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“That.” The hum of the engine disguised the rhythmic sound, but it wasn’t my imagination.

He leaned so close that I could make out every grain of stubble on his skin. I held my breath as he frowned, listening. It came through the soles of my sneakers, right near the front wheel. Thud-thud-thud.

“Maybe it’s the road and all the potholes.” Kirby stretched through from the rear seat, forcing Luke back into his previous position. “Check out that one over there.”

She shoved her hand beside my ear and pointed to a crater on the opposite side of the road.

“Hmm. Maybe.” But no. I knew what I was hearing, and none of it was good. I swatted her hand away and kept driving, swerving around a fallen motorbike with drag marks beside it, the streaks dark red against the bitumen.

The thudding continued as we covered more ground, but at least it wasn’t getting any worse. Even if we only made it halfway to the next town, it was better than having to walk the entire distance.

I followed a wide bend in the road with a thick cover of trees on either side, checking the scrub near the edges for wild animals and infected. The wind had backed off since we’d come down from the farmhouse, and dead eucalyptus leaves dropped from above. A couple of strays got caught in the wiper blades, and I flicked the lever to clear them.

The moment we came out of the bend, a sign at the roadside welcomed us to Bellmere, population eighteen thousand.

“Wait. What?” I sent Luke a surprised look.

His expression darkened, and I wondered if he suddenly regretted leaving Jeremy alive.

Kirby let out a humourless laugh. “Twenty kilometres, my ass.”

Everything had been a lie. His friendliness and willingness to help. The gun. “We could have walked here in the time we spent with that psycho.”

The speed limit dropped, and acres of open farmland narrowed to standard residential streets.

I eased my foot off the accelerator and entered the town centre, passing restaurants, a barber shop, and a butcher. Every business looked dark and empty, and public bins overflowed with rubbish. An announcement in pink paint filled the entire window of a hair salon, congratulating someone named Melody on the birth of her baby girl.

The roller shutters on the supermarket had been lowered, and the signs on the shop doors were turned to closed. No broken windows or doors yet.

A little farther down, an infected man bumped into the corner of a bench seat and tripped, stumbling before he regained his balance.

“There’s no one around,” I said. The parking spaces outside the businesses were empty, and residents weren’t rushing quietly down the footpaths like we’d seen in Sheldon.

Kirby huffed. “Nope. No looting or rioting. Jeremy was full of shit.”

The steady thump continued under my foot, even louder after we’d slowed down. “Please tell me you can hear that now.”

“I hear it.” Luke’s words sounded like a sigh.

“And?”

“It’s not good.”

The thumping ran up my arms, and a new grinding sound started underneath the car.

“At least we know which car wasn’t working now,” Kirby said.

Two dead men scuffed down the centre of the road, one wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else, and the other in an oversized hoodie and track pants. Blood soaked their faces, and skin had been torn, tendons exposed. I swallowed and tried to predict which way they’d move, or if they’d keep walking in a straight line.

“Left,” Luke said.

“Right,” Kirby threw in at the same time.

In the end, the infected moved in both directions.

A clattering soft drink can lured the hoodie man to the right, and the man in boxers reached for the car, leaning close enough that I had to swerve to avoid clipping him with the side mirror. His empty eyes followed the car as the rapid metal-on-metal hammering underneath turned more aggressive.

I couldn’t stop here. Not with the dead so close. Just a few more metres. More if we could keep pushing the car.