Dan just glares dumbly at the question. From the trunk of the car a big German shepherd is barking furiously.
“Have you been bit?” the driver shouts.
“N… no,” Dan manages.
“Then get in!”
And he doesn’t really seem to have a choice. At that moment, John cries out as Lone attacks him, and on the other side of the hedge, the paramedic has gotten back up, wobbling uncertainly on a pair of thigh bones obviously shattered, but nonetheless headed stubbornly back out towards Dan.
“Come on, goddamnit!” the guy in the car shouts. “If you don’t get in, I’ll go without you!”
Dan gets to his feet and staggers around the back of the car. He darts a glance down the street and sees the Arab getting up from the woman, who’s already dead and has lost her appeal, as the man heads for the nearest driveway, drawn by the scent of fresh, living meat.
Then Dan opens the car door and gets in.
The guy has already put it in reverse and now backs down from the sidewalk. He stops in the middle of the street, blocking the nonexistent traffic.
“Buckle up,” he says through gritted teeth. “Seems like he didn’t get the message the first time.”
The dog in the trunk has stopped barking, but is now panting and whining impatiently, as though it knows what’s going to happen.
Dan, however, is a little slower in catching up. Only when he sees the paramedic come barging through the hedge does he guess the driver’s plan, and he quickly grabs the seat belt and fastens it.
The driver floors the accelerator just as the zombie wobbles onto the street. The sound of the collision is even louder from inside the car, and this time the zombie is thrown under the tires. Dan feels the bumps in the seat, and they remind him of the little girl he and Linda ran over in the courtyard of the old lady’s house.
“Sorry about that,” the driver says as he speeds down the street. “I know that was gross, but I’d like to take out a few of them if possible. You know, weed out the herd a little.”
“It’s all right,” Dan mutters, and, before he can think, adds: “It’s not the first zombie I’ve run over.”
He notices the guy sending him a look. Then he smiles.
SEVENTEEN
“My name’s William and the dog is called Ozzy.”
“I’m Dan.”
William points a thumb over his shoulder. “I don’t know her name, but she’ll probably tell us once she wakes up.”
Dan turns his head to see the girl lying in the backseat, surprised that he didn’t notice her before. “Is she asleep?” he asks.
“Unconscious.”
“Did she …?”
“Don’t worry, she’s clean,” William says, immediately guessing the question. “I picked her up shortly before I found you.” He makes a right turn, coming out into the main street, where the traffic looks pretty normal for a Monday afternoon.
“Thank you for picking me up,” Dan mutters. “But I’d like to go back home now.”
William looks at him briefly. “You mean back from where you just came? Didn’t you notice the zombies attacking everyone?”
“Yeah, but … I need to get back. My mom and dad—”
“I’m sure your mom and dad will be fine without you for now,” William says, not slowing down. “As long as they don’t open the front door, of course.”
“I’d still like to go back,” Dan says, shifting his weight uneasily in the seat.
“Listen, Dan, you’re a lot safer with me right now. I’m going to—”
“Drive me back!”
Dan surprises himself by almost shouting.
The girl on the backseat grunts, but doesn’t wake up.
William pulls over and stops the car. “Fine, get out then.”
“I … I can’t walk home from here,” Dan says, looking out nervously.
“I’m not going back,” William says. “It’s way too dangerous. That street is crawling with zombies by now. For every minute we spend here in town, we increase the risk of getting eaten.”
Dan looks hesitantly from William to the street outside. No zombies in sight right now, but that might change any moment.
“My uncle has a safe place just outside town,” William goes on, his voice softer now. “There’s a spot open, if you want to come. Personally, I think it’s a hell of an offer, but of course you’re free to get out and walk back home.”
Dan’s phone rings in his pocket. He finds it and looks at the display. “It’s … it’s my dad.”
“Before you answer it, please tell me if you’re coming or not? ’Cause I’m about to go.”
“Could you wait just one minute?” Dan pleads. “I’ll just make sure they’re okay.”
William pushes his tongue into his cheek and scans the street. “One minute,” he says.
Dan answers the call. “Dad?”
“Dan, where are you?”
“I’m in a car. A guy picked me up.”
“You all right? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Dad. How about you?”
Dad gives off a sigh of relief. “Good, that’s great to hear. We’re also fine. Finn has calmed down now that he can’t see Lone anymore.”
“What about your shoulder?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“But Dad,” Dan says, lowering his voice. “Did you … did you get …?”
He can’t get the question out, but he can tell from the silence his dad guesses it.
“It hurts a little, but I don’t think the skin is broken.”
Dan feels a glimmer of hope. “So, no blood?”
“No, but I’ll probably get a bruise.”
“I think that’s okay. As long as you’re not bleeding.”
Dan senses William sending him a sharp look.
“Perhaps,” Dad mutters. “Guess I’ll just have to wait and see, because I won’t be going to the ER anytime soon … the street is riddled with them.”
“Make sure you close all the windows,” Dan says, feeling a drop of sweat making its way down his back. “Don’t give them any chance to get inside.”
