Infection Z 3 (19 page)

T
he first thing
Hayden noticed as he stepped inside the coach was the smell.

It wasn’t like the normal stench of rot he’d grown so used to living in this world of decay. No, it was sicklier. A sourness that clung to his nostrils—that made his head spin—made him want to puke. And although he couldn’t be completely sure of what’d gone on in here, it didn’t take a whole load of imagination to work out that the psycho driver had probably done some pretty rotten things.

The taste of sweat in the air.

The sour stench of death.

And the cry.

The muffled cry right from the back of the coach, right in the darkness.

A woman’s cry.

Hayden’s heart picked up. He swallowed heavily. As he climbed up the sticky steps and to the middle of the coach, he wasn’t sure he wanted to look down the aisle. Wasn’t sure he wanted to see the source of the cry.

Holly.

Or Sarah.

Or maybe neither of those two. Maybe this “Pamela” the driver spoke of. Maybe …

He heard the cry again.

And this time he knew he couldn’t avoid turning.

He knew he just had to look.

When he looked down the aisle, Hayden wasn’t exactly sure what he was seeing. How could he be? How could anyone be when faced with such violence, such brutality? Such incomprehensible acts of cruelty.

But he looked and he forced himself to keep on looking.

He had a duty to keep on looking.

Down the aisle, in each and every one of the seats, women. Some of them fully grown. Some of them barely out of their teens.

All of them strapped into the coach.

All of them with their legs open as wide as their eyes.

Their pained, fearful eyes.

All of them with lacerations, bruises, bite marks.

Intestines dangling out of some of their torsos.

Necks slit of others.

Flies circling all of them, oblivious to the horrors around, just getting on with their airborne lives like nothing had changed.

Hayden felt his chest welling up as he limped down the aisle of the coach. He didn’t want to look at the passengers but he had to. He had to because he couldn’t keep on pulling the wool over his eyes, not any longer. No matter how much he insisted desensitisation was a bad thing—something he’d never come back from—he had to look because he had to understand the kind of cruelty out there in the world.

Because sure, Holly had double-crossed him. She’d tried to kill Sarah.

But she’d done it because she was trying to get back to her husband.

She’d done it because she was afraid.

Not like this. This was just pure cruelty. This was evil.

This was the world they lived in now, and the world they had to stand against.

He stepped over squishy pieces of flesh. Flies head butted him. Outside, Hayden heard the familiar sound of tearing. Of damp body parts stretching and flesh splitting away. A sound as common and familiar as birdsong used to be.

Hayden couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard birdsong. Not long ago, he used to hear it. Peaceful, reassuring, calming.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d noticed true beauty.

As he made his way down the aisle, closer and closer to the back, anxious about what he might find, Hayden noticed something. Something lying on the floor in the middle. A body. A woman’s body.

No.

A girl’s body.

She was blonde. Lying there all rigid and cold in the middle of the floor. Blood drooling out of a crack in her skull. A crack that looked recent. A crack that—

“Hayden.”

The voice startled him. Jolted him out of his trance. He lifted his head. Looked down the aisle. Looked right to the back of the vehicle.

He saw Sarah kneeling right by a seat at the back of the coach.

Holding someone’s hand.

Someone’s limp, still hand.

He forced a smile at Sarah and took a few painful steps closer to her, blood still seeping out of his ankle. He felt his heart pounding. Prepared for the condition he might find Holly in. Because her hand looked still. Her arm looked pale. And as he climbed over the fallen girl, he started to put together a sequence of events in his mind.

The girl had chased Holly to the back of the coach.

Sarah had stopped her.

But she’d been too late.

She’d been too …

When he saw Holly sitting upright in the back seat of the coach, tears rolling down her face but life in her eyes, Hayden stopped.

She looked at him in a way he couldn’t quite get his head around. Not like she was dying. Not like she knew she was dying. But like she was sad. Sad about something.

Sad about someone.

Sad about …

It was then that he saw it.

That he saw the bite marks.

Saw them on her arm.

“You—you two should get away from here,” Sarah said.

