Thrive (Episode 3): Leave

by Lamb, Harrison J.

  But as she was coming to the end of the road, she heard something – the hiss of compressed air, like the sound of a bus braking. Having grown used to hearing nothing but snapping teeth, car alarms blaring in the distance, and the occasional unsettling scream of raw human terror, this sound was strange to her ears.

  The thrum of a large engine drawing nearer all but confirmed that it was a bus. Remembering the men who had stolen her car, Emma stepped into a driveway and squatted behind a wheelie bin to hide.

  A blue and white bus roared by, crossing the mini roundabout at the end of the road she was on. She could smell the hot exhaust as it disappeared from view.

  Who was on that bus? Was it full of people, banding together and helping each other survive, or was it just more thieves? Was there room for good people in this world anymore, or was there only space for survivors?

  Emma went left at the roundabout, the direction the bus had come from, and turned onto Shrub End Road. Then froze.

  Zombies filled the road ahead, thronging towards her. The noise of the bus must have attracted them, as they were walking in the direction it had gone – but now they had seen Emma and were evidently more interested in the easier target she presented, their murky eyes fixing on her, one by one.

  Her heart fluttered and she snapped her gaze back and forth between all the possible routes to the park.

  The quickest way she could think of was the narrow dirt path behind the cash and carry on Peddler’s Close. But to get there she would have to get past the group of twenty or more zombies in front of her. There was no way in hell she was doing that.

  Backing away from the voracious infected, Emma glanced at the barren car park of the pub to her right. The road next to the pub was blocked by them, but if she cut through the car park she could get around them and follow the long, winding road to the parks main entrance.

  A longer but safer route; her legs were already carrying her that way, driven by mechanical fear.

  It felt as though there were rusty nails in her heels being driven deeper and deeper into her flesh with every step. But the only way Emma was stopping was if she dropped dead.

  Which wasn’t an unlikely prospect.

  She was about halfway along the road when she came across five infected clustered around a body that lay near the curb, one leg mangled and half-severed at the shin, arms flung out in snuffed anguish. Flitting between the infected without much difficulty, Emma stepped over the body – just as one of the hands animated, grabbing hold of her tired foot.

  Startled, Emma missed a step, yanking her foot free from the grip of the immobilised undead. But in doing so she lost her balance, tripped, fell and landed with her knee crashing on the curb.

  Emma yelped in pain.

  Seeing the infected closing in on her, inert on the pavement, she tried to stand up again – only for her knee to flare in agony, the pain forcing her back onto her arse.

  Shit. How screwed am I now? she wondered helplessly as she scooted along the pavement. There was no way she could move fast enough to escape the zombies like this. She raised her steak knife, her fleeting coherent thoughts going to the memory of bashing an infected over the head with a lemonade bottle. Did she have it in her to stab one of them to death?

  Then fear took over, and Emma no longer had to ask herself; the vacant face of an infected was in front of her as it bent down to grasp her leg. She put her knife through it’s eye, burying the blade in the socket. There was a stomach-churning pop as she punched through the cartilage behind the eye, then penetrated the brain.

  Even as she tore her knife from the infected’s head, horrified at what she had just done, Emma knew she wouldn’t be able to take on the other five of them. Nor could she run. She was fucked. Completely and utterly—

  Wait. A sound – she almost didn’t hear it over the thrumming pulse in her ears.

  A car was approaching.

  She looked and saw that it was a white van. It pulled up nearby, the doors opened and three men hopped out.

  Wielding knives and a cricket bat, the men quickly took care of the zombies, cracking their skulls and stabbing them in the soft points at the temple and the back of the head.

  Just like that, Emma was saved. She sat there on the pavement, knee throbbing, gazing at the bodies sprawled around her and trying to process the fact that she was alive right now.

  Then she lifted her eyes to the strangers who had saved her life. Three men, one old guy, one young and one middle-aged. Like dad, son and grandfather, except they didn’t look related to one another in the slightest, the young one being clearly of Asian descent while the other two were Caucasian.

