Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel (2 page)

The GPRS loaded and the
route displayed. It showed my current location, and the route I needed to take
to get to the farm. Thank god that the satellites were still working, because
without them I would never find my way. The farm was tucked away in a remote
little spot in the countryside, so hidden away that it was impossible to just
stumble on it.

The farm was my dream, my
salvation. Once I got there, everything would be okay. I'd be alone, far away
from people, and I would be self-sufficient. And the GPRS was my only way of
getting there. I checked the mile section in the corner, and saw that I had 400
left to go. The thought of the journey ahead of me made my body feel heavy, but
nothing was going to stop me.

As I enjoyed the images
in my head of how good life would be once I reached the farm, my eyelids
started to fall.

Later, I don't know how
long, I jerked awake. I looked outside of my little tree hole. My breath
instantly caught in my chest and I felt a shiver run through me.

Across the woods, a
stone’s throw away, a stalker hugged the ground, its nose sniffing the earth
for my scent and its agile body slinking in my direction, hunger on its lips
and death in its eyes.

Chapter 2

I had nowhere to run.
Even if I had a head start on the stalker, with the way those things could move
it would be on me in seconds. I thought about grabbing my knife, but for all
the good it would do me against a stalker I might as well have just used it to
slit my own throat.

I reached for my revolver
and put it in the pocket of my windbreaker. I wasn't going to fire it; to kill
a stalker I'd need to get a head shot, and despite having three bullets I would
only get the chance to fire one. My aim was average at the best of times, and
right now my head was spinning so much it felt like I were on a boat.

Although my eyes stung I
didn't feel tired anymore, as though seeing the stalker had shot adrenaline
through my body. I felt wired; my pulse was racing and my legs were restless,
and part of me just wanted to stand up and bolt through the woods.

I needed to think. I
didn't have long before it caught my scent. Its head sniffed against the forest
floor, and it's body slunk across the earth like a snake. It was strange seeing
something that used to be a person moving in this twisted way, and watching it
made my skin clammy and put my stomach in a knot.

I looked up and saw the
night sky, black and endless. A few stars dotted the canvas, illuminating a
dark sea that threatened to drown me. I needed a diversion, something to take
the stalker’s attention away from me and give me just enough time to get the
hell away. But what could I do? What could I cause a distraction with?

Then I had an idea, and I
felt stupid for not thinking of it before. I still had the fireworks. What
better time than now to light up the sky a little, to give that stalker fucker
a show and send it off chasing an explosion? It would buy me the time I needed
to make a careful escape.

I reached into my bag and
pulled out the fireworks, but the cardboard they were made from was completely
soggy. Goddamn it, why now of all times? I had the worst luck in the world. As
I held them they fell apart in my hands, covering me with black gunpowder. My
head dropped. Now I really was in trouble. I thought back to the shack and the
men inside, and I felt like punching myself for my stupidity. Why had I not
gone inside? If I'd just trusted them, I wouldn't be in this mess.

What the hell was wrong
with me?

The stalker looked up.
There was a sense of purpose in its movements, and for a second it looked
straight at me. My blood froze. I held in my breath and tightened my body,
willing myself not to move an inch.

Maybe it wouldn't see me.
Maybe it was looking past me. I could still have a chance to get out of this.

But then it started to
move in my direction, and I knew. This was it for me.

I reached into my pocket
and took out the revolver. I flipped the safety and straightened my arm,
pointing the gun at the stalker ahead. My arm shook but I tensed my muscles and
bit down on the glob of bile that slid up my throat.

The stalker got closer.
It was moving in on my scent, testing the ground and making sure of its senses.
Any second now, it would pounce, but I wouldn't give it that chance.

This was it.

I took a breath and held
it in my chest to steady my aim, the way I had seen snipers do it in films
before they took a kill shot. The stalker moved back into its knees, crouching
and ready to pounce. I pulled the trigger.

The barrel of the gun exploded,
sending sparks shooting out of the chamber and filling the hollow tree with a
deafening bang. I felt a searing pain burn through my hand, and I dropped the
revolver in my lap. My hand was in agony, and it was so bad that for a second I
couldn't even look up to see if the stalker was dead.

