Текст книги "Fear the Dead: A Zombie Apocalypse Book"

Автор книги: Jack Lewis

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

Chapter 7

"Stop being so stubborn."

Justin stood in front of me and stared. I sat down on a rock and put my head in my hands, ostensibly using the time to think, but really trying to snatch every second of rest that I could. The kid was getting used to our long walks now and we had fewer rest stops. It was amazing what a good night's sleep could do for you.

I didn't know, of course, because I was sleeping only an hour or two a night. My body ached like it was held together by cello tape. I rubbed my head and my skull felt hollow.

"We have to take the motorway, Kyle. I know what you're saying, but just trust me,” said Justin.

The word 'trust' snapped me out of it. I lifted my head. "We don't have to go anywhere except where I say so. The village is quicker."

We were on the top of a grassy hill, high enough for the wind to collect and snap around our heads. The view was spectacular; to our west was the Ribble Valley, a collection of hills that stopped just short of being mountains, but none the less attracted waves of hikers during the summer.

Clara and I had climbed one of the modest peaks once, and I remembered having to stuff my pockets with the contents of her handbag when the handle snapped. I could remember it in minute detail, the smell of the grass as it cooked in the sun, the feeling of the breeze on my freshly-shaved head. It was stupid that this was the stuff I remembered, yet despite being together most of sixteen years Clara's face was fuzzy in my mind. It was strange, the little memories that the brain filed away and marked as relevant while forgetting other stuff. I felt the top of my head and ran my hands through my now-thick hair, messy from months without a cut.

Below us was a metaphorical fork in the road. One track would take us through a village called Blackfoot, and the other route was on the M7C motorway. Given that I’d been here before, I knew something of this place, and I knew which route to take. Justin might have liked being the guide and telling me which direction to go, but today I didn’t need him.

"I really don't want to go through the village," said Justin.

I looked up at him. With the tip of his right foot he scratched the back of his leg. He was still wearing the raincoat that was so big on him in practically reached his knees, and tucked into his belt at the front of his trousers was a hunting knife that he had gotten from a hardware store in Vasey. The silver of the blade was still gleaming. In contrast I looked down at my own, and saw the dirt that collected in the ridges, and a blade so dull that it was more useful for spreading butter that cutting. It would have to do. You could still use it to smash through a skull if you used enough force.

"What’s wrong with Blackfoot?" I asked.

"The GPRS said take the motorway."

I shook my head. "Course it did – they all say that because they assume motorways are quicker. Only this time, I know more than that piece of crap. Going through the village is better. It'll cut a day's travel at least."

Justin scratched the back of his head. "Won’t it be dangerous in down there? Won't there be more of ...them?"

"Nothing we can't handle if you can learn to walk a little quieter."

Justin took a few steps toward me and bent down. His face looked a little white. "Look, Kyle. There's something else. I know this place too."

"How?"

Justin turned round and pointed. I followed his outstretched hand and it led over past the village and to the east, where there was a warehouse building about five miles out. "Down there's a wholesaler’s. Our scouts used to come this way and make runs – the place is still full of stuff. Only, they had to stop."

I strained my eyes and tried to make out more detail on the warehouse – there was a sign on the front, but it was too far away to read. If Justin was right, though, maybe it was worth a look. A wholesaler that was still full of stock was a rare thing indeed, and my mouth watered at the prospect of the things that might be there – food, chocolate, beer, maybe even a whiskey.

"So why did they stop?"

Justin shoved his hand in his pockets. "There's a group that lives in this area. They call themselves a family, but I never heard of a family who did the things they do. They're hunters."

"What’s so bad about that?" I asked. I'd caught and skinned more than a few rabbits in my time in the wilds. You did what you could, and you ate what you could to survive.

"They hunt men,” he said, and tucked his chin into his coat.

