Thrive - Episode One

by Harrison J Lamb

  Then again, Eric had just killed a guy in defence of his friends. Anyone would be weighed down by that.

  Kingsley had watched everything from a distance, peering at the confrontation from behind the barbed wire fence, still disoriented from the traumatic memory triggered by the sight of the wreckage. But he was freaked out by what he had seen.

  He came to the realisation then that they had to do something if there was any chance that the mutilated woman on the ground was still alive. And it seemed that he was the only one who wasn’t busy recovering from shock. His distance from the scene, his detachment from reality in that moment, had allowed him to observe it all without the same horror that Eric, James and Sammy had experienced.

  There was also the matter of James’ arm. He needed medical attention to make sure that he wouldn’t contract any diseases from the bite or get an infection.

  None of them had their phones with them. They were all zipped away in their tents back at the camp.

  “Eric, can you run back to the tents and grab your phone?” Kingsley asked. “We need to call an ambulance, and the police. We need to alert them that there’s been a crash and two people are seriously injured, possibly dead.” He knew that Eric worked best when he had a specific goal to complete. Give him something to do, distract him.

  Eric raised his eyes from the man’s body on the road and met Kingsley’s stare. After a brief few seconds, he nodded, turned and raced off toward the trees.

  Kingsley eyed the mutilated woman with apprehension, knowing what he had to do next. He tried to ignore how dead she looked as he knelt beside her. Her eyes were so wide they seemed to bulge out of her skull, and they had a glassy sheen to them.

  First, he pressed two fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse in her jugular. He waited a few seconds with his fingers resting on the spot. Felt nothing.

  He moved on to her wrist and searched for a pulse there... Still nothing.

  Her skin was starting to go cold. It was looking more and more likely that the woman was already dead. Kingsley shifted his focus to the wound in her belly. The dark blue blouse she wore was ripped and soaked with blood where the man had bitten her, and beneath it, the jagged depression of the wound still wept red. However, the bite was not gushing blood as fast as it had been when the guy was gnawing on her.

  He applied pressure to the wound with two hands, but he was pretty sure there was no point as she didn't seem to be bleeding at all anymore. Kingsley had no idea what else to do. He tried chest compressions for a couple minutes, but he was almost certain the woman had died by now.

  He heard the splatter of vomit on the road behind him. Sammy was throwing up, and he felt like he might be sick himself.

  Kingsley stood, glanced at the trees just in time to see Eric rushing back to the road, his phone in hand, watching the screen as he ran. When he reached the crash site, he shook his head and swore under his breath.

  Kingsley went to him and asked what was wrong.

  “I tried calling 9-9-9,” Eric huffed. “But it didn’t connect. It just dialled for a few seconds then stopped and told me the number couldn’t be reached. I tried it twice, same thing happened both times. And I’m getting no signal anywhere, had to use an emergency network to make the call.”

  “It wouldn’t connect? To the emergency services? What the actual fuck is going on?”

  “This is bad,” James said. “This is really fucking bad.” He stared at Kingsley and Eric. “My arm is killing me. We’re going to have to go back and get the cars, then we can drive to the nearest town. Braintree’s not that far from here; I can go to the hospital, and we can report the accident either straight from the hospital or go to the police station.”

  Kingsley thought about James’ idea. Eric eyed the rugged man’s body, clearly pondering again on what he’d done to the guy.

  “Oh my god.” Sammy’s voice behind them was tremulous. “Guys. Look.”

  They all faced Sammy. She was standing over the dead woman’s body – there was no doubt in Kingsley’s mind that she was dead now – pointing with a shaky hand at the woman’s head.

  “Look at her eyes.”

  They all walked over to the body and gawped at the pale, lifeless face. Kingsley didn’t understand what he was seeing.

  The dead woman’s eyeballs had taken on a grey-blue tinge, the pupils fading into a murky cornea. And the rims of her eyes were a watery red colour.

  Kingsley was pretty sure her eyes had not looked like that a few minutes ago. They must have changed just now, within the small space of time that he’d been talking to Eric and James. They looked exactly like the crazed man’s eyes. The rugged, zombie-of-a-man who had killed her.

  Then the woman’s arm twitched.

  Her jaw opened and closed.

  Those grey eyes rolled and shifted in her skull, seeming to look directly at Kingsley.

  4.

  The world spun around him. He rocked on his feet. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

  The mutilated woman, whom Kingsley had accepted was no longer alive only minutes ago, was now writhing on the ground before his eyes. At first, he had thought it was muscle spasms. He’d heard that sometimes leftover electric signals in the body could cause that.

  But when her back arched and her head rose, turning to face Kingsley, he understood that she wasn’t dead. At least, not anymore. The discoloured eyeballs, the jittery way her limbs moved – it was exactly like the crazed man had been.

  This was some actual zombie shit going on.

  Kingsley’s breaths grew shallow. He began to back away.

  “Oh no,” Sammy murmured, everyone else speechless.

  The woman’s expression remained exactly how it had been when her stomach was being torn into. The eyes were still wide and unblinking. She folded her legs and tried to stand, but they noticed now that one of her legs was horribly twisted. The woman struggled to balance before toppling over and resorting to dragging herself across the tarmac road with her hands.

