Fear the Dead (Book 3)

1

Michael was
the first to die. We buried him a week after leaving Vasey, but I didn’t know
enough about the man to get upset about it. He was one of the survivors of the
Vasey stalker massacre, but we’d barely shared a word since leaving town.

We were outside
a block of flats on the outskirts of Dolington. Michael stood with his back to
a doorway and held the doorframe as if he was going to do a pull-up. He was
telling us about why he and his wife split up, completely his fault, when a
pair of hands reached out of the shadows. They dragged him screaming into the
black mouth of the building.

I ran in. I
sunk my knife into the first infected’s skull and cracked the second one’s head
with my steel toecaps. I pushed away the third so hard that it stumbled and
fell, but it was too late. Blood leaked out of Michael’s neck, the skin on his
throat torn open like a Christmas present.

For weeks we
walked in a tight formation, like a unit of marines on patrol. I was the
spearhead. Lou walked beside me full of energy, but she never said much save
the occasional profanity. Alice took big strides, whisking her son Ben along
with her. Justin trailed behind, his head hung, feet dragging. Melissa held his
hand so tight the skin turned white. I didn’t know what was wrong with Justin,
but ever since his coma, he hadn’t been the same. Sana and her son were at the
back. They didn’t speak to the rest of us much. She never smiled, especially
not at me. After what happened to her husband, Faizel, I didn’t blame her.

The sky was
a milky white, but clouds dribbled across it like runny paint. The wind was
biting. Flecks of snow drifted down, stung my skin and then melted. The further
north we got, the colder it was. The ground was tougher and it was harder to
walk for long without taking breaks.

Something
thudded against the ground behind me.

I span
round. “Oh shit.”

Ben, Alice’s
son, had collapsed. Alice bent down and put her hand against his pale skin. Her
forehead creased with concern and her eyes narrowed.

“Come on
lad,” she said. “Open your eyes.”

Had we not
heard him collapse, I could swear Ben was just asleep. His chest was thick from
the four layers of clothing that Alice had forced him to wear. His ghost-like
face poked out between the hat on his head and scarf around his neck.

I dropped my
stuff and walked over to them. I bent down and touched his cheek. It was ice.

“What’s
wrong with him?” I said.

Alice leant
both hands against the floor. “We’ve been pushing him too hard. He’s worn out.”

I nodded.
Our journey had been tough on him.

“We need to
stop,” said Alice.

Those words
sent a shiver through me, made my chest feel heavy with panic. I hadn’t rested
for a second for the last three weeks since we left Vasey, save to eat and
sleep. I was like a shark, if I stopped moving I would die. If we stopped
moving the wave of five hundred thousand infected would catch up to us.

Lou threw
her bag to the ground and sat on it. She wore a white tank top with only a
black cardigan covering her arms, as though the cold didn’t bother her. Her
neck tattoos, a diagram of the inner sinews of her neck muscles and throat,
made her look half infected. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair and
then stared at the ground.

Justin
dropped his bag to the floor. Melissa followed, and then Sana. It looked like
we were stopping. Ben was silent on the ground, his chest rising and falling.

“Do you
think we can just get outside of Dolington and then rest?” I said.

Anger
flashed through Alice’s cheeks. Almost too quick to notice, like the sting of a
scorpion.

“He needs
rest now, Kyle,” she said in a firm voice.

“How about
there?” Lou said, and pointed.

A church was
to the left, past a crowd of oak trees with bare branches. There was a
graveyard outside, and the heavy wooden doors of the church were closed.
Stained glass windows stretched along the side of the building, and the spire
ran forty feet into the air. It was the kind of church where the same
parishioners turned up every Sunday. Nothing changed save for the creases of
age that time cut into their skin.

I looked at
Alice. There was concern and a hint of anger on her face. Lou sat down. She
tried not to show it, but I knew that she was feeling the strain. Justin always
walked at the same slow pace, never saying much unless prompted. Sana walked
sullenly at the back, stopping every so often to wipe her son’s wet eyes.

We’d covered
hundreds of miles since leaving Vasey but it wasn’t enough. A wave of five
hundred thousand infected walked somewhere behind us, like an army falling into
step. Any infected they passed were sucked into it like a vortex. They would
never stop. Never take breaks. There were only two instincts in their brain.
Either eat something, or walk until you find it.

“Let’s take
him inside,” I said.

Every step
toward the church felt like two steps back. The wave of infected wouldn’t have
a rest, I knew. Every minute we spent idle was a minute they gained on us. If
only we didn’t need to sleep or eat.

The frozen
grass of the graveyard crunched as we waded through it. It reached up to our
knees and covered the gravestones, hiding the names of the dead etched into
them. Alice carried Ben in her arms. I had her pack on my shoulder, though it
didn’t add much weight. We were running out of food.

Lou gripped
the black handle of the door and pulled. The metal creaked and her face
strained, but the door didn’t budge. She let it fall back and knock against the
wood.

“Guess God’s
not home. Does anyone have his number?” asked Lou.

Sana closed
her eyes and sighed. I pulled mine and Alice’s packs off my shoulder and put
them on the floor. I walked up the steps to the door and sized it up. The wood
itself was sturdy, though the paint had long since become crusty and started to
rot. The door was at least four inches thick. I took a breath, tensed my body.
Lou looked at me with her eyebrow raised.

“I’ve had
worse ideas,” I said.

I rushed
forward and heaved the full weight of my body into the door. A shock of pain
ran through me when I smashed into the wood. It exploded in my shoulder, made
my stomach churn. I sat on the steps, caught my breath, and rubbed my aching
muscles.

“Done being
the tough guy?” said Lou.

I waved her
away. “No jokes,” I said between gulps of pain. “It’s killing.”

