Fear the Dead (Book 4) (18 page)

I’m going to tear his heart out
, I thought.     

The burning anger turned into a
bonfire. I felt my cheeks flush with blood, and I gripped the knife as if I was
trying to snap it in two. I didn’t know if it was anger at Shawn or if it was
anger at myself for being a lousy protector, but the effect was the same. The
flames of rage poured over me and scorched me.

I walked by Mel in the doorway.

“Watch him,” I said.

My boots boomed on the staircase. I
reached the lobby and walked toward the living room. I didn’t know what I was
going to do, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The time for
self-control was long behind me now, replaced by madness and adrenaline.

When I stepped into the living room,
I stopped. I looked around. The chair was empty, and a breeze blew in the room
from the open window. Reggie was on the floor, his face pressed into the
floorboards, with blood running from his temple.

Chapter
18

A trickle of blood ran down his skin,
hitting channels of wrinkles as it drew a red line down his cheek and then onto
the curve of his chin. Reggie’s eyes were unfocused, and he sank into the couch
and let it take his weight.

Mel found a washcloth in the kitchen.
She took a bottle of water out of her rucksack, put the washcloth over the lid
and tipped it over. With delicate swabs she cleaned Reggie’s head, the wash
cloth getting redder as she worked.  I walked over to the window and pulled on
it. The wooden frame resisted at first, then gave way with a whine and slid
down to the window sill. The sharp breeze dropped immediately.

“Think he went far?” I said.

Mel lifted the cloth away from
Reggie.

“Guy’s an Olympic sprinter or
something,” she said.

Reggie’s head wobbled as he tried to
focus on Mel.

“How do you… know about the
Olympics?” he said.

He slurred his words. He must have
been concussed from whatever Shawn had done to escape. We needed to get him
back to Charlie so that the scientist could take a look at him.

Mel smiled.

“Because dad and I stayed in a house
for a week once. It was the longest we ever stayed in one place. He took the
master bedroom and I took the kid’s room, and it just so happened that a
sports-crazy boy lived there and he had tons of books. I had to pass the time
somehow, so I read about the Olympics and the World Cup and Wimbledon.”

“Wimbledon. Huh. Hate tennis,” said
Reggie.

Ben stood by my side at the windowsill.
There was just an inch separating us, and it seemed that even that was too much
distance for him. He hadn’t said much since we found him, and I was starting to
get worried. We needed to take him out of this house, but we had to have a plan
first.

“Got a sec?” I said to Mel.

She nodded, and stood up. I walked
across the room and went to leave, when Ben grabbed my shirt.

“Stay here with Reggie,” I said.

Reggie lifted his hand in the air.
His eyes glazed over. Shawn had really given him a walloping.

“But Kyle,” said Ben.

“Just give me a minute. We’re only
going into the hall.”

I shut the door behind me. In the
hallway, the pictures on the walls stared back at me. One showed a lonely
bridge that looked decades away from collapse. Others were of crumbling country
walls and remote mountains. It was a bleak landscape, and I was sure that it was
local.

I kept my voice low.

“We need a plan. It makes me edgy
that Shawn’s out there, but something tells me that the crazy little bastard
knows enough to stay away from us.”

Mel settled down on the bottom step
of the staircase. Blood stained her fingertips from cleaning Reggie’s wound.

“So what’s there to decide then? We
need to get back to Lou and the others.”

“But I just don’t know. Maybe Shawn’s
dangerous, maybe not.”

“He’s definitely dangerous, Kyle.
It’s just whether that danger is gonna be directed at us. Like you said, he
probably knows enough to keep his distance.”

“I can’t get my head straight.”

Usually, when I needed to make a
decision, a single choice cried out at me. My decisions weren’t always the
best, but at least I made them with conviction. This time it was different. It
felt like I was the one who had taken a blow to the head. Like my confidence
was off-kilter and my thinking skills were marbles spinning across a room.

Maybe it was time for me to face
facts. I had stepped up as leader because, after Bleakholt, the crisis had
demanded it.  Things were in disarray back then. Most people had spent hours
fighting the undead, and nearly everyone had watched a loved one die in the
soil. On top of that their leader was gone and their settlement was unsafe. I
had stepped up because I had to.

Being a good war time leader didn’t
mean I could move things forward in times of peace though. Hell, you only had
to look at Churchill to see that some leaders prospered under certain
situations. I had my limitations, and it was time that I accepted them. I
needed to stop trying to decide things for people. Who the hell was I to decide
whether we should stay at camp, or leave? They needed to decide for themselves,
and then whatever the decision was, I’d have to stick by it.

“Listen,” I said. “I think it’s time
I stopped  giving all the answers. After all, doesn’t seem like I’m leading us
into paradise, does it? When I saw the helicopter, I guess I just thought
that…I don’t know. That there was something else out there. That it was worth
chasing.”

Mel gave a faint smile.

“It was. It is. Hell, I’ve never seen
a helicopter in person in my life. Think of that, Kyle. We had to come find
it.”

I felt weak. My stomach turned on
itself, and my arms felt heavy. I just wanted to sink to the floor for a while
and close my eyes.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I
said.

