Fear the Dead (Book 4) (23 page)

Al nodded. Kendal got to her feet and
shrugged her shoulders as if casting off the tiredness of the road. We stood
and watched the infected march silently toward us, their mouths opening and
closing but no sound meeting our ears.

 Chapter
23

At the bottom of the sloping hill
were almost fifty infected who wanted nothing more than to reach us. The grass
was wet from the morning rain, and the grey clouds above us hung so low I felt
like they were trying to suffocate us.

I looked at the people around me and
I wondered about our chances. Charlie had one arm and wasn’t much of a fighter,
but we had made him train back in camp. Mel was as good a person to have in a
battle as any, especially with her cleaver clutched in her right hand. Al was
ex-army and looked like he’d seen his share of trouble. Kendal was tough with
her words, but I had no idea if that extended toward using the black metal
poker that she carried. That left Lou and Ben. Normally I would have loved to
have Lou by my side, but today she wasn’t much use. And Ben, well, he was a
kid. It hit me that I needed to teach him how to fight.

The infected walked toward us at the
bottom of the slope. They were spread so wide that there was no way we would
have been able to get around them. I recognised some of them as the ones who
had attacked us at the barn, but there hadn’t been that many back then. They
must have pursued us here, and somewhere along the way their numbers had
swelled. For an unknown reason, their tongues had been cut out.

There was no way around it. We needed
to get back to camp, and from there we had to somehow travel the country and
get south to meet Al’s people before they left. It was quickly becoming the
only way out in my mind, a glimmer of a chance of leaving the hell behind.

“We better move Lou back,” I said.
“If the infected get up here, I don’t want them getting anywhere near her.”

“What about Ben?” said Mel.

“He can stay by Lou.”

“I don’t want to,” said Ben. His eyes
were wide.

Al grabbed one end of Lou’s stretcher
and I took the other. We heaved her up and walked ten feet back, well away from
the top of the slope. As we put her down I lost my grip and she hit the ground
harder than I intended.

Lou winced.

“Steady,” she sighed, her voice
barely a whisper.

I put my hand on Ben’s shoulder and
gently pushed him to the ground.

“Stay here,” I said.

“But Kyle.”

“Come on, kid. We’ll be fine.”

Al and I joined Charlie and Mel at
the top of the slope. The infected were starting to climb it now. One of them,
a tall black man with shoulders that looked like they could have busted down
doors, tried to walk up the dewy grass. His foot slipped, and he fell down.

“You really think that…” said
Charlie.

I looked at him.

“…That we’ll be okay?”

“Just have to keep the higher
ground,” said Al. “As soon as any of them reach the top, jam that knife through
their skull.”

I watched as the infected tried to
climb the hill. I held my knife in my hand and felt the gouges of the handle
dig into my skin. Undead eyes locked on mine, and the infected opened their
mouths and gave cries that made no sound. A shudder ran through me. I felt my
stomach wrap into a knot.

“There’s a famous quote I used to
like to say before a fight,” said Al. “
Courage is what it takes to stand up
and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen
. But I
realised that it’s bullshit. Let’s go and cave their heads in.”

The first of the infected managed to
reach the top of the hill. Al heaved his machete at its head, tearing off half
of its scalp. He pulled his weapon back and sliced at the infected again, this
time stabbing through its brain. It went limp and flopped down on the grass,
and then slid down a few inches until it was motionless.

They tried to climb up toward us but
the hill was so slippy that most fell back to the bottom and had to start
again. The ones that did make it to the top met with a cleaver or a knife or a
machete.

Their bodies started to pile up on
the hill. One of them climbed up near Mel. She swung her cleaver and sliced
away its nose, and there was a sickening crack as the blade whipped through its
forehead.

She pulled her weapon back, but she
hadn’t seen the second infected that had managed to reach her. It grabbed hold
of the sleeve of her jacket. Mel gave a shout and pushed it back, but she lost
her footing and slipped on the grass. I felt my heart pump to near exhaustion
as I watched her slip down the hill toward the infected.

She hit the middle of the hill on her
back. Some of the infected at the bottom took note and split away from the
crowd, ignoring Al, Charlie and I and moving toward Mel.

Al ran over to her. He got to his
knees at the top of the hill and stretched out to her, careful not to reach out
so far that he ended up falling down the hill too. Even with his arm filly
outstretched and Mel straining to grab him, there was still two feet between
them.

“Come on lass,” he said. “Stretch.”

Kendal waited at the top for an old
infected man to reach her. When he finally did, she didn’t panic. She took hold
of him by his hair, tilted his head back and then jammed her poker straight
through the skin underneath his chin. There was a popping sound, and dark blood
gushed out.

