Dead Winter: A gripping crime thriller full of suspense (14 page)

"They had a fair amount of meds in the kitchen." Dave said, after walking out of the house with a bag full of food, drinks and other miscellaneous items. He was also shouldering a hunting rifle, which he said he'd gotten from one of the other hunters.

"Hm.." John muttered to himself as he picked up a shovel from the ground, walking over to the drivers side of the vehicle, climbing in. I wondered what he wanted to do with it as I climbed into the back, where we had been held prisoner before.

Dave climbed into the front of the truck as it roared into life, casting light across the garden. Claire on the other hand jumped into the back with me, despite the fact that there was a spare seat in the front.

In the back of the truck were numerous bags of supplies, our weapons and a few canisters of fuel, one of which must have been siphoned from our own vehicle, which was now abandoned back at the camp.

"Are you alright?" I asked her, the car moving in reverse before we made our way along the dirt road we had come here on.

"I think.. I'll be fine." she responded, her voice sounding a little monotonous as she rocked a little, the vehicle moving over a bump in the road.

"You have just killed a man. I know how that feels." I said, placing my hand on her shoulder as I looked into her eyes.

"I did what I had to do. I saw an opportunity and I took it.." she said, closing her eyes for a few seconds as she spoke, trying to collect herself.

"And you're fine with that?" I asked, pressing for answers.

Trees went by at a rather quick pace, we were travelling down the road at almost twice the speed we had on the way here, John seemed to know where he was going.

"M'shaken up, naturally." she admitted, gazing down at the metal floor of the truck.

That is the natural response. Textbook, almost.

"Why don't you want the others to know?" I asked suddenly, reminded of her words only half an hour or so before.

"I don't know, I just.. don't want them to worry. I've seen how they look at you ever since you.. killed." she said, hesitating with her last words.

"In that case, your secret is safe with me. But if you ever want to talk about it, I'll listen." I said, removing my hand from her shoulder, making a motion with my hand as though I were zipping my mouth shut.

"Thank you." she uttered, barely audible over the roar of the engine as the truck careened around a corner, sending me sliding a little further down the truck.

Twenty or so cold minutes later, we slowed down as we approached our former camp and I was reminded of the shovel that John had taken from the farmhouse. I had a pretty good idea of what he was going to do with it now.

"Pack up the tents, put them in the truck. I've got something to do." John said, pulling out a sleeping bag from Paul's tent as he walked over to his corpse, shovel in hand.

"What are you doing?" Dave asked, raising an eyebrow at him as he looked around for the torches.

"We bury our own." John stated firmly, stabbing the shovel into the ground as he began to dig a grave.

Were we going to have a funeral?

We busied ourselves with dismantling our tents, putting them into their respective bags and rolling up the sleeping bags. A couple of owls could be heard hooting at each other as we placed the backpacks into the back of the truck with the rest of the supplies.

After we had finished, we all found ourselves huddled around the hole that John was digging, which was at least three-feet deep by now. Dave nudged John and pointed at the sleeping bag, to which John nodded. Dave then proceeded to gently pull the arrow out of Paul's shoulder and position him inside the sleeping bag, rolling it up around him.

"I still can't believe he's gone.." Claire whispered, her voice wavering as tears began to form in her eyes. I wasn't the biggest fan of crying, so I turned away from the rest of the group, staring at the night sky.

Ten more minutes of digging later, the grave was complete. We stood in silence as John dragged the wrapped body of Paul and gently lowered him down into the hole. He then talked about how he had met him, and the times they had shared together, before picking his hat from the ground and doffing it as a sign of respect.

Even in times like these, we had to show respect to our dead.

I climbed back into the truck as John piled the dirt back into the grave, and one-by-one, the others followed. Finished with the burial, John climbed into the drivers seat once more and revved the engine to life, leaving the camp behind for the motorway ahead.

Times were changing.

Chapter Eighteen

Day Nine (29th December – 8:07AM)

Hours had passed, and the atmosphere in the truck was still tense, almost palpable to the point where you could nearly feel it. We hadn't slept that night, how could we after what had happened?

I'd spent most of the day pushing abandoned cars out of the way, just like the days before. My muscles were burning, screaming out for rest; but I couldn't get a wink of sleep.

The truck's engine roared continuously as we made our way down the dual-carriageway, approaching a junction. To our surprise, the road sign had been painted white; someone had spray-painted words across it with an arrow pointing to the turn-off.

SANCTUARY THIS WAY.

"Nearly there, folks!" John shouted at us, from out of the driver-side window. It was just me and Dave in the back of the truck at this point, Claire had moved into the front a few hours ago. We swerved to avoid an abandoned military truck as we turned onto the roundabout.

