‘
Oi, Asboy!’ Al shouted. The kid didn’t move. My eyes were starting to get used to the light, but I could barely make out his features. Al had set the radios down and was strutting towards the young man.
‘
Oi, Workhouse!’ he yelled again, louder. I’d honestly never heard him shout before. The kid stood up straight. He looked at Al, cocked his head slightly, and started ambling towards us. I almost breathed a sigh of relief that he was walking normally, but I was starting to make out swollen blisters that cut across his pale cheeks, under his nose and around his slack mouth. Floyd had stopped barking and was now wagging his tail enthusiastically at the sight of us.
‘
Dude you stink!’ Al said as the youth came closer. ‘Ooh, you’re not right. You’re all messed up.’ He started to back away but the lad bared his teeth, so Al thumped him soundly on the nose which sent him spinning to the ground. He was sprawled out awkwardly, his chest heaving a bubbling wheeze as Al blipped the Audi’s central locking, jumped over the kid and up to the car, waggling his right hand like it was hot before opening the door. Sitting low he turned to say something to Floyd who was bouncing about in the boot. Then he started the car, fired up a little stub of a joint from the ashtray, and looked at us.
‘
Come on then!’
Lou pulled Susie towards the car as I called ‘shotgun’. They were soon in the back seat.
‘
Come on, for fuck’s sakes!’ Al revved, Floyd barked, Lou beckoned furiously at me.
The kid got up, and I drew a sharp breath. His eyes were dead, but his chest still gave off a bubbling sound. I was frozen. A childhood nightmare flashed in front of me; my feet sticking to the pavement as my mum and brother walked ahead. As they get further away, I am screaming but no sound comes out. They are soon too far down the street to hear anyway. I look to my right, to a high red-brick wall stretching as far up as the clouds. There is just one window, at head height right where I am stuck. Through it I see a stuffed owl perched on a branch, dead leaves scattered around. I hear huge, booming footsteps behind me. That’s when I would wake up, damp and tearful, scared to call out in case nothing came out of my mouth.
I found myself standing breathlessly next to Al’s car, the door handle in my grip, water bottle under one arm. I got in, blinking. The lad was still facing the spot where I had been standing. Al gunned the engine and roared past him towards the exit, then stopped the car and turned to me.
‘
What the fuck are you doing?’ Lou screeched. ‘He’s coming!’
‘
Grab the radios chum,’ he jabbed his finger at my door. I looked out of my window – he could have got a bit closer.
‘
Fucking hell, they’re miles away.’
‘
Well, you should get a move on, then,’ Al grinned. I flung the door open, and ran to the rack of radios on the ground. I couldn’t help but turn to see where the kid was, and wished I hadn’t. I ran for the car but as I approached Al moved a few metres forward and waited for me to catch up, before lurching again as I put a hand to the door. Lou found it highly amusing, but when he did it a third time, I punched his roof. He got out.
‘
What the fuck was that for?’ he asked, indignantly.
‘
Jesus! That’s how people get eaten! Don’t fuck about, not today.’ I got in the car and slammed the door.
‘
Okay - because of all the zombies around.’ Al sat back down and slipped the car into gear.
‘
Oh, and you think that kid’s got a bad case of doggie fever? Do me a lemon.’ The radios were pressing into my nuts.
‘
Did you see him baring his teeth at me? Rabies or not, that’s just rude,’ Al said as we roared up the ramp to ground level, and back into the daylight.
‘
Is that a Highland insult, or just in the new towns?’ I asked, still miffed.
‘
Did you smell the eggs?’ Lou leaned forward.
‘
The same as that old boy in my street,’ I said.
‘
I thought Clive just had bad guts. How many people have you seen like that?’ Lou said, sitting back and reaching through the grille to Floyd. ‘Oh, sorry Al, he’s having a little piss in your boot.’
‘
There’s loads of them,’ I said grimly. ‘You’ll see in a minute.’
I glanced at the building as we drove past the front entrance, and saw the huddle of motionless figures gathered around the door. Most were wearing smart clothes – ties and shirts and pencil skirts - but dusty, bloodstained or torn. Some turned to face the car.
