The woman goes to work on his pants, scratching at them eagerly like a dog smelling a buried bone, and William has a pang of panic as he feels her nails through the fabric.

  A thought—surprisingly clear—shoots through his mind: Good thing I didn’t wear shorts, or I’d be dead now.

  Then he pulls the rifle back, prying the barrel awkwardly in between himself and the woman. He points it at her mouth and pulls the trigger.

  The shot is less deafening this time, probably because William is already rendered deaf, but the effect is certainly there.

  The woman’s head is basically split in two, the top half tipping to the side like someone had cut into a boiled egg and opened it up in order to get to the warm stuff inside. The warm stuff inside the woman’s skull isn’t that appetizing, though; it splatters all over the ceiling, looking to William like some sort of clumpy, grey porridge.

  The rest of the woman tilts limply to the side and disappears mercifully out of sight behind the seat.

  William just lies there for several seconds, hearing nothing, but feeling his heart pound away in his chest and the breath wheezing in and out through his mouth. There’s a hole in the ceiling the size of an apple and the shape of a halfmoon, showing a tiny outline of the blue sky above, and William can’t take his eyes off of it.

  Ozzy pokes his head out and looks at him with concern.

  “I’m all right, buddy,” William says, his own voice a distant echo. “Thank you for saving my ass. Let me just … let me just regroup for a second …”

  William looks up at the hole in the ceiling once more. There’s something very comforting in looking at it. From where he’s lying, it’s pretty much the only thing not covered in brain or blood.

  Even though William can barely hear, his sense of smell works perfectly fine, and the sweet, putrid stench of the woman’s brain reminds him of prunes that have gone bad from lying out in the sun. Nausea wells up in his throat.

  He can feel the car rocking gently as the dead people outside push and shove at it, and he’s reminded of the open window.

  I need to get up. I need to get going. I can’t stay here.

  For some reason, his body doesn’t react. William can’t get it to cooperate. He should be afraid. The situation is still very dangerous. But he feels nothing except an eerie urge to just lie here and think of nothing.

  I’m in shock, he realizes with bemused detachment. That’s not good. Better get going right now, or I might never get up again.

  He tries again to move, and this time, his body listens, though it feels cumbersome, like the connection between will and acting is still fragile. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he manages to climb up onto the seat. He sinks down with a sigh, and Ozzy immediately begins licking his ear, as though rewarding him.

  “Thanks, buddy,” William murmurs, moving his jaw in order to make his hearing return. It clicks, and it actually helps a little. Now he can pick up the moans and groans from the zombies outside.

  And speaking of … there are so many now, William can barely see through them. At least fifty, but probably closer to a hundred. Seeing them crowd around the car reminds him of that one time he saw Foo Fighters play at Roskilde Festival.

  “Shit, buddy,” William mutters. “We got ourselves in quite a mess here …”

  He checks the ignition again, still not finding the key.

  “Damnit … if I could just turn on the car, we could drive our way out of here …”

  He glances sideways at the open window. The tattoo guy is still hanging there, blocking the opening. The bus driver has been shoved aside and two other zombies are now trying to squeeze in. It looks to William like a cartoon where several people try to rush through a doorway at the same time and get stuck. Except there’s no comical effect in this.

  They’ll get in sooner or later … and they won’t stop until that happens …

  SIXTEEN

  Dan lands on the concrete, breaking the fall by grabbing hold of the open door. Still, a sharp pain shoots up through his ankle, making him wince.

  Nothing seems to snap or give way, though, which is good. Dan doesn’t have much time to ponder it anyway; the zombies who were surrounding the car he just jumped from are now headed this way.

  He throws himself into the BMW and slams the door.

  The sounds immediately grow fainter, and he notices also how the atmosphere is different inside the car; it’s cooler, but also there’s a foul smell in the air, like something rotten has been lying around in here. Which isn’t too far from the truth, as the three dead kids were trapped in here just minutes ago.

  Dan looks out and up at Åsaa, who’s looking in at him anxiously. He sends her a thumbs-up, and she nods.

  Dan looks at the dashboard. He’s never been inside a car this new or big or expensive; his dad was an accountant and earned a decent wage, but he could never have afforded a car like this.

  Dan has also never really driven a car, which is something that just dawns on him now, expect for that one time not that long ago, where his dad let him drive down the block, while instructing him from the passenger seat.

  “Learn by doing, I guess,” he tells himself and looks for the ignition as the zombies outside begin groping the windows.

  He can’t find either the key or the ignition; instead, there’s a button saying START. He pushes it. The dashboard lights up, but nothing happens.

  “Shoot!” He looks back out at Åsaa, holding up his hands, mouthing: “How do I turn it on?”

  Åsaa seems to pick up on the question, but she just shrugs and shakes her head.

