by Lewis, Jack
While the soup simmered I reached into my bag and took out my GPRS. I turned it round in my hand looking for nicks or scratches, and once I was satisfied there were none I rotated the screen toward me. It was time to see just how much further I had left to go. I thought of the detour of the past two days, and I clenched my jaw. I knew I must have at least four hundred miles left, and I could cover about twenty five a day if I got my arse in gear. This had been was two whole days wasted, fifty miles not walked.
I pressed in the rubber ON button and waited. It usually took a moment and then the screen turned blue, but now it was completely blank. I left it a few more seconds, but the tight feeling in my chest made it hard to be patient.
I pressed it again. And again. This time I pressed the button in deeper, held it in longer. The screen stayed black.
I ran my fingers through my hair. If the GPRS was broken, I was absolutely screwed. The farm was so far away that I would never get there without directions, and though I'd been told where it was, I had never been there myself. My only link was the GPRS, into which years ago Clara had programmed the coordinates ready for a trip that we never got to make.
The idea of the farm and carving out a life there was a dream, really, because there was no telling what kind of state it was going to be in. But I had to make it. I owed it to Clara, because I'd promised I'd get us there once. I promised her that no matter how run-down it had gotten, we would put the work in and make it our own; that we’d make a safe home in a world where death stared in from all sides.
And now the screen was black. I twisted the unit in my hands again looking for signs of damage. In my haste I dropped it to the floor. I snatched it up again, held my breath, and pressed the button.
Nothing.
I stood up. I put my hands behind my head and paced the room. It was broken, that much I was sure of, and the chances of getting the parts to fix it, even if I had the know-how, were slim.
I couldn't breathe, but I couldn't stay still. Everything was ruined.
The door of the shack burst open. I snapped my head to the doorway and felt every nerve in my body fire. Within a second I tensed my muscles ready to snap on anything that moved toward me.
A thin figure appeared in the doorway and stepped out of the night. It was Justin. He looked at me, and then looked at the GPRS on the floor.
"Damn, that's too bad," he said, his voice hollow, his lips curled into a smile.
That was when I knew it was him.
Chapter 5
Before I could even recognise my actions I had stomped across the room. I towered over Justin, my nostrils flaring as I took big breaths. I knew that he had done something with the GPRS but I just didn’t know what, and I knew it was going to take every ounce of my self-control not to beat it out of him.
I wasn’t a violent man, and he was just a kid, but if he had broken the GPRS then I was screwed. Stupidly, I didn't know the way to the farm by heart; I relied on the machine to tell me. I’d once tried to learn the way so that I’d have a back-up in case the worst happened, but after two days of straining I had to give it up. I guess my brain just doesn’t work that way. It’s not like I could just ask someone where it was either; of the two people in the post-infected world who knew the farm, one of them was dead and I never wanted to see the other again.
I poked a finger into Justin's chest. His body was so soft that my finger seemed to sink in, and he took a faltering step back toward the wall. He looked strangely calm.
"What the fuck have you done?" I said with a tight voice.
Despite how I loomed over him, Justin didn't shrink away. This was a far cry from the kid I had seen in town, the one with the awkward gait who couldn't even balance his own shoulders. He cleared his throat. "Does it really matter, now, huh? It’s done either way."
I turned away from him. I could feel my face getting red. I walked across the room in three strides, picked up the GPRS and then walked back. In front of Justin, I pressed in the 'on' button, but the screen stayed dead. Justin watched me with a bored expression. I shook the GPRS in his face.
"Tell me what you did. Show me how to fix it."
He took the GPRS out of my hands, flipped it over and slid a finger along it. A plastic latch started to open.
"This is the battery compartment. See how it's empty?"
If I weren’t so furious, I would have felt stupid for not checking that. "So you took it."
Justin nodded. "Not only that," he said with pride, as though I was supposed to be happy with what he had done, "I broke it so you can't put a fresh one in.”
I could feel my face start to burn, and I clenched my teeth. As if picking up on my cues, Justin carried on explaining himself. “Before you go crazy, hear me I out. I did it to help you. I took the battery, so that way, if someone were to find it they'd have no idea where you're going."
The blood was pounding in my ears so loud I almost couldn't hear what he was saying. I might as well have turned the cooking stove off, because right now my face felt red enough to start a fire. I tightened my fist and felt my skin wrap around my knuckles. I looked at Justin and the placid smile on his lips, and suddenly I wasn't seeing a kid anymore, I was seeing a face that I wanted to smash. How dare he do this? Did he even realise just what he had done? Without the GPRS route everything was ruined, because I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Without that, without something to aim for, I was lost.
