Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost (2 page)

‘I’m fine,’ said Kay, sitting up straighter as though to prove her point.

Clay arrived and slid between me and Charlotte and took my position by the door. I backed up to give him room while he placed a hand to her forehead.

‘Yep, she’s hot,’ he said. ‘I think we should head back to the house and let Kay rest. We can head off once she’s over this virus or whatever it is.’

‘I’m bloody fine!’ snapped Kay. ‘Or I will be if people would just leave me alone instead of crowding round me. I can’t bloody breathe with you lot all gorking at me. Anyway, let’s just get on with this. Don’t you think I want to put as much space between me and that place where… where he died as possible?’

‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s hit the road.’ I turned to Clay who bit his lip. ‘She’s just got the flu,’ I said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ Still biting his lip, he nodded and we all took our seats in the car.

To avoid gridlocked roads, we had to travel back through the town and along the seawall to Sandgate. Misfit avoided the blocked motorways, keeping to smaller roads that took us whizzing through the Kent countryside. We had been driving for over half an hour and just approaching a village called Bethersden, when I glanced over my shoulder into the back of the vehicle. I saw Kay with her head at an awkward angle, her eyes half shut.

‘Guys,’ I said to the others on the backseat. ‘Is she OK?’

‘Kay?’ Charlotte shook her shoulder but there was no response. ‘Kay!’

Clay leant across Charlotte and placed his palm on Kay’s forehead. ‘She’s burning up.’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Charlotte, get that dressing off her neck, could ya?’

I watched as Charlotte peeled the blood stained gauze from Kay’s throat. Turning around a little more in my seat, I gasped when I saw the red, swollen skin around the bite on her neck. Green puss oozed freely. Anna, Sean’s HZ sister, had bitten her when me and Kay went renegade to free Sean, after he had been accused of murdering one of the St Andrews lot. We believed he was innocent and it turned out we were right when we discovered the town had an HZ problem.

‘Sweetie!’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh god, that looks sore.’

‘Damn. It’s infected,’ said Clay. ‘Regular infected and badly. Has she been taking her antibiotics?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Things have been a little bit hectic recently, I haven’t kept track.’

‘Kay,’ Clay reached over and shook her shoulder. ‘Kay, have you been taking your meds?’ Kay didn’t respond. ‘We need to stop and take care of this before the infection reaches her bloodstream, if it hasn’t already,’ said Clay.

‘And if it does?’ I asked, sitting on my knees and hugging the back of my seat.

‘She could die.’

‘Should we go back to Folkestone?’ asked Charlotte.

‘No time. First house we come to, just stop.’

‘There,’ I said, pointing to my left. I could see a large bungalow at the end of a long drive just off Ashford Road.

Misfit swung the car around and pulled up outside on the brick paved forecourt. It was as wide as the sprawling bungalow itself. Standing on the forecourt, I scanned the area. Behind me, an overgrown grassy border with bushes and conifers sprouting from it led to a row of three garages. To my left, a wooden fence marked the end of this property and the beginning of the next, and to my right, I could just see a wooden gate that I guessed led to the back garden. The wooden fence on the right hand side divided the property’s grounds and a one lane road beyond.

I couldn’t hear anything other than the occasional bird that chirped as though nothing had ever changed in the world. Clay, his spiked boxing gloves hanging around his neck by their laces, tried the front door. It opened. Before Clay could step foot inside the building, Misfit snuck ahead of him and stalked onwards. On light feet, Clay trotted in next, followed by me. Charlotte, supporting Kay, came last.

I edged my way along a galley style kitchen, my ears straining for any sounds and my nose straining for any smells that might indicate the dead. The thick dust on the work surfaces, completely undisturbed, suggested that no one living had been in the building for a very long time.

