Now there were these things that seemed to be beyond death. And that changed everything.
Her arm throbbed as she steered the old Toyota into a parking space. The wound had stopped bleeding, but she could still feel the sharp imprints of that woman’s teeth, their points piercing her skin and digging down into the meat of her. If Jayne hadn’t been lucky, the woman’s teeth would have pressed together, scraping across bone and ripping away a chunk of her arm. And what germs do I have? she wondered. What infection did she plant in me, and is it still in me now? She switched off the car’s engine, sat motionless for a while, and decided that thinking about it too much would be the end of her.
She’d been bitten and had survived. Now she must accept it and move on.
The drive through the dark night had been terrifying, and surreal. At one intersection Jayne had seen three cars crashed together and burning, a group of people on the sidewalk shouting and arguing about whose fault it had been. Turning a corner, heading out of town, she’d passed a long straight row of bars and restaurants, and a crowd had spilled onto the streets, bottles and glasses clasped in their hands, singing, living it up. Tommy’s dead! she’d wanted to shout, but she didn’t think they’d have cared. Perhaps many of them didn’t yet know about the strange attacks and the even stranger consequences, but she suspected that the ones partying hardest did know.
She’d dreaded getting caught in traffic approaching the airport, but there was only a slight hold-up. She’d wondered at that. Had people really not grasped what was happening? But then, she had witnessed things first-hand. Had seen people bitten and shot, run over and killed, only to stand up again and come at her with those empty, animal eyes. Eyes that held the depth of true death. So she supposed that news reports – garbled, confused, and unbelievable as they were – would do little to portray the unbearable truth.
Jayne left the car and locked it, knowing she would never sit in it again. It had been Tommy’s secret pride and joy, an old model that had far fewer electrics to go wrong, and which had gone around the clock already. They could have afforded a newer car, but he liked its styling, its look, and he’d said why dump what’s not broken? She liked that about Tommy. He never really considered material things to be of any real importance.
A passenger jet roared behind the buildings as it powered along the runway for take-off. At least they were still flying. She’d been worried about that. If this had been an outbreak of Ebola or bubonic plague they’d have shut the airports, seaports and state borders. But apparently it would take a lot longer for the authorities to take action over a zombie outbreak.
Jayne gave a bark of laughter that turned into a cry, and then she walked to the airport building.
The departures terminal was busy. There were businessmen reading newspapers or frowning over their BlackBerries, families huddled together with kids excited and worried adults glancing around, and single travellers, many of whom Jayne could not read. She found herself checking them all for injuries, but all she saw was one man with a fleck of blood on his white collar. Shaving cut, she thought, and she had to bite her lip to hold back the hysteria.