Fear the Dead (Book 4)

Chapter 1

Someone once told me, ‘
The only
thing we need to fear is what we do to ourselves’
. I remember thinking that
it was pretentious crap, but it turned out to be true. After all, what were the
infected if they weren’t a part of us? The infection turned friend against
friend, parent against child, brother against sister. The world was full of
fear, and it was our own fault.

It was always worse at night, with
only the flickering bonfires lighting our camp. There was darkness in the daytime,
too, but this was blackness of mood rather than of the sky. Something wasn’t
right, and even I couldn’t hide from it. It showed in the men’s faces as they
fetched water from the stream, and in the women’s as they butchered livestock.

“Two bodies this month,” said Darla.
“How safe does that sound?”

“This isn’t the Wacky Warehouse. Name
me somewhere that isn’t dangerous,” I answered.

“That’s not good enough, Kyle.”

“I was a teacher,” I said. “When I
wasn’t spending time with Clara, I was watching Die Hard and drinking beer. I
don’t have all the answers.”

“If you want to lead us, then you
better find them,” said Darla.

She sat with her shoulders tensed as
if she expected someone to sneak up behind her and place their hands around her
neck. Not that someone could do that to her. Darla was a fighter, and even I
would think twice before a confrontation with her.

Ever since the battle of Bleakholt,
where we’d managed to survive an attack from a wave of the infected, we had
kept moving north. Back then the place was in chaos and the people were scared.
After all, most of the survivors of the battle had never faced the Wilds. Not
really. They’d lived in Bleakholt under the leadership of a Victoria, and they
had never had to worry about whether an infected would grab them from the
shadows. When Bleakholt fell and we had to leave, they lost that comfort
blanket.

Darla had taken to her new life with
an ease that even I couldn’t match. As much as she was outspoken and sometimes
a pain in the arse, I needed her. The rest of the Bleakholt campers, around
fifty men, women and children, looked up to her. She had a natural leadership
style that, even if it was a bit forceful, worked.

“There has to be somewhere,” said
Darla. “I know this place is your idea of heaven, but two dead bodies in a
month must tell you that something isn’t right.”

“There’s a stream nearby. That’s a
fresh water source that will always be available to us. And we’ve done okay for
food so far, haven’t we? The hunters and foragers are bringing enough back to
keep us going. Not everywhere is like that, Darla.”

Lou shifted in the corner. She had
her legs stretched out in front of her and her arms propped behind her head. A
few days ago she had argued with one of the Bleakholt campers. After that she’d
gone into her tent and then an hour later she had come out with half of her
hair missing, as if she’d cut the ends away with a knife. It was now slicked
back over her head with what must have been grease or engine oil.

“It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,”
she said. “Stuff we need to feel satisfied. Used to be that the only things
that mattered were how big our gardens were and how many miles to the gallon
our cars could get. It’s different now. This whole mess; the infected, the
stalkers. It’s given us a push and sent us falling to the bottom of the
pyramid.”

“What’s your point?” said Darla, in a
harsh voice.

“Point is, my little pit bull, that
only the basics matter right now. Food. Shelter. Water. Safety. This place
covers two of them straight away, since we’ll always have water and there are
enough sheep to feed a Viking army. If you can crack the safety side, this
place might be okay.”

Darla scoffed. “You make it sound
like it’s a small problem. Two people are dead. And not just that. They were
ripped open.”

Across from me, Reggie Jolton stood
up. He was another Bleakholt resident, and since we’d started travelling I had
come to trust him. He was smart and helpful, even if his wife, Kendal, was a
stone cold bitch. With Justin and Billy missing and Alice dead, I needed people
I could trust.

“Mind if I open the tent a little?”
he said.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

Reggie strode across the tent and
took hold of the zip opening. He pulled it but the zipper was stuck, and he had
to fish fabric out from the edges before it would budge. When it did, a cold
breeze twisted through the gap. I smelled the sour smoke from the bonfires
outside, and a faint twinge of the toilet trenches that were five hundred yards
east of camp. Maybe we should build them even further away, I thought.
Fifty-odd people doing their business in the same place didn’t make for
wholesome air.

The four of us carried on the debate.
We each sat on cheap fold-away chairs that years ago were used at festivals by
revellers who needed a rest from partying. The whole field was once used as a
campsite and festival area, and we had found many of the tents still standing.
Others needed putting together again, but we had gotten lucky and found shelter
for everyone. A few families had to share with each other, but it built a sense
of community after a while.

It was strange walking around camp
sometimes. With the light of the orange flames glinting on people’s faces, the
smell of lamb and beef twisting on a spit, it could almost be pleasant. People
had started telling camp stories around the fire, reviving a tradition that
almost died out when technology had advanced. A guy named Gregor Horlock had
found a guitar in a discount store on a supply run, and he’d used valuable
carrying space to bring it back. I was pissed off with him at first, but after
hearing him play Bob Dylan songs at night time, I decided that it was a good
call.

