Fear the Dead (Book 3) (14 page)

21

“Four days,”
said Victoria, and tapped on the desk. Her nails were chewed up to the skin and
she’d even started to work on that, nibbling away at her fingers like they were
pieces of chocolate.

“Five at a
push,” said Charlie.

Lou and I
had gone straight back to Bleakholt. We told Victoria what had happened with
Moe. I expected her face to go red and for her to order us out of the
settlement. Instead she just nodded, took the news and chewed on it. Finally
she had sent for Charlie. He arrived in his lab coat, a trail of dried blood
splattered on his sleeve.

“We don’t
have much time to act, and there’s not a hell of a lot we can do,” said
Victoria. “But Charles has a plan.”

“You’re not
going to like it,” said Charlie.

I sat in
front of the desk, and Lou was to my right. She crossed her legs and leant back
like she was relaxing in a bar. The thing about Lou was that if you caught her
on her own, she was a hell of a lot more open. Put her in front of a crowd and
the sarcasm returned, her body language got cocky.

“There’s not
much I do like these days, so you might as well spill it,” I said.

Charlie
walked to the front of the desk and perched his ass against it. He looked like
a biology professor explaining a theory to a couple of students. His cheeks
reddened, as though having everyone’s eyes on him heated up his skin. He put
his hand to his mouth and coughed.

“Blowing the
pass is still the best way to head off the wave. I know what you’re thinking.
‘Look how that worked out last time, Charlie. We blew a guy to the moon.
There’s no more explosives left.’”

He raised a
finger in the air, as though one of us had actually asked the question. “But
wait,” he said, “Because Charlie has a plan. He knows where there’s some
dynamite.”

I leant
forward. “Cut the crap Charlie, get to the point.”

Victoria
tapped her fist on the desk. Her face was screwed up and her body was tense.
She’d either run out of tobacco, or stress of the impending charge of half a
million infected was getting to her.

“Come on
Charles. If we’re doing this, Kyle will need to go soon.”

I flinched.
“What do you mean ‘Kyle will need to go soon?’ I don’t know what the hell
you’re proposing, and you’re making a hell of an assumption.”

Victoria
took a breath. “You’re the only one capable of doing what we have in mind.”

“Then you
better tell me what it is.”

Charlie
adjusted his collar, unfastened a button as though his shirt was strangling
him. “There’s a quarry a dozen miles away. We sent a scout party there once. Six
men. Only one of them came back.”

“You’re
really selling this to me,” I said.

“The man who
came back didn’t speak for a week. He’d seen something there that sent him into
shock, but whatever it was, he couldn’t talk about it. It must have been
traumatic, because his brain had evidently blotted it from his memory.”

“What the
hell happened?” I asked.

“He couldn’t
tell us. He was, however, able to tell us that the quarry had a storage shed
where they stored old dynamite.”

“And you’ve
never gone back to get it?” said Lou.

Charlie
shook his head. “Couldn’t get anyone to go.”

“I know it’s
a lot to ask,” said Victoria. “But Moe won’t help us. And the wave are days
away. There really is nothing else we can do. I’m afraid it’s once more into
the breach for you, Kyle.”

I looked
over to Lou, wondered if I could ask my friend to go out there with me again.
But I didn’t need to ask. Lou grinned, as though we were about to take a trip
to the carnival.

“We better
get going,” she said. “I’ll put on my Sunday best.”

22

Our quads
zipped across the plain, the tough wheels trampling the grass. Trails of smoke
gushed out of the exhausts and filled the winter air with the smell of burning
petrol. The wind stung my face and stretched my cheeks. Billy and Alice rode
one quad, Lou and I rode the other. It took me a few minutes to get used to the
acceleration, but I worked out the balance.

I’d been
quad biking on a stag party in Prague once. It was fifteen guys riding motors
around a field. By all rights we shouldn’t have been allowed to do it because
most of us were blind drunk. Things came to a head when the stag took a slope
too quickly, span in the air and landed on the side of the grass. His quad
turned over and the weight of the metal pressed against his leg. Once we’d made
sure he wasn’t hurt we all had a laugh about it.

I wasn’t
drunk this time. Instead I had a deep ache in the pit of my stomach, a
foreboding feeling about what lay ahead. It made me want to ease down on the
accelerator, turn the quad around and drive home.

 The storage
facility was a dozen miles west of Bleakholt. We rode ten of them, and then
stopped at an expanse of forest. When the quad engines died their drone was
replaced by the sounds of wildlife. Birds screeched in the trees, and something
snapped twigs on the forest floor.

“It’s
through here,” said Billy.

