A flash of movement higher up caught his eye. He looked down at the road when he lost control momentarily and clipped the curb, but then looked back and saw there was someone gesturing wildly at him from the top of the gatehouse. There were two of them now, a man and a woman, and they were pointing furiously at the wooden gate below.
Driver accelerated again, lining the bus up as best he could and hurtling toward the gate at optimum speed. On either side of the road now he saw that many of the dead were little more than piles of dismembered remains—heaps of broken bodies which looked to have been shunted out of the way in the same way a plow might clear a path through a fresh fall of winter snow. The bus juddered as he reached the wooden bridge before the gate, and he felt himself beginning to panic. What to do? Should he pull up and wait for the gate to open and risk being surrounded, or maintain this speed and just hope for the best? Up ahead, his question was answered as the two halves of the gate began to slowly part. Driver gripped the steering wheel tight, kept his foot down hard on the accelerator, and flew through the narrow gap before skidding to a halt in the middle of a vast courtyard filled with vehicles, caravans, equipment and … people! Healthy people. Living people!
He didn’t move for a while. He couldn’t. Exhausted, he switched off the engine and slumped forward over the steering wheel, his heart thumping so hard he thought it might be about to burst from his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as a handful of corpses which had slipped through the gate with him were rounded up and destroyed. Some of the people he saw were hurriedly putting on hazmat suits; others wore leathers like Jas, Ian Harte, Greg Hollis and the rest of them used to wear. Some concentrated on getting the gate shut; others dealt with the disposal and removal of the dead. He was transfixed by this unexpected display of organization and cooperation.
A sudden knock on the door of the bus startled Driver. He sat up quickly and let a tall, clean, and remarkably well-presented man come on board.
“You okay?” the man asked.
“Think so,” Driver mumbled, not entirely sure.
“My name’s Jackson,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Anthony Kent,” he replied as they shook. “Tony. But most folks just call me Driver.”
“Most folks? There’s more of you?”
“There were. Probably still are.”
“We’ll get you some food, get you cleaned up, then you can tell me more,” he said, gesturing for Driver to follow him off the bus. Driver did as he was told. He looked around him in disbelief.
“What is this place?”
“Home,” Jackson replied.
8
Several hours later, Bob Wilkins ushered Driver into another part of the castle. Once part of a small museum space used as an onsite classroom by visiting schools, its size and relative comfort had resulted in it being adopted for use as a communal lounge by the current occupants of the ancient building. Driver waited in the doorway, feeling unexpectedly nervous, and Bob gently pushed him through. There were four other people in the room already, and he felt like a definite outsider.
“Come on in, love,” Sue Preston said to him as she carried in a tray of food and drinks from the adjoining café and kitchen. “No standing on ceremony here.”
Driver did as she said and walked a little farther, stopping again when he caught sight of his reflection in a window. He had to look twice to be sure it really was him. He’d almost forgotten what he looked like. Since arriving at the castle earlier he’d managed to shave for the first time in weeks, and one of the others—a lady called Shirley—had hacked at his long hair with a pair of scissors. He still wore his bus driver’s uniform overcoat as he had almost every day since the beginning, partially because it was warm, but mainly because he didn’t have anything else.
Jackson was sitting with another man in front of a paraffin heater which glowed a comforting orange. Even from here Driver could feel the heat it was producing. It was warmer than anything he’d felt in weeks. Jackson looked around, then beckoned him over, pulling up another chair. Driver sat down, still feeling unexpectedly uncomfortable.
“This is Kieran,” Jackson said, introducing the man sitting on Driver’s right. “Kieran, this is Tony.”
“I prefer Driver.”
“How’re you doing?” Kieran asked as they shook hands.
“Been better, been worse,” he replied, giving little away.
“Smoke?” Jackson offered.
“No thanks. Bad for you.”
“Coffee?” Sue asked, leaning between them with a tray.
“Now that I won’t say no to,” Driver said quickly, taking a mug and reveling in its warmth and its bitter taste. He sipped the drink and stared at the glowing heater, trying to work out how he’d managed to get from yesterday’s nightmare to here.
“Something wrong?”
Driver shook his head and glanced over at Jackson.
“Just doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Sitting in a place like this, with people like you, enjoying a drink in front of the fire like nothing’s happened.”
“If therw he?s somewhere else you’d rather be…”
“No,” Driver said quickly, “of course not.”
He drank more of his coffee—almost hiding behind it—and remembered the people he’d left behind at the hotel. He wondered what state they were in right now. Assuming, of course, they were still alive.
“It takes folks a few days to get used to being here,” Jackson said. “It’s a bit of a culture shock. Thing is, the castle is safer than most other places.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“No, seriously, it is. The dead just can’t get up here, apart from the few that make it up the road. The only downside of being somewhere as good as this, is it gives you time to think.”
“Tell me about it,” Driver said quietly. “I’ve been doing too much of that myself recently.”
“Anything you want to share?”
Driver paused before answering.
“This time yesterday,” he eventually said, feeling like he was confessing, “I was sitting in that bus out there, freezing cold, wondering if there was any point going on. I didn’t have a bloody clue what I was going to do next. The night before that I spent hiding in a café. The night before that I spent sitting in a truck. Before that it was a hotel…”
“So what point are you making?”
“You just get used to running, don’t you? You forget how to stop.”
“Well, maybe it’s time we all got used to stopping again,” Jackson said, putting a reassuring hand on Driver’s shoulder.
“It’s been the best part of two months since all this started,” Kieran said, his tone a little harsher than Jackson’s, abrasive almost. “You’ve told us about the last few days. Where were you before that?”
“Spent most of the time in a block of flats.”
“And why did you leave?”
“Same reason anyone leaves anywhere these days. A few thousand dead folk outside the front door that didn’t want to leave us alone.”
“Us?”
“That’s right.”
“So what happened to the others?”