An infected reached Charlie. He was a
tall man in an office shirt, with a black leather belt making his trousers
cling to his skinny waist. Charlie stabbed his knife through the infected’s
head. He was going to pull it away again, but the infected fell backwards and
took his knife with it, leaving Charlie defenceless.

The hillside was filling with the
bodies of dispatched infected. The ones who remained standing began to climb
over the bodies of the fallen, finding better grip on the corpses than they did
on the grass.

“Come on Mel! Put your shoulders into
it,” said Al, panic in his voice. His eyes bulged with the strain of trying to
reach her.

An infected climbed halfway up the
hill. He reached out for Mel’s shoe, and managed to grab it. Mel kicked her leg
out but the infected, set on its prize, wouldn’t be shaken off.

I was going to run over to help, when
two infected reached my part of the hill. One was a woman, her earlobe torn and
flapping loose from where an earring had been ripped off. The other was a man
with a football shirt covering what looked like an athletic body.

The woman clambered over the bodies
of other infected on the hill until she was a foot away from me. I took hold of
her head. I tried to keep it steady so that I could jam my knife through her
temple, but the other infected reached the top of the hill. It grabbed my right
arm.

I let go other the woman and turned
to meet the athletic infected. His grip was strong, and his body was too bulky
for me to shove him away. Charlie walked behind him, grabbed his hair and
pulled him away just enough for me to free my knife arm. I stabbed the blade
through the man’s eyes and then let him fall down the hill.

“Thanks,” I said.

Charlie nodded.

The woman grabbed my leg. I kicked
her with my other leg, destroying her nose as my boot met bone.

The infected near Mel grabbed hold of
her thighs now. It pulled itself up, desperately trying to reach her with its
teeth. Al stood up. Seeing that he would never reach her, he gave up trying.
Instead he took a deep breath, and then started to run down the hill, launching
himself down the grass.

He slipped on the dew and fell on his
back, smashing straight into the infected above Mel. They both fell down to the
bottom. Al was the first to his feet, slicing at the infected with his machete 
until it went limp. Al’s face, jacket and arms were covered in a dark treacle
of infected blood.

Kendal ran over to Mel. She sat down
on the grass and then slid down the hill until she was next to her. She reached
out, grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Fancy helping me? said Al.

At the bottom of the hill, the
remaining infected turned to him. There were only eight left now. Kendal and
Mel slid their way down. Charlie and I walked down the hill to join them.
Charlie stepped over the bodies of the infected, moving away from their heads
in case any of them were still alive. It was a known fact that ankle bites were
one of the most common means of infection.

A few sweaty, adrenaline spiked
minutes later, all the creatures were on the ground. Tiredness washed through
me as the last of my energy seeped out. I became aware of a stinging in my
lungs, and I opened my mouth and drank in the air. Everyone was silent, and the
smell of rotten blood hung heavy around us.

***

The miles back to camp seemed
endless. The weight of Lou on her stretcher made each step heavier. Every
passing second, the deadline to meet the ships ticked away.

None of us spoke much in the day in took
to get back. We each walked in the company of our own thoughts, speaking only
to correct our route or to ask for a break.

I dreamed of getting back to my tent.
I knew that we didn’t have time, but I wanted nothing more than to just lie
back on my bed and close my eyes. Through lack of sleep and poor diet I had
lost weight over the last week, but all the same my bones felt heavy.

“It’s too quiet,” said Mel.

It was the first she’d spoken in
hours. We had stopped to sleep the night after fighting the infected, and I had
taken watch. Under the silver moonlight and black sky, I had seen Mel toss and
turn on the grass. Her sleep had been uneasy, and I was sure that at one point,
I had heard her mutter “Justin”.

I stopped. I fought the urge to just
sit down on the grass and let sleep take hold, and I looked around me. We could
see camp now, a garden of mud splattered tents that flapped in the wind.

It was midday. This would usually
have been the busiest time in camp. Foragers would be combing the field around
us looking for edible berries, plants and mushrooms. Smoke would rise into the
sky from bonfires. Men and women would walk back and forth to the stream to
replenish our drinking water. Instead of all this, today there was only a
deserted field and a heavy silence.

“What’s that smell?” said Ben,
screwing up his nose.

I took a breath through my nose. A
twinge of odour hit me. It was a smell of rot and blood.

I looked closer at the camp in front
of us. I swept my gaze from tent to tent, praying for any sign of activity.
Nothing moved save the fabric as the wind swept through camp.

“You have a problem,” said Al, and
pointed.

I followed the line of his arm. In
the middle of camp, just yards away from my own tent, dozens of bodies littered
the ground. There were dark patches of blood covering the soil, and strings of
intestines and other organs littered the ground. The bodies were covered in
stab marks, cuts and gouges.  Some of the people had their noses pressed into
the mud, but I recognised the faces of the ones who didn’t.

