Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel

Fear the Dead

A novel by Jack Lewis

Copyright
2015 by Jack Lewis. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication
may be replicated, redistributed, or given away without the prior written
consent of the author.

This
book is dedicated to my wife, who has the patience to listen to me, and to my
mum, who knows that asking for honest feedback means ‘tell me what you like
about the book’.

Chapter 1

Black shadows slid from
the spines of the trees and covered the woods in darkness. Night was nearly
here, and soon it wouldn't just be the infected lurking in the forest; the
stalkers were coming.

The rain beat down on the
hood of my windbreaker in heavy patters that danced off the top of my head and seemed
to weigh me down with each drip. My shoulders were slick with water from where
the waterproof lining of my coat had faded. Across to my left, in the distance,
an infected stumbled through the trees, its clumsy footsteps crunching on the
twigs beneath it.

I reached for my knife. I
thought about getting out my revolver from my bag, but gunshots were the last
thing I needed. That was a sure fire way of getting a crowd of infected to come
looking for you, drawn in by the prospect of a meal. I walked quieter and
breathed a little softer.

The sky darkened a shade.
My stomach felt empty and ached with hunger. My legs were leaden and each step
was a chore. I needed to sit down, I needed food, and I had to get to shelter
before the stalkers came.

There was a town called
Vasey less than an hour’s walk away. There would be walls and a roof to guard
me from the elements and the things that walked in the night. There would be
fires – warmth - and God, maybe even a beer. My mouth watered at the idea of
gulping on a bottle of cold ale.

The problem with going to
town was there would also be people there, and lots of them. Vasey was the
biggest settlement of survivors in Lancashire, and it was as safe a place you
could get in this new world. Well, everyone called it the new world, but really
it had only been fifteen years since the dead had first started rise and eat
people. A lot of things had changed since then. People had changed since then,
and not for the better. No, I would give town a miss. I’d learnt better than to
seek out the company of people, and I’d learnt there was no man or women who
cared about your survival as much as they did their own, no matter how much
they tried to believe in their pretend civilisation.

I thought about my old
life. I thought about Clara, and the way she used to tug at my hand when she
saw an infected, about how good I used to feel knowing I could keep her safe.
So much for that.

The sky was darkening, I
had pangs of pain in my stomach and my legs felt like they were going to
collapse underneath me, but I couldn't go to town. There were too many people.
I looked around me. To my left the lone infected seemed to be walking in the
other direction. I moved my hand away from my knife, knowing that for now at
least, the danger had passed. A lone infected fifty metres away didn’t pose too
much of a threat to me. Their vision wasn't good and nor was their sense of
smell, unlike the stalkers. If that had been a stalker it would have seen me straight
away and it would have been leaping through the trees, pouncing on me before I
could even reach for my knife.

I shuddered at the
thought. I pulled my hood further over my head and walked on through the wet
woods, and after a while I saw a wooden building. It looked like some kind of
storage shed, small with a jagged tin roof and wooden panelled walls that
looked like they would blow down in a gust. Not a place to wait out the
apocalypse, but it would be good for tonight. I would get in there, put down my
stuff and maybe even grab a few hours of much-needed sleep, because it had been
god knows how long since I had last got some of that. There was something a
little more reassuring about putting your back against a solid wall than the
trunk of a tree.

As well as getting some
sleep, I could even live a little and risk cooking something. My mouth started
to water at the prospect of eating for the first time in hours. I didn't have
much on me - probably just some tins of beans and sachets of soup - but it
would taste like a kings feast, and man was my stomach aching for it.

I got closer to the shack,
and my heart sank.

Through a small frosted
glass window I could see a dim light flickering. I couldn't make out anything
else inside, but light meant people, and that meant I couldn’t stay there. I
turned and started to walk away from the shack, my stomach reeling from the
prospect of food that had just been snatched from me. My legs felt a hundred
times heavier and the pack on my back, filled only with my meagre possessions,
felt like a boulder. If I didn’t find somewhere soon, I was going to drop.

Behind me a door opened.
I span round, reached to my belt and in one smooth motion slipped my knife into
my hand and held it ready to strike.

"Whoa. You won't be
needing that tonight."

A man stood in the
doorframe. He was tall, bald and a wild beard sprouted from his chin. He wore a
baggy white t-shirt covered in red food stains, and jeans that were splattered
in patches of mud. His fly was unzipped, and on his feet he wore unfastened
boots. I got the feeling he hadn’t expected company outside the shack. He took
a step toward me.

"Evening." I
said, and looked away. I turned and started to walk in the opposite direction,
having no interest in conversation.

Behind me boots crunched
on the forest floor.

"Gimme a minute,
stranger."

I turned round. He had an
amused smile on his face.

"Need
something?" I said.

The man looked around
him. The forest seemed denser in the dark. "Where you goin’ this time of
night?"

"Don't worry about
it."

He took another step
toward me. "Do me a favour?"

I took a deep breath. I
wasn't big on favours. "What?"

He grinned. "I got a
call of nature. I know, I know - worst time for it, eh?"

"Why not take a piss
in there?" I said, nodding at the shack.

"We got a bucket,
but I don't like using it. Something about the sound the spray makes on the
metal. It don’t seem right to do it indoors."

