Undead Rain (Book 2): Storm (4 page)

I stepped inside, bat held ready.

Nothing jumped out at me, no hands reached for me.
 

My heart was beating so loudly it felt like it was in my ears and I was sweating and shaking. I closed the front door.

From one of the framed photos, the Mason family looked down at me with smiles on their faces. Mr. and Mrs. Mason and two blonde girls aged around ten or twelve. The whole family was dressed in their best clothes for what looked like a professional photo session. I wondered how long ago that day was and where the Masons were now? Huddled together in a Survivors Camp or wandering out back infected with the virus?

I hoped it was the Survivors Camp and not only because it would be easier for me that way; they looked like a nice family. I hoped they’d made it.

Meanwhile, I was going to use their house for a short time.

A doorway to the left led to a living room with the usual furnishings: sofa, easy chairs and a TV. There was also a big stone fireplace, which would be useful.
 

I tried the light switch. The ceiling light came on.
 

Someone—probably the army—was keeping the infrastructure of the country running. I imagined soldiers would be posted at power stations and sewage plants, making sure we had electricity and water even as we became overrun with zombies. At least we would die with the basic amenities.

I turned off the light and went into the kitchen.
 

It was small and well-equipped like any farmhouse kitchen, I supposed. Not that farmhouse kitchens were my specialty subject; before the apocalypse I barely visited my own kitchen, preferring instead to order takeaway. I used my oven to reheat pizza or curry sometimes but that was about the extent of my cooking abilities beyond making toast.

The thought of food made me hungry. I decided to quickly check the rest of the house then find something to eat. There must be something edible in one of those cupboards.

The only other room downstairs was a utility room with a washer and dryer.
 

I went upstairs, past more family pictures, to the landing. Four doors. All closed.
 

I stood still for a moment and listened.
 

Nothing.

The first door was a double bedroom. The next two were the girls’ rooms and the final door led to the bathroom. Toilet, bath, and a small walk-in shower.
 

I walked back along the hall, satisfied that the house was empty. The beds were all neatly made. I assumed the Mason family had followed the instructions on the Emergency Broadcast and left here to go to a Survivors Camp. There was no vehicle outside. They probably just packed a few essentials and drove to the nearest checkpoint, trusting their lives to the military and whatever government was running the country now.

Had Joe and my parents done the same? Handed their lives to the authorities with blind faith?

I went back downstairs to the kitchen. The cupboards were stocked with tins and dried food, including pasta and rice. There was a small green metal kettle on the gas hob and I found coffee and tea bags. No milk, of course, unless I tried milking one of the cows in the field, which I wasn’t about to attempt, but other than that I could have a good meal here and take some supplies with me when I left.

I could plan my next move on a full stomach.

I reached for the kettle and picked it up to fill it.

I dropped it immediately, stepping back as it clattered to the floor.

The lid rolled away and steaming hot water spilled out over the floor tiles.
 

Hot water.

The kettle had recently boiled.

Someone was here.

six

I crouched low and crept to the window. The house was empty but maybe someone was out there in the barn. They could have hidden there when they heard my car coming up the road. Were they afraid of me or were they waiting to ambush me? Maybe they had already disabled the Astra. Pulled the wires out of the engine or something.

The barn had a sliding door big enough to drive a tractor through. It was partly open. Beyond the door, there was darkness.

I wished Lucy were here. She was better at making decisions than I was, able to leap into action when the situation demanded it. Left to my own devices, I was too indecisive. Should I go out to the car, hope they hadn’t touched it, and drive away? Or wait here until whoever was in the barn came out? What if they weren’t in the barn at all and there was some part of the house I had missed?
 

I cast a glance over my shoulder at the hallway. I wished I had a key for the front door.
 

My legs were aching. I couldn’t stay here, crouched behind the kitchen counter, for much longer.
 

The people in the barn—if they were in the barn—showed no intention of coming out. There could be a dozen people in there, all as crazy as the survivors I had encountered at the marina. I should get in the car and get out of here.
 

Decision made, I moved as quickly to the front door as I could while keeping low on my aching legs. Standing and shaking my legs to ease the pain, I prepared to open the door and run to the car. I dug the key fob out of my pocket. As soon as I opened the door, I would unlock the car and get into it before the potential killers in the barn knew what was happening.
 

I would find another house, one with fewer inhabitants.

I tried to calm my erratic breathing and counted myself down slowly.

3…

I placed my hand on the cool door handle.

2…

Tightened my grip on the handle and the baseball bat.

1…

I let out a low breath.

Go.

I pulled the door open and fled outside, fumbling for the “unlock” button on the key fob.

Something hit me in the stomach, forcing my breath out in an explosive
whoosh
. I barely had time to see the woman step out from her hiding place beside the door before she lashed at me with a fist. It connected squarely with my face and I saw a sudden shower of bright sparks in my vision.

I swung the bat blindly, felt her catch hold of it.

She wrenched it from my grasp and threw it into the grass.

Unarmed, I raised my fists, only too aware that I had never faced anyone in a fistfight and this was a bad time to start.

She stood in a fighter’s stance, waiting for me to get closer like a praying mantis waiting for an insect to fly within reach of its spiked forelegs.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said, holding up my hands.

“Who the fuck are you?” She remained in her stance like a female Bruce Lee. The fact that she was Chinese added to the illusion. She wore a brown leather jacket over a black T-shirt and blue jeans over a black pair of boots. She was slim and tall with long raven hair and angry brown eyes.
 

“My name’s Alex,” I said. “I was just looking for somewhere to hide out for a while. I didn’t know you were here. I’ll leave.” I almost added, “If you’ll let me,” but stopped myself.
 

She looked at me closely. “Are you alone? You drove here on your own but do you have friends around here? Hiding in the trees maybe?” She stared at the trees, her eyes searching for movement.