Chapter
24

I remember when we had first found
the camp. It was after the battle of Bleakholt, when the horror of the fighting
was still fresh. We spent hours walking on the roads until our legs ached, but
many of us still couldn’t sleep. Those who managed it suffered through
nightmares of the hungry undead and ever-hunting stalkers.

We had trekked miles over the
Scottish highlands after the battle. We were a fifty-something strong band of
refuges. We were survivors just looking for a safe place to rest, with hunger
closing on one side and the infected on the other.

I remember the morning when I saw the
first tent. At first I thought it might have been a lone camper battling
against the elements. When another tent appeared, and then another and another,
I felt such a rush of relief that I almost fell to the floor.

Back then the tents were standing but
were empty. The grass was green and free from trampling, and the only things
staining it were the weeds as they pushed through the soil.

Looking around me now, things had
changed.

“Is this your camp?” asked Al. “It’s
not exactly Butlins.”

I shook away my thoughts. I nodded.
It was our camp, alright, but it wasn’t how we had left it. Instead of the
usual hustle of the day, of people chatting, hunting game, fetching water and
firewood, there was silence. In the middle of the camp, left to get sodden by
the autumn rain, were the bodies of the campers.

Mel strode forward. I took slow
steps, looking around me to see if whatever had left the bodies was still
waiting. Mel reached the first corpse. It was a man, and his face was squashed
into the wet mud. Mel turned him over, and she sank to the floor in shock.

I joined her and looked at the man.
The whole of his nose and right cheek were covered in mud. Brown soil smothered
his lips and flecks of it had gone in his mouth. One of his eyes was wide open,
but the other was closed as if he was winking at us.

“It’s Pete Jenkins,” said Mel.

I had seen plenty of dead bodies
before, but I had never seen a slaughter like this. It was different than
looking at the corpses of the infected. The last time I had seen these people
they were getting on with their lives, carving a niche of survival in a world
where hope was slim. Now they were just cold cadavers in the dirt.

Al held his combat knife in his hand.
He looked over the bodies.

“Steady on now,” he said. “We don’t
know what happened here. If any of these buggers start to rise…”

Mel stood up and stepped away from
Pete Jenkins.

“This wasn’t the infected. Look.”

She pointed at his chest, and
straight away I understood. There were no bite marks on Pete’s body. Instead,
his torso had been torn open by a cut that ran from his collar bone all the way
to his groin. His insides were empty, as if they had been scooped out. I looked
at all the other bodies and saw that the same had been done to the rest of
them.

Ben bent over to be sick, but nothing
came out.

“Better take him away,” said Charlie.

“No,” I said.

Charlie looked at me with wide eyes.

“We don’t know what the hell’s going
on here. Whatever did this could still be here.”

“If its stalkers” said Mel, “They
won’t be here. It’s daylight.”

Kendal bent down toward the body of a
woman. She took hold of her shoulder and gently rolled her over. It was a
heavyset woman with a white blouse which was stained yellow through constant
wear without a wash. Her hair was curly, and it was thick at the fringe but
growing sparse at the back. I recognised her. She used to babysit the kids of
the camp while their parents hunted and foraged. Sometimes she annoyed the
parents by telling their children dark stories. I couldn’t remember her name,
and the disrespect of it stung me. I felt like I owed it to her to know.

“It wasn’t stalkers,” said Kendal.
“Someone opened them up like a tin of tuna.”

I thought about Shaun and his horror
house. The dismembered limbs piled in his room like ornaments. Surely it was
too much for one person to be responsible for, but I didn’t know who else would
do something like this.

Al stepped beside me and put a heavy
hand on my shoulder. In my weakened state, I felt like his touch was enough to
push me to the ground. I needed to be stronger.

“Sorry, Kyle,” he said. “I think its
best we leave. Any bloody thing could be watching us right now. Waiting. Better
we go now, and you can grieve later.”

It was too much to process. We hadn’t
been gone too long, but the smell of the blood in the air spoke of a slaughter
that had happened long ago. It felt like we had stumbled into a tomb full of
bodies left decaying amongst the dirt. I just couldn’t believe that everyone
was dead.

Then I realised something. I counted
the bodies, grimacing at each number in my head.

“There was over fifty of us,” I said.

“Come on Kyle,” said Al.

“Where the hell is everyone else?
There are thirty two bodies here. So where are the others?”

Lou stirred on her stretcher. She
tried to say something, but the words were lost in her fever. It had started to
rain, and the soft patters fell on her forehead and the water ran into her
eyes.

“Charlie, can you cover her?” I said.

Charlie took off his coat, struggling
as he tried to shake his sleeve over his arm. When he got it off he gave a
shiver, and then laid his coat over Lou. She shifted from side to side, and then
laid back.

