by Naomi Weir
I began to walk swiftly away from the train station, Mark trying to keep up. “How do you know so much about this?” he asked in disbelief. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
“We’d had threats, but we always have threats,” I explained absently, my mind racing. “It comes with the job. I never thought it would get this far. I wonder who’s responsible. I bet it was that damn...”
“You had threats?” Mark asked hysterically. “And you did nothing? Nothing at all? That’s a criminal offence! You people should be locked away!”
Tears escaped at the corners of my eyes as I thought of my friends and co-workers lying dead or in agony at the office.
I wondered how much Belinda knew about all this. If this was the reason she’d gone away. Surely not.
I checked my phone, but the only missed call was from Chad. I stopped.
“I’ve got an idea!” I cried, dialling Chad’s number.
“Thank Christ!” he cried after the first ring. “It’s all over the news, Jenny! They’re saying someone attacked your work, and that people are dead, Jenny! Dead, for God’s sake! How far are you from home?”
“They’ve ceased all public transport in and out of the city, Chad. I’m trapped.”
“What? But why? How are you gonna get home? I don’t underst...”
“Chad! Please!” I interrupted him, hysteria now desperately trying to escape my throat. “I need you to come get me. Take the back roads if you can. The phone lines may get jammed when everyone realises they can’t get out, so we may not be able to speak again. Please honey, do everything you can to get here. Meet me at the service station near the East Bridge. I love you.”
“You too. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
I laughed bitterly as I terminated the call. It was a 30 minute drive at the very least, and that was when the traffic was good.
I sobbed aloud, just once, as I threw my phone back in my bag. Mark placed his hand on my shoulder, much calmer than before. “Let’s get to the East Bridge,” he said.
* * *
The soles of my feet ached and I had a massively painful stitch as we hurried away from the city centre.
We’d been jogging for about 15 minutes and unfortunately for us, most of our trek was uphill.
“You had to pick the East Bridge, didn’t you?” Mark puffed as he stopped to lean against a bus shelter. A few people were seated, waiting for a bus that would never arrive.
“It’s not coming,” I announced breathlessly as we passed.
An elderly woman glared at me and sniffed in disapproval as a young couple looked at each other, confused.
I attempted to jog again to keep up with Mark, but the pain in my side was almost unbearable so I continued with at a brisk walk instead.
As we reached the top of the rise I could see the East Bridge ahead. My stomach dropped.
It was bumper to bumper traffic all the way to the bridge. Red and blue lights danced in the distance and I groaned aloud. “They’re checking to see if people have come from the city,” I gasped. “It won’t be long before they close the bridge altogether.”
“Then we better hurry,” Mark replied, motioning for me to keep moving behind him.
I tried Chad on his mobile but was greeted by silence. The phones were jammed. I prayed he would be there waiting for us when we finally made it across the bridge. If we made it.
Cars incessantly honked and drivers swore at one another continuously as we hurried towards the bridge. I noticed a large group of people gathered ahead of us.
“Come on!” Mark urged, still ten paces or more ahead of me. Dark patches of sweat had formed under his arms and in the centre of his back and chest, his dark hair matted to his forehead and neck. He looked a mess and I wondered if I looked much the same.
“What’s going on?” I asked, pointing at the group ahead of us.
Mark squinted as if that would help him to see better. “It’s just a bingle. Someone’s run off the road.”
Panic began to rise in my veins as the wreck came into better view. A car had careened into another that was parked, and it now blocked one lane of the highway, causing chaos as cars tried to manoeuvre around the back end of it.
“What if they’ve been infected?” I asked. But Mark ignored me, determined to make it to the bridge. I continued to walk, but slowed my pace significantly.
Suddenly a white van appeared from the bridge, mounting the divider between each side of the highway and honking its horn loudly, trying to force its way into the traffic.
I watched in amazement as it revved the engine and eventually made its way through the sea of cars, pulling up beside the car accident. I stopped.
The back doors of the white van flung open and four people in bright yellow hazard suits jumped out holding a large plastic sheet. They surrounded the crashed car and the small crowd backed away, but there was shouting and two more men, this time with large guns, emerged from the van.
Mark froze ahead of me, as scared shouts of protest came from the crowd and the men in hazard suits holding guns barked orders. I watched in horror as men, women, the elderly and small crying children screamed in protest as they were herded at gun point behind the protective plastic sheet. Away from the prying eyes of the drivers.
“Quick! Cross the road!” I cried out to Mark.
We ran straight into the slow-moving traffic, darting in and out of honking cars, just as shots were fired somewhere behind us, resulting in screams of terror. We’d entered a war zone. Where the civilians were now the enemy. The civilians with their potentially lethal blood.
I instinctively ducked at the sound of gun fire and Mark grabbed my hand, pulling me faster across the highway.
But we were too late. The bridge had been closed.
We summoned energy from the depths of our souls as we bolted with all our might towards the police barricading the bridge. People had left their cars once they realised they were now trapped, and they joined us in our mad dash for the bridge.
As we reached the barricade, I was rasping for breath and my side felt as if it had been violently torn open.
“We’re not infected,” I pleaded with the closest officer. But he ignored me from within his gas mask, looking back at us with petrified eyes.
Army trucks had arrived and soldiers donning gas masks held rifles against their chests as they eyed us warily, forming a barricade of their own across the empty centre of the bridge.
“Let us go! What have we done?” one woman screamed hysterically, holding a bawling child to her chest while two more young children clung fearfully to her legs.
The angry crowd’s shouting grew to a fever pitch as realisation set in that something horrible was going to happen to them.
I searched the other side of the bridge but could only see a mirror image of what was happening here. People screaming in protest at the masked police officers at the barrier which separated us from them.
“Jenny!” I faintly heard a familiar voice call through the din.
Then I saw him.
Chad had somehow gotten through the police barrier right at the edge. The police called out to him to stop. But he kept sprinting. An eager grin spread across his face as he surged his body forward like a marathon runner nearing the finish line.
“Chad! It’s my husband! Let him through!” I screamed like a maniac, tears now pouring as I clawed at the uniforms that tried to keep Chad and I separated.
I became aware someone’s arms had fastened tightly around my waist, pulling me back. But I screamed in pure rage, tearing at the interlocked fingers digging into my stomach.
Then I heard the bang.
One second Chad was almost mid-air, barrelling straight towards me. Then his arms flew out to the side before he stumbled down to the ground.
I watched in terror as my husband fell hard against the bitumen. My ears were ringing from my own screams as my face went numb.
I willed Chad to get up, and he tried. He placed his
palms against the road and I watched intently as he struggled to push himself to his feet.
But before he could get any further he disappeared from view behind a curtain of soldiers who’d surrounded him.
I watched them carry him away from me like a dead dog. My husband. My Chad.
I turned to find Mark still with his arms wrapped around my middle. Sobs rose and fell in my chest as he held me, but I suddenly couldn’t feel a thing.
I was far away from here, drifting somewhere above this nightmare. In another place where none of this was happening and Chad was fine.
“Get back!” someone shouted nearby. It snapped me back to reality.
I looked up just as the crowd surged against me, almost knocking me from my feet.
I craned my neck, almost climbing poor Mark to see what the crowd was moving away from.
A woman had fallen to the ground not far from us. Blood oozing from her mouth, down the front of her dress. I held my breath and my lips curled back involuntarily.
“Someone help her!”
The invisible death was here.