Torben. The hunters.
“Remember when we were drunk in Brussels
and we had to pay out for another night because you were so wasted? They
wouldn’t let you on the flight.” I said, trying to bring up a light memory to break
the mood.
David looked up. “Remember when my
sister died and you abandoned me?” he spat.
I hung my head. I couldn’t have this
conversation, not now. I knew he was hurting, but it was something I just
couldn’t face. “Look, Dave – “
Justin came running in, his eyes wide
with panic. He stopped just short of us and caught his breath. “They’re here.
Fucking loads of them.”
I snapped my head to the doorway but I
couldn’t see them yet. That didn’t matter. Justin had seen them, and as I
predicted, they were going to swarm us. I felt my skin go clammy, and the
tendons in my neck pulsed.
In the doorway, the first of the
infected walked through. It was a male. His body was slim and his skin was
wrapped around his bones like Clingfilm. He looked at us and growled.
I got to my feet. “We need to move,” I
said. I looked at David. He had his hands wrapped around his body and he was
staring at the infected. He blinked rapidly. The infected had always terrified
him, and I guessed that hadn’t changed in the years since I last saw him. Next
to him, on the floor, was the shotgun.
I reached down and picked it up. The
handle was clammy from David’s sweaty palms, so I wiped it on my jeans. Justin
tugged at my sleeve.
“More of them are coming.”
I glanced at David. The infected man was
moving toward us, but David didn’t move. His breath was raspy, and his eyes
were squeezed shut.
“Justin, take care of it,” I said, and nodded
at the infected.
Justin took his knife out of his belt
and held it at head height. His stance had improved, and I was glad to see that
he’d actually paid attention to the things I taught him. Most of his awkward
posture was gone now. He was surer of himself, better at handling his own body.
He took a step forward and without a second’s contemplation sank his knife deep
into the skull of the infected, splitting its head open with a crack. The
infected’s body sank to the floor and brain fluid leaked out from the knife
hole.
“Hold this,” I said, and passed the
shotgun to Justin.
I bent down, hooked my hands underneath David’s
armpits and hauled him to his feet. Evidently he hadn’t enjoyed a healthy diet
during his time alone, because the guy weighed practically nothing. Getting him
to his feet seemed to shake it out of his trance a little, because he opened
his eyes and there was a hint of alertness there.
In front of us, three infected struggled
to get through the doorway, blocking each other’s way like commuters fighting
to get on a tube. Behind them I could see the faces of others straining to get
at us. This room was going to be filled with dead faces and snapping teeth
soon, and when it did we’d have no chance. I gritted my teeth and let out a
deep breath.
“Where’s your car?” I said.
David didn’t answer; he was too busy
staring at the infected as they groaned with their desire to eat us.
I slapped him on the face. He blinked,
and looked at me. He rubbed his reddened cheek.
“Where’s the damn car?” I said.
He pointed at the door. “Through there.”
“You’ve got the keys?”
He nodded.
Here was the choice then. I could take
the keys from David, get in the car and drive away. Or I could still take the
car and let David come with us. I didn’t want to take him, but it wasn’t really
much of a choice to make. I was hardly going to leave him here for the infected
to get him.
Not again.
“Good. You’re coming with us.”
I dragged him toward the door as the
infected finally spilled in, pushing and shoving against each other in their
struggle to get close to us. I got to the door, raised the shotgun and fired it
at the padlock. Another blast rang in my ears, and the metal smashed into
pieces. I kicked the door open.
Outside, there was the car.
I grabbed Justin and hauled him outside.
Behind me, David hovered in the doorway. The infected were a few feet away from
him now, but he didn’t move.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
“Leila,” said David, looking at the
mannequin sadly as the infected filled the room and swarmed around his doll,
leaving her out of reach.
“Leila’s fine. They don’t like the taste
of plastic.”
I grabbed the collar of his shirt and
dragged him away. We got in the car. There was the choke of the engine as it
sparked to life, and soon we were speeding away, leaving the infected-infested
building behind us. My pulse was racing as I turned the steering wheel and
followed the road out.
We had had the car and that was
something, but it had come at a price. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw
David. His eyes were blank and his mouth was open, and he retreated to wherever
the hell it was he went when things got too much for him.
I didn’t even want one person travelling
with me. Now I had two.
Chapter
15
I steered the car through the corkscrew
country roads. I had forgotten how easily you could lose your driving skills
without practice, and the last time I’d been in a car was over a decade ago. I
remembered that Clara and I still had her beat-up Yaris when things all kicked
off, and sometime later we found a Mercedes with the engine still hot and the
keys in the ignition. I had loved driving that.
