He must have been one of the drivers of the crashed saloons. He’s covered in broken glass.
Eve began to groan under the stress of pushing the door closed. “I’m slipping,” she cried out. “I can’t hold it much longer.”
“I can’t either,” Nick admitted. “We’re going to have to make a run for it. After three, you ready?”
“No.”
“Okay,” said Nick. “One, two…
“…three.”
They made a dash across the car park, stone chips flying up behind them as their trainers crunched down on the uneven gravel. They cut a wide arc around the man ambling in front of them and headed for the road. There was a chance that Lara might have got free and was now waiting somewhere up ahead. That would also mean that it was safe to get back inside his car and drive away. But, as Nick leapt the embankment, he saw that Lara was still tangled up in the seatbelts and was going nowhere. His car was off limits.
“Shit!” he said. “Where do we go?”
“Anywhere, but here,” Eve said.
They both tumbled down the embankment and into the road. Eve pointed to one of the intersections that led to a sharp bend in the road. “Maybe we can lose them around there!”
Nick glanced behind him. The two women from the garden centre were stumbling around the car park with the glass-covered man, but so far they seemed unaware of Nick and Eve’s location. They were glancing around, moving in circles and sniffing the air; like any other predator hunting prey.
“Okay,” said Nick. “Let’s just get out of here.”
They pounded the road towards the bend, their breaths ragged and painful. Just as Nick thought they might be home free, a piercing screech from the parking lot made it clear they had been spotted.
Eve’s eyes went wide. “They’re coming.”
“I know,” said Nick. “Just keep runni-”
Something caught Nick’s attention. He spun around urgently and managed to fling himself to the ground just in time to avoid getting hit by a skidding bus. Eve hit the dirt right beside him. There was a never-ending moment where he closed his eyes and waited for death, expecting to feel the crush of wheels over his body, but the moment eventually passed, leaving behind nothing but a tense silence.
The bus had come to a sliding stop, a protesting squeal echoing from its brakes. Its bulky rear tyres rested less than a metre from Nick’s outstretched legs. He rolled onto his back and looked up in confusion as the vehicle’s pneumatic doors hissed open.
“Get in!” screamed the driver.
chapter five
Nick yanked Eve off the ground and bundled her up the steps onto the bus. Then he flung himself in after her, twisting around to make sure that the doors were closing behind him. He sighed with relief when they hissed shut.
The bus started moving and Nick stumbled sideways into the aisle. He had to grab hold of one of the support rails overhead to keep from falling down. Eve dragged herself over to the nearest vacant seat and sat down, clutching her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
It was then that he noticed the other people on the bus. He nodded at them all politely, but decided to turn to face his saviour, the bus driver.
If he hadn’t come along when he did…
The driver was a rotund man with thinning hair, grey at the sides. Both his of narrow, unblinking eyes were glued to the road. The steering wheel was gripped tightly between his pudgy hands.
“There’s a car wreck up ahead,” Nick warned him. “You’ll have to drive carefully to get around it.
The driver nodded and kept the bus at a low speed. Up ahead, Mrs Curtis and the other two infected people from the garden centre were coming up the middle of the road. They looked like a pack of roving hyenas.
“Friends of yours?” asked the driver.
“More like acquaintances,” said Nick.