“You realise
you’re more John Major than John McClane?”

“I’m not
that old.”

“The
apocalypse hasn’t been kind to you.”

Maybe she
had a point. Over a year ago a hunter called Torben Tusk had chosen Justin and
me as his prey. I killed Torben, but not before he’d sunk a bullet in my left
leg. Since then, I got shooting pains through in my leg when I walked for long
periods of time. Lately it seemed all I ever did was walk.

Brawn wasn't
going to get the door open, but brains might. Justin was always the clever one,
and he would know what to do. I looked up to talk to him, but panic hit me in
the chest. There was an infected wading through the grass of the graveyard with
hungry eyes and an open mouth.

I got to my
feet, ignoring the stabbing in my leg.  The infected stretched out its arms and
twitched its fingers. The skin around its mouth had fallen away to reveal
cracked chin bone and gnashing teeth. Torn rags clung to a chest made sticky by
blood, sweat and decay. It was a foot away from Justin, but it wasn’t
stretching out at him. It was going for Melissa. 

I sucked
back the pain and prepared to jump in, but before I could Lou got to her feet
and closed the distance. She pushed Melissa out of the way so hard that she
fell to the ground, just about managing to put her hands out to stop her fall.

Lou grabbed
the infected by the shreds of its t-shirt and slammed its head down onto the
stony edge of a gravestone. The mold-covered stone smashed through the
infected’s skull. The light in its eyes dulled and its brain shut down. Lou
brought its head up and then slammed it down again. There was another crunch as
bone met stone.

She smashed
it again and again. Bone fragments split off. Blood splashed over Lou’s chin
and brain segments flew away like chopped cauliflower. Lou’s face turned red,
her eyes burnt.

Melissa
watched with her mouth open and rubbed a graze on her elbow. Justin looked with
disinterest. Alice held Ben in her arms, showing no signs of struggle with the
extra weight.

I stepped
forward and put my hand on Lou’s shoulder, felt her muscles tense underneath. I
pulled her away. The infected’s neck had come away from its body, and as I
pulled Lou back she kept hold of its head.

“Drop that,”
I said.

She opened
her hands. The head fell and landed on the grass.

Melissa
closed her mouth. She stood up, pointed a finger at Justin.

“I can’t
believe you did nothing,” she said.

Justin
looked up like a dog responding to his master’s call. “What?”

Melissa
strode over to him. She stood in front of him, looking up. There was a gulf of
four inches between their heights. She poked a finger into his chest.

“What the
hell is wrong with you? There's an infected coming at me, and you don’t do a
bloody thing? It takes Lou to save me?”

Justin
rubbed his mouth. “I didn’t see it.”

“You didn’t
see it because you’re in a world of your own, thinking about god knows what,”
said Melissa.

She was
right. In the last three weeks Justin had slipped into a dark hole. He didn’t
speak much. He never smiled. He took watch when it was his turn and he walked
without complaining, but it was like he was going through the motions. He and I
were close, but I hadn’t spoken to him about it yet. The words just wouldn’t
form.

Alice got to
her feet. “I’m freezing my tits off. We need to get inside right now.”

She pointed
to the side of the church. “Lou, you walk round there and check for a side
entrance. Justin. Make yourself useful and check the other side. Mel, go with
him please.”

There were
no arguments. When Alice asked someone to do something, they did it. She had a
natural authority about her, an inner confidence that demanded respect. It was
strange to think that she was once married to Torben Tusk, the sick man-hunter.
What the hell had she ever seen in him?

***

Lou smashed
a window and opened a side door that let us into the church. We might as well
have stayed outside though. The church was a wide space, the ceiling stretching
twenty feet above. A cold draught circulated, and the room smelt like dust had
mixed with mildew and thickened the air. We checked the priest’s room, but we
only found a dirty bed, an oak desk and a tattered bible. There was no sign of
the priest, and not even a scrap of food.

That wasn’t
much of a surprise. Tinned goods, back when they were still produced, were good
for several years. Manufacturers put ‘best before’ labels on the sides advising
how long the food should last for. It was usually a few years, but a tin of
sweetcorn, for instance, could last a lot longer. A tin of food – covered in
water, not sauce – with no marks or dents could last over a decade. If it smelt
okay when you opened it, you better start eating. The problem was that you
didn’t find many of those around.

Farming was
the future. I’d known it in Vasey, a settlement of two hundred survivors where
we’d tried to grow our own food. It could have worked had things not turned
sour, had that bastard not ruined everything. I thought of Moe. Heat rose in my
chest, and I had to suck it down. It didn’t matter how hungry or tired I was,
my body always had enough fuel to burn to keep my hatred of Moe going.

“He’s
waking,” said Alice.

We’d put Ben
down on a pew. Alice loosed his layers a little, gave him room to breathe. He
stirred now. He opened his eyes, twitched his fingers. Blood seeped into his
cheeks, just enough to colour the white.

“Mum?”

Alice kissed
his forehead and pressed him close to her chest. The kid struggled. He pushed
her away, and shook his head.

“Leave it
out mum!” he said. He glanced around and settled his eyes on me.

He was
trying to see if I’d watched him getting a hug from his mum. Lately Ben had
started walking alongside me. He studied me as if I was a waxwork and tried to
copy my mannerisms. I guessed since he and Alice had left his dad, the kid
lacked a male role model. I didn’t think he needed one; Alice was a better
example for him than anyone could be.

“Let’s
talk,” said Alice, looking at me.

Alice, Lou
and I walked to the front of the church. The altar loomed above us, and Jesus
hung from a cross on the wall behind it. The thorns dug into his head and blood
dripped from his skin. There was a haunted look on his face.

“How’s Ben?”
I asked.