I got off
the quad and looked at the forest in front of us. The bare-limbed trees were
bunched so tight that they blocked out all sunlight save for a few rays that
struggled through. It seemed endless; a horizontal well of darkness that looked
like it could hide anything within. The idea of walking through it made my feet
heavy. I was done with forests. Nothing good ever happened in them.

Lou bent
over, touched her toes, and stretched her calves. Then she sprang upright like
a jack in a box.

“Remind me
again why nobody came out here after the first scouting party,” she said.

Billy
scratched his chin nervously, and then folded his arms as if to hide the
gesture.

“Only one of
them came back,” he said, “And he was scared shitless.”

I didn’t
like the sound of this. “Why?” I said.

Billy looked
at me, raised his eyebrows as if I should already know the answer.

“Stalkers,”
I said.

He nodded.

The forest
looked like the perfect place for them. It was dark enough to smother any
daylight that dared to shine. The thick tree trunks hid the forest’s secrets
from us. Tangles of bushes and thorns poked out from the ground, ready to snag
on loose clothing, scratch the skin and draw blood. Stalkers nested in
darkness, everyone knew that. As I stared into the forest, I couldn’t imagine a
darker place.

“The quarry
is on the other side of the forest,” said Billy. “We should make it back well
before sundown.”

Alice took a
step closer to the first tree. “So we find the storage shed, get the dynamite
and then go home?”

“That’s the
plan.”

I looked at
Alice and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t be here, like
something bad was going to happen.

“Why did you
insist on coming?” I said.

“It can’t
just be you who puts himself in danger all the time, Kyle. I didn’t go with you
last time, and that was a mistake. I’m here to make sure you don’t blow
yourself up.”

We walked
forward, our chests heavy with a grim resolve. It felt like we were stepping
into a shadow, as the daylight washed away in a shower of black and disappeared
into a plug hole.

We walked
for twenty minutes. Every twig that snapped sent a shiver down my spine, but I
didn’t turn around. It felt like something was watching and listening. Like
being a kid in a dark bedroom, knowing that there was something in your closet
watching you. It waited for you to acknowledge it. If you admitted it was there
you gave it power, and it took on a darker form in your imagination. It was
better to put your head under the covers and pray for sleep.

The further
in we got, the more the darkness drowned the light. Roots stuck up from the
forest floor, twisted toward our feet and tried to trip us. We passed a fallen
log, the insides rotted into damp mulch. Something skittered out of a bush and
ran away from us.

“Shit,” said
Lou.

It was a dark
shape the size of a hare, but it bounced along the forest floor and out of
sight before we could confirm what it was. I gave a sideways glance to Alice.
She had her hands tucked into her pockets. Billy took careful steps at the
front, his butcher’s mallet in his hand, his arm tensed like he was ready to
strike. The darkness wrapped around my neck like a noose.

“How much
further?” I asked.

Billy
stopped suddenly. He held a hand in the air.

“What’s
wrong?” said Alice.

“Shh.”

Billy’s
breath left his mouth in a plume of steam. It was light at first, but as he
scanned the forest ahead of us, the plumes grew thicker and left his mouth
quicker. I could almost feel his heartbeat speed up and start to pound, like it
echoed off the trees.

I followed
his gaze and let my eyes adjust to the darkness in front of us. At first it
seemed like the rest of the forest. Rotted trees, tangled roots. Leaves
scattered on the forest floor like dead flaps of skin, hollow branches like
amputated limbs. My eyes adjusted more. They filtered the darkness, gave the
shapes of the forest definite forms.

My breath
caught in my throat. Icy hands closed around my neck, and frozen fingers tapped
up and down my spine.

There were
shapes on the forest floor. At first they seemed like black sacks strewn around
us. But then I started to pick out features. Arms sticking out, legs curled at
the knee. The rise and fall of chests. Oil black skin that glistened when a
rare slice of light stabbed through the trees.

We had
walked into the middle of a stalker nest. I felt the urge to turn around, like
an unseen hand was pushing on my chest and begging me to leave. Instead of
lessening the horror my brain dialled into it. It tuned out every other sound
in the forest so that I heard the raspy breaths of the sleeping stalkers. They sucked
in air and exhaled it with the choke of a hundred a day smoker. Dozens of the
sleeping black forms were scattered around us.

Lou’s face
was covered in shadow, but I could see the whites of her eyes as they widened.
Her shoulders tensed, and she took a silent step back. Alice moved closer to
me, so that there was only an inch between us. I felt like grabbing her hand.

