“It’s looks different from when Vicky and I saw it.”
“Different?”
The images were so stark Rhys squinted as he stared at them. “The police … ” He looked at a policewoman close to them. A bullet hole in her head, she also had a huge chunk torn from her stomach.
“It looks like something’s tried to eat her,” Larissa said. “Isn’t that what they do?”
“It wasn’t like this when we saw them earlier. And no , they don’t do that. They bite. They infect. But it seems that once you’re infected they leave you alone. This is them … ” the word stuck in his throat and his entire being sank “ … feeding . They’ve been feeding. I hate to think what we would have found here had the fire not pulled all of the diseased toward the city. It looks like it interrupted some kind of fucked up banquet.”
Only one police car remained at the scene and it now sat as a charred wreck. The road surface around it had turned black from the flames. “Fuck it.”
Larissa looked at Rhys.
“I was hoping we’d find some better means of transport. Vicky sounded like she was running with Flynn, so a car would have caught us up to them much quicker.”
Larissa didn’t respond as she stared at the policewoman on the ground.
The pair moved off again and it took all of Rhys’ will to not look down at the half-eaten woman. He had enough nightmares queued up in his head already, he didn’t need any more.
Rhys may have avoided a glance at the police officer, but he looked at Larissa to see she hadn’t taken her eyes off her.
When she got next to her Larissa stopped and sat on the road.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Rhys said.
But Larissa didn’t reply. Instead, she pressed the soles of her feet up against the soles of the police officer’s shoes.
The penny suddenly dropped for Rhys. “Are they your size?”
Larissa chewed the inside of her mouth and frowned as she eyed up the shoes. “They’ll do.”
Rhys squatted down next to Larissa and his knees burned from the movement. He could have stayed on his feet, but they needed to move on, and if he helped her, they could get going quicker.
Although a few feet away from the mauled part of her body, Rhys still shook as he touched the woman. What if she reanimated? Then he looked at the bullet hole that had killed her. It may have been small at the front, but a huge pool of blood swelled behind her head. She wasn’t getting up from that. Sweat turned Rhys’ palms damp as he pulled at the laces. He slipped the shoe free and passed it to Larissa.
While Larissa put the shoes on Rhys said, “We can run quicker than Flynn, and Oscar’s injured so I don’t see him moving too fast. Hopefully we can catch up to them if we increase our pace.”
Although she didn’t look up Larissa still said, “If we’re heading in the right direction that is.”
“I think we are.”
“But how can you know that, Rhys? She could have taken him anywhere.”
“Yeah, she could, but I think she’s headed to The Highlands like she said she would. To do that, she’d have to go through London. We need to take the quickest route to London. I think if we’re fast we can get ahead of the virus and get out of the city before it becomes overrun.”
“It’s nice to have a plan, Rhys, but I still doubt your logic. She could be going anywhere . We’re just pissing in the wind by trying to follow her. Is this another time where we have to have,” she made air quotes “ faith ? We need to trust in the force or something? We need to behave like we’re some kind of Jedi masters and follow our hearts on a wild fucking goose chase?”
Tired of her bullshit Rhys sighed. “And you have a better idea, do you? Or do you just want to spend this entire time criticising me for taking some kind of action?”
After she’d tied her other shoe, Larissa got to her feet and looked up the road in the direction they needed to head. She clearly didn’t have a better
Similar Books
