Coldbrook(129)

‘I’ll make it two!’

‘Make it one and a f*cking half!’

‘Not in front of the kids, dude,’ Vic said, concentrating on the steering lock, wondering whether he could risk wedging Chaney’s blade in there to try and jimmy it straight, worried that it would snap off and lock the steering completely. As it was now, they’d have about seventy per cent of the steering capability, and to turn right would take a much longer, wider sweep.

But f*ck it.

‘Done,’ he said. Chaney grabbed Vic’s belt and pulled him out, hauling him upright in one move and dropping him into the bloodied driver’s seat.

‘You got the duty,’ he said.

‘Fine.’ Vic had only glanced around briefly and what he’d seen was not good. Zombies crowded at the unbroken windows, smashing at them with fists and heads, falling away with bullets in their brains.

‘Out of ammo,’ one of the bikers said.

‘Then piss on them!’ Chaney shouted.

Kids screaming, the two adults remaining with them doing their best to calm them, and the most terrifying thing wasn’t the noise of gunshots or the screaming but the soft calling of the zombies. Weren’t they supposed to growl, or groan, or moan? And weren’t they supposed to eat their victims? But there were no supposed tos here. This was reality.

Vic once more touched wires to each other and this time twisted them together. The engine grumbled into life. It didn’t sound too happy about it. ‘Come on, come on, be a good girl,’ Vic said. He slid the gearstick into reverse and pressed down on the gas. The bus rocked and then moved, and in the mirror he saw several standing kids jolted to the floor. The gunfire lessened, and then the bus started bumping over fallen bodies.

‘Gross,’ Chaney said.

‘How much ammo you guys got left?’

‘Not much.’

Vic nodded and kept reversing, checking in the side mirrors and not slowing down when he saw zombies in his way. The woman cop with a fence post through her lay in the road, thrashing around like a beetle turned onto its back. Vic twitched the wheel slightly, then looked away. He hoped that she’d be grateful.

‘The bus turns left, but right will be a problem.’

‘Oh. I thought you’d fixed that?’

‘I did what I could, given the circumstances.’

‘Right. You think we’ll make it?’

Vic thought of the route down to Coldbrook, going over each stretch of road in his mind’s eye. ‘There’s one bad turn . . . but if I can bounce us off the banking . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Bounce us.’ Chaney stood beside him, shotgun held in both hands. ‘You seen Speed?’

‘The film?’

‘Yeah. These buses can do amazing things. Jump impossible gaps. Wheelies.’

‘Right,’ Vic said, and the two men laughed. It felt surreal to hear laughter in such a place. The ground in front of the police station was strewn with bodies, many of them still moving, and there was an open area where the bus had been parked. Rising slowly from a body heap was Sheriff Blanks. He still wore his gun, but not his hat. His left leg was crushed and he kept tilting in that direction before righting himself again, a constant sway-and-stumble. He stared at the bus.

Vic started forward and hauled the wheel to the left. Hope this holds, he thought as unsteady vibrations shook it.

‘Get the kids down,’ Chaney shouted back. ‘They won’t want to see this.’

The bus struck Blanks and knocked him back to the ground. Vic hoped that he’d smashed his skull, but there was no way to make sure, and no time. They ground over more bodies and continued in a tight circle, and Vic eased off the turn earlier than he would have normally. The bus straightened slowly, crossed the lawned area at the square’s centre, and then he aimed the vehicle for the road leading out of town.

With the bus mobile, the zombies didn’t stand a chance. A few faced them head-on, and Vic ran them over. Others leaped at the bus as it passed, some managing to grab onto frames where windows had been shattered. There were gunshots, but mostly the vehicle’s occupants saved their ammunition and let the things fall away behind them.

Vic saw people that he and Lucy had socialised with – town barbecues on the square, bowling nights, evenings at the pub – and there were others he recognised from their work in association to Coldbrook. He kept telling himself that they were no longer themselves. It worked, mostly.

Coming back to you, Lucy and Olivia. The thought drove him on. The steering wheel thudded against his hand as the wheels tried to take them in a different direction, and he could feel a terrible vibration through his feet from the steering column. His daughter and wife were warm and alive. He would touch them again. They’d made it to Coldbrook and were inside, safe, protected, waiting for him to return.

As they left Danton Rock he hoped the going would be easier, though it appeared that most of the town’s inhabitants were leaving as well. Some were following the road, but most of them seemed to be taking a more direct route, crossing the hillsides and passing through the wooded areas between the town and the Coldbrook valley. As though they were being called.

There was a blue Ford on its roof beside the road.

‘One of ours,’ Chaney said. A man and child stood beside the car and at their feet was a woman’s body, still half inside the broken door. Two zombies walked past the car, and Vic thought, They can smell their own. The little girl ran at the bus. Vic accelerated and did not look back.