Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel (12 page)

There was no answer. Maybe he had left.

I knocked again.

“David, you here?”

Nothing.

I turned the handle and opened the door.
We stepped inside David’s home. It was a draughty one-floored building with a
stone floor and walls that felt cold to the touch. In one corner of the room
there was a pile of hay that was spread into a makeshift bed. There was a
carpenter’s table with basin of water and a razor on one end, and some nuts scattered
on the other. It seemed like this was his bathroom sink and his dining table
all rolled into one.  Scattered around all over the floor were bits and pieces
David had scavenged; batteries, smoke alarms, jumper cables, screwdrivers,
copper wire, rope.

“What the hell?” said Justin from the
other end of the room.

I walked over. There was a table and two
chairs. On the table there was a mug with coffee stains on the sides, and
across from it there was an ashtray with a single butt stubbed out. I saw what
Justin was looking at, what had confused him.

In one of the chairs female mannequin
sat. She had long dark hair so slick that it looked like it had been brushed
every night.  In her left hand was a book, and it had been arranged so that it
was open in the middle, as though she were reading it.

I shook my head. Had David really fallen
this far? Was he pretending to have company?

“What
is
this?” said Justin. He
ran his hand down the arm of the mannequin.

“I told you, David is strange.”

“Guess I believe you now. But why do
this?”

I looked at the mannequin again. She was
wearing a t-shirt that I swore was one of Clara’s. It couldn’t be, could it?

“Loneliness,” I said. “He misses
people.”

Justin sat down in the chair opposite
the mannequin. “Then why not go to town? What comfort can he possibly get from
a doll?”

I ran my fingers through my hair and
sighed. “David is scared of being alone, but he doesn’t trust people any more.”
I looked down at the floor and tried to blot out the memory that was coming
back to me, unwanted. “Someone let him down,” I said.

Justin stood up. “But why the pretend
people? What comfort does a block of plastic give you?”

I was about to answer, when I heard the
door open behind me.

I span my body round toward it and
reached down to my belt for my knife, but it was no use. David was stood in
front of me, and he had a shotgun pointed at my head. His arms were shaking and
his eyes were wild. I couldn’t even tell if he recognised me.

“Sit on the floor. Hands behind your
heads. And get away from Leila.”

Chapter
14

He pointed the shotgun at us but he
couldn’t seem to choose between me or Justin, and he adjusted his aim so that
he was in the middle. Presumably this meant he’d be able to shoot either of us
should he need to.

How long had it been since I last saw
him? I must have been half a decade at least, and those five years hadn’t been
kind to either of us. The hair above his temple had receded so that his fringe
was reduced to just a small patch just above his forehead, and his once dark
hair was flecked with grey. His cheeks were sunken and the bones protruded
against them, and there was a lost look in his big brown eyes. He was six foot
two inches tall, but his back looked slightly crooked, and his arms were
definitely thinner.  Although he was looking straight at us, there was something
vacant in his eyes.

“C’mon, Dave, lower the piece,” I said.
“If you fire that thing we’ll be covered in infected. You know that as well as
I do.”

Instead of putting the gun down, he
trained it on my face.

“Rather see an infected than you.”

He didn’t mean that, I knew. David was
terrified of the infected, always leaving the killing to Clara and me.

“Where’d you even get it?” I said,
trying to think of anything to say to calm him down.

He sucked in his cheeks. “Lots of
farmers round here. Farm houses. Animals. Guns. You can get a lot of stuff, if
you look for it. Found the generator outside a barn.”

His words spilled out of him in quick-fire
succession, so fast that that it was like they were on a spinning conveyor belt
that David couldn’t control. He’d always been like this; a little on edge, the
wrong side of erratic. He’d gotten a lot worse since I last saw him.

He took a step forward. “Hands behind
your head. Move away from there.” He jerked his gun to his left.  He looked at
Justin.

“You asked about Leila, about why I have
her. Simple – I like people but I don’t trust the real thing. Leila doesn’t get
angry, doesn’t talk back,” he said. He looked straight at me. “Leila wouldn’t
just abandon me.”

