31
An infected span round, took a few steps and reached out for Lou. She moved
to the side, grabbed the back of its head and forced it down onto the edge of
the chair. The wood crushed through the infected’s skull like a hammer cracking
an egg. Lou let it flop to the floor.
“Kyle. The weapons,” said Alice.
I ran over to the side of the tent where Moe had put the weapons, but I
couldn’t see the box. I turned round and shouted to Billy.
“Was it here?” I said.
“Yeah” he said, and took a few steps back to get out of the reach of an
infected.
There were dozens of them in the tent now. In such small quarters we
couldn’t have hoped to kill them all, even if we had our weapons. At some point
the bastard had managed to get the box taken outside the tent.
How had he
done it, when we had all been looking in his direction?
Thoughts of revenge burned through my mind, but the groans of the
infected cut in. The tent filled with the sound of their gnashing teeth. One of
them lurched forward, stumbled and fell at my feet. I lifted my boot up and
brought it crashing down on the infected’s head, splitting through its skull
with a sickening snap.
“Shit!” shouted Lou.
My heart rate spiked and my whole body felt electrified. The smell of
decay crept up my nostrils and made me retch. My heart banged so hard that I
thought it was going to burst through my chest and splat onto the floor.
As the infected shambled toward us we backed into a corner of the tent.
With no more room to move, we all pressed together.
“We need to force our way out,” said Billy, his voice strained.
“We don’t have any weapons,” I said.
Alice put her arm on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If we
stand here, we’re dead either way. Don’t let him get us like this.”
Alice’s words seemed to fill my chest with air and send adrenaline coursing
through me. It rushed through my veins and gave strength to my muscles, feeding
them with a steroid of fury and hate. I wasn’t going to die in the corner of a
tent.
“This is it,” I said. “Don’t let the bastard win.”
We fought our way to around the table. I pushed away any infected who grabbed
for me, taking care to avoid their teeth and they clacked together with each
bite. One infected squeezed my shoulder with a sticky palm and then leaned in,
like a horny teenager diving for a love bite. I grabbed it by the neck. My
thumb pierced its skin and pushed through into its vocal chords, and I saw the
stringy tendons move as the infected groaned. I smashed its head down onto the
table.
The tent was alive with the shrieks of the infected and the snap and
cracks of their bones as we fought them. The smell of clotted blood was thick
in the air, look a week old jug of pig’s blood spilled on a carpet and left to
dry.
We worked our way around the table. Billy picked up a chair, raised it
over his head and smashed it down on the ground. He picked up a few shards of
wood and stabbed them into the oozing flesh of the infected in front of him.
“Almost there,” said Lou in a breathless voice.
As we reached the entrance of the tent I had never been more thankful
for the feeling of the cold Scottish wind on my face. We got out of the tent
and spilled into the night air. Billy bent over and wheezed. My pulse fired so
fast it felt like my veins were going to rupture.
Alice shouted to us. “Don’t stop now guys. We need to get the hell out
of here before Moe sees that we made it.”
She was right. Moe had probably assumed that the infected had gotten
us. After all, faced with dozens of them in such a cramped space and with no
weapons, we couldn’t reasonably have expected to survive. It was a miracle that
we all had.
I turned to Billy and Lou and was going to tell them to get ready to
move. As I opened my mouth, I heard a horrible scream behind me.
I span round in time to see an infected loom behind Alice. It grabbed
her and ripped a chord of flesh from her neck. Her face warped in a knot of
agony as blood spurted out from her.
I ran over, but before I got there two more infected had lurched out
of the tent. They grabbed hold of Alice and pulled her down to the ground.
Within a second they had sunk their teeth into her face, clamped down hard and
then torn away her cheeks in a spray of saliva and blood.
The next minutes were a blur of gushing crimson and shrieks of agony. Hot
sick filled my throat, and my veins pulsed to the point of bursting. Lou and
Billy rushed past me. Alice struggled on the floor for a few seconds, shrieking
out noises that were inhuman.
Alice’s thrashing settled into a weak shake and her cries dripped into
a sob. Blood poured off her face and neck and stained the mud. With great
effort she turned her head and looked at me, her stare so intense it looked like
her pupils could puncture.
Somehow, I understood the meaning behind the look. She was begging me
to find Ben and take care of him. In her final seconds, with her face ripped
apart and blood seeping out of her, Alice’s thought were on her son. Her body
shook, spasmed and then she was still.
32
I sank to my
knees in the mud. My stomach burned, and acid slid up my throat. I bent over
and vomited on the ground. I felt sadness run up to my face and into my eyes,
where it welled up and streamed down my cheeks. It was so deep that it felt
like a force pressing me to the floor, and it was going to keep me there until
my body started to rot. I didn’t want to get up, and I didn’t know if my body
would respond even if I tried.