  The middle man stepped forward, Emma immediately getting the sense that he was the leader of this trio.

  “Have you seen a bus?” the guy asked. Had Emma not been reeling from her close encounter with death moments ago, she would have answered right away – especially since the man had a cranky air about him, his hands constantly moving, fidgeting with his knife.

  She had seen a bus.

  “Err… yes, there was one… I think it was blue – blue and white. It—it went down Shrub End Road towards town.” Emma pointed in the direction she’d come from. “Thank you for saving me,” she added.

  Something flickered in the man’s eyes. He glanced down the length of the road, then turned back to Emma. “Which way is that? I’m not familiar with this area.”

  Emma started to answer, but then he seemed to notice her injured leg for the first time and he cut her off.

  “Your leg’s hurt. Is it broken?”

  She shook her head. “It’s my knee. It’s just badly sprained, I think.”

  “It’s dangerous out here,” the man said. “Come with us and you can show me where the bus went. We’ll help you. With your leg.”

  Her first instinct was to politely decline the offer. The idea of getting into a van with three men she didn’t know in order to help them track down a bus for god-knew-what reason wasn’t appealing. But she wasn’t exactly in a position to turn them down. After all, her knee was fucked; she could hardly travel on foot now. But she couldn’t stay out here either.

  And if she was being honest… Emma was slightly scared of this man she had never met before.

  “Okay,” Emma said at last. “Thank you.”

  The young one slung her arm around his neck and helped her hobble over to the van. She climbed in and sat stiffly in the middle seat, the young guy getting in behind her and sandwiching her between himself and the leader who took the driver’s seat. As there were only three seats in the van, the third man got in the back.

  They took off down the road, Emma beginning to wonder what she had just gotten herself into.

  7.

  Kingsley had been expecting it. But that didn’t make the sight of Colchester's streets – populated by snappers, signs everywhere of abandonment and the crumbling of society – any easier to bear.

  Driving into town perhaps wasn’t the smartest idea; when there were only one or two snappers in the road, they could simply run them over. But if there were too many standing in their way at once it would be dangerous to plough into them. Not only could enough impact damage the bus, but a couple of bodies piled up could become an obstruction, lodge one of the wheels and stop them from moving.

  However, they didn’t want to leave the bus unattended on the outskirts of town. So they were risking it.

  Eric was driving again. Besides Kingsley, he was the only one who knew Colchester intimately, Kara and Rebecca both being from Braintree. And since the incident in the bus park, there was an unspoken understanding among the group that Kingsley wasn’t to drive unless it was absolutely necessary.

  They were now heading through the inner residential area where Emma lived. The turn into her road was coming up.

  A short distance ahead – two crashed cars blocking the way. By the look of it, one of them had hit a lamppost and swivelled, the rear of the vehicle swinging round into the opposite
lane and colliding with the front of the other car.

  Stopping behind the crashed cars, they killed the ignition; the bus engine was like a dinner bell in the ghostly town, which wasn’t much of a problem while they were moving as the snappers couldn’t keep up, but leaving the engine on while idle was asking to be eaten.

  Three snappers hunched over a body on the other side of the cars, feeding. Presumably, they had discovered the corpse of an unfortunate driver. The snappers took no notice of the survivors.

  Walking the route in his mind, Kingsley pondered the length of the walk from where they were now to Emma’s house. It wasn’t far.

  “We might as well walk from here,” he said to the others. “It’s only a couple of minutes away. Saves us having to take any narrow roads on the bus.”

  They considered his idea in silence for a moment. Sensing their hesitancy, Kingsley added, “We won’t be long. We’re just going to get Emma, if she’s there, and come straight back here with her.”

  There was another contemplative pause. Then, one by one, the three of them nodded and murmured their agreement.

