My stomach dropped, and I nodded. I’d watched countless clashes over the past few days, but there was something off about this one. They weren’t fighting like they wanted to win a confrontation. It wasn’t panic or fear driving them. They weretrying to end one another, as if the anger might destroy them from the inside.
And we were only seeing snippets of what was going on around us. There weren’t enough reporters left to cover it all.
What if it stretched between major cities, too? Were the highways safe? The two-hour drive to the farm with Sadie might be dangerous. Too dangerous.
Then another thought hit like a sucker punch. “Ava’s landing and walking straight into this—and she has to make it all the way back here.”
She was younger than Sadie. All alone. What were her chances if this kind of thing was even wider spread than we knew?
Laura was too caught up in the fighting to look my way. “Don’t even think about going out to find her,” she said. “That’s a whole needle-in-a-haystack situation if I ever saw one.”
She was right, but it didn’t kill the urge. “I’m not going anywhere until Sadie’s recovered.”
“Good. There’s no point in leaving a stable situation for the complete unknown. You’re too pretty to be getting into fights.”
Her attempt to lift the mood had me smiling, and I tuned into the news again. The camera panned across the crowd, the condition of the men deteriorating in the short time I’d been distracted. The people on the ground were still lying in the same positions—dead or alive was anyone’s guess.
No one was coming to help. Bystanders watched. Some leaned forward and appeared to be yelling, but most were unwilling to risk diving into the brutality.
I linked my hands on top of my head, watching the last glimpses of humanity die live on TV. The only part I could be thankful for was knowing Sadie had escaped this version of the virus.
“Did you see that?” Laura dropped the remote and grabbed the sleeve of my puffer jacket, jabbing her finger at the screen. “Look. The guy near the shop doorway. He’s not dead.”
I followed the direction she’d pointed, trying to latch on to a sliver of hope in a shitty situation, but the guy hadn’t moved since the coverage started, and there were still no signs of life.
“That one? In front of the jewellery shop?” I asked.
“He moved, I swear. Watch.”
Matted grey hair. A streak of blood across his temple. He’d curled up in the fetal position, his shirt ripped open down the back and one shoe missing. My pulse thudded in my ears, and I willed him to do something. Then his socked foot twitched twice, and his arm lifted before it dropped back to the ground.
Shit. Hewasalive. “He needs a paramedic,” I said.
“Or at least someone to help him up. Everyone’s just standing around watching, like it’s the freaking UFC or something.”
The reporter stopped commentating on the violence and pointed out the same detail that had caught our attention, his rapid-fire words dialling up the drama.
When the man’s head jerked backward at an unnatural angle, my breath stalled.
“What wasthat?” Laura’s fingers dug into my biceps.
“A seizure?” I tried to sound calm despite the unease rolling through me. “Don’t people convulse sometimes after head trauma?”
But Sadie hadn’t reacted that way when she was hit by the cyclist.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He stirred again, his shoulder lifting from the concrete first, then his leg flinging out ramrod straight. Too fast for someone who’d just been knocked unconscious.
When his back arched and his eyes snapped open, Laura flinched, and every bone in my body went still.
“He’s getting up.” She shared a split second glance with me, then stared at the footage. “How the fuck can he be getting up on his own? I wish the reporter would shut up so I can concentrate. He sounds excited. This isn’t the Melbourne Cup, you idiot.”
Any other time, I would have smiled, but I didn’t have one in me right now.
The man opened and closed his mouth in quick succession, then turned his head from left to right, taking in the preoccupied crowd with strangely blank eyes.
My breath got stuck in my throat as I scanned the sea of nearby people. No one else saw it, too caught up in the threats coming from every direction to see what we were watching on a zoom lens.
