Touch: Book One by Steven Jenkins

Author:Steven Jenkins [Jenkins, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Different Cloud Publishing
Published: 2021-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

17

My entire skull aches. Everything distorted. One minute I’m in a state of alertness, the next my head is swirling with frenzied thoughts.

The little girl couldn’t be dead. I don’t care how it looked. It’s a coma. A terrible disease. Something logical to explain away the insanity. Whatever this thing is, rotting corpses don’t walk around. This isn’t some dumb horror movie. This is real life.

Zombies aren’t real.

Impossible.

Impossible? That’s exactly what you thought when you were a kid. When Bruce broke his leg in a dogfight. You could feel his pain when you touched him. You knew you could fix him. Something inside told you. You drew the agony from him. Fixed his leg. Even back then you thought it was impossible, yet you believed it. Accepted it.

This is different!

How?

I check my phone. It’s still dead. No signal. Data. Nothing at all.

Please, God, let Erin be okay. I couldn’t stand to lose her as well. I made a promise to Chloe. Said I’d keep our daughter safe, no matter what.

Is that why you drink so much? Is that why you missed another race? Because you’re such a great father? A father that doesn’t know squat about his own daughter. A father who’d rather ship her off to stay with her grandparents just to give you a little peace. Peace for what? Another weekend sat in front of the TV? Drinking yourself to sleep?

My knuckles are white, gripping the steering wheel tighter than ever before. The road is like a vortex. The Starship Enterprise whooshing through space at light speed. The rain like stars as my headlights reflect on the droplets. Nothing is going to stop me from getting to her. Nothing on this earth.

I keep seeing Izzy’s rotting face. It flashes like a movie in my head. I shake it off, but she’s still there. I see Kelly, too. Standing in the road. A family reunited in the most hideous of ways.

Another cop car screams past me, pulling me from my grim thoughts.

Through the rain and thick clouds, I spot people rushing down pavements. I’m travelling too fast to see if they’re infected, or just running to safety.

Every couple of minutes I glance at my phone, hoping it’s only the area that’s screwing with the signal. But it’s not. It’s obvious. This thing has affected everything. Power. Communication. All gone overnight. The beginning of the apocalypse. The only thing I’m yet to experience is a mad rush for supplies. People stepping over each other at the supermarket.

There’s still time for that.

The fuel gauge says I’ve got under half a tank of petrol left. That should be more than enough to get me to Pembroke. At the turn off to join the motorway, there’s a car on its back, smoke pumping from the engine. It’s blocking the road, obliging me to drive up onto the curb and over a patch of grass. The slip-road is clear, so I join the triple-lane motorway, only to come to a stop almost immediately. All three lanes are stacked with cars.

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