For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak (6 page)

While
Iliana grabbed one of the man’s legs, Daz remained staring at the approaching
crowd. ‘What?’

‘Daz,
we need to get this body shifted.’

Daz
turned and gripped the man’s jacket. With all four of us pulling and the woman
pushing from inside the car, we finally got him free. The infected were now only
fifty yards away. 

The
woman pointed out of the broken window. ‘The keys! I need the keys. I dropped
them in all the confusion.’

I
scooped them up and tossed them to her. She caught the keys with her
outstretched hand and hastily shoved one of them into the ignition. She turned
it, but the engine didn’t catch. She looked up. ‘Are you getting in or what? We
need to be ready to go the moment I get the engine going. It’s always a bit
temperamental, especially when it’s cold.’

We
didn’t need to be asked a second time. Tom pulled open the front passenger door
and jumped in while Daz, Iliana and I piled into the back. It was only once we
were inside that I realised the woman wasn’t alone: a young boy was clinging to
her side and she had one arm wrapped protectively around him; huddled in the
back behind the driver’s seat was a teenage girl, tears streaming down her face
as she shook with fear. The woman turned the key again: still it didn’t catch.
‘Damn thing never starts when you really need it to.’

I
stared wide-eyed through the windscreen: the nearest of the infected would be on
us in seconds. The woman glanced up, but she didn’t panic; pumping the
accelerator, she twisted the key for a third time and the engine spluttered into
life. ‘Finally! Now let’s get the hell out of here.’

She
slammed the Range Rover into gear and floored it. Without even blinking, the
woman drove straight into the mass of infected charging towards us. Even with
the SUV bearing down on them, they kept coming; not even trying to get out of
the way. Blood sprayed across the windscreen as we hit the first one, and I felt
the car judder as we drove over its body. There were so many of them ahead of
us, I worried they might be able to bring us to a halt. If that happened, we’d
be dead in seconds. Looking round, I saw we were just coming up to a crossroads.
I leaned forward and pointed. ‘Turn right here.’

As the
car skidded round the corner, narrowly missing another one coming in the
opposite direction, Iliana was thrown against me, pushing me hard into the door.
I reached around, searching for a seat belt, but with four of us crammed into
the back seat, I couldn’t find one.

‘Where’re we heading?’ The woman yelled over her shoulder.

‘If we
can get onto Great Western Road, we should have a pretty clear run out of the
city. Turn left there,’ I pointed again, ‘and then keep left at the next
junction.’

The
woman braked hard and shifted the SUV down a gear as we overtook an empty bus on
the inside, before throwing us round the next corner. She shifted back into a
higher gear and accelerated again. As we left the city centre behind and crossed
the bridge over the motorway, I glanced down, wondering if I’d made the right
decision; the road below was packed with stationary cars, and infected were
streaming between them. Some people got out and tried to run, but were dragged
to the ground before they got more than a few feet; others stayed inside and
locked the doors, but the infected simply smashed through the windows to get to
them.

We
reached the east end of Great Western Road and I saw the route ahead was blocked
with traffic. ‘Shit! How’re we going to get passed that?’

I felt
a jolt as we mounted the kerb and I was thrown upwards, my head slamming into
the roof. There was just enough room for us to squeeze between the shop fronts
and sandstone tenements on one side, and cars parked along the side of the road
on the other. As we sped along the pavement, forcing panicked pedestrians to
dive out of the way, I looked into the cars that were jamming the road; the
people inside seemed to have no idea of what was happening in other parts of the
city. We passed a junction where one car had rear-ended another; the passengers
standing round as the drivers exchanged their insurance details. Given the
circumstances, this seemed rather pointless, but they had yet to find out why.

Ahead
of the accident, the road was clear and the woman steered back onto the tarmac
and slowed down. She turned to Tom, ‘I’m Claire, by the way; this is Jake.’ She
smoothed the hair of the small boy clinging to her side. ‘And that’s Sophie.’
She nodded to the teenage girl in the back seat: she was no longer crying;
instead she just looked terrified, not only by what was going on outside, but by
having these strange people, who’d appeared out of nowhere, waving machetes and
wearing bloodstained clothes, in the car with her.