Billy walked
ahead of me to Alice and the infected. He grabbed one of them by the hair and
lifted it an inch off the ground. The infected turned its head and gnashed its
teeth. Billy smashed its face into the floor with such force that it exploded
like a watermelon.
The other
infected stood up. Chunks of Alice’s flesh dropped from its mouth like crumbs.
It turned to Billy and hobbled toward him.
Billy’s face
was as red with blood, and a look of fury overtook his eyes that made him seem
more like a rabid bear than a man. He put his foot on the infected on the floor
in front of him. He bent over, took hold of its arm and pulled. The infected’s
bones snapped, and with one heave Billy pulled its arm away from the body. He
held the limb in front of him, with jagged bones sticking from the end.
A wave of
sickness took me again. I was dimly aware of Lou behind me, and I was sure I
could hear her sobbing. I knew I should go to her and try and comfort her, but
the misery welling in my body held me down like gravity on an alien planet.
The infected
groaned and then stumbled toward Billy. He raised the severed arm over his
head, waited for the infected to get closer and then brought it down, piercing
its skull with the bone. There was a popping sound like a tyre getting
punctured, and the infected dropped to the floor.
An arm
touched my shoulder and tugged me up from the floor. I turned and saw that it
was Lou. The cloud of sadness shifted away from my eyes, and I knew that that I
had to say something.
“Listen, Lou
– “
Lou lurched
forward and wrapped her arms around me. She squeezed herself against me and
then sobbed into my chest. She made deep sounds that were almost howls and her
fingers dug into my sides. I thought of Alice and everything she had done for
us, everything she would have done in the future. And there was Ben, the boy
who had now lost his mum as well as his dad.
I wrapped my
arms closer round Lou. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay,
but it wasn’t. Right now my stomach was heavy with a welling sadness. Eventually
that would start to leak out and when it did, I would be empty. What would
replace the feeling? Hopelessness?
It was all
because of Moe. He’d agreed to the meeting, and then he had set us up. He was
happy to let us all get torn apart by the infected in his tent. He didn’t give
a shit that he was making a boy an orphan, tearing a group apart. And for what?
My blood
started to run hot. My shoulders tensed up, and my breath caught in my chest. I
took hold of Lou’s arms and prised her away from me. She looked up, red rings
around her eyes.
“What are
you doing?”
My head was
fogging over. My whole body shook as though the fury inside me was making my
cells vibrate. Moe had to pay for this. He had to die for everything he had
done.
I walked
across the ground toward the centre of the Vasey camp. The colds wind slapped
at me, but I didn’t care. I knew that as soon as I killed Moe, Sana or the
other Vasey campers would want revenge. I pushed thoughts of my own safety into
the recess of my brain. Right now, I was focussed on one thing. As I reached
the tents in the centre I stopped and looked for Moe. This was it. Time for him
to die.
The sound of
a horn broke over the stillness of the night. It boomed over the plains and
shattered the quietness like a sudden thunderstorm. The sound chilled my blood
and knocked thoughts of revenge away, because I knew what the horn meant.
The wave of
infected had reached the hills.
33
There was
static energy in the air that electrified my skin. I stood on the plains just
outside the fences of Bleakholt. I looked at the scared faces around me and
tried to work out what they were thinking. Most of them looked panicked. Men
with faces drained of colour, hands clenched around their chosen weapons. Women
with expressions set in hard resolve. The last few hours had been a scramble to
get everyone armed and to the plains, ready to fight. Now we watched and
waited.
I felt a
sickness deep within my stomach. The people needed a leader for the battle
ahead, and I wasn't it. I thought of Alice, and sadness welled inside of me. I
forced it back down. I wasn't the leader these people needed, but I would try
to be.
The security
of Bleakholt’s fences was too far behind us to give any comfort. The hills
loomed a mile ahead, hulking masses of stone that watched us silently. They
were here before us, and they would still be there long after our bodies rotted
into the earth. How many of us would survive the battle to come? How long would
it be before the infected spilled through the hill passage like pus seeping
through a blister?
The wind
whispered into my ears and blew down my back. The air was heavy with the sweaty
stench of a hundred people. Hours earlier, when the horn blew and gave its
signal, everyone picked up their weapons and headed to the front of the town.
Some had delayed and others had to be dragged out of their homes, but
ultimately everyone was here. Victoria had drilled them well.
Somehow the
hills seemed even bigger than before, as though they had swelled until they
covered the horizon. The people around me chattered with grimaces on their
faces. Some zipped up their winter coats and rubbed their arms. Others stared
at the ground and hoped it would swallow them up. These people were survivors,
but they weren't fighters.
A man stood
to my right, next to his teenage son. Grey had started to creep into the man's
hair, and his thin frame showed that his daily rations weren't enough for him.
The man stared ahead at the hills, eyes glazed. He looked like he would be
better placed behind a table in an office boardroom.
His son
looked more alert. He held two solid steel wrenches in his hand, the weight of
them enough to shatter a skull if applied with enough force. He held one out to
his dad, who had his arms at his side.
