Coldbrook(87)

‘Right.’ Waits glanced around every few seconds.

‘There are lots of them round,’ Sean went on, ‘so be careful.’

‘Careful. Right.’ Waits looked back at the blacked-out truck behind them, and Jayne wondered what might be inside.

‘Did Leigh call you?’ Sean asked.

‘Leigh?’ The big man shifted the shotgun to the other hand, moving forward and leaning against the truck’s damaged hood. The blood did not seem to concern him.

‘About us.’ Sean touched Jayne’s shoulder, and she could feel his hand shaking. ‘About Jayne.’

‘Don’t know no Leigh. Just know a girl’s got bit, hasn’t turned. Been plenty of claims on the register, but none confirmed so far.’

‘Where will you take us?’ Jayne asked.

‘Back to the station.’ Waits looked around again, and gave a vague signal to the truck. ‘From there, don’t know yet. How long you been up there?’

‘Several hours,’ Sean said.

‘It’s f*cked as hell out here,’ Waits said. ‘We been through some stuff. But the station’s tight, and it’ll be a damn sight safer than—’

They all heard the sound at the same time – the thumping of feet against metal. Jayne knew instantly what it was, and even as Sean gasped and Waits turned she shouted, ‘Bus!’

The vehicle was between the fire and the aircraft, where it had stood silent and unthreatening since they had closed the aircraft doors. Now she could see movement inside, silhouetted against the flames.

A man appeared on the bottom step wearing a bus driver’s hat, and when he stepped forward it was like releasing a stopper from a bottle. They flowed out behind him, rushing towards the police vehicles as fast as their various injuries would allow. For many of them, their wounds did not slow them at all.

Waits rested his elbows on the cruiser’s roof, aimed the shotgun, and fired. The resulting mayhem was so sudden that Jayne did not even see if anyone fell, and then Sean was grabbing her arm and pulling her inside the aircraft, reaching for the door handle and tugging it closed.

Something struck the aircraft with a loud, hollow thunk! and she realised that the shooting had begun in earnest.

‘The window!’ Sean said, pulling the door closed and engaging the locking lever.

‘Window?’

‘We might need to move fast, so we have to know what’s happening.’

Jayne tried to move quickly, but her joints screamed and the churu threw grit into her eyes, clouding her vision and disturbing her balance. She staggered along the aisle and fell sideways across a row of seats. She could hear gunfire outside, the pop pop of individual shots and a heavier, more sustained burst of machine-gun fire. She bit her lip and her vision cleared, and she felt a terrible, unreasonable shame at being such a burden.

‘It’s okay,’ Sean said softly. He was beside her on the seat, helping her upright and then leaning across her to look outside.

‘I don’t believe this,’ Jayne said. Tears burned in her eyes.

‘It’s not over yet,’ Sean said. But she could tell that the words belied his belief. So she pushed him away, and leaned forward to see from the window herself.

And it was all over, because Waits was already down and smothered with raging, thrashing people, and the cruiser’s other door was open and a uniformed woman was being dragged out, and she was shooting people in the head – three, four – before a young boy bit into her arm and she dropped the gun. And as automatic gunfire raked the cruiser from the truck’s lowered windows the monsters turned that way, rushing forward and being cut down, walking across those who fell to press themselves against the truck’s side, forcing those inside to withdraw their weapons and close the windows. The zombies – there must have been fifty by then, perhaps more, and others were rushing from all directions to join in – swarmed around and over the truck, punching and stamping and head-butting until windows smashed and gunfire erupted again.

As Jayne saw Waits standing, different from how he had been before, she pulled back from the window.

‘He saw me,’ she gasped.

The gunfire ceased. Someone screamed, the sound distant and muffled.

‘They can’t get in,’ Sean said. He was passing the gun from one hand to the other, as if he was trying to find a way to hold it without his nervous sweat making it slick.

‘But he knows we’re here,’ Jayne said.

Sean blinked at her and shrugged. But there was nothing he could say.

From outside there came that familiar, terrible call. Jayne looked again. They stood motionless now, following Waits’s stare, and before she pulled away from the window again Jayne was aware of every single one of them looking up at her. And she knew that they would wait.





4


This time the dream staggers rather than flows, shifting from one scene to the next like a damaged film missing random frames. And Charlotte stalks the suburbs of Vic’s guilt.

This is my dream I can change it I can make it better.

Charlotte chuckles. The dream flickers, and then they are outside the strange place that always feels like home. Vic tries to run, but he is on his hands and knees, his fingertips melting into the hot road. Charlotte knocks on the door and Lucy answers.

No, he tries to say. Charlotte turns to laugh at him or show him her dead eyes, but it is not Charlotte at all – it is Holly standing there dead before him and mocking his remorse.