  *

  He hates his life. The dull grind of it, waiting tables for six hours a day with a plastic smile on his face, the suppressed frequent urge to throttle someone leaving him so drained at the end of the day that it hurts. And he knows he’ll be fired sooner or later and he’ll be forced to find another job that he hates just as much. That’s Kingsley’s life now.

  She’s his new colleague. Kieth, the manager, leaves it to him to help get her acquainted with the job. Kingsley knows this is Keith’s way of testing him. Seeing if a little extra responsibility will bring out his pride and make him more dedicated to his work or something. It won’t.

  But Emma, his new colleague, does bring something else out of him. And he likes it. He likes her.

  Maybe it’s because she’s great to talk to despite her quiet, reserved nature, always showing an interest in his life and what he is doing, even though there isn’t much to tell.

  Maybe it’s the way she makes him enjoy being at the restaurant, if only because he gets to see her.

  Maybe it’s her inclination to see the good in people and give everyone a chance – how she makes Kingsley want to do the same.

  Whatever it is, he finds himself falling in love with Emma over the couple weeks he spends working with her. So he asks her out just before he gets fired.

  They date, and it is the most fun Kingsley has had in a long time. Life is still a dull grind most of the time, but she makes it more bearable; she makes it worth something.

  Then the pregnancy happens.

  He sees his life in a new light, starts to get his shit together—

  Then the crash. Their child, gone…

  As he stands by her hospital bed, a little concussed but otherwise unhurt, he has no idea what to say to her. Not only because there is no apology that will help mend what he has done to her – to them – but also because she has seen this coming for a while; she has been trying to get him to pull his act together since they started dating, knowing that his negligent nature and tendency toward nihilism would bite him in the arse one day. She was angelically patient… But in the end, his flawed nature won out. Kingsley watches as she comes to the conclusion that people never really change.

  And he knows that he has failed her.

  *

  You failed her, was all Kingsley could think as they approached Emma’s house.

  He felt a pang of despondence as he noticed that her car wasn’t in the driveway; there was little chance she would be home. He had no idea where she would have gone, and no way of contacting her. The likelihood of him ever seeing Emma again was slim.

  Perhaps that was for the better. He might be able to keep her safe but Kingsley knew he could never give her happiness again.

  Opening the front door, Kingsley tiptoed in and, pausing for a moment to listen for any sound from within, called Emma’s name. When there was no response, he called it again, treading into the living room.

  The sight of the room was quite a shock.

  Emma wasn’t obsessed with cleanliness like some OCD sufferers, although she did have to keep all the tins and jars in the kitchen cupboards with their labels facing forward – and she did always keep her living space tidy. Which was why the sight of the coffee table askew, the broken phone on the floor next to the spilled potted plant, the cupboard doors hanging ajar in the kitchen, hit Kingsley like a punch in the face.

  There appeared to have been a struggle in here, he thought. There were shoeprints in the dirt from the knocked-over plant pots on the carpet. The question of who had struggled, and whether it was snappers or other survivors they had struggled against, worried Kingsley. Had Emma been hurt?

  The shattered phone on the floor was hers. He bent down and pressed the buttons, tried to turn it on, but it was dead.

  “Emma, are you here?” he called as he went into the hallway and started up the stairs.

  Her bedroom door was half-open. He nudged it the rest of the way. The room was empty. Normal, not in disarray like downstairs. The bed was made but crumpled clothes were slung across the sheets, a discarded outfit.

  Emma wasn’t in the bathroom or the spare bedroom, either.

  Hopefully she had taken her car, and it hadn’t been stolen. Hopefully she was headed somewhere safe, with her sister, Leena, maybe.

  Whatever had happened, Emma was gone.

  “Come on mate,” Eric said from his shoulder as he stared into the empty bedroom. “Let’s go back to the bus. We don’t want to leave it too long.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Kingsley shook his head.

  “No.” He looked his friend in the eye. “You guys go. I won’t be joining you wherever you’re planning to go next.”