***

The streets of Blackfoot were dirty and empty. The whole place was so silent that not even the wind dared make a sound. Despite the fact that Justin was probably talking crap, I still found myself scanning the windows of the buildings and looking out of the corners of my eyes to see if anyone was watching us. Hunters of men. What a load of bollocks. I'd lived in the wilds long enough to know that men did whatever it took to survive, which sometimes meant killing others. But there certainly wasn’t a group out there making a game of it.

We walked as quickly as we could without making any noise, and I had Justin walk close to me to keep an eye on him. Like it or not, after we got a few miles out of the village I was going to need him, because from then on I didn't know the way to the farm. As soon as we got within spitting distance of it, though, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

 There was a rotten smell in the air, and somewhere in the distance I heard a feral dog bark. I reached to my belt for my knife and gave the handle a tap. Dogs were a problem whenever you got into a village or town. They ran in packs, five or six beta dogs subservient to an alpha, and they were ridiculously aggressive against anything that moved. Who thought that man's best friend would turn on him so easily?

"How far do we need to go?" asked Justin. He stared straight ahead, oblivious to any danger, whereas I jerked my head from left to right trying to scan every conceivable place an infected could be lurking.

"Through the high street and straight on out of town. That way, we make a detour that cuts out half the terrain that the motorway can't avoid."

"And what about them?" he said, nodding to the infected that were in front of us.

Two of them stood in our path, and when they saw us approaching them they turned and moaned. I tried to make out what they had once looked like, but fifteen years after infection it was tough to see any humanity in them. Their faces were full of sharp edges from where their bones pressed against their skin, and their scraggly hair tumbled to their shoulders. They stretched out their arms, and at the ends of their fingers long, dirty fingernails pointed at us. That was one of the more disgusting things about the infected; the fact that their hair and fingernails carried on growing after death.

"Is this one of the times we ignore them?" asked Justin.

I reached for my knife, took hold of the handle and pulled it out. I turned to the kid. "Think about it. Which direction do we need to go?"

"Straight on."

"And where are they?"

"Straight on."

I pointed my knife at them. "Then this isn't one of the times we ignore them. You take the smaller one on the left – he looks your height. "

I walked forward, poised and alert. Justin kept pace with me, and when we got closer he pulled out his knife. He held it at an awkward angle, almost at his waist, which meant that he had more work to do to stab the infected in the head. I held mine at head height and tensed my arm. Set on earning their meal, the infected let out guttural moans and stumbled toward us. They were only metres away now, and I could feel my pulse quicken in anticipation. I steadied my legs and got ready to stab.

My infected launched at me clumsily, hoping to grab onto some part of me with its outstretched arms. It was tall and its belly was bloated, and it wore a ragged football shirt. I stepped to the side and let it stumble past me. I reached forward and grabbed the back of its collar, but the material was so rotted that it tore clean out of my grasp.

To my left, Justin cried out. I snapped my eyes on him and saw that he had lodged his knife in the smaller infected's chest just below the collar bone, and he was trying to push the straining monster away. I took three strides toward him, raised my knife in the air and then planted it in the top of the infected's head, caving in its skull a meringue. I let it drop to the floor.

Justin sank to the ground, his eyes wide and his face a deathly white.

The infected to my right growled. I turned toward it but it was already in my face, so close to me that when it snapped its teeth I could hear the sound of them clacking together. I took hold of it by the neck with my left hand, raised my right and then brought my knife down into its skull. As the dead body fell to the floor, I let a long breath escape my lungs. After a few seconds, I got myself together.

"Did it bite you?" I asked him.

He shook his head. His face was pale and I could see that his hands were shaking. This was the first time that I had ever seen the kid scared – he hadn't even blinked when I'd strangled him back in the shack. I knew I should ask him if he was alright, show a little concern, but I didn’t have time for that.

"Pull yourself together," I said. "There will be more."

Sure enough, behind us at the bottom of the high street a couple of infected had gathered and were slowly picking up our trail. More would appear before long, I knew, and soon we'd have a crowd of them chasing us. The chase itself wasn't a problem, because they could never pick up enough speed to catch you. The problem was that they were relentless. Once they got on your trail – that was it. They wouldn't stop and rest, they wouldn’t sleep. They were driven by only one basic impulse, and they would stop at nothing to get it.

