But Nick was frozen.
Jake turned his head and spotted him still standing there at the front of the bus. He hissed with bloodstained teeth.
Nick finally managed to get himself moving. He spun around and leapt off the bus as quickly as his feet would carry him. Dave punched a big red button beside the bus’s door and it clamped shut with a hiss. A second later Jake crashed up against the glass, glaring at them with swollen, bloodshot eyes. Gory chunks of flesh hung from his teeth and he spat and snarled.
And he let out a screech.
Everybody outside the bus gathered together. Dave motioned for them all to get moving. “Everybody run!” he shouted. “Jake is infected. We have to get away from him or he’ll pass the disease on to us.”
There was a brief smattering of anxious mumblings, but then everybody took off like it was the start of a race. Nick held up at the back, trying to keep everybody moving in the same direction. The two old ladies were clearly the slowest and needed help to make it across the uneven and muddy terrain.
He glanced back behind him to see the bus shrinking away into the distance as the group put distance between themselves and it.
Then he saw Jake emerging from the front of the bus, climbing through the hole where the windscreen used to be.
“Shit!” Nick started pushing the two old ladies to move faster. “Come on, come on,” he shouted. “Move!”
Behind them, Jake let out another piercing scream. The fleeing passengers picked up speed, finding energy reserves that only the fear of death could liberate from a person’s muscles. Eve and Cassie were at the front of the pack now, heading for the treeline at the edge of the wide picnic area. Carl and Dave were right behind them, their rotund figures betraying their respectable sprinting abilities. Then was Pauline and Kathryn, barefoot after taking off their heels and keeping up a decent pace. Finally, at the back, the two old ladies ran their hardest. Nick was close behind them, urging them to go faster.
Nick glanced back. It wasn’t good.
Jake would be on them long before they all made it to the treeline. Even if they did all make it, they wouldn’t be safe. Jake would just follow them into the woods.
Game over, man. What the hell do we do now?
Suddenly, one of the old ladies stopped dead. She doubled over, clutching at her chest. Her friend stopped, too, putting an arm around her. “Ethel! Ethel,” she shouted. “We have to keep moving.”
Nick slid to a stop beside them both. “Come on,” he urged. “He’ll be on us any minute. We have to keep moving.”
Ethel fell to her knees, wheezing. “M-my heart. I can’t. I need to stop.”
“No,” said Margaret. “I won’t leave you here.”
Nick grabbed Margaret’s brittle forearm and tried to pull her away. “Come on, we have to go, or else we’re all dead.”
“Then you go,” Margaret urged, pulling back her arm, surprisingly strong. “But I’m not leaving Ethel to face that monster alone.”
Jake was getting closer; would be on them any second.
Ethel rose up on one knee. She grabbed Margaret’s hand, squeezed it tight. “I’m not letting you get hurt because of me. If you don’t get moving right now, Margaret Skinner, I will come back to haunt you. I swear I will.”
Margaret looked ready to burst into tears. Nick stared down the field. Jake was only metres away now, lolloping across the grass like a deranged ape.
Ethel fell back down onto the floor, rolling onto her side and clutching at her chest. She looked up at her friend and hissed the word, “Go.”
Nick grabbed Margaret’s arm and this time she didn’t resist. The two of them got moving, leaving behind Ethel as she suffered a heart attack on the floor. Nick hoped it was that which would claim her and not Jake’s savage teeth.
But it was not to be.