"Take
it, dad."
The man
didn't move or speak. It was like the hills cast a shadow over him, and the
idea of the infected pouring out of them made him mute. I imagined this was
what conscripts had looked like in the trenches before a push. White faces and
faraway stares.
"Dad."
I wondered
how people got like this. The man had survived the outbreak and the sixteen
years that followed, so surely he must have been used to the infected by now?
Or maybe you never got used to them. Perhaps living in Bleakholt so long, safe
behind the fences, had taken away the dread of the infected. Now, faced with
the reality of having to fight them, the dread was back.
A strong
hand gripped my shoulder. I turned and saw Charlie Sturgeon. He wore a winter
jacket that looked fit for arctic conditions instead of his blood-splattered
lab coat. A thick scarf reached from his neck to his mouth, and his wispy hair
lapped on the wind.
"You
won't need that when the fighting starts," I said. “You’ll be boiling.”
Charlie
looked over to the hills and grimaced. "There's something we need to do
first," he said.
I looked
across the ranks of the Bleakholt people. There were a hundred of them, but
without the Vasey campers we didn't have the numbers to put up a fight. This wasn’t
a battle that we would fight to win. We were on the edge of a cliff holding on,
and our fingers were turning white with the strain. There was only one way we
could hold out.
"We
need to use the explosives," I said.
Charlie
nodded. "I've got to ask, Kyle. Why have we left it so late?"
I looked to
the ground. I thought of Ewan and the time we'd wasted on him. I thought of Moe
and pictured him smirking to himself as he left us to die in his tent. Hot
bubbles of anger filled my stomach. Sadness was one thing, but fury was
another. Fury would see me through the battle, while sadness would lead me to
my death. I left my anger to boil.
"I let
us get side-tracked," I spat. "And look what happened."
Charlie
squeezed my shoulders. "We better do it now. We don't have much
time."
"How
long until they get through the hills?"
"Thirty
minutes at the most."
I swallowed,
but my throat felt cracked and dry. "Then we better do this. Have you got
the explosive?"
Charlie
nodded.
"Where
are Billy and Lou?" I asked.
Charlie
shrugged his shoulders. His winter coat added bulk to his body, but he looked
weak.
"No
idea."
The pit of
my stomach burned. Where the hell where they? Charlie must have sense how mad I
was because he scratched the back of his head and added:
"Maybe
they're with the kids."
I thought
about Ben. I hadn’t even seen him since Alice died. "And where are they
exactly?"
"In the
mayor’s office with a few of the older mums and dads."
I pictured
them shivering in the office for hours, listening to the screams of battle, too
scared to even look out of the window. Then, when everything went quiet, they'd
step outside. What would they see? A litter of corpses on the battlefield and
everyone they knew dead and eaten? Would the infected finish them off after the
rest of us were dead?
"This
won't work," I said. "We need to be able to get a message to
them."
Charlie
adjusted his scarf. "We've got a spotter on the roof. If the kids need to
leave, he'll blow the horn."
"Then
what?"
"They
got on the bus and leave."
"Wait a
minute. There's a bus?"
Charlie
nodded. "We have a double decker fuelled up and ready to go."
"How
many people can it carry?"
"Eighty,
in a squeeze."
Maybe it
would have been better to just leave right now. Was Bleakholt worth the fight?
I knew that there was nowhere else to go, that Victoria had built the only
place capable of giving us a life. But was it worth the sacrifice?
As if
reading my thoughts, Charlie answered me.
"We've
still got a chance Kyle. If we blow the hills, we can stop them coming. But we
have to go now."
I felt myself
fill with resolve. I'd spent so long running that I'd forgotten what it was to
stand and fight. The infected had torn the world apart. They'd broken families
and ruined lives. Those of us who were left had to take a stand. If we didn't,
there was nothing else left.
I turned to
my right and walked over to the scared man and his teenage son. The man's arms
hung limply by his side, and now he stared at the ground rather than the hills.
"What's
your name?" I asked.
The man
turned his head slowly like a crane. He looked at me but didn't reply for a few
seconds, as though the sound of my voice travelled miles before it reached his
ears.
"What's
your name?" I repeated, feeling irritation rise in me.
The teenager
grimaced. "He shouldn't be here, he can't fight for shit. He should be
with the others."
In contrast
to his father, he was a stocky teenager. His face was chubby, youthful and
flushed red, but in a cruel twist his hair was thinning at the back and
receding at the front. He stood with one hand around the wrenches and another
in his pocket, shifting his weight restlessly from one leg to another.
He gulped
and his cheeks turned grey. His stringy hair blew in the wind and showed the
pink of his scalp. He reminded me of Justin, in a way. He looked nothing like
him physically, but he had the same lost look in his eyes.
"Then
you'll have to do instead of your dad," I said. "What's your
name?"
"Reece."
"Come
with me Reece. It's time to save Bleakholt."