Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel (8 page)

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.

Chapter
9

I needed to find shelter before the sun
completely disappeared and covered the countryside in darkness. We left
Blackfoot as far behind us as we could, and as we climbed a muddy hill I looked
over my shoulder from time to time, checking there was no movement coming from
below. There was no sign of Torben and the hunters.

I didn’t know where they were headed but
I knew one thing – they were hunting us now. Torben wasn’t just a survivor in
this world, I realised; he actually relished it. The trophies that hung from
his belt said as much. Everyone in the wilds had to hunt to survive, but I
hadn’t yet met anyone else who wore the spoils of their hunt around their waist.

And I had never met a man who hunted
humans before.

Justin took big strides beside me. He
had his hands curled into fists at his side, and he seemed full of nervous
energy.

“Did you see it? The way I smashed into
him?”

“I saw him punch you in the face.”

Justin’s cheek was red from where
Torben’s fist had connected with it, though mercifully the hunter had missed
his eye.

Justin turned his head to me. “You could
at least say thanks, you know.”

“For nearly getting us killed?”

He shook his head. “For saving you.”

I stopped walking. The side of the slope
was slippery and the quickly darkening sky didn’t give us much time to waste,
but I felt if I didn’t straighten this out right now I was going to end up
pushing the kid down the hill.

“When we set out, when I agreed to let
you come with me, what did I say?” I prodded his chest. “I told you that you do
exactly what I tell you.”

He scratched his ear. “But you weren’t –
“

“Shut up,” I said. I felt my body tense
up and my pulse quicken. “If it weren’t for you climbing through the barricade
like some clumsy chimp, we wouldn’t be in half the shit we are now.”

“I just thought – “

“Shut. Up.” I said, through clenched
teeth.

We walked up the hill for thirty
minutes, enough for my calf muscles to start to throb. It would have been more
of a struggle of course, if I had my rucksack with me. But thanks to Torben,
that was gone, and along with it were ninety per cent of our supplies and the
GPRS tracker.

A freezing breeze lashed at my cheeks
and nipped at my skin. I felt my chest and arms go cold, but I didn’t zip up my
coat. I was thankful for it, truth be told, because it would make it much
easier to stay awake, and I had a long night’s watch ahead of me. The sky was
completely black now save for the glow of the moon and stars.

“Here’s good,” I said.

We stopped fifty metres short of the
summit, where some natural force had carved a small recess into the side of the
hill. It wasn’t a four-star room with a king-sized bed, but it would be good
enough to give us some protection for the night. Besides, there wasn’t much
likelihood of stalkers all the way up here.

Justin threw his pack on the ground and
was about to sit on it.

“Wait. Open that up and tell me what
we’ve got.”

He knelt down and unzipped his bag. He
put his hands in and fished through it, and then sighed.

“Pass it here,” I said.

With my rucksack gone, whatever was in
Justin’s pack was all that we had. With the shortcut through the village now
out of the question due to the barricade and the presence of the hunters,
taking the motorway route was our only course. I needed to see if we had enough
supplies to make it.

I opened the bag and tried to see what
was inside by the dim glow of the moonlight. I couldn’t read the labels on the
tins, but I could see how many we had, and it didn’t look good; a few tins,
some water, a can of fizzy pop and a bar of chocolate. We had enough for a few
days at most, nowhere near enough to make it to the farm. All things
considered, we were screwed.

“What’d you reckon?” asked Justin.

I looked at him. He was already a skinny
boy, despite living in the safety of the town where food wasn’t much of a
pressing concern. He was probably just a naturally thin person. God knows what
he was going to look like after a month in the wilds.

“I think you’re going to need to get a
belt soon,” I said.

Justin rubbed his hands together. His
coat was thick and it was zipped all the way to the top, but his body still
shook.

“Can you light a fire?” he asked.

“No chance.”

“But I’m freezing.”

I clenched my fists, breathed in, and
fought back the rising irritation. I couldn’t afford to spare the energy it
would take to be angry with him. “Weren’t you listening back in the village?”

“Course.”

“Then use this genius memory of yours
and tell me what Torben said.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “That
they’re going to hunt us.”