‘
Oh my God, that’s Dean,’ I heard Lou say.
‘
Dean’s nice. I’m tired.’ Susie yawned, oblivious.
It had all got a lot more hectic outside. We crawled across town as the traffic built up around us, sometimes forcing us onto the pavements. Lou was silent. We saw frenzied struggles in thick queues and fist-fights around dented cars - and still the sun bleached everything around us ash-white. More shops had been looted, and inside them we could see dim flames picking out the silhouettes of aisles and trolleys and people. Our route was blocked in several places by lines of blazing cars, as fuel tanks sparked and spat their flames about them. Al motored on, picking his way through the debris on the wide roads. Susie had her eyes closed; her head slumped against the window. Finally Lou spoke.
‘
We said we’d drop Susie off, but I don’t know whereabouts she lives.’
‘
She’s been out for a while now,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t we just drop her off at the medical tent?’ I suggested. My words betrayed my real instinct, which was to shovel her head off and get going.
‘
Do you really want to get out of the car and queue?’ Al asked. ‘I’m not waiting around to catch the lurgy. We’ll get her some help in Worthing or Brighton if she still needs it, they’ll be less busy down there, anyway.’ Al looked over his shoulder at her slumped figure. ‘It’s probably just the heat.’ he said, hopefully. I said nothing.
‘
Are you sure, chum?’ Lou asked. ‘There’s your last chance.’
The inflatable medical tents now sat fully engorged on the precinct, with only their tops visible above the hordes of bodies and the banners advertising the medical industry sponsors. We drove on.
Al beeped people out of the way as he navigated the gaps between parked and burning cars, occasionally hitting an empty stretch. As I pointed Al to the next right there was a screech of rubber from the forecourt of a petrol station mini-mart, with broken glass and people scattering. A new-shape Volkswagen Beetle was coming to rest on top of a line of crushed fuel pumps, springing two or three foamy pink fountains behind it. I saw a curl of flame lick the underside of the car.
It felt briefly like we’d driven into a shaft of brilliant sunlight thrown between two tall buildings. The heat hit me next, tightening my cheeks and drying my eyeballs, before a breathtaking thump hit my lungs. I saw no more, as deep gold flames billowed through the forecourt, enveloping cars and customers. There was no bang, just bright silence sucking in all the noise around us except Lou whispering ‘Oh, no!’ as she put a hand to her mouth. Al looked in his mirror agog. The flames blossomed, quickly forming a black bubble of ink in the blue summer sky.
‘
Fuck off!’
Al was in full PlayStation mode now, weaving fast through the hulks of cars and people and the sprays of shattering glass. I turned to Al, deciding that now was a good time to tell him about the fat woman I’d seen getting crushed by the girl in the white Golf, when he practically stood upright on his brake pedal. The tyres screamed, and the rich oily stink of carbonising rubber filled the car. I looked forward to a small figure bound in a blanket, slap-bang in the middle of Al’s racing line. As we slunk ahead in dreamy slow-motion, the little girl turned to us, her blanket falling to the road. Closer. She had the same expression as Al, who was vertical, his head sideways, his ear almost pressed to the ceiling. Closer. The car felt like it was tipping me forwards off my seat, my fingernails sinking into the dashboard. Floyd started howling, and everyone exhaled. We had stopped.
The girl ran off, into the arms of a woman who dropped a mobile phone to scoop her up. Al raised a hand and made a grimace. He checked his mirrors and blind spot, indicated and pulled away carefully. In the mirror I could see that the dome of smoke had twisted into a thick black finger.
Near the slip road down onto the A23 to Brighton we ground to a halt. People were trying to form two lanes in each direction on the single lane street, and had started honking their frustrations at each other. We sat for five minutes or so, until Lou had a brainwave.
‘
I’ve got my SatNav in my bag. Hang on. Good job I always take it out of the car.’
I took that as a dig at me, because I always left it in full view whenever I took the car out. My record on car security was not good – I’d even heard an announcement in the supermarket once, reading out my number plate and asking if the owner could go to customer services. The stout chap on the desk had told me I’d left my car open. I told him I thought it was very vigilant of someone to notice that I’d left my car unlocked, but he said that in fact I’d just left the car door wide open and went shopping. That had been a morning of PlayStation and skunk, come to think of it.
