Fear the Dead (Book 3) (3 page)

4

Hours later,
in the thick of night, Alice, Justin, Melissa and I sat around the map. Whoever
left it had drawn a circle around a remote town in Scotland called Bleakholt.
According to the map, there was nothing near Bleakholt save a range of hills to
the south that were so high they were almost mountains. A few miles east there
was a lake.

‘Darling,
if you come back, come to Bleakholt. I couldn’t wait any more. It’s salvation.’

The
farmhouse door slammed, shaking the old timber beams that ran across the ceiling.
Lou wiped a hand down her arm and sent water flying to the carpet. She took a
step forward and smeared mud on the floor.

“Wet out,”
she said.

I leant
forward. “Take it Sana won’t come in?”

Lou shook
her head.

“You should
have worn a coat,” said Alice.

I cleared my
throat. “Guess we’re going to have to make this decision without Sana,” I said.
“Lou, pull up a seat.”

Lou took
hold of an arm chair and dragged it toward the coffee table. The map was in the
middle of us. The edges curled up, and a brown coffee stain in the corner
looked like a mountain range. I spread my hand across it, tried to flatten some
of the ridges, but the paper curled back again.

“We’ve got a
decision to make,” I said. “There’s a promise of salvation here. But we don’t
know who left the message or when. It could have been a decade ago for all we
know.”

“Someone was
here recently,” said Lou.

“Look at the
state of the place,” said Alice. “Nobody lives here.”

Lou sneered.
“So where did the fresh veg come from?”

Melissa sat
back and let the couch take her weight. She rested her head on Justin’s
shoulder. Justin sat there, his face glum, eyes disinterested. Every so often
Alice cast her glance to the stairs. Ben was asleep in one of the bedrooms.

“So we
accept that someone wrote the message within the last month?” I said.

Alice
shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so.”

I pressed
down a corner of the map, but it sprang back into a curl. “Now we need to know
who left it.”

Lou leaned
forward and ran her hand through her hair, stopping when her fingers hit a
knot.

“Does it
matter who wrote it? It was probably some woman who got sick of waiting for her
husband to come back.”

“Could have
been a man,” I said.

Lou huffed.
“Whoever. It doesn’t matter who left it.”

“Then let’s
consider the map,” I said. “The positioning of the place looks fantastic.
Remote, water nearby. The range of hills will make it hard to approach from the
south.”

Alice
crossed her feet. “I feel like you’re already sold on this, Kyle,” she said.

Justin
smirked. I almost rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It was
the first time in weeks that I’d seen him look anything but glum.

“What’s so
funny?” I asked.

The corners
of his mouth twitched. “Just thinking how distrustful you were when I first met
you. And now you trust a message written in lipstick on a map.”

I nodded. “I
realise that. But we’re running on empty here. I think we need to get to
Bleakholt, get food, rest a little and then we can set out again full of
energy.”

Lou leaned
forward. She put her feet on the floor with a thud. Her eyes narrowed and her
forehead creased.

“What the
hell do you mean, ‘set out again’? Once we get to Bleakholt, that’s it, isn’t
it?”

I shook my
head. “Think the wave is just going to rest because we found somewhere nice to
live? They’ll keep coming.”

Lou slammed
her fist on the table. The glass shook. “I’m sick of this damn wave,” she said.
“Sick to the teeth of hearing about it. Part of me just wants it to catch us
and get it over with. At least it would spare me another lecture.”

Her angry
words buzzed in the air. I let the silence hang. Outside, ivy clung to the
window panes on the front door and covered half the glass. The wind groaned,
and when it drifted through the cavities in the farmhouse walls it turned into
a screech. I couldn’t believe that Sana preferred freezing outside to being in
here with us. How much did she hate me?

“Are they
okay out there?” I asked.

“They’re
wrapped up in blankets in the shed,” said Lou.

Alice shook
her head. “Stupid woman.”

I put my
hands together. “Look guys, we need to decide. I think we should press on. The
minute we see daylight we move.”

Alice’s
eyebrows narrowed. She put her hand down on the table. “Not this time, Kyle.
You’re not pushing us on again.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Ben isn’t going
anywhere until he’s better. I don’t care if it takes a week.”

I sighed.
Having the same argument over and over again took it out of me. In a perfect
world, we’d get plenty of rest and we’d have enough to eat. But this world was
far from perfect. It was the kind of world where resting even a few hours too
long could get you killed.

