บท 24: BARE NECESSITIES [5]
The zombie was still ten meters short of them when the van pulled away. Watching it in the wing mirror, Sam saw it try to put on an extra spurt of speed but succeed only in tripping over and sprawling headlong in the dust.
"Need to lose some weight, you fat fuck," he thought, then turned as Purna muttered, "Hell."
"What's wrong?" asked Xian Mei, who was sitting in the middle of the three front seats.
"We're almost out of gas," Purna said. She raised her eyes heavenward. "Thank you, God."
"Bound to be a gas station around here someplace," said Sam.
"There is," said Xian Mei. "There's one further along the main street, back the way we've just come."
Without hesitation, Purna hit the brakes and turned the steering wheel, performing a neat U-turn.
They were now heading back towards the fat, grey-bearded zombie, which appeared to be picking itself up almost ruefully, its bare legs and the front of its T-shirt covered in brown dust.
At their approach, the zombie held up its hands and lurched into their path, like a drunken late-night reveler trying to hail a cab.
Purna gave a casual jerk on the steering wheel to bypass it, but in a desperate attempt to satisfy its hunger, it flung itself at the van. There was a heavy thump, and the van shuddered slightly as the zombie impacted with the side of it and bounced off.
Once again glancing into his wing mirror as they sped away, Sam saw the zombie, its shattered arm now hanging at a bizarre angle, pick itself up from a spatter of its own blood and stagger hopelessly after them.
He had barely faced front again when two more of the infected appeared. One, a skinny, short-skirted black woman with spectacular legs, who had clearly been for a night on the town and had decided to head home a little too late, came running out of the open door of a nearby bar.
The other, a white boy of about seven wearing nothing but a pair of green shorts, was crouched in the gutter on the other side of the road, devouring what might have been a dead cat, but he jumped to his feet at their approach.
With the zombies heading at them from separate directions, it was impossible to avoid hitting both of them. An expression of calculating grimness on her face, Purna took the path of least resistance, veering to her left just as the boy took a running leap towards them.
Caught in mid-air, the boy smashed into the van and all but disintegrated like a flimsy bag of meat – which, in effect, is what he was. For a few seconds, the windscreen was coated in a thick spray of red, and Purna was driving blind.
Then, calmly, she flicked on the windscreen wipers and tugged the indicator lever towards her, activating the water jets.
Sam sat back with a groan as the wipers swept the majority of the mess away, shocked by the fact that the boy's violent death hadn't affected him more than it had.
What was it the psychologists called it? Combat fatigue?
With Xian Mei directing them, they reached the gas station without further incident. Opening the passenger door, Sam said, "I'll fill her up.
You guys watch out for more of those things."
The girls nodded, and Sam flipped open the cap on the side of the van and unhooked the gas hose.
For a second after squeezing the trigger, he felt sure the pump would either be locked or run dry.
But to his relief, the gas started to flow.
The tank was almost full when he happened to glance up and saw a face watching him through a small dusty window in the closed side door of the body shop attached to the gas station.
As soon as he established eye contact with it, the face disappeared with a wide-eyed expression of alarm.
"Hey!" he shouted.
Purna opened the driver's door and stuck her head out. "You OK?"
"There's someone in there," Sam said, nodding towards the body shop. "A regular person, I mean."
"They look friendly?" Purna asked.
"They looked scared," said Sam. "She looked scared. It was a girl. Twenty years old, maybe younger."
"I'll check it out," Xian Mei called, getting out of the van and walking across to the body shop. She knocked on the door.
"Hello, anyone in there?" When no one answered, she said, "We just wondered if you needed any help? We're not going to hurt you."
After a few seconds, there was a click, and the door opened, albeit no more than a few inches. A girl's voice, young and nervous, said, "What do you want?"
"We're just getting some gas," replied Xian Mei. "We'll pay you for it if you want. Are you OK in there?"
There was a pause, and then the girl said, "My papa's hurt."
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