Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5

by Lamb, Harrison J.

  “Stop struggling,” he spat.

  Knife, was all Emma could think as she grew dizzy. But it was trapped beneath her, tucked in her waistband at the small of her back. Pushing back against the crossbow, she let go of it with one hand and tried to worm her fingers behind her back to get the knife, but with Sebastian’s weight on top of her she couldn’t squeeze her hand into the tight gap between herself and the floor. Emma strained upwards with her hips – the pressure against her throat increasing, her pulse thrumming in her ears and drowning out every other sound – until she managed to get her hand underneath and her fingers closed around the knife handle.

  She was almost gone – her vision swimming with colours, a deafening silence wrapping her head – when she thrust the blade up between Sebastian’s ribs and felt him jerk in response.

  He let go of the crossbow and Emma gasped and coughed and gulped in several breaths of metallic tasting air.

  Sebastian slipped off of her and the sound of him choking on his own blood reached her ears. But she could barely comprehend what she had just done. It took a few minutes to pick herself back up off the cold stone floor, every hop sending a streak of molten pain through her knee.

  Retrieving her walking stick, Emma limped back into the front room to check on Kingsley; breathing, still unconscious. Outside, the two women were dead on the ground. Skulls caved in and blood pooling around them. And now there was a third body, which she realised was Sammy.

  Emma fought the urge to vomit as she looked for Eric, noticing Mark and John standing by the side of the houses at the back of the development, tipping something that looked like sand into a hole.

  They must be burying his body, she thought, sick to her stomach. They’re all dead.

  Kingsley started to stir. Groaned as he sat up and squinted at her. “What are you doing here, Emma?” he asked. Then as he got up, “Shit. What happened? Is Sammy okay?”

  In tears, Emma shook her head.

  “No. Fuck.” He walked to the window, looked at the bodies. She saw the emotion welling up in his throat, his eyes glassy.

  “We have to go,” Emma said.

  “Where’s Eric?”

  “He’s… I think he’s dead.”

  “You think? You don’t know?”

  Emma shook her head again. “I think they’re burying his body over there,” she said, pointing to Mark and John. “But we really have to go.”

  Kingsley rubbed his head where Sebastian had struck him. “I can’t go. I need to know what’s happened to him. I have to finish this.”

  “No, Kingsley. Eric’s gone. I’m telling you, he’s dead. But we’re alive and we need to get out of here before they come and find us.” She grabbed his arm. “I can hardly walk. I need your help. Come on – don’t let me down. Please.”

  He met her eyes, staring for a couple of seconds before his face settled into a frown of determination, and he nodded.

  Supporting Emma with an arm, he walked her down the hallway and into the kitchen. Kingsley gave her a sideways look when he saw Sebastian. They moved past the body, wordless.

  Then as they came to the back doorway, there was the sound of footsteps behind them.

  They turned to see Mark and John enter the house.

  4.

  He only knew he was conscious because of the pain. The fear. The constricting, claustrophobic heaviness all around him. The knowledge that he was dying. It all came to him at once, his gut twisting with blind primal panic.

  No air. Pitch black. Suffocating – fast. No room. Grit in his eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears. The muffled noise of powdery sand shifting around him as he struggled.

  He couldn’t even breathe to scream. When he wriggled his limbs, it felt as if they were encased in concrete.

  His mind was melting, everything fading again. He only knew he was still alive – just barely – from the distant sensation of sand sifting through his fingers as he burrowed through the grit without conscious volition. Why was he trying to escape? In a few seconds he would be dead.

  But then there was a different sensation on his fingertips: open air, breeze.

  By the time the realisation hit that his hand had broken through the surface, he was so oxygen-starved that he felt himself leaving his body…

  … floating…

  … up above the ground…

  … looking down upon his sandy grave…

  … seeing his own hand protruding from the grey mound he was buried under…

  I’m dead, he thought. And the surreal image of his stiff, pale hand poking up from the sand scared the fuck out of him.

