Friday – 14:25

Charlene had seen many things during her twenty year career as a bus driver. Things that, in the words of the song, a woman ain't s'posed to see. Especially on the Friday and Saturday night runs. But she'd never seen Marrenforth town centre quite like this. Even though there was surprisingly little traffic on the roads, she drove the double decker slowly and cautiously.

The town this afternoon was a strange mixture of silence and chaos. The streets were definitely emptier than usual, just a few people hurrying along. Hardly anyone was going in to the shops and nobody had been waiting at the last three bus stops she'd passed. This was always a quiet service, but not that quiet.

Where there was activity on the street, it wasn't of the sort normally associated with this time of day. It was more like she'd expect at night, just after the pubs closed. Already today she'd seen lots of people staggering, clearly drunk. She'd seen numerous brawls, quite unpleasant ones by the look of things. A couple of hours ago, at the beginning of her shift, she'd even seen an overweight, middle-aged man jumping up and down on another man's head whilst a crowd looked on.

The town appeared to have gone mad.

She'd tried calling base to report in, but her radio was dead. Without the radio, she had no way to contact anyone and find out what was going on. So all she could do was continue her route until she got back to the main garage where she was due to end her shift.

She heard a man's scream.

Inside her bus.

It came from above her, the upper floor. Over the years she'd learned to recognise numerous different sounds, including different types of scream. There were the screams of children playing, the screams of couples arguing with each other, the screams from young people playing games on their phones. None of those were her business. But the scream echoing through the bus now was raw and full of genuine fear. That meant it was very much her business.

She glanced at the CCTV monitor in front of her and flicked to the upper deck camera, but the picture was so small and fuzzy that she could hardly see anything. There were several people standing up who appeared to be fighting, that was all she could tell.

Protocol said she should radio base and arrange for police to meet her at the next stop. Since that was impossible, she had two choices: ignore it or deal with it. Which, for Charlene, was no choice at all.

She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the vehicle, switching off the engine. The screaming had stopped but a glance at the monitor showed that whatever had been happening upstairs was still happening, so she got out of the driver's cab and smiled at the half a dozen people on the lower deck.

"Won't be a moment, folks, I'll just sort this out," she said. There was another pained scream from upstairs and looks of concern spread over some of the faces in front of her. "Nothing to worry about, probably just someone playing their music too loudly. Some of today's pop songs make me want to scream!" Her feeble attempt at a joke was met with a couple of sickly grins.

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Holding on to the rail, she made her way up the stairs. Once she reached the top, she quickly appraised the situation: there were only three passengers on the upper deck, all standing near the rear. Two middle-aged women and a young man. The women were attacking the man...

No, more than that. They were... eating him. He was struggling and he screamed again as one of the women chewed off half of his right ear. The other woman bit into his neck. Blood began to spurt, gushing from the wound and covering the woman's face, then streaming on to the seats and the floor. The young man's scream died as he slumped to the floor.

Charlene remembered the two women getting on. They had seemed taken a little longer than most swiping their smart cards, but apart from that had seemed perfectly normal.

"What the fuck?" she muttered.

At the sound of her voice, both women turned to face her. She could clearly see the sickly pallor of their blood spattered faces and their dead, grey eyes. The woman who had bitten off the ear staggered menacingly towards her, while the other returned to feasting on their victim.

Charlene's mind span rapidly. She'd seen enough movies and TV shows to recognise what was happening: zombies.. But zombies don't exist... No, Charlene? So what are you looking at?... But it's impossible... OK, it's impossible. But it's happening... So what do I do now?...

Run!

Part of her wanted to stay, try to rescue the young man, but she knew he was beyond help. And there was no way she could take on two flesh eating zombies by herself. No, her first responsibility – after staying alive – had to be to protect the other passengers on the bus.

She scrambled back down the stairs, stumbling down the last few in her haste. Reaching the lower deck, she turned and slammed the emergency door shut behind her. The metal clanged and she flicked the locking catches in place. The system was designed to isolate rowdy drunks or junkies; as far as she knew, it had never been tested on zombies.

She took several deep breaths, then turned to face the passengers on the lower deck. All were paying her close attention now.

"Don't... worry," she puffed. "Just a minor incident." There was a banging from behind the door to the upper floor. "This... this bus is being taken out of service. If you could get off and wait here, another one will be along in a minute or two. Apologies... for the inconvenience."

There was a collective grumble from the passengers, mixed with a few puzzled questions which Charlene ignored. She walked to the front of the bus to open the main door.

As she reached up for the red 'Door Open' button, there was a crashing sound. A man on the street had thrown himself hard at the outside of the door directly in front of her. She snatched her hand away from the button.

The man was pressed up against the door of the bus, clawing at it. He didn't seem to realise that he couldn't walk through the hardened glass and kept bashing into it like a wasp on a window. His face had the same sickly pale complexion and grey eyes as the women upstairs. His lips were pulled back from the teeth in a feral snarl.

Seeing one this close removed any remaining doubt from Charlene's mind about what she was seeing: this really was a zombie. Just like in the movies. And right behind it were several others, approaching the bus. With more behind them.

What to do? She looked through the front window at the street ahead: the situation was deteriorating, zombies staggering and ordinary people running. The road wasn't blocked, she could still drive on. But where to? She couldn't simply head for the next stop and let the passengers off; most had now realised what was happening. Even if they agreed to leave, which was unlikely, they'd just be eaten.

Maybe she should take them all back to the main garage. That was what control would say if the radio was working. But what would happen to them then? Was the garage even safe? If other drivers had done the same thing, the place was probably swarming with zombies by now. Many of them would once have been her colleagues. Her friends.

No, not the garage. This was her bus, they were her passengers. Her responsibility.

She reached into the driver's cab and pulled out a pen and paper, then turned back to the passengers on the lower deck. A few started to ask questions but fell silent when she raised a hand.

"OK folks," she said. "I'm sure you've all realised that something isn't right out there today. I don't know any more than you do and I'm not going to speculate. What I do know is that it's not safe for anyone to wander around. So here's the plan: I want you all to tell me where you live, or give me the address of another local place you'll be safe. Then I'll take you there one at a time by the quickest route I can think of. You've got a chauffeur driven bus to your front door!"

She paused, noting the palpable reduction of tension in the air. "But," she forced a smile. "Don't tell my supervisor!"

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