Tom
leaned across from the front passenger seat and shook Claire’s hand. ‘I’m Tom.’
He twisted in his seat. ‘That’s Ben, Iliana and Daz.’

I
waved when I heard my name. Tom carried on. ‘How did you end up with the big guy
attacking you?’

‘We
were just picking up some tickets for a concert we’re going to next weekend, and
it took longer than expected, and then Jake needed to go to the toilet. When we
finally came out, it seemed like everyone, all the people and the traffic, had
just vanished. We were about halfway back to the car when the “big guy”,’ she
looked at Tom, ‘as you so eloquently called him, appeared. I could see almost
immediately that there was something wrong with him; I think it was his eyes.
Anyway, he started running towards us and I knew we had to get to the car as
quickly as possible. I fished out my keys and pressed the button to unlock the
doors, but Jake slipped and I dropped the keys as I picked him up, so we got
into the car in time, and got the doors locked, but I couldn’t drive away. God
knows what would have happened if you lot hadn’t come along when you did.’

I
caught Claire’s eye in the mirror. ‘From what I saw, you were doing pretty well
on your own.’

We
drove by grand sandstone buildings and the glass palace of the Botanic Gardens
and then, as we passed over the brow of a small rise, for the first time I could
see the hills that lay beyond the city. They looked so close and my spirits
soared: surely we were going to make it out. We dropped into a dip and then up
over another rise.

‘Shit!’ Claire jammed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt. The road ahead was
filled with queuing traffic. ‘What’s this all about?’

I
leaned forward, trying to get a better look. ‘Must be the lights at the next
junction.’

After
a minute of just sitting there with nothing happening, Tom noticed something
odd. ‘How come there’s nothing coming the other way?’

Now he
mentioned it, I realised I hadn’t seen a single car pass in the opposite
direction for a while.

‘This
can’t be good.’ I opened the rear passenger door and stood on the SUV’s sill. I
was high enough up that I could see down to where several police cars, their
blue lights flashing, were parked across the road, just on the far side of the
junction. Beyond that, the road was clear as far as I could see.

I
called down into the Range Rover. ‘It’s the police. It looks like they’re
setting up a roadblock.’

I
heard another door open and saw Claire appear on the other side. She stared down
the road.

I
watched her reactions: she didn’t seem surprised; instead, it was more as if she
was trying to work out what to do next. I nodded towards the police cars. ‘What
d’you think that’s all about?’

Claire
glanced back at me. ‘I guess they’re trying to contain the outbreak before it
spreads too far.’

‘But
why are they setting it up around here? We haven’t seen any infected for a good
couple of miles.’

Claire
stared off down the road again. ‘I’m guessing they’re doing it here exactly
because the infected haven’t reached this point yet. Anyway, whatever the
reason, I don’t want to be stuck on this side of it.’

Ahead,
at the crossroads, a police van pulled up and two uniformed men got out. I saw
them pointing to the road which led off to the right and I realised it must
still be open, at least for the moment.

‘We’ve
got to go!’ I shouted to Claire. ‘Pull onto the other side of the road and turn
right at the junction.’

We
both dropped back into the SUV and slammed our doors. As Claire pulled out and
accelerated down the opposite carriage way, I noticed Jake was now sitting on
Tom’s knee. Tom had slipped his seat belt on and was holding Jake tightly to
stop him being thrown around. We were at the crossroads in seconds and with the
policemen waving at us to stop, Claire turned right and then stood on the brakes
again: two police cars were already blocking the road ahead.