  But if he was dead… how was he still thinking? Where even was he?

  How was his hand still moving?

  It felt like he was there – wherever there was – for several minutes. Then the sand rose as his other hand came to the surface.

  Suddenly he was back in his body. Sand and cement powder cascading down his face as he heaved himself up into a sitting position and sucked in a painful breath of fresh air. Everything hurt. Every muscle, every inch of his skin. But he was alive. Somehow.

  He dug his torso and legs free, a burn in his lower abdomen reminding him of the wound he’d sustained. His eyes were fuzzy but he could see that the area on the side of his abdomen where he had been stabbed was caked with red clumps of sandy cement. It seemed to have clogged the wound, slowing the bleeding to a small trickle.

  He wasn’t going to question how he was still alive; there was only one thing on his mind now and he wondered if he had enough life left in him to carry it out.

  *

  The two men noticed Sebastian’s body almost as soon as they walked through the front doorway of the house. They glared at the other two survivors.

  “Go,” Kingsley hissed at Emma. “I’ll hold them back.”

  Emma didn’t move. She knew he wouldn’t be able to take on both of them. Mark and John began to march toward the pair, brandishing their bloody knives.

  “Emma, go!” But she only shook her head. Squeezed her knife until her knuckles blanched.

  The men stopped at the threshold of the kitchen. Kingsley and Mark stared daggers at each other, no sound in the room but the quick, shallow breaths of fight-or-flight alertness.

  It was Mark who made the first move – a horizontal slash, Kingsley flinching back and retaliating with a thrust. They tracked Sebastian’s blood across the floor with their feet as they swiped and jabbed their blades at each other.

  Emma wanted to help him, but John came toward her with a predatory glint in his eyes before she could do anything.

  She waited for him to get close. Then she lifted the wooden stick in her left hand and swung it at him. He caught it with his free hand and she tried to yank it back, but his grasp was iron. Still tugging, Emma swiped at his arm with her knife and he let go to avoid the cut. He swung his own knife at her but she was already hopping away, retreating out the back door.

  John caught up with her and shoved her to the ground outside, Emma dropping the knife as she fell. She rolled onto her back and whacked him in the stomach with her stick. It barely nudged him.

  He kicked her sprained knee, snatched the stick off her as she yelped, tossed it to the side.

  Defenceless, Emma searched for the knife she’d dropped. But John found it before her.

  Squatting above her, he pointed the blade at her belly while pressing down on her knee with his free hand. She gritted her teeth; she couldn’t fight him, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

  “You dumb cunt,” John snarled. “We helped you, and you turned against us.”

  Emma threw her head to the side, a groan escaping from her mouth.

  That was when she noticed the snapper. Shuffling past the back wall of the next house, coming toward them.

  She groaned louder, watching the snapper and thinking if she made enough noise John wouldn’t hear it approach until it was too late.

  “Bitch. You’re gonna pay.” S
he stared him right in the eye and let her groan turn into a scream as her knee flared under the increasing pressure of his grip. “Yeah, you keep screaming. Might not even kill you.”

  When she looked again, the snapper was less than six feet away. She shut her eyes and kept yelling, hoping it would attack him first.

  “Might just break both your legs,” John went on. “Leave you out here for the—”

  She heard him startle as he let go of her leg, opened her eyes to see him grappling with the snapper. Right away she began to crawl towards the wooden stick John had dropped a few feet away.

  Reaching it, Emma clambered up onto her good knee and used the stick to help her stand. She faced John just as he pried the snapper’s stiff fingers from his jacket and turned in her direction. Putting excruciating weight on her sprained knee so she could lift the stick above her head with both hands, Emma brought the length of wood crashing down on the crest of his skull.

  John reeled from the blow, tripped over his own feet and collapsed in a semi-conscious daze – allowing the snapper to bend down and sink it’s teeth into his neck.