  Catching a glimpse of the back of her injured leg, Kingsley saw a piece of debris jutting from the thigh. He realised that she must have hurt herself in the crash.

  Suddenly, he felt somewhat sorry for this wretched woman. Why did she crawl towards them so desperately like that with no regard for her own health?

  At the same time, he saw that she was nowhere near as much a threat to them as the man had been.

  Blame it on his hazy, detached mental state, but Kingsley was curious and he had a crazy idea out of nowhere.

  He glanced sideways at his friends. They were all mesmerised. Then he took a step towards the crawling woman. The shocked, dying gaze remained on her face, and she wasn’t crying out in pain or anger or excitement. She made no noise. But Kingsley could sense an intensity in her as he neared the woman; the snapping of her mouth grew quicker, one of her arms stretched out towards his feet.

  He inched his right foot closer to her head, tapped it on the ground in front of her. Her outstretched arm grasped his boot. Her jaw gaped wide, ready to bite down on him.

  With slight panic, Kingsley tugged his foot free from her surprisingly fierce hold.

  He’d satisfied his curiosity enough. Kingsley turned around. “Let’s just get away from here,” he said.

  They moved like ghosts off the road and back into the woods, Kingsley peeking now and then at the teeth marks in James’ wrist, the leaking red craters like tiny spewing volcanoes.

  *

  They had brought only two vehicles on the trip. James’ SUV and Eric’s pickup truck were both in a tree-lined car park next to a nearby fishing lake. Kingsley drove the former with James in the passenger seat, clutching his injured arm in pain. Eric drove his own car, Sammy riding with him.

  The two vehicles crept out of the tree shade on the winding country road, then sped along the A120, heading for Braintree.

  They weren’t able to speed for very long, though. Only minutes after they had joined the A120, the traffic started t
o swell to a point where they became packed, bonnet-to-boot, in a long column of idling vehicles. Not ideal for their current situation. They needed to get help as fast as possible, and they still were getting no service on their phones.

  Kingsley kept eyeing James in concern. He knew that James must have noticed his repeated glances and was probably feeling uncomfortable about it. Being a burden to those around him was something James dreaded, to the point where he was constantly making an effort to be as unobtrusive and helpful to his peers as possible.

  But Kingsley couldn’t help but check on his friend. James seemed physically sick. He was sweating and his skin was paler than usual. He’d even taken off his purple beanie which almost never left his head in public. Maybe it was just the pain of his injury combined with the shock of the morning’s events, because there was no way he could already be falling ill from tetanus or something else he had contracted from the bite.

  Kingsley stared ahead, straining to see how far the traffic lines stretched and whether they were progressing.

  But he noticed something that gave him pause.

  People were getting out of their cars and walking up the road between the lanes. What were they trying to see? There would be nothing except long lines of vehicles waiting to enter a clogged roundabout, or stuck behind some traffic lights up ahead.

  But a lot of people were leaving their cars now. Some had shut their engines off and were standing outside talking with others. None were smiling.

  Kingsley had the same bad feeling he'd had earlier, before they had stumbled upon the crash site. A heaviness in his gut.

  He ejected his seatbelt and turned to James. “I’m gonna take a look,” he said. “Just wait here.”

  “No, I’m coming with you. I need some fresh air, anyway.”

  They both stepped out of the car, Kingsley glancing at the pickup behind them to see Eric and Sammy exiting to join them.

  The late morning sun was harsh on their exposed necks, the air weighty with exhaust fumes and body odour. Next to them, a young girl cried in her mother’s arms, the pair leaning against a dusty car. The girl was bleeding from a gash on her shoulder. In the western distance toward the town, dark clouds roiled on an otherwise clear horizon... No, not clouds – smoke.

  They wandered up the stagnant lanes, each of them in bewildered silence while arguments, cries and the hum of nervous conversation reverberated down the queues. As the four of them moved up the dual carriageway, the commotion became louder, more heated. Fear and confusion were vivid in the voices.

  Kingsley noticed for the first time the few abandoned cars scattered on the opposite carriageway across the divider. Now and then, a vehicle would fly past and have to swerve to dodge the empty cars.

  “Oh my god.”

  Kingsley turned towards the voice. A man stood on the roof of his car, his eyes flicking across the road ahead.

  “We’re stuck here!” The man looked down at the other people, stabbing a finger in the direction of the traffic. “Everyone, the road is blocked! There are tons of abandoned cars. No one is getting around that, no one is moving. You should all leave now; run away while you still can, before those zombies get here!” The man leapt off his car and strode down the carriageway, shouting at everyone to leave.

  A coldness crept up Kingsley’s spine. Zombies. His mind flashed back to the crash site and the crazed man chewing on that woman's stomach, as he snuck another glance at James. His skin was still sickly pale and his movements were slow, his feet dragging on the concrete when he walked.

  Kingsley needed to check if there was any possible way around the blockage. He needed to be certain there was no way out before they abandoned the vehicles and went on foot, because he wasn’t sure if James could cope with it.

