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protesting squeal
echoing from its brakes.  Its bulky rear tyres rested less than a metre
from Nick’s outstretched legs.  He rolled onto his back and looked up in
confusion as the vehicle’s pneumatic doors hissed open.
    “Get in!” screamed the driver.
     

chapter five
    Nick yanked Eve off the ground and
bundled her up the steps onto the bus.  Then he flung himself in after
her, twisting around to make sure that the doors were closing behind him. 
He sighed with relief when they hissed shut.
    The bus started moving and Nick stumbled sideways into
the aisle. He had to grab hold of one of the support rails overhead to keep
from falling down.  Eve dragged herself over to the nearest vacant seat
and sat down, clutching her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
    It was then that he noticed the other people on the bus.
 He nodded at them all politely, but decided to turn to face his saviour,
the bus driver.
    If he hadn’t come along when he did…  
    The driver was a rotund man with thinning hair, grey at
the sides.  Both his of narrow, unblinking eyes were glued to the road.
 The steering wheel was gripped tightly between his pudgy hands. 
    “There’s a car wreck up ahead,” Nick warned him. 
“You’ll have to drive carefully to get around it.
     The driver nodded and kept the bus at a low
speed.  Up ahead, Mrs Curtis and the other two infected people from the
garden centre were coming up the middle of the road.  They looked like a
pack of roving hyenas.
    “Friends of yours?” asked the driver.
    “More like acquaintances,” said Nick.
    The driver steered around them carefully and then
decided to introduce himself.  “I’m Dave, by the way.”
    Mrs Curtis leapt at the side of the moving bus but
rebounded futilely to the road in a crumpled heap.  The people onboard
whimpered with fright but seemed to realise that they were safe.
    “Really good to meet you, Dave.  I’m Nick, and the
girl with me is named Eve.  What made you pick us up?”
    The bus reached the crossroad intersection and started
to manoeuvre around the three wrecked cars, which included Nick’s Alfa
Romeo.  It felt wrong to abandon it.
    I bloody loved that motor.
    Dave cleared his throat.  “You looked like you
needed a lift, way you was running down the road like a bat out of hell. 
Seems quite a few people are in need at the moment.  But I can only pick
up so many.”
    Nick glanced back at the other passengers.  All of
them wore their own individual expressions of fear and pain.  Some were
stony-faced and silent, while others wept quietly. 
    “You rescued all these people?”
    Dave shrugged one shoulder.  “Some of them, I
did.  I’d already picked up a few on my normal run.  Things didn’t
get crazy till about thirty minutes later.  After all hell broke loose I
managed to collect a few people, here and there – dropped ‘em off near their
homes whenever I could – but most people were beyond saving.  People have
gone bad in the head; like wild animals.”
    Nick nodded.  “I know what you mean. 
Something is making people insane.  I think it’s some kind of…sickness.”
    “I was pretty much thinking the same.  Seen a lot
of sick people these last few days on my morning runs.  Flu, colds,
fevers; people sneezing and coughing from the moment I picked ‘em up till the
moment I dropped ‘em off.  Something bad has got itself inside people.”
    “Well,” Nick said.  “I’m pretty sure I owe you my
life.  Thank you.”
    Dave huffed and put his foot down on the
accelerator.  “We’re not out of the woods yet, I’m afraid.  I got no
clear destination and only half a tank of petrol.”
    “We should go the hospital.  Find help.”
    Dave took his eyes off the road for the moment and looked
Nick in the eyes.  There was something approaching regret in his
expression, as if he didn’t want to say what he was about to.  “Hospital
was the first place I checked.”
    Nick raised both eyebrows.