Billy turned
round and faced me. He took careful steps forward, away from the stalkers. He
beckoned us to follow him. The quarry storage shed was less than a mile away,
but we would have to abandon it. We couldn’t walk through a nest of sleeping
stalkers. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t think my brain would allow me to take
the steps. I felt like it would lock down on my motor movements like a vice and
refuse to release the controls until I agreed to go home.

Before I
turned around I took another look at the stalkers. Ice washed through my body
and sent shivers across my skin. I scanned the black creatures on the forest
floor from left to right and tried to count how many there actually were. And
then I stopped.

My throat
tightened and I made a choking sound as if something strangled me. I opened my
mouth wide in disbelief at what I saw.

Further
back, in the centre of the nest, there was a black form bigger than the rest.
This one was the width of four stalkers. Its belly was swollen like a balloon
ready to burst.

It reminded
me of when I was a kid and I saw a pregnant woman on the bus. She was so far gone
that I was worried she was going to pop before we got to our stop. I remembered
her belly, the skin stretched around the oval shape. Swollen, like the
slightest pin-prick could puncture it.

I knew know
what this was. Now I knew how the stalkers bred. That is what waited for us in
the forest. Not just a stalkers nest, not just twenty dozing stalkers. Here,
sleeping in the darkness, was the source of them. This was a breeder.

23

As we ran
through the forest it was a while before my brain caught up with my legs. My
head swam with thoughts of the stalkers shifting in their sleep, their limbs
straightening out. I imagined the breeder in the centre of them. A swollen
beast, its belly swimming with the stalkers inside it.

We stopped a
mile away from the stalkers nest. The forest was as thick as ever, but as far
as I could see there were none of the black shapes were sleeping on the floor
around us. Billy sunk to the mud and rested his back against a tree trunk. He
ran his hand over his bald head and punched the ground.

“Fuck,” he
said.

“Shit,” said
Lou.

Alice leant
against a tree. She gave a quick look behind her, as though she expected
something to be waiting in the darkness.

“Are we just
going to stand here and swear?”

I scratched
my cheek, felt my beard rough against my fingers. My face was cold. “Is there a
way around them?” I said.

Billy
stretched out his legs, cracked his knees. “We could skirt around them. But it
would add a few hours onto the journey.”

“Then let’s
do that,” I said.

The sensible
thing to do would be to go back, but I wasn’t going back to Bleakholt empty
handed. Victoria had sent us out on one mission already, and that had ended in
a spray of body parts. If we failed this time, there was no hope for Bleakholt.
They needed the dynamite to blow the hillside passage. If we couldn’t do that,
then the wave of infected would get a free pass into the settlement.

***

When we
reached the storage shed the long fingers of night were closing the eyelids of
the sky. The shed was the size of a house, a wood panelled building that look
ready to fall apart. The wooden walls looked moist, as though they were sodden
with rain and just couldn’t get dry. Beyond the shed was the quarry itself, a
deep curve cut onto the earth, the sides of it covered in sandy limestone.

There was a
disused quarry back in my hometown. Nobody had worked on it in thirty years,
and at some point it had filled with water so dark and murky that I couldn’t
see the depths. My friends had run to the side of the quarry and dived in. I
stood on the edge and watched them lap in the brown sea. It was easy to imagine
unseen creatures swimming around them, pulling at their legs and dragging them
down. I didn't jump in.

This quarry
was empty. A danger sign stood on the side of it with a warning drawn in faded
red paint. ‘
Demolition charge area. Keep out.
’ On the other side, a
stone’s throw away if you had a strong arm, a group of infected shambled along
the sides of the slope. They dragged their feet aimlessly and focussed on
nothing in particular.

Billy put
his shoulder to the storage shed door and forced it open. A musty smell hit me,
a decade old collection of damp and dust. A film of stone powder covered the
floor and crunched beneath my boots. There were various white bags that reached
up to knee height, some full of stone chips and others wood. A row of shelves
lined a back wall with the tools that once the quarry men would have used to
collect their stone. Various sledgehammers, pneumatic drills, hard hats.

Billy walked
over to the shelves and inspected them. He reached out and heaved away a box.

“Got it,” he
said.

“That the
dynamite?” I said.

“No, it’s
the Xbox I’ve been dreaming about.”

“Fuck off.”

Alice stood
at the window, leant against the frame. The glass was single-paned and
encrusted with grime.

“We should
have turned back,” she said.

I walked
over to a table near the door and rested my weight against it. The wood bent a
little underneath me. “We couldn’t go back empty handed,” I said.

“We let it
get too dark,” she said. “There’s no way we can leave here tonight.”

“She’s
right,” said Billy, and put the box of dynamite on the table next to me. “No
fucking way I’m walking back through the woods at night. Not with them waiting
for us.”

