Nick felt uneasy about the situation. He wrung his hands together and took a few breaths as he thought it through. Three prisoners, at least one of them was a sure problem in Dash. The guy was an obvious loose cannon. Jan seemed reasonable enough, but the third man said not a word. He just stood there taking it all in silently.
“We don’t know anything about you,” Nick said.
Jan nodded. “True enough. We’re criminals, and obviously that’s a cause for concern for you. If what you say is true, though, you have a whole busload of people to keep an eye on us. It’s not in our interests to harm you. We just want to find safety. I’m sure that’s what you want to. If that’s true then we have common ground.”
Nick wavered, swayed from foot to foot as he wrestled with the right reply.
“What if I said, please?” Jan said. “And I promise to keep Dash on a tight leash. We’re all beat, and pretty damn terrified to tell you the truth. If you allow us to join your group, I promise we we’ll pull our weight.”
Nick sighed. Was it really a good idea to team up with bunch of criminals? But could he really turn his back on somebody asking for help? Jan was right about one thing: safety in numbers was the only thing any of them had going for them
“What were you in for?” Eve asked. It was the obvious question and Nick wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.
“I tried to rob a bank,” Jan replied, bluntly as ever.
Nick cleared his throat. “And your friends?”
Dash shrugged. “I’m innocent, blud.”
“Sure you are,” Jan said, patting him on the back. “Dash was in for dealing – he’s a bit of a cliché. You’ll have to excuse him. As for Rene, I honestly don’t know. Fella doesn’t talk none. Only reason I know his name is because I heard the guards use it before they bit the dust. He’s an odd one, but no harm that I can tell.”
Nick stared at Rene and found himself agreeing. The man was a picture of gentle calmness, almost smiling, but not quite. For some reason, Nick didn’t feel in any danger at all around Rene. It was his two colleagues that were the bigger worry – Dash especially.
But what choice was there? It was a free country and Nick couldn’t exactly stop the prisoners from tagging along. It would be better to extend the hand of friendship than to make an enemy, especially of a bunch of needy criminals lost in the woods.
“Okay,” Nick said finally. “You can join us; but you keep to yourselves and don’t upset anyone. These people have been through a lot already.”
Jan nodded. “Understood and thank you. Lead the way, brother.”
***
Nick emerged back into the clearing where everybody was waiting. When they saw the three newcomers they grew immediately apprehensive.
“Who are they?” Dave bristled.
Nick introduced the prisoners. “This is Jan, Rene, and Dash. They’ve had a similar day to ours.”
“Why are they all wearing matching tracksuits?” Cassie asked timidly.
Nick decided on honesty. “Because they’re prisoners. They’re going to tag along with us for a while. There’s safety in numbers.”
“Are you shitting me?” Dave said. “They’re supposed to be locked up, not roaming free. No way are they coming with us.”
Jan, as was becoming standard, was the one to speak on behalf of the prisoners. “We are indeed supposed to be locked up, but right now there isn’t really any authority to take charge of us. We were sprung free purely by accident and ever since we’ve just been trying to survive. We didn’t escape by force or try to break out; we just suddenly found ourselves free in a very bad situation. What would you have us do?”
Dave sighed. “You better not be rapists or murderers.”
Cassie whimpered.
Jan sniffed. “We are no such thing. We may not be angels, by any length of the imagination, but we are human beings and would very much like to survive. We don’t want to become one of those things.”
“Do you know what those things are?” Kathryn asked, before chewing anxiously at her fingernails.
“I don’t know what they are, ma’am. I probably don’t know any more than you folks do. Your man, Nick, thinks a virus did this and I’m inclined to agree, but the only thing I can say for sure is that I’ve seen dead bodies walking around and eating people. As for what could cause such a travesty of nature, I have no idea. I’m not a praying man, usually, but I would suggest asking our Lord take mercy on us right now, because it seems like he’s pretty pissed off.”
Carl scoffed. “You think it’s the end of days?”
