Sean nodded and lowered his gun. ‘Bring the one with the most fuel. Follow us.’ He clapped the man on the shoulder, then returned to the station wagon.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Vic muttered as Sean slammed his door closed again.
‘Nope,’ Sean said, ‘just some dude who doesn’t know shit about safety catches.’
They headed off with Thomas and his family following on behind.
Marc got out next time and talked to the people they saw, a group of three teenaged boys walking along the road and, amazingly, still alive. They carried automatic weapons and when he returned to the station wagon Marc said that the boys had been using them against the zombies. They joined Thomas and his family, sitting in the truck’s bed.
A car, eight bikers from a gang called Unblessed, a bus with several adults and twenty kids, more walkers. They found some of them stationary, parked on or just off the road and waiting for something that would never come – or fearing something that would. They passed others going in the opposite direction and flagged them down; some stopped, some stepped on the gas.
And Vic began to feel that this was something good. Once inside Coldbrook they’d be somewhere easy to defend, and from there Marc could start his development of a vaccine or cure. With luck the food and water would last.
As they advanced towards Coldbrook and the convoy grew they saw more and more movement in the hills. Several times they passed zombies stationary by the roadside, and with the vehicle’s windows down they could hear their haunting calls. They did not stop.
They moved south-west, parallel to Route 81 but sticking to minor roads. There was a general agreement that to hit the highways would be a bad idea. And, as the afternoon wore on, Vic gained a sense of their wider surroundings and the stories unfolding around them. The people they picked up either lived close by or had fled to the mountains from surrounding cities and towns, believing that the wilds might be safer. Most of them told tales that proved this was not the case. Many had lost family – brothers, parents, wives, children – and they wore the haunted, often hopeless expressions of refugees.
Vic knew that the zombies could not follow on foot, but the larger the convoy of survivors grew, the more he came to fear that news of their existence was being broadcast. The few times they stopped, he climbed from the car and heard a gentle hooting in the distance. It might have been a breeze in the hills.
But he thought not.
7
Holly checked every CCTV camera that was still working at least three times, until she knew that she could wait no longer. A strange, heavy numbness had spread around her side, and she wondered whether she was bleeding internally. She balanced the danger of making her way to the garage against staying put, and opened the door.
She was fairly certain that there were at least three furies loose in Coldbrook’s corridors.
Are the keys still in the Hummer? Are there more furies loose in the garage area? Can they smell my blood? Will I pass out before I can even get there? There were so many variables and unknowns that Holly tried to thrust them from her mind, and concentrate only on what she knew: she had a job to do.
She worked her way slowly from Secondary, down the staircase, and towards the common room and garage beyond. Vic and the others could easily get down into Coldbrook, but that single parked vehicle crushed against the door was a problem. And a bleeding Holly offered the only chance that it could be moved. The weight of responsibility pressed down on her even as the pain spread and numbed her, and she felt a strange dislocation from her body.
A figure shambled around a corner ahead of her. One side of his face was black with dried blood. On seeing her he ran, uttering that mournful noise, alerting any other furies in earshot.