Page 5

“It’s a push button.”

“Where’s the fob?” She shoved past me and climbed in, rummaging inside the console, then the glove box.

I ran around to the other side and yanked the driver’s door open. A key not in vehicle warning flashed on the display.

“You can stop looking.” I slipped off my backpack and fed it through to the rear. “The owner took it.”

“We can still drive it, though, right?” Kirby asked from the passenger door.

“As long as we leave it running.” With another check of the car park, I slid behind the wheel and adjusted the seat, tweaking the rearview mirror.

“At least it gets us out of here.” Ava pulled the seatbelt across her body. “Are you coming?” she asked Kirby.

“In a second.” She stooped out of sight, her head disappearing now and then as she completed a full circle around the SUV. Breathless, she slid into the back and fastened the middle belt around her. “Just making sure they didn’t drop it on the ground.”

“It was worth a look.” I strapped in as a man with blood streaming from a deep wound on his neck staggered into view in the side mirror. He’d pressed his hand against the injury, but going by the lack of colour in his skin, he wouldn’t be upright for much longer.

“No,” I said as Kirby looked back there. “We’re not helping. He’s as good as dead.”

“Didn’t say a word.”

I reversed fast, stopping just shy of ramming him. When I shoved the car into drive and took off, another explosion ripped from the direction of the runway.

Glass shattered somewhere nearby, and a second engine screamed overhead, coming in fast.

It was surreal. A complete mind-fuck.

Ava braced a hand against the dash, a harsh breath wrenching from her. She checked the signs and jammed her finger to the left. “That way.”

“Got it.” I didn’t know the right direction, let alone the wrong one. I veered off into a no-entry lane, dodging a snapped barrier arm and an abandoned luggage trolley.

Kirby leaned forward and gripped both front seats.

Traffic lights worked through their usual cycles, and a minibus sat at the side of the road, the front doors thrown open as two people ran from the vehicle.

Another man tried to scramble out of the back seat just as someone clamped onto his neck and tore skin from bone.

Accelerating without a word, I swerved around an e-scooter someone had dropped in the centre of the road.

“It’s everywhere,” Ava said. “Not just the airport. I don’t know why I thought it would only be there.”

“Did you see how many of them were in the terminal?” Kirby asked. “I was ducking and weaving for my life.”

I checked the rearview mirror. “I didn’t see a single one when I was passing through.”

“Same,” Ava added. “It started when I was already out the front.”

I might not have seen any at all if she hadn’t gotten all aggressive with me.

We drove in silence for a few minutes, finding panic in every direction. People screaming. Cars racing through the streets.

As we crawled through another set of traffic lights, I hit the central lock button.

Ava pivoted in her seat, meeting my eyes before looking behind us. Smoke rose in clouds from the airport, shrouding the skyline. More cars fled the scene, and a motorbike flew by us so fast the engine barely made a zip.

We still weren’t out of trouble. Even as we headed into the next suburb, I had to swerve around a fight between four men that took up half the road. A grey-haired woman tried to tear a teen girl’s hair out, and a man in a plaid jacket was bent over double, coughing blood into the gutter.

“Here.” I dug my phone from my back pocket and tossed it into Ava’s lap, rattling off the code to unlock it. “Check the news. See what you can find out.”