Fear the Dead (Book 4) (22 page)

 He nodded his head at Lou.

“Better pick up your cripple, we need
to leave.”

“How long until your ship goes?” I
said.

“A few weeks. Is that enough time? I
bloody hope so. But it isn’t just that. This place isn’t safe.”

“Well, yeah. Don’t know if you
noticed,” said Mel, “But nowhere’s really safe these days.”

Al stretched his arms out, and I
heard his joints crack.

“I spent days here trying to fix the
sparrow. Heard some things at night that I don’t care to hear again.”

“Stalkers,” I said.

“Sorry?” said Al.

“You must have seen them. They hunt
at night. Slimy looking things.”

Charlie left Lou and walked back over
to us. Ben clung to his hand.

“They’re nocturnal creatures. Like
the infected, but more agile. Have you seen them?”

“I have,” said Kendal.

Mel gave her a look that was best interpreted
as ‘shut up’.

Al shook his head.

“The things I heard weren’t
creatures. It was engines. Lots of them, buzzing around at night. I won’t lie
to you, one night they sounded so close that I climbed in the cockpit and spent
the night shitting myself.”

“I heard them too,” said Kendal. “And
other things. Makes me shiver when I think about it.”

“What sort of things?” said Charlie.

“Like people chanting,” said Kendal.
“And screaming. When night’s at its darkest.”

***

We started the walk back to camp. I
lost track of how many miles we had walked to get to the helicopter originally,
but I knew that we would soon come across the Quarryman’s Secret pub. Next to
it would be the road back to camp. I wondered how it would feel to get back.
Would it feel like going home?

With each mile we covered the terrain
became more familiar. Where once it looked like an endless sea of grass and
hills, I began to recognise its features. The rock formation shaped like a
giant head. A cobblestone wall with barbed wire running along the top and
shreds of old carrier bags fluttering from the spikes.

After a full day of travel, it seemed
like there was still miles between us and camp. We didn’t have much chance of
making it to the capital in time, I realised.

We rested next to a wall as the sun
dipped from the sky. Next to us was a cattle grid installed over a narrow path
at the boundary of a field. Once the field had belonged to a local farmer, but
nature had reclaimed it now.

Lou was on her stretcher, but she
asked that we prop her in a sitting position with her back against the wall.
Ben lifted a water bottle to her dry lips. She drank the bottle dry, then put
out her hand and ran it through the boy’s hair.

Kendal hovered on the outskirts of
the group, sitting by herself and staring at the ground. Mel leaned against the
wall and just stared at Reggie’s wife.

Al stood up, arms folded, rucksack
hanging from his back. He looked up at the sky and scowled.

“Something wrong?” I said.

“Wish I was up there,” he said. “It’d
take an hour in the sparrow.”

“Well we’ve got to work with what we
have.”

Al glanced at Lou. He sighed.

“Isn’t going to work. Do you really
think we’re going to make it down there in time? My boys won’t wait. That’s our
rule. No matter who makes it back to the ship or not, we leave when we say we
will.”

“So what do you suggest?” I said.

“We need to think about what’s
slowing us down.”

“Which is?”

“He means me,” said Lou.

Her voice was croaky, but I was glad
to hear it. I wouldn’t have said that she looked better, but it reassured me a
little to see that she was conscious, at least. I wondered how long it would
last.

“Kyle, have you got a second?” said
Mel.

I nodded. I turned my stare to Lou.

“One sec,” I said.

Lou gave a thin smile and put her hand
up in a dismissive gesture.

Mel and I walked a few paces away
under the crunching grass. Al and the rest of them stayed back and watched us.
When we were far enough away, we stopped. Mel spoke in a hushed voice.

“We need to decide what to do with
her,” she said.

I glanced over at Lou. My friend
looked weaker than I’d ever seen her.

“We need to get her something for her
leg.”

“I looked at it earlier, Kyle. Have
you seen it? It’s swollen as hell. And I don’t know if it’s just something in
the air, but I’m sure it was starting to smell.”

“We can do something.”

Mel huffed. “What if she, you know,
goes the same way Reggie did?”

“This is different. She broke her
leg, she wasn’t bitten. I’m worried, Mel. It’s become infected, and Charlie
said she could lose it.”

“And if we try to get to London
carrying her with us, we’re going to lose a hell of a lot more.”

Across from us, Kendal sat on the
grass. Al stood with his rucksack on his bulky shoulders and shifted on his
feet. He looked into the horizon as if he was worried it would disappear.

“What are you saying, Mel?”

“I think you know what I’m saying.”