  “Ridiculous,” Eric said. “You’re not doing this too, not after Sammy.”

  Kingsley pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling too tired to argue. “I’ve made my mind up, Eric… I’m just not made for groups, for community. I’m not made for society. I’m supposed to be alone, and that’s what I want. I refuse to let anyone rely on me ever again, because I’ll always dance on the edge of danger and make poor decisions – that’s just the way I am – but I can’t let those decisions affect other people anymore… I’ve made my mind up.” Kingsley thrust the crossbow and bolts toward Eric, offering them to him. “Please – go.”

  Eric was taken aback. Probably because he had read the look on Kingsley’s face. The look of cold, iron stubbornness. Unlike Sammy’s spontaneous decision to run off in the night, this was something that had been brewing in his mind for a while – since before the apocalypse, even.

  And Eric knew from his voice and the look on his face that there was no changing his mind.

  “Whatever you think of yourself, Kingsley, your biggest flaw is your stubbornness.” Eric pushed the proffered crossbow back. “Keep it close,” he said, before turning and leaving.

  8.

  The men in the van had introduced themselves to Emma as Mark (the leader) and Sebastian (the young one). The older gentleman in the back they told her was John. Of the bus they were pursuing, Mark explained that they were after a group of four survivors on the bus who had not only killed one of their friends but also stolen the bulk of their supplies and weapons – including a crossbow, some expensive knives, and some other mace thing Emma had never heard of.

  This murderous, thieving group sounded dangerous to Emma. She didn’t like the idea of confronting them, especially as they were better armed than the three men in this van. She decided to voice her concern.

  “Is it a good idea to go after these people? I mean, if they have better weapons than you don’t they have an advantage?”

  The side of Mark’s mouth twitched and Emma thought she had angered him for a second. But he kept his eyes on the road and spoke levelly.

  “I was a push-over my whole life, before the dead started getting back up. I avoided conflict at all cos
ts, let people walk right over me… and all it ever did was land me in shit. My wife left me because of that unwillingness to fight, for myself and for our marriage. It took me thirty years to learn that I wasn’t going to get anywhere in life continuing that way.”

  His hand wrung the steering wheel as he talked, his words underlaid with the friction squeak of leather, veins popping out on the back of his hand like parasitic worms under his skin.

  “One day, I snapped; not long after the divorce, I’m walking in town, staring at my feet, thinking about my life choices. I wanted to change, but didn’t know where to start… Then this old man comes waltzing towards me, bumps into me. I wasn’t looking where I was going but there was plenty of room on the pavement – he could have avoided me easily. But he starts getting aggravated, he starts ranting about how some people have no respect. I was pissed off and I think I told him to go fuck himself or something. But then… then he swings his cane at me. I’m even more pissed off now and suddenly I think, No more, I’ve had enough, and my fist is flying at his face, and it feels so satisfying to hit him. It was like all the anger I had ever felt in my life was suddenly being released, and I felt lighter.”

  The van clipped a zombie standing in the road. The abrupt thud and tremor made Emma jolt. She had been watching Mark’s expression flicker between calmness and intensity and hadn’t seen the zombie.

  Now her eyes went to the road, and she realised they were getting close to the street she lived on. Not back there again, she pleaded silently, thinking of the stress of leaving her home earlier, the gruelling journey she’d faced.

  Thoughts of her sister followed; she hoped Leena, Dave and the kids were safe. Emma promised herself that she would still go to Dave’s uncle’s when she got the chance.

  She just needed to fix her leg so she could walk again. And not die in the meantime. Then she would make her way there.

  “I kept punching him,” Mark continued. “His face was all purple and red from the bruises and blood by the time I stopped, and he was staggering about and falling over, but still mouthing off to me. The cunt. A few witnesses called an ambulance for him and he ended up being hospitalised, but he wasn’t seriously injured; I was charged with assault, sentenced to a hundred hours of community service… But I felt like a new man. I didn’t take shit from anyone no more.