I looked down and saw
that the firework powder on my palm had caught fire from the spark of the gun.
My skin was burning and all I could think about was the agony of it as my nerve
endings cried out. I shoved my hand as deeply as I could into the sodden earth
and though the dirt cooled it a little, my skin still felt like it was on fire.

Ahead of me the stalker
roared. I looked up and saw it crawling toward me in a jagged movement. There
was a hole in its left leg from where my bullet had hit. It was a good enough
wound to slow it, but not a lethal one. Bleed, you bastard, I thought. If you
want to eat, you’re going to have to fight for it.

I picked up the gun with
my good hand and tried to aim again, but my left hand hurt so much that I
couldn't focus. My ears rang from the explosion of the gun and threw me off
balance, making it impossible to know if I was even aiming straight. I took a
breath and fired, and the bullet disappeared into the trees far away from the
stalker.

Unperturbed by the shot,
the stalker moved closer. Did these things have no fear?

I pushed the pain of my
hand back and filled my lungs. One last chance.

 I fired again.

The bullet zipped away
into the night.

The stalker got closer
and closer. My whole body shook, and I had the sickening feeling that this was
it for me. Fifteen years a survivor and this was how it would end; packed up
tight in a hollowed-out tree stump with a stalker chewing through my
intestines. Whatever happened, I would give it a fight

The stalker was six feet
away now. It stuck its long wet tongue out of its mouth and trailed it along
its bottom lip. Spit pooled down its chin. This was the closest I had ever been
to one of them, and the reality of it sent sharp shivers through my spine. Up
close I could see the vague remnants of the person it had once been, but now it
was more monster than human.

I reached to my belt and
grabbed my knife, and I prepared for my last fight.

"Over here!" said
a deep voice.

To the right of me were
flames; orange and red and glorious. They got closer to me, and as they came
near the stalker shied away a little. It took a cautious step back and looked
at me and then the fire, deciding whether the proximity of an easy snack was
worth enduring the heat.

The flames were actually
three torches, and they were carried by three worried-looking men. I didn't
need to be told who they were; it was Noah and the others from the shack.
They’d come back for me, the idiots.

The adrenaline seeped out
of me, and I started to feel faint.

Noah looked over at me,
his face shining in the flames.

"He's alive."
he said.

I stretched out my arm
and pointed to the stalker. This simple act drained me, and I felt faint.

"It's wounded,"
I said.

I saw the men crowd the
stalker and beat it with hammers and bats. It fought back ferociously, sinking
its teeth into Noah’s shin bone and breaking it with a crack. He screamed and
dropped his torch into the wet earth, where it extinguished with a fizz.

Angered by the screams of
their friend, the other two men fought harder, raining down blows on the
monster with animal-like fury. Before long the stalker didn’t have any fight
left in it, and as I saw one of the men cave its head in with a hammer, my
vision turned black and I fell back, smashing my head on the tree behind me.

Chapter 3

When I woke up it was
daylight. I was in a bed in a strange room, the bed sheet drawn up to my chest
and tucked tightly into the sides of the mattress. My head banged and my body
felt weak. I wriggled myself into a sitting position in the bed, but when I put
my weight on my left hand a shock of pain ran through me. I pulled my hand out
and saw that it was covered in bandages, and I remembered the previous night
and how the gun powder had exploded on me when I fired the revolver. I winced.
To my right there was a window, and on the streets below I could see a few
people stood shooting the breeze. I knew that I was in Vasey, the only real
civilised place left in Lancashire. The question was, how did I get here?

It was probably the men
who had helped me fight the stalker, the ones who had offered me shelter. They
must have carried me here during the night after I blacked out. However I got
here, it didn't matter. All I knew was that I wasn't staying. I had avoided
Vasey all this time for a reason - the people. If I wanted to be around people,
I would have come here a lot sooner.

I put the weight of my
body onto my right hand and swung myself out of bed. An ache ran all the way up
from the bones in my toes to my skull. My lips felt dry and my left hand stung
like a bitch. I put my feet down on the floor. I wasn't sure I could even make
it to the door, let alone outside, but there was no way I was staying. I got to
my feet and stood shakily. How had I let myself get like this? I felt drained.
An image flashed in my head of the previous night, of the men beating the
stalker to death, its blood splashing out onto their clothes, of it clamping
its teeth around one of the men's shin bones and squeezing until it snapped.
The man screaming, and falling.

