Thrive - Episode One

by Harrison J Lamb

  James coughed, then looked around at each of them. “Ugh... My arm is burning. Seriously, it feels like it’s on fire.”

  “Just take it easy,” Kingsley said. “We’ve got this under control.”

  “What's under contr—” James seemed to focus then on the zombies outside for the first time since he’d woken. He just stared at them – snapping their jaws and licking the windows, drooling blood-laced saliva down the glass – and blinked several times, as if he thought he was hallucinating.

  “Oh shit,” James said. He looked down at the bite mark on his lower arm. “I remember... what happened.” He turned back to the others. “What are we going to do? Are we trapped?”

  “I’m working on it,” Kingsley said. “We should be safe in here for now. It doesn’t look like they’re getting in anytime soon, at least.”

  Eric had sat in contemplative silence for a while now, watching the zombies outside with a glazed expression. Just then, he spoke in a calm, level tone. “I know what to do.”

  Everyone faced Eric, waiting for him to tell them his plan. Eric always had been the best at improvisation, always the most focused in the toughest of situations. And now hope shined in the eyes of the rest of the group.

  Eric nodded at the bags in the front of the car that they had retrieved from the campsite on their way to the vehicles. “First we need weapons. We can use James’ ukulele.”

  Everyone went quiet again. If they weren’t in such a serious predicament, Kingsley might have laughed at that point.

  Sammy frowned, shook her head. “Eric, what are we supposed to do with—”

  “A ukulele is hard enough to do some damage. We can use it to defend ourselves against those zombies outside, along with whatever else we can find in here that’ll hurt. If we draw the zombies towards this side of the car” – Eric tapped on his window – “then we can open up a gap on that side, and we can jump out.”

  “Wait,” James said. “I can’t fight. I’m too weak right now, and my arm…”

  “You don’t have to fight, James. You either, Sammy, if you don’t want to. But we’re going out there – it’s the only way. And I need someone to have my back.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Sammy.

  “I’m with you too,” Kingsley added.

  “Good.” Eric reached forward and grabbed the headrest of the passenger seat in front of him, pressed the two buttons on the sockets that the plugs of the headrest slotted into. Nobody questioned him as he released the headrest and knocked on the window with the metal plugs a few times.

  Eric nodded to himself, then began to explain. “The plugs on these are designed to be hard enough to break the windows on a car. It’s a safety measure. So, if you’re trapped in your car and you need to get out but the doors won’t open, you can detach the headrests and smash the windows with them.”

  “Right.” Kingsley followed Eric’s train of thought. “If they’re strong enough to break the windows, they can be used as a weapon.”

  “Exactly,” Eric said.

  It was probably the talk of weapons that caused Sammy to remember; all of a sudden, she straightened up in her seat and, with a wavering look of courage on her face, reminded them that she had brought her Swiss pocket knife from the camping gear with her. She pulled it out of her pocket and flicked the blade up. It was sharp enough to inflict some serious harm.

  “Good. Now we just need a distraction.” Eric rapped his knuckles against the window, observing how the zombies reacted to his hand. They followed it with their glassy grey eyes as he moved it up and down, side to side, in front of their unchanging faces. Some of them tried to bite Eric’s fist through the glass of the window or grab it with their own hands.

  Their desperate hunger for Eric’s flesh prompted Kingsley to think about trying to give them food. He had an unopened pack of bacon in his bag that he’d been saving for a breakfast at the campsite. Maybe that could be their distraction. It might not work. Kingsley hadn’t seen the zombies eat anything but the flesh of other people yet, but they were clearly hungry.

  Maybe the virus – whatever it was making people act like this – did something strange to their appetites. Maybe the zombies were just starving, to the point where a primal response had been triggered in their brain, causing them to violently seek out anything to eat – including the flesh of other human beings.

  So, perhaps giving the zombies something else to eat would stop them, at least for enough time to make a run for it.

