Nick leapt to his feet. So did Eve. Standing several feet away, beside a large conifer bush, were three large men: two black and one white. One of the black men was bald with a pointed goatee, while the other was well-groomed with short cropped hair and stubble. The white man was huge – six-and-a-half-feet, at least – and heavily bearded. He looked like one of those American bikers you often saw on television with names like Axel or Bones. All three of them were wearing the same grey tracksuits and white trainers.
“Who are you?” Nick asked them.
“Could ask you the same question,” said the black guy with the pointed goatee.
The large white man put his hand up to silence his associate and then smiled at Nick. “My name is Jan. Janwin Banks. This man on my right is Renee. The charmer on my left with the Fu Manchu is Dash. Don’t ask what his real name is, though, because he won’t tell you.”
“You’re prisoners,” Nick surmised from their matching attire. He backed away slowly, pulling Eve with him.
Jan held his hands up. “Hey, brother, there’s no need to fear us. We’re stuck in the same shit puddle that you are. We’re just trying to make it somewhere safe.”
“How did you get free?” Eve asked.
“The fuck it gotta do wid you, sweetheart?” said the one named Dash.
Jan sighed and shook his head. He took a step forward, his large hands still out in front of him. “Let’s just say that we’re victims of circumstance. The guards that were relocating us to a prison in Nottingham are all dead.”
Nick and Eve backed away more rapidly.
Jan laughed and shook his head. “No, not because of us. There was an accident. Some silly bollocks driving a Land Rover went right into our minibus. Next thing I know, there’s a bunch of lunatics tearing apart our P.O.s. We weren’t cuffed or anything, so we did a runner. It was either that, or suffer the same fate as the guards. There were five of us to begin with, but we didn’t all make it. It appears the world has become quite dangerous as of late. In fact, I preferred it on the inside.”
“There’s some sort of virus infecting people,” said Eve, “making everyone crazy.”
The man nodded and scratched at his impressive beard. “Makes sense. People don’t act like savages for no reason, not even in prison.”
Nick asked a question. “You said something about needing to go for the head?”
Dash spoke up in reply. “Yeah, it’s the only sure way to put ‘em down for good, you dig?”
Jan shrugged in agreement. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when one of these ‘infected’ people dies they have a tendency to come back.”
“You know that for sure?” Nick asked.
Jan nodded solemnly.
“Told you,” said Eve.
“When they come back,” said Jan. “They come back different. Slower and easier to deal with, but they tend to group together and come after you in a pack. You can only stop them for good with a good blow to the head.”
Eve gave Nick a look and he understood what she was thinking. James had not come back because he had struck his head on the chair. He had been spared the fate of coming back as a ghoul. There was a certain amount of relief in that, but not much.
“How do you know all this?” Nick asked.
“Because we saw that shit,” said Dash. “We’ve been hiking it all the way from Nottingham. Seen some seriously wacky shenanigans since then, blud.”