Chapter 5

“Dammit! Hello?!?!” Meagan screamed into the phone, “Elise are you still there?”

Okay, stay calm. No reason to panic, Elise said they were giraffes. Think Meagan! How is a giraffe different than a zombie really?

She pulled over onto the side of the westbound lane and this time she noticed a few other crazy people headed towards the city. But they weren’t driving offensively; this was all defence. Something in Petesborough was literally driving people out. The cars drove too erratically, like rats evacuating a sewer. These people were definitely running from something.

Meagan hopped out and opened her trunk. She removed the thick grey tarp her father made her – that looked exactly like the bottom of a trunk – and opened a large black case marked Peavey. “I always knew guitar lessons would come in handy,” she muttered as she dialled in the combination. She had only actually attended three lessons when she was seventeen, and she did show quite promise – until it occurred to her she might actually be seen playing by someone – but she was more interested in the highly secure packing most instruments and amplifiers came in anyway.

She popped the case open and surveyed the contents. Crowbar, GOOD bag (or Get Out Of Dodge), liquefied food she ordered off that bizarre Republican website, and most importantly... the crossbows. Maybe zombies weren’t real, but crazy serial killers were and for whatever reason, crossbows were perfectly legal in Ontario. So she’d bought three of them as soon as she turned eighteen.

“Who’s crazy NOW, mom?” she said, but her triumph was short lived. Behind her came the familiar sound of burning, screeching rubber followed by breaks, and then the inevitable shattering of glass.

She squinted against the sun to see a young couple shove open the door of their Prius about fifty feet behind her. The boy stumbled over to the girl as she hobbled to the curb, and Meagan gave a fleeting thought to just completely fuck off before they saw all of her supplies.

But instead, she grabbed a fistful of granola bars and some water, slammed the trunk shut, pocketed the crowbar, and took off for the kids.

“Hey!” Meagan shouted, waving her arms as much as she could. “Are you guys all right?”

They looked up at her, their eyes completely glazed over. “I, I think so...” the girl replied. “Who are you?”

Meagan stopped ten feet short of the curb. She pointed a shaky hand at the boy and said, “You’re bleeding.”

“I know that. Do you think you could give us a ride to the hospital?”

“...No, I’m sorry. Here just take these. I’m sorry.” Meagan tossed the water at them and slid her crowbar out of her jeans for easier mobility and turned at once to hightail it back to her car. The couple shouted and swore after her, threatening all kinds of bodily harm but she knew they would never catch her.

The boy wasn’t just bleeding.

His face was practically melting, as if his body was rejecting the skin. And the girl didn’t have a scratch on her.

Jesus, Meagan thought. Whatever had sliced that kid open happened before the accident, and it certainly wasn’t getting into her car.

She tossed the crowbar into the passenger side and peeled off the highway, watching in her rear-view for the couple. But they had obviously given up, or were hopefully using her water to tend to their wounds.

As she drove away Meagan had no idea that the “ailment” the boy had suffered was now, quite literally, eating his girlfriend.