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.
At first, Kingsley feared that the undead had seen them and were coming their way. But the one in front turned and shambled up the road away from them, it’s mouth opening... closing... opening... closing. Like a hungry, mechanised animal. The second one stopped in the front garden of the bungalow, twisting it’s neck and rolling those grey-blue eyes.
Past the red convertible was a turn into a side road which curved and ran parallel to the street they were on. They turned the corner to avoid having to pass the zombies they had spotted further ahead. Kingsley thought they could make it all the way to Braintree Community Hospital untouched if they just snuck past the undead until they got there, taking side roads and alleyways or tramping through back gardens whenever zombies blocked their path.
That was if the amount of them didn’t increase too much.
“How far is the hospital, Kingsley?” asked James, pessimism sharpening his tone. “I’ve never been here before.”
“I can’t remember exactly where it is. I’ve only been here twice myself, but I know it’s not too far from George Yard – the shopping centre in the middle of town. We... I used to go there every time I came here.”
“We’ll get there, James,” Eric chimed in. “Even if I have to carry you.”
James said nothing. The four continued to make their cautious way through the suburbs of the hushed town.
As they came out onto a main road called Coggeshall, passing corner shops, cafes and rows of terraced houses on either side, the number of zombies started increasing. Ghastly, ice-eyed faces appeared behind windows, stiff hands thumping on the glass as the survivors passed.
They didn’t even notice some of the zombies until they heard the scuffing of feet on concrete. Movies and books had always depicted zombies as moaning, croaking, screeching things, but that was not the creature the survivors met on these streets. No vocal sounds whatsoever came from the throats of the undead.
The only noises they made were those of their footsteps and the snapping of their teeth. If you weren’t wary, it was easy to not even realise they were nearby until they were dangerously close to you.
More dead stalked the alleyways and stood in the road. These the group either gave a wide berth or hid from and waited for a clear path. At one point – while Kingsley, Eric, Sammy and James crouched behind a car, waiting for three zombies to stagger past – Kingsley saw something that gave him pause.
On the turn of a corner just ahead, an undead man knelt by a torn rubbish bag and buried it’s face in the waste inside. When it’s head rose, it was holding the slimy remnants of a roast chicken to it’s face, chewing on the unwanted bits of meat left on the bones.
Kingsley whispered to his friends. They all turned to take in the repulsive sight.
The others said nothing, mesmerised by the abhorrent appetite of the zombies. James averted his eyes and looked nauseous.
When the coast was clear and they had moved on and been walking along Coggeshall Road for about a minute, the air started to grow sour with the smell of burning. They were nearing the area of the smoke cloud. It drifted hungrily over the heads of the buildings on their right.
The air was breathable here – they weren’t close enough to the fire to be exposed to the fumes – but the wind picked up from the west and brought little flakes of ash cascading down around them.
Following one of the ash flakes with his eyes, Kingsley’s gaze passed a window in the second storey of a house to his left, just as the curtain twitched and a half-seen figure sank back from view. Kingsley was sure it had been a person – a live person – at that window, watching him and his friends.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The thought that they weren’t the only people alive in this town was relieving because it meant that there was less chance of the hospital being abandoned like many other buildings they had passed. However, no one else was outside roaming the streets like they were. And there was probably a good reason for that.
Aware that the zombie population was not getting any thinner as they neared the centre of the town and the shopping district, Kingsley was about to suggest that they should get off the main road before the zombies became too many to deal with.
But then – as if fate had eavesdropped on his thoughts and decided to toy with his expectations – the group rounded a curve and the stretch of road that greeted them ahead was completely forlorn and empty. Quiet. Not even the footsteps of the dead.
Kingsley could see a roundabout ahead with a building on the left that he recognised. The Old Water Tower stood behind it, a historical building that Kingsley couldn’t say he’d ever been interested in visiting. But now it was a beacon of hope for him, its brown, octagonal shape jutting out stern and proud above the buildings enclosing it.
He knew where he was going, and they weren’t far from the hospital now.
Past the roundabout, George Yard shopping centre was on either the first or second left turn. Then it was simply a matter of following the main road beyond for a distance until the hospital came up on the right.
They could make it yet, get James the medical attention he desperately needed. Would luck really be on their side? Would the road to the hospital be clear for them now, despite all the signs there were that this was where the highest concentration of zombies should be?
The sudden absence of the undead didn’t sit right with him.
While it was true that many things that happened in life were down to chance, people tended to blame just about everything that happened to them on pure luck, when in fact a lot of events were really the outcome of unchecked behavioural patterns. People were generally terrible at taking responsibility, looking at their own actions and thinking about what they were doing wrong, rather than chalking everything down as a matter of stupid fucking luck.
Kingsley wasn’t about to ignore the strangeness of the lack of zombies here. Something had probably drawn them all farther ahead, and if they continued down the road they would probably end up walking into a large group of the undead.