“No, I’m alone,” I assured her.

She looked me over. “How have you survived this long?”

“I’ve been on a boat.”

She nodded, as if that explained to her how someone like me could still be alive during a zombie apocalypse. She probably thought I had no chance on the mainland.

She was probably right.

Relaxing her fighter’s stance, she said, “So what are you doing here? Where’s your boat?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I came ashore in the fog. I wanted to find a rowboat so we could get to shore more easily…”

“We?”

“I was with three friends when…the world went to shit. Two of them are dead. There’s just Lucy and me left. We live on a boat. I shouldn’t have left. I heard my brother on Survivor Radio and I wanted to see if I could find out anything so I needed a rowboat and…” I shrugged, feeling helpless. My stupid decisions were indefensible. “Lucy disappeared,” I said, “and now I’m stuck.”

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Why not just get another boat and go find her?”

“I was going to but the army are crawling all over the marina.”

That caught her attention. “Really? Interesting.”

“Can I leave now?” I asked.

“Where are you going to go? You said you have no clue where your boat is. You came here looking for shelter. You think you’re going to find somewhere safer?”

“No, but…” I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay there with a woman who punched first and asked questions later.

She laughed. “You can stay here when we’re sure you are actually alone.” She nodded to the dirt road where a tall, lanky guy in jeans and a Savatage tour T-shirt was walking towards the house. In one hand, he carried a tire iron. He saw the girl looking at him and gave her a thumbs-up.

She looked back at me. “You were telling the truth about being alone, anyway. I’m Tanya. The guy coming up the road is Sam. And the girl sitting on your car is Jax.”

I turned to the Astra behind me. A pretty, young, petite woman with shoulder-length blonde hair sat cross-legged on the roof. She smiled, waved, and slid down to the ground. She wore a denim jacket and jeans and a white T-shirt. Her wooden baseball bat was propped against the car.

Sam got closer and Tanya said, “Everything okay?”

He nodded. “He’s on his own. And he remembered to close the gate behind him.” He was big and loose-limbed with short sandy hair and a soul patch.
 

“This is Alex,” Tanya said.
 

“Hey, man.” He raised a hand.
 

I nodded. I still wasn’t sure if they were going to kill me. They knew I was here alone so why not? But they didn’t seem like the killing types. They looked like they were ordinary people caught up in a deadly situation they had no control over, just like me.
 

“Give Jax your car keys and she’ll put your car in the barn with ours,” Tanya said. “We can’t be too careful. The army might decide to come and take a look. I’d rather not advertise our presence.”

I had dropped the key fob in my fight with Tanya. I picked it up and handed it to Jax. She took it and went over to the Astra, slid in and started the engine.

“You’d better come inside,” Tanya said. “If you’ve been sailing along the coast, you might have some useful info.”

And maybe they’d tell me what they were going to do with that info. They had a purposeful air about them, as if they had a mission beyond simple day-to-day survival.

Tanya and Sam went to the front door and I followed, aware of a dull ache across the bridge of my nose where Tanya had punched me.
 

She turned and said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

I frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

She pointed to the grass where my baseball bat lay. “Your bat. It’s too dangerous to be unarmed.” She grabbed a crowbar she had placed by the door.

I ran over and picked up my weapon. As I stood and turned back to the house, I felt a sudden panic in my gut. Everything seemed too quiet. I closed my eyes and listened to the noises of Mason’s Farm. I could hear my car being parked in the barn, the breeze on the grass and Tanya and Sam talking inside the house. I opened my eyes and shook my head. I was getting paranoid.

But as I reached the front door of the house, I realised my senses hadn’t picked up a noise that didn’t belong; they had detected that a sound was missing.

The birds in the trees had stopped singing.

Jax came running over from the barn. She ran past me and into the house. “We’ve got company!” she shouted.

All three of them came out of the front door and closed it behind them. “Get to the barn,” Tanya told me. She sprinted to the barn with the others.

I followed and as I entered the barn, Sam slid the door closed behind me.

I felt trapped

seven

The barn was spacious. There was a small tractor in there as well as my car and a white Jeep Cherokee I assumed belonged to Tanya. The barn smelled of hay and oil. Various farming implements stood against one wall and there were bales of hay piled in the corner beneath a wooden ladder that led to a hayloft. The others were climbing up the ladder. The barn was gloomy with the door closed but there was sunlight up in the loft so I assumed there must be a window. I followed them up the ladder.

The window was actually a window-sized opening in the wooden wall. A shutter that fit over the opening was open, allowing the sun to come into the loft and offering a perfect view of the house and the dirt road beyond.
 

Rucksacks and rolled up sleeping bags lay amongst the hay. Tanya, Jax and Sam were positioned around the window, peeking out at the house.

Tanya turned to glare at me. “If this is somebody you brought here, I will kill you, Alex.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “I swear.” I crawled over to the window. The farm looked deserted. “There’s nobody out there,” I whispered.

“Sshh!” Tanya held up a hand to silence me then pointed out of the window.

Coming up the dirt road was an olive green Land Rover. It halted twenty feet from the house and four soldiers poured out, taking up shooting stances to cover a 360-degree arc.

A fifth soldier climbed out of the passenger side of the vehicle and stood with hands on hips. He wore a maroon beret where the other soldiers wore helmets. He wore army trousers and boots but his top was a dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt that showed off his muscular physique. It was hard to see his face from this distance but I could see he had a moustache. He regarded the house and swept his eyes over the farm. I shrank back when his gaze fell on the barn but his inspection continued over the rest of the farm.

He pointed at the house and the four soldiers advanced to the front door in a tight line.
 

“Stand by,” the man by the Land Rover said, then, “Go.”