had actually come to pass – was fucking with her mind.
Nowhere was truly safe.
Still, Emma stayed sitting there for a while, getting up only to lock the door when more infected started turning up in the streets. Unable to make herself leave the place that had been her safe space for so long.
When she’d fled yesterday there had been someone in danger, and it hadn’t been so difficult to bring herself to act. To help the helpless.
But with no certainty as to where her sister was now, and her original plan compromised by the thieves who’d nicked her car, Emma understood just how fear-driven she really was. Yes, she had put herself in danger to help Terry, but it had been more the fear of staying where she was and being alone that had compelled her at that moment. She had been steering the ship, but anxiety was the wind in the sails.
It was getting dark again by the time Emma had decided what to do next. She didn’t want to be outside at night. She would have to wait for morning. Maybe catch some sleep, though she didn’t think it likely despite how little of it she’d had the previous two nights.
*
A change of clothes – her sweaty jeans and t-shirt replaced with a pair of khaki hiking trousers, black vest top and a loose green corduroy jacket.
A steak knife clutched in her hand.
Attempting to nap on the sofa, but failing to lay there with her eyes closed for longer than five minutes without getting up and checking the windows.
Watching the infected ambling insect-like down the road…
Finally, the waking sky blushed as the sun reared its head. Even with the monsters stalking the streets, Emma was moved by how beautiful the sunrise was.
Never a crier, she was surprised to find tears in her eyes as she looked around at her home for what would probably be the last time. Staying was pointless, she reminded herself. There was nothing here for her anymore.
Emma opened the front door and rushed out into the unknown, again.
6.
Emma reasoned that if she just kept running, the dead wouldn’t get her, and it wouldn’t take a long time to reach Westland’s Park with Stanway Green just beyond. Surely there would be less infected in the open fields of the park area than in town?
Once she got there, she could go around Beacon End through the green and find the quiet lane where Dave’s uncle lived.
The infected were slow. Emma wasn’t. She’d always been good at cardio, always had great stamina – and she could run fast.
As a kid, Emma would win every footrace in the school playground and every game of Manhunt was a breeze for her. As an adult, she regularly wen
t for runs in the park. She enjoyed them and sometimes they actually helped to clear her head, pumping her anxious energy into physical activity.
But it wasn’t clearing her mind today.
What if I get there and nobody else has made it?
What if the others are dead?
What if Leena’s dead?
There were two zombies in front of her and she slipped between them, narrowly avoiding their outstretched, blood-smeared hands.
She was starting to feel the burn in her legs. She had been straight-up sprinting for several minutes now, trying to imagine that the zombies she kept darting past were just regular people, trying to ignore the hideous sound of teeth cracking together as they snapped their jaws.
Huffing, feet pounding, dodging the dead. Running non-stop. The minutes felt like hours.
Then Emma realised the next turn was Shrub End Road; not far from the park now.
But as she was coming to the end of the road, she heard something – the hiss of compressed air, like the sound of a bus braking. Having grown used to hearing nothing but snapping teeth, car alarms blaring in the distance, and the occasional unsettling scream of raw human terror, this sound was strange to her ears.
The thrum of a large engine drawing nearer all but confirmed that it was a bus. Remembering the men who had stolen her car, Emma stepped into a driveway and squatted behind a wheelie bin to hide.
A blue and white bus roared by, crossing the mini roundabout at the end of the road she was on. She could smell the hot exhaust as it disappeared from view.
Who was on that bus? Was it full of people, banding together and helping each other survive, or was it just more thieves? Was there room for good people in this world anymore, or was there only space for survivors?
Emma went left at the roundabout, the direction the bus had come from, and turned onto Shrub End Road. Then froze.
Zombies filled the road ahead, thronging towards her. The noise of the bus must have attracted them, as they were walking in the direction it had gone – but now they had seen Emma and were evidently more interested in the easier target she presented, their murky eyes fixing on her, one by one.
Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5 Page 11