If that happened, it wouldn’t be because they were unlucky. It would be because of their failure to heed the signs.
That accident wasn’t luck. Emma breaking up with you wasn’t luck. It was all your fault. These thoughts flew at him. Accusations, facts, contradictions? Whatever they were, it didn’t matter – not right then at that moment, and that couldn’t have been any clearer to him.
Apocalypses have a way of highlighting the important things in life, Kingsley thought as he turned to tell his friends that they should take the next exit off the main road before they ran into trouble.
They nodded at him and followed, likely sinking into their own turbulent thoughts.
Maybe that was why they didn’t immediately notice the red slug-trail lines of blood leading around the corner. Or the little pieces of raw meat in them. Or, when they turned the corner, the blood-covered bodies squatting around the open back doors of a butcher’s van, feasting on the carcasses of two slaughtered pigs.
This was where all the dead had gone. They had been drawn to this side street by the meat from a butcher’s van, all the zombies from that long, empty stretch of the main road. There were at least twenty of them, and the sound of them all gnawing together on pig flesh was a horrible, wet cacophony.
Kingsley may not have liked to blame everything on luck, but at the same time, he was aware that pure happenstance could be a significant factor in how some events played out; and it definitely seemed like happenstance that one of the zombies at the back of
the feasting group happened to turn it’s head and stare in the direction of the four survivors who had frozen in the middle of the road, completely caught off-guard.
They hadn’t made any loud sounds to attract it’s attention. The zombie just turned, glared at the newcomers with it’s murky grey eyes for a few seconds, then stood and began to limp toward them.
Kingsley found himself rooted to the spot. He didn’t want to run because he thought the movement and sound might catch the attention of more of them, yet he realised that killing this one could have the same effect. It would have been best to slowly creep away, but that wasn’t possible now that one zombie was onto them.
And it looked like another one had also picked up on their presence. It was about to escalate into a bad situation.
But the first zombie only made it halfway toward them. The door to a block of flats on their left flew open and a figure loped out with something heavy and cruel dangling from their hand. Moving fast, it was hard to tell whether they were alive or undead.
That question was answered right away, though, when the figure – swinging their hefty weapon overhead in circles – brought it crashing into the side of the zombie’s head like a bulldozer. Caved it’s skull in with one sweep.
Their saviour halted, digging in a pocket for something. They saw then that it was a man, looked to be middle-aged. Light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, flecked with the odd grey strand here and there.
He was wearing what looked like a stab-proof vest over a loose brown shirt. The chain mace that he had cracked open the zombie’s skull with hung casually in a gloved hand, blood dribbling from the spiked head.
The man’s hand came out of his pocket with a key fob in it. He aimed it at the butcher’s van and pressed a button, and the vehicle alarm started whining, the blaring noise making Kingsley jump after the uncanny silence of the streets.
The other few zombies that had turned from their feast at the sign of new prey heard the alarm and instantly stopped, twisting their necks toward the source of the noise. Most of the zombies that were still eating the carcasses paused and turned their dumb gazes on the wailing van for several seconds, before burying their mouths again in ravaged chunks of pig flesh.
While the focus of the dead was no longer on them, the man raced back to the block of flats he’d sprung from. At the door, he looked back over his shoulder at the four of them and beckoned for them to follow.
9.
Perhaps it was the pent-up tension inside him wanting a release, but Kingsley suddenly felt a laugh rising to the top of his throat as they climbed a set of stairs to the first floor of the block of flats. They had just been bailed out of a bad situation by a fucking armoured guy wielding a medieval weapon – an actual knight in shining armour (minus the shine).
The sheer absurdity of it was funny.
He couldn’t hold it in any longer. The laughter spilled from him in a series of breathless chuckles, and everyone stopped and watched him like they thought he was about to reveal that this whole end of the world thing had been a huge prank or something. That the dead people walking around everywhere were just actors in hyper-realistic costumes.
After half a minute of inappropriate laughter, Kingsley started to feel awkward and stopped. Their new friend stood with his back to one of the doors a few feet away. He seemed to eye Kingsley with suspicion, glancing at everyone else with a strange face as well.
Kingsley straightened up and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but what the actual fuck is going on? Who are you, and why the hell do you have that thing?” He nodded at the chain mace in the man’s hand.
The suspicion disappeared from the guy’s face. “I... well, I got it from the dark web, actually,” he said in a low, gravelly voice that seemed just right for his lined forehead and sunken eyes. “Along with most of this,” he added, opening the door at his back and stepping in, one arm waving at something inside the flat.
They entered. Atop a dining table on the right, opposite a kitchenette in the far corner, was spread an impressive selection of weapons and equipment.
The thing that caught Kingsley’s eye first was the crossbow – compact and black, with a little scope and a collapsible stock folded across the butt. It was uncommon to see any kind of gun in Britain, and although the crossbow was not technically a firearm, it was surely just as lethal as one. And definitely just as rare to see in this country.
