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“Shit.” Our doors were still locked, but I shifted in my seat and kept him in my sights. “He’s coming.”

“Don’t stop,” Kirby said as she stared at him, too.

Luke picked up speed, monitoring the road, the mirrors. He didn’t utter a word, not even when the man slapped the rear panel and stumbled, arms windmilling as we drove away.

“We need to be on guard,” he said when we were clear. “All the time. People get stupid when they’re scared.”

“Or dangerous.” I couldn’t shake the thought that this might never end.

Luke kept driving as the sky darkened further. The car’s automatic headlights had come on a while back.

Twenty-six kilometres left before we were stranded, just like the others we’d seen.

“We seriously need a place to stay,” Kirby said. “Like, now.”

A sign on the left had me straightening in my seat. “There’s a shopping centre up ahead. What about an accountant’s office? A hair salon?”

With no better option available, Luke followed the direction of the arrow. “As long as there’s a rear door we can bust open and brace from the inside, it might be enough for one night.”

A day ago, the thought of sleeping in an unfamiliar place with two strangers would have bothered me, but now it was nothing compared to what we were hiding from.

He turned right and passed a row of houses, a few of them with lights glowing in their windows.

When the shopping centre came into view, Luke slowed to a crawl and let out a low whistle.

My lips parted, and I stared. “No way.”

The car park was alive with activity. People and cars were scattered, and all the lights in the building were on, leaving the centre illuminated like a beacon.

“Holy mother of shit,” Kirby murmured at my shoulder.

Dozens of vehicles were parked every which way, and a ute sat at the main doors with its tailgate lowered.

Three lanky teens dropped their bikes and sprinted toward the entrance with empty backpacks hanging off their shoulders.

“Look.” I gestured at a grey-haired man and a pregnant woman rushing away from the main building, their trolleys overflowing. “The looting’s started.”

Smashing glass and shouts cut through the air. A man ripped a bulk pack of toilet paper straight out of a woman’s arms and strode away. At one time, I would have jumped out of the car and stood up for her, but I didn’t reach for the door.

Luke nodded at a group of shadowy figures in the distance, stumbling and bumping into one another as they closed in on the crowd. “Infected are on the way.”

“Those idiots are making too much noise,” Kirby said.

My breath stalled as I tracked the dead. Twenty metres away at most, and no one had a clue. I reached across Luke and honked the horn to warn them, but all it did was add to the chaos. No one looked our way.

Luke drove off before the screaming started, sending one last glance at the rearview mirror. His jaw clenched, and he repositioned his hands on the wheel.

We travelled down another unknown street, still no closer to finding a safe place to rest. I’d gotten little to no sleep on the plane, and the new time zone was catching up with me.

I wracked my brain for a solution. There had to be somewhere we could go without breaking into a house.

The display screen glowed brightly in the dim interior. So many buttons. So many options.

Two seconds later, I blew out a breath, annoyed with myself.

“Wait,” I said. “Pull over. I don’t think it’ll work otherwise.”

“Hold on.” Less than a block down the road, Luke stopped outside a deserted McDonald’s, keeping watch on our surroundings. “What is it?”