‘There!’ Iliana pointed over Claire’s shoulder to where a narrow lane led past a
row of blonde sandstone town houses. Claire revved the engine and pulled the car
to the left, throwing Iliana against me once again. We sped down the street,
running parallel to the main road, separated from it by a grassy bank and a low
stone wall. Soon, the lane ran out, but a wide pedestrian path led back down to
the road. The Range Rover juddered as we leapt onto the kerb for the second
time. After a few seconds, Claire jerked the wheel to the left and pulled us
onto the road again, well beyond the roadblock. 

‘Woohoo! That was way cool; like a video game or somethin’.’ Daz squirmed round
so he could see out of the rear window. ‘No one’s chasin’ us. I think we got
away with it.’ 

As we
raced along the deserted road, I noticed the trees which now separated the two
carriageways were just coming into blossom. I’d always loved driving along this
road in spring when the cherry trees were in full bloom: on a sunny day, it
could beat almost anywhere in the world, but today, all I could think about was
getting out of town as quickly as possible. We passed under a railway bridge and
immediately ran into another queue of traffic. Claire didn’t brake. Instead, she
bounced over the kerb and we sped down the pavement once more. Suddenly, the
unmistakeable silhouette of a tank emerged over the top of the cars ahead of us.
As we got nearer, I could see machine guns mounted on armoured jeeps and heavily
armoured soldiers manning a barricade spread across the road ahead.

‘No
wonder they didn’t bother following us; it looks like they’re pretty serious
about containing this thing.’ Claire adjusted her grip on the steering wheel.
‘Hold on.’

I
grabbed onto the handle above the window and felt Iliana brace herself against
me. Ahead of us, a metal barrier blocked our way; on the other side of it, a
slip road curved off to the left, away from soldiers. If we could somehow get to
that, we could at least keep moving. Suddenly, there was the sound of gunfire
and the windscreen exploded. Ducking down, I looked through the shattered glass;
at the right-hand end of the main barricade, three men in army uniforms, machine
guns raised, were firing at us.

Despite the gunfire, Claire kept the accelerator pressed to the floor as I felt
more bullets slam into the car.

‘Why
the hell’re they shootin’ at us?’ Daz was crouched as low in the seat as he
could get. Before I could answer, Iliana’s face exploded and Tom screamed.
‘Fuck, I’m hit!’

The
teenage girl crammed in beside Daz screamed too.

‘Sophie, are you alright?’ For the first time Claire sounded panicked.

‘She’s
fine.’ Daz called out. ‘She’s just scared.’ There was a moment’s pause as he
swallowed. ‘I think Iliana’s dead, though.’

Claire
looked across at Tom. ‘What about Jake?’

‘He’s
fine,’ Tom winced with pain. ‘It’s just me that got hit.’

Claire
turned her attention back to the road ahead just as the Range Rover crashed
through the barrier. The car skidded and Claire had to fight hard to keep it
under control. I felt the SUV slide across the tarmac and we side-swiped the
barriers on the far side, causing Iliana’s body to rattle back and forth between
Daz and me, sending blood flying in all directions. Claire wrestled with the
steering wheel, managing to keep us moving in the right direction. She glanced
at Tom’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, it looks like it’s only a flesh wound, but
we’ll need to get some pressure on that pretty quickly so you don’t lose too
much blood.’ She turned to me. ‘Are we out of their range yet?’

I
nervously inched my head upwards until I could see out of the back window: the
soldiers were no longer in sight. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yeah.’

‘And
they’re not following us?’

‘No.’
I wondered why this was. Maybe we were still inside the cordon they’d set up to
stop people leaving the city. If that was the case, we’d need to find another
way out.

‘Good.’ Claire stood on the brakes. Tom yelped as he was thrown against his seat
belt and Iliana’s lifeless body slammed into the back of his seat. The car
screeched to a halt and Claire jumped out. She pulled open the back door.
‘Sophie, you need to take Jake.’

The
teenage girl got out and took the small boy from Tom, kissing his head and
stroking his hair before climbing back into the car. I glanced at him. He seemed
listless, almost as if he was unaware of all that was going on around him.