The truck swung rather gracefully around the roundabout, turning sharply around a corner as we went through the indicated exit. We passed through a sleepy-looking village, the sort you'd see on a postcard. It seemed relatively untouched by all of this, and I wondered if there were actually people still living here.

There were trees as far as the eye could see beyond the village, in fact we were surrounded by them, this area seemingly host to a large forest; the trees stood tall, most of them still bearing leaves, clearly evergreen.

At the direction of another sign, we turned off from the picturesque village road onto a narrow one which wound its way through the trees. Following the road for about fifteen minutes, we noticed something in the distance, something glinting in the dim light.

"What's that?" Dave called out from next to me, rocking slightly as the vehicle moved over a pothole in the road.

"Jesus, is that it!?" I heard John shout, his window still open.

We slowed down to a snail's pace as we approached what looked like a large camp. It was completely fenced-off, either with chain-link fencing, sheets of metal or tall concrete barricades. We stopped about twenty-metres from the makeshift gate as a man appeared in a dingy looking watchtower of sorts.

"Out of the vehicle! Hands where I can see them!" a voice blared out over a megaphone. It was the man in the tower.

Taking quick glances at each other, we carefully climbed out of the truck and raised our hands into the air. There was a loud scraping sound as the front gates slid open, the man with the megaphone approached us with weapon in hand.

"Just the four of you?" the man asked, stopping a few yards away from us with his rifle trained on John from his hip.

"Yes." John answered, still taking the position of leader. He might as well, since I was certain that Dave didn't feel up to it, I definitely didn't.

"Are you armed?" asked the man. I took the time to examine him.

He was rather tall with short, light-brown coloured hair; thin stubble adorned his chin, most of it obscured by the straps for his helmet. His clothing suggested military, as it was plastered with desert camouflage patterns. I wondered whether he was actually a soldier, or if he'd merely taken the uniform from somewhere.

"Yes, we are. Do you want us to leave our weapons?" John questioned, directing his speech solely to the soldier, who nodded. We slowly drew out our weapons, placing them in the back of the truck with the rest of the supplies before raising our hands into the air again.

"I'm going to search you, just to be sure. Don't make any sudden movements." the soldier called to us, lowering his rifle. I recognised the weapon immediately, it was a SA80 bullpup assault rifle, standard military issue at the time.

He looked as though he was in his mid-twenties, barely that much older than I was.

One at a time, we were padded down by the soldier, who was clearly checking for concealed weapons. Satisfied that we were indeed clean, he stood back in his original location.

"Alright. They're clear. Do we let them in?" the soldier asked, speaking into a walkie-talkie that had been attached to his belt.

"Go ahead, Shaun." issued a voice from the device.

"Okay, if you'll follow me to screening.." Shaun said, directing us inside the encampment. Huddled together, we made our way through the open gates, following Shaun towards a large tent; someone had painted a white circle with a red cross on the wall of it.

"What about our weapons?" John asked quickly, his head pointed towards the soldier known as Shaun.

"Someone's already on their way to collect your supplies, they'll be kept safe in our armoury, only certain people can carry weapons here." the soldier stated, as a couple of men dashed past us towards the truck.

Honestly, I didn't like the idea of not having something to defend myself with.

"I'd feel safer with my weapons." John said bitterly, stealing the words right from my mouth as I had nearly opened my mouth to speak.

"I assure you, you're plenty safe here, sir." Shaun said casually, waving to another uniform-clad man, who was busy walking past the fences. He was probably doing a perimeter search, I thought to myself as the man waved back.

"That's Ed, we arrived here together." Shaun called to us as he stepped into the medical tent, which was huge and only had three walls.

"What now?" I asked, as a gruff looking man approached us, examining us slowly as he paced back and forth in front of us.

"We'll take a small blood sample from each of you and ask you some questions." said the man, who I assumed was the doctor of this camp.

Needles. Oh joy.

"Take a pew, ladies and gentlemen." Shaun joked, waving his arm across the tent at the several chairs laid throughout it. The four of us took a look at each other before sitting down on the chairs closest to each other.

There was a muffled roar as the truck we'd arrived in drove past the tent, heading over to an open section where several vehicles lay. The two men driving it hopped out and began to sort through our bags and tents, calling over to a small group of people for help.

The doctor took a small sample of blood from each of us as he asked our names, which he scrawled on the label of the vials before placing them in a little fridge, there were several small trays of blood samples already in there. There must be at least thirty people here, if not more.

