“You looked like you needed a lift, way you was running down the road like a flaming monkey. There have been quite a few people in need this morning, but I can only pick up so many.”
Nick glanced back at the other passengers. All of them appeared weary, shell-shocked. Some sat silently, stony-faced, while others wept to themselves quietly.
“You rescued all these people?” Nick asked.
Dave shrugged. “Some of them, I did. I’d already picked up a few on my normal run before things went potty. After all hell broke loose I managed to collect a few more people, here and there. I dropped most of ‘em off near their homes wherever I could; tried to get ‘em home to their families where they might be safe. People’ve gone bad in the head, you know? Like wild animals.”
Nick nodded. “I think it’s some kind of…sickness.”
“I was pretty much thinking the same thing. Seen a lot of sick people these last few days on my morning runs. Flu, colds, fevers; people sneezing and coughing from the moment I picked ‘em up till the moment I dropped ‘em off. Something bad has got inside people.”
“I’m pretty sure I owe you my life,” Nick said. “Thank you.”
Dave shrugged again. “We ain’t out the woods yet, I’m afraid. I got no clear destination and only half a tank of petrol.”
Nick thought about Deana. “We should go the hospital. Find help.”
“Hospital was the first place I checked.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “And?”
“No good. There were sick people everywhere, bleeding and half-naked, making those terrible screeching sounds they make. It was a bloodbath. I left no sooner than I’d got there. In fact, there’s a bird named Pauline I picked up from near there - just in time, too. She had a group of crazies right on her heels, legging her down the highway. I got to her, though. She’ll tell you herself that heading for the hospital is suicide.”
Nick felt defeated. People were sick and even the hospital couldn’t help. How was the situation ever going to get better when there was nowhere to go, no one to take control or offer assistance? Maybe there was no getting better. Perhaps this was it. The end.
“How about a police station?” Nick asked, grasping at straws.
Dave shook his head. “The cop shop’s in the town centre and the main roads to town are all snarled with traffic.”
Nick groaned. “Then where? Where the hell is safe?”
Dave answered him calmly. “One of the folks I picked up earlier had the idea of finding an Army base. They tend to be out in the countryside where things might not be so bad. Big fences, too.”
Nick nodded. It was a good idea. “If anyone can deal with a shit storm like this, it’s the military. Where’s the nearest base?”
“That’s the problem. No one has any idea, and the guy who suggested it took off to find his family. So, keep an eye out for any road signs that might help us. I’m going to head towards Nottingham, see if I can find the Sherwood Foresters or, at the very least, a rural petrol station that isn’t overrun.”
Nick looked at the road ahead and was glad to see that it was clear for the time being. There might finally be chance to take a breather…to think.
James.
Deana.
Nick blinked and shook away his thoughts. “You mind if I take a seat, Dave? I’m dead on my feet.”
“Take a load off, mate. If I need something, I’ll let you know.”
Nick took the seat beside Eve who was leaning against the window and watching the scenery rush by.
“I’m filthy,” she muttered.
Nick stared at her. “What?”
She stretched out her legs to show the mud covering her jeans. “Look at me. I need a shower. Need to wash my hair. It’s disgusting.”
Nick was surprised that cleanliness was her biggest concern. “Big picture, Eve. People are dead. You can clean yourself up later.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re my dad or something.”
“I’m not trying to be your dad,” Nick grunted. “My son died this morning on my goddamn kitchen floor, so trust me the last thing I want to be is your dad. Especially when all you can do is whine about some dirt under your nails.”
Eve folded her arms, showing that she had no interest in talking with him unless he was ready to indulge her complaints; so Nick moved to the other side of the bus. He took a seat in front of a middle-aged woman wearing the tattered remnants of a grey blouse. A colourful scarf lay on the seat beside her. It was caked in blood.
“Hello,” she said to him while failing to blink even once. “Welcome to the hell bus.”
Nick chuckled, but it held no mirth - a mere social instinct. “Well, I for one am glad to be a passenger. Beats being where I was before Dave picked me up.”
“It’s not the bus that’s hell. It’s everything outside of it.”
Nick stared out the window and saw nothing but autumn leaves and muddy fields. It was a pleasant view for the time being, but he could imagine the things the woman had likely seen on the main roads.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I haven’t had the greatest of mornings either.”
“I was at the hospital,” she said, staring out the window blankly, “to pick up my sister. We live together and her car isn’t running. She was working the night shift – she’s a nurse…was a nurse. I was supposed to pick her up this morning.”
“I’m sorry.” Nick remembered the sight of his son lying on the kitchen floor. “I’ve lost people, too. I think a lot of people have.”
The woman carried on talking as if she hadn’t even heard him. “She was always a bit of a mess, my sister. Never could seem to get her life in order, always sponging off me and wasting her ability. I always figured she’d find her way eventually, once she’d grown up a little. Now she won’t ever get the chance.”
Nick remained silent for a while before he said: “Dave told me he picked you up near the hospital. Your name’s Pauline?”
“Pauline Cummings. Wish I could say it’s a pleasure, but…well, you know.”
