Authors: Jack Lewis
14
We left the silent streets of
Stowmouth behind. Darkness lingered black and angry in the sky, and a chill in
the air licked at our faces. My shoulders sagged under the pack on my back and
my leg ached, but I pushed through it.
A few years after the outbreak, when
things got really bad and the population wasted away, I travelled back into a
town after months spent camped in the Wilds. One thing that stuck out was the
absence of noise, as if every sound had been sucked away and we walked through
a vacuum. It was like that every night now. Stowmouth, and the countryside that
branched from it, were mute.
My brain started to fill the gaps in
noise. The rush of the wind blowing against a tree sounded like the movement of
a stalker, the patter of its claws scraping on the pavement. Every shadow
twisted into a creature, every shape in the darkness was a threat.
“Not a single one worked. I can’t
believe that,” said Dan.
Faizel shifted the weight of his pack
on his shoulders. “Sometimes you get lucky.”
“You’ll have to remind me what that
means,” said Dan.
We walked out of Stowmouth, took a
turn on a bypass that led to the motorway. The small country roads were the
quickest way to Bury on foot, but there weren’t many houses on the way, and
absence of houses meant there wouldn’t be any cars.
“Do you know where we’re going,
Kyle?” said Alice. Ben tugged on her hand, gripping her as if she were about to
leave him. In Alice’s other hand she held a crowbar that she’d found on the
roof of a car.
The motorway stretched into the
distance, an endless concrete path. Trees lined the side of it, their branches
almost bare from autumn shedding. Ahead of us, a bridge stretched across all
four lanes of the motorway, with the words ‘Tracy Lithgow I love you I’m sorry’
drawn on in white paint.
The motorway was curiously
absent of cars save for a few that were parked haphazardly against the
barriers, their doors opened in a state of abandon.
We looked at each one we passed.
Faizel pried open the bonnets, checked for oil and other things that I was
unaware of in my complete lack of technical knowledge. Each time, he shook his
head.
Shapes burst from a bush at the side
of the road. I flinched and reached for my knife, the drum of my heartbeat
racing. It was for nothing. A scatter of rabbits darted across the motorway
ahead of us, tiny shadows with bulbous eyes. One stopped dead, stared at us,
and then followed the rest of its family.
“What are you looking for?” I said.
“When you pop the bonnet.”
“No science to it. If the car looks
healthy, there’s a slight chance it’ll have enough battery to start. But even
that is a one in a thousand chance. Did you ever go on holiday for a while, get
home and try to start your car?” said Faizel.
I thought back to all the trips Clara
and I had taken. What a novelty that was, the idea of a holiday. “I guess.”
Faizel continued. “You must have come
back at least once and found that your car choked. And that’s when it hadn’t
been used for a few weeks. Imagine what they are like after sixteen years.”
The black sky was compounded by
clouds thick enough to cover the glow of the moon. Darkness seeped down from
above and covered our faces in shadows.
Ben stood still, pulled Alice back.
“Can we stop, mum?”
She put her hand on his shoulder.
“We’ve got to keep going.”
He screwed up his face, looked like
he was about to cry. “But I’m tired.”
Dan stopped now. He dropped his bag
on the floor, let out a huff of air. “Can you shut that kid up?”
Alice gave Ben a gentle squeeze. She
walked over to Dan and without saying anything, she punched him in the gut.
Dan bent over and took hoarse
breaths. He blinked and then lifted his head. He held his fists at his sides
and his face glimmered with anger.
I stepped in between them. “Cut that
shit out,” I said. I turned to Alice. “Don’t ever do that again. That isn’t how
we do things.”
Alice’s face was twisted, her body
tense. “If he talks to my child that way again I’ll do worse.”
Faizel dropped his pack on the ground
too. It seemed we were stopping, but this was the wrong place to do it. The
motorway was completely in the open, and we had no cover. If any infected saw
us, or God forbid a stalker, we’d have nowhere to hide.
“We need a plan, Kyle. We can’t just
walk down the motorway.”
I nodded. I’d driven down this road a
few times before the outbreak, and I knew how far it stretched. I didn’t have
any intention of walking all the way to Bury, because it would take too long
and Justin could be long gone by then.
“There’s a service station up ahead.
Maybe we can find a car and get some sleep for a couple of hours. But we’re
moving at first light.”
Dan bent down and rubbed his calf.
His heavyset body shook with each breath, but I didn’t know whether it was
through exhaustion or through anger at Alice.
“You’re pushing us too much. I’m sick
of this shit.”
I picked up my pack, heaved it on my
back. I was moving no matter how much he moaned. “Just a little bit
longer. Man up.”