The way he spoke worried me. David was
the cleverest guy you could meet when it came to mechanics, science, and
practical things like that. But, as Clara had explained to me before I met him
for the first time, he had some problems growing up. There were some things
about the world that he couldn’t comprehend and struggled to cope with, and things
like emotion were always a foreign language to him. Clara always knew just how
to handle him, but I was useless at first and it took me years to get on his
level.

“Who are you?” asked David, looking at
Justin.

“He’s with me,” I said.

David tutted. “Watch this one. Your
sister will die and then he’ll just leave you to fend for yourself.”

Justin nodded. “Don’t worry, he’s
already told me I’m on my own when we get to the -”

I interrupted him before he said the
word ‘farm’. The last thing I needed was David knowing where we were going. If
he knew we were going to his dad’s house he’d want to come with us, and I
didn’t need that.

There was a small part of me that knew
that I actually owed it to him, letting him come along, but I tried to
suffocate that side.

Justin didn’t seem to be scared by
David, but I was worried. Deep down he had a kind heart, but the problem was it
sometimes got clouded by poison. He used to have rages that he struggled to
control, and you didn’t want to be around when he took the lid off.

David took a step backwards, never
taking his eyes off us for a second. He reached to the counter behind him, took
hold of some rope and threw it at our feet.

“Tie your wrists together.”

I looked at the rope. It was ragged and
worn, and there was what looked like a chicken feather embedded into it. I glanced
up at David. There was an intense look in his eyes, and I could see his finger
resting on the trigger of the gun. Would he really do it, I thought? Could he
kill me? The old David couldn’t have, but it had been so long since I last saw
him. A man can change a lot when he’s left to his own devices.

I put the rope on my wrist. The material
was rough and scratched against my skin, and I struggled to tie a knot with one
hand.

“No,” said David, “Not your own wrists.
Tie yours to the boy’s.”

My head sunk. The last thing I needed
was to be tied to Justin. He made enough dumb decisions for himself, and there
was no way I was letting him get me killed too.

“No David,” I said in as calm a voice as
I could. That was the trick with David when he was mad; calm words and soothing
tones.

He walked across the room and stood over
us, the shotgun bearing down on our heads.

“Tie them together. Now. Won’t ask
again.”

I looked at my brother-in-law’s face. I
remembered how, years before this, we used to go to the footy together. He’d buy
the pies and I’d buy the beer - that was our system. We watched our home town
get promoted one season and then relegated the next. He’d been groomsman at
mine and Clara’s wedding, and he’d helped me rewire our house after a dodgy electrician
screwed us over.

He wouldn’t hurt me.

I got to my feet and stood in front of him.
I forced a smile on my face, and I reached over to grab the shotgun. “C’mon
Dave. Don’t start things like this,” I said, and move my hands toward the gun.

David took a step back. Quicker than I
could react, he span the gun round and jabbed the butt of it hard into my face.
I felt my nose crack and a kind of fizzy pain exploded in my head. Blood spurted
out and dripped over my skin, warm and thick, and dropped onto the floor. I put
a hand to my nose and when I pulled it away, it was covered red.

The pain screamed through my head. My
heart was hammering and I felt a rage start to flow through my limbs. I looked
at David. This wasn’t the same man as I used to know. I could feel my breaths
coming quicker and shorter. My face was getting hot, flushing my capillaries
with blood as my brain took in the sensory information of having my nose broken
and translated it into anger.

“You motherfucker,” I choked out.

Nobody did this to me.

I leapt forward and smashed my fist into
his face. This time David’s nose popped, and as his bone crunched he let out a
cry. He dropped the shotgun to the floor, and I could see water welling up in
the corner of his eyes.

I dropped my fist and took a step back.

“You big baby,” I said, trying my
hardest to cool down.

He looked at me and his eyes were so
intense they almost burnt red. He had blood all over his fingers, and when he
touched his cheek he left a red smear.

“You left me,” he said. “We both lost
everything. Right when I needed you, you left me.”