  Dan bites his lip. He looks around for something to help him; a manual or something. His gaze falls on a cell phone left on the passenger seat. He picks it up and activates the screen. It shows a picture of a blond-haired woman standing in what looks like Disney World. Next to her, arm in arm, are three kids. Dan recognizes them and feels a lump in his throat. For some reason, Jennie’s face appears in his mind, and he has to gently push it aside.

  Not now. Focus on what you’re doing.

  Luckily, there’s no password needed for accessing the phone, and Dan opens a browser. The front page is from a Norwegian news media, and the headlines are all yelling at him things he already knows.

  He pauses for a second, recalling what make William had told him the car was. Then he types in a search for “How to start a BMW X5.”

  A brief YouTube video tells him what to do: step on the brake, then hit the Start-button.

  Dan puts down the phone and follows the instruction. The engine comes to life immediately. It’s surprisingly quiet and produces only a very subtle vibration in the seat.

  He sends Åsaa another thumbs-up, then puts his hand on the steering wheel, muttering to himself: “All right, you can do this. Remember what Dad told you.”

  Dan puts the BMW in reverse, and a monitor gives him a live feed from a camera somewhere on the rear end of the car. The zombies are completely surrounding the car now, and as soon as he puts it into motion, it begins pushing them aside. Some of them trip and get caught underneath the car—Dan can hear them bumping against the undercarriage—and some are even dragged under the tires and get run over, causing the BMW to bump softly and sway a little.

  Dan does his best to ignore them, concentrating instead on getting the BMW turned around. In order to do so, he needs to drive farther out into the roadside where the grass is tall. He worries for a moment that the car will get stuck, but William turns out to be right: it has no trouble at all driving on the uneven ground.

  It would be a hard challenge driving the car even without the dead people crowding him, constantly blocking his view. But Dan manages to get as close to William as possible; he can’t get all the way there, since the car William sought refuge in is on the far lane, meaning there’s one lane separating them. And the cars in that lane are parked bumper to bumper.

  He stops and looks over at William’s car. He can see him waving briefly before he’s cut from view by the crowd of zombies swarming around both cars.

  Dan rolls down the window half an inch. The dead people outside immediately push their grey fingers through the crack, and their moaning voices fill up Dan’s ears.

  “William!” he calls out. “Can you hear me?”

  He waits for a reply, listening intently. Then, over the choir of zombie voices, he picks up William shouting: “… barely hear you!”

  Dan bites his lip. This won’t work. If they’re going to work out how to get William from his own car to the BMW, they need to be able to communicate.

  Dan looks at the phone on the seat beside him. William has a phone, too, but Dan doesn’t have his number.

  He shouts out the window: “What’s your number?”

  He stretches his neck and catches a glimpse of William looking back at him. Dan holds up the phone. William raises his eyebrows. Then he holds up two fingers. At first, Dan takes it as a peace sign, but then William holds up four fingers.

  “Oh,” Dan says. “Hold on!” He types in 24.

  William signals the rest of the number using his fingers. Since Dan loses him from sight every other moment, he gets the number wrong a couple of times. But finally, he gets it. He makes the call, and William answers right away.

  “Johnny’s Auto Repair, what can I do for ya?”

  It’s such a lame and unexpected joke, Dan can’t help but snort with laughter. “I’m glad you made it to safety.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s not celebrate too early. Hey, I didn’t know you had a driver’s license?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, you’re a natural, then.”

  “How do we get you out of there?”

  William sighs. “I really don’t know, dude. I just don’t know. It doesn’t look good.”

  There’s suddenly something in William’s voice that Dan cares very little for. He has seen William angry and upset, even sad, but he has never picked up on this tone of voice before. It sounds like William is about to lose hope.

  “It’s okay, we just need to figure it out,” Dan says.

  “Yeah, well, there’s like twenty feet between us, and those twenty feet are crammed full of zombies. I don’t see how we’re going to make that happen.”

  Dan feels his heartrate rise. “Let’s just think for a moment. There are three options as I see it. We either get you over here. Or we get the car to you. Or we get rid of the zombies. Right? You see any other ways of doing it?”

  “I think that about covers it.”

  “Right. So, can we get you over here?”

  “Not unless I spontaneously sprout a couple of wings.”

  “There’s no key for the car?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you can’t shoot your way through them?”

  “That wouldn’t work; there are way too many of them.”

  “How about shooting them from the car?”

  “I only have twenty-two bullets left. I already counted them.”

  “Twenty-two ain’t bad,” Dan says. “That’ll thin the herd at least.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” William says, his voice growing even more downcast. “Even if I make all of them perfect headshots, twenty-two would be like a drop in the ocean. I mean, have you looked outside? There are at least two hundred of them now.”

  Dan chews his lip. “How about Ozzy?”

  “What about him?”

  “Can he do anything to help? He’s immune, right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see him killing two hundred zombies. That would take him like a week.”

  “Wait!” Dan snaps his fingers. “Can’t you, like … disguise yourself? Maybe if they can’t see you, or … I don’t know … if they think you’re already infected, they’ll leave you alone.”