"Pick up your pace." I said.

We moved quicker down the high street. I looked behind me and saw that the two infected were now six. Ahead of us, the street twisted round a corner. I knew that round it there was another short walk and then we were out of Blackfoot. I couldn’t wait to leave.

I looked behind us again. Now there were ten of them. Where the hell were they coming from?

"Just round this corner then we're home free. Come on, speed it up. And don't look back."

As soon as he heard me say the words, Justin looked back. "Shit," he said.

We were moving just short of a jog now. We travelled through the high-street and turned the corner, after which we would be golden.

As soon as we turned the corner though, I froze.

"Oh, fuck," said Justin.

I would have scolded the kid for his language, but his sentiment was right, because in front of us was a giant makeshift barricade that completely blocked the exit to the village. It stretched twenty metres from either side and was made of various items of scrap metal – steel sheets, kitchen sinks, shopping trolleys – that were arranged like a madman's game of Tetris. There was no way through it, and there was sure as hell no way to move it.

Behind us, a couple of hundred metres and closing, fifteen or so infected chased us.

"Now what?" said Justin.

"Give me a minute," I said, and put my hand to my forehead.

Justin stared at the makeshift barricade that blocked us in. His eyes seemed to light up, and a little of the colour came back to his cheeks. "There's a way through," he said.

I looked at the barricade again. It might not have been air tight – there were gaps in it here and there – but there sure as hell wasn't enough room for a person to fit through.

"Don’t be stupid," I said.

He looked at me with a wounded look on his face. "I'm telling you, Kyle. There's a way. Stop being so stubborn and listen to me." He walked over to the barricade. "Lemme go first then, and prove it."

I was going to tell him to shut up and let me think, but before I could say anything he moved a shopping trolley as much as he could to one side to work enough room to squeeze into. With that, he squirmed his way through the barricade. I looked at the hole that he had left, and there was no way I was going to fit my frame through it. I was considerably bigger than Justin, and I was nowhere near as agile. The kid was like a rat.

I bit my tongue and tried to fight back the rising anger that I could feel building. Why had he gone off like that? Way back when we started, hadn't I specifically told him that he had to do everything I said, that he mustn’t act on his own? Yet he had gone and done just that, leaving me stood on my own, trapped and with twenty of the infected closing in. Just wait until I got hold of him; the strangling was going to seem like a treat compared to what I would do this time.

The infected were close enough now that I could make out what passed for their faces. I could see their expressions – blank for the most part, yet there was something like desire in their eyes, something in their stares that glimmered. It was likely a hunger for my flesh, but it was proof enough to me that something about them was still alive, even though they weren’t people.

At their pace, I had five minutes until they reached me. I still had my knife, and with that I could probably take a few of them out, but with no space to fight and nowhere to run, this was a battle I was sure to lose.

Above me the sky had taken on a late-afternoon grey tint. It was getting dark, and we were supposed to be out of the village by now. I looked at the barricade. Where the hell was the kid?

"Justin?" I shouted, no longer caring about making a noise.

There was no answer.

I weighed up my options. As I saw it, I only had two; fight the twenty infected on my own, or try and get through the barricade.

I put my knife back in my belt and walked up to the wall of scrap metal. I found the part that Justin had squeezed through, and I pushed on the shopping trolley to try and make a little more room for myself. Blowing out as much air as I could to make my body smaller, I crawled forward. I worked my way slowly through the barricade, squeezing my body into a much smaller space than it had any right to fit. Through squirming carefully and sucking in my stomach, I could almost see an exit.

And then I got stuck.

I tried to move my body, but it was wedged right between two blocks of metal. I felt my chest tighten and adrenaline shot through me as the panic took over. No matter how much I tried I couldn't move. Outside the barricade and on the high street, the infected were so close that I could hear them moan. My legs poked out of the barricade and soon they would be an open target for the infected to chew on. I was going to be eaten alive.

Or half of me was, anyway.