Nick tried to smile. While he’d been running around on adrenaline for the past couple hours, too panicked to properly grieve his losses, this woman had been sitting on the bus, alone with her grief. The reality of the situation was crushing her now and Nick knew that once he took time to slow down, his own grief would crush him too. He looked around the bus at the other passengers, trying not to dwell on things that could wait for later. There was a grimy-looking man in navy-blue work overalls at the rear of the bus, taking up the long seat. He had thick brown dreadlocks and was staring at the floor while picking at his calloused hands. A couple rows in front of dreadlocks sat a teenager in a bulbous yellow puffer jacket. He was staring down at a mobile phone in front of him.
Lastly, there were two older ladies sitting together in the middle rows, nattering to one another as if they were on an ordinary journey on an ordinary day - the stiff upper lip of the older generation.
The vibrations of the engine started to lull Nick into a restful daze. Now that he was finally safe, his entire body began to throb. His bladder felt heavy and his hearing seemed to be on high alert. He felt the blood pulsing in his veins. He buzzed.
Through the window, Nick watched the countryside break apart as the bus passed through an industrial estate. The various factories and workshops were all dormant, their workers unable to make it in today. Or likely for the foreseeable future.
“Looks like things are going to get a tad rough up ahead,” Dave shouted back at them. “Everybody hold on to their arses.”
Nick got up and clambered his way to the front, wanting to see what they were coming up against.
More car wrecks littered the road and pedestrians were everywhere. A motorway service station lay just off the upcoming island and it was currently ablaze. Nick could only assume what had happened there was another outbreak – of whatever was making people cra
zy. Weary commuters hoping to grab a quick pasty or make use of the restroom would have got more than they bargained for.
The whole scene was a disaster-zone. The healthy fought desperately against the sick. Burning husks of automobiles piled up in the road. Fires seemed to catch all over the place.
Nick swallowed the lump in his throat. “Think we can make it through?”
“I don’t know,” Dave said. “The motorway is totally blocked but I might be able to stay on the island and get round onto the A road.”
“If we get stalled then we won’t be able to get moving again. Those crazies will be all over us.”
“Thanks for that, Nick. Very comforting.” Dave took a deep breath and held it; then he stamped down on the accelerator, choosing speed over caution. He quickly steered to the right as a body flew out in front of the bus, arms flailing. Nick couldn’t tell if it was one of the crazies or someone normal pleading to be picked up. It was too late to find out when their bodies fell under the wheels.
There was a woman at the side of the road clutching a bloody arm against her chest. As they passed her, Nick noticed the arm was missing a hand. She screamed at the bus to stop and help her, but there was no hope of doing anything for her, especially when a mob of infected people engulfed her.
“Holy shit!” Eve said. She had crept silently to join Nick at the front of the bus. “They’re like a pack of piranha.”
Dave steered through a gap between an abandoned minibus, an overturned Land Rover, and a Union Jack roofed Mini Cooper. The bus scraped the Mini and exchanged paintwork, but it didn’t slow them down or alert the owner. Nick figured the ding was the least of anybody’s concerns right now.
The bus jolted suddenly.
“What was that?” Nick asked. “What did we just run over?”
Dave stared straight ahead. “You don’t want to know.”
Halfway around the roundabout, the road opened up a little. Mangled bodies littered the verges, but there was no one alive walking around. The amount of car wrecks also lessened.
“I think we’re through the worst of it,” Nick said.
Dave put his foot down in reply and the bus accelerated. While Nick couldn’t be sure, he had a feeling that the guy’s unflappable manner was actually masking a great deal of fear; fear that was currently manifesting as a heavy right foot.
“Hey, Dave, slow down a little.”
“It’s fine, we’re clear.”
“I know, but we don’t know what’s around the next bend.”
“Hey, this is my bus. I picked you up, remember?”
“Okay, okay. I just don’t want us to have an accident.”
“Yeah, of course…sorry.”
Nick waved his hand. “Don’t worry ab-”
The bus hit something. Hard.
Dave slammed on the brakes. The bus fishtailed, back tyres slipping. Everybody screamed, louder when the entire left side of the bus rose up off the road. Nick tumbled into the aisle. Eve landed on top of him, her elbow catching him in the ribs.
Nick was sure the bus was going to tip over.
But it didn’t.
The wheels came back down onto the road and the bus came to a sudden stop with the pained screeching of its tyres. Everybody onboard stopped screaming and fell into silence.
Nick climbed gingerly to his feet, rubbing at his ribs. Dave was still staring straight ahead. He’d gone deathly pale.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked the man.
“I…I’m fine. We hit something.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Nick said. He pointed. “Look!”
A group of ten or twelve infected people stood in the road, glaring at the bus like an army of savages. They let out a single, collective screech, then rushed towards the bus.
The first body to collide with the bus was a child. The small girl had pigtails dripping with blood. She leapt up onto the windscreen and began beating and clawing at the glass. The rest of the mob hit the bus from every direction. From inside, it sounded like a hailstorm, but the view from the windows betrayed the true horror of the situation. Blood-shot eyes peered in at the bus passengers from all sides. Swollen and smashed faces smeared themselves against the glass, leaving filthy streaks that blotted out the sun. The weak strip lighting overhead flickered as the bus rocked back and forth on its axles. The passengers inside were sheep ready to be slaughtered.
