At first I was in complete denial. It couldn’t be.

But then he spoke, he said my name. And I knew it was him.

I was lying on the ground, so he sort of tilted his head to the side and looked at me. “Bec!?”

Instantly I jumped up and hugged him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.

“Rebecca, you’re...you’re choking me.”

I started crying and I think I managed to say sorry. But I can’t really remember.

After I let him go I had to take a step back so I could get a good look at him. Kenji’s face was completely covered in dust. He was almost unrecognizable, almost. He was also wearing a towel or some sort of cloth around his face, like Daniel and I were, to protect against the dust.

Later on, Kenji told me he was confused as well. He said he just couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In fact, he didn’t even recognize me at first because of the NBC suit. He said I looked like some sort of superhero.

But when he saw my face, he knew.

“Your hair?” Kenji said. “It’s so... short! What the hell happened?”

“Long story,” I said as I ran my hand over my scalp. “I’ll tell you sometime.”

Someone had moved up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “So where’s my hug?” they said.

I turned around. “Jack!”

I hugged him, still in disbelief that we’d found them. “What the hell are you guys doing out here?” I asked. “Where’s Maria?”

“What do you mean, what are we doing here?” Jack replied. “What the hell are you doing here? And what the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s a special protective suit,” I answered.

“You look like a total babe.”

“Shut up.”

I think Jack was covered in even more dust than Kenji. It looked like they had been through hell.

“So what are you doing here?” Jack repeated. “How did you get here? Where’s Kim? Is she all right? Is her arm all right? Is she with you guys?”

He fired off question after question in rapid succession.

But before I could answer him and tell them about our escape and the outbreak in New Zealand and everything that had happened, we heard another deafening roar. That giant thing was definitely getting closer.

Daniel broke the mood and brought us back to reality. “Guys, sorry to break up this little reunion party but we need to get out of here. Right now.”

“What the hell was that?” Jack asked.

“We don’t know,” Daniel answered. “But it’s big and it’s scary and it sounds like it’s pissed off.”

I regained my composure. I snapped out of the shock and surprise of finding Jack and Kenji. It was time to go.

The heavy footsteps were getting louder, closer. The road was shaking. Tiny pieces of rubble were bouncing and vibrating across the bitumen.

That thing probably couldn’t see us, but I bet it could hear us. And after all the gunfire that just went down, I bet it was coming right for us.

“We need to get as far away from here as possible,” I said. “Where’s Maria?”

“She’s hiding,” Kenji said. “She’s safe for the moment.”

I wanted to ask him where but I didn’t get the chance. Suddenly a car smashed down beside us about fifteen feet away. It rolled and flipped and somersaulted along the road and eventually came to a stop on its roof.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

We all ducked, diving for the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Jack asked. “What’s going on?”

Before anyone could answer him, another car came hurtling towards us, flying through the air, appearing magically through the dust. It hit the road and skidded, slamming into the side of a building.

And then the giant thing roared again, and the whole city shook.

“We gotta go!” Daniel shouted.

“Where?” I asked.

The tunnel; it was the obvious choice.

“Do we go in?” Daniel asked Jack and Kenji.

“NO!” they shouted together.

They were adamant it was a very, very bad idea. I suddenly realized why. Surrounding the car were piles and piles of infected. Their limbs and their guts and their other assorted body parts were splattered all over the road.

And we could hear more howling screams coming from the tunnel.

“Follow us!” Jack said. “We know the way.”

We ran back down the road away from the tunnel.

But I hesitated. “Damn it! I left my rifle in the Range Rover!”

“Forget it,” Daniel said. “There’s no time.”

We kept running. About half a block away, we came to a small alleyway. At the entrance to the alley was another Humvee. It was heavily armored. It sort of looked like a tank.

“We found this over near the stadium,” Kenji said. “It’s armored, reinforced. Figured it was used for someone important.”

It even had a machine gun on top like the other one.