I started breathing noisily heavily though my nostrils, and it was all I could do now to shout out madly. "Justin," I said in as calm a voice as I could. "If you're here, I need your help right fucking now."

When no reply came, I suspected the worst for him. For now though, his wellbeing was the furthest thing from my mind. This was it for me. The infected were getting closer to my outstretched legs, and I was completely stuck.

From outside the barricade, a gun popped off. There was the sound of bodies hitting the pavement as the gun exploded several times, and then it stopped. My heart hammered. I twisted and turned and slowly shifted the metal off me and backed my way out. I managed to move my body around so that the top half of me was out of the barricade, but my leg was still trapped. I looked up and saw what the sounds had been.

A man was there. A man with a gun and a grin.

Chapter 8

There were still five stray infected all within a feet of him, but the man didn’t seem to care. One of them stumbled close, but he sidestepped, got behind it and drove a hunting knife through its head with a crack, sending bloody skull fragments to the floor. He wiped the blade on his green khaki trousers.

As he walked over to me his steps were almost playful, and despite how heavy his boots looked, they didn’t make a sound on the ground. Justin could learn something about stealth from this guy. He had a thick brown moustache that curled over his top lip and into his mouth, which must have been irritating, and his eyes were small, squinty, and gave him an almost sneering look.  I wondered if his army khakis meant he was in the military, or if he was one of those guys who just loved to pretend he was.

Before getting to me he stopped above the body of one of the infected. It was a little boy who wore a blue t-shirt. The man put his foot underneath the boy’s body and gave a kick, flipping him over. On the boys t-shirt, faded but just about there, was the outline of a train. The man looked at the boy’s face as though he was trying to recognise him, but attempting to see any facial features was made impossible through fifteen years of infection. He shook his head and turned his attention back on me.

I moved my foot and tried to pry it loose inch by inch, but it wouldn’t move. The weight of the metal on it was such that if I moved too much, the whole barricade was going to shift itself onto me and break my foot, and then I really would be screwed. I could still move my arms though, so I reached to my waist and pulled out my knife. I looked at the man and wondered if I’d get time to use it.

He lifted his gun up in the air and gave a sideways nod to it, with a mocking look in his eyes.

“Gun beats knife,” he said. His voice was gravelly, like a boot crunching on glass.

He was right, I knew. If things went bad I could swing my knife all I wanted, but all he had to do was take a step back out of my reach, pull the trigger and I’d be done. With the metal sheets trapping my leg, I was completely at his mercy. Behind him, the four infected were slowly making their way toward us. I felt sweat trickle down my forehead.

The man took a step closer and knelt in front of me so that his head was only a little higher than mine. Up close he had the same unwashed smell that most of us travellers had, so it was obvious he wasn’t from Vasey. He also smelt faintly of Old Spice, and I didn’t know where he could have gotten that from, or why. What did it matter how we smelt these days? He had a dark leather belt around his waist. On one side of it was a sheath for his knife, and then wrapped around the rest of it were what seemed to be parts taken from various animals – a couple of rabbits paws, presumably for luck, and some teeth that looked like they were from an alligator, though he must have ordered these online before the infection. As I followed the trail of animal memorabilia hung around his belt my eyes snapped onto something, and I felt a cold shiver run through me.

There was a human ear on his belt. It was torn and mangled, but unmistakably human.

I remembered what Justin had said about the hunters, and suddenly it didn’t seem so stupid. The need to free my leg became more urgent, and the feeling of being trapped jabbed at me. It was a struggle to control my breathing, and my chest felt tight. Behind us, getting closer still, the infected moved toward us.

“Name’s Torben,” he said. His voice was as rough as sandpaper. “Torben Tusk.”

I looked down at my leg, but there was no way I could get myself free. It would take someone to hold up the metal while I dragged myself out, and Torben didn’t move to help. I still had my knife in my hand, but he was knelt in such a way that he could easily move himself back if I took a swing at him. The infected were moving slowly toward us right now, but they would speed up when they got closer, and at that point I would need Torben to take care of them or they would be on me.