“I know how
you feel Alice, but – “

She hit the
table. Even Lou jumped. “You don’t have a bloody clue how I feel! You never had
kids. You don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for someone, because you
don’t have anyone.”

The words
shocked me. She was right, but hearing them sent a stabbing sensation across my
chest. I had no one. She’d summed up my existence in just a few words. I hung
my head and let ill-feeling seep through my brain. Thoughts of Clara smouldered
in my mind like a spent forest fire.

It was
Melissa who spoke first. “She doesn’t mean it that way,” she said. She moved
her head off Justin’s shoulder and sat up straight, facing me. “You’ve got us.
Without you, we’d be dead. But at the end of the day, we’re still not your
responsibility. Not the way that Ben is Alice’s responsibility.”

She gave me
a smile. Alice turned away and looked at the wall. Lou rested her chin on her
hand and tried to look in any direction but ours. Emotional scenes were never
her thing.

“Lou,” I
said. “Do you think we should stay for a while?”

She nodded.
“Yup. Give everyone chance to get their shit together.”

I didn’t
want to rest. The Bleakholt settlement was hundreds of miles away, and the
sooner we got there, the sooner we could rest. They didn’t have the same drive
as me, though. They didn’t understand how dangerous the wave of infected were.
They said they did, but if that was true, how could they even contemplate
resting? It wasn’t worth arguing, because I knew they had made up their minds.

I
straightened up. “Okay then,” I said. “Guess that’s settled. We rest for a
couple of days, and then we set off toward Bleakholt.”

Lou nodded.
Justin blinked. Melissa rested her head back on his shoulder, moving so that
his shoulder blade didn’t stick into her cheek. Alice turned and looked at me.
She opened her mouth to say something, but then we heard a cry from outside.

“Hear that?”
I said.

Someone
screamed. It was faint, as if the wind carried it away into the night. I stood
up and knocked the glass cover of the coffee table with my knees. Lou steadied
it.

“That’s
Sana,” I said.

My blood
pumped and my heart pounded. I rushed to the door. Lou followed me, but Alice
went upstairs to check on Ben. Melissa and Justin stood at the doorway.

Outside, the
wind hit me like a slap and the cold reddened my cheeks. I shivered and felt
the hairs on my arms curl up. I looked across the garden for Sana and her son.
When I saw them, an even bigger chill spread through me.

They were at
the end of the garden. Sana’s son was on the floor. Two infected knelt by him
and tore at him with their teeth. Agonised gurgles bubbled from his mouth, and
terror was cut into his face. Sana stood beside him. She didn’t scream or
shout. She grabbed one of the infected and tugged the collar of its shirt. The
infected looked like it weighed a few hundred pounds and no matter how much
Sana strained, she couldn’t get it away from her son.

“Ohmygod”
said Melissa, and then her cheeks bulged. She bent over. She heaved, and liquid
splattered the ground.

I pulled out
both my knives and ran over to the end of the garden. I lined up my first knife
and pierced the infected's brain. It hissed as though it were a punctured tire.
The second infected looked at me, its mouth full of flesh. It blinked. I swung
the second knife and lodged it in its temple. The infected fell onto its back and
its black eyes stared at the sky.

Sana fell to
the floor and hit the back of her head on the shed. She didn’t even seem to
notice it. The colour drained from her face and made her look sick. She stared
at her boy. His arms were torn apart, his flesh marked by teeth imprints like a
nibbled block of cheese. Dark blood trickled from his veins and seeped into the
grass. His eyes were shut.  I grabbed his wrist and pressed my thumb into it,
but I couldn’t feel a pulse.

With the
amount of bite-marks on him, there had to have been at least a dozen points of
infection. That meant the transformation process would be quick, and we only
had a couple of minutes to act. I looked at Sana.

“You know
what I have to do?” I said, more a statement than a question.

She didn’t
say anything.

It was a
moment where I knew that my actions in the following minutes would imprint
themselves on my brain forever. I looked at the dead boy, his blood trickling
into the mud, red smears across his face. It was moments like that that drained
a little bit of you away, but I had to do it.

I pulled my
knife out of the first infected’s skull. I wiped the blade on my jeans,
staining them with brain fluid. I held the boy’s chin and lined up my knife. I
took one last look at Sana. Nothing registered on her cold face.  I took a deep
breath. I plunged my knife into the boy’s temple, felt it cut through the
tissue and stab into his brain.

For a few
seconds I let the adrenaline swish around my body. My hands shook, and a chill
spread across my back. I stood up and turned to Sana. I offered out my hand. At
first she reached out and took it, and I felt how freezing her fingers were.
Then she drew back. Her eyes moved into focus, the fire in them burned.