  Kingsley was about to fish the pack of bacon from his bag and tell the others about his idea when a scream cut through the rhythmless chorus of fists thumping against the car. The four friends inside all turned and faced in the direction of the noise. Outside, the zombies ceased their assault on the SUV, their attention shifted.

  Through newly forming gaps in the mob outside, Kingsley glimpsed a man with a hammer in his hands, swinging at one of the zombies and bellowing in rage. Then a woman appeared in front of the man, kicking at another zombie.

  Some other survivors had probably had the same idea as them. Only they had acted first, and it was drawing the zombies away from the SUV.

  Now was their chance.

  “We have to be quick,” Kingsley turned to his friends. “Come on, we’ll make a break for the trees at the other side of the carriageway.”

  “If you have to hit one of them, aim for the head,” Eric added as they unlocked the doors. “It’s the only thing that stops them.”

  7.

  Sammy had never intentionally hurt anyone before, but she was ready with her pocket knife as she jumped out of the clear side of the car.

  Well, it wasn’t completely clear. There was one zombie off to her right, a short distance down the road, shambling toward her like a robot, moving one limb at a time. And another of the zombies that had been distracted by the other yelling survivors had noticed Eric as it squeezed past the boot of the car, turning around to chase after him.

  Eric raised the headrest as the zombie rounded the back of the SUV and whacked it’s head with the heavy cushioned end. The zombie crashed into the side of the car and Eric gripped it by the neck, pinning it against the vehicle with one strong hand, clutching the headrest in the other.

  As dead arms thrashed at him, Eric thrust one of the metal plugs into an eye, pushing the length of metal deep into the skull until it hit the brain and the zombie grew still.

  Sammy looked at the other one just a few metres away from her now, hoping she wouldn’t have to kill it. She glanced over her shoulder at James and Kingsley. James was still very weak, barely able to walk. Kingsley had to help him out of his car and lend him an arm to speed him up.

  When she turned back, the dead old woman in front of Sammy was stretching a pair of stick-thin arms toward her. She gulped and held her knife ready.

  The zombie lunged at her and Sammy pushed it back by the chest. She raised the pocket knife and stabbed frantically at the dead old woman’s face, going for the eyes as Eric had done. Her knife pierced the zombie’s right eye with a sickening pop, but got stuck in the socket. It hadn’t slid deep enough into the skull to puncture the brain, and the zombie continued to wrestle with Sammy, her blade lodged in it’s head.

  Adrenaline and revulsion battled over control of Sammy’s body as she ripped the knife out, still holding the dead woman back, then aimed for the temple and stabbed again. But the blade hit bone and, once again, didn’t sink far enough in to kill.

  Her eyes darted around, searching for Eric, catching sight of him over her shoulder defending James from one of the undead, kicking at the threatening zombie’s legs to disable it.

  Sammy was on her own. Fight or fall. She had to prove herself now, just like she’d always had to do; growing up in a stressful household that sapped every ounce of her youthful energy and forced her to dig for happiness. Hanging out with a male group of friends for most of her life and joining the testosterone-fuelled competitions between the guys. As an adult, fighting to keep her high
-paying position in the advertising firm.

  Sammy was used to struggling, wired to push through pain in order to survive.

  It was in her nature to try again. So she gritted her teeth, pressed the knife against the soft spot at the back of the zombie’s head and rammed the blade in one last time.

  When Sammy realised she had aimed too low and hit the dead woman’s spine, she was on the verge of just letting go and allowing the zombie to bite her.

  But suddenly, Sammy felt the old woman’s body sag in her arms, no longer pushing against her, but dropping towards the ground. Looking down at the zombie’s limp body, she began to understand what had happened. Her blade must have severed the nerves in the zombie’s spinal column and paralysed it from the neck down.

  The undead continued to snap it’s teeth like a barracuda, but the rest of it’s body flopped to the concrete, motionless apart from the occasional spasm. Sammy retrieved her knife and left the pathetic zombie sprawled in the road, then turned and rushed to help her friends...