Where the hell was Justin? I wanted to look at the other side of the barricade to where he had squirmed his way through, but I didn’t want to draw Torben’s attention to it. The longer he thought I was alone, the better.

My only option was to see what he wanted, and hope he didn’t want one of my ears for his belt. I was conscious of the fact that my bag was on the floor a few feet away from me, and in it were the bulk of our supplies as well as the broken GPRS. I prayed Torben didn’t notice it.

Torben wiped his knife on his khakis again. He brought the tip of it toward his mouth and stuck his tongue out so that it was millimetres away from the blade. I thought of the lingering infected atoms that would still be on the silver, just waiting to enter a new host.

“Peculiar, don’t you think? One little nick from this blade, and in a few days I’ll be one of them,” he said, gesturing behind him. He didn’t seem to care that the four infected were only fifty feet away and headed in his direction.

I stayed quiet and kept my eyes focussed on him, waiting for the slightest of movements in my direction. As silently as I could, I twisted my foot and tried to make room to pull it out.

He held the blade of the knife in front of him as if transfixed. “We’re all living like this – inches away from the knife edge. Makes you wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just give in and become one of them.”

The infected were forty feet away now. Where was Justin?

Torben leant in a little closer. “How’d you come to be in this fix?”

I feigned a smile. “I slipped.”  I needed to play nice as much as I could, but I wasn’t telling him anything.

“Accidents happen easier than you think, ‘specially now. You from town?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

He turned his head away from me and looked at my rucksack on the floor. As he moved, I saw an infected closing in behind him less than ten metres away. My heart pounded. Should I warn him, or should I let it pounce on him? I didn’t trust the guy an inch, and he gave off a vibe that made me want to get far away. But once the infected was done with him, it would eventually turn its attention toward me. Justin was gone and I was stuck, and I’d be helpless as all four of the infected ripped me to pieces.

The infected was five steps away.

“Behind you,” I said.

Without even looking first, Torben readied his knife and span his body, connecting with the stomach of the infected and slashing a deep gash through its skin. Through the tear in its abdomen the infected’s rotten guts slipped out and slapped onto the floor. Torben sprang to his feet, hooked his right leg behind the infected and pushed it to the ground. He walked around to its head, lifted his boot in the air and brought it down with all his weight. The infected’s skull caved like a watermelon and sprayed bits of blood and bone onto the road.

Somewhere behind me, I heard the sound of someone retching. I couldn’t move my head because that meant taking the effort to reposition my whole body, and this would draw Torben’s attention to what I was trying to look at. I knew who was being sick behind the barricade. It had to be Justin. I just hoped he had the sense to keep quiet.

In front of me, Torben lifted his leg, propped it awkwardly on his knee and tried to balance. He picked at the grills of his boots with his knife and dug out a piece of flesh that had lodged between them.

“These are great in the snow, but they’re a bitch to clean,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, what’ve we got here?” He walked toward my rucksack, unzipped it and began to look through it.

The sight of the stranger fishing through my things made my blood run hot. I tried to pull my leg toward me, but the metal wouldn’t budge.  As Torben looked through my bag, I slowly moved my body so that I could get a view of the other side of the barricade. I managed to do it without him seeing, and on the other side of the barricade, there he was.  Sure enough, it was Justin, and his face was pale.

I flicked my head to the side, trying to tell him to run. Justin took a few seconds to comprehend my instructions, but he got them wrong. Instead of running, he started to climb the barricade. He put his foot onto a metal dustbin and began to work his way up.

To my left Torben pulled his hand out of my bag, and he had my GPRS in his palm. My heart pounded.

“Haven’t seen one of these in years.” he said excitedly. “Good thinking, using one. Course I remember once getting rerouted fifty miles and almost driving into a lake on account of one of these buggers.”

He pushed the on button. For a second, I worried that it would work, and that the route to the farm would flash on the screen. I didn’t want Torben to know where we were going.

“Broken?” he asked.

