Chapter
20
The farmhouse was dirty and there was a
mouldy smell that seemed to be coming from the walls. Cracked wooden beams ran
along the ceiling to support it, though in some places the roof bulged slightly
as though it would cave in any second. There was a dining table in the far side
of the room, and a tattered couch that looked like it had been salvaged from a
rubbish tip. On a dresser next to a wall, there was a solitary photo frame, and
in it was a little girl with auburn hair and a wide grin. I knew that girl, or
I knew the woman she had grown up to be. It was Clara.
I moved my arms and struggled at the
rough ropes that tied me to the chair. They were wrapped so tight around my
wrists that it felt like they were cutting off my circulation.
I looked up at the photo again. Clara
had never shown me photos of her as a kid before, and it was almost like her
childhood had never existed. Yet here was something; a memento her dad had
saved and given a prominent place in his house, despite the fact he hadn’t seen
his daughter in decades.
Torben followed my gaze to the photo. He
walked over, picked it up and studied it. Seeing him with his hands on a photo
of Clara made me clench my fists, but I said nothing. Instead, I looked to the
door.
“Can’t we bring him in?” I said.
When they had escorted me into the
farmhouse they had left David outside on the porch.
Torben put the photo face down on the
dresser, walked over to the dining table and pulled out a chair. He sat in it
and faced me. Despite how pale and tired his men looked, Torben’s face glowed
red by contrast. There was no doubt that he was getting enough to eat.
“Your friend is bitten,” said Torben.
“And soon he’s gonna turn. Or he would, if I wasn’t here.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked around him. “We’re on a farm.
What do farmers do with sick animals?” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“They take them in the barn and shoot
them.”
I looked out toward the porch, but I
couldn’t see David. I knew he was hurt, and I knew he’d be scared. I didn’t
want to admit it, but deep down I knew that Torben was right. David was
infected now, and soon he was going to die. I pushed the thought down as far as
I could.
Across from us and through a door, I
could hear footsteps walking down the stairs. They got closer and then the door
opened, and Justin walked into the room. His clothes were tattered and his nose
looked bloody around the nostrils, but otherwise he seemed fine. He saw me,
stopped, and his eyes grew large. Torben stood up, walked over to him and
ruffled his hair.
“Here’s my lad.” He said, and give him a
punch on his arm. Justin looked away. Torben smiled at me. “Kyle, I’d like you
to meet our latest recruit.”
I shook my head. Did he mean that Justin
had joined the hunters? The way I saw it, he had been kidnapped, and there was
no way he’d ally himself with them.
“Looks more like a prisoner than a
recruit,” I said.
Torben walked back to the chair and took
a seat. He nodded at Justin and beckoned him to do the same. “I gave him a
choice,” he said. “Join us, or die. It looks like his survival instinct kicked
in.”
“He’d never join you,” I said, feeling a
lump in the back of my throat.
Torben closed his eyes and shook his
head. “You make it sound like we’re monsters. All we’re doing is surviving,
just like you. We’re a pack. We trust each other with our lives.”
I scrunched up my face. I couldn’t shake
the feeling of disgust. “There’s something rotten at the core of your ‘pack’. “
Torben stood up and perched against the
dining table. Through his open jacket I could see a revolver in a holster. I
recognised the gun – it was mine, the one I’d kept in the rucksack that Torben
had stolen.
“It’s not man versus man anymore, Kyle.
There are no cliques, no armies. Its man versus infected.”
“So why hunt people?”
“Some men just don’t belong in a pack”
he said, and stared at me. Then he turned to Justin. “But others fit right in.”
I struggled against the ropes on my wrist,
but I barely had a centimetre to move. My skin burnt from rubbing against the rough
material.
Torben reached into the holster and took
out the revolver. He opened the chamber and checked the bullets, and from my
chair I could see gold circles filling two of the holes. The other four were
empty. Torben span the chamber round to line up the bullets and then closed it
with a snap.
My breath caught in my lungs now, and my
chest felt tight. The bullets had only one purpose; I knew it, and Torben knew
it. I was tied to the chair so tight that there was no way I was going to move.
I looked over at Justin and tried to get a sense of what he was thinking. Had
he really joined them, or was he just playing along? Maybe he had weighed up
his options and come to the conclusion that sticking with the hunters was the
only way to stay alive.
Torben walked over to me and stopped
just inches away. He reached forward with the revolver and pressed it into my
forehead. I felt the cold metal dig into my head, and Torben pressed it harder
so that it broke the skin. It was like he was trying to push it all the way
through my skull and into my brain. The metal pressing against my head stung,
but I wasn’t going to show him that. I took a deep breath and held it in.
“The farm’s ours, and so are you. You
lost.”
I opened my mouth and spat at him.
Torben took a step back and wiped his khakis with his hand. He turned, put the
gun on the table and slid it over to Justin. The boy looked up in surprise.
