Fear the Dead (Book 4)
Chapter 1
Someone once told me, ‘The only thing we need to fear is what we do to ourselves’. I remember thinking that it was pretentious crap, but it turned out to be true. After all, what were the infected if they weren’t a part of us? The infection turned friend against friend, parent against child, brother against sister. The world was full of fear, and it was our own fault.
It was always worse at night, with only the flickering bonfires lighting our camp. There was darkness in the daytime, too, but this was blackness of mood rather than of the sky. Something wasn’t right, and even I couldn’t hide from it. It showed in the men’s faces as they fetched water from the stream, and in the women’s as they butchered livestock.
“Two bodies this month,” said Darla. “How safe does that sound?”
“This isn’t the Wacky Warehouse. Name me somewhere that isn’t dangerous,” I answered.
“That’s not good enough, Kyle.”
“I was a teacher,” I said. “When I wasn’t spending time with Clara, I was watching Die Hard and drinking beer. I don’t have all the answers.”
“If you want to lead us, then you better find them,” said Darla.
She sat with her shoulders tensed as if she expected someone to sneak up behind her and place their hands around her neck. Not that someone could do that to her. Darla was a fighter, and even I would think twice before a confrontation with her.
Ever since the battle of Bleakholt, where we’d managed to survive an attack from a wave of the infected, we had kept moving north. Back then the place was in chaos and the people were scared. After all, most of the survivors of the battle had never faced the Wilds. Not really. They’d lived in Bleakholt under the leadership of a Victoria, and they had never had to worry about whether an infected would grab them from the shadows. When Bleakholt fell and we had to leave, they lost that comfort blanket.
Darla had taken to her new life with an ease that even I couldn’t match. As much as she was outspoken and sometimes a pain in the arse, I needed her. The rest of the Bleakholt campers, around fifty men, women and children, looked up to her. She had a natural leadership style that, even if it was a bit forceful, worked.
“There has to be somewhere,” said Darla. “I know this place is your idea of heaven, but two dead bodies in a month must tell you that something isn’t right.”
“There’s a stream nearby. That’s a fresh water source that will always be available to us. And we’ve done okay for food so far, haven’t we? The hunters and foragers are bringing enough back to keep us going. Not everywhere is like that, Darla.”
Lou shifted in the corner. She had her legs stretched out in front of her and her arms propped behind her head. A few days ago she had argued with one of the Bleakholt campers. After that she’d gone into her tent and then an hour later she had come out with half of her hair missing, as if she’d cut the ends away with a knife. It was now slicked back over her head with what must have been grease or engine oil.
“It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” she said. “Stuff we need to feel satisfied. Used to be that the only things that mattered were how big our gardens were and how many miles to the gallon our cars could get. It’s different now. This whole mess; the infected, the stalkers. It’s given us a push and sent us falling to the bottom of the pyramid.”
“What’s your point?” said Darla, in a harsh voice.
“Point is, my little pit bull, that only the basics matter right now. Food. Shelter. Water. Safety. This place covers two of them straight away, since we’ll always have water and there are enough sheep to feed a Viking army. If you can crack the safety side, this place might be okay.”
Darla scoffed. “You make it sound like it’s a small problem. Two people are dead. And not just that. They were ripped open.”
Across from me, Reggie Jolton stood up. He was another Bleakholt resident, and since we’d started travelling I had come to trust him. He was smart and helpful, even if his wife, Kendal, was a stone cold bitch. With Justin and Billy missing and Alice dead, I needed people I could trust.
“Mind if I open the tent a little?” he said.
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
Reggie strode across the tent and took hold of the zip opening. He pulled it but the zipper was stuck, and he had to fish fabric out from the edges before it would budge. When it did, a cold breeze twisted through the gap. I smelled the sour smoke from the bonfires outside, and a faint twinge of the toilet trenches that were five hundred yards east of camp. Maybe we should build them even further away, I thought. Fifty-odd people doing their business in the same place didn’t make for wholesome air.
The four of us carried on the debate. We each sat on cheap fold-away chairs that years ago were used at festivals by revellers who needed a rest from partying. The whole field was once used as a campsite and festival area, and we had found many of the tents still standing. Others needed putting together again, but we had gotten lucky and found shelter for everyone. A few families had to share with each other, but it built a sense of community after a while.
It was strange walking around camp sometimes. With the light of the orange flames glinting on people’s faces, the smell of lamb and beef twisting on a spit, it could almost be pleasant. People had started telling camp stories around the fire, reviving a tradition that almost died out when technology had advanced. A guy named Gregor Horlock had found a guitar in a discount store on a supply run, and he’d used valuable carrying space to bring it back. I was pissed off with him at first, but after hearing him play Bob Dylan songs at night time, I decided that it was a good call.