Nick turned to Dave, determined to act. “Can we still move?” When there was no answer, he shook the driver. “I said, can we still move?”
Dave snapped out of his daze and blinked his eyes rapidly. “I-I don’t know.” He reached shakily for the ignition key. “Let me try.”
The engine grumbled back to life happily and Nick sighed relief.
Dave worked the clutch, kicked the accelerator. The bus lurched forward.
“We’re moving,” Dave said, “but I can’t see a damn thing.”
Nick patted his shoulder encouragingly. “Just keep her moving forward.”
Bodies continued to leap and climb at the bus’s sides, but only the little girl managed to hold on at the front, clinging to the windscreen defiantly. She stared in at them with unblinking red eyes.
Then the little girl began to beat her forehead against the glass.
Again and again and again.
The little girl’s face broke apart, flesh splitting open wider with each slam of her head. After a while, she no longer even resembled a child, just a gore-soaked skull with dripping pigtails.
Dave sped up, knocking loose several climbers from the bus’s flanks; but the little girl still held on at the front, continued smashing her skull against the glass.
The windscreen started to give way, a small crack quickly growing into many tributaries.
“Shit!” Dave groaned.
“Just keep moving,” Nick said. “If we stop now we’ll never get going again.”
The little girl kept smashing her skull against the glass and more cracks began to spread. At the sides of the bus, the remaining infected people also started bashing at the glass, trying to get inside.
Nick squeezed Dave hard on the shoulder. “Step on it.”
“I can’t see where I’m going! There’s blood everywhere.”
The little girl struck her skull against the glass one last time and the windscreen finally gave way. It fell out in a single cracked sheet and landed in the aisle, the girl came tumbling in after it. The only stroke of luck was, that as the bus picked up speed, the bodies on the flanks finally slipped free. Some fell beneath the wheels like morbid speed bumps. Nick lost his balance as the floor lurched beneath him.
The little girl thrashed on the floor like a barracuda stranded on deck. She was attempting to claw her way to her feet.
Dave took his eyes off the road long enough to give the girl a worried glance. “What do I do?”
“Just keep driving,” Nick said. “Don’t slow down.”
He braced himself as the little girl rose to her feet. As soon as she was up she launched an immediate attack, barrelling into Nick with so much force that it felt like her bones were made of bricks. Staggering backwards, Nick’s ankle clipped the bolted-down leg of one of the passenger benches. He stumbled into the aisle and fell at the feet of the teenager in the yellow puffer coat.
The teenager reached down to help, but as he did so, the girl pounced on him and sunk her bloody teeth into his hand. He cried out in agony and pushed her away.
The little girl fell backwards but attacked again immediately. Nick tried desperately to get back to his feet in time to defend himself, but then she bundled into him and knocked him onto his side. The teenager recovered and grabbed the girl around her waist before she could leap on top of Nick. He held her there, wrestling with her from behind.
“What should I do?” he cried out in the high-pitched tones of panic. “She’s gunna take another chunk out of me in a minute.”
Nick looked around for inspiration and quickly found it. “Pauline!” he
shouted. The woman was already watching him, a terrified expression contorting her face. He clicked his fingers at her. “Pauline, throw me your scarf.”
For a split second she looked at him like she didn’t understand, but then grabbed it and balled it up. She threw it in Nick’s direction, but it fell to the floor a foot short.
Nick stretched for the scarf, and once he managed to grab it, he shouted to the teenager. “Hold her as still.”
“Fine, but whatever you’re doing, mate, you better do it quick.”
Nick got up and approached the young girl. Her face was a mess, her gums and cheekbones exposed. She growled at him like a demon and looked like she had come to them straight from Hell. But she was alive. The light in her eyes told him so.
Nick thrust the scarf over the girl’s mangled face and quickly wrapped it around her head, trying to cover her bleeding eyes and the ruined mouth that snapped at him. After wrapping the scarf as tightly as he could, Nick tied a double knot with the two frayed ends.
The little girl stopped thrashing.
The teenager frowned. “She…she’s stopped fighting me.”
It was as if the little girl had shut down. Her attack mode had switched off.
“Everything alright back there?” Dave shouted.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I think so.”
Nick’s intention had only been to calm disorientate her, but as he waved a hand in front of the girl’s face now, trying to tempt a reaction, there was none.
After thinking for a few moments, Nick came up with a suggestion. “Try letting her go.”
The teenager balked. “What? No way.”
“It’s okay. I’m ready to grab her again if she tries anything. Go on, just let go of her, slowly.”
The teenager eventually obliged, slowly pulling his arms away from the little girl until he was no longer holding her.
She stood there motionless. Everyone on the bus let out a collective sigh of relief. The girl’s hands hung limply at her sides, fingernails caked in blood. One of those fingers pointed outward at an unnatural angle, suggesting a break or dislocation, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She was also missing a shoe; dirt and stones were imbedded in her bare foot. Looking at the girl, one thing was clear: she needed help they could not provide her.
The BIG Horror Pack 2 Page 5