In this part of the world the roads were
tiny and they ran anyway they could but straight. At random times without any
warning the road would seem to shrink so much that your wing mirrors scraped
the hedges or the ramshackle stone walls that all ran alongside us.
I looked at Justin next to me. He stared
out of the window with his eyes wide, taking in every centimetre of scenery. To
him, someone who had fifteen years of his life living behind walls, everything
was a wonder. To me, the way the roads twisted and turned made it feel like we
were circling a drain.
“David,” I said.
I looked in the mirror and saw him
curled up on the back seat, asleep.
“How long’s he been out?” I asked
Justin.
He looked away from the window. “All day,
pretty much.”
I nodded. I’d rather he was asleep and
quiet than awake and asking me questions.
Justin leaned in a little toward me. “Is
there something wrong with him?” he whispered.
I thought about a tactful way of putting
it. “Bering alone does strange things to some men.”
“Sure does. It made you the most
paranoid, distrustful person I ever met.”
I didn’t even have the energy to
reprimand him. Last night we’d pulled over on a layby to get a little rest, but
I hadn’t managed more than two hours. In the night the country was a foreboding
place, and at one point I had seen reflective eyes staring at me through the
darkness. My first thought was stalker, and my heart pounded, but then I
realised it was a fox.
My head throbbed. I was starting to
worry that the blow from David’s shotgun had given me concussion or something
because every twenty minutes my eyelids flickered, and my attention started to
drift.
The road in front of us seemed to run
straight for a while, so I moved into fourth gear and picked up the speed. The
engine hummed in the car bonnet and on the backseat, David snored in rhythmic
breaths. A stone wall ran alongside us. It was hundreds of rocks of all shapes
and sizes piled together, presumably to keep livestock from getting into the
road.
Above us, the sky was mostly blue but
with a few rain clouds drifting through it. Little patters of water trickled
onto the windscreen, so I turned on the wipers and watched them sway
hypnotically from side to side. My eyelids felt heavy, and I knew they were
starting to close. My brain sent soothing messages through my body and tell me
it was okay. My attention began to dissipate and my thoughts drifted.
There was a loud scrape and then a thud
as the car swayed to the left and smashed into the wall, the impact of the
metal against the rocks waking me immediately. Behind me in the mirror I saw
David jolt upright. I felt my pulse racing and my breaths were shallow. I
looked at Justin next to me.
“You hurt?” I asked.
He shook his head, his eyes large and
white.
The wall in front of us was destroyed,
and some of the rocks had collapsed onto the car bonnet. I hoped the car was okay;
the last thing we needed, just fifty miles from the farm, was for it to break
down.
The worst thing was that I was to blame.
It was my stupid inability to sleep properly that had made me tired and made me
drift off while I was supposed to be watching the road. Now I’d probably wrecked
the car and I’d also put Justin and David in danger. If David hadn’t already
done it for me earlier, I would have hit myself in the nose.
David rubbed his eyes. “Back it up and
I’ll take a look,” he said.
“Want me to –“
“I said I’ll take a look,” he said,
cutting me off. From the way his eyebrows slanted I could tell he was annoyed.
I put the car into reverse and moved it
away from the wall. Luckily it responded to my actions, but something about the
engine sounded a little off. David got out front. There were a few rocks on the
bonnet, which he picked up, with considerable strain, and threw onto the road.
He popped the bonnet, and for a while his head disappeared behind it.
I put my hand on Justin’s shoulder.
“Sure you’re okay?” I said.
He nodded.
I thought about what the kid had been
through in the past month – getting choked by me, punched by Torben, twisting
his ankle jumping thirty feet off the warehouse, and now getting in a crash. He
didn’t complain much about any of it, and I knew he made an effort not to slow
me down. The kid was tougher than he looked.
“How does he know about this stuff?”
asked Justin.
I found the lever under my seat and
moved it back a little to give my legs more room. “He used to be an engineer.
He was always tinkering with stuff. When other people were out getting drunk,
David would be in his bedroom bent over a soldering iron.”
“What happened between you two?” he
said.
I looked out of the window. There was
nothing coming up or down the road, not that I expected anything. This place
was so remote that even if the world hadn’t ended fifteen years ago, cars
would probably still be a rare sight.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I said.
Justin slammed his hand on the
dashboard. “I’m sick of you, Kyle. That’s what you always say. You never tell
me anything! All this time on the road and you won’t tell me a frigging thing.”
