The dog inched forward, sniffing at the bowl, then began lapping the water up aggressively. It looked almost as though it was trying to eat the liquid. Kingsley checked up and down the road to make sure no snappers were creeping up on them. When the dog was finished, the homeless man lifted the bowl to his lips and drained the rest of the water with a few large gulps. “Thank you, kind sir,” he gasped, packing the bowl back into his bag.
Kingsley nodded and started to walk away.
“Wait! One more thing.”
He turned back.
“Have you seen a woman out here with dark, wavy hair, fairly tall? And freckles on her face? She has a lot of them, I think. Her name is Ellie… or Emily. I can’t remember. I’m awful with names, to be honest.”
It was the name that planted a seed of curiosity in his mind. The description, while it matched Emma’s appearance, was vague enough that it could have fit any woman with similar features, of which there were doubtless several in Colchester. But the ambiguous name that started with the letter E, together with that description, was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
“Err… no. I haven’t seen anyone like that. Sorry,” Kingsley replied. Furrowing his brow, he added, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you looking for her?”
“She helped me. She saved me and my dog when the zombies were on us. Other people were just staring at us from their windows, but she came running outside to help. We ran from the zombies and barricaded ourselves inside a shop to hide from them. I wanted to repay her by helping her out, but she left while I was asleep and I never got the chance.”
Helping a stranger in their time of need – something Emma would do.
Maybe it was a longshot, but he had to try.
Kingsley cleared his throat. “Did she mention where she was going?”
“Not specifically,” the man said. “She was very concerned about her sister, and she mentioned her sister’s husband had an uncle with a huge house where the rest of her family were going. She kept saying she needed to go there. But she didn’t say where it was. I asked her about it but she got proper worked up over it and then started to hyperventilate. I managed to calm her down, and eventually we both went to sleep without saying another word. When I woke up, she was gone. I wanted to help her look for her sister.”
“What was her sister’s husband called? Did she tell you?”
The man sighed. “It began with a D… Dan? Something like that. Why?”
Kingsley turned away from the homeless man’s searching gaze. He rubbed his shoulders and neck, massaging them in self-comfort as his heart rate shot up.
It was Emma. It had to be. Her sister’s husband was called Dave, not Dan, and Dave’s uncle had a large rural home that was an obvious choice of location to ride out the apocalypse. Kingsley and Emma had been there for one of Dave’s birthday gatherings. He knew where it was.
“Why?” the man asked again. “Do you know someone called Dan?”
If it wasn’t Emma, it was the biggest coincidence ever.
“Hello?” The man was getting impatient now.
Kingsley closed his eyes, breathed in deep through his nose, let the breath seep out between his lips.
Then he faced the homeless guy again and said, “I think I know the woman. And I think I know where she went.”
3.
Eric was only able to keep up with the van because of the snappers that kept getting in their way. The van had to slow down to weave between pockets of the undead scattered along the roads. The bus, on the other hand, wasn’t as mobile and could take more of a battering – though it was still hazardous to plough through groups of snappers – and as the van decelerated to dodge them Eric only sped up, bracing for the thud of bodies racking the bumper.
They were gaining on the van.
“You’re damaging the bus,” Rebecca said in Eric’s ear, pointing out a hand-sized fracture in the corner of the windscreen. “How are you gonna stop the van? If you hit them you’ll wreck their vehicle and end up killing her.”
Eric didn’t reply, his concentration taken by the chase. In truth, there was nothing he could think of doing to stop them that wouldn’t put Sammy at risk. But he had to do something. Inaction wasn’t an option; doing nothing was the same as giving up in Eric’s book.
“Listen to me, you arsehole!” Rebecca snarled.
“Shut the fuck up,” Eric bit back as another series of thumps shook the bus.
He was getting worked up, and he knew it was because he was coming to terms with the fact that he didn’t know how to fix the situation. It would have been easier if Kara and Rebecca weren’t with him, if he’d gone on this lunatic mission alone.
He couldn’t live with himself if he let Mark get away with Sammy. But if he drove them off the road, there was a high chance he would seriously injure or kill Sammy in the process of trying to save her from the clutches of a madman. Which outcome was worse?
“You’ll kill her,” Rebecca went on. Eric needed her to quit yapping at him. He couldn’t fault her logic, not when he was having the same thoughts himself. But she wasn’t helping.
Thankfully, Kara pulled Rebecca back down into her seat. “He’s not going to stop,” she said.
A bend was coming up and they were now almost bumper-to-bumper with the van. Immediately Eric saw an opportunity to stop the other vehicle; if he was quick enough he could catch the side of the van as it slowed on the bend, or get ahead of them and force the van to T-bone the bus. He realised that both options might injure or kill everyone in the van.
The opportunity was there for a fleeting matter of seconds. That was all Eric needed. He might not get another chance to stop them, to rescue Sammy.
So he floored the gas and swung into the opposite lane.
They were metres from the rear of the van. Without looking at the speedometer, Eric knew he was going too fast to take the bend. It didn’t matter, as long as he stopped them.
Another two snappers fell beneath their wheels.