I tightened my fist. I
took a deep breath and tried to keep my irritation under control. "So what,
you need me to hold it for you or something?"

He laughed. "Nah.
Just keep a look out. Make sure one of them bitey bastards doesn't take a chunk
out of my arse."

I was done with this. I
didn't feel any threat from the man but there was no way was I letting my guard
down around him, and nor did I have the time to stand around while he took a
piss. The sky was pitch black and it wouldn't be long until the stalkers were
prowling. I had to have shelter before then, or I was done for.

I heard a spurt of liquid
hit a tree behind me. "It's getting late," said the man, as he
released his bladder. "And town’s an hour away. Say, I don't remember
seeing you there before."

"That's because I
don't live there."

"Really?" His
voice seemed incredulous at the thought that someone might not be from town,
that someone might spurn the safety of its walls. "At any rate, you're
gonna need to get yourself under a roof." The stream of urine stopped and
he zipped up his pants. He motioned behind him to the shack. "It's not the
Hilton, but you're welcome to stay for the night. We're seeing it out until
morning then heading back."

Part of me was already
walking over there and setting down my bag. I wanted to get in the shack, take
my boots off and sink to the floor, and I would have done anything to fill my
belly with beans and then sleep for a week. I looked at the man again. He
seemed genuine enough, but the bad ones always did. Everyone seemed honest, at
first.

 The only people you
could count on to show you their intentions were those who didn’t care to hide
their bad ones.

"How many are you in
there?"

"Me, Dan and Faizel.
My name’s Noah."

"I'll pass."

His voice changed and became
patronising. "I don't know if you've checked your situation lately, but
it's night-time. ‘Scuse me for being blunt, but if you're out here at night you
are screwed. I don't know you from Jack, but I don't want to hear you screaming
out here when I'm trying to sleep."

I needed to go inside. It
was crazy to stay out at night, I knew, and I wanted the shelter, food and
sleep so badly. I didn't want to spend another night shivering in the woods,
not daring to shut my eyes. But I couldn't. I knew that in there, in the same
room with three strangers, I would keep one eye open all night. There was no
way I would let myself sleep.

I turned again and walked
away. "Thanks for the offer."

My boots felt heavier
with every step. The man called out behind me. "You're going to get
yourself killed, you idiot."

Tell me something I don't
know, I thought.

***

I carried on walking. I
judged it to be around midnight, and being out in the open at this time was
akin to swimming in shark infested waters with a steak on your back. To my
right there was an oak tree that shot thirty feet into the air. It looked thick
and solid but there was emptiness in the trunk, some kind of dark hole. I got
closer and found that the bark was hollowed out. Whether it was through old age
or the work of some forest animal, I didn’t care, I was thankful for it. It
might not have been the Ritz, but it would do.

I lowered my head and climbed
into the hole, squeezing my body into the tight space. The inside of the tree
smelt like sodden earth and felt soggy on my jeans, and my back was bent so
much that it hurt. I wasn't looking at a comfortable night’s sleep, but then,
when was the last time I had one of those? When had I last shut my eyes for
more than an hour?

I couldn't go on like
this.

I thought about the shack
and felt a pang of regret. Why couldn't I have just gone in? Plenty of people
would have trusted the men, gone inside and got a good night’s rest.

I shook my head. Those
were the kind of people who died. Every time you trusted a person you had
another spin of the chamber, hoping this time it wasn’t your turn to take the
bullet.

From my hole in the tree
I had a limited view of the forest in front of me. If something suddenly
spotted me, I would be screwed; there would be no way to escape, no back exit.
It was still better than being out in the open, though. Out there an infected
could come out of nowhere and bite you, or a stalker could leap from a tree and
take a chunk out of your neck.

To take my mind off the
infected and the stalkers, I put my pack on my lap. I unzipped it and looked
and what I had with me. Somewhere at the bottom were some fireworks - useful
for distracting the infected - and a lighter. I rummaged round the pack and
took out the revolver that I had found a few months ago in the pocket of an
infected whose skull I’d smashed. The handle was scratched and the brown paint
had started to fleck away, and when I opened the chamber the smell of gunpowder
cut through the soggy aroma of the tree. I only had three bullets left but that
didn’t matter. I rarely fired the gun if I could help it; the sound of a gunshot
might as well have been a siren call for the infected.

I checked my food. Two
tins of bargain bin kidney beans in brine. As hungry as I was, the thought of
the slimy beans put my stomach in a knot. My only alternative was a sachet of
powdered chicken soup, but I needed to boil some water to cook it with. Right
now, lighting a fire would be suicidal.

I dug down and felt the
cold touch of metal on my hands. It was Clara’s gold bracelet. I had bought it
for our five year anniversary, back when things were good. Now it was a grim
reminder of what I had lost. I felt a sentimental wave start to wash over me,
so I put it back.

Tucked at the bottom of
my bag and wrapped in a waterproof plastic sheet was my prize possession, my
GPRS tracker. I looked out into the woods, and seeing that nobody was around, I
took it out. I pressed the ON button and within a second the screen came to
life, a blue light that illuminated the darkness. I covered the top of it with
my hand to stop the light being seen by anything that was lurking around me.