“Pick it up,” said Torben.
Justin looked at the gun and then at
Torben. I could tell what he was thinking; he was wondering if he should pick
it up and fire it in Torben’s face. At least, that’s what I hoped he was
thinking. Then again, there were six hunters outside who would come running in
the minute they heard a shot. Whether Justin was on my side or not, we were
still outnumbered.
Torben nodded at Justin. “It’s okay,” he
said. “You can do it.” His voice was soft. He pointed over at me. “This guy
doesn’t give a crap about you, but you’re one of us now.”
Justin’s picked up the gun, but his
hands were shaking.
Torben stood up and put an arm around
his shoulder. “Every man has to die, Justin. At least you won’t have to do it
alone.”
Justin raised the gun at me. His pupils
were so big that it seemed like his eyes were completely black. His arms were
trembling, and his cheeks were white. He pointed the gun at my head. I looked
deep into his eyes and tried to guess what he was thinking. Despite him aiming
the gun at me, I knew that there was no way he would do it. There was no chance
that Justin could shoot me.
There was a yell outside, and the
farmhouse door burst open. A worried-looking hunter ran in.
“They’re here, Torben. There’s hundreds
of them!”
Chapter
21
Torben walked over to the door slowly,
as though he were in no hurry. He opened it and went outside. The hunter trailed
after him. As soon as Torben left the room, Justin walked over to me. He pulled
a knife from his belt and sawed at the ropes around my wrists, and as he cut them
away I felt my skin loosen.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He nodded. “They’re a bunch of idiots.”
Torben and the hunter walked back into
the room. Justin straightened up and backed away from me, hiding the knife
behind him.
I grabbed the ropes and held them so
that it looked like I was still tied up.
Torben looked at me. “He wasn’t kidding,”
he said, his voice controlled. “Never seen so many before.”
I twisted my head to get a look. I could
only see through the square doorway, but across the farm and over the fields I
spotted them; there was a sea of infected headed in our direction. Was it the
same ones we had seen in Edness? If it was, then there were thousands of them,
and none of us stood a chance.
Torben turned and looked at me. His face
was void of emotion, a stark contrast to the hunter next to him who looked terrified.
“This is what happens when you fire a
shotgun out in the open,” he said.
I thought about David outside. I wondered
how he was doing, how hurt he was. The bite hadn’t been bad, but I knew enough
about the infection to realise that eventually, whether it be in hours or days,
the bite was going to kill him. And when it did, he wouldn’t stay dead for
long. I felt something welling up inside me, but now wasn’t the time for that.
I couldn’t afford to feel anything now.
Torben looked over at Justin. “Come on,
boy, time to earn your place.”
“What?” said Justin.
Torben pointed at the door. “We didn’t
drive all the way here just to give it up. Come out and fight.”
He strode outside. Justin looked over at
me, and I nodded. He walked after Torben and out of the door.
When the room was empty I let the ropes
fall off me and stood up. My legs ached and my skin around my wrists was raw. I
had a pain in my lower back, and my neck was stiff. I looked around me for my belt
and knife, but I couldn’t see what Torben had done with them.
I walked over to the dining table,
pulled out a chair and tipped it on its side. I need some sort of weapon if I was
going outside. I didn’t know what my plan was yet, but going out there unarmed
would be crazy. Any weapon would do, any blunt instrument; it just had to be
solid enough to smash through bone. I lifted my foot and brought it down on the
chair leg, snapping it from the base. I picked up the block of wood and twisted
it in my hands.
Outside the sky was black. The first
wave of the infected had reached the farm and their faces were illuminated by
the dim glow of the lamps on the porch and the flashes of the hunter's guns as
they fired at them. The sound of the gunshots made me flinch, but it didn’t
matter about the volume now. There were already enough infected coming our way,
and drawing in a few more wouldn’t make a difference.
The hunters and the infected engaged in
battle. The driver held a machete in his hand and swung it at the head of an
infected, splitting into down the middle. Across from him the hunter with the
long fringe held the neck of an infected woman as she struggled to bite him.
With his right hand he lined up a screwdriver and drove it into her eye socket,
splitting her eyeball like an onion.
A man to my right cried out, and I span around
and saw him fall to the floor. Two infected fell on top of him and didn’t waste
a second in tearing pieces out of his neck and chest, their teeth clacking as
they tore through his skin. One took a big bite of his chest, chewed and pulled
away a long strip of flesh. The man’s screams of agony rose above the
collective cry of the infected, but were quickly silenced as the infected ate
his vocal chords.
“Kyle!”
I turned round and saw David with his
back against the porch. His face was drained of colour and he held his bitten
arm tight against his chest. When he saw me look at him, he pointed to my left.
I turned and saw an infected man inches away and lunging right at me.