I nodded. “And evidentially, this is a
game to them. If we light a fire up here at night, we might as throw them a
welcome party. Wait ‘til the morning”

It was pitch black and the only sound
was that of the wind as it blew through the grass. From our shelter we had a
perfect view of the countryside for miles around us, though in the night time,
that didn’t help much. Even the most innocent of shadows took on a menacing
form; the branch of a tree became the spindly arm of a stalker, the swaying of
a bush in the wind became the movement of an infected. Now though, we didn’t
just have the stalkers and the infected to worry about. For all I knew, the
hunters could be sneaking up the hill side ready to attack.  Maybe Torben would
tire of making this a game, and would just decide to kill us instead of toying
with us.

I looked at Justin. His eyes were wide
open, and he was staring into the distance.

“You sure they can’t fix it?” I said.

He turned and looked at me. I could see
faint rings under his eyes, the beginnings of the marks of those who live in
the wilds. He was starting to realise that sleep was hard to come by out here.

“I told you, I took the battery out and
I broke it. Even if they got another one, they wouldn’t be able to do anything.
I’m not stupid.”

I let out a long breath. “I hope you’re
right.”

Justin picked up a stone from the
ground. He twisted it in his hands, moving his fingers along its surface. Then
he pulled his arm back and threw it down the hill.

“None of this would have happened if
you’d listened to me,” he said.

“’Scuse me?”

He scrunched up his face. “I wanted to
take the motorway route. I
told
you that’s the route the GPRS
programmed. But no – you didn’t listen to me. Because you never listen to
anyone.”

“Listen to people and you start to hear
the wrong things,” I said.

“If your way was right, then I’d hate to
be around when you’re wrong.”

“Shut up and get some sleep.”

He was right, I knew. This time, just
this once, he was right. If we had taken the motorway route, none of this would
have happened. But then, how was I supposed to know Blackfoot would be
barricaded? There was no way to predict something like that, and on paper it
was
a good short cut.

Still, I should have listened, and
because I hadn’t our situation was a hundred times worse. We had hardly any
food, and as well as the stalkers, infected and whatever the hell else was out
there, we also had a group of men hunting us for fun. We were hundreds of miles
away from the farm, and the idea of getting there seemed so far in the distance
that if it weren’t so damn cold, I would have said it was a mirage.

“Want me to take watch tonight?” said
Justin.

“No,” I said, my body screaming at me as
I spoke the word. I felt tired all the way down to my bones, and my eyelids
were lead weights, but it was too dangerous for me to sleep.

It was going to be another restless
night.

Chapter
10

Dawn broke and the sun hung weakly in
the sky, the gas giant finding it as hard to rise as I was. My back ached from
a night spent propped up against the side of a hill, and there was a deep pain
in my stomach. When I moved I felt a pang in my stomach, and I couldn’t stop
the groan that escaped my lips.

Justin was already awake. He’d arranged
a pile of twigs in front of him and he was furiously rubbing two stones
together.

“Why didn’t we just take the stove from
the scout shack?” he asked.

I shook my head, trying to clear away
the fog.

“It wasn’t ours to take.”

“It would have been easier.”

I stretched out my arms and felt my
elbow joints crack. “Tell me I didn’t fall asleep.”

He nodded. “You were out when I woke. I
thought I’d let you get a couple of hours.”

That worried me. I knew my body needed
sleep as much as the next man, but I couldn’t ever let myself drop off while
there was nobody on watch. I didn’t know what to do. I needed some rest, and I
didn’t know where I was going to get it. My head pounded.

Justin carried on banging the rocks
together, and I almost laughed.

“What’re you trying to do?”

His cheeks were tinted red. “I was going
to cook us some beans.”

“By smashing rocks together?”

“Thought that’s how you did it.”

I grinned. Through all his learning and
his amazing memory, he still had no clue. “Where’d you get the sticks from?”

He gestured toward the pocket of his
raincoat. “Collected them when we were in the woods. I got sticks and kindling,
now I just need the spark.”

“You’re not going to get it that way. Hand
me the chocolate and the soda from the bag.”

He passed me the items and I spent
twenty-five minutes painstaking showing him the chocolate-soda can method of
lighting a fire. It took a hell of a lot of patience, but if you were in the
wilds with nothing to set a fire going, it was as good a method as any. All you
had to do was use the chocolate to polish the can until it was all nice and
shiny,  then angle it toward the sun and use it to get the tinder smouldering.
It acted like a crude magnifying glass.

“Wow, where did you learn that?” he
said.

