“I know what it was,” Anna replied, refusing to cry. “And I know who it was.”
“It’s not him anymore,” he said quietly. “Come on. We’ve got to get to the bowling alley.”
Anna nodded, eyes trained on the horizon. An acrid scent filled the air, and a tall black funnel of smoke blew away into pale, gray clouds that filled the skies over Little Haven.
“John?” Anna said in a small, little-girl voice.
“Yeah?”
“I really want to find my dad.”
“We will,” he promised. “And my mom.”
“Okay,” she said, biting her lip and smiling at her best friend. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Silently, he reached out for her hand, squeezed it once, then let go as they walked on together.
12
“OPEN THE DOOR!” John shouted as Anna fumbled with the keys to Thunderballs. “Open the door!”
“I’m trying!” Anna replied, her hands shaking as she worked the padlock.
Behind them, a small army of blood-covered zombies staggered in their direction, slowly but surely coming closer and closer. John pressed his back against his best friend, backpack at the ready, determined to fend them off when—click!—Anna found the right key and the lock sprang open. They fell into the bowling alley and locked the door behind them as the mass of undead bodies roared with anger outside.
“Argh!” John shrieked as two bodies jumped up from behind the shoe counter. Anna hit the lights and sighed her first real sigh of relief. It was Chris and Steph.
“Told you it was them!” Chris said, almost falling over his own feet to get to his friends. “I saw you out the window.”
But Steph wasn’t so easily pleased.
“Have you been bitten?” she demanded, holding a fire extinguisher over her head. “Show me!”
“They’re fine,” Chris insisted, and although he didn’t know it for sure, he needed to believe it was true. Anna pulled up her sleeves and turned her head to show Steph her unbitten arms.
“We’re clean,” she said, rolling down her sleeves. She wanted as much of her own flesh covered as humanly possible. Steph lowered her weapon but kept it close by.
“You break in?” Anna asked.
Steph shook her head. “Back door was open,” she explained.
Anna gave John a look.
“That’s the cleaner’s job! Mrs. Hinzmann locks up the back, not me!” he replied, leaping to his own defense. “Although, she might have been concussed…”
“Have you heard from Lisa?” Chris asked, so much hope in his voice.
Anna and John shook their heads at the same time.
“We went to her house,” Anna said slowly. “She’s not there.”
“But her stepbrother was,” John said. “Chris, man, I don’t know how to tell you, but—”
“He’s been turned?” Steph guessed.
“I’m sorry,” Anna said, giving Chris a hug.
“Oh no.” He frowned for a moment and then broke out into his standard sunny smile. “Oh well. He was a bit of an arsehole anyway, wasn’t he?”
No one could really argue with him. Jason was a complete tosser and everyone knew it.
“I’m glad you guys are okay,” Steph said stiffly, setting down the fire extinguisher with great reluctance. “Whatever’s going on is total insanity.”
“How come you ended up here?” Anna asked, walking quickly around the room, turning on as many lights as possible.
“We were out filming the soup kitchen,” Chris explained. “It was going really well, too, we had loads of good footage.”
“And then somebody screamed.” Steph’s expression soured with the memory and Anna could only imagine. All those people in such a small space? It had to have been a bloodbath. “This was the first place we came to and Chris thought maybe you guys would still be here.”
“Yeah.” He looked at the floor, sadness washing over him. And then he looked up at his friends with a giant smile on his face. “But hey, zombies, right? Crazy.”
John couldn’t help but smile. You could always trust Chris to find a silver lining. Even if that lining was to be excited about zombies. Anna shook her head and threw her schoolbag down onto the shoe counter with a heavy sigh.
“You’ll have to excuse Anna,” John said. “She’s in Egypt.”
Steph raised an eyebrow.
“Because she’s in denial.”
Chris immediately held up his hand for a high five. No one loved a pun as much as Chris.
“You’re not funny,” Anna declared. “Have you guys heard anything? From anyone?”
