Page 2 of This is How We Live

“The virus,” I said. “It changed again. I think it happened while we were up in the air, then it just… exploded. They’re biting people. Ripping into them.”

“I heard people talking about new symptoms in the boarding lounge, but I thought they were just rumours.”

A teen boy with shaggy hair staggered toward the pedestrian crossing, arms hanging by his sides, fingers twitching. A couple more steps, and his foot collided with the woman who’d already fallen.

His skin was the strangest mottled grey, and his eyes were vacant. When he turned his head, deep gashes marred the back of his neck, as if a wild animal had gotten hold of him.

A kid left to die alone.

“Looks pretty real to me,” I said as we backed even farther from the stampede. “What’s your name? Do you have a car?”

“Luke Russo. No car.”

“I’m Ava Wentworth,” I said. “Is someone coming to pick you up?”

His mask still rested under his chin, stark blue against dark stubble. He didn’t look at me this time—just stared at the madness.

“No,” he said. “There’s no one. It’s just me.”

His words caused a pull in my chest. I knew that feeling too well. “What are you still doing here?”

“Figuring out how to get home to Adelaide. I started looking through old photos and lost track of time.”

“Well, I need to go to Melbourne.”

The teen’s legs gave way, and he fell half draped over the woman. She’d been lying still for minutes now, but her fingers suddenly tapped against the concrete. Index finger, middle finger.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Luke said. “Tell me you saw that.”

The woman’s arm jerked once, then again with more force. I gripped the strap of my crossbody bag and made a choked sound just as the movement stopped.

“She’s dead,” I said, struggling to believe my own words. “It’s over. She—”

Her fingers danced over the ground again, and she lifted her head, eyes cloudy where before they’d been scared and lost. She was gone. Except… she wasn’t. Her jaw moved in a mindless chewing motion, grinding from side to side.

“That’s not right.” Luke moved several steps away, and I joined him.

The terminal doors opened again, and three more people staggered outside with the same cloudy eyes as the woman on the ground.

A young woman wielding a metal bin burst through after them, shoulder-length purple hair flying out behind her, dark roots showing. Her septum ring caught the light as she raised the bin above her head and clanged it into the skull of the nearest man. A metallic rattle joined the screams and shouts, and rubbish scattered, but he didn’t flinch.

“Are you serious?” she shouted, flinging the bin away. “These assholes don’t stop.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me to fight back. I didn’t have a weapon—but then neither did she.

A man stumbled as he ran past her, hitting the concrete on one knee. While everyone else streamed around him, the woman grabbed his arm and hauled him upright before shoving him away from the door.

She’d already removed the top half of her PPE jumpsuit, and she paused just long enough to wrestle the bottom part off, hopping on one foot and yanking it free.

Just then, an engine roared overhead, so loud it rumbled through my bones. With my heart in my throat, I tilted my head and stared.

An aeroplane dipped over the airport, leaning hard to the left, then right. The landing gear was down, but the plane was coming in too fast and flying so low it didn’t seem real.

Panicked people outside the terminal stopped, and my pulse tripped. The ridiculous urge came over me to duck, but there was nowhere to hide.

The plane tilted again, the right wing clipping a light tower in the distance. A shower of sparks exploded into the air, and the engine’s roar eclipsed every other noise.

I sucked in a breath as my feet shifted backward.