“I already checked all the windows.” Dad is quiet for a moment, then he says: “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you, Dan.”
“That’s all right. I get it, Dad.” But he still feels a great amount of relief, despite the circumstances. It feels like a great burden has been lifted from him; as if it isn’t only the zombies his dad is acknowledging, but also the fact that Dan had no fault in what happened to Jennie.
William clears his throat and points to his wrist.
“Listen, Dad, I don’t think I’ll be able to come home right now,” Dan says.
“Who picked you up? Was it someone you know?”
“No.” Dan turns discretely away from William. “He … he says he knows a safe place outside town.”
A couple of seconds before his dad replies: “Does he strike you as someone you can trust?”
“Yes,” Dan says without really considering the question.
“Then go with him, Dan.”
“But are you guys—”
“Don’t worry about us. It’s way too dangerous for you to come back right now. The whole street has turned into chaos. I can see it from the living room window. Some of the neighbors have come out to try and help, and they … oh, Christ …” Dad is quiet for another moment, and Dan thinks he can hear a distant scream. “Don’t come home yet, Dan,” Dad says, even more firmly. “We need to wait till it’s safe.”
“All right,” Dan mutters.
“What’s it gonna be?” William asks.
Dan glances at him. “I’m coming with you,” he says.
William doesn’t waste any time, but immediately slams the accelerator and pulls back out into traffic.
“I need to go, Dan,” Dad says. “Your grandma needs help with Finn, he’s become restless again. Call me once you get to the place, okay?”
“I will.”
“Right. Tal
k to you soon, son.”
Dan disconnects and puts the phone away.
William turns left at an intersection and speeds up. “Your old man sounds like a reasonable guy.”
“Could you hear what he said?” Dan asks, feeling a little awkward.
“Yeah.” William sends him a brief smile before looking out into the street again. “This part of town looks okay. At least for now.”
“It only just started,” Dan mutters, almost to himself.
William looks at him again. “You don’t seem like you had the best day.”
“I didn’t.”
“What happened? You said something about running over a zombie?”
“It’s a long story.”
William sneers at him. “Dude, cut out those movie lines and tell me what happened. We’ve got plenty of time.”
Dan breathes in a couple of times, then he begins talking. “I wasn’t the one driving, but I was in the passenger seat. It was a little girl. We had to do it. She was—”
“Sorry, shut up for a moment,” William interrupts, turning up the radio, which Dan only now realizes has been on at very low volume the whole time.
“… latest reports from local police indicates some sort of terrorist attack, possibly involving biological weapons. Our current intel puts the number of wounded at thirty people, but many more are …”
“Goddamnit,” William murmurs, turning down the radio again. “Biological weapons? They have no idea what’s going on.”
“They’ll find out soon enough,” Dan says quietly. When he senses William looking at him, he goes on: “I saw how it began. I tried to stop it.”
William is trying to look simultaneously at the road and Dan, as Dan begins to tell his story. He lays it out as briefly and concisely as he can. How he, Jennie and Thomas arrived at the old lady’s house. How they discovered she had tried to resurrect her dead grandchild, inadvertently creating the first zombie who then killed her and her son second. He also tells the story of how he and Linda escaped the house, and how he later would go chasing a zombie cop with a girl named Selina.
“Last I heard from her, she had killed Jesper at the hospital,” he closes. “And I thought this time it was really over.” He sighs heavily, shaking his head. “Something must have gone wrong, because I saw her in a news report from the hospital … as a zombie. They also said something about a bus outside town that got attacked by an elderly couple. I’ll bet you it was the old woman, the one who lived in the woods. She got infected from her cat after it stepped in the officer’s blood.”
William is quiet for a while after Dan stops talking. They’re almost out of town now, and the traffic is sparse.
“It all makes sense,” William finally says. “It all began here. Right here, right in the middle of fucking Denmark, and not even in Copenhagen, oh no, it began all the way out here in our tiny shithole of a town. Right here!” He stabs the steering wheel with a finger, as if to emphasize his point. “What are the fucking odds, man? Of all the places …”
“I know.”
“And it’s only here,” William goes on. “Right? Isn’t that what you’re telling me?”
“As far as I know.”
“Yeah, it has to be. Since it started with that voodoo-shit. Holy crap, I always imagined it would be some kind of top-secret military project with genetically modified super soldiers or, or maybe a radioactive release or some shit—didn’t you think so? I mean, that’s always how it goes in the movies.”
“I … I didn’t really think about it,” Dan mutters.
“You seriously never contemplated how the apocalypse would go down?” Williams asks, giving him a critical look. “Come on, everybody has!”
“How about you?” Dan asks, conveniently switching the subject. “When did you find out?”
“I was at the hospital right before it went crazy.”
“You were?”
“Yeah, man. I work there—or worked, now that the world is ending. You thought these were my regular clothes?”
Dan hadn’t really noticed it before, but William is wearing what looks like the white shirt and pants that hospital staff usually wear.
