For a long, dreadful moment Michael stared at the flimsy door to his left. At the darkness beyond it. Then he turned to find Rachel staring at him, her eyes as wide as his own felt.
“How long since we saw Infected?” she whispered breathlessly.
Michael felt like telling her the time for whispering was over. Every creature for miles around would have been following the roaring of the engine, closing in on them inexorably.
He stared at the dashboard, but the clock was smashed; stuck at 05:29am. It could well have been, he realised, the time at which the bus had encountered the Infected for the first time. The moment at which the driver had smashed his head into the dashboard, immortalised forever.
“I’d guess maybe eight or nine minutes,” he said.
“Then we’d better move, and hope most of them are somewhere behind us,” Rachel said.
Michael hoisted the rifle.
“Everybody off,” he barked. “Silent. Single file. Fast.”
With that Michael swept back the door and let the night air in.
It brought snapping teeth with it.
Michael fell backwards, stunned, jabbing blindly with the butt of the rifle and sending the creature that leapt toward him crashing back through the door.
Move.
He sprang forward, catching the creature once more on the forehead as it charged at him, oblivious to the weapon. Didn’t catch it flush, though; just a glancing blow, and suddenly the creature was on top of him and only the rifle was blocking the snapping teeth and Claire was screaming and—
The creature’s head collapsed, crumbling inward like a controlled demolition as the lead pipe swung through the air only inches away from Michael’s face. He felt the air the swing disturbed, and a second later the terrible weight was lifted from him.
Paralysed once more, Michael could only watch in stunned amazement as Jason squeezed his huge bulk through the door without a word and moved outside to begin killing.
On the bus, drenched in the heavy darkness, the passengers sat and listened for what felt like an eternity to the melody of death; the shrieks of frustration and the wet snapping of bone, until finally Michael shook himself out of the trancelike state he had fallen into.
More would be coming. Maybe a lot more. And Jason could only do so much.
Michael stood on legs that trembled as badly as they had the first time he heaved himself out of the wheelchair, and motioned to the people huddled on the bus.
Follow.
*
Rachel exited the bus to see Jason felling the last of the creatures that had streamed toward the vehicle in the darkness. When the body crumpled to the floor, Jason stood and stared down at it blankly. It was almost, Rachel thought, like he couldn’t see them either. Not really see them.
She took his huge hand in hers, and led him away from the pile of eyeless corpses that littered the ground at his feet, directing him back to the bus.
In the distance, Rachel heard the sea.
No, not the sea. A river.
The Mersey.
So close.
It was as she was focused intently on listening to the sound of the water that she heard it. Somewhere behind them. A faint rumble of rolling thunder. The sound was odd, though. It didn’t seem to fade away as thunder normally did; didn’t recede as the atmosphere drew in its breath to bellow once more.
Rachel came to a dead stop.
It wasn’t thunder.
Shit.
*
Michael bristled when he heard footsteps approaching him hurriedly. Logic told him that Jason had killed all of the Infected, but still, as he turned to see Rachel approaching fast, he felt himself tensing up as if he expected an imminent attack.
“You hear that storm?”
Michael nodded. “It should help cover the noise of our movement, we’ll have to run the rest of the w—
“That’s no storm.”
Rachel fixed him with a meaningful stare.
“Listen,” she hissed.
Michael’s stomach lurched. She was right. The noise he heard didn’t have the undulating quality of thunder. The rumbling was enormous. Constant.
Getting louder.
Footsteps. Hurtling toward them.
“There must be thousands,” he breathed in a horrified whisper.
Rachel nodded.
“It’s getting louder, Michael. That’s the only reason I realised it wasn’t thunder. At first I thought the noise was behind us, but now it sounds like it’s everywhere. Listen.”
Rachel cocked her head for a moment, and jabbed a finger into the darkness.
“West.”
Jab.
“South.”
Jab.
“East.”
Michael’s eyes widened.
“We’ve driven into the middle of a fucking county-sized herd. They’re coming straight for us,” Rachel said.
For a moment Michael felt like his mind was a computer, and somebody had just hit the reset button. It was taking him some time to reboot.
“Do you know where we are? Where, exactly?”
It was a simple question, and one to which Michael had no ready answer.
“Not exactly,” he said. “The last sign I saw was for a town called Mold. I think that is pretty near the English border, just south of Liverpool. Hang on.”
Trying to make as little noise as possible, Michael stepped back onto the bus and searched the various compartments dotted around the driver's seat, sighing in relief when he discovered a roadmap.
He hadn’t needed to check a map while driving the bus: the roads were all clearly marked and well travelled. Getting to Liverpool had been a matter of just following the signs.
But on foot, and with the knowledge that there were Infected all around them, navigation became a different matter entirely. Following a road blindly now could well see them walking in the wrong direction and running headlong into danger.
He squatted, stifling a grunt as his back shrieked in complaint, and spread the map out on the floor, focusing the beam of his flashlight on it. After a moment, Rachel crouched down next to him.
“That would put us around here, right?” she said, pointing.
Michael followed her finger and nodded.
“This is the road we’re on,” he agreed. “And the last sign for Liverpool said it was five miles away…”
“Which means we’re here,” Rachel repeated, jabbing a finger at the map.
Michael followed her gesture and saw a peninsula that jutted from the Welsh coast, rising north until it was parallel with Liverpool. The peninsula offered a single way to reach the city, and as Michael realised what that route was he felt anxiety rising in his gut.
The Mersey Tunnel.
Three miles of claustrophobic underground darkness. One way in, and one way out.
Michael would have liked to avoid taking the tunnel even if he had still been behind the wheel of the bus. The risks were simply too great. There was no way of knowing if the tunnel was clear or not, no guessing what might be waiting for them at the exit. The only way to survive an encounter with the Infected on anything other than the smallest of scales was to run or to hide, and the tunnel severely limited the chances of either of those options being successful.
Now there was no choice.
And no time.
Just go.
Michael straightened, and turned to the frightened group of people that huddled by the bus, their confident singing long forgotten.
“They’re coming,” he hissed. “Follow me. Run!”
He didn’t stop to look back. Grabbing Claire’s hand and pulling her into motion beside him, Michael tried to ignore the shattering pain in his back, and put his head down to the wind, running blindly, panicking because it was the only thing left to do.
Behind him, he heard footsteps clattering as the group followed his lead, and further back still, a wall of noise that approached indefatigably. Two miles to the tunnel. Three miles through it.
Michael blanked the thoughts from his mind; blanked out everything except a single all-consuming directive.
Right foot.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Faster.