Inches from the rear of the van now – the other vehicle just turning into the curve of the road. Eric fought the urge to slam on the brakes and avoid the collision as the plain white siding of the van filled their windscreen.
He wasn’t expecting the rear of the van to swing round in a wide skid, tyres squealing on the tarmac, narrowly dodging the bus.
And because he wasn’t expecting it, Eric didn’t react in time to stop the bus from hurtling through a chain-link fence at the edge of the road and down a small decline. Just as they were about to hit a brick wall, he braked.
“Fucking hell,” muttered Kara’s voice behind Eric as he caught his breath and began to assess their surroundings. He’d landed them in a grassy space with a wall ahead, buildings on both sides, and a slope leading up to the road at their back. They couldn’t reverse back up the slope and onto the road. The snappers pouring through the gap in the fence would only push the bus back downhill if they tried.
Which meant the bus was stuck. They would have to ditch it here and get away before the dead trapped them inside.
Eric cut the engine so the noise wouldn’t continue to attract more of them, then released his seatbelt and grabbed his things. “We have to leave or we’ll get stuck here. Come on.”
“What about Sammy?” Kara asked as she and Rebecca followed him out.
“We’ll work that out when we’re safe. Can’t do anything for her if we’re dead.”
The snappers bounded down the slope as they ran through an opening in the brick wall where a cycle lane exited from the cul-de-sac on the other side.
Stumbling to get away from the snappers already spilling through the opening behind them, the survivors made it about twenty feet into the cul-de-sac before noticing the row of snappers that had materialised in front of them at the other end of the street – a group as large as the one on their heels, too many to fight. They must have heard the bus crashing through the fence.
Terraced houses lined both sides of the
street. Eric raced to the nearest one and tried the door, but it was locked. He moved from house to house, trying each door with no luck, preparing to kick one open if he needed to.
But he didn’t. Just then, Kara grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed to some scaffolding that stood against a house across the road. “We’ll be safe up there. They can’t climb.”
The three of them rushed over to the scaffolding, reaching the ladder right as the first snapper from the bend lurched towards Eric and he swung the chain mace round in a blow that almost took the snapper’s head off it’s shoulders.
Rebecca scrambled up the ladder first while Kara clobbered another snapper to death with her police baton. Then Kara was up, kicking at a pair of dead hands that had gotten hold of her left boot on the fourth rung. Seeing this, Eric threw his arms around the waist of the snapper holding Kara’s foot, pulled it off of her and launched it bodily at the other encroaching undead.
Then Kara was safely up on the wooden platform and it was Eric’s turn.
Hurry. Five snappers encircling him, drawing in on the ladder as he leapt onto the rungs. The duffel bag and chain mace weighed him down considerably and he struggled to climb the ladder as fast as Rebecca and Kara had.
Halfway up, he suddenly felt his feet being tugged toward the ground. When he looked down he saw that two of them had latched onto him.
With a blow of fear, he watched as the snappers tried to bite through his boots. Their teeth failed to penetrate his footwear but it was a startling sight, an unnerving sensation to feel the pressure of something that, without the protection of his boots, would have spelt his doom.
But he was doomed anyway; he couldn’t climb any higher with them pulling on his legs, and sooner or later more would join in. The combined strength of the hungry mass would drag him off the ladder and tear the flesh from his bones.
Eric looked up at the women on the platform. Sorrow in his eyes, he lifted the duffel and the chain mace so they could reach down and take them from him before the horde ravaged him.
But the women didn’t reach for the bag or the weapon. Instead, they each leaned over the edge with bricks in their hands and tossed them down at the snappers grappling onto Eric’s feet.
One brick hit the snapper holding his left leg square between it’s marbled eyes with a horrible clunk, sending it to the ground. The second brick fell on the other snapper’s shoulder which caused it to loosen it’s grip enough for Eric to yank his leg free and climb the rest of the way up to safety.
Collapsing on the platform in exhaustion, Eric’s relief at surviving the ordeal lasted all of thirty seconds.
Because their problems had just doubled; not only had Sammy been kidnapped, but now they were stranded up here on the scaffolding.
For the third time in the past ten minutes, Eric was out of solutions.
4.
A thousand fears, thoughts and questions tornadoed through Emma’s mind as they sped away in the butcher’s van.
Sammy and Eric were both here in Colchester – two of Kingsley’s closest friends. Was he here too? If so, why wasn’t he with Eric? Had something happened to him? Could she help Sammy? And what about Leena? If she was going to be of any help to anybody, she needed to do something about her knee. Oh god, her knee! A throbbing ache wracked her leg whenever she bent it, and she could barely stand. How was she supposed to do anything in this state?
When Emma had been out in the streets running from the dead, it had elicited a fight-or-flight reaction in her that seemed to stop her from spiralling, the external danger more pressing than her internal anxiety. But, although Emma didn’t feel safe here exactly, there was no immediate threat inside the van to distract her from obsessive thoughts.
A few drops of blood had gotten on her hands when she’d stabbed the zombie on the road after falling over. All of a sudden she could think of little else but the blood.
