Fear the Dead (Book 4) (24 page)

Billy walked toward us. Part of me
was happy to see my friend, but I looked at the bodies on the floor and I felt
my natural caution close over me like a shell. The world changed all the time,
I knew, and people changed with it. I remembered what Billy was capable of. He
and Lou once travelled together, and there was a time when they were so hungry
that they had robbed a man and let him starve.

He stopped when he was a couple of
feet away. Al held his combat knife in his hand, making no pretence of his
distrust. He eyed Billy with an unflinching stare.

Billy held out his hand toward me.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.
“This is Casey and Alistair”. He jerked his thumb toward the man and woman who
had driven the truck. “Don’t mind their scowls, they’re just tired. They think
I don’t know, but they spend all night screwing when I’m asleep.”

Casey frowned and shook her head.
Alistair’s cheeks started to redden. After a few seconds, realising that I
wasn’t going to shake his hand, Billy withdrew his.

“That’s the Kyle I know and love,” he
said.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to
do,” I answered.

He looked at me as if he couldn’t
believe what I was saying. I needed to know where he had been all this time. It
wasn’t as easy as just trusting him. Casey and Alistair stood in the background
and watched.

“Why didn’t you try and find us?” I
said.

“Give him a break, Kyle,” said Mel.

Billy took a step forward.

“Come on, buddy. That’s no way to
welcome an old friend.”

I nodded at the bodies around us. Men
and women piled on top of each other in the dirt, gaping wounds in their
chests, blood staining the mud. I didn’t want to think Billy was capable of
something so terrible, but the days were gone where people got the benefit of
the doubt.

“You don’t really think I had
anything to do with this?” said Billy.

Across from us, a voice shouted out.

“Billy!”

Ben had opened the tent. Charlie
tried to grab hold of him but the boy was too quick. He eluded Charlie’s
one-armed grasp and ran across so us. When he reached Billy, he leapt against
his waist and gave him a hug. Billy laughed, pressed Ben close to him and
ruffled his hair.

“At least one of you is pleased to
see me.”

“Like I said, you’ve got some
explaining to do.”

Billy crouched down until his head
was level with Ben’s. There was genuine warmth in his smile.

“Go back to Charlie,” he said. “Me
and Kyle need to talk.”

***

We went across camp and into my tent.
I wanted to sit on my bed, but I was worried that if I did, my body would just
give up and sleep would overtake me. I paced around the floor, which had been
made dirty by the tracks of mud we had trailed in with us. Mel, Kendal and Al
sat on the chairs that had once been used for our council meetings. Lou was in
the corner on her stretcher.

Billy knelt down next to her. “Poor
girl,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

“She broke her leg. We tried to get
her antibiotics, but someone cleaned out every pharmacy in a fifty mile
radius,” I answered.

“That wouldn’t be anything to do with
you, would it fella?” said Al.

Billy jerked his thumb toward Al.
“Who’s the big guy?”

“I was once a pilot, but my sparrow’s
gone. Don’t know what I am now. Guess I’ll have to find out.”

Dots of rain pattered on the canvas
above us. It was daylight outside, but the light struggled to creep in through
the tent sheet. I thought once that this place could be home, but now it just
felt empty. The tent fabric wasn’t enough to stop the smell that drifted from
outside. It was one of old blood, and of flesh that was already starting to rot
under the Scottish drizzle.

“Listen Kyle. This wasn’t me. But I
know – “

“Then who was it?”

“Let him finish,” said Casey. She and
Alistair stood together at the opening of the tent, their shoulders touching.

“Oh just quit the act,” Billy told
them. “I know you guys are together. Think I’m blind and deaf? You sound like
animals when you go at it. Thought about risking a trip to town to get
earplugs, at one point.”

Casey grabbed Alistair’s arm and made
him drape it around her shoulder. She smiled to herself, her freckles creasing
around her nose.

“Go ahead,” I said to Billy.

Billy took a few seconds as if he was
organising his thoughts, and then he spoke.

“Like I said. I know who did it. It
might seem funny, us turning up like this, but the fact is that we spotted your
camp a few weeks ago. We stayed back and watched you guys for a while. You
don’t know what kind of people are out here, Kyle, and we had to make sure.
Funny though. For all the time I watched this place, I never saw you. If I had,
maybe we could have spoken to you sooner.”

He walked a few paces in the tent,
and then carried on talking.

“There are some people around. The
kind you’d hurry past if you saw them in the Wilds. Only, they wouldn’t let
you. They’re not the shy type, you see. They’d stop you and take everything
you’ve got.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” I said.

“That was a long time ago,” said
Billy. “Lou and I paid for that.”

“Sometimes you don’t just get to say
sorry and then get on with your life,” said Mel. “I like you, Billy, but don’t
think you can wash away guilt by saying sorry a few times.”

