For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak

by Drysdale, Colin M.

  Daz took a deep breath and looked quickly at each of us in turn, as if he was checking we were ready to hear what he had to say next.

  ‘We moved off again, but I kept watchin’. Just as we arrived in Cowcaddens, a man burst into my carriage and tried to force the door shut behind him. He was covered in blood an’ was shoutin’ somethin’ I couldn’t quite make out. Everyone turned an’ stared at him, an’ the train lurched forward; he lost his footin’ an’ fell onto the floor. The door burst open again an’ these people just started pourin’ through. Except they weren’t actin’ like people, they were actin’ like animals, attackin’ anyone they could get their hands on. They were covered in blood an’ one of them was rippin’ into some poor woman’s face.’

  He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of this image. It was a few seconds before he carried on.

  ‘As everyone started to crowd towards my end of the carriage to get away from these people, I was squashed up against the door. Just before the first of them got to me, I felt the train slow an’ I realised we’d pulled into Buchanan Street. The doors opened an’ I was pushed onto the platform by the people behind me. The same thing was happenin’ at the other doors an’ soon there were all these people on the platform. I scrambled to my feet an’ started runnin’ up the steps. I heard this sound behind me, an’ I looked back an’ saw all these people chasing me, their faces screwed up with anger an’ blood on them, on their hands an’ all over their clothes.’

  There was a loud bang as one of the infected threw itself at the door with enough force to cause it to shudder alarmingly. Daz jumped as a look of panic flashed across his face, but when he realised we were still safe, he steadied himself, closing his eyes for a moment before speaking again. ‘When I got to the top of the stairs, I ran into the first turnstile, but it didn’t move so I jumped over it. Then I heard a crash and l glanced over my shoulder. It seemed that the turnstiles weren’t working for them either an’ instead of leapin’ over them, they were just pilin’ up against them; the ones in front being crushed by those comin’ up after. I slowed down, thinkin’ I might’ve gotten lucky, but one of them made it through by climbin’ over the bodies of the others ahead of it. Then another made it, an’ another.

  ‘I sped up again an’ headed for the escalators, takin’ them two at a time. I could hear the people comin’ up behind me, an’ the noises they were makin’ were echoing off the walls around me. It was pure terrifyin’.’ His voice faded out and he took a deep breath before carrying on.

  ‘Anyway, I think you pretty much know the rest from there.’ Daz was staring down at his shoes. He slammed his fist into his thigh. ‘Fuck! I can’t believe this is happenin’ here.’ He looked up. ‘What the hell’re we goin’ to do?’

  I could hear the infected still hammering at the door behind me. ‘Well, we can’t go back out there.’

  Tom stared at me. ‘Are you saying we’re trapped in here?’

  Iliana looked up from her phone. ‘We could try the other door. It leads onto the street by the bus station. We might be able to get out that way.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Tom grabbed his machete. Which way?’

  ‘Up here!’ Iliana shoved her phone into her pocket and raced up the stairs. We followed as she led us through a maze of empty corridors. I wondered where everyone was, but then I realised it was still too early for the concert hall to be open, or even for many of the people who worked there to have arrived. Eventually, we reached a solid-looking door and Iliana stopped. She put her hand on the handle, then hesitated before withdrawing it again. ‘What happens if they’re out here, too?’

  Up to this point, none of us had considered this possibility. I pressed my ear to the door, but heard nothing. I eased it open as quietly as I could and peered through the gap. The street looked deserted and there were no bodies in sight. It looked like the horde of infected hadn’t passed this way. I glanced back at the others. ‘I think we’re in luck.’

  ‘What’re we going to do once we get out there?’ Iliana sounded scared.

  ‘We need to get out of the city as soon as we can. We need to find a car or something … anything,’ I hesitated for a moment, ‘Ehm, any of you happen to know ...?’

  ‘Know what?’ Daz looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘How to steal a car?’ I glanced round nervously as the others shook their heads.

  ‘What are the chances?’ Tom snorted. ‘Four Glaswegians and none of us knows how to nick a car!’

