Dead Frost - 02 (3 page)

'I swear to God,
Shane,' Marla began, before realising that they were in the presence
of Terry. 'Sorry, Terry, I'm just a little worked up, is all.'

'No offence taken,'
Terry smiled, and it was the smile of a wise man, the kind of
heart-warming expression you would get from your own grandfather.
'Shane and I were just discussing our apparent President.'

Marla
thought for a moment, and then it clicked. 'Oh, you mean
Victor-Lord-of-the-fucking-manor. Do as
I
say or my buddies will shoot you in the face, that one?'

Shane smiled. 'And
how has your day been, Marla?'

She
sighed. 'Apart from worrying my ass off about
you
the whole time, and then finding somebody I hate more than Charles
Dean, it's been one of the best days of my life.' Charles Dean had
been the governor of the prison at which she worked, and Shane and
Terry were incarcerated; one
mean
bastard that wouldn't have looked out of place as a Bond villain.

'Glad to hear it,'
Shane said. His spirits were lifting by the second, which was what
decent friends were for.

'From what I hear,'
Marla said, checking around to make sure that nobody was in earshot,
'you've been grounded.'

'Hol-eeeee shit,'
Shane whistled. 'How many survivors we got here? Thirty, maybe
forty? And it's taken less than half-an-hour for that shit to get
back to me.' He held his hands up. 'That's gotta be some kind of
record.'

'Is it true?' Terry
asked with some seriousness.

Shane shook his
head. 'Victor likes to think so,' he said. 'But you know what they
say: You can't keep a good man down.'

Marla glanced
towards Terry. His white beard was trembling, as if he were talking
to himself beneath it. She turned back to Shane.

'What are you going
to do?' she asked.

Shane scratched his
head, and Marla could tell instantly that he wasn't comfortable with
sharing. She was, however, pretty damn good at pushing peoples'
buttons, and if Shane knew anything about her – which by now he
most certainly should – it was that she wouldn't back down.

He was better of
spilling now, otherwise it could get very annoying, very quickly.

'I'm
going out,' Shane whispered. Marla made out that she hadn't heard
correctly, even though she had. Terry simply placed a hand on the
cover of the bible, as if in silent prayer for Shane. 'Oh, come on!'
Shane suddenly
snapped. 'My
wife and daughter could still be out there,
alive,
stuck somewhere, somewhere where I can get to them.'

It was true; Shane
had spoken of his family a lot, and it was the not-knowing that had
started to take its toll.

'You're not
serious?' Marla sneered. 'They could be alive, sure. You knew that
anyway. But say they are, huh, and they're out there. Do you have
any idea how unlikely it is of you finding them? They could be
fucking anywhere. A needle in a haystack doesn't even begin to cover
it.'

'She's right,'
Terry said. 'Even if you found them, you might wish you hadn't even
gone a-looking. What if...what if they're turned? What if you had
to look into your daughter's eyes and, I don't mean to step out of
line here, there's nothing left inside them? Could you live with
that?'

Shane knew that he
could; it would be easier to live with than what he was going through
now. He hadn't expected them to understand, and he had prepared for
that very scenario.

'I'm going,' he
said. 'I have to. You're safe here, at least for now, and I'll be
back in a few days, with or without my family.'

'Oh, hell no!'
Marla said shaking her head as if there was a piece of recalcitrant
gum stuck in her hair. 'I am not staying here with those idiots.'
She gestured to the soldiers who were now dusting themselves down and
explaining themselves to Victor Lord, who looked furious. 'If you're
going, then I'm coming with you.'

Shane was about to
tell object when Terry held his bible aloft.

'Me, too,' Terry
said. 'We'll be taken care of; you have my word.'

Marla gave Shane a
smug grin, one that said he had very little choice in the matter.

Realising he was
stuck between a rock and a hard place, Shane sighed. 'Okay, but if
we're going to do this, then we're going to do it right. I'm
thinking we leave first thing, before sun-up, that way we'll be gone
before that prick, Victor, gets up for his morning shit.'

'I assume we're
taking a vehicle,' Terry said, not intending it to be a question.

'One of the Jeeps,'
Shane replied. He'd given it a lot of thought, and the Land Rover
Snatch was probably the most secure vehicle they had available –
armoured glass, mesh screen, Barracuda thermal insulation. There was
no point taking one of the Defenders, of which they had two. A
Defender was marginally quicker, but if a horde of lurkers managed to
get a hold of it they would tear it to parts in minutes, and then
they would tear the passengers into pieces in roughly the same amount
of time.

'Victor is not
gonna fucking like this,' Marla said, although the way in which she
said it suggested a certain happiness at the fact.

'We'll be gone for
a few days, a
week
at most,' Shane said. 'Jackson ain't that
far; we'll do it in twelve hours,
max
.'

'Then we've just
got to hope that all the lurkers have headed on to somewhere else,
find your family, convince them to come back with us, and Bob's your
mother's brother.' Marla didn't sound convinced with the plan,
although it had been her own idea to sign up.

'Sounds like a
pretty fucking fine plan, to me,' Terry chuckled. 'I'll make sure
that Jared's awake in plenty of time.'

Shane, for a
moment, forgot all about Terry's ex-cellmate. It wasn't that he
disliked him, it was that he was liable to get them all killed.
Jared was simply not up to busting zombie skull, and taking him along
was a risk that Shane hadn't even considered.

'I know that look,'
Terry said. 'You honestly think he's going to stay here? Especially
if I'm going. Not a chance.'