  Not even the adrenaline rushing through her system could numb the twisting, squeezing, burning pain that racked her injured knee; she hobbled to the wall of the house and slumped against it, listening to John gargle on his own blood as the snapper feasted and wondering if she would ever walk normally again.

  *

  Sweat poured down Kingsley’s forehead, stinging his eyes as he swerved away from Mark’s blade. It felt like he’d been doing this for hours – evading Mark, taking swings at him every time he backed Kingsley into a corner where he couldn’t dodge.

  Ducking a wide cut at his face, Kingsley heard Emma’s scream and glanced toward the door. He felt the blade nick him across the chest less than a second later.

  Instead of cringing back, he slashed at Mark’s wrist as the man moved in for a second swing, slitting the base of his palm open and causing him to drop the pocket knife.

  Kingsley had the upper hand now. Finish him, his mind cried as he thrust and swung wildly. He murdered your friends.

  But as Kingsley forced him back toward the corner, Mark caught his wrist and slammed his knife hand hard against the wall. Twice. His fingers gave and the knife fell to the floor.

  Mark punched him in the nose, sent him lurching backwards. A second jab to the stomach doubled him over and Mark followed it up by kneeing him in the face.

  Lying on his back, nauseous at the taste of copper in his mouth, Kingsley winced as the bleary image of Mark straddling him and drawing back his fist for another punch filled his vision. But the punch never came.

  A dirty arm hooked itself around Mark’s neck and started choking him. At first, Kingsley thought the figure attached to the arm was a snapper, from the pale and tattered look of them; then his eyes adjusted and he saw that it was Eric. A film of grey powder dusted his clothes and there was sand in his hair and all over his face. He growled as he strangled Mark, the animalistic noise building into a broken roar. Mark gasped, flapped, kicked and twitched before he finally grew still.

  5.

  Eric passed out sitting against the wall with Mark in his lap. Kingsley called out to his friend as he crawled over to him, the relief of seeing him alive moments ago replaced by dread when he didn’t respond.

  But he checked Eric’s pulse and found it steady. His fear was only slightly eased, however; there was a nasty wound in his side that had bled quite a bit, running down to his hip and congealing in the waistband of his jeans. It seemed to have stopped bleeding though, clotted with whatever the dust was all over his body.

  Hearing movement behind him, Kingsley turned as Emma limped through the doorway.

  “Shit. Is he okay?” she asked, her voice fractured with pain.

  “He’s alive, but it looks like they stabbed him. I need to clean and cover the wound.” He stood, moved towards the hallway, then stopped and looked back at Emma. “You alright?”

  She nodded. “Just my knee.”

  “Where’s the other one?”

  Emma swallowed. “Dead.”

  Kingsley slogged out through the front door, a sickly taste rising to the back of his throat when he saw the bodies in front of the butcher’s van again. Averting his eyes, he trod past them and bent down to pick up the duffel bag. Then he thought of something and went round to the passenger door of the van, opened it and climbed in. He clicked open the glove box and peered inside.

  When they’d been in Darren’s flat, the man had mentioned that his group were out looting a dentist’s office for medical supplies. Kingsley assumed the items in the glove box – boxes of paracetamol, packets of sterile gauze swabs, a bottle of saline solution – were the fruits of their search.

  He piled the items in the bag and went back inside the house.

  He was pretty sure his nose was broken. It was swollen, throbbing, and he could hardly breathe through it as he squatted beside Eric and rolled up his tattered shirt.

  Tearing open a packet of gauze swabs, Kingsley took one and wetted it with saline, then began to wipe the wound, clearing the blood and grime around it. Eric stirred, his breath coming out in asthmatic wheezes.

  “It’s okay,” Kingsley said, though he didn’t know if Eric heard, and he also had no idea whether he would be okay. “It’s over. I’m here and I’m not leaving you.” His swollen nose made him sound as though he had a cold.