Al walked over to the bodies. He bent
down next to a man. His name was Leroy Sultan, and he was an ex-carpet salesman
turned wild berry forager. I had once sat with Leroy and we shared an old,
sour-tasting bottle of scotch under the night sky. He had never had a wife or
kids, and the thing he missed most about the old world was his dog, Kilroy.

Al put his hand into Leroy’s trouser
pocket. He pulled out an old leather dog collar with a metal tag on the end of
it. I had seen him do something similar at the helicopter, but I had thought
nothing of it at the time.

“This isn’t the time for trophy
hunting,” I said.

I felt angry. Not just at Al, but at
everything. The fragile balance of the world. One where everything could look
like it was swinging up for a second, and then come crashing down without
warning. What use was there trying to survive when it took mere days for
everything to be ripped apart?

I walked over to Al. I stood in front
of him. I clenched my fists and felt heat run through me. I struggled to keep
my head.

“Steady on,” he said. He put both his
hands on my shoulders. The tag on the collar in his right hand dug into my
skin. “This isn’t trophy hunting. I don’t know what you think I am, but what
the hell kind of trophy is a dog collar?”

“Then what’s your game?”

He stepped back.

“Open your hand.”

I didn’t know what to think.

“Just open it.”

I held out my hand and opened my
palm. Al pressed the dog collar into it and then closed my fingers around it. I
looked at the collar. The tag was fake silver, and the colour had long started
to flake away. Gouged in the metal, still legible, was the message
‘Hi! My
name is Kilroy. If you find me on my own, please call XXXXXX.’

“It’s not trophy hunting,” said Al.
“It’s called doing the decent thing and taking something to remember people by.
Even if it’s a stranger. No one deserves to go without leaving some kind of
impression.”

I didn’t say anything. I stood in the
camp amongst the bodies of the dead. I wanted silence, but I didn’t get it.
Instead, fainter at first but then louder, I heard a humming sound. It was a
rumbling that came from the east. Soon enough everyone else heard it. Mel held
her cleaver ready, and Charlie knelt beside Lou and beckoned Ben over to him.

Something was coming. I looked at the
slaughter around us. I knew that whatever or whoever was capable of doing this
to thirty-odd people was more than a match for us. I couldn’t protect everyone,
I knew.

“Charlie. Take Ben and Lou into a
tent. Don’t come out for anything.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll feel better knowing you’re
hidden.”

“I’ll help,” said Kendal.

Kendal and Charlie took hold of Lou’s
stretcher and carried her over to a nearby tent. Ben followed, and the four of
them went inside. Charlie poked his head through the door.

“Kyle…”

“Close the zipper, Charlie,” I said.

The droning sound was louder now. It
was an unnatural sound, something man-made that broke the stillness of the
countryside. I looked around me, but I still couldn’t see anything.

“Over there,” said Mel.

A truck drove toward camp,
approaching from the east. Its wheels tumbled over the rough grass, flattening
it under rubber, and black smoke spat from the exhaust.

“He’s not alone,” said Al.

A quad bike span out from behind the
truck. It levelled alongside it, and then sped up and overtook it. It headed
straight toward camp, making easy work of the highland terrain. A man drove it
in a standing position, with big arms gripping the handlebars.

“No bloody way,” said Mel.

“Know him?” said Al.

“Kyle is that…”

I looked at the man. He was tall and
muscled. His head was tucked down in a look of concentration, and his shoulders
shook as the quad bike sped over rocks and grass. I knew this man. I couldn’t
believe it, but it couldn’t be anyone else.

“Billy,” I said.

***

We first met Billy in the Bleakholt
settlement. He was the right-hand man of the leader there, a stern but strong
woman named Victoria. I had been suspicious of him at first, but Billy had
proven himself to be a good guy.

In the middle of the battle of
Bleakholt, stalkers had attacked. This should have been the end for us, but
Billy had taken off on his quad bike, using himself as bait to lead the
stalkers away. Later I used to think about what might have happened to him. I
poured my thoughts over all the potential outcomes, but it was rare that I
imagined one where he survived.

Yet here he was in front of me. He
rolled his quad bike to a stop a few feet in front of us. His head was no longer
shaved, and instead he had let his hair grow on the front and sides, but I saw
that he was balding at the back. His face was covered by a mossy beard.
Underneath the strange hair and beard though, was the man I knew.

“Know this guy?” said Al.

“Yeah,” Mel answered.  “He’s a
friend.”

“Was a friend,” I said. “We don’t
know what he is now.”

Al nodded. “That’s the spirit.
Nothing wrong with a healthy distrust in people.”

The truck pulled into the camp. It
was too big to thread through the tents like Billy on his quad bike, so the
driver slowed to a stop on the outskirts and stopped the engine. The doors
opened, and a man and a woman got out. The man carefully shut his door and
locked it. The woman slammed hers.

“Careful,” said the man. “The
paintwork.”