  I stifled a snigger, knowing Tom was just trying to lighten the mood. ‘Not really the right time, Tom.’

  I opened the door a second time, and risked poking my head out. I could see a portly middle-aged man in a business suit prowling round a car, slamming at the windows as he tried to get in. As quietly as possible, I pulled my head back in and turned to the others. ‘D’you want the good news or the bad news?’

  Tom put his ear to the door, trying to work out what was going on outside. ‘What’s the good news?’

  ‘I think I’ve found us some transport.’

  Tom pulled away from the door. ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘There’s an infected man between us and it.’

  Daz glanced at me. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘There’s a woman out there sitting in a Range Rover, so she must have the keys. The trouble is there’s one of them trying to get to her. We’ll have to deal with him before we can get to the car.’

  ‘How’re we going to do that?’ Tom asked worriedly.

  I looked down at the machete I was still clutching in my right hand; it was already covered in blood from where I’d severed the fingers of the infected as they’d tried to get inside. The very thought of what I was about to suggest made me feel like I was going to throw up. I swallowed hard. ‘I guess we could use these.’

  ‘And do what exactly?’ Tom was staring at me.

  ‘Take it out, you mean?’ Daz was staring at me, too.

  Iliana gulped, disbelievingly. ‘You’re going to kill someone?’

  ‘Yes.’ I closed my eyes, wondering if I could bring myself to do it. ‘I don’t think we have any other choice.’

  Tom shuffled his feet nervously. ‘Have you ever done anything like that before?’

  ‘No.’ I stared at the ground. ‘Have you?’

  Tom shook his head.

  As we looked at each other shiftily, I heard the sound of breaking glass outside followed by a roar. I opened the door and stuck my head outside; the fat man had broken through the front passenger window of the Range Rover and was trying desperately to reach the woman in the driver’s seat. He was, however, sufficiently rotund that he couldn’t fit through the window and she remained beyond his grasping hands. As I watched, she swivelled round in her seat and started kicking him as hard as she could. Soon there was nothing left of his face but a mass of blood and broken bones. Finally, he stopped moving and lay still, half in and half out of the car.

  I turned back to the others. ‘Looks like we won’t have to deal with him after all.’

  They looked at me questioningly, but before they could ask, I turned and ran out of the door; seconds later, I heard them follow. I was halfway to the Range Rover when I noticed a distant sound; I glanced round to see a crowd running towards us. By the way they were moving, I had no doubt they were infected. When we reached the Range Rover, Tom and I tried to pull the lifeless body from the window, but the man’s bulk meant he was tightly wedged. Up the road, the infected were rapidly closing on us. I called out to the others, ‘Daz, Iliana give us a hand!’

  While Iliana grabbed one of the man’s legs, Daz remained staring at the approaching crowd. ‘What?’

  ‘Daz, we need to get this body shifted.’

  Daz turned and gripped the man’s jacket. With all four of us pulling and the woman pushing from inside the car, we finally got him free. The infected were now only fifty yards away.

  The woman pointed out of the broken window. ‘The keys! I need the keys
. I dropped them in all the confusion.’

  I scooped them up and tossed them to her. She caught the keys with her outstretched hand and hastily shoved one of them into the ignition. She turned it, but the engine didn’t catch. She looked up. ‘Are you getting in or what? We need to be ready to go the moment I get the engine going. It’s always a bit temperamental, especially when it’s cold.’

  We didn’t need to be asked a second time. Tom pulled open the front passenger door and jumped in while Daz, Iliana and I piled into the back. It was only once we were inside that I realised the woman wasn’t alone: a young boy was clinging to her side and she had one arm wrapped protectively around him; huddled in the back behind the driver’s seat was a teenage girl, tears streaming down her face as she shook with fear. The woman turned the key again: still it didn’t catch. ‘Damn thing never starts when you really need it to.’

  I stared wide-eyed through the windscreen: the nearest of the infected would be on us in seconds. The woman glanced up, but she didn’t panic; pumping the accelerator, she twisted the key for a third time and the engine spluttered into life. ‘Finally! Now let’s get the hell out of here.’