There was another chair in the tent
next to Lou which should have made up the council of five, but this one was
empty. In fact it had been empty for quite a while now. I thought about the
people who should have filled it; my buddy Justin, who I hadn’t seen since he
made a sacrifice to save us all. Alice, Ben’s mum who had died in Bleakholt.
Billy, a tough Bleakholt resident who again had made a sacrifice in the battle
of Bleakholt. But the empty chair wasn’t for any of my departed friends. It was
for Charlie Sturgeon, the one-armed scientist who had to juggle jobs as camp
researcher, doctor and vet. Charlie’s chair had been empty for every night this
week, and the week before he had only attended one meeting. I was starting to
think we should replace him, but I needed someone I could trust. It had to be someone
who didn’t support Darla.

“Let’s get down to the basics of
this,” I said. “Number one. Unless you can tell me somewhere safer, there’s no
way we’re leaving.”

“Come on Kyle – “said Darla.

I put my hand up to silence her.
“Number two. We need to find out what the hell is happening with the bodies.
Lou, you’re captain of the guard. Why haven’t your guys seen anything?”

Lou flinched from the criticism. “My
men still only have two eyes, same as everyone else. Difference is that they
choose to keep theirs open, shivering their balls off in the cold nights while
the rest of you sleep. You should be thanking them, not bitching.”

“The whole point of a watch is that
they see things,” said Reggie.

“Shut it, lanky. The bodies are
turning up in places we don’t expect. Whatever’s putting them there, it knows
where we aren’t watching.”

“It’s the mutilation I don’t
understand,” I said. “The organs get taken but the rest of the body is just
left there.” I had a shift in focus. “Where the hell is Charlie? I need his
input on this.”

Darla crossed her legs. “I don’t know
why you have that crackpot in the council,” she said.

From outside the tent I heard
Gregor’s guitar twang as he tuned the strings. The air in the tent was stuffy,
and it started to feel hard to breathe. I loosened the collar on my shirt.

“Okay Kyle?” said Reggie.

“Never better.”

“I think we should leave,” said
Darla.

“We can get to the bottom of this,” I
said. “We need to consider the chance that there’s a stalker nest nearby.”

Reggie shivered in his seat. His tall
frame looked too big for the plastic chair he sat in. The hems of his jeans
went way up beyond his ankles, giving him the look of a man wearing trousers
two sizes too small. Back in the old days there had been shops dedicated to
tall men whose physiques were too ungainly for regular shops. Reggie’s body
wasn’t profitable enough for the fashion brands even before the outbreak. The
apocalypse hadn't been kind to his wardrobe.

“I hate stalkers,” said Reggie. “I’d
never seen one until the battle. Never realised how real they looked. How slimy
and greasy.”

Darla stood up. “See Kyle? For all
your talk about how safe this place is, even you admit there could be a nest of
stalkers nearby.”

I made a dismissive hand gesture.
“Sit down, Darla. You can’t keep getting out of your seat every time you get
upset. That’s not how meetings work.”

“Don’t patronise me, Kyle.”

“Oh just sit down, bitch,” said Lou,
in a half-joking voice.

I shot her a look that told her not
to do it again.

“We can get through this if it’s
stalkers. We just need to find their nest in the day time. Look, we can’t just
abandon this place. If we do, where do we go? I’ve spent enough time in the
Wilds to know that there aren’t any safe places, and this one is as good as it
gets. Otherwise, what else do we do? Just keep walking until we die? Are we
supposed to have any sort of life?”

“What kind of life is it when people
are scared to sleep?” asked Darla.

I looked around the tent hoping for
any trace of support on the faces across from me. Reggie’s face was a page
scrawled in a foreign language; there was something written there but I
couldn’t read a bit of it. His shoulders sagged and his posture looked bent.
Lately, it seemed like confidence was seeping out of him the way air leaves a
punctured tire. I’d been meaning to talk to him about it to find out why, but I
hadn’t had the time.

I glanced over at Lou. She shot me a return
look, then turned her head and stared out of the tent. I got the feeling that
in these meetings she always supported me, but not because she agreed with me.
I think she just disliked Darla and loved to piss her off. Lou hadn’t been
happy since we had settled here.

Finally there was Darla. She reminded
me of a young, female Winston Churchill. Her body was squat, her face screwed
up as if she chewed on something nasty. She’d never made any secret of her
desire to lead. After we left Bleakholt, she’d been helpful at first. Then
slowly she asked for more and more responsibility. If I didn’t give her any, she
created some for herself. She began to disagree with me at every turn,
especially when others were listening. I should have stopped this before it
became a problem, but now it was too late and she had too much support.

She was the opposite of me. I never
wanted to be leader. Hell, I used to get as far away from people as I could. I
guess I had changed over the last couple of years, and the fact was that I was
a leader now, and I was stuck with it. Most of the Bleakholt campers were soft,
and they needed someone who knew what it was like to live in the Wilds. I
wouldn’t abandon them.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said.

Everyone lifted their head to look at
me. Darla’s glare was so strong it felt like sunlight shining through a
magnifying glass and scorching my skin.

“Our guard isn’t strong enough, and
we need more people on watch. Up to now we’ve let people volunteer to be on
watch at nights. Well this isn’t a charity, and the days of volunteering are
done. Until we stop finding bodies, everyone is going to do their share. People
will draw watch times, and if they don’t stick to them, I’ll kick them out of
camp myself. And that includes the people with children.”