"Now, the questions. Firstly, how did you hear about this place?" the doctor asked us. Shaun had taken to leaning against one of the posts holding the tent up with his eyes closed.

"Over a radio, repeated message at an abandoned outpost." John briefly stated, the doctor seemingly taking notes on a clipboard.

"And where did you come from?" he asked sternly, peering into John's eyes from behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

"The city where this shit came from." John answered, crossing his arms after he'd finished speaking.

"You came from the city!? How the hell did you get out of there alive?" Shaun suddenly spat, opening his eyes in apparent shock.

"We got lucky, I guess." I said, nervously glancing at the rest of my small group.

"Shaun here came from the city too. Barely made it out alive, apparently." the doctor said, his voice calm and low as he looked over at the soldier, who was now looking curiously towards me.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew where Shaun had come from.

Resisting the urge to ask him outright in the middle of our interview, I instead turned my attention back towards the doctor. He was rather elderly, his hair almost perfectly white.

"That pretty much answers my next question, which was if you'd encountered any infected. So I'll ask the next, have any of you come into contact with the blood, bite or bodily fluids of any of the infected?" the doctor went on, checking boxes on his little list.

We all shook our heads, except for John, who leaned forwards in his seat and looked deep into the eyes of the doctor.

"I got bit a few days back." John said calmly.

"But you're...fine. John, right?" the doctor asked, his calm tone of voice shattered for a moment as he looked over at John in concern.

"Yes. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me since, besides the bite hurting like hell when it happened." John continued. I was quite worried that they'd either shoot him or lock him away in quarantine.

"So you're immune. We have another guy like you in here." the doctor proclaimed, sighing in relief. So it wasn't just John who was completely immune. Could I be too?

"So what are you going to do with me?" John asked sternly, almost standing up from his seat.

"Nothing, my dear boy! If you haven't shown any symptoms now, you're not going to. I'll take a look at your blood though, to be sure." the doctor said, adjusting his glasses. He opened the fridge and poured a drop of John's blood onto a slide, which he put under a microscope.

"Fine.. fine.." the doctor muttered under his breath as he peered into the microscope. We sat there in near silence for a few minutes until the bearded doctor looked back up at us, throwing the used slide into a yellow bin to his side.

"Your blood is fine. I couldn't see anything in it but... blood, really! I'm not a biologist, but I think you're okay!" the doctor said, laughing humorously at the end of his sentence, brushing his hand against his beard.

I could hear people chattering away in the distance, I wondered how big this camp really was, itching with anticipation at the thought of having a look around. Across from us were a series of tents, lined up neatly as though we were merely at a camping ground.

"That's all. Welcome to 'Safe Zone 01', or as we like to call it: Sanctuary!" the doctor said joyfully, getting up out of his chair to walk towards us. He shook our hands one at a time, ushering us out of the tent.

Such a strange name for a camp.

Shaun had followed us out of the medical tent and began motioning for us to follow him through the rows of tents until we reached an open spot, where a small group of people had already began assembling ours, hammering the pins into the ground.

"You'll be here. Right, I've got to report to the boss, so I'll be leaving you here." Shaun said quietly, thinking to himself as he span around and walked away in the opposite direction, rifle slung over his shoulder.

Five minutes later, our tents were all set up next to four little camping chairs, which we gratefully sat down on. As we began to take in our surroundings, I heard the unzipping of one of the tents adjacent to us and looked at it just in time to see a pair of eyes peering out through the gap.

"Newcomers!" a voice called from inside the tent. After a few seconds, a pair of heads appeared from inside the tent, stepping out onto the grass.

"Hello there!" said one of the people, a petite woman with short blonde hair. John gave a tired wave as we greeted our neighbours.

"I'm Annie, and this is Steve." the woman said, motioning her hand from herself to the man next to her. They were married it seemed, as I noticed they were wearing matching rings.

"We're from the village nearby." Steve said, stifling a yawn as he looked around at the four of us.

"We came from the city." I said, yawning loudly as the lack of sleep started to gradually hit me, bit by bit.

"From the city? Jesus.. Daniels says it was overrun by the time he left, and that was only a few days in." Steve blurted, rubbing his eyes as he spoke.

"Daniels?" I asked curiously, the name rang a bell for some reason, but I was getting too tired to recall properly.

"The soldier that guards the front gate. I think his first name is Shaun or something." Steve went on, describing the man who had led us here.

I vaguely recalled where I'd seen the name 'Daniels' before. Shaun had a name tag on his uniform that I'd noticed back during the screening process. Yeah, that must've been it.

"You know it's rude to call people by their surname, Steve.." Annie shot at her husband, who shrugged his shoulders.