  Only, her friends were gone.

  *

  As Kingsley slammed James’ ukulele into the head of a zombie that had crept up on them, fierce vibrations rattling the instrument and hurting his hands, he felt wrong. Even though the person he was hitting was undead and a threat to his and James’ lives, it nevertheless felt utterly wrong to be attacking what was once a human being. Especially one with such sad eyes; this young man had obviously died in a state of pure sorrow and regret, an expression of hopelessness forever etched onto the zombie’s pallid face.

  Not even bashing it’s head in with a ukulele could wipe the sadness from those features.

  Kingsley was huffing by the time he had caved the zombie’s skull in – a hefty seven swings of the ukulele later. He was sure that his arms would ache like hell after this.

  But right now, adrenaline drugged Kingsley’s body, pushing him onwards. No hint of exhaustion as he took James by the arm and led him to a gap between two cars in the next lane.

  Eric was behind them, kicking at the other zombie that had snuck up on them. It seemed they might have jumped out of the safety of the SUV a little too early in their eagerness to get away.

  Sammy was trying to push a dead old woman away from her. She might have been in trouble, but Kingsley couldn’t help her right now. James was more vulnerable. He had been racked by bouts of dizziness as soon as he stepped out of the car. James’ balance was poor, his energy levels only a little better, and he kept muttering that they should just leave him.

  Kingsley ignored the hero-sacrifice talk and nudged James through the gap in the lane. But his friend clearly didn’t believe he would make it, which meant he wouldn’t be putting all his effort into getting to the other side of the road.

  “Seriously. I... I’m not gonna live through this, mate... I don’t have the strength. Please. Just leave me.”

  “Shut up. We’re almost there.”

  The divider and the other carriageway were just beyond this row of vehicles. They shimmied between the two cars and came out on the other side. Kingsley spun around, checking for any zombies lurking behind the line of cars.

  There were none. The path to the trees was clear. They were going to make it.

  As they stepped over the divider and began to cross the second carriageway, Kingsley looked back to see if Eric and Sammy were behind them.

  He spotted Eric climbing over the hood of a car and heading towards them. But he couldn’t see Sammy.

  Kingsley started to wonder whether they should stop and wait for Sammy to catch up with them, or just keep going. Suddenly, Kingsley felt like his lungs weren’t getting enough air.

  His ears were ringing again – like they had when he’d stared at the wreckage near the campsite earlier, the memories assaulting him.

  His arms tingled.

  He had made that decision months ago to drive over the speed limit and had ruined Emma’s life for it. How would this decision that he had to make now affect his friends’ lives?

  Kingsley felt glued to the spot. He wanted to act, but to act was to decide and to decide was to accept the weight of the consequences. Though he didn’t have to do anything because when Eric reached them, he grabbed them both by the arms and steered them toward the trees, mumbling, “It’s too late. We need to go.”

  Kingsley, his ears continuing to ring and his arms still tingling, looked one more time over his shoulder to see the dead swarming between the cars on the carriageway they had just fled. It was overrun.

  Sammy was—

  “Wait for me!”

  All three of them heard the cry, the voice immediately recognisable. And when their heads snapped round to see, their eyes confirmed what their ears had told them.

  It was Sammy. Her hair and clothes were messy and her little pocket knife was dripping red, but other than that she was unscathed. In fact, Kingsley thought there was even a glow in her face, a spring to her step. Not happiness, but confidence for sure.

  *

  The four trudged along a dirt path, trailing through the fields that bordered the A120 leading to the suburbs of Braintree. Kingsley felt like he was sleepwalking, or just plain dreaming. As if he might wake up from this nightmare at any minute and find himself back at the camp, tangled in his sleeping bag and hungover.