Four bolts were laid out next to it. They didn’t look fake.
Next to that were two knives in brown leather sheaths, intricate serpentine designs on them. And a larger machete beside the two blades, dwarfing them with its curvy, polished steel length.
The man walked straight past the table, through a spacious living room area, and cracked open a curtain just an inch, not letting any extra light into the dim, lamp-lit flat. The butcher’s van still droned on with its urgent alarm. The man peered left and right at the street below, then reached through the gap in the curtains and opened the window, the alarm becoming louder within the flat. He quickly stuck his key fob out and shut it off.
He closed the window. Facing the survivors and scratching his stubbly chin, the man’s eyes widened. “Oh! I’m Darren by the way,” he said. “Excuse me, I always forget to introduce myself properly. I’m not exactly... well-versed in social interaction, as you can likely imagine. Guys like me usually don’t have many friends.” He gestured toward the dining table.
“Guys like you,” Sammy said. “And that means... what?”
“I’m... Can’t you tell? I’m an apocalypse prepper. You must have seen the documentaries about people like me? I’ve been waiting for the fall of society for about five years now and, well, look what the fuck’s happening! This day has been coming ever since humanity started getting curious too curious for it’s own good – started digging it’s hands in genetic manipulation and nanotechnology and all that shit. But did anyone believe me when I told them? Fuck no.”
Darren went to the table, pulled a cloth and disinfectant spray from a duffel bag on one of the chairs, and began cleaning the blood from the spiked head of his chain mace.
“I have a group with me,” he continued. “There’s four of us, like you guys. We’ve been surviving together since everything went to hell yesterday and I saved them from a group of the undead. Snappers we’ve been calling them – because of that sound they make with their teeth, you know?
“Apologies for talking so much. I’ve never really had anyone to talk to and when I meet people who seem interested in what I have to say, I get a bit carried away I guess. Anyway, the people with me, they’re out right now searching for supplies at the dentist’s office on Coggeshall Road. We agreed it might have some good medical supplies. Meanwhile, I’m guarding all of my stuff here.”
Kingsley felt his insides turn to mush at the mention of medical supplies. It reminded him of why they were here in this town in the first place. James still needed a doctor.
Looking at him, you could tell he was barely awake, and his skin was starting to take on a bluish hue. He didn’t look much better than the dead, actually.
Could they trust this man to help them? Was it safe? Kingsley thought he could get along with Darren. It sounded like he could actually relate to the man on his misanthropic societal views. But that probably wouldn’t matter much when he saw the mark on James’ arm.
Eric lead James to an armchair in the living area while Darren went on.
“We found that butcher’s van outside unlocked and abandoned in the middle of the road. Then we saw a snapper eating one of the pig carcasses out of the back of the van. We figured they must like meat. So we thought if we pressed the horn a couple times, the noise would lure all the snappers in the block to the van and they’d stay there and eat the pigs, leaving the other roads empty. That way it was safer to search the dentist’s office on Coggeshall Road. It worked a treat. I only ran out to help you lot because I could see you catching the attention of them and I didn’t want you ruining
the distraction so my friends wouldn’t be able to get back. Thankfully, those porridge-brains haven’t scattered yet and there’s still a lot of pig meat left to keep them busy.”
Darren stared each of them in the eye for a few seconds – first Kingsley, then Sammy, then Eric, then James, his thick eyebrows furrowing briefly as he noticed James’ severe lack of energy. Then his eyes returned to Kingsley.
“Listen... I don’t want to seem too eager or anything, but there’s safety in numbers. It’s true when they say it in the zombie films. And I don’t know whether it’s stupid of me to trust you, but I think now that you’re here you should stay. If we work together, we can—”
“James?”
It was Eric who interrupted Darren. He had a pretty good reason to.
His bulky frame was bent over James’ slack body.
His fingers were pressed into James’ wrist, feeling for a pulse. Then they were digging into his neck. Then gripping his shoulders and rattling him.
“What’s wrong with him?” Darren asked under his breath.
“He’s sick. We need a doctor. We might be too late—”
“But what is wrong with him? Was... was he bitten?”
Kingsley was trying to make a rushed decision whether to tell the truth when he saw Darren's eyes travel to James’ body and widen.
Eric had put James on the floor on his back and was attempting to resuscitate him with chest compressions. But his right arm was flung out to the side, the angle of it revealing the sticky, red-brown patch on his sleeve where the wound was.
Darren’s eyes widened as he focused on the vaguely bite-shaped tear in the sleeve that James had been hiding against his chest. The horrified expression on Kingsley’s face alone must have confirmed Darren’s fears. It was a bite. It was clearly a bite.
Darren once again stared at each of the survivors as if reassessing their characters. Then his head dropped and swung from side to side in a ponderous shake.
Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5 Page 4
