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Straightening, I brushed the dirt from my fingers and faced the carnage. “Let’s get this done as fast as we can.”

“As safe as we can,” Luke corrected.

I slanted him a glance. “For a minute there, I almost forgot you were our health and safety officer.”

Back when Kirby had been part of our crew. When Tim wasn’t dying.

Luke gave me a half-smile as we made our way back down to the road, following the outer edge of the pile-up.

A plush pink rabbit lay on the ground beside a family van, and pantry items spilled from a garbage bag, leaving loose macaroni spread amongst shattered glass.

One of the infected appeared from between two four-wheel drives—the woman I’d seen last night with the loose ponytail. Her hair tie barely hung in there, swinging from the ends of her dark hair as she turned her head in one direction, then the other.

I stepped up and ended her with a swing of my axe. My muscles were aching from the fighting we’d done yesterday, and I rolled my shoulder.

We kept moving, eyes ahead.

Dead bodies lay on the ground here and there, with injuries that looked like they’d come from cars crashing into one another. A man’s leg was twisted the wrong way, and another in a black hoodie had been trapped under a tyre. I stepped over a woman whose eyes were still open, her ankle crushed and a shoe missing.

Several metres later, Luke and I took down an infected each, then we came up alongside a hatchback with a teenage girl trapped in the back seat. She clawed at the window, her long hair stuck to her cheek with dried blood.

When she banged her forehead against the glass, I turned away and kept moving. “How are they dying in their cars?”

“Probably went to find out what was blocking the road and got bitten by the infected.”

A man occupied a pharmacy’s company car, eyes blank and teeth gnashing.

Luke stopped and examined him. “See there?” He tapped the side of his own neck. “All torn up.”

Bone showed through the ripped flesh, and blood soaked the neckline of his shirt. He wouldn’t have made it even if someone had administered first aid. “Maybe he just didn’t want to die on the road.”

“It’s possible.”

We splashed through shallow puddles as a crow flapped its wings and descended on something behind the car we were passing.

Luke sidestepped a backpack, sodden from the rain. “Do you think he’ll make the drive?” he asked in an offhand tone.

I nudged an empty soft drink can off the road. “I think he’ll hold on through pure stubbornness.”

“If he gets worse—”

“We’ll have to stop,” I said.

“And if it reaches the point where a decision needs to be made, it’s up to Tim and Varesh. We back them either way.”

I nodded, my insides twisting. “It’s the right thing to do.”

We arrived at the original crash site, and everything looked so much worse a day later.

Blood streaked both cars from the infected man who’d been pinned there yesterday, and the dead we’d taken down were scattered across the ground. A few new bodies were among them, killed on impact. The ute that triggered the chain reaction had crashed into the rear of the Mazda, the force flinging it sideways.

On the other side of the collision, the opposite queue was noticeably shorter than it had been the last time I looked. Most of the drivers must have escaped while they had a chance. A few cars remained parked in a straight line, but there were no people in sight. Were they in nearby warehouses watching us through the windows?

A shiver stole over me, and I fought the urge to turn around.

“If we start at the back, it’ll give us the best chance of getting out of here,” Luke said.

I drew a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Please tell me someone left their keys behind.”