A dark cloud hung above us, heavy
with rain, a deep, dark grey. So plump that it looked like it could fall out of
the sky any second. A shadow was cast over Mel’s face. I tried to read her
expression, and it worried me. There was something there, a look that she’d
worn more and more lately but I had pretended not to see. She was developing a
mean streak.

“I don’t want to hear another damn
word from you,” I said.

Without giving her a second to reply,
I walked away from Mel and joined the rest of the group. I knelt down next to
Lou. The grass was wet with dew and it soaked through my trousers. I put my
hand out. I went to move the makeshift bandage away from Lou’s leg, but she saw
my hand and flinched. Instead I rested my palm on her forehead. It was hot and
wet.

“Kyle,” she said. Her voice was
strained.

“Shh. Just rest.”

“I’m sorry about how I’ve been acting
lately. I’ve been a real bitch to you. With Darla. And then I was an idiot and
got myself into this state.”

I smiled at my friend.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I just want you to know,” she said.
“You’re one of….There’s plenty of bad people around, and I guess by their
standards, you’re alright.”

“Wow, Lou. Steady with the
compliments,” I said.

She gave a weak laugh. She reached up
and grabbed my hand. Where her forehead was burning, the touch of her hand was
ice. She tried to squeeze my palm but her grip was weak.

I sat back on the grass. I felt the
rain soak through to my knees and wet my skin. I closed my eyes and sat for a
while with Lou’s hand in mine, aware that everyone around us was waiting for
something.

Al wanted to get to London to meet up
with the rest of his crew. I didn’t have a clue what Kendal wanted, but I
didn’t care. Mel just wanted to get somewhere safe, and Charlie was itching to
be back in his lab at camp. What did Ben want? The boy stood next to the
scientist and clung to his leg as if it was all that kept him upright. He
probably wanted nothing more than to have his mum back. Did he miss his father?
Who knew, but he was better off without him.

All these people, some of them my
closest friends, all needed something. The people back at camp did, too. I
thought I could decide for them what they wanted and needed, but the truth was
that I didn’t have a clue. I thought I was some tough survivor and I knew
better than them, but I was just as clueless as everyone else. My big conceit
was thinking I could decide their futures for them. I was an idiot. An
arrogant, selfish idiot.

I looked at Lou. Her hand slipped
from mine and fell by her side.

“I was wrong,” I said.

She looked at me, though the effort
seemed to take every last shred of energy away from her. I became aware of a
smell. Something unpleasant. Not quite rotting, but something dark and
unnatural.

“Wow,” she said. “Three words I never
thought I’d hear you say.”

“I thought I could be the big guy and
tell people what to do and what’s good for them,” I said. “But I guess the
thing is, I’m just no good at it. People have to decide their own paths, so I’m
gonna let them. From now on I’ll only look after me and my own.”

“And does that include me?” said Lou.

I reached out and brushed her hair back
over her forehead into her trademark sweep.

“I’m never getting rid of you, am I?”

Al dropped his rucksack to the
ground. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun, and then he bent
down to his rucksack and pulled out a combat knife.

“When you two have finished having
your little moment,” he said, “You might want to help deal with these.”

The smell was stronger now. It was
the stench of decay, so strong that it made me want to gag.

I stood up. At the bottom of the
hill, fifteen feet away, dead bodies walked toward us. Some approached us head
on, while others were at our sides, both left and right. There must have been
over fifty infected.

Mel ran over to us. She held her
cleaver tight in her hand.

“There’s way too many,” she said.

Charlie put his good arm around Ben’s
shoulders and pulled the boy close to him.

“So where do were go? Back?”

Al shook his head.

“I’m not running. Don’t know if I
mentioned it earlier, but there’s somewhere we need to be. We can’t go back. If
we miss the ship, we’re stuck on this shithole of an island.”

“So what then?” said Mel.

Al looked at me.

“What do you think, Kyle?”

I felt weak. Maybe I had been
fighting too much and for too long, and my body was giving up. I got to my feet
and felt my right knee click. I took out my knife.

The infected walked toward us at a
slow pace. I wondered how we hadn’t heard them approaching, but then I realised
that it was because they weren’t making a sound. Every single infected I had
ever seen came with a trademark groan, a pathetic cry borne of desire and
hunger. These were different. They made a silent approach with steady
footsteps.

I looked at one of them. She was an
old woman, with straggly grey hair stuck to her waist by a gluey mixture of
rain and blood. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but nothing came out. I
realised that her tongue had been cut out. I looked at each of the infected and
saw that they all tried to groan, but each of them had been made mute.

“Time’s ticking,” said Al.

“I don’t see what choice we have,” I
replied.