  She slammed the Range Rover into gear and floored it. Without even blinking, the woman drove straight into the mass of infected charging towards us. Even with the SUV bearing down on them, they kept coming; not even trying to get out of the way. Blood sprayed across the windscreen as we hit the first one, and I felt the car judder as we drove over its body. There were so many of them ahead of us, I worried they might be able to bring us to a halt. If that happened, we’d be dead in seconds. Looking round, I saw we were just coming up to a crossroads. I leaned forward and pointed. ‘Turn right here.’

  As the car skidded round the corner, narrowly missing another one coming in the opposite direction, Iliana was thrown against me, pushing me hard into the door. I reached around, searching for a seat belt, but with four of us crammed into the back seat, I couldn’t find one.

  ‘Where’re we heading?’ The woman yelled over her shoulder.

  ‘If we can get onto Great Western Road, we should have a pretty clear run out of the city. Turn left there,’ I pointed again, ‘and then keep left at the next junction.’

  The woman braked hard and shifted the SUV down a gear as we overtook an empty bus on the inside, before throwing us round the next corner. She shifted back into a higher gear and accelerated again. As we left the city centre behind and crossed the bridge over the motorway, I glanced down, wondering if I’d made the right decision; the road below was packed with stationary cars, and infected were streaming between them. Some people got out and tried to run, but were dragged to the ground before they got more than a few feet; others stayed inside and locked the doors, but the infected simply smashed through the windows to get to them.

  We reached the east end of Great Western Road and I saw the route ahead was blocked with traffic. ‘Shit! How’re we going to get passed that?’

  I felt a jolt as we mounted the kerb and I was thrown upwards, my head slamming into the roof. There was just enough room for us to squeeze between the shop fronts and sandstone tenements on one side, and cars parked along the side of the road on the other. As we sped along the pavement, forcing panicked pedestrians to dive out of the way, I looked into the cars that were jamming the road; the people inside seemed to have no idea of what was happening in other parts of the city. We passed a junction where one car had rear-ended another; the passengers standing round as the drivers exchanged their insurance details. Given the circumstances, this seemed rather pointless, but they had yet to find out why.

  Ahead of the accident, the road was clear and the woman steered back onto the tarmac and slowed down. She turned to Tom, ‘I’m Claire, by the way; this is Jake.’ She smoothed the hair of the small boy clinging to her side. ‘And that’s Sophie.’ She nodded to the teenage girl in the back seat: she was no longer crying; instead she just looked terrified, not only by what was going on outside, but by having these strange people, who’d appeared out of nowhere, waving machetes and wearing bloodstained clothes, in the car with her.

  Tom leaned across from the front passenger seat and shook Claire’s hand. ‘I’m Tom.’ He twisted in his seat. ‘That’s Ben, Iliana and Daz.’

  I waved when I heard my name. Tom carried on. ‘How did you end up with the big guy attacking you?’

  ‘We were just picking up some tickets for a concert we’re going to next weekend, and it took longer than expected, and then Jake needed to go to the toilet. When we finally came out, it seemed like everyone, all the people and the traffic, had just vanished. We were about halfway back to the car when the “big guy”,’ she looked at Tom, ‘as you so eloquently called him, appeared. I could see almost immediately that there was something wrong with him; I think it was his eyes. Anyway, he started running towards us and I knew we had to get to the car as quickly as possible. I fished out my keys and pressed the button to unlock the doors, but Jake slipped and I dropped the keys as I picked him up, so we got into the car in time, and got the doors locked, but I couldn’t drive away. God knows what would have happened if you lot hadn’t come along when you did.’

  I caught Claire’s eye in the mirror. ‘From what I saw, you were doing pretty well on your own.’

  We drove by grand sandstone buildings and the glass palace of the Botanic Gardens and then, as we passed over the brow of a small rise, for the first time I could see the hills that lay beyond the city. They looked so close and my spirits soared: surely we were going to make it out. We dropped into a dip and then up over another rise.

