Beth awoke with that blood taste in her mouth, a head full of fog and a plague of pains.
"Carl..." He scream ended in a gurgle and the urge to cough overwhelmed her. "Carl, please help."
Her cry for help turned into a blubber as she sobbed weakly in terror. Her breath was shallow and a pain was creeping up inside her chest. Worse still a vague memory came back like a tsunami, flooding her with grief as Carl haunted her from beyond. That sinking sick feeling was multiplied by Jace, who sat unmoving in the passenger seat, his chin resting lifelessly on his chest as blood and saliva dribbled onto the machete blade protruding from his gut.
Beth stared at the windscreen, trying hard not to think about what was beyond the cracked glass. The hole front and centre spoke for itself in Dan's absence, but it was enough to know her two companions were gone, without adding him to that list yet. Instead Beth sat awash, lost in emotion, everything had been taken from her in an instant and she struggled to find the will to go on.
It was a banging from the boot that woke Beth from the grief that crippled her. The thing that Dan had so roughly shoved into the small space was still alive, each thud sent a small shock up Beth's spine. It had gone in willingly or as best she could tell it had, but other than that too much had happened and it was too fractured in her mind for her to decide what to do. There had been a lot of talk and much of it had been confused.
Beth remembered yelling at Jace, her last words to him were spat in anger as Dan lent between the seats and said it was Carl's own fault. Jace had tried to warn her, his last words back to her had been a warning as he had seen what she hadn't. Reaching painfully for the seat belt latch, Beth untethered herself and ignoring the throbbing in her head, she reached for the door handle, letting herself out.
Steam rose from the bonnet as coolant pooled on the hot engine before hitting the ground and forming a small, green stream that trickled behind the front tire. The black blood that flowed with it was enough to tell Beth she had hit something already dead. A body on the road made her pause before she realized it was Dan. He lay face down on the bitumen, his arms twisted beneath his body and his leg at an odd angle.
Something moving at the front of the car caught Beth's attention as she moved around, steering well clear, not that it mattered, she was beyond outrunning anything that had the will to chase her. The pony, as it turned out to be, fared even worse. The impact had split the animal's gut, coating the grill in dark spray and letting loose intestines. It remained trapped beneath the vehicle, jammed between the engine bay and the road.
Ignoring the undead pony, Beth limped to Dan, her breath getting shorter by the minute. It was a waste of her precious time, Dan's face was unrecognizable from the harsh road. The sight dropped Beth to her knees as she dry retched, bringing up blood and bile of her own, the action further starving her of oxygen, making her head swim. Stumbling she made it back to the car only to sit on the back seat with the door open, trying not to cough.
The taste of blood was as thick as her breath was shallow, and a deep pain was spreading across Beth's body, her cells starving for oxygen. With a whimper she lay on the back seat, trying to ease the suffering and it worked a little, or maybe it was just the dizziness that was taking over that made her think that. Closing her eyes, Beth wished it would all be over already, as a deep dark endless sleep overtook her and she slipped into death, to the sound of beating fist like drums from within the boot.