I thought
about the breeder we had seen in the forest, its belly swollen with what I
could only assume were stalker eggs. I couldn’t shake the feeling that passing
it by was a missed opportunity. That maybe we could have killed it and ended
Bleakholt’s stalker problem.

Outside the
light had been sucked away like water in a whirlpool, leaving the sky the colour
of crow feathers.  Alice was right, this had been a mistake. By taking the
detour we’d gotten the dynamite, but we’d been out too long.

“We’re going
to have to hole up here for the night,” I said.

Lou sank to
the ground. She reached forward and tugged at one of her boots, straining as
she pulled it off her foot. She threw it across the floor and then reached for
the other one. Her blonde bob was greased back with sweat.

“Better get
comfortable,” she said.

***

We settled
into sleep. We hadn’t had the foresight to bring sleeping bags or covers,
because we hadn’t planned on this being an overnight stay. Alice lay next to
me, our bodies almost touching. I never liked having someone sleeping next to me,
not even Clara. I had always been an independent sleeper. Tonight, though, I
was glad of the warmth that she gave off.

Billy
settled down near the shelves, his arm around the box of dynamite like a boy
sleeping with his teddy bear. Lou sat against a wall and faced the door. She
closed her eyes, but I could tell she wasn’t sleeping. I closed my own and let
the haze of sleep slip over me.

A few hours
later I woke to tapping sounds. Something pattered across the ground outside
like a wolf walking on ice. I rose into a sitting position.

“Shh,” said
Lou.

She stared
at the door intently, as though she was trying to bore through the wood with
her gaze. The way she looked at it reminded me of a guard dog keeping watch
over a house.

“What’s
going on?” I whispered.

She broke
her stare and looked at me. From the bags under eyes, I could tell she hadn’t
even dozed.

“I think
they’re outside,” she said.

A chill ran
through me like someone was blowing up and down my skin. I pictured the
stalkers outside, their sneering eyes refreshed from sleep, their noses honing
in on our scent. We had been stupid to stay here. Stalkers could track
anything. It was what they were built for.

I tried to
make sense of the sounds outside. They could have been the delicate steps of
the stalkers as they crawled across the ground. They also sounded like rain
drops dripping from the gutter. It was easy for your senses to lie to you when
you were already on edge. I had to be sure.

I got to my
knees and crawled over to the window, my jeans shuffling against the stone
floor. I reached the window and put my fingertips on the ledge above me.

“What are
you doing?” said Lou.

Billy
stirred at the other side of the room and his eyes flickered open. I held a
hand out to signal quiet. I carefully raised my body so that my eyes were level
with the bottom pane. I imagined a stalker waiting outside, staring at the
window and watching my head slide into view. Its eyes snapping on mine, its
body tensing up, a sneering smile snaking its way across its lips.

The woods
outside were swollen with the black of night. I scanned the trees and the
forest floor. There was no sign of the black silhouettes that had so often sent
a shard of terror through me. 

There was
movement in my peripheral vision, something tracking along the forest floor. I
almost didn’t want to look, as though my brain didn’t want my senses to confirm
what was there. My heart pounded, and I gripped the window frame until my
fingertips were white. I turned my head toward the movement and expected the
worst.  It was a rabbit.

“Jesus,” I
said, sinking back away from the window and letting out a gush of breath.

“What is
it?” said Alice, her voice groggy.

“Just a
rabbit,” I said.

Billy sat
up, stretched out his arms, and gave a groan. “I need some air,” he said.

He got to
his feet, walked over to the door and opened it. The cold air of the night
seeped in and washed over my face like water. Billy stood in the doorway and
drank it in. My skin tingled with the chill, but it made me realise how dusty
the air in the storage shed was. Maybe we should have worn masks while we
slept. You always heard about quarry workers and miners getting lung diseases
from the crap they breathed in.

The sounds
of the forest floated in. Birds chirped bedtime cries and critters snapped
across the bracken on the forest floor. The wind wheezed through the air and
wrapped itself around the branches of the trees. It could almost have been
peaceful, a night time lullaby to go to sleep by. Then a shriek pierced the stillness
of the night.

It was a
wail so full of hate and anger that it seemed to shake the trees. Other screams
returned the call in answer, and soon the air was filled with dozens of them.
It was like the howling of a wolf pack, but twisted and made more terrible by
the desperation that the sounds carried with them.

Alice and
Lou both looked to me, as if asking me for reassurance. I couldn’t give any. I
knew what the cries were. Fear wrapped around my heart like a snake, slithered
through my chest and then down my spine. My stomach twisted.

“They’re
ready to hunt,” I said.

My words
hung heavy in the air. It was night time, and the stalkers were coming.