“You killed
him,” she said.

I looked
down at the ground. I had to let her have this. She’d just lost her boy.

Sana got to
her feet. She stared at me, her shoulders straight and her face as hard as
stone. “I’ll kill you for this,” she said.

When I
looked into her eyes, I could tell she meant it.

5

We had to
keep moving. They were the only words I thought about these days, and I said
them so much that I even started to annoy myself. Walking was all we had done
since leaving the farmhouse in the dead of night. It had taken three days to
get into Scotland. We moved non-stop during the day and rested at night,
clinging to whatever fitful sleep we could manage. A fog of grief hung over the
group, each of us dealing with what we saw in our own ways.

Darkness
seeped into the sky and made it the colour of charcoal. I spread the map on my
knees, careful not to worsen the tears that had begun to appear in the folds.

“I don’t get
it,” I said, scratching my head. “It should be here.”

“Sure you’re
reading it right?” asked Lou.

“Course.”

Lately we
spoke in as few words as we could, as though every extra syllable consumed
valuable energy. My stomach growled at me, demanded food. To my left, Alice and
Ben lay on the ground. Ben stirred in his sleep, kicked his leg out. Sweat
mottled his forehead.

“He can’t keep
going,” said Lou.

I nodded.
Ben had gotten worse since we left. Alice shot me dirtier looks with every
passing mile. She blamed me for Ben’s condition, and I blamed myself too. But
what was I supposed to do? They had wanted to rest a few days at the farmhouse,
and look at what had happened there. Despite how remote it was, it just proved
that nowhere was safe. We had to find Bleakholt, and until we did, we couldn’t
rest.

The flame of
my lighter flickered over the map, set an orange glow over the green contours
that depicted Scotland. Lou’s face, locked in a grimace, was half-illuminated,
but the other half was shadow. Alice sat up and rubbed her eyes. Bags hung
underneath them.

“Can you put
that out? Some of us are trying to sleep,” she said, her words clipped.

“Just trying
to get our bearings,” I said.

She huffed
and lay back down. I’d never seen Alice like this. She was pissed off at me,
but there was nothing I could do. Sana slept a few feet away, as far as she
dared stray. She had isolated herself from us. She walked on autopilot during
the days, her eyes blank, dragging her feet. She never spoke, and if she ever
looked my way, it was to give me a stare that burned with malice.

Between her
and Alice, the hostility they held for me added an extra ten pounds to my load.
It lowered my shoulders, made each step that little bit heavier. Where was
Bleakholt, dammit? I folded the map away and hung my head.

Lou stood up
and shuffled over to me. She sat an inch away.

“What’s
wrong Kyle?” she said.

“Sick of
being lost.”

She shook
her head. “It’s more than that. There’s something on your mind. I can feel it.”

Her tone
seemed kind, but there was no reason for her to be nice to me. I’d pushed her
just as much as the rest of them. But feeling like I did, I would take whatever
niceties I could get. I could use a bit of comfort.

“It's all
down to me, isn’t it? I’m the reason we’re lost. It’s my fault Sana’s boy is
dead. And Ben’s sickness is on me.”

I couldn’t
hide the self-pity in my voice. I expected nice words to come, some kind of
comforting gesture. Lou looked at me.

 “Yep, it’s
your fault. I’m not gonna lie to you, Kyle. You’ve pushed the boy too far.
Hell, you pushed most of us adults too far. We’re not machines.”

I put the
map in my pocket. “I just need to get us somewhere safe. They don’t understand,
Lou. “

She stuck
her palm out in front of me. “Please don’t start with the wave again. We’ve
gotta stop soon. If we don’t, people are going to drop.”

I sighed. I
knew she was right. Maybe I should let them get a little more rest and cover a
few less miles each day. Perhaps I should just let the wave catch up to us,
maybe then they’d realise the position we were in. I turned away from Lou. I
lowered my back to the ground, looked up at the charcoal sky. It was time to
get some rest.

Across the
woods, something shrieked. There was a crash, like a branch falling from a
tree. I bolted upright. Another shriek pierced through the trees. My chest
flooded with panic. I knew what had made that shriek.

I looked to
Lou. Her eyes were wide.

“Is that – “

My voice was
a whisper, the words cold on my throat. “Stalkers.”

I let my
eyes adjust to the darkness and tried to tune into the silence. Twigs snapped.
Somewhere in front of me, I couldn’t tell how many feet away, a slick black
outline slunk along the ground. My stomach lurched.

