Authors: Jack Lewis
Civilisation had crumbled, and the
only thing that stopped Vasey from toppling further was one simple rule: you
take something from the town, you pay for it with your life.
“What’re you gonna do Kyle?” said
Justin. He stood with his arms folded and stared at the man. There was no hate
in Justin’s eyes, unlike the rest of the people here.
Some of them, especially Moe, lived
for moments like this. It was like they enjoyed getting permission to kill
someone. As though there was a primal instinct inside them begging to be let
out.
The final decision was on me. I was
trying to keep this place together, trying to make a life for us all in Vasey.
To do that, we needed to have a safety lever that stopped us from descending
into darkness. I knew I had to uphold the law, because if I didn’t, then the
next guy who wanted to steal a car or rape a girl or kill a man might not think
twice if he knew he’d get to keep his life afterwards.
Harlowe cleared his throat, choked
out words. “I know I did wrong. You gotta believe me, I wouldn’t have done it
if I didn’t need to. My wife and boy, they’re sick and I … well I just had to.”
He was the man that I could easily
have been. I had a wife once, and I knew how it felt when you weren’t able to
protect her. He had spent his post-outbreak life surviving in the Wilds, where
a good night’s sleep was scarce and food was hard to find. He’d been forced to
live like an animal, and now we were treating him like one. I didn’t know if I
could watch him die.
“Let go of him,” I said to Moe.
The old man blinked and tightened his
grip. “Excuse me?”
I pointed at two guys in the crowd,
the bald one and the cocky one. “Take him to an empty shop. The hairdressers.
Lock him up and watch him. I’ll decide what to do later.”
Adrenaline had surged through the
crowd as they waited for my decision. They waited for me to give the kill
order. When I didn’t, and the tension couldn’t dissipate. Instead, fists
tightened. Gazes hardened.
I got to my feet. Justice unfolded
his arms, his face serious. He was with me whatever happened.
The crowd stared as though they were
waiting for something.
Moe looked at the men stood around
Harlowe. He nodded.
“Thank you,” said Harlow.
The men took hold of him and dragged
him away.
“Don’t thank anyone,” Moe called
after him, “You're still gonna die.”
Harlowe’s arms and legs were slack,
as though all his will had been sapped out of him. Around me, the crowd stared.
I didn’t know what they were thinking.
Maybe they thought I was weak. Maybe
they were trying to decide what a man could get away with in Vasey while I was
in charge. Any of them with a bit of sense should have realised I did the only
thing a decent person could.
***
“Don’t you all have jobs to do?” I
said, puffing up my chest.
The crowd lingered a little and
then drifted away. A few went in the direction of the wall, where they’d check
for weaknesses and work under the direction of our builder to get them plugged.
Others went toward the fields. Most of them went home where they’d waste
away the day.
Moe fastened up his coat. “Walk with
me a little,” he said.
We walked away from the town square
and onto the cobbled road of the high street. Businesses lined either side of
us. Vintage clothing shops, cake stores, vegan cafes. None of them had
done a day of trade in sixteen years and now most lay empty, their shelves lined
with dust. A crusty poster on a gift store window advertised a sale for
Mother’s day, the proprietor ignorant to the fact that the end of the world had
been heading their way.
Justin fell in step. He looked at me,
his eyebrows drawn close. “Your leg hurting?”
Since the incident at the farm where
the Torben Tusk, the man-hunter, had put a bullet in my leg, extended walking
shot me with pain. Back then Justin had helped me escape the inferno of the
farm, and now he treated me like a wounded war hero.
I gritted my teeth. “I’ve had worse.
Listen, you better get back to the radios,” I told him.
He shook his head. It was a tiny,
nearly imperceptible movement, but I saw it.
“There a problem?” I said.
“I don’t see what good sitting there
all day is going to do.”
“You serious? You heard the
broadcast. If we trust this guy – and for the record I don’t - there might be a
cure. Probably bullshit, but we can’t afford to ignore it.”
Justin kicked a stone. “Just don’t
see why I should be there all day.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“We’ve been through this Justin. You’re not finishing early. Now get back to
the radio room.”
Justin looked at Moe, his eyebrows
arched.
“Don’t look at me boy. Kyle’s the
best friend you got here, and if he says no then I’m afraid you’re shit out of
luck,” said Moe.
Milky-red blotches spread through
Justin’s cheeks, and his eyebrows twitched as he fought against the teenage
tantrum that was tearing to get out. He turned away from us, gave another stone
a kick and then walked off toward the radio room.
Moe stuffed his hands into his
pockets and pulled something out. “Got something for you,” he said, and held
his out his hand.
He held a gold bracelet in his
palm, the chain links worn but still glinting. I recognised it straight away. A
year ago I’d been attacked by a stalker out in the woods, and I woke up in a
bed in Vasey. When I told them I wasn’t sticking around, Moe had insisted on
taking something as payment for “my healthcare.” He gave me a choice between my
gun and the bracelet; between survival and the sentimental.