  There was an empty sports car to his left, its white paintwork scratched, presumably from the driver squeezing it through a tight gap in desperation to get past. Kingsley clambered onto the bonnet of the sports car, stood and squinted at the road ahead.

  The man hadn’t been bullshitting. The way ahead was well and truly clogged; every vehicle in the far reaches of the traffic line had been left, doors ajar. There was even a lorry sitting diagonally in the middle of the lanes, its driver long gone. Cars had spilled onto the shoulder in a vain effort to get around.

  But that wasn’t all. There was movement, people shuffling between the congested lanes. And it was clear from the stiff, shambling way they moved that there was something wrong with them.

  The same thing that had been wrong with the man who had attacked them at the crash site, and the woman whose flesh he’d been chomping on.

  “Shit, they’re here already!”

  Kingsley dropped his gaze to one of the drivers a few vehicles ahead. He was screaming at anyone who would listen. “The hungry ones, they’re coming! Run!”

  He was right. Just then, Kingsley spotted the stumbling figure moving towards an unsuspecting blonde woman at the front of the queue. Too late to warn her.

  The thing lurched at her and pulled one of her arms toward it’s mouth. The blonde woman shrieked and flailed as the teeth sunk into her bicep.

  Kingsley had seen enough. He jumped back down to his friends, yelling, “We have to get back to the cars. Right now.”

  5.

  They started to rush back, barging past other milling drivers in their path. Eric noticed James’ weakness and supported him with one arm. Kingsley and Sammy frantically searched for their vehicles, forgetting where they had left them in the queue.

  They were unable to find them after a full minute of looking.

  Kingsley’s heart hammered against his ribcage. The panic set in like a balloon expanding inside his chest. What were they going to do?

  Then Sammy’s gaze settled on a battered old minivan.

  She thought she recognised it... Yes, the one that had stopped next to them.

  Her eyes travelled to the car in the first lane directly across from the minivan – and there was Eric’s pickup, James’ SUV right in front of it.

  “There.” She pointed out the cars to the others, and they raced over to them.

  Eric opened the SUVs passenger door and threw James inside. But when he turned to run back to his own car, an old man limped out from behind the boot, blocking Eric’s way. The old man’s eyes were grey and marble-like.

  Eric didn’t want to hurt anyone else today. He jumped into the rear of the SUV, Sammy climbing in after him and slamming the door shut.

  For a moment the four of them just sat there, gawping at the zombie of an old man – as strange as it sounded, that’s what they were, zombies – pounding on the back window.

  James was the only one who wasn’t watching. He was slumped in the passenger seat with his head down, and it took them a minute to realise he was unconscious. He was still breathing though, and Kingsley could feel a strong pulse in his neck. But he also had a high temperature.

  With static vehicles enveloping them, they couldn’t drive away. Outside, the zombies gnawed on the limbs of unlucky drivers and passengers or meandered from car to car, trying to get to the few survivors hiding inside them.

  It dawned on Kingsley that they hadn’t really thought this through. Not that they’d had time to. But they probably would have been better off sprinting into the woods at the side of the carriageway and hiding out there.

  At a loss for what to do next, Kingsley began to fiddle with the radio. While he had been occupied with getting to Braintree and reliving the terrible events of the morning over and over again in his mind, he hadn’t even thought about turning on the radio.

  There might be something helpful on the radio stations – perhaps some information on what the fuck was happening.

  But as he switched through the channels, dread filled his gut once again. Most of them were down, playing nothing but loud static. However, some were broadcasting a message.

  “Emergency notice. Attention all British citizens: for your own safety, and the safety of those arou
nd you, you are advised to remain indoors indefinitely, awaiting further orders from military personnel. Please avoid contact with anyone who is showing the following symptoms: sweating, fever, high temperature, general weakness, headache, coughing, muscle twitches, loss of consciousness, loss of vision, hallucinations.”

  “It was the same on my radio,” Eric said.

  “What does it mean?” Sammy asked. “Stay indoors? Great fucking help that is. Just tell us what’s going on.”

  The same eerie message, read by the same female in the same monotone voice, was playing on three different channels. As the warning repeated, Kingsley realised that James was displaying most, if not all, of the symptoms listed.

  It didn’t seem like this day could get any worse.

  Then – having feasted on most of the dead – the zombies outside moved in search of more food.

  Kingsley looked up as the interior of the SUV darkened to see several of them shrouding the car like a mob of rioters. They banged on the doors, the windscreen, the roof, their opaque eyes fixed on the four inside.

  6.

  Kingsley, Eric and Sammy were silent as they stared into the glassy, lifeless eyes of the zombies.

  They were silent long enough for James to start shifting in his seat, his breaths getting heavier. He was rousing.

  Kingsley rubbed James’ shoulder as he stirred, imagining the horror he would feel when he regained consciousness and saw what was outside the car. He needed to put James at ease.

  “What... what did you say?” James slurred as his eyes fluttered open, visibly confused. They all leaned toward the passenger seat.

  “It’s okay, James,” Sammy said, her voice croaking. “You just passed out. We were camping, remember? Then we left because there was an accident on the road near the woods, and... and we were trying to get to Braintree but the A120 was blocked. Do you remember that?”