***
The service station consisted of a
petrol garage and a large complex that housed fast-food chains and shops.
Truckers and long-distance commuters went there to fill up their cars, use the
toilet, grab some food or just have a nap before continuing their journeys. I’d
been a few times myself when I travelled for work. There was something lonely
about the service station; everyone who used it was usually hundreds of miles
away from their families, spending nights away from them for a job that made
them miserable. If only we’d realised how precious that time was.
The crazy thing was that during the
first years of the outbreak, when things turned bad and got progressively
worse, people carried on with their jobs. They kept going to business meetings,
wearing suits, travelling to work. They pretended everything was okay. If only
we’d looked around us and seen how screwed things really were, maybe we could
have prepared better.
We’d taken the outbreak too lightly,
but there was no reason why we wouldn’t; we’d heard it all before with Swine
Flu and Ebola. There was always a fresh reason the world was going to end. Even
as the news reports flooded in, most people still got dressed and went to work.
They thought someone would find a cure. They believed that if they just acted
like everything was okay, then the whole mess would blow over.
A dozen cars were parked up outside
the services, various models ranging from tiny hatchbacks to four wheel drives.
Maybe one of these would work. We were here, so it was worth checking.
The rest of the group lagged behind.
Ben slid his feet on the floor so that Alice had to drag him along. Dan idled
at the back, staring at the floor. Faizel stood and took in his surroundings,
drinking big gulps of air. The weight of his pack and the miles we’d covered
didn’t seem to bother him.
“What do you think, Faizel?” I said.
“Reckon any of these cars will work?”
He sucked in his cheeks. “Maybe.”
“How about we check them first, then
we get some sleep? We could smash their windows and get some rest in the back.”
Dan caught up to us. “Can’t we check
in the morning?”
It would have been better to wait
until morning, when we were all refreshed, but my arms and legs were filled
with agitation. I kept imagining Justin in the back of the van, wondering about
what Whittaker was going to do to him. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t abandon him
to it.
“The quicker we check, the sooner you
can rest.”
We went to each car, opened the
bonnets by force and waited while Faizel did his checks. My eyelids felt heavy
after we worked through ten of them without getting lucky.
Faizel stood away from the bonnet of
a red Peugeot. He smiled.
“Think we have a winner,” he said.
Dan gave a sarcastic grin, too wide to
be genuine. “Fantastic.”
I walked over, patted Faizel on the
back. “Good stuff. Now we just need the keys.”
Alice pressed her head into the back
window of the car and peered in. “There’s a business jacket hung up on the back
seat.”
I nodded. The service station was the
size of a warehouse and stood at the end of the car park. “Must have been a
business man who went for a piss. He’ll have the keys on him.”
It amazed me, at first, the way that
some people kept on going right to the end. Even when the country was falling
apart some people still put on their suit in the morning and headed off to
work, as if clinging to their normal life would somehow keep it from slipping
away.
Dan scoffed. “You’re saying we go in
there?”
It was the only way. He would still
have the car keys on him. The business man would have parked up, gone into the
services and died. That’s what happened back then; the start of the outbreak
was a slow progression, but when things got really bad, it happened without
warning.
I didn’t want to do it any more than
Dan did, but we had no choice. Every second we wasted we let Whittaker get
further away, and even after getting Justin back, we still had to see if the
wave of infected existed and then return to Vasey before Moe left.
I took a deep breath, held a
confidant pose. “We have to do this. It won't be so bad.”
Dan rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“So all we’ve got to do is go in there,” he said, pointing, “Find a
suit-wearing infected among God knows how many monsters are in there, kill it
and take the car keys?”
I took my knife from my belt and
tightened my grip around it.
“Exactly.”
15
The dark glass doors of the service
station loomed ahead. Adrenaline washed through my body and soaked my veins in
a nervous energy that made my fingers twitch. Dan walked behind us, his
reluctance showing in each slow step. Faizel slipped his fire axe out of his
belt, held it casually at his side. He looked like he was taking a walk in the
park.
“Need to ask you something,” I said.
Faizel turned his head to me. “Go
ahead.”
“Back at your house, why wasn’t Sana
talking to you?”
Dan scoffed. “Is this really the time
for a chat?”
We had better things to think about,
but I needed to know. Faizel was always calm no matter what went on around us,
and I couldn’t understand how a guy like that could have upset his wife so
much.
Faizel’s tightened his fingers around
his axe. “I promised her I wasn’t going out again.”
“To the Wilds?”
