Dead Winter: A gripping crime thriller full of suspense (22 page)

"Now, now. That'll do you no good!" he sang, waggling his index finger at me as I lowered the rifle. He was right, what use was shooting at a hallucination, if that's what this was. It must be, I didn't believe in the supernatural in the slightest, so I must simply be going crazy.

"What... do you want from me?"

"Ethan, my boy! There isn't a thing I want from you, but since I'm apparently stuck with you, I thought I'd make conversation!" Lucas exclaimed, making some rather vivid hand gestures as he spoke.

"You're so annoying.." I sighed, now finding myself at an intersection. I turned onto the road on the left and continued to trudge my way across the tarmac.

I could hear other voices coming from a side-passage and I started walking backwards as they grew louder and louder. Lucas hummed a eerie melody from behind me as footsteps came within earshot.

"Uh oh!~" Lucas exclaimed, raising his hands to his mouth in a mocking gesture.

Those were the last words I heard as everything went red again and I found myself feeling completely detached from my body. From the red static, I could hear panicked shouts and screams and my own voice, rambling to itself. A gunshot rang out through the void, bringing me to my senses a few seconds later.

I was a little further down the street now, standing over a couple of bodies which began to jerk and twitch uncontrollably as something took them over.

Did I do this?

"Oh god.. Shit.." I stammered as what I assumed were the people in the alleyway started turning into infected. I must have bitten and cut at them in my unwilling frenzied attack, as they were covered in little scratches and a couple of bite marks to the neck. My mouth tasted of blood.

Pulling out my knife, I plunged the blade deep into their heads, one at a time as they started to shout in delirium, no longer the people they had been only moments ago. I felt insanely guilty as I ended the lives of something I had created.

"Oh...god.." I said to myself, dropping the knife and walking backwards until I hit the wall of the alleyway behind me. I sunk into a sitting position and pressed my head against my knees, trying not to look at the corpses.

I sat there for a good twenty minutes, my eyes tearing up slightly every now and then as my thought drifted from what I had done to what I should do with myself. My rifle had apparently fallen onto the ground next to the corpses as I shot a look over at the bodies before closing my eyes again.

"Get up, Ethan." a voice said to me. It was different from Lucas' sing-song tone. It was a deep, rough and familiar voice. As I opened my eyes, I found them slowly moving up the figure of a man standing before me.

Smart dress shoes, black trousers. My eyes continued to move upwards, my gaze running across the black business suit and the matching tie until it reached the face of the man. He had stubble on his chin and a knowing expression on his face.

"It's me." the man said to me as I realised who it was. He began to straighten his tie and ran his fingers through his hair. I waved my hand through the air, trying to touch his leg, but found that my hand merely just went through the person, the same as with Lucas.

It was Dave.

Chapter Thirty

Day Seventeen (6th January – 12:25PM)

Every breath could be my last, and they came out deep and rough; I trembled with every little intake of air as I sat there in the dimly-lit alleyway. My gaze was still fixed on the face of the man, who I was desperately trying to touch; but no matter how much I wanted it to be real, it was still just a figment of my imagination.

"You know I'm not really here, kiddo." Dave said to me, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Shame, could've done with some company." I admitted, my head still pounding with the most intense pain I had ever experienced. It strained my eyes just to look up at him.

"Clearly. It's not pleasant. I only felt it for a few seconds, but it was the second worst feeling I've ever experienced." Dave mused, rubbing his chin as he patted himself down in search of something.

"Second? What was the first?" I asked curiously, lowering my gaze to look at the ground, watching a bug crawl its way across a piece of paper.

"You already know the answer to that." Dave said, sighing at the end of his sentence as he finally found what he was looking for; a pack of cigarettes.

Even his ghost smoked. Huh.

"Yeah.. So this is it, huh?" I said, pausing slightly mid-sentence as I returned my eyes to Dave.

"How do you mean?" Dave asked, while taking out a cigarette and lighting it. It all looked so real, I could even see the smoke as clear as day.

"Doomed to die in an alleyway, forgotten by everyone?" I lamented, taken slightly aback by how depressed I sounded, though I suppose I did have a good excuse, given the circumstances.

"Is that what this is?" he remarked, his words coming out as smoke that hovered in the air for a few seconds before breaking up into nothingness.

"Huh?" I said, confused by what he was asking me. I wiped my eyes dry with my sleeve and looked into his eyes. His look was stern and serious.

"You've crawled into an alleyway to what? Kill yourself?" Dave spat, clearly irritated by the assumptions he was making.

"What else is there to do? I'm not turning into one of those things." I sighed, looking off to the side as I spoke, I couldn't bear to look him in the eyes right now.

"Get up, we're taking a walk." he said sternly, commanding me to my feet. I swayed a little as I got up, still dizzy from the pain in my head.

We left the alleyway and moved back onto the street, carefully walking over the corpses of the two people I had infected in my craze. I was merely following Dave, who was always a few steps ahead of me. Some birds flew over the rooftops as I cast my gaze skywards for a few seconds.

This'll be the last blue sky I ever see.

I found it incredibly strange how something I had previously taken for granted every day could suddenly have so much meaning now that I was on my last legs. It was eerily beautiful, and I felt my eyes water as I took it all in.

"We've been through some rough shit, haven't we?" Dave said quietly, still puffing on his cigarette as we walked, turning a corner onto one of the streets we'd cleared.

"Yeah." I said, thinking about all the times we'd gone through.