I shook my head. I was done with this.
Right now, getting a car didn’t seem worth it.

He moved toward me. “You left me to die!”
His screaming voice echoed off the stone walls.

He swung his fist toward me, but this
time my reactions were quick enough for me to move my head to the left and make
him miss. I ducked down a little and sank my fist into his belly. The wheezing
sound he made told me I’d struck home and I had knocked the wind out of him. I pushed
him to the floor.

 I got on top of him and sank my weight
into him. I raised my fist and was about to bring it down on his bloody nose,
when his knee sprang up and smashed straight into my groin. The world seemed to
turn white, and the only thing I could think about was the utter agony in my
testicles.

For a second, the twin forces of pain
and anger fought for control of my brain.

I was going to kill him. This was it.
The rage was taking over me. I forced myself up off the floor and turned to
him, ready to tear him apart.

Then the shotgun fired, and the loud
boom it produced almost ruptured my eardrums.

***

I looked up and saw Justin stood in
front of us. He held the shotgun in the air and smoke was drifting from the
barrel. There was a strong smell of gunpowder, and my ears rang from the
explosion. Above us there was a hole in the ceiling. Flecks of slate and dust
fell onto the floor.

What the hell was the kid thinking? By
shooting the gun he’d just made a noise so loud that every infected within five
miles was going to set their radar on us. Right now, as the seconds ticked by,
they would be turning their feet in our direction, a swarm of them all intent
on tearing us apart.

Before I could reprimand him, Justin
pointed the shotgun at me.

“What the hell?” I said.

Justin flicked his head in my direction.
I turned round and saw that David was stood directly behind me.

“We need a car,” Justin demanded.

David’s eyes were hollow, as though he
were struggling to process the situation. He had a lot to take in – his broken
nose, the shotgun blast, seeing his brother-in-law for the first time in years.

“A car? For what?” His voice was nasal
from where he pinched his nose to stop the blood.

I looked up at him. With the infected
due to arrive shortly, we didn’t have time to mess around. I didn’t want David
to know where we were going, but I couldn’t just steal a car from him. I needed
him to agree.  “We’re going to the farm,” I said.

David spent a few quiet seconds thinking. 
“Okay. Good plan. The farm. Haven’t seen it since dad died.” He looked at
Justin. “Give me the gun, I’ll show you the car.”

This didn’t seem right; he’d agreed to
this far too easily. I was about to tell Justin not to even think about giving
back the gun, but the naïve kid had already passed it across. I closed my eyes
and let out a long, frustrated breath. How many times did he have to make the
same mistake? I thought back to Torben at the barricade.

When I opened my eyes, David had the gun
pointed at me.

“I’ll ask again. Tie your wrists together.”

Reluctantly, I did what he said. After
smashing me in the nose in the nose with the shotgun, I knew that David wasn’t
the gentle person I had once known anymore. I didn’t know this man, I didn’t
know what he was capable of. And he posed a threat to me most, of all people,
because he was angry with me for what I’d done.

Maybe he had good cause, I didn’t know
anymore.

“Go and wait outside,” he side to
Justin.

The boy looked at David and then back to
me, as though he were asking what to do. I nodded at him. He walked over to a
door at the far side of the room past the table and chairs. There was a padlock
on it.

“Use the door you came in,” said David.

When we were alone, neither of us spoke
for a while. David kept the gun pointed at my chest, but he was staring at the floor.
I wondered what he wanted and why he had sent Justin out. Was he going to kill
me? Despite how unsure of him I was, I still couldn’t believe he’d go that far.

I felt a sting of pain from my nose. I
put my finger to my nostrils and scratched away some of the dried blood. “Don’t
suppose you have any paracetamol? I heard most of them still work,” I said.

He shook his head.

I needed to say something. I had to get
him out of this state of mind. The infected weren’t here yet but the shotgun
blast was sure as hell going to draw them to us, and when they got here I
wanted to be long gone. Not only that, there were others out there, apart from
the infected, who could have heard it.