Thrive (Episode 2): Follow

by Lamb, Harrison J.

  “How did you get so many of them after you?” Kingsley asked as he wrenched the wheel to the left, aiming for the exit at the back of the bus park.

  “Shit,” Sammy said. “Hurry up. They’ll swarm us.”

  The first snapper was only a few feet away from the bus.

  “It was a trap,” Eric said, breathless.

  As Kingsley accelerated to turn, he ran the snapper over.

  The impact of the body slamming against the front of the bus startled him.

  A floodgate broke open in his head, traumatic memories pouring out and sweeping him back to that terrible moment. The only other moment in his life when he had felt so out of control at the wheel of a vehicle – the accident.

  Suddenly, he really didn’t want to be driving.

  But Kingsley couldn’t slow down or stop. Snappers were chasing them. A lot of snappers.

  He saw that the bus was heading towards one of the shelters between the parking lanes. But for some reason, he couldn’t steer away from it. His arms were paralysed, his muscles rigour. They were heading straight for the edge of the shelter but Kingsley’s foot would not lift from the pedal.

  Only the jolt of them crashing forced him to hit the brake.

  The voices of his friends filtered into Kingsley’s awareness through a haze of disorientation, through the familiar ringing in his ears.

  “Reverse!” Eric.

  “What happened?” Sammy.

  “Hurry, we’re being surrounded!” Kara.

  Kingsley began to put the bus into reverse – at least he tried to. But his hands were shaking like hell and everything felt so uncannily slow. His mouth opened and closed like he was a fish out of water, the words trapped in his throat.

  A large pair of hands pulled him out of the seat. Eric took over. Kingsley dropped into one of the passenger seats, unable to do much else other than try to control his shallow, frenzied breathing while the others struggled to maneuver the bus around the wrecked shelter.

  Five minutes later, a hand touched Kingsley’s shoulder and startled him from his fever. It was only then that he realised they were no longer in the bus park. They were now coasting along a main road, approaching the urban-rural fringe of the town.

  Kingsley looked up at Sammy, her hand still resting on his shoulder. She tried to smile at him, but he could see the worry in her eyes, clear as day.

  *

  It was all his fault.

  Everything that had happened to them was because of him and his stupid decisions. He had led them to Braintree after James had been attacked, and James had ended up dead. Maybe James would have died regardless, but not in that brutal manner. And if they hadn’t gone to the town, they might have been able to bury his body rather than leave him to rot on the floor of a stranger’s flat.

  Kingsley hadn’t been able to steer the bus out of the way of that shelter and it had almost resulted in all of their deaths. He had misjudged; he didn’t think he would be affected in that way when the bus hit the snapper.

  He should have known. His therapist had urged him to take it slow, to not drive when he was feeling anxious. But Kingsley had never been very good at taking advice.

  It was all his fault.

  With Sammy taking the wheel, Eric walked over to Kingsley and sat in the seat next to his. Kingsley watched the trees and fields whizz by, not sparing his friend a glance. He knew that Eric was going to tell him exactly what he needed to hear, but right now he just wanted to be left alone.

  “It was a trap.”

  They weren’t the words he had expected to come out of Eric’s mouth. Kingsley’s head turned a fraction.

  “Somebody made a trail,” Eric continued. “A trail of blood and meat to lure the snappers to the shop. It led into the stockroom where our stuff was, like someone knew we were staying there and wanted to ambush us.”

  Kingsley didn’t know what to make of that. For a moment, he was baffled as to why anyone would want to kill them.

  Then he remembered Darren, and his talk of the group that had been with him – a group of three other people, so he had claimed. There was a good chance that the crazy, apocalypse-obsessed man hadn’t been lying, and his pals had returned to find him dead and all of his expensive weapons and valuable supplies gone. That would surely piss them off.

  But Kingsley found it hard to believe that anyone would have gone through the effort to set a trap for him and his friends.