“Isn’t it?” Jan asked. “You think this isn’t the end of the world as we know it? Whether it was God, terrorists, or something else entirely, things have just taken one hell of a turn for the worse.”
Cassie whimpered again. “We’re all going to die. Eventually they’ll get us.”
Pauline tried to comfort her while the rest of the group exchanged nervous glances. Nick knew from his own mixed feelings that having the three prisoners tag along was as comforting as it was disconcerting. They were probably dangerous, but no more than anyone else was right now.
Kathryn broke the silence. She began to cough and splutter into her hands. Her legs wobbled like she was going to fall down.
Nick hurried over to her. “You okay?”
She caught her breath and nodded. “I-I’m fine. Just a frog in my throat.”
Nick nodded and gave her some space.
“What’s the plan then, folks?” Jan asked them all. “Is there a destination in mind?”
Dave shrugged and said, “Does anywhere count?”
“Better than nowhere, I guess.” Jan turned and pointed in the direction they had met up with Nick. “Me and the boys came from the main roads beyond the woods. Things are pretty bad back in the towns, so I suggest we keep to the tress.”
“This whole area is a country park, apparently,” Nick said. “Maybe we’ll find help somewhere up the hill. There might be a craft centre or a farm or something.”
Jan clapped his meaty hands together. “Then we have somewhere to head for. We’re happy to do whatever you folks think is best.”
Dash rolled his eyes and grumbled. Being subservient obviously did not sit well with him.
“That okay with you?” Nick asked Dash, unwilling to deal with petulance from him any more than he would have from James. Not that James had been a particularly petulant little boy.
Dash smirked. “Yeah, honkey, I’m sound. Lead on.”
Kathryn succumbed to another wracking cough. This time she seemed unable to stop it and began staggering around in a panic.
Dash eyeballed her suspiciously. “The fuck is wrong with that bitch?”
Jan marched over to Kathryn and grabbed her. He forced her chin up and stared into her eyes. Then he shoved her away so she could resume her coughing. “She’s infected.”
Nick baulked. “What? Impossible.” Then he saw Kathryn’s swollen, bloodshot eyes and knew it was true. “Oh no.”
“We need to put her down,” Jan said. The man seemed incapable of being anything other than blunt.
Kathryn managed to halt her coughing enough to stumble backwards with her hands outstretched. “No! No, I’m fine. Leave me alone, please. Just leave me alone.”
Jan stalked after her. Nick grabbed the big man by his wrist, which was too thick to get a hand around. “Back off! No one’s killing anybody. Are you insane?”
Jan looked at Nick like he was the one who was insane. “If we don’t kill her now, she’ll kill us later. I’ve seen it enough times to know.”
“He’s right,” Dave said. “We’ve seen it too, with Jake.”
Nick shook his head. “But she can’t have it. She hasn’t been bitten.”
“We don’t know that,” Dave argued. “How can we be sure?”
“It was the water,” Pauline said.
Nick turned on her. “What?”
“When we picked her up she had a bottle of water
. Jake was feeling unwell so she shared it with him. Cross-contamination.”
Carl groaned, then kicked at the dirt. “Are you fucking kidding me? What virus acts this fast?”
Nick thought about Deana and how she had kissed James’s wounded finger before putting a Beano plaster on it. Had that been all it had taken for her to catch it? And, for that matter, was the kid who bit James’s finger the one who passed it on to him?
Nick shook his head, feeling dizzy. “It can’t be… It can’t be that contagious.”
“It is what it is,” Jan said. “We need to put her out of her misery before she loses it and comes after us. It’s a kindness, believe me.”
“Fuck you,” Kathryn shouted. “You’re all fucking insane. You can’t kill me. I’m fine—” More wracking coughs. She dropped to her knees, wheezing for breath. Blood spattered the crisp brown leaves in front of her.
Dash picked up a rock the size of his fist and handed it to Jan. “Turn her lights out, blud.”
