by Lewis, Jack
That wouldn't be the right thing to do. I couldn't show him what it meant to me, because that would make it all the more valuable in his eyes. I had to play this smart.
"You went through my stuff?" I said.
He nodded. "Think healthcare is free? This ain't the NHS."
"No. They had a better bedside manner."
Moe smirked. "I was an old and set in my ways long before things turned to shit, so I'm not going to pretend to know what this is." He tossed the GPRS on the bed. I cradled it in my hand and inspected it, but thankfully there didn't seem to be any damage. I let out a long breath. I placed the GPRS carefully in my bag on the end of the bed.
"You can take your gizmo, your game or whatever it is. But I need paying."
I didn't have time for this. I had to leave right away. Outside the window the sky was white and the sun was shining. It was actually a beautiful day. It was the kind where, long before the fall, Clara and I would load up the car with sandwiches and go for a picnic. Looking at it, you could almost imagine there was nothing wrong with the world. It wasn't true, obviously. The infected didn't care whether the sun was shining or it was pissing with rain. They'd tear your flesh apart whatever the weather.
I looked back at Moe. I wanted done with this. "Fine," I sighed, "what do you want?"
He nodded down at my bag. "That's a nice revolver."
I shook my head. "No chance."
"It's not much good to you without bullets, unless you think waving it at one of the monsters will stop it."
"I'll take my chances on finding more bullets. I’d rather have the gun and need the bullets, than find the bullets and need the gun. "
He walked to my bag and stuck his hand in it. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. It felt like he was invading my space. That pack had been my only means of living for months now, and I had carried food, ammo, clothes, and everything else I needed to stay alive in it. Seeing someone else going through it made me clench my fists.
"You want to take your fucking hand out of there?" I said. Something was bubbling up inside me, and this time it wasn't dry heaves. I filled my lungs and tried to bury the feeling, knowing that if things kicked off here I would likely have a whole town to contend with.
"I'd much rather take this," said Moe, and he pulled his hand out of the bag. In his curled fist he held Clara's gold bracelet.
I took a step toward him. My tiredness was gone, replaced for the moment by the energy only fury can give you. Moe took a step back, but I noticed his right fist tightening into a ball at his side. Near the dresser, Justin twitched. He looked from me to Moe, as if weighing up what action to take.
The old man I might have been able to deal with, but Justin was different. Sure, he was dripping wet behind the ears and had probably never stepped foot outside town in his life, but he hadn’t spent the previous night fighting a stalker. I had survival instincts and experience, but right now he had the physical edge. I didn't take another step forward.
"You're not having that."
"What good is it to you?" he said, letting the gold slink through his cigarette-stained fingers.
"It's personal."
Moe looked to the bracelet, and then to me. A wide grin spread on his face, and his grey whiskered cheeks tightened. "I didn't have you pegged as the sentimental sort. Mr Lone Wolf."
In another second I was going to punch that smile off his face, no matter what the consequences. This was why I stayed away from people; you couldn’t trust their intentions, and I couldn’t trust myself not to beat the hell out of them.
"I suggest you take your fucking fingers off that bracelet."
He threw it on the bed. "Sure. But it's either the bracelet or the gun. I'm a generous man - I'll let you pick."
I glanced sideways at Justin. The kid looked jumpy.
"Suppose I just beat the crap out of both of you." I said.
Moe laughed. "Even if a fine physical specimen as yourself were able to do that in your current state, do you suppose you'd get a foot out of Vasey without getting a bullet in your back?"
He was right, I knew. There was no way I was getting out of here by force. I had two choices. I either gave him the gold bracelet, my last memento of Clara, or I gave him the revolver. What a choice. The bracelet was the only thing of hers that I had, but the gun that could easily be the difference between living or dying.
The way I saw it, memories wouldn't do me much good in the grave, and I thought Clara would respect that. She wouldn't want me to lessen my survival chances just to keep hold of a piece of jewellery.
"Take the gold," I said.
"A pragmatic choice, and I can’t say it doesn’t fit you.” He stood up, rubbed the bracelet on his jumper and then stuffed it in his pocket. “There's a pretty girl in town. She’s got an ass you could eat your dinner off, but she costs a little too much. Maybe this will buy me a few hours with her." said Moe.
His words hit me in the gut. The last memory of my dead wife, and I’d cheapened it. I’d taken the slim chance of survival in this world over keeping the memory of her around, and now it was going to be used as currency to pay a whore.
Chapter 4
Moe was a piece of crap, and meeting him confirmed what I had known about Vasey all along. The idea of sticking around had some comfort to it - walls, warmth, and protection - but it came at a price I had no interesting in paying. If being around people was the cost of security, I'd rather take my chances outside. It just wasn't worth it. At least alone I could control what I did, and any mistakes I made would be my own. If you spent time without someone else, you were at the mercy of whatever dumb decision they made.