  ‘Shit!’ Claire jammed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt. The road ahead was filled with queuing traffic. ‘What’s this all about?’

  I leaned forward, trying to get a better look. ‘Must be the lights at the next junction.’

  After a minute of just sitting there with nothing happening, Tom noticed something odd. ‘How come there’s nothing coming the other way?’

  Now he mentioned it, I realised I hadn’t seen a single car pass in the opposite direction for a while.

  ‘This can’t be good.’ I opened the rear passenger door and stood on the SUV’s sill. I was high enough up that I could see down to where several police cars, their blue lights flashing, were parked across the road, just on the far side of the junction. Beyond that, the road was clear as far as I could see.

  I called down into the Range Rover. ‘It’s the police. It looks like they’re setting up a roadblock.’

  I heard another door open and saw Claire appear on the other side. She stared down the road.

  I watched her reactions: she didn’t seem surprised; instead, it was more as if she was trying to work out what to do next. I nodded towards the police cars. ‘What d’you think that’s all about?’

  Claire glanced back at me. ‘I guess they’re trying to contain the outbreak before it spreads too far.’

  ‘But why are they setting it up around here? We haven’t seen any infected for a good couple of miles.’

  Claire stared off down the road again. ‘I’m guessing they’re doing it here exactly because the infected haven’t reached this point yet. Anyway, whatever the reason, I don’t want to be stuck on this side of it.’

  Ahead, at the crossroads, a police van pulled up and two uniformed men got out. I saw them pointing to the road which led off to the right and I realised it must still be open, at least for the moment.

  ‘We’ve got to go!’ I shouted to Claire. ‘Pull onto the other side of the road and turn right at the junction.’

  We both dropped back into the SUV and slammed our doors. As Claire pulled out and accelerated down the opposite carriage way, I noticed Jake was now sitting on Tom’s knee. Tom had slipped his seat belt on and was holding Jake tightly to stop him being thrown around. We were at the crossroads in seconds and with the policemen waving at us to stop, Claire turned right and then stood on the brakes again: two police cars were already blocking the road ahead.
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  ‘There!’ Iliana pointed over Claire’s shoulder to where a narrow lane led past a row of blonde sandstone town houses. Claire revved the engine and pulled the car to the left, throwing Iliana against me once again. We sped down the street, running parallel to the main road, separated from it by a grassy bank and a low stone wall. Soon, the lane ran out, but a wide pedestrian path led back down to the road. The Range Rover juddered as we leapt onto the kerb for the second time. After a few seconds, Claire jerked the wheel to the left and pulled us onto the road again, well beyond the roadblock.

  ‘Woohoo! That was way cool; like a video game or somethin’.’ Daz squirmed round so he could see out of the rear window. ‘No one’s chasin’ us. I think we got away with it.’

  As we raced along the deserted road, I noticed the trees which now separated the two carriageways were just coming into blossom. I’d always loved driving along this road in spring when the cherry trees were in full bloom: on a sunny day, it could beat almost anywhere in the world, but today, all I could think about was getting out of town as quickly as possible. We passed under a railway bridge and immediately ran into another queue of traffic. Claire didn’t brake. Instead, she bounced over the kerb and we sped down the pavement once more. Suddenly, the unmistakeable silhouette of a tank emerged over the top of the cars ahead of us. As we got nearer, I could see machine guns mounted on armoured jeeps and heavily armoured soldiers manning a barricade spread across the road ahead.

  ‘No wonder they didn’t bother following us; it looks like they’re pretty serious about containing this thing.’ Claire adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. ‘Hold on.’

  I grabbed onto the handle above the window and felt Iliana brace herself against me. Ahead of us, a metal barrier blocked our way; on the other side of it, a slip road curved off to the left, away from soldiers. If we could somehow get to that, we could at least keep moving. Suddenly, there was the sound of gunfire and the windscreen exploded. Ducking down, I looked through the shattered glass; at the right-hand end of the main barricade, three men in army uniforms, machine guns raised, were firing at us.