Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel (5 page)

Chapter
6

Justin’s feet
thudded on the forest floor and smashed every twig and leaf in their path. With
each crunch and snap I looked around me to make sure we hadn't drawn the
unwanted attention of an infected.

"Do you
have weights in your boots?"

Justin looked
at me. His face was looking wearier, a little less cocky and there was two days
of stubble sprayed on his cheeks, though most of the hair was light and the
growth was sparse. "What do you mean?"

I put a hand on
his shoulder and forced him to move slower. "Walk a little quieter. It's like
you're trying to invite them over for a chat."

We had covered
thirty-five miles in the last two days. The first day after Justin had joined
me we only walked fourteen, because despite getting something to eat, I still
felt zapped. I also found that travelling with someone else held you back in
other ways. The kid couldn't match my pace, and though he never asked me to
stop or take a break, there were times when his breathing got heavy and I could
tell his steps were tough for him to take. The second day was better, and we
managed twenty-one miles, but this was because we got out of the woods and managed
a full day's walk over flat terrain.

We moved over
the English countryside, and under different circumstances I might have said it
was beautiful; it was green, hilly and clear for miles. You didn’t have to
worry about an infected jumping out at you because you could see everything
around you in all directions, and that meant you could afford to walk a little
quicker. For two days our view had been nothing but swaying fields with grass
high enough to reach our ankles. Now though, we had hit woodland again.

"How thick
is this patch?" I asked him.

His eyes looked
up and to the side, as though he were searching his brain for data. "I
don’t know. The GPRS didn’t have a route through the trees. We should be on the
road somewhere over there,” he said, and pointed east of us.

I looked up.
Through the slots of the tress I could see the sky, and it looked grey. Darkness
was starting to creep in, and soon the whole woodland would be black. I looked
as far through the trees as I could but there didn't seem to be any shelter.
There wasn’t going to be any scout shack like back in Vasey, because there were
no populated areas in this neck of the woods. This made me sweat. I didn't want
to be out in the open again when the stalkers came.

"How far’s
the nearest town?" I asked.

He shrugged his
shoulders. "I dunno."

"I forget
that you're not Google."

"Eh?"

I shook my
head. "Never mind."

"Are we
stopping?" asked Justin.

I dropped my
rucksack to the ground. It was about five times heavier than it had been two
days ago, and though this meant extra weight to carry, I was glad of it. Justin
had brought enough supplies with him to get us a hell of a lot closer to the
farm, and the first thing I'd done when I agreed to let him join me was to
transfer most of them to my own bag. The kid thought it was because I wanted to
help him carry the load, but really it was because if he screwed up and got
himself killed, I didn't want to be left starving.

I took a look
round us and, seeing nothing, lowered myself to the forest floor. The mud was a
little damp from a light shower in the morning, but it had been a long time
since I had cared about something like that. Justin sat down, felt the wetness
of the dirt and instead put his bag underneath him.

"Think
we're going to have to hold up here for the night. Don't know exactly where we
are, but I got an inkling there's a village a few days away."

Justin blinked.
"You don't trust me, but you’ll trust an inkling?"

"An
inkling never got me killed."

Truth was I had
been here once, many years ago, so I had a dim recollection of the area. Back
then though, I had been with Clara, and I had been too focused on how beautiful
my new wife was to take in the scenery.

"Won't
'they' come out? The things?"

"Stalkers."
I said.

"That's
what they're called?"

I nodded.
"That'd be the dictionary term, if someone out there was still printing
them. Truth is I don't know if they’ll come out here. But I think we're good
for miles on either side - there's nothing here but fields. Stalkers stick near
towns and villages where they know there are people.”

Justin tilted
his head to the side. "What are they?"

I swallowed. I
didn’t want to spend time thinking about the stalkers. "Don't ask. Just if
we ever see one, for god’s sake do what I say."

A few hours
later the woods were cloaked in darkness. Somewhere in the tree above me a bird
shuffled in its nest, and aside from that the only sound was the regular chirp
of crickets. A breeze blew cold on my cheeks, and with it came the smell of
spring onions from a patch that must have been growing nearby. The sky was so
black that I couldn't see whether it was cloudy or not, though the absence of
stars wasn't a good sign. The last thing we needed when we didn't have shelter
was for it to start raining. I'd spent some long, wet nights out in the open
over the last few years, and I didn't plan to spend many more if I could help
it.

Justin had his
back against a log that was led horizontally on the forest floor. The middle of
it was hollow and looked like it had been chewed by something, but the hole
wasn't big enough to get inside. I rested my body against a tree, but I kept my
mind alert. It felt good to sit down. I could actually feel the tiredness
seeping out of me; it was like a warm energy that drained from my limbs. It was
a good feeling, but it would have been even better would be to get some sleep.