My stomach gurgled. I
felt bile rush up my throat, and I sank to my knees and heaved. Nothing came up
but air. I wheezed and wanted to die.

Across the room, the door
opened, and I lifted my head. A boy walked in with a grin on his face. His hair
was buzzed almost to the scalp so that the top of his head was dotted with
little black pin pricks that looked more like a five o'clock shadow than hair.
He was tall and skinny, and he had an awkward gait to his walk, as though he
weren't fully in control of his own body. When he saw me his eyes widened and
he looked at me in wonder.

"What are you doing
down there?"

He walked over to the side
of the bed and stuck his arms out toward me as though to help me up.

"I got it." I
waved his arms away.

"How's your
hand?"

I felt a stinging pain
run through my burnt palm. "I'll live."

"Did one of the
infected do it?" he asked. He looked nervous.

I put my right hand on
the ground and pushed down on it, using it to support my weight. My body felt
like lead, but I managed to get to my feet. When I stood up, I felt dizzy.
Looking up, I noticed that the walls of the room were stripped down to the stone,
as though someone were decorating.

 I looked at the boy. He
was about fifteen years old, sixteen at a push. He looked green to me, like
he'd never spent a day outside of the town in his life. Fifteen years into the
apocalypse, some kids were being born into this nightmare. They didn't have to
make the transition from the old, safe world to this new, dangerous one - this
was the only life they knew. This kid was one of the lucky ones though; he was
obviously born in town and had lived here all his life. The walls protected him
from what was outside, and he didn’t have to give much of a thought to
survival. I considered the question he had asked- "Did one of them do
it?" - and I couldn't keep the scorn out of my voice as I spat an answer.

"Kid, if one of them
did it, do you think I'd be here?"

He looked confused.
"What do you mean?"

"If someone got bit,
I don't imagine you'd let them back into town."

"Why not?"

"Jesus. Kid - "

He interrupted me.
"My name's Justin."

"I don't care."
My head was pounding and the corners of my eyes were blurry. I heaved myself
onto the bed and let my body sink into it.

Justin walked over to a
dresser on the far side of the room, opposite the window. He poured water from
a plastic bottle into a chipped white mug. He brought it to the side of the bed
and offered it to me, but I had no interest in taking a drink off him no matter
how much my cracked lips begged for it. I waved him away.

"Where are you
from?" asked Justin.

"Nowhere."

"Were you looking
for Vasey?"

"No."

"Then where were you
going?"

I felt blood rush to my
head, and my face was starting to get red. I felt like giving the kid a clout
behind the ears, anything to get him to stop asking me questions. "For
god's sake, give me some space."

Rather than pick up on my
cues, Justin grabbed a wooden-backed chair and dragged it to the side of the
bed. He sat in it and stared at me with curiosity, as though I were the new
animal in a zoo.

Behind him, the bedroom
door opened and an old man walked through.

His face was beaten and
wrinkled, like a crumpled leather purse. His hair was grey, wiry and ran down
to his shoulders, though on top it was noticeably thinning toward his crown. I
couldn't help but wonder why he didn't just stop pretending and shave it all
off, but I guess he was too stubborn for that. He gave a wide smile when he saw
me, but I didn't read anything remotely friendly behind it.

"You're a lucky
man," he said. He had a thick Lancastrian accent but his pitch was higher
than I expected.

I looked down at my
stinging, bandaged hand. My head throbbed and my body felt so brittle that I
couldn't even get out of bed without heaving. I didn't feel too lucky.

"Yeah, guess I
really won the lottery here."

The man motioned at
Justin to get up. He took his place in the chair beside the bed.

"Name's Moe."

"Great."

"Yours?"

I let the seconds drag
out and a silence took over the room. I wasn’t going to tell him a damn thing.
The only thing I wanted to do was get the hell out of here, because every
second I spent here was time wasted. Every minute I didn’t spend getting closer
to the farm meant someone else could find it and take it, and I couldn't let
that happen. I needed to leave, and to do that, I needed to feel better. I
looked over at Justin. The kid was perched awkwardly on the dresser.

"I'll take some of
that water, please," I said. If I was going to leave, I needed to get
hydrated.