He nodded. “I told her I’d give up
being a scout. Actually, I was going to ask you if I could help in the fields.”
“Faizel the farmer,” said Dan.
Faizel grimaced. “You would
understand if you had anyone to think about but yourself.”
I slid the service station door open.
Inside, the darkness looked thick enough to wade through, but we couldn’t risk
flashlights because of the unwanted attention they would bring. I closed the
door quietly behind us.
“Stick to the walls,” I said.
The main lobby was the size of a
school hall. Fast food chains, newsagents and coffee shops split off from it,
and benches were spread out in the centre. Next to them, plant pots the size of
boulders stood empty, the plants having wilted away years ago.
“How the hell are we meant to find
it?” said Dan.
The darkness thinned as my eyes
adjusted. Black outlines of the infected lay prone on the floor. Some of them
stirred, kicked their legs out, rolled their heads to one side. It was like
they were sleeping.
You got so used to thinking of the
infected as being devoid of brain function that it was amazing to see the
differences in their behaviours. In the Wilds, most of them would stumble around
until they found someone to eat. But when they were indoors, they usually shut
down, only rising when something jolted their senses.
We were looking for an infected
wearing a business suit, minus the jacket. Hopefully there weren’t too many of
them around because I wanted this done quickly. A weight sat on my shoulders as
though the darkness was pressing down on me.
“They should stay dormant if we’re
quiet,” I said.
We followed the curve of the wall
until it stopped outside a newsagent shop. A rack of magazines lined one wall.
On the other, bottles of spirits were stacked together. Dan eyed them like a
wolf watching a flock of sheep.
“Nope,” I said, reading his
intentions.
“Give me a minute.”
“I swear to God, Dan, if you even
think about – “
As the words dropped from my tongue
Dan had already moved away, his brain guiding him straight to the alcohol. It
was hard to believe that a few minutes ago he had been reluctant to even come
in here, and now he was shopping for whiskey. To a man like Dan, life was about
the small pleasures. The future was a hard concept to grasp, but the warm glow
of whiskey as it slid down his throat was something he understood well. I
guess some instincts overruled fear, no matter how banal they were.
I turned to Faizel. “Looks like it’s
down to us.”
I could see more of the lobby now
that my eyes had grown used to the darkness. The infected at the far end of the
room were still vague black forms that wriggled every so often, but I could
make out the features of the ones nearby; a woman in a Costa Coffee uniform, a
man wearing a janitor apron. I couldn’t see our business man.
“There he is,” said Faizel, and
pointed.
I followed the direction of his
outstretched hand, my eyes peeling away the layers of darkness until I saw what
he meant. The infected in the business suit was slumped against a bench as if
he were killing time in-between meetings.
Glass clinked behind us. Dan picked
bottles from the shelf, held the labels close to his eyes and strained to read
them. He was probably looking for whisky; that was his drink of choice, and
unlike most things it actually improved with age.
Faizel put his hand on my shoulder.
“Your knife will be better for this. Get as close as you can and kill it.”
I grimaced at the idea of approaching
the infected in the dark. What if I tripped over something or made some other
noise that got its attention? The last thing we needed was a fight. I knew I
was being irrational. I’d spent years in the Wilds, and I knew how to be
quiet when I needed to be.
I moved forward, my boots treading
lightly on the floor. My ears were sensitive to every sound, and even my own
breathing was like a gush of wind. A shiver ran through my chest.
I stopped a few feet shy of the
infected, let my raging pulse settle. The infected didn’t sense that I was
behind it, and if my hammering heart made any sound, the infected obviously
couldn’t hear. I took a deep breath, clenched my knife in my hand.
One short
stab in the temple. That’s all it will take.
I tensed my arm, pulled it
back and got ready to plunge it into the infected’s head.
There was a crash behind me, the
sound of glass bottles smashing onto the floor.
“Shit!” shouted Dan.
The newsagent’s floor was
covered in broken glass, and liquid seeped out onto the floor. Dan stood with
his hands against the row of bottles and tried to steady the ones that hadn’t
fallen yet.
The infected behind me groaned. By
the time I faced it, the monster was already climbing over the bench to get at
me. Other shuffling sounds came from the shadows of the lobby, and black shapes
lifted creaking limbs off the floor and straightened themselves. All of them
turned in my direction and walked.
Adrenaline burst in my chest, bled
into my bloodstream. I took a step back and let the infected fall over
the bench and topple face first into the floor. I bent down, twisted my knife
through its skull until the tip drilled deep into brain tissue.