  Kingsley supposed they must all be feeling pretty detached right now. It was an uncomfortable sensation that he was familiar with: derealisation. The feeling of distance from your surroundings, of being spaced-out and running on autopilot, of seeing everything through some sort of intangible hazy screen.

  Apparently, it was the brain's way of protecting you from the crushing weight of trauma and stress. Many people experienced derealisation after a traumatic event. But it was also a symptom that many anxiety sufferers had to deal with and could be brought on by recurring stress.

  For Kingsley, it had plagued him for months after the accident.

  If there was one person here who should feel more spaced-out than anyone else, it was James. Not only had he been right next to them through all the madness of the day, but he had also been bitten by one of the zombies.

  And that was what scared Kingsley. James wasn’t in great health, which could simply have been from minor blood loss – the bite wound had bled quite a bit before Kingsley thought to bandage it with what few first aid supplies he had in his backpack – coupled with shock and the hangover from last night.

  But there was another possible explanation for James’ illness. And James himself, who had stopped to vomit at the side of the path not long before and was struggling to continue, suddenly voiced the possibility as if reading Kingsley’s mind.

  “Guys... I know none of you want to do it,” James choked. “I know that no one wants to be the one to make that decision... but you have to leave me. You know what the first rule of a zombie apocalypse is: don't get bit. Everyone knows it. And... well, look at me. I’m fucked.”

  “Nothing’s certain,” Kingsley said. “That may be how it works in every film, book and video game ever, but that’s just fiction. That’s just an idea, one of many possible ways that a zombie virus could be spread. But we don’t even know if this is a virus. It could be a chemical agent created by terrorists, or a side effect of a radiation leak, or, I don’t know, God’s fucking punishment on the human race for all of our sins. And even if you are infected with some zombie virus, there could be a cure. Maybe all you need are antibiotics, and leaving you out here in the middle of a field would be sending you to a pointless death. We don’t know anything yet.”

  Kingsley stopped and put his hand on James’ shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, I can assure you none of us think you’re a burden. You’re our friend, and I know you would do just as much for any one of us.”

  They plodded on, wordless and numb. James vomited again after another minute of walking, but at least his hero-sacrifice talk had stopped. Instead, he watched his feet and frowned in concentration.

  “N
ot far now,” Eric said. And sure enough, they soon crossed the urban-rural fringe, passing several eerily quiet cottages, and entered the suburbs of Braintree.

  When they first set eyes on the town, their hearts sank.

  8.

  Dark smoke rose from a distant part of the town – the Springwood industrial estate at a guess. Though it didn’t look like factory emissions. More like the smoke of a fire. It was the same pulsing cloud that Kingsley had spotted earlier from the dual carriageway.

  The streets of Braintree were deserted as far as the survivors could see – at least of normal human beings, they noted as a zombie ambled across the road ahead, far enough away from them to pose little danger. Yet the sight set new claws of dread scratching at their hearts.

  The houses and flats around them were devoid of activity, ominous caves of brick and glass. Some doors hung open, and the dim, curtained interiors on display looked all the more cavernous against the afternoon light.

  Most vehicles were gone from the driveways and curbs outside the homes. Kingsley didn’t spend long wondering where all the cars had gone after their earlier escape from that huge cluster-fuck of a traffic jam on the A120. No doubt the majority of the population had taken their cars and fled the town as fast as they could on the main roads, seeking safety elsewhere, probably only to end up trapped in traffic congestions with hundreds of other confused, helpless drivers.

  Of the vehicles that hadn’t been taken, one was a dirty red convertible a few houses in front of them.

  Only as they approached the car did the survivors see the pale, shirtless figure craned over a slack body in the driver’s seat. Then the copious amounts of blood that glossed the white leather of the front seats and coated the zombie’s arms to the elbow, dripping, ceaseless, down onto the tarmac.

  The shirtless one was too busy eating to notice the four of them passing by. However, as they passed, two more zombies skulked out from a bungalow on the opposite side of the street.