“I used to do a bit of camping back in
the old days. It was just a hobby then. Never thought it would become my life.”

Justin had a wide smile on his face. “I
love learning this stuff.”

“Remember it for when I cut you loose,”
I said.

I hated to admit it, but a small part of
me got a kick from teaching him. He was an eager student, and he seemed to be
getting the hang of knowing when to shut up. Back when I was a hiking
enthusiast, I’d always looked forward to the day me and Clara would have a
child – obviously a boy – and I’d get to teach him things like this. Then the
world decided to give us a big ‘fuck you’ and any plans for the future rotted
away.

As the beans cooked, the smell of the
tomato sauce drifted through my nostrils, down my throat and put my stomach in
a twist. It was so overpowering that I felt spit collect in my mouth.

“What are we going to do?” said Justin.

I scratched my chin and my beard felt
rough beneath my fingers. When I had last shaved? It must have been weeks ago. 
“We don’t have a lot of options.”

Justin looked into the distance. “The
GPRS said – “

“Enough with the GPRS.”

“Is this just because I know the route
and you don’t?”

Of course it is, I thought. If you
hadn’t have taken it upon yourself to screw me over just so you could tag
along, I’d be fine. I felt my chest tighten and the familiar feeling of anger
welled up inside me. I tried to let it settle back down, because I didn’t have
the strength to get mad.

“If we’re taking the motorway, we’ve got
some work to do. We’ve got supplies for another couple of days, and that isn’t
going to get us far.” I said.

Justin bit his lip. “We could ration
ourselves.”

I shook my head. “Still won’t cut it.”

“Then what?”

“We either get a car and cut our travel
time, or we get more food somewhere.”

On hearing the word ‘car’, Justin’s eyes
lit up.  I wondered if he’d ever actually seen one before the pick-up truck
yesterday, because working cars were rare these days. There were plenty of them
scattered around and most of them still had the keys in the ignition, most
likely because their drivers had met an untimely death. The problem was that
batteries soon drained, and there weren’t exactly any mechanics out there
waiting for a callout.

“Let’s get a car!” he said.

“Not that simple.”

Rare as they were these days, I knew
someone who had one. He was also the only man alive besides me who knew where
the farm was. The problem was, I didn’t have any desire to see him again. It
wasn’t that he was a bad guy; more that he reminded me of what I had lost, of
who I had failed to protect.

Getting a car would be easier than
getting enough food to last the trip, but it wasn’t an option.

“How dangerous is the wholesalers,
really?” I said.

Justin looked at the floor. His eyes
looked grave. “Kyle, please. Let’s not do that.”

“Come on kid, can’t be that bad.”

Above us a grey cloud had gathered. The
edges were white, but in the middle of it was a heavy darkness. It started to
spit, and I felt the flecks of rain drop on my head. I was in for another
drenching if this carried on. I should have just picked up a new raincoat when
I was in town.

Justin pulled his hood over his head. He
looked at me, and I could see in his eyes that he was scared.

“Moe sent five guys there once. They
were supposed to be gone a week and come back with loads of stuff. Two months
later, we’re still waiting.”

“Hunters or infected?” I said. I hated
having to ask that question, and I thought back fondly to the time when the infected
were all I had to worry about.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said
Justin.

The rain was coming down heavier, and
the storm cloud seemed like it had deliberately positioned itself above us.
That was the way the world was now – it actively worked against you. Once man
was the king of the planet, and now our home was trying to destroy us. How else
could you explain all this shit? The infected, the stalkers, men hunting men.
This was the end.

I wasn’t going down so easily.

“They must be ready now,” I said,
nodding at the beans. My stomach ached.

Justin dished us both a share. The smell
of them was intoxicating, and my mouth watered as I lifted them to my lips.
They tasted amazing; it was the most glorious breakfast I’d ever had.

So here was the choice then. We could go
get a car, and I’d have to face someone I had no interest in ever seeing again.
The only other option was to go to the wholesalers and run straight into a den
of either the hunters or the infected. It all came down to this question; would
I rather risk emotional pain, or would I rather risk my life?

I shovelled another spoonful of beans
and felt a warm glow in my stomach. Above us the rain cloud gathered force and
blotted out the sun. The rain thickened into a torrent, the water battering the
grass as it landed. I closed my eyes and made my decision, knowing the choice I
made could mean the end of myself mentally, or the end of us both physically.