With shaking hands I searched through
the infected’s pockets. I touched the leather of a tattered wallet, loose
change, scrunched up paper. My nerve endings fired as I searched, a mad panic
flowing through me. I closed my fingers on a sharp set of keys.
“Got them,” I said. There was no
point being quiet anymore; we just needed to get the hell out of there.
“Oh fuck!” shouted Dan.
An infected lurched across the shop
and dived at him, and Dan crashed back into the liquor shelf. The remaining
bottles rolled onto the floor, smashed, sent vodka and whisky spraying over the
shop, the alcohol fumes strong enough to pinch my nostrils.
Faizel ran into the shop. He grabbed
the infected by the shoulders, dragged it back. Two more lurched out of the
shadows and took hold of Faizel’s shoulders. One lowered its head at him,
gnashing its teeth toward his neck.
Dan pounced forward, grabbed it by
the hair. He pulled its head back and smashed it into the corner of a shelf,
and there was a cracking sound as the metal pierced the infected’s skull.
A cacophony of groans rose behind me.
The infected walked in my direction, their feet dragging on the lobby floor.
Some retched, others coughed as if their throats were clotting with blood. I
put the keys in my pocket and gripped my knife tight enough for the handle to
pinch my skin, as if cutting the blood circulation to my hand would somehow
still the feelings of panic rushing through me.
Faizel pushed one of the infected
away from him, sent it spinning into the magazine rack. He slipped his fire axe
from his belt, span to face the other infected. He was a second too late, and
as he readied to strike, the infected opened its mouth and bit into his arm.
Faizel let out a shout, grabbed the
infected by the neck and smashed the blade of his axe into its head, carving
through the bone and slicing into the brain. He pushed it away and let the
corpse sag to the floor. He held his bicep, inspected the bite marks on his
arm. It was a jagged row of dents that cut into his flesh, and dark blood
spilled through the grooves.
Dan straightened up. He looked at
Faizel’s arm, and then looked at me. No words needed to be said. We knew what
this meant, but there wasn’t time to process it.
I gripped my knife, held it ready to
strike as we made our way to the doors.
***
I had never been so glad to feel cold
air rush at my face. It reminded me that I was alive, that I wasn’t going to be
trapped in the service station with the infected, doomed to spend the afterlife
trying to fill a never-ending hunger.
Faizel followed me, his back bent. He
clutched his arm and blood seeped between the gaps between his fingers and ran
down the back of his palm. His face was twisted as though he was fighting back
shouts of pain.
Dan shut the door behind him, slid
his hammer between the bars. He looked up to the sky. His cheeks were pure
white, and he sucked in breaths so deep it was like they were going to be were
his last. He looked at Faizel, and his eyes narrowed.
“He’s losing pints,” he said, eyeing
the blood that oozed from Faizel’s wound, welled between his fingers and
dripped onto the floor.
There was too much to process. Faizel
was bitten. The infection would drip into his veins and spread through his
blood stream. His antibodies would go to war, and ultimately they would lose.
We could stop the bleeding, but we couldn’t stop the infection.
Faizel took a faltering step then
sank to his knees. I put my arms around his waist, heaved him to his feet and
threw his arm over my shoulders. Dan looked back at the service station doors,
then took Faizel’s other arm.
There was a scream across the car
park. Alice stood in front of the car, Ben hidden behind her. Her wide eyes stared
at something on the ground, but my view of it was obstructed by a four by four
that was parked across two spaces.
“Alice,” I said. A jolt of panic shot
through me for the woman who had knocked me out hours earlier.
Faizel tried to hurry, but his energy
drained and after a few steps he dragged his feet across the floor. When we
moved clear enough of the four by four to get a view, a sudden shard of ice
stabbed through my chest. I stopped, my legs heavy.
A stalker prowled across the concrete
toward Alice and Ben. It moved on all fours, two thin legs pushing it forward
and claw-capped hands scraping on the floor. It sniffed at the ground and slid
its red tongue across the stone, a wheezing growl coming from its throat.
I stopped. My natural defence
mechanisms fired, and every instinct at my body told me turn in the opposite
direction. I knew how dangerous stalkers were, and how quick they could move.
Whatever mutation had diluted their DNA, it had twisted their human form, made
them more agile. Alice had seconds at the most. I tried to put a foot forward,
but it was like moving lead.
Faizel coughed. Flecks of blood spat
onto the ground. His left hand was completely covered in blood, and the crimson
flowed down Dan’s supporting shoulder.
Alice took a step back, pushed Ben
even further behind her. She held her crowbar in a death grip and raised it
ready to strike. Even thirty metres away, I could see how her hand hands shook
as she wrapped them around the iron.