Dead Stop (5 page)

‘A cabin in the woods?’ I asked. I didn’t like the thought of that

‘A cabin in a semi-wooded area near to an old farm,’ Melissa replied. ‘Not as creepy as it sounds. Poachers use it, company security has wired it and keeps tabs on them. I guess it passes the time. If we’re going to find anything useful, it’ll be there.’

That didn’t sound too bad.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
DON’T WANT
to belabour the cross-cultural thing, because I don’t want this account to turn into a zombie version of all those heart-warmingly amusing Bill Bryson-type books about the differences between Britain and America, but most British people never have any reason to deal with guns, to the point where they’re effectively fictional, fantasy items that only exist in films, like lightsabers and stain-free sex.

I have had more experience than most, in that I fired a shotgun at a clay pigeon once while visiting a friend who lived in the country. The clay pigeon was fine, but the kick really bruised my shoulder. I don’t think that counts as firearms training.

So I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do with a gun if I got one, but if one was available I definitely wanted it, even if I only used it as a last resort, at the point-blank range necessary for me to actually hit something.

I
FOUND A
shotgun in the poacher’s den. I was hoping it would be in a rack, or leaned against a wall like in some rustic painting of a farmer’s kitchen. Maybe sensibly locked up in a proper gun cabinet I would need to lever open with my slim but sturdy hockey stick, though I couldn’t see poachers bothering with sensible safety precautions.

Instead I found the shotgun in a poacher’s hands, pointed at my face.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ demanded the poacher.

It was a fair fucking question.

T
HE CABIN WAS
more or less exactly as Melissa had described it, a small wooden hut at the edge of a deserted farm, closer to the lab complex than the campsite. According to Melissa, the faint light I could see over the next hill was the lab itself.

I grew more cautious the closer we got to the farm. The zombies might be mainly sticking to the light, but this close to the centre of the outbreak they’d be spreading out in all directions.

The cabin was completely dark as I approached, so when I saw the door was unchained I decided to get inside, and to safety, as quickly as possible. Hockey stick raised, just in case a zombie had got in ahead of me, I pulled the door open quickly.

The entirely alive poacher inside, a guy slightly younger than myself in hunting clothes and a baseball cap, was up on his feet and had a gun at my nose before I’d even processed the fact that the inside of the cabin was well-lit while the outside was dark.

They’d blacked out the windows. Of course they had. They were poachers, they would hardly advertise their presence. They certainly wouldn’t welcome visitors.

Especially visitors waving hockey sticks in the air. I’ll admit, that’s a poor first impression to make.

‘I
’M
D
AVID,
’ I said.

It was a perfectly accurate answer to the question I had been asked, although perhaps not as pertinent to the matter as my interrogator might have wished.

I didn’t know what to say. Neither, it seemed, did the poacher pointing the gun at me, or his older friend, who was sat at a wooden table. There was a low portable camp light on the table, and playing cards laid out, mid-game.

‘If I put this down,’ I said, glancing up at the hockey stick, ‘can I come in?’

‘Why do you want to come in here?’ asked the older man. He asked the question in a level voice, but he was nervously tapping the table with a playing card.

‘It’s not safe out there,’ I said. This really wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having. Any talk of zombies and they’d be more likely to consider
me
a danger and lock me out.

‘Why, what’s out there?’ said the poacher with the gun. While the other poacher was at least trying to keep his cool, this one wasn’t even trying to hide how twitchy he was. The gun barrel near my nose smelled oily, but behind that there was a distinct smell of booze-sweat, of alcohol seeping from the pores of a habitual drinker.

Whether he was loaded or in withdrawal, neither state bode well for me. I needed to end this conversation and at least get inside the cabin. I could work out how to borrow some of their stuff once the gun was out of my face.

‘There’s been an accident at the lab,’ I said. I lowered the hockey stick in as slow and non-threatening a way as possible, but didn’t let it go just yet.

‘I’m not sure they’re going to believe you,’ interrupted Melissa, who was already inside the cabin, looking around while the two poachers stood oblivious. The seated poacher pulled his coat closer together as Melissa passed through him.

‘What sort of accident?’ he asked, adjusting a scarf around his neck.

No way was I telling him the truth. Melissa had said she presumed they were doing animal experiments, hadn’t she?

‘Some of the dogs got loose,’ I said. ‘They’ve been experimenting with different diseases down there, so I don’t want to get bitten. I was looking to see if I could find a gun, but I’ll settle for just coming in right now.’

‘Poor damn mutts,’ said the poacher with the gun, raising it level with my forehead in a manner I really, really didn’t like. ‘We should leave you out there for torturing those poor creatures.’

Looking at some of the traps hung up on the cabin wall behind him, I’m not sure how a serial deer-shooter was in any position to argue animal welfare with me, but I needed him on side.

There was no point trying to tell him the truth. That I worked at the lab made sense, and would explain what I knew. I needed to run with that story, but make myself sympathetic. Keep the lies consistent, I knew that. Cribbing from Melissa seemed the way to go.

‘I’m not a scientist,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m an accountant. Honestly, I had no idea what they were doing down there until tonight, now I just want to stay safe until I get out. Could you please let me in?’