Hayden felt his throat tighten up. Felt tears welling up in his eyes. “Sarah, you—”

“We did it, Hayden,” she said, a smile on her face, but tears rolling down her cheeks. “We got to her. We saved her. Now you have to get out of here.”

She said it with such certainty as she held onto Holly’s hand.

Such authority and fearlessness.

But that didn’t change the fact.

It didn’t change the truth as Hayden stood there, flies buzzing around him, pain splitting through his leg, zombies groaning outside as they pursued their next prey.

It didn’t change the bite mark.

The bite mark on Sarah’s left forearm.

“
P
lease
, Hayden. The two of you. You … you have to leave. It’s just how it is now.”

Sarah’s words dulled in Hayden’s mind. They were distorted, like how he imagined voices to be while underwater. Not that he’d know. He’d always been afraid of submerging himself underwater.

Right now, staring at the bite mark on Sarah’s left forearm, he felt like he was drowning.

“We made it this far so we—”

“We can sort it,” Hayden said, stepping towards Sarah, then taking a step back, unsure of where to look, where to go, what to do.

Sarah just kept on smiling. Eyes glistening. “We can’t,” she said. “Not—not this. We can’t sort this—”

“Your arm,” Hayden said, heart racing as he searched the seats of the coach, rooted through the decaying bodies, the smell doing nothing to affect him, not anymore. “We—we can cut it. We can cut it off above the bite wound and—”

“No,” Sarah said.

Hayden turned back. Looked her in her beautiful eyes.

“No you can’t,” she said.

He understood right then. Felt the news blow into his core. Crash against him. She wasn’t telling him it was physically impossible that chopping her arm off might stave away the infection. She was telling him that he didn’t have her permission. That she wasn’t allowing it.

She wasn’t going to let him help her.

“But I … I don’t want to give up on you,” Hayden said.

The words hurt. And Hayden saw the words hurt Sarah too. Saw more tears drip down her face. Holly sat beside her, crying too. Holding Sarah’s hand. Shaking her head.

“You have to now,” Sarah said. “You just have to.”

“Maybe we can—”

“Hayden,” Sarah said, raising her hand. “It’s over.”

He put a hand through his greasy hair. Heart racing. Throat swelling up. Sarah. The first person he’d known in this new world. The last remaining friend he had. The woman who’d saved him back on the first day.

The woman he’d travelled so far with. Who he’d lost so much with. Who’d stood beside him and held his hand as together they conquered the world.

Who put her arms around him when he needed to talk.

About his mum. About his dad.

About his sister.

Bitten.

Anger replaced the sadness. Anger towards Holly. Because it was her fault they were in here in the first place. Her fault for betraying them. Her fault they’d left Riversford and ended up in this fucking hell. “It shouldn’t be you,” Hayden said to Sarah while looking at Holly. “It—it just shouldn’t be—”

“But it is,” Sarah said. She stared down at the blood dripping from her arm, her face growing a little paler, fear filling it for the briefest of moments.

And then she looked up at Hayden and she smiled shakily again. “It just is.”

Hayden felt sick. Wasn’t sure if it was the smell or the pain in his leg or Sarah or Holly or just fucking everything. But he felt sick. So sick he needed to puke. So disoriented. So lost. “What do … What’re we supposed to do?”

Sarah glanced at Holly then back at Hayden. “You—you do what you came here to do.”

“But Holyhead’s—”

“You take Holly back there. To—to her guy. You do what you came to do. The right thing.”

Hayden thought about Holyhead. Thought about that bastion of hope that was now nothing more than a black cloud of uncertainty. “And … and what then?”

Sarah didn’t say anything to that.

She didn’t say anything and Hayden knew exactly why.

She didn’t know.

Holly would find her ex and Hayden would be alone a hundred miles from “home.”

Holly wouldn’t find her ex and Hayden would still be alone.

Lost.

“You’re strong, Hayden. Weak as shit when we first met but a hell of a lot stronger since.”

Hayden shook his head as he stepped closer to Sarah. As he crouched opposite her. “I’m not.”

