Infection Z (Book 2) by Ryan Casey

regretted it instantly. The pack of zombies was so dense that it was filling up the road. He could just about make out the abandoned Range Rover through their mass, but it was barely noticeable.
    So many of them.
    Flesh spewing out of their red-raw limbs.
    Maggots biting into their decaying skulls.
    All chasing, all approaching.
    “Shit,” Hayden said, as he kept on running, kept on holding his sister’s hand. “We … Sis, we need to go into the woods. Need to try and lose them.”
    “But they came from the woods,” Clarice said.
    Hayden looked at the trees on his left. He could see movement, rustling. A sign that more zombies were preparing to join their companions. Readying themselves to hunt.
    Then he looked to the right and he saw the branches and the leaves were still.
    “I think we can go right,” Hayden said, cold sweat dripping down his face. “We can go into the woods and lose them if—”
    “But what about Newbie?”
    Hayden looked ahead at Newbie. Looked at him striding away. And a part of Hayden saw himself in Newbie. He saw himself making his stupid, life-threatening decisions when he’d gone back to the bombarded Preston to try and save his family.
    He saw himself, and yet he saw exactly what those decisions had done for him.
    Those decisions had saved his sister.
    “He’s made his choice. There’s nothing we can say to change his mind now.”
    Hayden gripped Clarice’s hand tighter.
    “But … we can’t just …”
    “I’m sorry, Sis,” Hayden said. And he was. He really was. Newbie was a good man. He was a man who’d been there for him all this time, except for their occasional spats that could be forgiven in the circumstances.
    But he was a man with a mission of his own. A man with a journey, a quest, to pursue.
    A quest that he had to see out alone, because following him was just too much danger for Hayden to risk putting himself in right now.
    Way too much risk putting Clarice in.
    “Not too late to take a right,” Hayden shouted. “You … you know where we’ll be. You know where we’ll be if you need us.”
    Newbie didn’t turn around. He didn’t nod. He just kept on moving, kept on speeding up the road.
    Hayden’s stomach sank, but he couldn’t let himself be sentimental anymore.
    He tightened his grip on his sister’s hand and pulled her to the trees at the right of the road.
    As he moved towards the evergreen leaves, he prepared to be swarmed in the clutches of zombies he hadn’t seen hiding away, waiting to pursue their prey.
    He held his breath as he sprinted at the trees.
    Took one final look at Newbie.
    Then the leaves and the branches scratched against Hayden’s face and the woods surrounded him.
    The pair of them ran through the trees in no real direction and with no real end point in mind. Just getting away from the zombies was a good enough goal in itself. Hayden’s shoes snapped against loose twigs, splashed through thick mud, and he lost his balance a few times and almost dragged Clarice down with him.
    But they were alive. They were alive, and the sounds of the zombies’ gasps were getting gradually less pronounced behind them.
    Hayden slowed down his running when he was pretty certain the rotting stench was far enough out of his senses. He let go of his sister’s hand and rested his palms on his knees. His heart pounded, and a crippling stitch gnawed at his stomach and chest.
    He could hear his sister panting, puffing beside him. And although she sounded like she was exhausted, like everything was a struggle, it was just a relief to hear her breathing.
    Hayden never let go of how lucky he was. Never.
    “So I guess we’ll have to find a diverted route to Warrington?” Clarice said.
    Hayden looked up at the sky. He was pretty certain they hadn’t veered too far off the track, but he couldn’t know for definite. “I … I think if we head west from here we’ll be parallel with the road again,” he said. “We just … we just have to stay quiet.