Less Than 3%

Chapter 4 - Congestion

There were no keys in the ignition, or in the sun visor. I was just about to tell Dean and Maggie that we'd have to find another car, when Maggie began to wave a set of keys 3 inches from my face.
"Don't scratch her."
She said, laughing at the same time and looking back through the window at the two bullet holes and the smashed window.
Me and Dean both laughed a little and I started up the engine.
"Where are we going then Jay?"
Dean asked.
"To find a place to set up a new home, and see if there are anymore people like us.. alive."
I answered. I figured we should head along the motorway so I had to ask one more question.
"Maggie, do you know what time it was that most of the people started to.. you know."
"Yes it was around five o'clock in the morning, I remember being awake all night after what had happened. Some places went sooner than others, which is probably why that driver killed my husband, they probably died at the wheel and their muscles relaxed onto the pedal. The cure never came to my house that next day, I'm guessing that the people administering it knew what was going on everywhere else.. but they never told any of us. The village all died a fortnight later without knowledge of anything going wrong, until the same morning they would die. People who were up early enough, were the only ones to find out they were about to die, as one newspaper company managed to escape the government's secret silencing. I was the only person left. So I know you're asking because of the motorway and how busy it would've been, but the best answer I can give you is that some places may be empty.. some may not."
It was difficult listening to Maggie open up, but it's the harsh reality of it all. Dean and I never even had a second to think about all the people we had lost. We were only both twenty and none of us had a partner or kids or anything but we still had family. A family that was now gone, luckily we got to say our goodbyes before we left for the trip and one day we knew we would see them again.

We left the village, a distant image of it remained in the rear view mirror. The newspaper pages flew from beneath the car wheels, spiralling out of control before settling back down. Strange really, I can imagine that the world was exactly like those pages as everything was falling to shit. All three of us had no idea if there was anybody else as lucky as Dean, Maggie or Myself. Our main objective was to try and find at least a glimmer of hope, that not all was lost.

As I drove away from the village, I couldn't help but wonder what else we'd be faced with. The speed at which peoples lungs shut down must've been pretty instantaneous, judging by how many bodies there are, just laying around in the streets. We passed car after car and saw slightly decaying corpses either slumped onto their steering wheel or their forehead pressed against their door window. It was a morbid sight and one that sent chills down my spine, but none of those compare to the bus we drove past.

The bus had clearly ploughed into a tree and must've been transporting people from the same area because there was a lot of condensation on the windows, which were also fly encrusted.
"We were so isolated, we had no idea.."
Dean said in a low voice. It seemed as though he felt survivors guilt. Nobody would have thought that anything like this could happen.
"There isn't anything you could've done dear, once the cures went out, the damage was already done."
Maggie tried to comfort Dean as she turned around in her seat to face him.

Towards the back of the bus I could see what appeared to be dark hair, stuck to the condensation. I assume that there were quite a few people that were dead on the bus and the condensation was due to the bodies decaying in such a small area. As we passed it, it felt as though time went slowly and all of our eyes were glued to the fly ridden rot hole.

Pressing on through what was becoming a vehicle graveyard, the density of parked up vehicles began to thicken. Since we left the bus, Dean had strict orders to rest by Maggie, and Maggie had fallen asleep on her own. I guess she felt a little more settled with the chaos that had littered the streets. After all she had been there from day one. We had reached a point about five miles from the border of Scotland until we hit a roadblock. There must have been a sort of border control system in place, concrete road barriers stretched out the entire width of the road and many bodies were scattered along the floor. This was no roadblock. This had become a graveyard. The stench began to creep through the air conditioning of the car it had gotten that bad. I quickly closed up the air conditioning and began rummaging through the glove compartment for something to cover the remaining holes. I pushed odd bits and pieces to the side and stumbled upon an old photograph as well as some tissues. Maggie had awoken to the noise of me rummaging and reached out gently towards the photograph. I began to plug the holes up with the tissue that I had found, when I turned around to Maggie and saw a tear forming in her eyes.
"Are you okay?"
I asked, placing my hand on hers.
She turned her hand so it was on top of mine and gripped it lightly.
"This photo, I had no idea he had it in there."
She continued after a deep breath
"This was taken two days after our wedding, if you look closely you can see a coffee stain on his pants."
She let out a slight chuckle underneath some tears before she proceeded to explain.
"It was from a coffee he bought for me about twenty minutes before the picture was taken. It was being brought to our table in a coffee shop and I swung my bag up off the floor. I wanted to get my lipstick out so I could doll myself up more in the bathroom. Only thing is, when I swung the bag, it hit the waiter directly in the.. unspeakables, and the coffee was thrown out of his hand all over my husband's crotch. I felt so embarrassed, he stood straight up and poured a jug of water onto his pants to stop the burning. I tried too hard to hold back the laughter but he was worse than me. He was so gentle and kind, he always saw the funny side of things. The waiter looked both in pain and mortified at what had happened, but my husband and I were in stitches."
I could see how much love they had for each other, it was purely admirable. To have that much of an attachment to somebody and lose them, it must've felt awful.