He opened the door, got out of the car
and went to the front to watch David work. I wound the window down a little and
let a breeze into the car. As well as bringing in a little wind, it also
brought the smell of manure.
After a few minutes, David opened the
car door and climbed in the back. Justin followed him, this time getting in the
back to sit next to David rather than in the front with me. I rolled my eyes.
“Should be okay. I should drive now
though,” said David.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“You’re going to fall asleep again and
total my car,” he said.
“It’s only fifty miles.”
David grabbed hold of the seat in front
of him and leaned toward me. “In your state you can’t drive five.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “I’ll be
fine.”
“Sorry Kyle,” said Justin, “but I agree.
You look like shit.”
***
The countryside floated alongside us and
we wound our way through the roads, but this time I watched them from the
backseat. I looked up at David and say that he was concentrating on the road,
his eyes wide and alert.
“Sorry,” I said.
He turned his head slightly, still
keeping his eyes on the road. “For what?”
I was going to say for everything, I was
sorry about all the stuff that had happened and all the shit I had done. But
when I tried to say that, my throat tightened and the words got stuck. I let
out a sigh.
“Sorry for ruining the paintwork.”
David looked at the car bonnet. There
were two big dents and a few scratches. “I was going to get an MOT soon
anyway.”
I smiled and let my eyelids fall as the
road and the hedges and the walls swayed past.
When I opened my eyes we had stopped in
the middle of a wide road. In front of us and to the left was a pub with black
and white walls and a sign on the outside that read ‘The Babe and Sickle’ and
had a picture of a gleaming blade and a tiny lamb. Up ahead was a roundabout
with overgrown grass spilling over the sides. A few cars were abandoned and on
our right there were a row of shops, but the windows so thick with dust it was
impossible to see inside.
David and Justin were already sat on the
car bonnet. I unclipped my belt and got out of the car.
“Evening,” said Justin.
I looked up at the sky and saw that it
was indeed evening. The light of the sun was getting weaker and the sky was
losing its colour. Somewhere, wherever they nested, stalkers would begin to
stir, ready to prowl in the night-time and look for their kill.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Edness,” said David, a pointed to a
large sign in front of me that said ‘EDNESS’ in capitals.
I walked over to them and looked in the
bonnet. Everything seemed okay. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“No juice,” said David.
I sighed. This was the last thing we
needed, to be stuck in the middle of a village when night was coming. Even
though there didn’t seem to be any infected nearby, this was a human habitat
and that meant a good chance there would be stalkers in the area.
“What do we do?” said Justin. He put his
hands in his pockets.
I looked around me. There weren’t any
petrol stations nearby, that was for sure. We were only twenty-odd miles away
from the farm so we didn’t need much fuel, just enough to last that short
journey. It’s not like we needed anything for a return trip; for me, there was
no return. This was it.
Across the road and parked near a shop,
there was a white transit van. I nodded over to it. “Think you could siphon
some from there? We only need a little.”
David put his hand to his chin and
looked at the van. “Could do. Worth a try.”
I nodded. “Good. Take the kid with you,
show him how to do it.”
While I watched David show Justin how to
siphon fuel from the van, I leant against the car and smiled. I hated to admit
it, but part of me was starting to like having them around. Sure they annoyed
the hell out of me sometimes, but it was occasionally nice to have the company.
I wondered if I would still be able to
dump them off, when it came to it.
Fifteen minutes later David poured the
petrol into the car, closed the cap and gave the roof a tap. I sat in the driver’s
seat.
“Start her up,” he said.
I twisted the key. The car coughed, but
the engine didn’t roar. I twisted it again. It sounded like the spluttering
sounds of a dying man.
“What now?” I said.
David shook his head. “Must have been
the crash. I thought it would make it to the farm before it died. I was wrong.”
I thumped the steering wheel with my
hand. This was all my fault, I knew. If I’d just kept my eyes open and not
crashed into a wall, we’d be fine.
I got out of the car and looked up at
the sky. The sun was gone now, and we only had a couple of hours before the sky
turned completely black and the stalkers came. I looked over at the Babe and
Sickle pub. Should we shelter in there? We could have a pint and wait for all
this to blow over.
“Guys,” said Justin.
I span round and looked at him. His arm
was outstretched and pointing at a turn in the road less than fifty metres
away.
“Oh shit,” I said, and felt my blood run
cold.
Walking down the road was a sea of
infected. There were more than I had ever seen in my life, an endless
procession of rotting faces.