Al propped it up against his windscreen – the bracket was still in Lou’s car, wherever that was – and we waited in the queue until it picked up enough satellite signals to locate us.
‘
I can set the destination now,’ I said. ‘You want to go back to Brighton don’t you? What’s your postcode?’
I had wanted to download the voice of Alec Guinness for the instructions but Lou had refused point-blank, instead keeping the soft, dreamy tones of the default female who told us to continue ahead for half a mile within seconds of me tapping in Al’s postcode.
‘
Fuck’s sakes, we’re trying to continue ahead,’ Al snorted. There was certainly no space to reverse.
‘
It’s all good, if you take a wrong turn it will recalculate, so we can just double-back into Crawley and try another way out.’
‘
Useful,’ Al said, staring ahead at the blocked road. A woman had got out of her tiny car in front of us and was having a to-do with a chap in a white van. She had been one of those most keen to make two lanes, so she was more in the middle of the road than anyone. She was waving her arms and screaming, but the man just laughed. Two little kids in the back seat of her car started yelling, and she ran to the passenger door and hauled a man out, white as a ghost and doubled over. She sat him down in the road, leaning his head against her rear bumper. The other chap held his hands up and got back in his van, but the woman wasn’t going to let it go yet and started thumping on his door.
‘
Cough it up, might be a gold watch,’ I murmured, transfixed by her passenger’s weary heaving. Al laughed; Lou tutted. He slumped, and the black tar strung from his chin glinted in the sunlight. The man’s mouth slowly fell open, and his head rolled onto one shoulder.
‘
Shouldn’t we help?’ Lou asked.
‘
Yes, let’s travel the countryside collecting the fuckers in a big net!’ I spat. ‘We could start a freak show, except ticket sales wouldn’t be that hot because we’d be the freaks. The tasty-smelling freaks. Sorry I shouted. Al wants to go home,’
‘
It’s not like we’re going anywhere,’ Al pointed out.
‘
For Christ’s sake, Lou, we’re not getting out and helping. They’re all dead.’
I’ll admit it was overly melodramatic, and probably not what was called for at the time. I was in Dutch with the wife – I knew without seeing her face and without her saying anything. It was more like an imperceptible lowering of the temperature.
‘
He’s alright anyway. Look,’ Al said, pointing at the sick bloke who was now standing. He leant against the back of the woman’s car, like his legs weren’t ready yet. The woman was still having it out with white van man.
‘
I’m at least going to tell that bitch to look after him,’ Lou stated, and opened her door. I swung round angrily and began to shout at her not to dare get out, but the sound of an approaching motorcycle stopped me. I saw it in the rear window careering down the middle of the road towards us, taking on a precarious wobble. Lou must have read something in my face because she slammed the door and assumed a nifty crash position. The whine of the engine flooded the car and Al’s wing mirror was ripped off, spinning away into the line of traffic.
The bike slew into the woman’s car which ground forwards and into the rear of the car ahead, simultaneously launching the rider clear over the top of three or four vehicles. The dry sounds of smashing glass and crunching bones were pierced by the woman’s screams as her children and passenger became folded up with the motorbike inside her crumpled car. As the wreckage settled I could see that her sick passenger’s torso was still in relatively the same place; pinched into the twisted roof with one arm severed at the shoulder. The woman ran with floppy arms and all the noise drained out of her, staring at where the man’s lower half – and the back of her car - should have been. She took a faltering step forward.
Two things happened – a breathtakingly large quantity of guts fell from his torn torso onto the sizzling hot tarmac; and his remaining arm flailed out, clutching a handful of the woman’s hair and pulling her face towards his open mouth. Al wasted no time putting the car into gear and pulling into the rubber-streaked space left behind the wreckage. She made no sound as Al pulled alongside in a three-point-turn. She didn’t even resist as great wads of fat were pulled cleanly from her skull.
We accelerated back up the road. The SatNav was the first to speak, without emotion.