There was another chair in the tent next to Lou which should have made up the council of five, but this one was empty. In fact it had been empty for quite a while now. I thought about the people who should have filled it; my buddy Justin, who I hadn’t seen since he made a sacrifice to save us all. Alice, Ben’s mum who had died in Bleakholt. Billy, a tough Bleakholt resident who again had made a sacrifice in the battle of Bleakholt. But the empty chair wasn’t for any of my departed friends. It was for Charlie Sturgeon, the one-armed scientist who had to juggle jobs as camp researcher, doctor and vet. Charlie’s chair had been empty for every night this week, and the week before he had only attended one meeting. I was starting to think we should replace him, but I needed someone I could trust. It had to be someone who didn’t support Darla.
“Let’s get down to the basics of this,” I said. “Number one. Unless you can tell me somewhere safer, there’s no way we’re leaving.”
“Come on Kyle – “said Darla.
I put my hand up to silence her. “Number two. We need to find out what the hell is happening with the bodies. Lou, you’re captain of the guard. Why haven’t your guys seen anything?”
Lou flinched from the criticism. “My men still only have two eyes, same as everyone else. Difference is that they choose to keep theirs open, shivering their balls off in the cold nights while the rest of you sleep. You should be thanking them, not bitching.”
“The whole point of a watch is that they see things,” said Reggie.
“Shut it, lanky. The bodies are turning up in places we don’t expect. Whatever’s putting them there, it knows where we aren’t watching.”
“It’s the mutilation I don’t understand,” I said. “The organs get taken but the rest of the body is just left there.” I had a shift in focus. “Where the hell is Charlie? I need his input on this.”
Darla crossed her legs. “I don’t know why you have that crackpot in the council,” she said.
From outside the tent I heard Gregor’s guitar twang as he tuned the strings. The air in the tent was stuffy, and it started to feel hard to breathe. I loosened the collar on my shirt.
“Never better.”
“I think we should leave,” said Darla.
“We can get to the bottom of this,” I said. “We need to consider the chance that there’s a stalker nest nearby.”
Reggie shivered in his seat. His tall frame looked too big for the plastic chair he sat in. The hems of his jeans went way up beyond his ankles, giving him the look of a man wearing trousers two sizes too small. Back in the old days there had been shops dedicated to tall men whose physiques were too ungainly for regular shops. Reggie’s body wasn’t profitable enough for the fashion brands even before the outbreak. The apocalypse hadn't been kind to his wardrobe.
“I hate stalkers,” said Reggie. “I’d never seen one until the battle. Never realised how real they looked. How slimy and greasy.”
Darla stood up. “See Kyle? For all your talk about how safe this place is, even you admit there could be a nest of stalkers nearby.”
I made a dismissive hand gesture. “Sit down, Darla. You can’t keep getting out of your seat every time you get upset. That’s not how meetings work.”
“Don’t patronise me, Kyle.”
“Oh just sit down, bitch,” said Lou, in a half-joking voice.
I shot her a look that told her not to do it again.
“We can get through this if it’s stalkers. We just need to find their nest in the day time. Look, we can’t just abandon this place. If we do, where do we go? I’ve spent enough time in the Wilds to know that there aren’t any safe places, and this one is as good as it gets. Otherwise, what else do we do? Just keep walking until we die? Are we supposed to have any sort of life?”
“What kind of life is it when people are scared to sleep?” asked Darla.
I looked around the tent hoping for any trace of support on the faces across from me. Reggie’s face was a page scrawled in a foreign language; there was something written there but I couldn’t read a bit of it. His shoulders sagged and his posture looked bent. Lately, it seemed like confidence was seeping out of him the way air leaves a punctured tire. I’d been meaning to talk to him about it to find out why, but I hadn’t had the time.
I glanced over at Lou. She shot me a return look, then turned her head and stared out of the tent. I got the feeling that in these meetings she always supported me, but not because she agreed with me. I think she just disliked Darla and loved to piss her off. Lou hadn’t been happy since we had settled here.
Finally there was Darla. She reminded me of a young, female Winston Churchill. Her body was squat, her face screwed up as if she chewed on something nasty. She’d never made any secret of her desire to lead. After we left Bleakholt, she’d been helpful at first. Then slowly she asked for more and more responsibility. If I didn’t give her any, she created some for herself. She began to disagree with me at every turn, especially when others were listening. I should have stopped this before it became a problem, but now it was too late and she had too much support.