“Wifi’s spotty but check it out.” Steph opened her laptop and they crowded around the screen, Anna with a lump in her throat. They clicked from tab to tab to tab, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, the BBC, CNN … It seemed as though Steph had checked every news outlet on the internet, and none of them had good news. GLOBAL STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED. ARMY DISPATCHED TO ASSIST SURVIVORS. IS THIS THE END? She settled on a site still streaming video and clicked the screen to turn up the volume.
“Governments worldwide are coordinating a response and setting up safety zones. The cause of this outbreak of violence is, as of yet, still unknown,” the reporter announced.
“Yeah, sure,” Steph muttered. “Big pharm has been doing weird shit for years. It’s a cover-up.”
“Survivors have been instructed to monitor social networks for their nearest evacuation zone and await assistance.”
“Ours is the school,” Steph said as the video froze.
“So the school’s okay?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Chris confirmed with a nod. “Lisa posted something on Facebook a while back, there’s loads of people there. Her and my gran and your mom and your dad, Anna. I haven’t been able to get hold of her, but they were all safe a few hours ago. The army’s gonna escort us. How cool will that be?”
Anna turned to John with tears in her eyes and fell into his reassuring hug. Her dad was okay, they were going to be okay. John rested his face on the top of Anna’s head and tried not to smell her hair.
“Oh shit!” Chris gasped.
Anna felt John’s arms tense around her.
“What?” Steph gripped her fire extinguisher tightly as Chris held up his phone for them all to see.
“Justin Bieber is a zombie!” he announced with disbelief. John’s jaw dropped open as he grabbed Chris’s phone out of his hand to see the news for himself, while Anna and Steph shared a despairing look. This was not going to be simple.
“Also, search hashtag ‘EvacSelfie,’” Chris said, peering at Instagram over John’s shoulder. A stream of images appeared on the phone, hundreds of posts from people using the puppy filter as they were loaded into army vans, pulling a duckface, and throwing up peace signs next to the undead. Steph shrugged.
“We deserve to go extinct,” she said simply.
As John scrolled down to a picture of a woman applying false lashes while a zombie tried to smash in her bathroom window, Anna couldn’t help but agree.
“Lots of places still haven’t been secured,” Steph said, mentally checking off location tags. “Did you see Toronto on there?”
“Your girlfriend’ll be fine,” Chris promised. “And your folks. Maybe there aren’t any zombies in Mexico? Bet the government is just starting with the people who need them the most.”
“Sure,” Steph said, closing her laptop with a snap. “Just like they always do.”
13
OVER AT THE school, Justin Bieber’s well-being was not the most pressing topic of conversation.
“We are not opening the doors!” Savage yelled, blocking the exit to the cafeteria with his skinny body. Tony stepped up to the increasingly manic man while everyone else watched.
“We’ve waited long enough, Arthur,” he argued. “We’re going to get our kids before it gets dark.”
It had been hours. The school had lost internet service, their mobile phones weren’t working, the su
n was about to set, and there had been no sign of Anna or John.
“If I hadn’t acted so quickly last night, those things would have gotten us.” Savage shoved Tony out of the way and barked at the rest of his captives. “Now these idiots want to let them in!”
The parents in the cafeteria drew their children closer toward them as Tony and Julie stood firm behind Savage. In their quiet little corner, Lisa took Bea’s hand in hers. It was cold and clammy, but the old lady gave her a brave smile.
“My girl’s out there, she needs me,” Tony said, as much to himself as everyone else. He turned to Savage, eyeing the ring of keys that hung from his belt. “It’s not something you would understand.”
Savage inhaled sharply. He stared down the other man, cold, blue eyes narrowing.
“There are creatures on the outside trying to get in,” he snarled, shoving Tony again and staring down the panicking parents. “We cannot open those doors to disaster. I say we keep the doors locked and protect the people who are already safe. Face it, Shepherd, anyone on the outside is already as good as gone.”
With a sharp sob, Julie collapsed to the floor. Tony knelt down to help her as Savage continued with his rally.
“We must stand our ground here; leaving the school would be suicide!”