“You’ve got bigger things to worry
about than something I did a couple of years before I even met you. So maybe
you better focus on that, and the people I’m telling you about.”

“Where are these people?” I said.

“Ten miles to the east, just off the
coast.”

Mel jerked her head back in surprise.

“Off the coast?”

“Yeah,” said Billy. “They found an
old fishing ship. This place used to be full of trawlers looking for coalfish
and cod. These guys must have an engineer with them, or a little engineering know-how
at least, because they got the old tub working.”

“What’s their goal?” I asked.

“They drift up and down the coast
looking for survivors, but not so that they can lend a helping hand. Guess
you’ve figured that out, though. Right now, they’re anchored ten miles away
from you. Seems like they took interest in your camp.”

“And they’re the ones who did this?”
I said.

Billy nodded. “Yep.”

“Why all the mutilation? What does it
do for them? I just can’t get my head around it.”

Billy shrugged his shoulders. “I
don’t have a clue.”

Al ran his fingers through the
bristles of his moustache, and the hairs curled over his lip.

“So let me get this straight. Bill,
right?”

“Billy.”

“Al’s not good with names,” I said.

“Let me get this right, Billy,”
continued Al. “You knew about this camp. And I gather you’ve got some kind of
principles about you, from what you’re saying. You knew about a bunch of folks
on a ship who aren’t quite on the right side of the moral compass. You ever
think about warning the camp?”

Casey shifted on her feet and she
moved away from Alistair’s arm. Her face bristled with anger.

“For all we knew, you guys were part
of them. Think we’d just wander into a camp of strangers and give ourselves up?
We didn’t fancy getting our livers ripped out.”

“Wait,” said Mel. She had started to
look tired, but she still held her cleaver in her hand. The blade was stained
red. “The people on the boat. They’re the ones who have been leaving the bodies
around camp? Cutting people open and stuff?”

“That’s happened before now?” said
Billy.

I nodded.

“Few mornings we’ve woken up to find
bodies in camp. I thought it was stalkers, from the way they’d been ripped
open.”

Billy’s expression was grim, but
there was recognition in it, too. A light being turned on and straining against
the darkness.

“These guys have some pretty crazy
ideas. They’ve got rituals. We scouted them two days straight once, and some of
the things they did made me cold. Honestly, it got so I couldn’t bear to watch
them.”

“So why didn’t you do anything?” said
Mel. She looked at Billy with scorn.

“Don’t know if you’re a gambler,”
said Alistair, “But three versus twenty is what they call a long shot. And when
you play against a long shot, the house tends to win.”

“And I like my liver,” said Casey.

Mel frowned. “Yeah, you told us.”

I walked over to my bed at the corner
of the tent. This time I couldn’t fight it. I sat down on it and let the frame
take my weight. I thought back to Shaun’s house. Back then, he’d told us that
there were worse things than him around. At first I thought that he had meant
the infected, but I realised now that he wasn’t talking about monsters. He was
talking about another group of people.

“Someone go get Charlie and Ben,” I
said. “We need everyone together.”

“There’s another thing we need to
think about,” said Mel. “The bodies.”

“We don’t have time for a burial,
sweetheart,” said Al.

“I don’t mean that,
darling
,”
she said, putting as much scorn into the word as she could. “When we left camp,
there were around fifty of us. Well, there aren’t fifty bodies out there. So
where the hell is everyone else?”

The tent was silent. I couldn’t tell
what everyone else was thinking, but I knew that my own thoughts were clouded
dark. The camp was forever tainted, now. It would never be home for us.

Billy was the first to break the
quiet.

“Like I said. The people on the boat,
they’ve do some pretty dark shit. I don’t want to worry you, but I’ve gotta say
this.”

“Just say it,” I told him.

“Well it’s like this,” said Billy.
“And I’m sorry for breaking this to you. The fact is that the rest of your camp
is on the boat, probably tied up somewhere. And the ones who died, well,
they’re the lucky ones.”

I wanted nothing more than to lie
back on the bed and close my eyes, but I knew that I couldn’t. The rain picked
up outside and the sound as it hit the tent turned from patters into drum
beats. I stood up. I shook away the tiredness.

The tent door opened and Charlie and
Ben stepped in. Charlie’s hair was soaked from the walk across camp.

I looked at everyone in the tent.
There was me, Al, Mel, Kendal. Billy and his two friends. Charlie and Ben. And
then there was Lou. That left nine adults and a kid, but Lou was so out of it
that she couldn’t be counted in our numbers, and I could hardly expect Ben to
fight.

“There are eight of us,” I said.
“Think that’s enough?”

“Enough for what?” said Billy.

“To find the boat, climb aboard and
rip their goddamn hearts out of their chests.”