"The police, the hunters, Sanctuary.." Dave mumbled, listing them off on his free hand.

"The bridge, now this.. It's been one hell of a ride." I said, concluding the list of the important events that had unfolded in my journey.

"Indeed it has.." Dave agreed, looking ahead to make sure the coast was clear. For a figment of my imagination, he was pretty concerned about his safety. I felt an overwhelming pang of guilt as we kept walking.

"I'm.. really sorry, man." I blurted out, unable to contain my guilt any longer.

"For what?" Dave inquired, a puzzled look playing across his face.

There were more bodies on the ground as we passed the place where I was bitten, their eyes were glazed over and unfocused. My attention was drawn to the leaper that had inflicted me with this curse, and I kicked it onto its back, where it merely gazed blindly up at the sky.

"I couldn't finish you before you turned. You asked me to, remember?" I said, stepping over the body and continuing our little journey to wherever he was taking us.

"It's fine, you did the job before I could hurt somebody else. Don't sweat it, you did just fine." Dave said, trying to assure me that it was fine. I wondered if the real Dave would have said the same thing.

"But it wasn't supposed to be like this!" I exclaimed, stopping dead in my tracks to stare at him.

"How was it supposed to be?" Dave asked, looking at me from over his shoulder as he too halted to a stop in the middle of the road. As he did, I felt everything go hazy and my sense of balance was kicked to the ground as everything went red once more. Only one word played at my thoughts as the infection took over.

Control, control, control.

I felt as though I were lost in an abyss of pure red. Nothing I tried to do registered and nothing I thought made the situation any better. I couldn't even observe my actions, everything was simply just red.

I could hear myself rambling as I aimlessly wandered the streets, looking for somebody to infect or kill. A minute or so later, I came to my senses again as control of my limbs returned to me. I found myself on my knees in another street; it was littered with fresh corpses that moved no more. Somebody else had been here, and my surroundings weren't familiar in the slightest.

"Ethan. How was it meant to be?" Dave asked once more, moving into my line of sight from the back of a van.

"It was supposed to be me and you against the world!" I mumbled, picking myself up from the ground in order to follow Dave, who was walking away.

"Things never go to plan, you know that." he chimed, humming quietly under his breath. Taking a look over my shoulder, I noticed the hallucination of Lucas following the two of us, a strange grin spread wide across his face.

"I guess.. Where are you taking me?" I uttered, curious as to where we were headed. In all probability, we were just wandering without a goal, but I had to be sure.

"It occurred to me that the boat might simply not make it when it fires up." Dave said, voicing his concerns for the rest of the group, who were surely at the docks by now.

"What?" I asked, relatively confused as to where he was going with this. My mind was having trouble processing everything that was going on around me.

"All that noise. It'll attract unwanted attention, if you catch my drift." Dave disclosed, a smirk playing across his facial features. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he seemed quite pleased.

"We're going to the boat!?" I growled. That sounded like a terrible idea, but Dave was right; my friends might need some help when the boat left, lest the infected jump aboard.

"Yeah. You'll be more useful there than in some damp alleyway, waiting to die." Dave scoffed, turning a corner onto the next street. Suddenly it all clicked inside my head, the fresh corpses were infected that the group had gotten rid of on their way to the docks, we were following their trail.

From another street, an infected wandered into sight. It had seemingly been drawn to the sound of occasional gunfire that had been growing more and more audible as we got ever closer to the port. Noticing me, it began a mad dash in my direction.

"Steady.." Dave muttered as I took the rifle from my shoulder and lined up the sights, sliding my finger across the trigger.

"I got this." I murmured, the infected getting closer with every passing second.

Satisfied with my aim, I took the shot and found myself pulled forward by the recoil of the rifle, which jerked quite powerfully in my hands as it spat lead into the infected, which fell down and slid spectacularly across the tarmac.

"Heh. You got it, eh?" Dave remarked, chuckling as I regained my balance, which the rifle had pretty much knocked out of me.

"Did the job, didn't I?" I spat, slinging the rifle back over my shoulder as we continued to walk. Lucas suddenly spoke up from behind us in his disgusting sing-song tone.

"What's the point? You want your friends to watch you die?" he said mockingly, making me cast a glance over my shoulder towards him. I thought I saw his eyes glow red for just a moment before I dragged my eyes back to the road ahead.

"I'm going to help them." I said defiantly, making my point.

"Hmph. Making the ultimate sacrifice, are we?" Lucas asked, jeering at me. From the front, Dave was lighting another cigarette until he pulled a gun out of his pocket and began walking up to the two of us.

"That's none of your concern, you're not even real." I retorted, watching Dave approach the two of us with the gun in hand.

"And neither is he!" Lucas shouted, an expression of anger showing now as Dave got closer and raised to gun, pointing it directly at him.

"He should be." I said briefly as a gunshot rang out and Lucas' eyes unfocused as though he were trying to look up at the fresh hold in his forehead.

He stood there for a few moments until his body started to simply disappear, turning into dust from the ground up until all that were left were a pair of eyes, staring deep into my own. It stayed like that for a second before they too disappeared from my sight.

"That's that. Let's keep going, Ethan. We're nearly there." Dave said bitterly, pocketing the handgun before turning around to walk through the open gates that lead to the ports.

There were several abandoned military vehicles along the last stretch of road as we walked up a little slope. It seemed that until recently, soldiers had been guarding this place.

I wondered for a moment if the gunshot would draw any attention but then realised that it was all in my head, along with the rest of what was happening.

I've lost it.