I was still standing slightly outside the cabin, so I rested the hockey stick against the outer wall, and raised my hands in surrender.

The poachers exchanged looks. The one at the table shrugged, and his younger friend lowered his gun.

‘Get in,’ he said.

I thanked him in that very English and profuse manner that people seem to find so disarming, and allowed myself to be hurried in, the door closed behind me.

The older poacher indicated a chair, and I sat down gratefully. Now I was in, I could see a small heater, and my gratitude was genuine as the warmth inside the cabin took the edge off the chill in my soaked clothes.

‘How do you even know about this place?’ asked the poacher with the gun, also taking a seat. He rested the shotgun across his knees, but kept his hand close to the trigger.

Keep the lie consistent.

‘Our security keeps tabs on everything around here,’ I said, warming to the business of passing Melissa’s experiences off as my own. Now the gun was down, and I was in a safe place with armed men to deal with any wandering zombies, I may have got a little giddy. ‘They’ve been monitoring you.’

‘Great,’ said the older poacher, throwing his card on the table in disgust. ‘The NSA, now this. So where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’ I asked.

‘The bug, the camera, whatever it is?’

I looked desperately at Melissa, who was sticking her head through the locked door of a cabinet in the corner. So they did lock their guns away properly.

‘Camera,’ she said, when she realised I was waiting.

‘Those dogs can’t get in here, David,’ said the younger poacher, presumably in response to the way I was craning my neck around to look at a person they couldn’t see.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, playing up the blustering Englishman. ‘It’s a camera.’

‘And where is it?’ said the older poacher slowly. They were getting impatient, probably because I hadn’t answered their actual question.

‘Sorry?’

‘Where is it?’ he said again. ‘If you’ve seen the screens in this security place, you must know where the camera is?’

Shit, that made sense. But of course I hadn’t seen anything of the sort.

‘Let me see,’ I said, making a play of looking around the inside of the cabin, as if I was comparing camera angles in my head. I coughed a couple of times, attracting Melissa’s attention.

‘I’ll turn the fire up,’ said the older poacher. ‘Don’t want you dying of pneumonia before the dogs even get to you.’

The other poacher laughed. They didn’t believe my story, but at least they didn’t seem to consider me a threat.

‘Wait a second,’ said Melissa, from behind me. ‘I’m looking for it.’

I smiled stupidly at my new friends/protectors/captors.

They grinned indulgently now. I obviously wasn’t law enforcement, I wasn’t a threat or likely to steal anything. I was just a stupid English accountant lost in the woods and talking garbage. They could relax.

I knew they couldn’t relax at all, but I preferred them this way.

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Up here at the top of the picture frame.’

I made another big show, this time of looking in the direction Melissa had said. She was standing there, pointing directly at the top of a framed picture of a deer.

‘I think it must have been somewhere over there,’ I said. ‘Perhaps on top of the painting?’

The younger poacher waved towards the picture with the barrel of his shotgun, looking down at the weapon as if to say that he could not
possibly
go over there while guarding their dangerous prisoner.

‘Goddamit, Mike,’ said the older poacher, heaving himself out of his chair. He squeezed around the table to get to the picture frame—pushing through Melissa again, and giving another shudder as he did so—then pulled a torch out of his coat pocket, stood on tiptoe, and looked at the top of the picture frame.

‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well look at that.’

He turned around, and held up something that looked like a little bit of black wire with a shiny bit at the end.

‘Get rid of it,’ said Mike.

Before I could protest, the poacher who wasn’t called Mike opened the door to the cabin, leaned out and threw the camera out into the dark.

‘There,’ he said, turning around. ‘Done.’

We didn’t see what it was that pulled him out, though I knew. Maybe Mike thought it was one of the dogs. Regardless, not-Mike was jerked backwards out of the doorway and out of our view in one sudden motion, which would have been comical if not for the guttural scream of terror.

‘Shit,’ said Mike, on his feet and out of the door.

I ran after him. If Mike was concerned about me as a threat, he didn’t seem to show it as, checking both ways that there weren’t zombies coming in from the sides, I ran up and stopped behind him.

Ahead of us, illuminated by the light from the cabin, a man in lab scrubs was bent over not-Mike on the ground. The older man’s screaming had stopped now, and in its place was a ripping, chewing sound.

‘That’s not a dog,’ said Mike, gun hanging loose in his grip.

True
.

Maybe responding to our voices, or maybe not, the figure leaning over not-Mike slowly stood up, limbs twisting in that uncomfortable way I was beginning to recognise.

We couldn’t see him fully in the dark, but not-Mike wasn’t moving. I caught a glimpse of a dark stain on his shirt, but from this angle I couldn’t see his head or face.

The zombie began to turn to us.

‘It’s not a dog,’ I told Mike. ‘But it’s still rabid. You need to shoot it.’

‘Shoot
it
?’ Mike said, aghast. ‘That’s not an
it
, that’s a man. I can’t shoot a guy.’

The zombie had fully turned now. Unlike the rancid creature who I had encountered in the diner, this one was less visibly decayed. In the dim light I could see its skin was pale and purplish, the eyes slack and yellow. But I could understand why Mike wouldn’t believe this wasn’t a living, albeit deranged, human being.