“I will not leave my child out there to those monsters!” Tony bellowed as his voice and his temper finally broke. Several of the parents jumped at the sound of his shouting. It wasn’t something they were used to hearing.
“We’ve got to at least try to help, haven’t we? Otherwise we’re no better than monsters ourselves.”
A mutter ran through the crowd, mothers and fathers with their arms around their children, raising quiet objections to the idea of opening the barricades, while those without their family faintly insisted they be allowed outside.
“You can’t let them in here!”
Tony looked up to see Gavin, the local butcher, comforting his son in his arms.
“They’ll kill us all!”
“And what about everyone else out there?” asked another parent, Sharon. “There’s not even a hundred of us in here; that means there are thousands of our friends and family and neighbors on the outside, and we’ve no way of knowing if they’re safe. Can you honestly just sit here, twiddling your thumbs and waiting for someone to show up to save you, when you know they’re all out there on their own?”
“It’s the only thing we can do,” Priya, a woman who lived two doors down from Anna and Tony, said quietly. Her little girl cuddled in tightly against her legs.
“I don’t know how you’re going to look yourself in the mirror tomorrow,” Sharon replied. “I don’t know how you can all live with yourselves.”
“Let’s see if we even make it to tomorrow,” Gavin said as he stepped forward, forcing Sharon to back down. “We’re not opening the doors.”
“I think it would be best if we all tried to work together,” Lisa tried, but her quiet voice was drowned out by the increasing volume of the crowd.
Savage smirked as the parents turned on one another. One by one, they let go of the pretense of politeness and let their true selves show. And their true selves wanted to survive. But his satisfaction was short-lived.
“Open the door or give me the keys,” Tony ordered quietly, holding his arm in a viselike grip. “Or I swear to God, Arthur, I’ll throw you out to them myself.”
The loud screech of a megaphone suddenly cut through the cacophony of raised voices and crying children.
“Please stay indoors,” a voice ordered. “The armed forces are securing the area. Please stay indoors.”
Everyone fell silent. Tony let go of Savage’s arm as he backed away, sneering.
“At times like this, people need a leader,” Arthur said, his voice soft and dangerous. “We can’t just let people do whatever they want, Mr. Shepherd. They don’t know what’s best for them. In times of crisis, they need a firm hand to direct them to the right decision. So please sit down.”
Tony glared at him, the anger and frustration still in his eyes. Savage took a step away from the larger man before puffing out his chest and tapping on his clipboard.
“Everyone is to remain calm,” he barked. He was back in charge. “And everyone is to do as I say.”
Lisa gave Tony a half smile as he sank against a table with his head in his hands.
“We’ll be all right,” she whispered to Bea. “They’re coming for us now.”
But Bea didn’t answer.
* * *
Before Thunderballs was a bowling alley, it had been a shoe factory. Anna had seen photos, but she still couldn’t quite imagine it. Thunderballs was so loud and obnoxious with its terrible sound system and the hilarious graffiti-inspired art on the walls. It looked as though someone’s dad had seen some real graffiti once and then asked a painter and decorator to do something a bit similar. The ceilings were low and there weren’t many windows and even with every light in the place turned on, it still felt like perpetual twilight inside. The shoe factory had closed down before she was born, but John’s mom still asked John if he was going to the factory whenever he had to work, and it always made Anna smile. John’s mom was lovely. Anna paced up and down in front of the shoe counter, trying not to wonder whether or not Julie was okay.
The four of them, John, Chris, Steph, and herself, had been locked inside for hours now, and no one had come to help them. As far as she knew, no one had any idea that they were even there. The internet had gone down completely, and none of their messages would send.
She glanced out the darkened window and saw hordes of those things swaying around. Every so often one would bump into another, and they would just turn and set off in a different direction until they disappeared from sight. But there were always more. She hugged herself and sent up a silent prayer to whoever might be listening. John and Chris sat at one of the little plastic tables, munching on packets of crisps they had liberated from the stockroom. Despite the confirmed apocalypse, they were debating their theories as to which superheroes would be able to survive a zombie attack, while inhaling bag after bag of Cheetos. For some reason, Anna didn’t have the stomach for snacks.