Through the kitchen door and into the gloomy corridor, I could begin to see how big the single story building was inside. To my direct left, at the end of the corridor, I spotted a door with another one facing me on the opposite side. Both were closed. To the right, I could see another six or seven doors leading off either side of the sprawling corridor, and one more at the far end. Misfit, just the other side of Clay, caught my eye. He nodded in the direction of the doors to my left. I nodded back, knowing he wanted me to check them out, and I watched him head to the right, him taking the first door on one side of the corridor, while Clay took the first door on the opposite side. I turned back to the first door and listened carefully with my ear pressed up against the wood.

I could feel Charlotte and Kay behind me as I gently pushed the door open. I poked my head through the gap and scanned the room: a small, highly polished dark wood table and six brown leather chairs sat at its centre, with a dresser and a sideboard against two of the walls. Other than that, the room was empty. I could see another door leading off the rear and I indicated for Charlotte to stay put while I checked it out. I edged across the dining room and opened the door just enough to see a porch with tall windows that allowed me to glimpse an expanse of patio, a sunken garden and a long overgrown lawn, a low wooden fence cutting it off from the fields at the back. I ducked back through the dining room and rejoined Charlotte and Kay out in the corridor.

Next I tried the door opposite. I found a living room with a white three piece suite positioned around a flat screen TV. The room was sparsely furnished but the patterned carpet in muted tones of beige, blue and brown and matching curtains, together with the framed prints that covered almost every bit of available wall space avoided the room looking bare. It would have felt homely had it not been for the prevailing smell of damp from the building being empty and unheated and unaired for so long.

I crept further into the room. I knew there was nowhere for a zombie to hide but I still felt uneasy walking into what used to be someone’s home. I guessed I’d always feel like a trespasser in this new world. I indicated for Charlotte it was safe to follow me and she guided Kay over to the sofa and set her down.

‘She’s going to be OK, isn’t she?’ said Charlotte, bending down in front of Kay who lay slumped and unresponsive against the sofa’s high back.

‘Of course she is. Once we get the antibiotics inside her she’ll be fine.’ I smiled and tried my best to look upbeat, just in case Kay wasn’t as out of it as she looked. ‘You guys wait here and I’ll be back in a minute.’

Back in the hallway, I saw the two boys ahead of me checking out each of the bungalow’s rooms. I edged along the hall until I reached Misfit and I stood at his back. He opened a door and peered inside. After a moment I heard him say, ‘Clear,’ so I eased past him, and headed on to the last door at the end of the corridor. As I wrapped my fingers around the handle, I felt Misfit move up behind me. I opened the door just a little and waited, my ears straining. I heard nothing from inside so I swung the door wide open.

‘Fuck!’ I said, the unexpected sight making me incapable of doing anything other than standing with my mouth wide open.

Inside, I saw a coach had crashed through the side of the bungalow. It had come to a stop at a slight angle with its entire front section up to its first set of wheels embedded through the bedroom wall. The impact had shoved the double bed halfway across the room. Brick and debris lay over the bedcovers and around the front of the coach. I couldn’t see through the hole around the coach to the outside, but I guessed it must have veered off the road to the right of the property and steamrollered through the fence and into the side wall. Escapees of the initial outbreak, I reasoned, probably unaware they had infected aboard.

The coach’s large front window had been smashed on impact and I saw that the driver and some of the passengers had been propelled out of the vehicle and into the room. One of the zombies had been impaled on a knob at the foot end of the brass bed frame, the metal globe embedded in its chest. When it saw me, it perked up and reached out its claw-like fingers. But with its legs sprawled out on the bed behind it, it just looked like it was attempting the front crawl in an imaginary swimming pool. Held fast, it posed no threat. No, the threat came from the driver who stood at the foot of the bed. Zombie-Driver growled before lunging at me. This snapped me out of my catatonic state but too late to shut the bedroom door. The withered driver had already wedged itself between the door and the door frame.

I stabbed the driver through the ear and reached back inside the room to close the door but before I could, another zombie gripped the wood. More zombies staggered forwards, while the rest of the coach’s passengers began piling out through the front window, plopping down onto the bed and the littered floor gracelessly before rising to join the queue for the long awaited snacks.

