When we finally haul Chloe onto the bus, clad in a red stained parka and sticky snow boots to match, she's crying. And not just in a one-tear, shoulder's slightly shaking sort of way, either; the girl is a mess, her nerve wracking sobs filling the otherwise silent vehicle around us.
Luke raises an eyebrow at me and I try not to shrug. I get that he's confused- I would be too, if I'd just woken up to a fellow classmate of mine having a breakdown in the middle of the bus aisle- but he could at least have some compassion. Ask her what's wrong, maybe. Because if he doesn't, then I'll have to, and I'm not very good at situations like this.
"Chloe?" I start silently, unsure of where to put my hand. When I settle on her shoulder, she shudders, her entire body flinching away from me like my palms are red hot and she's ice.
Which, she might as well be. She's as cold as ever and trudging through that blizzard outside did her absolutely no favours. "Chloe, hey, it's alright. It's just me—"
"Don't go out there!" she screams, and it's only just now that I see where Luke's gone off to. He's at the doors again, a hand on the button that opens them. "I mean it, Luke! Don't!"
"Okay, okay, relax," he frowns, walking away from the button. I watch as he shoves his hands in his back pockets, "What's wrong with you, Marshall?"
"And is that-" I gesture to her parka, to the matted fur of her ruined boots.
I've seen it like this before. Sticky and drying and consistently darkening, a maroon colour that eventually settles into a sickly black. When my older sister would hole herself up in her room for days at a time, she used to hang up pictures of medical patients who'd been cut up and investigated; morbid notes for her Criminal Psychology course back when she was at Uni. I don't know how she went to bed every night facing those images. I can barely look at it now.
Chloe's head hangs low.
I give her a moment before speaking. I try to sound as confident as I can, but I don't think it's working, "Chloe, what's going on? What happened?"
"Y-You tell me," she stutters, desperately trying to wipe at the smeared mascara on her face. Even while crying, she looks good; in a totally offset, dishevelled way. "I was just in there, g-getting coffee, when out of nowhere there was screaming and people running and-"
"Did somebody rob the place?" my blood runs cold, thinking of my classmates and how many out of the thirty that went in there survived. It's livid, a dark thought, but the amount of blood splattered all over the sobbing blonde in front of me hints that it's not a light bodycount.
"N-No," she sniffles, her eyes darting between me, Luke, and the door. Luke himself stays silent, but he shifts his weight from the foot facing the door to the other; reassuring both of us that he won't make the move to open it anytime soon. "No, it wasn't like that at all. There were no guns or knives, it just happened,"
"What happened?"
She turns to me, and I see the seriousness plastered all over her face. She's only ever given me this look once; several months ago, when I was crying over my mother and she told me that it would be okay, that she would have my back no matter what. And she stuck to that promise; meaning, she wasn't lying then. But I find myself wishing she was lying now.
"Everybody's dead, Sophie," she croaks out, "And they're not staying that way."
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I've been watching Luke pace the floors for the past ten minutes now and a part of me wonders if he believes her. I don't, obviously- things like that don't happen in real life. Your classmates pulling up to some creepy old diner and getting hit with a Walking Dead virus doesn't happen in real life. The fact that Luke Hemmings- the boy I least expect to take Chloe seriously- believes her, that just doesn't happen in real life. Yet he's here, and he's real, and he hasn't said anything since.
I take a bite of the granola, only just now realising how hungry I actually am. Outside, the storm is only getting worse and worse, piles and piles of the stuff overtaking the thick blanket of it already on the ground. I've been religiously wiping away at the condensation on the window, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the cafe beyond. But there's nothing.
Finally, I feel something heavy plop onto the seat next to me. I know it's not Chloe; she's at the back, fiddling with her phone and trying her best to get some sort of signal. Once she does, I don't know what our options are. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to call 911 for some hoax High School zombie prank.
"Believe her?" Luke asks me, his blue eyes twinkling, eyebrow raised quizzically. As if on instinct, I press my back up against the window, having never been this close to him before.
I shrug, though I already know my answer. "Do you?"
"Nah,"
"Are you sure?"
He pauses. I can feel a chill run up my spine, "That's terrifying,"
"I was lying."
"You're insane,"
"Look, what else would it be?" he murmurs, making sure that Chloe can't hear us. Though I don't think that's a problem; we're quite far from the back of the bus.
"A lot of things, Luke,"
"Like what?" he asks. I open my mouth to answer, but he speaks again, "What kind of robbery- or fight- or hold up, results in that much blood? She didn't even get hit, Hayes. Yet her coat's covered in the stuff. We didn't even hear any gunshots,"
Maybe it had a silencer, I think. Maybe they used a knife. Maybe Chloe accidentally slipped and fell into a pool of it on her way out.
Maybe it isn't even blood. Maybe it's just paint- the building's red, right? Maybe they had some new work done to the place like, very recently. Very very very recently.
Maybe, just maybe, it's anything other than what she says it is.
"Have you been watching the news lately?" Luke then asks me, his lips pursed, his eyes trained on me. This is the longest conversation we have ever had, and if you'd told me a year ago that it would be about potential zombies and news info that I'd failed to pick up on, I would have laughed.
"No," I say honestly.
"They discovered an epidemic. Not too long ago, it happened around Long Beach. Someone on the Queen Mary went wild, started attacking everyone around her-"
"And you call that a zombie outbreak?"
"She ripped a woman's vocal chords out, Hayes."
"Maybe she was just bad at singing,"
"With her mouth. And then she ate them,"
I cringe, "Oh."
"And that's not all. There's been loads of stories just like that, most of them across New York," he stops again, looking at me from the corner of his eye, "Don't you watch the news?"
And again, I'm lost for words. I stopped tuning into that channel once I found out about my mother through one of the reports. The familiar headlines and voices bring back memories I'd rather suppress, but I don't want Luke to know this.
"Not really."
"If you did, what Chloe was going on about earlier would have made a lot more sense," he breathes. Then, as if remembering that we literally know nothing about each other, he holds his left hand out. "I'm Luke, by the way. My favourite colour's blue."
"I know who you are," I say slowly, amused by the second part of his introduction. I never would have expected the almighty Luke Hemmings to act like this. But it's a good icebreaker; my father used to say that a person's favourite colour is the thing that nobody asks about but everybody should know. "I sat next to you in Maths that one year. I'm Sophie, and we have the same favourite colour,"
"I know you, too."
"You do?" I question. It's understandable that everyone knows Luke; he's your typical mystery, and every stereotypical High School has one. Sort of like a staple. I, however, am very much a crowd-blender; I dodge attention, and in return nobody notices me. That's really the only way we differ; otherwise, we're both as irrelevant as the other.
"Yeah," he shrugs, and that's all he gives me before taking his phone out and standing up from his seat. "I'm going to try and get some signal, help Chloe out back there. You think you can keep an eye on the cafe for the time being?"
I nod. I mean, I can barely see it from where I'm sitting, but my butt's numb from the same position I've been in so I think it'll do me some good to change seats and park my ass further up the bus.
Luke gives me a small smile, using the seats as guidance to make his way to the back. I stand up myself, groaning at the sound of my bones clicking, before turning to walk to the front.
And that's when the first hand slaps the window of the seat I'd just been sitting in; bloody, pink and slimy, leaving a trail of red liquid in it's wake as it slithers down the plexiglass.
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HIHI IVE JUST STARTED UNI AND I LOVE IT SO FUCKING MUCH WOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWO
I love yous all!! I hope you liked this chapter and I hope you're all having a wonderful day today. Yous mean the world to me and I aPPRECIATE THE FUCK OUT OF YOU<3
Tale care!
-M xxx