* * *
Steph was struggling.
She sat and listened to Chris and John for as long as she could before she had to ditch them and now, here she was, spending what was more likely the last few hours of her life, hiding in a bathroom while two idiots argued over whether or not Deadpool’s regenerative properties would save him from a zombie bite. She should have gone to Mexico. Or Toronto. Anywhere would have been better than dying in a bowling alley that looked like it was straight out of the 1980s.
She stared at the blank page in her notebook, trying to think of the right thing to say. She had to document this. She had to tell their story. So far, she’d abandoned the headlines “The End of Everything” and “What Next?”
“Too clickbaity,” she muttered, crossing them out and turning the page.
She pulled off the cap of her pen with her teeth and scribbled down A Survivor’s Story.
“Too optimistic,” she sighed, capping her pen. “Too bad we don’t have Deadpool to help us.”
Dropping the notebook, she turned on the cold tap and let the water run before leaning over and splashing her face.
“Hey.”
She jerked upright to see Anna’s reflection right behind her in the mirror.
“Shit!” Steph exclaimed, her heart pounding. “What’s wrong, did you decide things weren’t creepy enough already?”
“Sorry,” Anna offered, turning on a tap at the neighboring sink and holding her hands under the water. Steph watched as the white of the sink turned red.
“Here.” She pulled a packet of cleansing wipes out of her bag and offered them to Anna.
“Any luck getting hold of your parents?” Anna asked, nodding at the phone next to the sink.
“Mexico is not picking up,” Steph replied, holding her platinum-white hair away
from her face to dab at a particularly stubborn bloodstain. It was super annoying; she’d only just bleached her hair, and now it was going to need doing all over again. Someone at whichever pharmaceuticals company was responsible for this was getting a bill for a bleach-and-tone appointment come January.
“So, I was thinking this is the worst Christmas ever,” Anna said, looking back at Steph in the mirror. The other girl met her eyes as she scrubbed at her face. “And then I remembered the time I got Encyclopedia Magazine in my stocking when I was thirteen. Aardvark to cuttlefish. My dad got me a year’s subscription and to this day, I have no idea why. I’d asked him for a bike. Worst Christmas ever.”
Steph mustered a chuckle.
“Just before they left for Mexico, to make themselves feel better about leaving me here for the holidays, my folks came to visit and took me on a surprise trip,” she said.
“Ooh,” Anna replied. “Fancy!”
Steph turned to face her new friend.
“They took me to Birmingham.”
“What?”
“One of Dad’s business meetings,” Steph explained, still not quite over the experience. “Mom was all, ‘What’s wrong? It’s a city break!’ Did you know Birmingham’s first canal opened in 1769?”
“I did not,” Anna said, tossing her used face wipe in the bin.
They both smiled until Anna caught herself in the mirror, and the happy moment fell away.
“I was horrible to my dad yesterday,” she said. “Like, really horrible.”
Steph stared deep into her own eyes.
“One time isn’t so bad,” she said quietly before looking away and hurriedly throwing her things back into her bag.
* * *
“Bollocks,” Chris declared. “He’s a zombie.”
“Robert Downey Jr. has, like, a billion dollars,” John argued, still in his stained Christmas sweater. The lights flickered on and off in time to music no one could hear every time he moved. “He’s in the Jacuzzi right now, surrounded by electric fences. And supermodels.”
John and Chris were not in a Jacuzzi. They were in the forbidden ball pit, tossing brightly colored plastic balls at each other’s faces. It wasn’t exactly a “pit” but rather a blow-up swimming pool serving as a pit. John’d had dreams about this ball pit. He had longed to get into it ever since Thunderballs opened, but even back then, he was already too tall. He wasn’t sure if it was the heightened emotional situation or the fact he’d wanted to get in here since he was twelve years old, but even if he was being brutally honest, it exceeded expectations.
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