  He had to rub at the sticky debris to dislodge it from the wound. More blood oozed out and Eric moaned, fidgeted. His eyes peeled open and what little Kingsley could see of them looked red and irritated.

  “Sorry, mate. Hold still.”

  Having no idea how much saline he was supposed to use, Kingsley flushed the wound with small douses of the solution – eliciting more moans and quick, shallow breaths from Eric – until only crimson red came out. He then wiped away the excess fluid and pressed a fresh square of sterile gauze against the wound to staunch the blood flow again.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Emma asked.

  “Not really, but I’m trying my best. He hasn’t gone into shock yet, which I think means he hasn’t lost too much blood. What I’m worried about is the wound getting infected. He’s probably going to need antibiotics.”

  The bleeding had all but stopped, so Kingsley grabbed a roll of duct tape they had in the duffel bag and asked Emma to tear pieces off for him so he could stick the gauze patch over the wound.

  As he finished it up by wrapping Eric’s abdomen with a roll of bandage from the duffel, Emma said, “Leena might be able to help. She and Dave are at Brian’s house near Stanway – you remember the one?” Kingsley nodded as he tied the bandage. “At least I think that’s where they are; Leena said she would call me but my phone got smashed.”

  He recalled finding her broken phone earlier that day in her house, and the absurdity of the past twenty-four hours – the past three days, even – hit him all of a sudden.

  A lot had happened. Not just to him, but to Emma as well. How had she ended up here? He had so many questions, so many things he wanted to tell her, so many apologies he wanted to make. But those could wait.

  That was when Kingsley remembered that they had left Terry waiting in the public toilets just down the road.

  “Okay.” He brushed as much of the powder and sand as he could from Eric’s clothes and hair, and used a rag to wipe it off his face. “We’ll take the van to Brian’s house, but there’s something I have to do first. After I move the bodies,” he added morbidly, getting up and heading back out front.

  A gust of cool wind stung the gash under his left breast as he emerged from the house. Luckily, the pocket knife hadn’t sliced deep and there was only a trickle of blood, the skin around it swelling.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline wearing off, but suddenly Kingsley found room for the grief prying at his mind and he collapsed to his knees in front of the bodies of his friends and cried.

  It took him about five minutes to p
ick himself back up, still shaking, a tight ache in his throat.

  He stared at the trees, the sky, the hollow houses – anything but the body in his arms – as he carried each of them into the house behind the van and laid them on the floor just inside. Then he covered them with a sheet of tarp he’d liberated from a stack of materials outside. It gave him flashbacks of covering James’ body in a similar fashion with a bedsheet, and he wondered if this was what would happen to all of them – no funeral, no time to say goodbye. It disgusted him that he couldn’t give his friends the burials they deserved. All he could do was keep them in his thoughts forever, never stop mourning.

  *

  Unable to press on the gas pedal without splinters of pain shooting through her knee, Emma couldn’t drive. And neither could Eric, weak as he was.

  So it was down to Kingsley.

  The public toilets were less than a minute away in the van, Kingsley pulling up next to the grassy strip outside. He helped Emma out of the passenger side and left Eric in the middle seat to rest. Propping the door open with the duffel bag so they could monitor the van, they crept inside.

  The first thing he noticed was the door of the last cubicle in the row hanging ajar. Neither man nor dog in sight.

  Then he picked up on the low growl coming from the cubicle. His heart raced as he called out, “Terry?”

  “What are you doing?” Emma whispered, unable to mask the anxiety in her voice.

  “He’s in here.” As Kingsley approached the cubicle, the growl turned into a whine. He peered into the small space to see Archie and Terry sitting together on the floor. Terry’s cheek lay on the toilet seat and he was completely still.

  A puff of wind nudged the cubicle door, Kingsley catching it before it closed. Terry lifted his head abruptly, and it occurred to Kingsley that they might have walked in just as the man was turning.

  But then a groan slipped out from between Terry’s cracked lips, the human sound allaying Kingsley’s fears.