 I looked over
at the kid. He had his eyes focussed on his hands, and he seemed to be picking
dirt from underneath his fingernails. Could I trust him to keep watch tonight,
I wondered? I really needed to get some shut eye, even if it was just for an
hour, but I didn't want to go to sleep and leave the kid watching out for me.

No, I couldn't
do it. No matter how scratchy and red my eyes were, no matter how much my
shoulders felt like a weight crushing me down, I couldn't sleep while he sat
watch. I was just going to have to snatch ten minutes here and there when it
was light. My body ached at the thought of the next morning, of another day of
hiking on tired limbs.

"Justin,"
I said.

He looked up.
His eyes were puffy. "Yeah?"

"You
should get some sleep."

He put his
hands on his lap. "How long've you been out here Kyle?"

"Don’t
talk, just go to sleep. I'll keep watch."

Justin put his
bag in front of him then led his head on it. He wrapped his green raincoat
round his body and tucked it tight up to his chin. It only took fifteen
minutes, and then he was out for the count. As the kid lightly snored the night
away, I began to wonder how we were going to cope for the next few hundred
miles. He wanted to experience what it was like out here in the wild, in the
real world, but he had no idea whatsoever how to live in it. If we were going
to make it to the farm without further incident, then I was going to have to
teach him how to survive.

The fact was,
as soon as we reached the farm he was on his own, and whether he decided to
carry on living in the wilds or he decided to go back to Vasey, he was going to
have to do it independently. I knew I would never buckle from the decision to
leave him, but I could at least prepare him better for when the time came.

The night sky
reached its peak of darkness and the visibility in the forest was less than a
couple of metres. The temperate had plummeted, so I zipped up my coat and
tucked my chin inside. In a way I was thankful for it, because the cold helped
keep me alert.

Despite having
potential hypothermia as an ally, though, my eyelids were starting to feel
heavy. My head was light, my body drained of energy, my eyes closing. I
struggled to keep them open as my brain coaxed me into a soft sleep, and soon I
felt myself surrendering against the feeling.

                                                        ***

I opened my
eyes. My brain felt fuzzy from the sleep I had just accidentally taken.
Somewhere to my right, I heard something crunch. I felt my face drain of blood,
and one word automatically leapt into my brain: Stalker.

My shoulders went
tight and my hands were clammy, but I took a deep breath, held it in and tried
to control myself. I looked at Justin. The only movement coming from him was
the rise and fall of his chest. I turned my head to the right and listened
intently. If it was a stalker, it probably wouldn't make another noise, I knew.
There were two possibilities: either it had caught our scent and it was working
its way toward us, in which case the first we would know about it would be when
it tore one of us apart. The second possibility was that it was a lone
infected, just another corpse shambling through the forest.

Please be an
infected, I thought.

Justin stirred.
No, I thought, don't wake up. That would be the worst damn timing ever. To my
right there was another crunch, and the sound of something dragging. I stared
as intently as I could but my eyes couldn't puncture the thick curtain of
darkness. Whatever it was could be metres away, and we wouldn't have the
slightest idea. I looked up at the sky. Never in my life had I wished more for
a little bit of moonlight.

Justin moved
again. I got to my knees and crawled toward him as quietly as I could, taking
care to brush my path for any twigs that could snap underneath me. When I
reached him, he was waking up. He mumbled something unintelligible, and then shoved
the rain coat off his chest. He was about to sit up when I put my hand firmly
on his chest, pushed him down and put my hand over his mouth.

"Don't
make a sound. There's something out there, but I don't know what and I don't
have a clue where it is," I whispered.

I moved my hand
away from his mouth. Justin quietly sat up. He looked around him, but he could
see about as much as I could. His eyes were squinting into the darkness.

"Stalker?"
he said.

I listened
again. I could hear the dragging sound, but it seemed to be going further away.
I let out a breath and felt a wave of relief. This was no stalker, and if it
was, it was a pretty damn bad one. At any rate, whatever was out there was
moving away from us. What worried me more though was falling asleep while on
watch. That was dangerous for both us.

"Talk to
me about something," I said to Justin.

He straightened
up and rubbed his eyes. "You actually want to talk to me?"

I nodded.
"Got to keep awake somehow, unless you got some coffee tucked away
somewhere."

"What
should we talk about?"

"You got a
water bottle?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Pass it
here then."

I took a big
drink, letting the first few gulps of the cold water take care of my thirst. I
sloshed another gulp round my mouth to clear the dryness. I spat it out onto
the forest floor. "Ask me a question," I told him.

Out in the
distance, the dragging sound got even fainter. "What happened to your
wife?" Justin asked.

It was like a
sucker-punch in the stomach. I'd expected him to ask something light and easy,
but instead he'd gone straight in for the big question.

 "Not
about me," I said. "You wanted to know about the world and what it’s
like living without Vasey’s walls Well, I’ve lived out here almost as long as
you’ve been alive. So ask me about it."