Justin looked up at Moe,
and the old man nodded. I looked at them both to see if there were any facial
similarity but there didn't seem to be any, so they probably weren’t related. 
What was their connection? Justin brought the cup of water over to me and
offered it out. Before I sit up, Moe grabbed it from him and held it away from
me.

"What do they call
you?" he said.

It seemed he was going to
withhold the water unless I answered him. I took a deep breath and counted to
five in my head, trying to bite back on the annoyance rising in me. I looked at
the cup of water in his hand, and I felt my mouth try to salivate, except that
it didn't have the moisture to do it. My lips were dry and my tongue was rough
and fuzzy.

"Kyle," I
answered.

He offered the cup to me.
I took it, and sniffed at the water. It was a little musty, and there were
flecks of white powder at the bottom.

"What the hell is
this?"

"I crushed up a
paracetamol for you," said Justin.

“Paracetamol?” I said.
“Hasn’t that stuff all gone out of date yet?”

“Still works,” said Moe.

“Drink it,” said Justin, and
nodded at the glass. “You’ll feel better.”

I eyed him with
suspicion. The kid had a trustworthy face, almost plain in its honesty. Moe, on
the other hand, looked like a man you’d hide your cards from in a poker game.
It was obvious he was a boss of some sort to Justin, and the kid seemed so
naive that he'd follow any instruction.

A dagger of pain shot
through my temple, and I felt another dry heave begin to rise up from my
stomach. My body was crying out for the water. I looked up again at Justin's honest
face, and I reminded myself that the most conniving men are brilliant at making
themselves seem truthful.

 I put the water on the
nightstand beside my bed. As I set the cup down, a shard of pain stabbed my
skull, as though my body were admonishing me for refusing the drink.

"They said you were
a suspicious one." said Moe.

"Who?"

"Faizel, one of our
scouts you met last night. He said that Noah offered you shelter, but you said
no."

"I don't like having
to sleep with one eye open."

Anger flashed through Moe's
face, and suddenly his old eyes were dark and set deep on my own.

"And I don't like
losing a good man because of a stranger's stupidity."

I bolted up into a
sitting position. The movement nauseated me, and I choked back on a heave that
rose from my stomach. Anger flashed through me and made my chest feel tight.
Who the hell was Moe to speak to me like that? I looked to Moe and Justin, and
didn't like my odds; I was down two to one, and I was practically an invalid
right now. If something was off about these two, and I needed to get out of
here, I doubted my body could even get me to the door. I was done with this
though. I didn’t like being in Vasey, and I had somewhere I needed to get.

The farm was waiting, and
every second that ticked by without me making at least some progress felt
wasted.

I choked back my anger
and tried to keep my voice calm. "If there was some stupidity last night,
it wasn't mine."

Moe snorted. "So
what do you call pissing on an offer of shelter in the middle of the night when
there are stalkers are prowling round? That sound wise to you?"

I had to admit that put
like that, it didn't sound too clever. I looked Moe up and down. He had to be
in his sixties, so he must have been around before the fall. He had to have
seen how the world used to be, and how it was now, how much it had changed and
definitely not for the better. God knows how long he'd lived in Vasey, tucked
up behind the town’s walls, but surely he knew the laws of the wilds. You
didn't trust anybody, ever. Any man could turn on you and any man could do you
harm. Giving your trust to a man wasn't free - it just might cost you your
life.

Moe crossed his legs.
"Noah was a good man, and so are Dan and Faizel. They meant you no
harm."

"Good is an
objective word. You have to know the qualities of something to judge it as good
- and I didn't know shit about them."

Perched on the end of the
dresser, I saw Justin's head snap in my direction. I realised I was raising my
voice and my tone was getting mean. This always happened whenever I spent too
much time around people.

Moe stood up. He was an
old man, and on equal terms I could kick his ass. But now, with me in my
weakened state and him towering over me, the odds were even. "I've spoken
to Faizel. He says they saw where you decided to settle for the night, some
grubby little hole in a tree. Probably you were sharing it with a squirrel or
something, I don't know. At any rate, they kept an eye on you. They saw a
stalker coming toward you looking for a taste, and they rushed in and saved
your life. What do you have to say about that?"