“Do what?”

“Take all of this on. The people, the
camp, Ben. It’s all getting too much.”

“No shit, Kyle.”

Mel sat with her chin resting on her
hand and her back bent forward . For a second, she reminded me of Lou. She was
different, though. Her face looked younger than Lou’s, but the way she carried herself
was much older.

“You keep it together pretty well,” I
said.

Mel patted the step next to her.

“Come sit here a sec.”

I joined her on the step. We sat so
close our shoulders touched, and it reminded me of being with Lou by the tree
when she was on watch. I was glad of the contact now; it reminded me that I was
still here, that I was still a human being who was alive and could feel things.

“I’m gonna tell you something, Kyle.
And I want you to make me a promise.”

“Depends what it is,” I said.

“Just promise me.”

I nodded.

“I’ll give you a conditional promise.
Because I don’t know what you’re asking yet.”.

Mel grinned. “Okay, whatever. Just
promise me this; that when I tell you something, you won’t ever ask me about it
or bring it up again. Once these words leave my mouth, you listen to them,
understand them, and then let them fade away. Because I’m only saying this to
make you feel better.”

I tapped her knee with my hand and
gave it a squeeze.

“Sure,” I said.

Mel sighed. “Okay. Here goes.” She
sighed again, a long trailing breath. Then she looked away from me, at the
floor. “This is the thing, Kyle. You came to my tent back in camp and you
started talking about Justin. About how you think he’s still alive.”

“Mel, I – “

“Just hear me out. I told you that I
didn’t give a shit about him. That I screwed Peter Jenkins and Kieron because I
don’t care about Justin.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself
to me,” I said.

Mel pressed her thumb into her calf
muscle and pivoted her hand, as if she were trying to drill the digit into her
skin.

“It wasn’t quite true. Everything I
said.”

Her voice was low now, and she
wouldn’t look at me.

“So Pete and Kieron then. You didn’t...”

“Oh, I slept with them. But it wasn’t
because I hate Justin. It’s because when I think of him, it feels like every
single cell in my body is screaming at me. It’s agony, Kyle. I close my eyes
and I see Justin walking across the plains like he’s some big fucking hero. I
don’t see his face anymore, I see the back of his head. So it’s not that I hate
him, it’s that I need to forget him. If I don’t, it’s gonna tear me open.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. She
shrugged me off and looked at me, and her eyes burned.

“How could the selfish bastard just
abandon me?”

“He didn’t. We had bigger things to
think about. The picture doesn’t end at me and you. Think about everyone else.”

“But what about me? A bunch of
strangers meant more to him than I did. I miss him so much that I could be
sick. But you know what, Kyle? I’m done. I’m not gonna let myself get attached
to anyone. From now on, everything is about survival. Fuck Justin.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

She shook her head. I could tell that
something had left her, as if a tiny part of her resolve had drained away and
left her that bit more vulnerable.

“No. Guess not.”

***

Ben sprinted across the open fields,
his eyes fixed in one direction. He didn’t see the rock on the ground until it
was too late, and by that point his foot had stumbled on it and he fell to the
floor. At least he managed to put his arms out in front of him before he hit
the dirt.

By the time I caught up to him,
Charlie had seen us. He reached Ben before I did and he helped him up off the
floor. Ben gave the scientist a hug.

“Missed you, buddy,” said Charlie. He
looked at me and mouthed the words ‘is he okay?’

I nodded.

“How’s Lou?”

Charlie let out a sigh. He led us
over to the bush. Lou was on her stretcher. Her forehead was dripping with
perspiration, but her cheeks were chalky pale. Charlie had changed her bandage,
though it was debateable whether wrapping denim around a broken leg was stellar
medical treatment. I longed for the days of the old health system. The waiting
times were long, but at least treatment didn’t mean a wooden plank in the
middle of a field, with a one-armed scientist feeding you whiskey.

“She’s not at her best,” said
Charlie. “Hasn’t said a word in hours. Not one I could understand, anyhow. This
is reaching breaking point, Kyle. She needs help.”

“There’s nothing we can do?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Clean her wound a little. Make sure
she’s drinking. I hate to talk about it like this, but if I was putting my pay
packet on a bet, it wouldn’t be on her side.”

I looked away into the distance. Less
than a mile away, a large grey rock stuck thirty feet into the air. Something
drifted up into the sky behind it. It looked like smoke, but the trail was so
thin and light coloured that it must have been a cloud.

“Jesus,” said Charlie. “Reggie looks
like crap.”

Mel and Reggie had reached us. As
soon as they got here, Reggie sank down onto the floor. On the walk back from
the house he had seemed to perk up a little; his eyes focussed, his words were
straight rather than slurred.

I walked over to him. He hung his
head forward so far he looked like he was about to tip over.

“Okay, pal?” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Reggie,” I said.

He lifted his head. I wasn’t prepared
for how he would look. His face was bright red, like a coal smouldering in a
blacksmith’s forge. I put my hand to his skin and felt his heat warm me. When I
pulled my hand away, his sweat covered it.

“Is this normal for concussion?” I
said.