Jan didn’t hesitate in taking the rock. He moved towards Kathryn with it in his hand.
Nick blocked his way. “Not going to happen.”
“Move out of his way, Nick.” Dave said. “There's no other way and you know it.”
“Yeah.” Carl added his voice to the argument. “We have to think about ourselves.”
Nick shook his head in disbelief. “Do you all think this is the right way to behave? You think we should kill an innocent woman like it’s nothing? Has it really taken less than a day to turn us into a bunch of savages?”
“All men are savages,” Jan said. “Times like these when they really begin to show it.”
“I’m not a man and I’m not a savage.” It was Eve talking. She stood next to Nick. “I don’t think this is okay.”
“Me either,” Pauline said. “It’s barbaric.”
“It’s cowardly, is what it is,” Margaret grumbled. “This is not the way people in Britain behave. We’re not French.”
Nick looked at Cassie, trying to swing a vote. “What about you, Cassie? What do you think?”
Cassie looked at her feet and eventually shrugged. “I don’t want anyone to die.”
Nick sighed with relief. “Thank you.”
“But I don’t want to be attacked again, either. I think…I think Kathryn is already dead if she has the virus.”
Nick couldn’t believe it. Of all people to advocate mob violence, shy and quiet Cassie seemed least likely.
“You can’t do this.” Nick was exasperated yet held himself firm in front of Jan’s towering frame.
Jan stared down at Nick with his crystal-blue eyes. The shallow divots of widening crow’s feet betrayed the man’s age, but also his weathered toughness. It was the hard face of a hard man, but Jan’s expression seemed to soften slightly as Nick stood his ground.
Jan let go of the rock and let it fall to the ground. “It’s bad judgment, brother, but I promised to play things your way, so that’s what I’m going to do. How do you want to proceed?”
Nick deflated and let his shoulders relax. For a moment there he thought he was about to be crushed by a giant.
“We send Kathryn in the opposite direction,” Nick said. “By the time she turns – loses it, or whatever – we’ll be a mile and half in the other direction. We don’t need to kill—”
Thud! A sickening wet sound.
Nick spun around and tried to understand what he was seeing. “Dave? What the hell are you doing?”
Dave had just bludgeoned Kathryn with a meaty blow to the head with a rock even bigger than the one Jan had had. Already the left side of her face had swollen up like a balloon. Everybody watched in horror as the bus driver prepared to smash the rock down again into the struggling woman’s face.
Kathryn moaned as Dave climbed on top of her. The pungent smell of urine wafted into the air as a dark stain appeared on the crotch of her work trousers. Dave was going to kill her.
Nick tackled him to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing, Nick? We have to do this. Get off me. GET OFF ME!”
Kathryn crawled away, weeping and moaning in the dirt.
Nick held Dave down by his wrists and shouted over his shoulder. “Run, Kathryn. Find someplace safe.”
She glanced back at him like a rabbit in the headlights, her face a crimson mask of blood. She managed to scramble to her feet and then she was sprinting through the trees and into the distance.
Once she had disappeared, Nick let go of an irate Dave.
The bus driver hopped up, brushing twigs and dry leaves from his knees with aggressive swipes. “You fool! I was doing what needed to be done. I wasn’t going to let her take a bite out of me or anyone else. Now she’s running around in the wilderness, ready to become a monster. The people she kills will be on your head.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Eve shouted, pointing her finger at Dave.
Pauline looked disgusted. “This isn’t how people behave.”
Dave spat at the ground. “It is now. If we want to stay alive.”
Silence hung densely in the air. Eventually Jan shrugged and looked at Nick. “Can’t change it now, brother. For better or worse, we need to get going.”
“What? And just leave her out here alone?” Pauline said.
Dave grunted. “We’ll alert the authorities when we can. You can even tell them what I did. I’ll stand by it, don’t you worry.”
Nick was utterly shocked by Dave’s actions and by the rage that had suddenly taken over him. Nick had read Dave all wrong. He thought Dave was a rescuer, a decent and brave man, but he was something else entirely.