  First off, they would have needed to track down Kingsley’s group or have seen them leave the building with the weapons and then have followed them.

  Then they would have needed to set the trap, which meant wasting meat to make a trail that would lead the dead to the store. Who would do that?

  “There was a severed pig’s trotter in the trail,” Eric said. Kingsley’s head turned all the way now, and he faced his friend with bewildered eyes. Before he could speak, Eric continued. “It was a trail of pig flesh, Kingsley. Remember that van full of pig carcasses outside Darren’s flat?”

  Kingsley gawped at him now, suddenly understanding. It made sense. Darren’s group had used the pigs as bait to shepherd the flesh-craving undead from one street to another. It wasn’t impossible that they had used that trick again to set a trap for the people who killed their friend and stole their supplies.

  Kingsley managed a few words. “Does that mean they’re following us right now?”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll lose them now that we’re out of Braintree.”

  “Jesus… We need to be more careful. We can’t just kill people and take their stuff.”

  Eric frowned. “We didn’t attack Darren for no reason. He shot James as soon as he found out he was bitten. The bloke was fucked up in the head.”

  “But we can’t have conflict like that,” Kingsley said. “We need to be more careful when we run into survivors. People are more dangerous than the dead.”

  “You think I’m not careful enough? I’ve made some bad decisions, I know. But only to keep us alive, and I’m choosing not to let my decisions weigh me down so I can continue to keep us alive. Maybe you should do the same.”

  Kingsley faced the window again, wishing a sinkhole would open beneath him and swallow him up.

  “Mate… I’m sorry,” Eric said, realising that his words had poked at a fresh wound. He stood and started toward the front of the bus. “Forget about it.”

  Kingsley stared at the back of Eric’s head, wanting to punch the man despite knowing that he was speaking the truth. As he always fucking did.

  Kingsley couldn’t escape his fear of confrontation, though. He couldn’t stop reliving in his mind the moment James had been shot with the crossbow. The way his eyeball had exploded as the bolt speared through it was something he would never forget.

  People were the worst. They really were the fucking worst.

  The bus slowed to a halt. “We’re here,” Sammy said.

  6.

  Sammy’s parents lived on a secluded, winding cul-de-sac. As they would have struggled to turn the bus around in the narrow dead-end street, they decided to leave it on the main road, taking the keys with them while they went to see if Sammy’s parents were home.

  It was incredibly quiet. It would have been pretty dark out if it weren’t for the street lights; they hadn’t gone out yet, but most of the lights were off inside the bungalows and houses. Presumably, the power stations that supplied the national grid would falter sooner or later with no one to maintain them.

  The only home that seemed to have lights on inside was a bungalow on the left side of the street, close to where the winding road terminated. A side window glowed languid orange, silhouetting a dark figure standing in front of it. A snapper. The arhythmic sound of it thumping on the glass was all they could hear other than their own footfalls.

  Kingsley had never been to Sammy’s parents’ home. He had no idea what it looked like. But when Sammy paused and stared at the bungalow with the light on for a good few se
conds, he knew that was their place.

  Eric stood next to her and rubbed her back. “When you’re ready,” he whispered.

  Sammy didn’t take her eyes off it. She didn’t say anything either. She just gulped, then after a few moments she drew her knife and started toward the bungalow.

  The snapper didn’t hear her approach. It was still beating on the window when she stuck the knife in the back of it’s skull, drove it to the brain stem. Yanking her knife from the body, she squatted with her elbows on her knees for a few moments.

  For a second, Kingsley thought the snapper Sammy had just killed might have actually been her undead father, and that was why she had suddenly stopped. He couldn’t see well in the dusk, but the body looked like an old guy.

  Then he realised that Sammy was simply hesitating to take a look inside her parents’ home out of fear of what she would find.

  Abruptly – perhaps in a moment of sudden courage – Sammy stood, cupped her hands against the window and peered between them at her parents’ kitchen. Kingsley and Eric joined her.