I grabbed hold of the man’s hair, held
it tight and then smashed the end of the chair leg against its face. The leg
was so square and blunt that all it accomplished was breaking the skin and
making putrid blood ooze from the infected’s face. I pushed the infected to the
ground. When it was on the floor, I lined my boot with its face and brought it
down as hard as I could. Its head didn’t smash straight away, and it took three
tries before I heard it crack. When I looked down, my boot was covered in dark
red blood and bits of grey flesh.
I turned, ran over to David and knelt
beside him. He looked at me, and his voice was so quiet that it was hard to
hear him over the battle cries of the hunters and the groans of the infected.
“You need to go,” he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “
We
need to go,” I agreed, and give him a squeeze.
I heard footsteps run over to us, and then
Justin was next to me. He bent over and took a few shallow breaths. His hands
were covered in blood.
“You okay?” I said, looking for the
tell-tale marks of a bite.
“It’s not mine,” he said. He held his
hands up.
Behind us there was a scream, and I knew
another hunter had been taken by the infected. How many more were left? I
glanced over, but I couldn’t see them all. It didn’t matter; the hunters were
outnumbered twelve to one.
Justin leaned in to David. Panic spread
across his face. “Shit, David,” he said.
David nodded. Shit. No other words
needed to be said.
I looked at Justin. “We need to go, right
now. I don’t care where, we just need to get out of here.”
Justin swallowed. “Their truck,” he
said, and pointed past the farmhouse. The hunter’s pick-up truck was parked on
the stone driveway that led to the farm.
I nodded at him. This was as good a plan
as any. Right now we just needed to get as far away from the farm as possible.
What happened after, whatever we were going to do later didn’t matter, now we
just had to escape.
“What about the keys?” I said.
“They keep them in the ignition for
quick getaways.”
I grinned. “Smart.”
We picked up David and between us we
supported him over to the truck. Behind us the sounds of the gunshots faded as
the hunters ran out of ammo, and I knew that most of them would now be reaching
for their knives. If they had any sense, they would slit their own throats.
There were too many infected swarming in for the hunters to have any chance of
winning.
We set David down next to the wheel of
the truck. I opened the door, jumped in and reached for the keys. The ignition
was empty.
My heart began to pound and my chest
flooded with panic. The keys had to be here somewhere. Our luck just couldn’t
be this bad, surely. I looked all around the dashboard and found plenty of
chocolate wrappers, but no car keys.
I got out. Justin and David looked up at
me, but I shook my head.
“Shit,” said Justin.
I knelt down next to David. His face was
so grey that he looked like he should be in a morgue. I put my hand on his
arm. “Listen, pal. We need to leave, we can’t stay here. Think you can make it
just a little bit further?”
He looked up at me. His lips were dry
and his eyes were dark. “Just leave me. I’m dying anyway.”
I couldn’t leave him. I’d already done
that once, and I knew that I was going to have to live with that for the rest
of my life. I couldn’t change the past, but what happened in the present was
still up to me. And I wasn’t abandoning him again.
I squeezed his arm and started to pull
him up.
“Nobody’s leaving you. Get up and stop
moaning,” I said.
Justin and I heaved David to his feet.
For a second he was able to support himself on his own.
“Thanks, Kyle,” he said, and smiled at
me. “Let’s go.”
A shadow leapt over the truck, and
quicker than I could react it pounced on David, pinned him to the floor and
tore a chunk out of his neck. Blood sprayed out like mist and covered the
ground. I looked at the creature on top of him, and every nerve in my body
screamed out. I felt my blood freeze, and for a second I couldn’t even move.
It was a stalker.
By the time I forced myself to move,
David had stopped breathing. The stalker turned its head toward us, and despite
its disfigurement I swore I could see something of a grin, some sort of human
expression. It stared at me with hatred, and I saw its legs kneel up behind it,
ready to propel it into a pounce.
I reached for my knife but then realised
I didn’t have it with me. I gulped.
The stalker twitched and got ready to
jump. Then, something next to me exploded, and half the stalker’s face tore
away. It made a rasping sound and fell back to the floor with a thud. I looked
to my left, and Justin stood with the revolver in his outstretched hand, smoke
drifting from the chamber.
I looked at David’s lifeless body on the
floor. A huge chunk of his neck was missing, and blood sprayed out from the
torn veins like water seeping out of a broken pipe. I grabbed his hand and felt
his wrist, but his pulse had stropped. I had failed him, I knew. I had brought
him into this, and I had let him die.
“We need to leave,” said Justin.
I nodded and stood up. It was time for
us to go. The farm was lost, but at least we could escape with our lives.
“Here,” he said, and passed me my
revolver. The barrel was hot to the touch. I slipped the gun into my pocket.
We started to walk down the driveway and
away from the farm, when I heard the stones crunch behind me.
“Where are you going?” said a voice.
I turned round and Torben was stood in
front of me with his rifle raised. He pointed it at me and pulled the trigger,
and I felt the bullet tear a hole in my leg.