Wild Strawberry: The Motorcycle Diaries by T.A. Donnelly

Wild Strawberry 2:  Deleted Scenes
    Motorcycle Diaries
     
    Joe was a biker.  But he was as far from the unshaven ‘Hell’s Angels’ cliché as it was possible to be and still ride a bike.  Joe belonged to the ‘midlife crisis biker fraternity.’  His hair was short and neat, he wore expensive and fashionable glasses.  The friends he hung out with were all businessmen, all wealthy, and all also owned a family car.
                  On the day the world ended he was to meet sixty or so of his biker friends in a service station off the M25 in Surrey.  Only twenty-three turned up and all had strange stories to tell.
                  “The motorway is solid by junction twelve, and there’s rioting on the road.”
                  “People have gone crazy.”
                  “I swear I saw him take a bite out of the driver.  I swear he took a bite out of him.”
                  “This fucking lunatic with blood all round his face chased me.”
                  “It’s like the end of the bloody world.”
                  Joe could not believe his ears.  Riding a motorbike was the only wildness he could cope with in his ordered life.
    The radio had advised people to stay indoors, board up their doors and windows, and avoid all unnecessary journeys.
                  Joe tried, without success, to use his mobile phone.  No one’s phone was working, so as a group, they took to the road to return to their families.  They found that the motorway had been totally overrun by rabid lunatics who had attacked the bikes before they even left the slip road.  All those who could, turned round to return to their meeting place.  Of those who had originally turned up for the meeting only fifteen managed to return.
                  Joe was shaken, and several of his friends were bloodied.  A crazed, middle-aged man had leapt out of a car and tried to pull him from his bike.  The man, who had been all wild grey hair and teeth had taken a bite out of Joe’s leather jacket, then had clung on to Joe himself as he revved the bike and shot away down the grass beside the road.  The deranged man had then leapt from the bike in order to pounce on a woman standing, looking dazed, beside the crumpled wreck of her car.
                  Joe had glanced back over his shoulder to see the man bite the dazed women in the neck, and her blood spray impossibly far.
                  Of the fifteen who had returned nine made a second attempt to find their families.  Six had remained for a variety of reasons: judging the journey too dangerous, having no families, or just not wanting to take any journey alone.
                  Joe’s family had been on their way back from Cornwall.  He had returned a day early from the family holiday so that he could attend his biker’s meeting.  He had no idea how far they had progressed on their journey, and he hoped they had been listening to the news and wouldn’t try to get home, as London seemed to be the centre of whatever was going on.
                  Joe considered going to his wife’s parents, but he didn’t think Lucy would inflict that on the children, and he didn’t think he could bear to sit out this crisis in his in-laws’ flat.
                  So while he considered his options he decided to stay with the remaining bikers.  There was Salman, a stocky man with very crooked teeth, who was divorced, and whose desire to be with his children was perfectly balanced with his desire to keep away from his ex wife. 
                  Troy and Jeffrey were partners, and their only family was each other; Troy was younger, dark-haired with a short, stubbly beard; Jeffrey was thin, grey-haired, with a luxuriant grey moustache. 
                  Peter was a somewhat overweight, bespectacled