Infection Z 3 Read Free Page A

what you do, Hayden.”
    “We really do,” Karen said. But her smile was too wide, too false to take seriously. Hayden knew it, Matt knew it, and Hayden knew that Matt knew he knew it and vice versa.
    Okay, cutting through the complicated way of putting it: Karen could be a bit of a bitch where other people were concerned.
    “I’ll have a word with Tim when we eat later. Hear Martha’s cooking up a delicious—”
    “Wait,” Hayden said, lifting a hand. “Let me guess. Baxter’s Chicken Soup?”
    Matt patted Hayden’s shoulder. His half-smile widened into a full one, and it was as if the confrontation that occurred just moments ago had faded into distant memory. “Tomato soup and ready-packed toast, fresh from the dusty, damp cellar. Featuring cobwebs and rat shit.”
    “Sounds delicious,” Hayden said, his stomach turning in the complete opposite reaction to hunger.
    Matt chuckled and returned to his wife’s side, grabbing a soaked shirt from the icy cold water basin and rinsing it out. Later, they’d start a fire and dry out the clothes over it. Laundry, cooking—the Riversford group were a well-oiled machine. They’d made serious progress in the last ten days. There was still something dreamlike about it all, though. Like they were just playing house and someone was going to appear out of thin air and rescue them from this eternal struggle. The fantasy.
    There was the knowledge, too. The knowledge that this place wouldn’t last forever simply because it couldn’t last forever. No place lasted forever. Something would happen. Something would lead the group astray like they were destined to be led for the rest of their aimless lives. And it was strange, for Hayden, because he realised now just how similar his life was before the rise of the undead to now. Life really was just an endless loop of waking and drinking and eating and smoking and video-gaming and napping and takeaway-ing and …
    On and on and on, without an end goal, without direction.
    And sure, he didn’t have video games anymore, but in terms of profession he was as much a layabout as he used to be.
    But the beauty of his old life was that he couldlive without direction through choice. He had the option to live some other way, but he chose a life of booze and weed.
    Now he had no choice but to sit around and do fuck all, he wanted something else. He wanted to see the world. He wanted to stand at the top of the Rockefeller building and look out over Central Park on a gorgeous, blue-skied day like he’d seen in so many movies. He wanted to step inside the Coliseum in Rome and feel the adrenaline kick of a million spectators before him.
    He wanted to live .
    Instead, he was being forced to survive.
    “I should head off, anyway,” Hayden said. “See you for food in …” He started to say “in an hour,” but he knew how futile the suggestion of time was now. Sure, the clocks kept on ticking and the days kept on turning. But eventually the batteries would stop. Calendars would rot, just like bodies. Time would go on, but human perception of it wouldn’t.
    “See you for food when we smell it,” Matt said, a chuckle in his voice.
    Hayden nodded. “When we smell it.”
    He turned away from Matt and Karen and stepped out of the hangar.
    When he saw Sarah standing in front of him, he knew from the whitewashed look on her face that something was wrong.
    He knew from the glassiness of her bright blue eyes that something terrible had happened.
    “What—”
    “You need to see this, Hayden,” Sarah said, her voice shaky and quivery. “You—you need to see this.”
    It was only then that he saw the blood on her hands.

Four
    I n the three weeks since the start of the outbreak, Hayden McCall had seen a lot of horrifying things.
    But few things unsettled him more than what he saw in the yard outside the hangar.
    The first thing he saw was Amy, Martha and Newbie’s daughter. At first, Hayden thought she was smiling or laughing like she always