Shane sighed. It
was cute, in a strange, ex-prison sort of way, that Jared needed to
be around Terry. The father-figure element had a lot to do with it,
although Jared appeared to be more of a Mommy's boy.

'If you think he'll
be able to deal with what we're doing,' Shane said through clenched
teeth, 'then he's your responsibility. But, if I think for one
minute
that he's slowing us down or acting the wuss,
you're
taking the next fuelled vehicle we find and bringing his ass back
here.'

'Agreed,' Terry
said, a smile creeping onto his face. 'I'll go talk to him, make
sure he understands your terms. In the meantime,' he said, pointing
across to Victor Lord who was still berating his men as if they were
at kindergarten, 'get what you need together, and stay out of that
prick's way. If he gets wind of this he'll lock us all down, and I
don't know about you but I've had enough of metal bars and one
meal-a-day.'

Terry turned and
headed off, through the double-doors at the opposite end of the room.

'He's getting on a
bit,' Marla said. 'Do you think he'll be able to keep up?'

Shane shrugged his
shoulders. It was a good question, and one that he was a little
unsure of answering. 'Well, let's put it this way,' he said. 'What
choice has he got?'

FOUR

The sweat poured
down his face and onto his pastel-blue shirt, staining it like a
Rorschach test. God, it was hot, and yet he shivered, and as he
trembled with the uncontrollable spasms brought on by the flu he felt
a little squirt of piss escape into his pants.

Great
, Max
Martigan thought.
Survived two wars, made it all the way to
ninety-seven without so much as a hint of dementure, and all it takes
is a fucking cold to make me piss myself.

He chuckled
to himself, which made him cough until he was red in the face.

When he managed to
compose himself once again, Susie Bloom dabbed at the sweat on his
brow with an already sodden handkerchief.

'What's the
matter?' she asked, referring to his sudden bout of hysterics. 'Told
yourself a joke that you hadn't heard before?'

He shook his head,
fighting back another coughing-fit. 'I was just thinking,' he said.
'Do you know how old I am? I'll tell you. I'm old enough to
remember the moon-landing as if it were just yesterday. I can
remember hiding in the basement on my mother's farm when I was eight
years old, just in case those Nazi-bastards decided to drop a few
groundshakers on us. I signed up for the next war just to get my own
back for all that time I spent in the fucking basement – pardon
my French. And do you know what the funny thing is?'

Susie didn't, but
she knew that whatever the old man said next probably wouldn't be as
funny to her as it was to him.

'It's taken the
dead to rise to make me piss in my shorts.' With that he burst into
yet another uncontrollable cackle. Susie couldn't help but join in;
he was infectious, at least in the comedic states. By
God
,
she hoped he wasn't infectious in any other way.

Just then, as the
pair laughed together, Kelly Bloom appeared and sat herself down next
to Max. Kelly was Susie's daughter, and despite her youth –
she was eight-and-a-half, although she would like to tell people she
was almost eight-and-three-quarters – she knew more than most
adults could ever dream of knowing.

'What's so funny?'
she asked, smiling along. It really
was
infectious. 'Max, you
look like you seriously need to take a breath.'

He coughed,
spluttered, composed himself, and then started laughing all over
again.

'Max and I were
just talking,' Susie said. 'He was just telling me about the war.'

Kelly's expression
turned to one of confusion. 'Well, that's not funny,' she said,
arching her eyebrows. 'You old people sure do some strange things.'

Max, still laughing
and choking, said, 'We do! We really do, but you'll realise, young
Kelly, that when you reach my age, nothing really matters anymore.
Somebody will be there, doing everything for you, wiping bits that
you haven't even thought about for over a decade, and in the meantime
you're left with a giant void to fill. Take it from me, laughter is
probably the best way to fill the void.'

Kelly had no idea
what the old man was rambling on about, but it appeared to make sense
to her mother, who was looking on with a mixture of intrigue and
acknowledgement.

'Kelly, why don't
you go play with Sam?' Susie said as she wiped the sweat from Max's
face.

'
Mo
-
om
,'
Kelly whined. 'I
know
he's the same age as me, but that
doesn't mean we have to be best friends.'

'Nobody said that
you have to
marry
him,' Susie sniggered. 'Just go and talk to
him while Mommy finishes up over here.'

Kelly sighed; a
massive exhalation that was both forced and exaggerated. 'Okay,' she
said. 'But I'm only doing it because you asked nicely, and if he
annoys me I'm going to tell him that he's an idiot.'

Max laughed aloud,
so much so that his eyeballs bulged from their sunken sockets. 'You
make sure to tell him that,' he said. 'Tell him momma didn't raise
no fool.'

Kelly laughed,
although she had no idea why. She stood, waved a tiny hand at Max
Martigan, kissed her mother on the cheek, and danced across the hall
as if she didn't have a care in the world.

'She's a sprite,'
Max said. 'You've done well with her.'

Susie shook her
head. 'She can be a handful at times. The thing about bringing up a
smart kid is that they soon become aware of just how fucking
smart
they are.' She straightened up Max's shirt as if she was preparing
him for his first day at school; he smiled as she did it. 'Once she
found out she was cleverer than your average whipper-snapper, it's
been a battle of wits.'

Max pushed himself
forward onto his elbows. Too long spent lying on the cold, hard
floor had numbed his ass to the point of no return. 'Well,' he said.
'She should do just fine, despite this chaos.'