Nick started walking. “Let’s just get moving. Quicker we find help, quicker we can contact Kathryn’s family and tell them you just tried to smash her brains in.”
“It was more like he was trying to smash them out to be honest,” Dash said, giggling.
Nick ignored the bad joke and sped up his pace, leaving the rest of the group several yards behind him, but after a while, Eve caught up to him. He wasn’t about to admit it, but he was glad she was there.
Chapter Nine
“So what do you think we’re going to find?” Eve asked as she and Nick trudged through the woods together. The rest of the group were trailing a dozen feet behind. Everyone seemed to be following Dave’s lead for the most part – probably because he was constantly barking orders. Regardless of whether anybody condoned the bus driver’s actions, his willingness to take charge and act cemented his place of authority. Nick tried not to think of poor Kathryn in the woods, alone, injured, and afraid.
“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” he said. “I hope we can find somewhere with a nice big gate and a police sniper on the roof, but I’m pretty sure we won’t get it.”
Eve laughed. “I’m just wishing for a shower.”
“You’re not still bothered about being mucky, are you? Not after what happened to Kath—”
“Hey,” she cut him off. “Don’t give me grief. I’m just trying to focus on the small things. Creature comforts, you know?”
“Sorry. I’m just angry about what happened back there.”
“Me too, but none of us really know each other. We have no power over the actions of Dave or anybody else. Nobody here is boss.”
Nick huffed. “I’m not sure Dave would agree with you. I would’ve stopped him if I knew what he was going to do.”
“I know you would have, but you didn’t and you couldn’t, so forgive yourself. At least Kathryn’s still alive. She wouldn’t be if you hadn’t stepped in.”
Nick remained silent, but took in what Eve was saying. There was no point in ruminating about things he couldn’t change, and right now a lapse in concentration was surely a death sentence.
***
“We’ve been walking through these woods for more than two hours,” Margaret complained. “I need to rest.”
Nick and Eve were still a little further ahead than the others, but they stopped when th
ey heard Margaret. Nick didn’t know how long they’d been trudging through the woods, but two hours sounded about right.
“We keep moving,” Dave told the old woman. “We can’t afford to stop.”
Eve frowned. “Why not? What’s the harm in taking a ten minute rest?”
Dave stared at her and his top lip curled slightly upwards. “We need to find help, young lady, or have you forgotten that? The longer we stay in these woods, the bigger the risk we get attacked again.”
Eve turned a slow circle, taking in their surroundings. “I think we’ll be okay, old man. We’re totally alone.”
Dave shook his head. “We’re not stopping.”
“Who the hell put you in charge?” Nick said. “Margaret needs to rest, so we let her. There’s no argument to be had about it. She’s elderly. Show some compassion.”
Margaret looked at Dave pleadingly. She seemed embarrassed that her age and weakness was causing a spat, but she seemed determined to get her own way.
Dave gritted his teeth then said, “Fine. She can have ten minutes, but then we’re not stopping again until we find help. We can’t afford to be stuck in these woods after dark.”
Nick checked his watch. It was just after two. It wouldn’t get dark until about 7PM, but Dave did have a point: they didn’t want to be wondering through the woods in the dark.
Margaret eased herself down onto a fallen log. Pauline sat beside her and rubbed her back. Dave, Cassie, Carl, and the three prisoners huddled together between the trees, chatting.
“Dave is starting to get on my tits,” Eve whispered to Nick. “Talk about a power trip. He thinks he’s head boy scout or something. What the hell happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Nick admitted. “I can’t believe how quickly his attitude has changed. To think he was driving around rescuing people, and then to just attack Kathryn the way he did. I think driving us all to safety has made him feel entitled. On the bus he was his old self, doing what he does for a living. Since we got off, though, he’s finding a new role for himself. Still trying to be the driver.”
The BIG Horror Pack 2 Page 8