“It’s a piece of shit,” I said.

He put it in his jacket pocket. The sight of him taking what was mine made me want to get up and beat the crap out of him, but all I could do was grind my teeth and keep calm.

“Where were you headed?” he asked.

“Just wandering.”

“A fella from the town, leaving behind those cushy walls with a GPRS and a bag full of food? I’m no Sherlock, but to me that ain’t just wandering. ”

What could I say to him? That I was a scout sent by the town to see what I could find? That I just fancied a road trip? I needed something to tell him; anything but the truth.

“I got kicked out,” I said.

Torben walked over to me. He raised his boot and then brought it slowly down onto my arm, pinning it to the floor. I could feel the moisture on his boots from where he had stomped on the infected’s head, and the pressure of his foot made me drop my knife. I was powerless.

Behind him, the three remaining infected were closing in on their meal.

Torben’s eyes narrowed on mine now, and his voice was rough. “Don’t fuck with me. Nobody leaves that town – nobody. And to do it with a bag full of beans, means you got a plan. It must be pretty damn important to risk the wilds.”

He pushed down a little harder on my arm, and I started to feel it go numb as the blood drained from it. I said nothing.

“Now either you tell me where you’re going, or you can talk to the freaks behind me instead,” he said, gesturing toward the infected.

As I contemplated what to tell him, there was a clang of steel from the top of the barricade and Justin leapt off it, slamming straight into Torben and knocking him to the floor. The man led there for a second and tried to suck in a deep breath, but he was winded.

Justin was the first to his feet. He readied his knife in his hand with an awkward grip. Torben looked up at him from the floor. A smile spread across his face, and he laughed.

“Look at the little stalker boy,” he said.

Justin looked like he was shaking, and his face was still white, but he didn’t take his eyes off Torben.

“Come to rescue your dad?” said Torben.

“He’s not my dad.”

“No, you got more guts than him by the looks of it.”

Torben took a step toward Justin, but as he got closer, he held his hands up to show there was nothing in them.

“Come now, let’s play nice. No need for us to get off on the wrong foot.”

I was about to tell Justin not to trust him, but Justin had already dropped his knife, suckered in by Torben’s gesture of peace. Torben took another step, raised his fist and clocked Justin in the face, sending him to the ground.

I tugged at my feet but the metal wouldn’t budge. I still had my knife, but it wasn’t going to help much. My thoughts were flying through my head as the blood rushed through my skull. What was I going to do? Was he going to kill Justin in front of me and leave me for the infected?

Somewhere in the distance, there was the drone of an engine. I tried to reposition myself to see where it came from, but the effort was too much for me. Justin sat up now, and he shuffled away from Torben. The sound of the engine got louder. Torben turned his attention toward it, and a vehicle drove round the corner. It was a four-by four pickup truck with two guys sat inside and a man and a woman sat on the back. Next to them were lots of bags and crates. The truck smashed into the three infected, sending their frail bodies flying.

The driver wound down the window. “We found it, Torbs,” he said.

Torben nodded. He turned and looked at me, and gave me a smile so cruel that it froze my blood.

“I have to go now. But don’t think this is the end for us. I still have this,” he said, and patted his pocket where he had the broken GPRS.  “I’ll find out where you’re going, and whatever it is you’re looking for, I’ll take it for myself.” Then he looked into my eyes. “As for you, you’re too good to waste with a bullet. You belong on my belt.”

He patted his belt and I saw the animal parts sway. He walked over to my rucksack on the floor, picked it up and threw it onto the back of the pick-up truck. Then he turned back to me.

“Get your little boy to help you loose, and then go. We’re going to play a game, you and me. You’ve got a head start, but you’re going to need to hurry. From now on, you’re hunted. Try and give a better game than this one,” he said, and pinched the human ear on his belt with his fingers.

He walked to the truck, put his foot on a tire and heaved himself onto the back. He gave the side of the vehicle a knock with his hand and the driver started the engine.

“Been a while since I got to hunt. Good luck!” he said, and smiled.