  A brief pause. “I thought about that. In Walking Dead, they do this move where they rub themselves in gunk from a dead zombie and then the other zombies can’t smell them or something. They’re able to walk right out among them without getting attacked.”

  Dan feels hope rise. “You think that could work?”

  “I don’t know, it depends on whether they go by smell or something else.”

  “But it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” Dan looks over at William’s car. “The dead guy in the window—can’t you use him?”

  “If I begin messing with him, I risk the others making their way in. Right now, he’s the only thing keeping them out.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I do have someone else, though.”

  “You do?”

  A brief pause. “There’s a woman here. I suppose she was the owner of the car. She was already in here. I shot her.”

  “That’s perfect! Try it, William.”

  A longer pause this time. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

  “Why not? Can’t you get to her?”

  “Yeah, but … you realize what we’re talking about, right? Rubbing myself in the juices from a half-rotten corpse? That’s not exactly a turn-on.”

  “I know, but you need to—”

  “And I don’t even think they go by smell anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a lot more likely they go by sense. You said it yourself, remember? How would they have found us at Holger’s place? Don’t tell me they could smell us from miles away inside a house built of bricks. There are no predators in the world that could pick up a smell like that. And yet they came from town and headed straight for us.”

  Dan thinks about it and realizes that William is right and that Dan already knew that. He was just grasping at straws.

  “Okay, so there’s no way we’re getting you out of there,” he goes on. “Can we get the car to you, then?”

  “I don’t see that happening either.”

  “If I could just cross the middle lane …”

  “Yeah, but it stretches for miles in each direction. And even if you found a hole to slip through and you got the car close to mine, how would we do it?”

  “We would park the cars right up against each other and you would climb through the windows.”

  “Dude, listen to what you’re saying. You’d spend hours getting the car over here and parking it just right, and even if you managed to do all that, there’s no way I can get from this car to yours without them reaching me and scratching me.”

  Dan begins to feel his mouth dry up. “Okay, then there’s one option left: we get rid of the zombies.”

  William snorts. “You’re gonna find a machine gun and go Rambo on them?”

  “I could … I could set them all on fire.”

  “Using what?”

  “I could drive to Bergen and find some gasoline.”

  “That’s not going to work. You’ll just cook me alive in here.”

  “What about luring them away?”

  “You’d have to get closer to them than I am, and that can’t be done.”

  “Okay. Okay, then … then we …” Dan tries very hard to find something to say, but the words escape him.

  “Dan, listen,” William says, and there’s that tone of voice again. “I already went over this in my head …”

  “No,” Dan says fiercely, suddenly grinding his teeth, staring over at William. “You’re not doing it. You’re not giving up. You hear me? We’re getting you out of there.”

  He gets a glimpse of William shaking his head. “Unless I can get this thing started and drive out of here myself, there’s no way,” he says. “Anyway, there’s nothing more you can do. I think you should get going.”

  “No …”

  “Drive to Bergen and find a ship that’ll take you to Denmark.”

  “What about you then?” Dan’s voice is trembling now. “Are you just going to sit there and wait to die from thirst?”

  “Eventually, maybe. I’ll try to get the car started first, but I’m not too hopeful. These newer cars can’t just be hot-wired like Bruce Willis used to do in the eighties. But I’ll give it a shot, I promise. I still have power on my phone, so I can probably Google it.”

  “Yes, do that,” Dan urges. “Try to get it started. I’ll wait.”

  “It could be hours.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “I think you should go.”

  “I’m not leaving!”

  William sighs. “Yeah, you are. And you know why? Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It is. You’re going to save the world, remember? That’s way more important than saving me.”

  Dan feels like crying. He already left William behind once, but this time it’ll be for real. And he’ll be leaving him with the certainty that William will die.

  “Listen, I’ve got your number now,” William goes on. “If I manage to get this thing started, I’ll call you.”

  “What if … what if I already left for Denmark by then?”

  “Then I guess I’ll try to catch up with you. But these are pretty big ifs, Dan. Don’t count on any of it. Just focus on getting back to that house. End this thing so it won’t all have been for nothing.”

  Dan is surprised to hear William’s voice shake. He looks over at him, but when he catches a glimpse of him, William has turned his face away.

  “You promise me that, okay? Promise me you’ll see this to the end.”

  Dan opens his mouth, hesitating, thinking that he can’t promise that, that if he did, he would be accepting the fact that William’s not coming, and there’s no way he’s accepting that.

  “I promise,” he whispers.

  SEVENTEEN

  Iver is called out of a blessed deep and dreamless sleep.

  At first, he can’t recall anything. He’s so tired and just wants to keep sleeping. But something tells him he needs to wake up.

  He opens his eyes slowly and with difficulty, finding himself on a couch in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows.

  Where am I?

  For a moment, he’s sure he was out drinking last night.

  Then it all comes back to him.

  The ferry.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14