“Damn it,” said Eve. “They’re coming this way.”
The first of the dead reached into the truck and grabbed at Michelle’s ankles. Annaliese watched, powerless, as she was dragged kicking and screaming into the crowd. She disappeared so fast that it was as if she were sinking into a sea. One minute she was there, the next she was just another part of the ever-moving mob.
Nick and Renee made it to the truck, slumping up against its side with exhaustion.
“In the back,” Annaliese shouted to them. “Get in the back.”
The truck bounced on its suspension as the two men leapt onto the cargo shelf. The dead clawed at them, trying to drag them back out again.
Time to go.
Annaliese stepped on the accelerator. The truck bolted forward.
Stalled.
A body leapt onto the bonnet and thumped at the broken windscreen. Annaliese cursed out loud and got the engine back in gear. She tried to pull off again and was relieved when the vehicle shot forward and picked up speed.
Glad I still know how to drive.
More bodies fell beneath the wheels and the truck whined unhappily under the additional stress. It was never designed to drive over bodies.
“Where do we go?” Eve asked. “They’re everywhere.”
The dead were indeed everywhere, and that was just the ones from the house. When the ones from the bottom of the hill arrived, there would be zero chance of escape.
“We need to head for the access road just past the house,” Annaliese told her passengers. “It leads down the hill and into the towns. It’s how the staff and delivery drivers used to come and go.”
Eve took a breath and nodded. Annaliese could feel the younger woman shaking beside her. In the rear view mirror she could see Nick and Renee fighting to hold on. Despite not wanting to, she slowed down. She didn’t want to lose the two men off the back.
“Wait!” said Eve.
Annaliese turned to her. “What? What is it?”
“We need supplies or we won’t last the week.”
“We have to go. We have no choice.”
“What if we can’t find food…or water?”
Something occurred to Annaliese. Something that made her point the truck towards the woods. “Hold on,” she said. “I know where we can get supplies, but we’ll have to be quick.”
She took the truck off into the treeline at the edge of the park. It was hard work steering the truck through the woods in the dark, but there was no choice to drive slowly. She knew the dead would be everywhere within the hour. Eve was right, though: they needed supplies if they had any chance of surviving on the road.
She had to concentrate hard to try and remember the way she had come when she fled the greenhouse. When the truck broke through the trees and entered into the open area of the crop field, she knew her memory had served her correctly.
We might just do this.
Something jumped out in front of the truck and Annaliese turned sharply to avoid it. The tires skidded in the muddy ruts and came to a violent stop.
“What the hell was that?” Eve asked.
“I don’t know,” said Annaliese, peering out of her side window. “There was somebody in the road, but I can’t see anything.”
A man jumped up against the glass.
“It’s one of them,” Pauline cried.
Annaliese stared out of her window felt her heart turn to stone. She recognised the man outside.
“It’s Mike,” she said, feeling sick to her tummy.
Everyone in the truck was silent. They had all liked Mike.
“Oh, thank God. Anna!”
Annaliese’s eyes went wide and her breath caught in her lungs. She stared at Mike with disbelief. “You’re alive?”
Mike nodded. “Of course I am. I could use a doctor, though, or maybe a good vet. Do you know any?”
Annaliese opened up her door and fell out on top of him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. “I thought you were one of them.”
Mike winced. “Ow, ow. Easy.”