“We’ll head for the motorway,” Sebastian panted as he ran. “It should be easier to use than the back streets. Hopefully not as many zombies. We can head south or something. And when it gets clearer, we might find a working car.”

Maria didn’t respond verbally; she just nodded, saving her breath. She wasn’t exactly sure how safe the motorway would be, but she didn’t know the city well enough to make any other suggestions.

The two ran in relative silence once more, trying not to think about the ramifications of what was happening. It took only a minute or so to get to the nearest entrance to the motorway. The view that greeted them was astonishing.

There were abandoned cars filling every lane; absolutely no way anyone could fit a vehicle through there. The lanes were still; a soft breeze wafted by, bringing with it a sickly stench: something horrible that neither of them wanted to think about mixed with leaking petrol.

“Do we keep going?” Maria asked.

“I was about to ask the same thing,” Sebastian replied. “We could turn back, go a different way. North isn’t a great option for the long-term,” he started to explain. Seb was cut off by the first few dead runners appearing at the top of the on-ramp. “South it is!” he yelled, grabbing Maria’s hand.

The pair scrambled onto the motorway itself, climbing on top of the nearest car and jumping between them. It was a sight to behold, if anyone were there to see it. Two teens, ragged and splattered with blood, heavy bags on their backs, leaping from one roof of a car to another, closely followed by over a hundred people, apparently dead, attempting to do the same. Granted, some of them managed it frighteningly well, scrambling along like animals, others just as they would have alive, but the vast majority of them tried to squeeze through the gaps, slowing them down, to Maria and Sebastian’s advantage.

It was just over a kilometre to the junction which would take them either south, toward the potential danger of South Auckland (even on a normal day) before the potential safety of the Central North Island, or west, toward New Lynn. In normal circumstances this kilometre would be less than a minute’s travel. Normal circumstances involved being in a car, not on top of many, however, so the trip took considerably longer.

It was a good fifteen minutes or so before the junction came into view. It was a vast beast, named for what it looked like on maps: spaghetti. With multiple entrances and exits, the majority of it was underground, and if one didn’t follow the signs properly, one might end up leaving in the same direction they came in. Sebastian hoped it would be much easier to navigate at a walking pace.

In another ten minutes, Maria and Sebastian were inside the tunnel. Petrol fumes filled the air, but they took comfort in the fact that the horde were getting further and further behind them. The pair managed to keep up their pace in the tunnel, adrenaline keeping them going.

They turned a corner and stopped.

“Shit,” Sebastian exhaled quietly.

“Fuck!” Maria yelled.

In the middle of the tunnel, somehow managing to block all four lanes, were two buses, overturned, oil dripping onto the concrete. Glass crunched under Sebastian’s feet as he landed on the ground, stepping closer.

He inspected the bus blocking their lane, quickly concluding that scaling it would result in cuts and gashes, and that there was no real way around it. It had managed to crash in such a way that it was wedged between the wall of the tunnel and the barrier splitting the sides of the road. Another inspection revealed that the second bus had done the same thing, leaving a small gap right above the barrier, in between the two buses. It couldn’t have been more inconvenient if it was organised, Sebastian thought to himself.

“We might be able to get through here,” he called to Maria, looking closely at the small gap. “But we’d need to bend back some of this metal; pressing up against would be likely to give you a nasty gash.”

Maria jumped off the car and ran over to Seb.

“I can probably fit,” she said, pressing up to the gap.

“Try,” Seb responded, dubiously. “But not too hard. I need to make space to get through, anyway.”

“It’ll be easier if I’m helping from the other side!” Maria exclaimed as she slipped through with ease.

“Oh, good,” Sebastian grinned, bending to his knees and trying the metal strips. “Now, I just need to push a few of these out of the way, and I should be able to make it through-“ he started to explain, before getting cut off once more.

“Sebastian!” Maria yelled, pointing. He turned.

The noise of the crowd following them had been echoing through the tunnel for minutes now, so neither of them had noticed it growing.

There was the first of the pack standing on the nearest car, a dumb, animalistic grin on its face.

“Shit,” Sebastian muttered, pressing himself up against the bus.

The zombie jumped toward him.