“Thought you were going to trade it
for some…leisure time?” I said.
“There are other things you can trade
for ass around here. Day or two after you left, I got to thinking we’d see you
around here again. Even a bastard like me has some sensibilities.”
I took the bracelet from him. The
metal was warm.
“Thanks.”
The wind nipped at my cheeks and
carried the smell of manure from the vegetable fields. It wasn’t alpine air
freshener, but you got used to the sour odour. People complained that the town
constantly stunk, but I reminded them that the smell of manure represented our
future. It was a means of us being self-sufficient.
Moe ran his hands through his sheet
of grey hair. “I’m leaving, Kyle.”
A steel gate loomed at the end of the
road, the black bars thick enough to withstand artillery fire. It was operated
by a system of cranks and pulleys controlled by levers in the turrets that
stood either side of it. I’d walked through that gate once, but I never thought
I’d be back on this side of it.
“Leaving where?”
“Just going. “
I stopped. “You mean for good?”
Moe sighed. “For good doesn’t mean
much to an old man like me. Could be a year, could be five. But yeah, I’m
going.”
“Why?”
“Look around you Kyle. The place is
turning to shit. You can smell it in the air.”
I kicked a stone, sent it rolling
across the cobbles. “We’re building something here. What’s out there for you,
Moe? I’ve lived in the Wilds. There’s nothing but death.”
“Sure, around Vasey. There’s more to
the world than this shithole.”
Outside Vasey’s walls there was only
starvation and death. A year ago I wouldn’t have come near the town, but I’d
come to realise that there was nothing else waiting for us, no shiny place
where everyone was happy. Vasey was as good as it got, and I would do
everything I could to keep it together.
The sky above of us was tinged with
grey. A thick raincloud gathered, swollen and ready to drop. There was a chill
to the air, and winter would be here soon. It was probably time to send people
out chopping fire wood. We needed to build a stockpile to get us through the harsh
months ahead.
“It’s the same everywhere,” I said,
“Nothing but desolation. This is the world now, everything we have here.
There’s no green grass on the other side Moe; just a fucking load of infected
waiting to kill you.”
“We ain’t even got grass here, only a
foul-smelling town full of people waiting to die,” said Moe. “Appreciate what
you’re trying to do, but it’s misguided. We’re running out of booze, and I
haven’t had a smoke in days.”
It was so stupid, I could have
laughed.
“So you gotta forego some things. Wouldn’t you rather stay
alive than have a smoke?”
Moe looked at me. His eyes were
squinty black balls. “You’re not living, Kyle; you’re surviving. The people
here don’t wanna count down the minutes until doomsday, they want a little
pleasure in their lives.”
I couldn’t understand him. Sure, we
were out of alcohol, and I knew that sometimes you had to let off a little
steam. But this was the safest place for miles, and I’d travelled enough to
know that for certain.
In the Wilds you were lucky to find a
place to sleep that wasn’t the hollowed out trunk of a tree, and even if you
did find somewhere to rest, you did it with one eye open. The infected were bad
enough, but at night the stalkers left their nests. They were more terrible than
the infected could ever be.
I wasn’t a fan of Moe, but he had a
lot of friends here. He’d been at Vasey since the beginning, and his word
carried respect. If he left, others would join him. I could make something of
Vasey, I was sure of it, but I needed people to do that. If they left with Moe,
everything was over.
I changed my tact. “I’m the leader
Moe. The people voted me in, and what I say goes. We’re not going anywhere.”
The corners of his wrinkled mouth
turned up. “You’re not going anywhere, but I am.”
When the votes were taken and the
people of Vasey elected their leader, lots of residents wondered why Moe had
never put himself forward. There was a good reason that he didn’t; he was just
too damn selfish to think of anyone but himself.
We walked on, nothing but the whisper
of the wind playing in our ears. A shiver ran through me, and the sour smell of
the air got stronger. There had to be something I could do to get him to stay.
At least until I got more of the people on my side.
“What about the broadcast? Don’t you
want to know more about that? There could be a cure out there.”
Moe sneered. “There’s no damn cure,
and I don’t give a shit what the fella on the radio says.”
We walked on to Moe’s house. It was a
three bedroom terrace that pre-dated the Second World War, like most of the
houses in Vasey. Unlike some parts of England, Vasey had escaped the bombing of
the Germans though sheer obscurity.
He turned to the door. “You’re
not persuading me, Kyle.”
I nodded. For now at least, he was
right.
Moe unzipped his coat. “You’re so
damn naïve.”
I bit my tongue, stopped the angry
words coming out.
Moe carried on. “What you did today
was stupid.”
The wall of patience I’d stacked up
so I could deal with Moe without wanting to punch him started to crumble. I’d
carried a lot of anger in me since Clara had died, during all those nights
travelling on my own. I couldn’t afford to go back there.