‘Fall back!’ I yelled, realising I wasn’t going to get the door shut.

I backed up into the corridor, my knife held before me, ready to kill if I had to but not wanting to because I knew it would slow me down. Clay fell in beside me from the other side of the corridor and slammed his spiked fist through the heads of a couple of front runners. The fallen bodies in the confined space slowed the others down a little but they soon managed to clamber over their fallen comrades to pursue us. I felt Misfit’s hand wind around my chest as he pulled me backwards, hoping to speed me up.

‘Go and help Charlotte get Kay out,’ I yelled at him over my shoulder. ‘Me and Clay will hold this lot off. Go!’

Misfit hesitated then released me and darted off down the corridor yelling, ‘Out! Get out!’

Me and Clay had put a little distance between us and the zombies but we had to stop just before we got to the living room door in order to give the others chance to escape. I glanced behind me to see Misfit and Charlotte emerge from the room, dragging Kay between them. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ I yelled as I slammed my knife through a zombie’s head before backing up as much as Misfit and Charlotte’s progress would allow. The mass of zombies was relentless as it pursued us along the long corridor, their ravaged arms reaching out, desperate for food after so long in captivity.

‘Not today, guys,’ I said as I backed into the kitchen.

Clay attempted to close the internal kitchen door but the sheer weight of the zombies pushing it from behind prevented him from doing so and he was flung backwards as the door swung open. With the others already out front, me and Clay turned and darted for the external door.

Outside, I saw Misfit and Charlotte bundling Kay into the back of the Mazda. Misfit then dived into the driver’s seat just as me and Clay reached the car. We both flew into the back, practically crushing Kay, though I didn’t think she was in a condition to notice. With our arms and legs entwined, I glanced back towards the bungalow to see zombies spilling out onto the forecourt, their arms outstretched, their rotten faces saying, ‘Please come back. We’d love you to stay for dinner.’

Offer refused. 

A short drive later, we pulled up outside an Oast house surrounded by countryside. It appealed to us due to the tall brick wall around its grounds and an iron gate at the front. Plus the area was clear of zombies, so Misfit stopped the car in front of the gates. With my knife in my hand, I jumped out, having squeezed through the front seats to sit alongside Misfit en route, and opened up so he could drive through into the front yard. He pulled over beside the bright red front door.

I closed the gate and jogged to catch up with the car. The place looked secure from the outside, but we had no way of knowing what awaited us on the inside so, this time, Charlotte stayed in the car with Kay while me, Misfit and Clay went to check it out.

The front door was locked. Misfit shot off around the circular section of the building and it wasn’t long before I heard a smash and not long after that, the front door swung open. Misfit stood before us.

‘Nice place,’ I said as I squeezed past him into the entrance hall.

‘Yeah, I’ve gone up in the world,’ he replied, following me, his knife held at his side.

Me, Misfit and Clay split up and checked the downstairs rooms.

‘All clear,’ I said to them as we gathered in the living room.

‘Let’s head up,’ said Misfit, nodding towards the staircase that led off the far end of the room.

Without another word, the three of us edged our way up the stairs. My senses automatically searched for sounds, smells and sights that could indicate the undead. I heard nothing, smelt nothing and saw nothing out of the ordinary but I had learned from the last place we stopped at – that meant nothing. Expect the unexpected.

At the top of the stairs we paused to survey the scene – only four doors; three closed, one partially open. Misfit darted towards the open door. He pushed it fully open and, beyond him, I could see a sleek, modern bathroom sink sat below a window. Misfit took a second to run his eyes around the room from where he stood before turning back to me and Clay and nodding the all clear. We then split up for the last three rooms. I paused outside mine and placed my ear against the wood, straining to hear any tell tale sounds within. I couldn’t hear anything so I pushed the handle and slowly shoved the door open. As I stuck my head through the gap I realised I was holding my breath. It took a few seconds for my mind to register that the room – a large master bedroom set in the roundel section of the building – was empty before I could relax enough to let the breath escape.