I walked down the pothole-ridden road that led out of town. I looked to the side of me and saw a bunch of shops lining the high street, though none of them were used as businesses these days. What was once a bakery was packed with blue gas canisters, and a yellow-walled hair boutique with a "Village Supercuts" sign had the skins of various animals hanging up on the walls. It was a strange choice, really, because further down the road was a butcher shop, and surely that would have made a better choice to store animal hides. From another doorway a man watched me walk. He was topless and the curve of his stomach poked out above his jeans, the beginnings of a beer-belly that he had no business growing in this new world where food was rare and beer even rarer. He rested his arms on the doorframe and let a cigarette hang from the corner of his mouth. He never took his eyes off me as I walked past him and toward the gate that guarded the town exit.
The gate was twenty-feet high, black and made of steel. On either side were stone turrets, and in each turret stood a guard with a gun. Vasey, like many places in the North of England, was once home to a Norman stronghold, and the black gate was a remnant of its ancient defence. Now though, instead of protecting the townspeople against invading armies hungry for territory, it was protecting them against the living dead who were hungry for brains.
I walked up to the gates. The guard in the left turret twitched at every step I took, and when I stood in front of the bars he raised his gun at me. I looked up and saw that it was an air rifle. It wasn't exactly lethal, but I didn’t want to take a shot in the head from it. Still, there was no way I was going to let them keep me here. I took hold of two of the steel bars, which felt cold against my skin, and I shook them. They didn’t budge.
"Need you to step away from there," said the voice above me.
I looked for some sort of latch or bolt so I could get the gate open, but there didn't seem to be anything. On the side, where the gate joined the turret, I saw a chain which fed into a pulley system. That was why it wouldn't open, then. Although the gate was a relic from centuries past, at some point it had been mechanised, and now the gate would only open if someone operated it. I guessed the controls were in the turret.
Above me, the guard raised his rifle a little higher. "I won't ask again, back away from the bloody gate."
I needed a little diplomacy here. I had to persuade him to open
the gate for me, and getting angry would earn me nothing but a pellet in my skull. I tried to breathe in and control my pulse, but the feeling of something being outside control made me feel trapped. I wanted to climb up the gate, jump in the turret and knock the guard out, but I wouldn’t get more than halfway up before I was peppered with shots from the other one.
I looked back toward the street. The man in the doorframe was still staring at me. He spat his cigarette onto the floor. Above me, both guards had their air rifles trained on my head. I felt my chest begin to tighten, and my palms were getting clammy. The gate loomed over me, unmovable, and I felt the hairs on my arms raise. Who the hell did they think they were to trap me here, to stop me from leaving?
Nobody did that to me - nobody. I was going to show them what happened when you did.
I took my bag off my shoulder and reached inside it. I knew what I was doing was stupid, but I couldn't stop myself. I felt around for my revolver and, with the handle in my grasp, I was ready to pull it out. I didn't have any bullets, but I wanted to see how cocky the guard was when I waved a real gun in his face instead of an air rifle. I looked up at him and slowly reached my hand out of my bag, knowing that as soon as they saw the gun they would shoot me.
Just as the silver of the chamber glinted in the sun, I heard a voice call out behind me.
"Kyle, wait."
I turned round. Justin was running toward me in a strange shuffle. He wore a thick coat on that was too long for him at the sleeves, and his body was unbalanced by a rucksack on his shoulder.
I looked up at the guard. "Get this open, now."
The guard acted like he hadn't heard me. Justin got closer, and he had a nervous grin on his face.
"Where are you going?" He asked.
"I’m leaving."
"But where?"
"You don't need to know."
He stood in front of me and dropped his bag to the ground, and there was the clang of something metal. There was a pause, and Justin seemed to be thinking of what to say to me. What could he possibly want?
"Take me with you," he said.
So that was it. That's what the coat and bag were for. I wondered what was in it the bag; probably provisions, but for all I knew it could be his toys or something. The kid had never set foot out of the town in his life, so I dreaded to think what he'd packed as necessities for his "trip".
I stopped just short of sneering at him. "The class trip’s not until next week."
Justin looked at me, puzzled. I realised that he had been born straight into this new world that even after fifteen years hadn’t stabilised itself enough to establish a ‘normal’ way of life for people. Justin didn't have a clue what things had been like before. He didn't know what a class trip was, because he'd never been in school. I realised how alien the experience of the world was for kids like him, those who were born into it rather than adapting to it. He couldn't help how he was.
This time I spoke in a kinder tone. "You can't come with me." I nodded at what was beyond the gate. “There are no walls out there, Justin. There’s nothing separating you from them, and one wrong step will get you killed.”