She was the opposite of me. I never wanted to be leader. Hell, I used to get as far away from people as I could. I guess I had changed over the last couple of years, and the fact was that I was a leader now, and I was stuck with it. Most of the Bleakholt campers were soft, and they needed someone who knew what it was like to live in the Wilds. I wouldn’t abandon them.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said.
Everyone lifted their head to look at me. Darla’s glare was so strong it felt like sunlight shining through a magnifying glass and scorching my skin.
“Our guard isn’t strong enough, and we need more people on watch. Up to now we’ve let people volunteer to be on watch at nights. Well this isn’t a charity, and the days of volunteering are done. Until we stop finding bodies, everyone is going to do their share. People will draw watch times, and if they don’t stick to them, I’ll kick them out of camp myself. And that includes the people with children.”
“Don’t you think I get a say in this?” said Lou. “As captain of the guard?”
Darla laughed. “Captain? Don’t make me laugh. They all hate you.”
“Shut up Darla.”
I stood up.
“That’s enough. We’ve got our plan, and I expect you all to see that it’s done.”
“This isn’t going to be popular,” said Darla.
“People don’t have to like what I do,” I said. “As long as they’re alive long enough to hate me.”
Chapter 2
A few hours later I stood in my tent above a fold-up picnic table. I had stretched a map across the surface. The sides of it curled over the edge of the plastic, but it didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t reach that section of the map for a long time yet. I had drawn red crosses through parts to mark where I had been. When I thought about the hours I’d spent walking alone, I felt drained. I got a couple of hours of sleep a night at best, and I woke up as soon as the sun peeked through the clouds each morning.
I went looking for two things. Stalker nests, and Justin. I didn’t know where my friend had gone after we had gotten separated in the battle of Bleakholt, but I refused to think of him as dead. He was alive out there, somewhere; I just needed to find him.
“You look like shit,” said a voice.
I turned and saw Lou. She was wearing a thick parka coat with fur running across the collar and over the hood. I remembered the days when she would walk around in a vest no matter the weather, and I was glad she was finally seeing sense. It seemed that these days Lou was putting less and less effort into showing people how tough she was. She still spat venom if someone looked at her the wrong way, but she didn’t go all out trying to cause trouble.
I rolled the map up, walked across the tent and put it in my rucksack.
“Going somewhere?” said Lou.
“Just getting familiar with the local geography.”
“You should get some sleep, Kyle.”
“I could say the same about you.”
Lou crossed her arms.
“You appointed me captain of the watch, remember? It’s my job to stay up at night. I get my sleep during the day.”
“Like a vampire?”
She nodded. “Like Dracula without the penchant for virgins.”
“Can you close the tent?” I said.
Lou walked across the tent and pulled the zipper, muting the sounds of the camp. The air became stuffy again. I sat on the floor and crossed my legs. Lou took a seat opposite me.
“Something wrong, Kyle?”
I knew what I wanted to say, but it was like the words tried to work their way up my throat and something beat them back down before they surfaced. I took a deep breath.
“I’m hardly sleeping,” I said.
“Well yeah. That’s what I told you. You need a good few hours of shut-eye.”
“It’s not just that, Lou. With running around trying to help everyone. The stalkers, the infected. I’m always wired. Like I’m stood on a building top and the wind’s blowing on my back and any minute it’s going to push me over the side. Something’s happening, Lou.”
“You’re worn-out and you’ve got a lot of crap to deal with. Any shrink would tell you it’s normal and then charge you forty quid for the privilege.”
I sank back against the side of the tent and felt the fabric become taut against my weight.
“I get heart palpitations, sometimes. And it feels like my breath is stuck in my chest and I have to really work to get it out. Sometimes I try and sleep, but before I know it hours have gone and my eyes haven’t closed.”
“Sounds like a grade-A case of anxiety.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I picked up a few books on a supply run. You might think it’s kinda stupid, but I’m trying to change my outlook on life. Maybe they’d help you.”
“It’ll take more than a book to sort my head out.”
“Maybe you should take a step down,” said Lou. “As much as I think she’s a massive bitch,
Darla could take the weight off you a little.”
I sat forward.
“You serious? I can’t give her the reigns.”
“Then why have her bossy arse in our meetings?”
“Because I have to. She has too much support.”
Lou folded her arms. Strands of her roughly-cut hair broke away from the grease and dropped over her forehead.
“Why is being leader such a big deal?”
“Well have a look around you. See anyone else? The people out there are softer than butter. They were sheltered in Bleakholt, and they don’t have a clue what it’s like to really have to survive. If we left them to fend for themselves, they’d die. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
***