I gripped
the handle of my knife.  “We’ve got to move,” I said.

Another
black outline joined the first. And then another. The faint shape of a head sniffed
the floor. A body slid over the bracken. Another shriek pierced my ears, jolted
my brain and wrapped around my spine like a cold hand.

To my right,
Melissa sat up. She shook Justin awake. She looked at me, her eyes as wide as
discs.

“What was
that?” she said.

I held my
finger to my lips. Justin lifted himself from the ground and rubbed his eyes.
His skin was grey and his hair stuck out in curly clumps. There was another
shriek. Justin turned in its direction, and recognition shot his eyes.

It had been
stupid to camp here, but there had been no choice. The Scottish wilderness was
so remote that houses were few and far between, and the woods had at least
offered a little cover. Stalkers stuck to populated areas where there would be
people to hunt, and I didn’t think there would be any out here. Yet here they
were. My skin felt frozen.

“We need a
plan,” said Lou.

I put my
fingers to my temples and rubbed them.

“We can’t
run,” I said. “Ben can’t even walk, so we’d have to carry him. And none of us
can outrun stalkers with a kid on our back.”

The black
shapes slunk closer. Their heads sniffed the floor and tried to pick up our
scent. Right now they were probing the ground, not sure what it was they
smelled, but it wouldn’t take long for them to confirm it.

“You’re not
saying we leave him?” said Melissa.

Alice’s eyes
snapped on mine. Her face turned into steel.

“Hell no,” I
said.

“Then what?”
asked Lou.

There was
another crunch as a stalker trampled the twigs on the forest floor. The
darkness above pressed in on us, so thick I felt like I was drowning.

We needed a
plan. We couldn’t all run, not with Ben. But we needed to escape. It was my
fault we were in this mess, and I owed it to them to do something. I had to
make it up to them, especially to Alice and Ben.

I looked at
Alice. “A diversion is our only chance. Some of us will split off and draw the
stalkers away. I’ll volunteer for that. Alice, Ben, Melissa and Sana will go
the other way, away from the stalkers.”

Alice shook
her head. “I can’t carry him as fast as you Kyle.” She looked down at her son.
His eyes were open. His breaths were raspy. “You take him. I’ll create the
diversion. Just get my son away from here.”

I couldn’t
believe how fast Alice made the decision to leave her son. I was in awe of the
guts it took to do something like that. Maybe when the choice was leave your
son or watch him get torn apart by stalkers, the decision was easier to make.

“Okay,” I
said.

Lou stood
up. “I’ll go with you, Alice. “

The stalkers
moved closer. I could almost hear their noses sniffing as they caught our
scent. I thought I could see the flashes of their teeth and their mouths set in
sickening grins. My heart pounded.

“Me, Ben,
Justin and Melissa will go west. Alice, Lou, and Sana, you guys go east. Don’t
fight them, just run. If you’re quick, you should be able to get away.”

Lou nodded.
Alice stood up, wrung her hands. She pulled Ben to his feet. She gave him a
long, pressing hug.

“What’s
going on mum?” said his weak voice.

She kissed
his forehead. When she pulled away, a wet film covered her eyes.

“Go with
Kyle,” she said.

“Remember,”
I said. “The stalkers will follow you. Get as far in front as you can. Head for
Bleakholt, and we’ll meet you there. Don’t stop running.”

Lou nodded,
and then turned away from us.

“Just keep
Ben safe,” said Alice.

“I will,” I
promised.

We split
away from the group and moved west. I carried Ben on my back, felt his head
rest limp on my shoulder. Melissa and Justin walked at my side holding hands.
None of us spoke. We didn’t dare look back. We just walked as quickly as we
could through the darkness of the woods. Every crunch under my foot sent a
shock of fear through me.

I thought
about Alice, Lou and Sana. Deep down, I knew they couldn’t outrun the stalkers.
I thought about what they were giving up. Alice was sacrificing herself for her
son. Lou was doing it for a complete stranger. It should have been me.

I put one
foot in front of the other. Yard by yard, we cleared the forest. My pulse
wouldn’t set still, and every sound sent a shiver through me. Then I heard a
shriek. Ben screamed so loudly that it hurt my eardrum. He dug his nails into
my neck.

I span
round. There were three black outlines in the darkness behind us. The stalkers
slunk along the floor, tracking us, their claws scraping over the earth. The
diversion had worked, but not the way we planned. Instead of following Lou and
Alice, the stalkers had followed us. They were hunting the wrong people.