If you don’t wash the blood off your hands, Leena will die.
If you don’t wash the blood off, everyone you love will die.
Emma wasn’t a germaphobe. Some OCD sufferers had the urge to scrub their hands raw every time they touched a door handle in a public space. That wasn’t Emma. But she did hate, hate, hate uncomfortable textures on her hands. Sometimes when it was cold and her hands were dry and chapped, the crusty feeling it gave her skin made her feel physically sick and she would have to lather her hands with moisturiser.
The blood had dried in sticky smears between Emma’s fingers and on her palms. It took a lot of effort not to gag every time her fingers glued themselves together.
It was all she could do to focus on more pressing matters.
They’d lost the bus several blocks back after it nearly hit them, Mark skillfully dodging the other vehicle at the last second. Emma had watched the bus plough through a fence at the side of the road and disappear between two buildings. They hadn’t seen it since.
She didn’t know what had happened to Eric and the other two women on the bus, or whether they were still following the van. She didn’t want Eric, Sammy or any of them to get hurt, but the only way she could think to help them was by coaxing Mark into letting Sammy go.
The issue was that Mark didn’t seem like a person whose mind could be changed about anything. Especially not by someone as thin-skinned as Emma.
No. She would have to accept the fact that there was nothing she could do for Eric and Sammy. She wasn’t supposed to be here, getting involved in this mess. She was supposed to be with Leena, Dave and her two nieces, safe within the walls of the large semi-rural house that belonged to Dave’s uncle.
And part of her saw the sudden reappearance of Eric and Sammy – people who were part of a life she’d let go of – as a sign, a result of her blocking out her compulsions. She knew it was illogical. But there was a difference between knowing something to be true and believing it.
As soon as the irrational thought came to her, Emma knew she’d made her mind up. Whether the consequences were real or imagined, she had to get away from these people as soon as possible. She couldn’t get tied up in this. It wasn’t her battle to fight. The longer she and Leena were separated, the more likely it felt to Emma that she would never reunite with her sister.
With a glance at the wing mirror, Mark pulled the van into the wide packed-dirt driveway of an unfinished development of six houses arrayed in a semi-circle.
We’re stopping, Emma realised with relief. Maybe there would be a chance for her to get away from these men if she could get back on her feet.
Mark parked the van horizontally at the end of the driveway in front of the two semi-detached houses that faced the entrance to the building site. The windows and doors of the houses hadn’t been fitted and the interiors were dark against the day, forbidding.
Opening the glove box, Mark took out a small handheld radio. Then he got out of the vehicle.
Two rapt knocks on the side of the van – Mark summoning John from the back. Emma watched as he stared at the empty, newly constructed houses around him, before lifting the radio to his mouth and speaking into it.
*
Stranded on the scaffolding, Eric thought his mind was playing tricks on him when he heard a muffled voice coming from the duffel bag.
“If you’re hearing this,” the voice said, “which you should be – I saw the other radio in the bag you were carrying – respond immediately.”
That’s where the second radio is, Eric realised, recognising the voice as Mark’s. He reached into the duffel to retrieve the handheld radio set with its two charging docks, one of them empty.
“If you’re ignoring me, know that I’m about to tell you something important that will happen in one hour. Whether you respond to me or not, it doesn’t change what has to be done.”
Eric keyed the mic and spoke into the radio. “Mark, this is Eric. We hear you.”
“Good… Listen carefully: we’re parked on a building site. Greenwood Crescent – there’s a sign by the entrance. You know w
here that is?”
“Yes.” Eric had actually worked on that site. A small plot with a wide driveway, six semi-detached houses in a crescent shape at the end, hence the name. The construction company he worked for had taken the job on.
“Perfect. I’m holding a knife to your friend’s neck as we speak. So listen: you have one hour, starting from now, to get your arses down here and hand over the weapons, supplies and everything you took from the flat. And that includes the crossbow. If you fail to do this, she dies.”
Eric sighed, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s going to be an issue for us, Mark. We’re trapped on some scaffolding with over twenty snappers below us. They’re surrounding the ladder, and there aren’t any windows we can climb through to get down some other way. We’re stranded here, Mark.”
“That doesn’t sound like my problem,” Mark replied in an indifferent tone that warred with a subtle fervent quiver in his voice. The man sounded tired, composed and vindictive all at the same time.
“It is your problem because it means we can’t get there in one hour. And we don’t have the crossbow. The other guy who was with us has it, but he went to search for someone on his own and I don’t know where he is.”
“Then your friend dies. I won’t lose sleep over it.”
“No… I can assure you you’ll be sleeping for a long fucking time when I get my hands on you.” Eric could no longer keep the hatred from his voice, his knuckles going white as he squeezed the radio, picturing his fingers locked around Mark’s neck.
“The hour is ticking away,” was all Mark said in response.
The radio went silent. Their conversation was over.
5.
“I think some of them have left,” Rebecca murmured, craning over the edge of the platform to count the snappers below. Then she turned to Kara and Eric. “If we sit back from the edge and keep quiet, maybe they’ll all wander away.”
Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5 Page 14