In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

picture tufts of hair wedged between the mechanical joints, eyes dangling down by connective tissue from where the metal parts met.

With the windscreen wipers fighting to clear the blood, smearing the sticky mess left and right, I could feel the van slowing. The metal complained as I tried to relax back into the seat, tried to let the pressure of my blood release, only to spike again as each new horror presented.

The children were the worst, my imagination fixing panic on their features; setting their hands grasping for parents, instead of their expressions devoid of any reaction. I knew they didn’t take notice even as they hit the metal, even as what life remained expired. If you could call it life.

I took a great gasp, imagining nieces and nephews I’d barely spoken with in the past few years, their perfectly formed features showing no sign of affliction, their veins buried deep and out of sight, not raised to the surface, black and bulging despite what my eyes were telling me.

A hand gripped my left. Alex to my right shot a look as I gasped for air, hoping it was my imagination alone which felt our momentum slowing with each hit.

We were slowing. I looked to Alex, then to Jordain to confirm. Neither of them were able to hide the fact from their features as we each tried to look on and beyond the sea of creatures which seemed unending.

“What’s your name?” I shouted out above the din of each impact. The complaint of metal. Of plastic. The fabric of the van seeming so fragile.

I didn’t look as he kept quiet, just repeated. “What’s your name, your first name? It can’t end this way without knowing who you are?”

When he still didn’t reply, I twisted for a look to see his expression narrowed, eyebrows heavy as he caught my glance.

“Don’t you know your name?” I said, nervous laughter spilling up from my throat.

Alex gave a flurry of air from her lungs and I turned to see her lips set in a smile as she shot me a look. But the smile soon dropped as she stared back through the windscreen.

I turned to see Jordain’s eyebrows even further down his face, his weathered skin lined across his forehead.

“Liam,” he replied, his white teeth on show as a smile soon parted his lips.

Each of us flinched back to the windscreen, rocking against our seats as a dark shape disappeared at the top of the glass to leave behind a great crack radiating where it had hit.

I renewed my grip on Liam’s hand, wishing I could hold Alex’s in the other, but the tension alone caused pain to pulse up and along my right arm. With the last hit, the van seemed to have slowed more than ever.

There had been hope before. We’d known the crowd of undead couldn’t have gone on long enough for us to slow to a stop, but now with the path unending it felt as if we were only moments away from the worst situation.

Just as my mood sank lower than I thought I could recover from, I saw light, saw spaces between the bodies and their grasping hands. Air pulled into my lungs and I raised myself to squint through the sheen of smeared blood.

I was right; the crowd was thinning. I could see the darkness of the road between and we had more than enough speed to carry us through, to knock the bodies to the side. To roll over those who wouldn’t get out of the way.

I gripped Liam’s hand tight, pulsing my fingers and nodding towards the windscreen in a hope he’d seen the same and would not take the way out his colleague had. Yet, at least.

I turned to Alex. Her face dropped as I caught her view and flinched back to the screen, but nothing had changed.

Our view was still clearing; we were coming out of the danger.

Then I felt it. Felt the rumble of the engine, the hiccup of our movement despite no impact from outside; despite having cleared the last creature Alex just couldn’t avoid.

The engine coughed a second time and I twisted around to Liam, letting go of his grip, hoping someone would say something as the engine stuttered again.

Blood drained from my head as on the fourth pause it didn't recover and we slowed, rolling in the silence.

102

It didn’t matter which way she turned the wheel or how many times the key clicked in the ignition, the engine wouldn’t pay attention to Alex’s command. We soon travelled too slow to outrun anything nimbler than a tortoise who’d just woken from the winter.

Heavy breath filled the cab as those we’d barged our way through gathered back around. Their hands slapped, fingers clawed, scratching against our thin metal skin. A rising pressure gripped my empty stomach and a dread expanded deep down inside as the windscreen filled with faces, jaws slack, bloodied teeth bared and broken.

For the first time since we’d stopped, I glanced to Alex and her stern expression toward the gathering crowd. I knew she wasn’t really looking. I knew she had something else on her mind.

I turned to Jordain and the blood drained from my face as I watched his hands tracing the outline of the pistol he’d placed on his lap.

“No,” I said and reached over to push his fingers from the gun, then turned to lean across Alex and peer at the dashboard with the lights of all colours flooding the view.

The fuel gauge hovered high above empty. It could only have been damage to the front, the radiator maybe, which had been too much. Still the question slipped from my mouth.

“What’s wrong with it?”

Alex shook her head, looking down to the rainbow of colours staring back, none of which said anything other than