Smells Like Winter

29: Don't Look

Everyone in the car jolted awake.

"What the-" started Logan, who still hadn't taken notice of their new friend standing by the back window.

A crying, helpless sound was climbing up Maddy's throat, as if she was choking. She couldn't speak, so she was just pointing at the man -no, the monster- on her right like she was crazy, her eyes bulging.

Sia and Carter, who were also sat in the back, were the first ones to see him.

His skin was burnt and blistered, flesh swollen with rot, only a few strands of hair remaining on his otherwise bald head. And where his eyes should have been were two black pits, shadows writhing inside their unfathomable depths.

"Logan..." Carter's voice was warning, but not even the slightest bit scared.

Maddy, however, was terrified. And so was Sia, as far as she could guess from the whimper that escaped her parted lips. Mia's breath caught in her throat when she looked back. Logan turned back too, and Maddy followed his gaze as his blue eyes met the absent ones of that monster standing by Maddy's window.

That monster is human. He was once just like you, you know. That little voice in her head again, the one that didn't know when to shut up.

When the man screamed in pain and crashed his forehead on the glass, as if trying to break it with his own head, Maddy jumped back, hitting Carter's stone-hard chest, her breath uneven. A deep red, nearly black liquid smeared the window, blood splattered all over the glass.

Logan turned the key in the engine and stomped down on the gas pedal, mumbling something Maddy thought was a weak, "Here we go again."

The car rocketed forward, the engines roaring.

But only a few frenzied heartbeats later, Maddy heard a loud thud, and she flew forward as Logan pressed on the breaks. She ran a hand through her unruly hair, which was forming a curtain in front of her glistening eyes, and went to look forward again and ask Logan why on that green earth he had stopped. But her words died on her lips when she beheld another man with bloated, red and black skin and blooming spots of blisters all over his bloodied body.

On the windscreen. Snarling like a wild animal, showing his teeth threateningly. His gums were black. He howled and then his fists met the glass of the front window, his knuckles so damaged that Maddy could see his bones showing under his scorched, peeled-off flesh.

"Logan! Do something!" Mia yelled and Maddy froze at the sound of her voice. She was crying. Mia was crying, and Maddy couldn't help but remember the lost expression on her face, the far-away look in her eyes when she had shared with them how that infected man had attacked her back in London, only a few months before.

Logan stepped on the accelerator once more, and the car spurted forward, the tyres squeaking along with Sia and weeping along with Mia. Maddy, on the other hand, couldn't make a sound, her throat closed, clogged up by terror.

Logan gave the car an abrupt turn, in the hope that the motion would send the infected man flying in the air, away from the windscreen he was still punching with one hand. But his other hand was gripping the side of the car firmly, and the sudden move of the Ford only made him waver a bit on top of the car's front.

"Son of a bitch," swore Logan, his knuckles flexing white on the steering wheel.

Crack.

Maddy almost fainted. Oh no. No no no no no.

A huge split went down the entire windscreen. The man lifted another clenched fist above his burnt face, ready to smash it onto the fragile glass.

"Hold on tight!" shouted Logan, and Maddy somehow knew he was about to do something really, really stupid.