Rise of the Dead

Chapter 17: The Dead Air

"What the hell did we do to deserve this?" ~ Tony Hayward

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We shut the car doors quietly and put on our seatbelts, the crisp morning air prickling my skin. I  scrutinise the map one more time before handing it back to Josh, the circles of red indicating our staggered stops along the way.  

"You ready to hit London?" I ask and they all reply enthusiastically, however somewhat stretched smiles fix onto their faces- forced and fake.

"Wait, does that mean we're not going to Bristol anymore?" Toby asks and Amelia nods.

"We decided that it's not worth the risk, Lara and Nicholas heard that it's completely run over by infected and the trigger-happy military which we all know is a bad combination, so we're going straight up to London," she explains, my eyes focused on the gas meter in front of me as I listen to her gentle voice.

I hear Lara and Nicholas' car behind me rumble to life and so I pull out of the garage cautiously, I drive along the coastal road next to the beach and sigh. I wish we could have stayed here longer, it brought back such good happy memories of when I was a little child and had weekends away with my parents and sister. Those were the good days, days where I hadn't a care in the world. My family- how are they dealing with this? Are they even all alive? I've put these thoughts away for so long, but lately, they have been catching up with me.

"How long will it take to get there?" Soph asks me and I debate her question mentally before slowly replying tiredly.

"Probably about two days, maybe less- depending on how long we drive and sleep for," I say, "we have to travel slower than I'd like but it's not worth the risk of a car accident."

"So if we just continued driving then we would be there by the end of today?" Amelia asks and I hum along to her words in agreement.

"Yes but we need rest and to gather energy for the trip so we've decided to stop off at a service station along the way, one where there's food and a place to sleep," I say with forced cheerfulness.

"Yes! I bet there are loads of fast food chains at the service station, I love these places!" Josh exclaims excitedly and I laugh quietly under my breath.

"No you love anywhere that sells unhealthy food, Josh," I retort and he sticks his tongue out childishly, a gesture that brings a smile to my lips.

"How far to the service station then?" Toby asks and I roll my eyes, are all boys obsessed with junk food?

"About, oh I don't know, an hour maybe two? If we don't run into any problems that is," I explain and the boys both nod their heads in synchronisation, making me giggle. I flick the CD on and hum along to the flowing rhythm of Imagine Dragons, occasionally singing along to the chorus of my favourites.

We drive along the countryside and I realise how truly beautiful it is, the fields all stretch for miles and there are rarely any towns. I don't understand how there are so many infected corpses, mind you when we do get to a town it's a decent size and we even passed through a small city a while back. I wish I lived here, an area so scenic and peaceful, though I don't know if you can really compare the rolling countryside to the eccentric coastal towns of Cornwall.

We drive for another hour before we are out of the countryside and I find this disappoints me slightly, on the one hand, we're closer to London, on the other it's less scenic. The towns we drive through are bleak and grim, the infected more rabid and violent; they hurl themselves at the car from time to time eliciting a scream from Sophie. We see numerous zombies ravaging helpless victims along the way, much more than amongst the fields where we saw one or two. It was mostly cows, sheep and horses back then, now it's a whole new meaning to the word animal.