“You are,” she said, grabbing his hand, squeezing it. Holly continued to cry beside Sarah. Tears of guilt. “You’re the strongest, most dedicated and loyal man I’ve ever met. And … well, sure, I’ve not met many loyal men in my life. But you’re one of the good ones. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Hayden wanted to say something back to Sarah.

Then he felt her lips on his.

Tasted her sweat.

The bitterness of her tears.

But savoured every ounce of warmth that filled up inside.

After the kiss that felt like it lasted forever, Sarah backed away. She wiped her eyes. Turned to Holly, who refused to look at her.

“I can’t ever forget. What—what you did to me. What you tried to do to me. But I believe deep down you’re a good person. Good, but just scared like everyone else.”

She grabbed Holly’s face.

Turned her neck so she was looking right at her.

“Don’t you dare betray Hayden again or I swear I’ll come back and fucking bite you myself.”

Holly didn’t say a word.

She just kept on sniffing.

Kept on crying.

Her visible guilt said more than any words ever could.

The fingernails of the zombies scratched at the sides of the coach. Made the vehicle rock from side to side. Hayden wasn’t sure how long all three of the group sat there—the group that was dwindling, fracturing, fragmenting—but he wished it’d just last forever. Like a pause button on life. He wanted to live in those flickering paused moments of old VCRs.

But this was no home video. This was life. And like everything in life, Hayden had to make a decision. He couldn’t crawl back into the stasis of his pre-apocalyptic existence.

“How do you want to go?” he asked. Wasn’t sure how he managed to ask the question. It ripped him to shreds inside. Broke him down.

But he had to be brave.

He had to be strong.

He had to do what was right.

Because if Sarah wanted something—if anyone close wanted something—he had to deliver it.

Sarah puffed her lips out. Smiled. “Hardly got the best options, eh? But I dunno. I think the nutter who drove this thing might have a spare gun lying around somewhere. That’d be my preference. Failing that, a …” She stopped. Gulped. “A blade to the neck would—would finish me of course.”

A flashback to Clarice.

To the way she’d died. The way she’d been murdered.

“I’m not doing that,” Hayden said. “I … I can’t do that. Nobody deserves that.”

“Don’t always get what we deserve, boyo,” Sarah said. “Surely you’ve realised that by now.”

Hayden stood up. Walked down the aisle. He looked from side to side for a gun or for something that’d make it … that’d make
death
easier for Sarah. Because she’d made her choice. She’d made her choice and he had to honour that.

But he didn’t find a gun.

All he found was broken glass. Pieces of scrap metal. A blood-soaked knife.

He looked at the knife as it rested on the lap of a disembowelled brunette. Looked at it and imagined wrapping his hands around it. Imagined lifting it, walking back to Sarah, crouching opposite her, holding her hand and looking her in the eye as he pressed it to her throat—or her chest, maybe her chest would be better, right in the heart, but he didn’t know where the heart was exactly so he—

Shit. He couldn’t fucking do this. He wasn’t fucking doing this.

He stepped away from the chair and he walked down the aisle, away from Sarah, away from Holly.

“Where you going?” Sarah asked.

Hayden kept on walking. Towards the open door. Towards the breeze.

And a part of him wanted to jump back outside. Back out of his responsibilities. Away from his duty, just like he’d been doing all his life.

But instead, he sat down in the damp driver’s seat. Felt the piss of the fallen driver soaking through his trousers.

He turned the key and he started up the engine.

“Hayden, what’re you—”

“I’m not leaving you behind. I respect your right to die but … but not like this.”

He put the coach into gear. Started reversing.

“But you—you can’t even fucking drive,” Sarah said.

“You’re right,” he said, as he swerved the coach away from the zombies, knocking a few of them over in the process. “But I suppose I’m just gonna have to learn. ’Cause I’m not leaving you behind.”

He continued his three—or zillion—point turn. Continued until the road to Holyhead was back ahead of him. Until the sun shone through the dusty, bloody window, marking the road ahead.

“We’re going to Holyhead. Whatever’s there, we’re finishing this journey. And we’re finishing it together.”