Dead Ahead Read Free

else, anyone you could consider as normal anyway: whatever normal is nowadays. But so long as I have him I have a purpose. He is too young to be seeing the things he does, it’s already changing him. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh. He used to be so happy, we both were. Now all we seem to have is survival, that and the road. We don’t know where we are headed. I guess we are searching for other survivors. Or somewhere safe where there aren’t any of these things trying to eat us. I try to keep up hope, for the wee man at least. But it has been so long now. I lost track of the days. I tried at first, but it seems so pointless now. Everything seems so pointless now. But still, we keep on moving.

Chapter
    1
    Popping the Heads
     
     
    His name was Alan, but he didn’t know that. He had had a nice life, a comfortable life, as a finance manager of a major insurance company in London. He had a nice house, a nice car and a nice family. But he didn’t know that either.
    He had always seen himself as someone you can depend on, one of the good guys. At least he was until that fateful train journey from London to Glasgow. He was on his way to yet another boring meeting with a group of bankers. Why they couldn’t have the meeting through conference call he didn’t know. But these were old school bankers, and that’s where the real money was.
    He hadn’t been feeling too good lately, but dependable old Alan would struggle through and produce the results. He had shaken off worse than this in the past. But from the moment he boarded the train he knew this was different, as soon as the doors shut he started to feel claustrophobic, then the cold sweats started. It wasn’t till they were approaching Carlisle that he started to cough violently. He felt he was trying to bring his whole chest up through his throat, and then it happened. He felt it as if in slow motion, rising from his stomach, past his lungs, gurgling up his gullet and through his balled up fist in front of his mouth. Blood shot through the small hole left in his hand, spraying over the woman sat in front of him; she had picked the wrong day to wear a white blouse.
    That’s when the screaming started, sounding distant in his numbed ears. He looked down at his trembling blood soaked hands. Bemused and wondering where it had all come from. He looked to his side to see an elderly man cowering from him in horror, droplets of blood smattered on his pale skin. He saw his lips move silently, not quite making out the words they were forming. Then he heard it.
    “Infected,” it came almost as a whisper at first, but soon the whole carriage was screaming it while scurrying away from him, “INFECTED!” Who? Not me? But all eyes were on him, eyes holding fear within them. Everyone backed away from him, no one knowing quite what to do.
    The ticket inspector was a big man and an ugly man too. He seemed too big to be doing such a job. He looked like a gorilla in a cheap suit, completely out of place on the express London to Glasgow. But the inspector had to be. The rail company had drafted in security teams to cover the lack of muscle on the trains. He approached Alan with caution. He knew his instructions, they were simple. Anyone showing signs of infection had to exit the train, immediately! This was an easy one, just a spurter, and he was still in a state of shock. The inspector pulled on his stout gloves and grabbed Alan by the collar, turning his head away so as not to get sprayed, then dragged him over to the door. He presses the door button twice, slowly, and they opened just enough to squeeze a body through. The pushback mechanism had been widened lately for just this occurrence. He moved Alan forward and gave him a push.
    It was then that Alan had a serene sense of calm, like he was floating in mid air, and for all intents and purposes he was, all for about three seconds. He was lucky, well, as lucky as he was going to get today. He crashed into a