  There was nothing out-of-the-ordinary to see in there. Some dirty dishes were piled in the sink and an open box of dog biscuits stood on the kitchen counter. One of the cupboards hung open though, and a roll of gauze, as well as some boxes of prescription drugs, were visible inside.

  Then Sammy’s breaths grew shaky. Kingsley glanced at her and back at the kitchen in confusion. What did she see that troubled her?

  It was only when he craned his neck to the left and noticed the open utility room door that he saw what was bothering Sammy.

  A man on his knees in the doorway, leaning into the narrow, unlit space of the utility room – Sammy’s dad.

  She rapped on the window. “Dad! Dad, it’s me!” The man didn’t move.

  Eric touched her shoulder and held a finger in front of his mouth, reminding her that making loud noises wasn’t a good idea out here in the dark. “Let’s go in. Will they have locked the doors? Do you have a key?”

  Sammy shook her head. “No, I don’t have a key and I’m pretty sure they’ll be locked. Mum used to keep the doors locked all the time in our old house, day and night. She’s like that. Even if they somehow have no idea what’s going on out here, I doubt she’ll have left them unlocked.”

  Trying the front door and finding it locked, as Sammy had guessed, they rang the doorbell a few times. No answer. They went to the back door, passing the kitchen window again and seeing that her dad was still in the same place. It was hard to tell if he was alive or dead. Or…

  They had no luck with the back door either.

  “Oh god,” Sammy said. “He probably can’t hear me. Mum told me that dad’s hearing was going, but I didn’t know it was that bad already.”

  “You sure there’s not a spare key lying about somewhere?” Eric asked.

  She shook her head again, looking defeated.

  “Do your parents have a security system?”

  “No.”

  Eric nodded to himself. “Then we can get in without an alarm going off and attracting snappers.”

  “How are you going to break in?” Kara asked. “Kick down a door?”

  “That’s not ideal. The only one I would be able to kick in is the front door, as the back door swings out into the garden. But the front one will be made from hardwood – solid-core material. It’ll take too long and I might injure myself. We could smash a window, but the noise is an issue.”

  “So what option does that leave us with?”

  Eric pulled the chain mace from his belt, looked at his friends and cocked his head, gesturing for them to follow as he moved back round to the front of the bungalow.

  “Mum will have a heart attack,” Sammy murmured.

  Eric stood a foot from the door, hefting the mace. “We don’t have a choice.” He started swinging the weapon lightly back and forth, rocking his shoulders to build momentum. “I’m gonna try to break the lock… Stand back.”

  The first swing didn’t do the trick. The mace head crashed into the door and left a sizable dent of splintered wood below the handle, but the lock held. On the second swing, there was a snapping sound and part of the door frame came loose. Rather than hit it a third time with the chain mace, Eric took a few steps back, then strode forward and sprang into a kick.

  The weakened door burst open. Sammy was the first inside, calling out to her parents and rushing to the kitchen.

  Kingsley tightened his grip on his machete.

  “Dad? Mum? It’s Sammy!” She went through a doorway on the left at the end of the entrance hall, into the kitchen, and they followed.

  “I’m sorry for breaking in! I had to make sure you were—” She went silent. Oh no. Kingsley’s heart almost stopped as he entered the kitchen and saw her standing by the utility room, frozen as she stared at what was inside.

  Joining her, he looked into the utility space and right away wanted to throw up.

  Sammy’s dad hadn’t moved, still kneeling over something in the little room. He couldn’t tell what it was, but the dark red stains on the pale linoleum told him enough. And the sound of her dad – or what was once her dad – eating, teeth squelching in something wet and fleshy.

  Sammy shook her head. “No, no, no, no… NO.” She started to back away.

  Eric reached into the utility room for the light switch and Kingsley prayed that the darkness was deceiving them and their fears had not come true.