“I think I saw that girl you mentioned,” William goes on. “Selina.”
Dan stares at him. “You did?”
William nods and swallows something, but doesn’t say anymore. Dan eyes him for a moment, surprised to see his driver hesitate for the first time. William strikes him as the type of person with tons of confidence; the suntanned skin, tattoos and the latest haircut.
“I think it’s your turn to tell your story,” Dan says, just as they cross the town border and continue out onto the open road stretching far ahead between the open fields.
EIGHTEEN
She’s floating somewhere between wakefulness and unconsciousness. Unpleasant images keep flickering by. Mads sitting up, his eyes all wrong. Krista screaming her heart out as Mads bites down on her chin. The sound of the skin ripping.
“Krista!” she tries to shout, but the word won’t come out. She tries instead to call for help, but that doesn’t work, either. When she turns to look down the street, all the cars are suddenly gone. Instead, an army of living dead comes marching at her.
Mille screams and opens her eyes. The scream catches in her throat, only producing a hoarse whimper. She stares around bewildered, blinking the stinging sweat from her eyes and trying to comprehend what she’s seeing.
She’s lying on the backseat of a car, but not the same as before. Krista isn’t here, and neither is Mads nor the Arab. Instead she can hear unfamiliar voices talking together.
“… in a way it’s my fault; I guess I should have called the police instead of just bailing.”
“They probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway.”
“No, and I thought it was too late anyway. You know, that it had begun in other places, too.”
“It had. At that time the bus must have already been attacked.”
“Yeah, and you know I wrote a warning on the door, but I guess someone must’ve opened it anyway …”
Mille sits up with a strained groan. Her head is spinning, and a stinging pain is throbbing just behind her forehead. Something sniffs the back of her head, and she spins around with a whine of surprise to see a large dog look curiously at her.
“Oh, hey! You’re awake.”
She turns around again. A boy is in the passenger seat and guy a little older than her is behind the wheel. They’re both looking back at her.
“Who are you?” Mille murmurs, rubbing her forehead.
“I’m William and this is Dan. I picked you up back in town—you remember?”
Mille moans. “I don’t know ... I remember Krista, she … oh, no … what happened to her? What happened to Krista?”
The guy behind the wheel sends her an apologetic look in the mirror. “If you’re talking about the girl who was with you in the car—I’m sorry, but she’s dead.”
Mille lowers her head and feels like crying. She’s not sure whether it’s mostly due to grief or shock or confusion, as all of them fight inside her. “My head’s all … did I pass out?”
“Yeah.”
“And where are we going?” She looks out at the fields gliding by.
“We’re going to my uncle’s place, where we’ll be safe for now.”
Mille’s brain is slowly clearing up, and her memory starts throwing up fragments from what she thought was only bad dreams. Her classmates screaming inside the bus, Mads dying on the backseat of the car, Krista trying helplessly to perform CPR on him … it all spins into an awful cocktail, faster and faster.
“Are you all right?” the boy in the passenger seat asks, eyeing her closely. “You’re turning pale.”
“I … I think I’m going to throw up,” Mille croaks.
“Hold on,” William says, hitting the breaks. “Keep it in just a second longer.”
Mille feels the sick come rolling up her throat, and she swallows it convulsively
back down. As soon as the car comes to a stop, she opens the door, tumbles out on the burning asphalt and pukes into the dried-out grass of the roadside. It’s been a few hours since she ate, so only a handful of oatmeal comes up. She spits and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. She straightens up and looks around. Except for a few farms in the distance, the area is completely desolate.
When she turns to the car, both boys have gotten out and are now looking at her with something Mille at first interprets as concern.
“I’m okay,” she assures them. “I feel better now.”
She goes to get back in, but William steps carefully in front of her. “Hold on,” he says. “Are you, uhm … are you sure you feel better?”
“Sure,” Mille says. “I mean, it’s the worst day of my life, but other than that, I’m fine. I won’t throw up in your car, I promise.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says, finding a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Mille notices he’s dressed in what looks like a hospital staff uniform. “Do you have any wounds?”
Mille looks down and shakes her head. “No.”
“No tiny scratches or anything?”
“No, I tell you!” She’s starting to feel annoyed, mostly because she’s afraid. Afraid because part of her already knows what he’s driving at. “I think I’d notice if I was bitten.”
“You don’t need to get bitten,” Dan says in a grave voice, stepping slightly forward. He can’t be more than fourteen, although his face looks twenty-five. He’s obviously tired, ragged and scared, all at once. “You don’t even need to have been in direct contact with one of them. If you cut yourself on anything with their blood on … I’ve seen it happen.”
Mille breathes deeply, making an effort to get her emotions under control, although everything is firing inside of her. She looks down again. Her clothes are a little messed up—probably from when she collapsed in the middle of the road—but she can’t see any blood. She shrugs. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me. You want me to strip down so you can check me?”
Dead Meat (Book 3): Dead Meat [Day 3] Page 7