Kenji climbed up to man the gun but then Daniel volunteered. “It’s cool. I got it. You navigate with Jack. Two people who know the way is better than one.”

He had a good point considering we’d just spent the past hour or so completely lost.

So Jack drove and Kenji sat in the front passenger seat, riding shotgun so to speak. I was in the back.

We took off at high speed. The Humvee was deceptively fast for something that was built like a tank. It must have weighed something ridiculous. Jack was speeding through alleyways and side streets, ramming broken down cars and rubble out of the way.

As we raced through the backstreets of the city, I couldn’t stop thinking about how bizarre it was to have found Jack and Kenji like this. We were supposed to rescue them, yet here they were, rescuing us. It was crazy. I mean, how the hell had they survived? I guess Kenji was pretty tough. And Maria and Jack knew the city better than most people. But still, it was a total miracle. And really, we owed them our lives.

Jack accelerated and smashed through a pile of cardboard boxes. After a couple of twists and turns I was completely disorientated.

“I don’t mean to be a back seat driver, but are you sure you know where you’re going?” I asked Jack.

“Yeah!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I know the city like the back of my hand.”

“OK, just checking. But shouldn’t we slow down?”

“No,” Kenji said. “Staying in one area of the city for too long is bad. If we stop, the infected will find us.”

I suddenly remembered Doctor West and his disturbing warning about how the Oz virus was designed to find life and consume it.

Kenji was doing his best to navigate, like a rally car co-driver. “Hard left down this alleyway!” he shouted. “And then hard right on to the main road.”

The Humvee barreled down the alleyway. We crashed through some industrial sized bins and rubbish exploded everywhere.

Up ahead, a pile of bricks and shattered concrete partially blocked the alleyway. I guess it was a section of the wall. It had crumbled and fallen across the alleyway. Jack was forced to slow down and drive around it. Suddenly, two infected jumped out of the adjacent building and onto the hood of the Humvee. Jack hit the brakes and they went flying forward. He then accelerated, running over them, squashing them beneath the giant wheels.

Jack floored it again and we picked up speed as the alleyway seemed to narrow. For a split second it looked like the Humvee wouldn’t fit. Sparks flew as the armored sides of the vehicle scraped against the alley walls.

“Hold on,” Jack said. “We’re almost there.”

We shot out of the alleyway and on to another main road. Jack slammed on the breaks as he turned sharply to the right. We slid out in the middle of the road, the tires tearing and screeching and finally gripping.

Up ahead was a main intersection.

But something was wrong.

The power lines above the intersection were moving like they were alive. They seemed to have caught and wrapped up a group of the infected, at least a hundred of them. It looked like the wires were rolling them up, cocooning them or something. There were maybe four power line poles or telegraph poles. One at each corner of the intersection. The wires were converging in the middle like a massive, messed up spider web.

Jack slowed down. “Ah, Kenji, have you ever seen anything like this?”

Kenji’s mouth was wide open. “No. No way.”

“Was this here the other day? Or this morning?”

“I ... I don’t think so.”

Some of the wires extended from the middle of the intersection. They seemed to zero in on us, like a snake rearing, ready to strike.

I heard what sounded like the crack of a whip.

Some of the cars parked on the side of the road were lifted into the air and flipped. A few of the cars were sliced in half.

Jack put the Humvee into reverse and executed a 180 degree turn. We accelerated away from the intersection and the wires.

Just when I thought we’d gotten away unscathed, Daniel slid down from the machine gun turret, his face was bleeding.

“Oh my God. Are you all right?” I asked.

Daniel was holding the side of his head. He looked like he was in shock.

“We need to find a place to pull over!” I shouted.

“Yeah, hang on,” Jack said. “There’s a parking facility up here. It’s clean.”

Daniel’s face was pretty pale. He was definitely in shock. I couldn’t quite hear him properly, but it sounded like he said something about the wires being alive.