  A hanging light bulb flickered on. Sammy’s dad turned toward the new stimuli, chewing. His eyes were murky, red-rimmed, and on the floor at his knees was a small dog with it’s belly torn open, it’s insides on the floor like spilled mincemeat.

  “NOOO!” Sammy staggered backwards into the kitchen counter. The snapper that was once her dad limped out of the utility room and she sidestepped to get away from it. “I CAN’T DO IT! I CAN’T!”

  The snapper shifted it’s attention to the others, reaching for Eric as he was the closest person. But Rebecca moved behind it and drove her blade into the back of it’s head before it could do anything.

  Sammy crumpled to the floor and cried. Eric grimaced, staring at the body of her dad. Kingsley was shaking with adrenaline and nausea; yet his eyes wandered back to the floor of the utility room, morbid curiosity taking over. He identified the dog as a Yorkshire Terrier before looking away again, the lurching of his stomach driving him out of the room.

  Seeing innocent animals needlessly hurt or killed always got to him. Kingsley had always had a soft spot for animals. But since his accident and the consequent loss of his child, the longing to protect innocent life – and the aversion to seeing it torn apart – had only grown stronger in him.

  He couldn’t imagine what Sammy must be going through now. He had never really known her dad well enough to form an emotional connection with him, but it was sickening to see the man in that state and Sammy on the ground in despair, nothing they could do for her.

  Kingsley couldn’t take it. Exiting the kitchen, his erratic legs took him a few paces down the hall and he found himself standing in front of another door. It stood open an inch or two, light seeping through the gap.

  Where is Sammy’s mother? The thought suddenly occurred to Kingsley. Is she in there?

  He had to check. If her mum had also turned, he didn’t want Sammy to be the one to find her.

  He nudged open the door with his foot and sidled into the living room. A TV sat on an antique wooden cabinet in the far corner, switched off, the only light in the room coming from a standing lamp in the opposite corner. Cream, floral-patterned curtains covered the window. Facing the TV was a sofa, an armchair and a coffee table.

  Nothing seemed amiss. But as Kingsley listened, he heard the susurration of movement somewhere in the room. Then, a more worrying sound – the hollow clack of teeth snapping together.

  They had heard that same sound many times in the past two days, always heralding the arrival of the dead. There was another snapper in here.

 
As much as he wanted to turn around and leave, Kingsley knew he had to find the snapper before Sammy did. If Kingsley’s own mother had turned, he definitely would not want to see it for himself, especially if he had just walked in on his zombified dad eating the family pet.

  Kingsley crept towards the sofa where the sounds seemed to be coming from. When he peered over the back of the sofa, though, no one was sitting there.

  Then he saw her.

  The elderly woman on the floor, staring up at him with eyes like pale, bloodshot fish eggs and incessantly biting at the air. The lower half of her torso looked like it had been snacked on by a pair of wolves. A cane leaned against the sofa. Kingsley deducted that Sammy’s mother must have had trouble walking when she was alive because her undead body couldn’t seem to stand.

  At a guess, Sammy’s dad had been bitten a few hours ago, locked himself and his wife inside their home and called the police to no avail. Then her dad had turned, killed her mum and started feasting on her body, been distracted by their yapping dog, cornered the animal in the utility room, and…

  Kingsley felt a new wave of guilt start to form as he realised that they probably could have saved Sammy’s parents had they come a few hours earlier.

  Kara, Rebecca and Eric appeared at the living room door. Kingsley shot them a pained look, then knelt down beside the snapper. A sickly lump formed in his throat.

  He held his machete to the snapper’s chin and clenched his teeth as he impaled it’s skull. The snapper stilled and it’s arms dropped.

  Tugging his blade free, Kingsley looked up to see Sammy standing with the others, her eyes red from crying. He hated himself for having nothing better to say to her than, “I’m sorry.” Sammy stumbled forward and dropped to her knees, clinging to the arm of the sofa as if it was a life raft on the sea of turmoil she had fallen into.

  7.

  Silence in the bus again.