He shook his head. "I've been out before. Not so far, just round town, but far enough. I know how to avoid them."
"You ever been out at night?" I asked.
He looked to the ground. "No."
"Then you don't know what's out there. Those pathetic bastards are nothing compared to what comes after it gets dark."
"I know about the night things."
I let out a sigh. I looked up and saw that above me the guard was listening to our conversation with interest. I wondered if he had ever been out at night, or whether anyone in this town had ever spent a night in the dark hoping a stalker didn’t catch their scent. Then I remembered Noah and the others in the shack, about how they'd risked their lives to help me with the stalker.
I took a step toward Justin. "The things out there will tear you apart."
His eyes were wide. "I can handle it. Or you can show me."
"I'm not a babysitter."
"And I’m not a baby. I'll pull my weight. I've got supplies," he said, and gave the little bag in front of him a kick.
The bag was packed tight, and I could see the outlines of tin cans busting at the fabric. The stuff would have been a godsend for me, considering I only had enough on me to last a couple of days at a stretch. But the price was having a tagalong, a kid who was so green that he'd blend into the grass, someone who would undoubtedly make the wrong move somewhere down the line and get us both killed.
I could see that he was earnest in wanting to join me, and his intentions were good, but it wasn’t a chance I was willing to take. I shook my head softly. "Why do you even want to come?"
He leaned in a little closer. His voice was quieter. "This town, there's nothing to it. No future. The people here are drinking themselves stupid, and they're not thinking about what’s coming. We should be doing something; farming, expanding, I don't know what. But they're sinking into a rut and they're smiling about it."
The kid was making a little sense in this point. "It’s not much better out there," I said, and nodded my head back toward the gate.
He looked at me in a strange way, almost knowingly. "I bet you got a plan."
He was right, though there was not a chance I was telling him what my plan was.
"You're not coming - end of discussion."
His shoulders sagged, but he didn't say anything else. Maybe the message had finally gotten through to him.
"Look, kid, stay behind your walls. It's safe here. It might not be much of a life, but at least you got one. The second you step outside these walls, it's forfeit."
He said nothing, just stood there and sulked.
I gave his bag a tap. "Take these back to wherever you took them from, people will need them. And look, can you tell this wanker to open the gate?"
Justin looked up and the man in the turret. "Moe says let him go," he said.
The guard pressed a button. The chain and pulley on the gate creaked into motion, and soon the black bars swung open. I stepped through them, out of the safety of the town and back into the wastes. Behind me, I could feel Justin's eyes on my back following me every step of the way.
***
I walked out of town and into the woods. The temperature was warm and the leaves on the trees were still. Although the sky was sunny, a grey cloud was gathering to break it. I could smell the earthy aroma of the pine trees, and for some reason it made me feel hungry. How long had it been since I'd eaten?
There were a few lone infected walking lazily through the trees, but there was nothing to worry about unless I planned on making a racket. My most pressing need was to find shelter before night came. There I could get some food in my belly and fire up the GPRS, because I needed to get my bearings. The last two days had knocked me off course, and I didn't have a clue which direction I should be heading in. I could have turned it on there and then, but I didn't trust doing it out in the open. There were too many places for bodies to lurk and eyes to see.
I walked for forty-five minutes and I found the shack that Noah and his friends had stayed in. I didn’t know whether I should use it; for all I knew, it was a regular spot for the Vasey scouts, and some of them could easily turn up while I slept. The last thing I needed right now was to run into anyone from Vasey.
Then again, I doubted they'd be making any runs anytime soon after what happened to Noah, and besides, the sky was starting to turn a little too dusky for my liking and I didn’t want to get caught in the open. I didn’t have a choice.
I got inside the shack. It was just one room, and it was empty. At some point it had probably been used as a storage shed for park rangers, but now it was just four walls and wooden floor boards. There was a faded poster imploring the use of walky-talkies on patrols on one wall, and from another a sink stuck out from the plaster, though the water had long since been cut off. I dropped my bag and sank to the floor, re
sting my back against the wall that was furthest away from the door. As soon as I touched the floorboards, I felt my energy seep out of me.
In the corner of the room I found a small grill camping stove with a rubber tube that connected it to a gas canister, as well as two bottles of water that I deemed drinkable through their lack of any offensive odour. I twisted the knob of the camping stove to feed it gas, and I pressed in the ignition to create a spark that sent blue flames shooting underneath the grill. Despite it being evidence that the Vasey scouts used this shack on their trips, it was a fantastically lucky find. If I'd had a calendar with me, I would have checked to see if it was my birthday.
Five minutes later I had a chicken soup sachet cooking in the pot. The smell was salty and about as far away from chicken as you could get, but the aroma of warm food was enough to make my mouth water. I could almost hear my stomach thanking me in anticipation.