I felt the vein in my temple twitch. "Are you actually trying to get me to kill you? Do you have a death wish? Because there are easier ways, I promise."
He dropped the GPRS to the ground. My stomach jumped at the thudding sound it made on the wooden floor. Justin looked up at me. "I gave you a chance to say yes."
"You're trying my patience."
"I asked you nicely to take me with you. I even brought supplies, but you're so stubborn. You're like Moe - you don't listen to anyone but yourself."
I could almost have laughed if it didn’t feel like my throat was tightening up. "And you think I'm going to take you with me now? I’d rather kill you," I choked out.
My shoulders shook and there was a tension in my legs, a restlessness that made me want to pace around the room. I could hear the chicken soup bubbling over in the corner and knew it was going to start spitting out onto the floor soon, but I couldn't concentrate on anything but the smug boy in front of me. My physical advantage was so big as to make the idea of a fight laughable, but all I could think about was punching him in the face.
For a whole year I had travelled alone toward the farm, and in all that time I had stayed away from people. Well, look how right I was. The second I came into contact with someone, he had purposefully messed with my plans.
My head throbbed and it was getting harder to think. All I could feel was the rush of anger, the hot feeling as my blood flooded to my head. I raised my hand, extended it toward Justin and wrapped it around his throat.
I pushed him back, and his head hit the wall with a thud. I squeezed my hand against his windpipe and I felt the jagged contours of his neck bones as they met his Adam's apple. Justin let out a choking sound, but he didn't struggle against me. His eyes watched me in an almost interested way, as though he were curious as to what was going to happen. I squeezed his neck tighter. It felt so fragile, as if I could completely snap it if I applied more pressure.
"I'm giving you once chance here," I said, "If you don't give me the battery and fix it, I won't just kill you; I'll squeeze until you pass out, and when you wake up you'll be in the middle of the forest, alone and far from here, and I'll make sure the infected can smell you. It won't be a quick death. You'll scream so loud that you'll wake Moe from his sleep."
He stared at me with his wide bug eyes. He blinked once but said nothing, and this made my temple throb even harder. I tightened my hand a little and felt the sinews of his neck move like gristle. It would be so easy now just to squeeze a little more and snap his neck. My breath caught in my chest, and I could feel m
y heart pounding.
As I squeezed his neck, I felt consciousness came back to me, and my head started to clear. I looked at my hand and realised what I was doing. The image disgusted me, the idea that I’d fallen this far. I wasn't this sort of man. I might be many things, but child killer wasn’t one of them.
I loosened my grip. Justin's body sagged a little, and he took in a deep breath. From the raspy sounds he made I could tell he was struggling to fill his lungs, and I could see red marks from where my fingers had been wrapped around his neck. He looked at me calmly, which made my anger rise again. I gave him a hard shove into the wall then walked away from him, scared of what I would do next.
"Dammnit! When a man is strangling you, you better show some fear," I said to him. "Because next time it won't be someone like me, and your stupid stare will make them go all the way."
I was sat on the floor with my back against the wall. Justin walked over to the end of the shack. He looked at the chicken soup bubbling in the cooking pot.
"It's boiling dry."
"Leave it."
He turned off the stove, wrapped the sleeves of his jacket around his hands and picked up the pot. As he moved it onto the floor the smell of the chicken wafted over to me, and the way my mouth salivated reminded me of how long it had been since I had eaten.
Justin walked over and sat in front of me, cross legged. His eyes stared straight at mine. "I know I've not seen much of the world, and I know in some ways I'd hold you back, but I've got skills. Sure, I'd need you to look out for me with the infected for a little, but I'd get used to them. And there's other stuff I can do to help you."
His voice sounded as young as he actually was, but the way he spoke was so much older. He was obviously intelligent, a trait I could never really say I had. I was more of the practical type, a reactionary kind of guy. I could fight fires, but I sure as hell couldn’t figure out a way to stop them from happening.
I looked down at the ground, because I couldn't look at Justin’s face anymore. The GPRS was broken, and on my last count I was four hundred miles away from where I needed to be. If I was closer – maybe ten miles away - I could have gotten lucky and found it myself. But four hundred miles was impossible. There was someone else who knew where the farm was, but going to see him wasn't an option.
"I can tell you're a little sceptical," he continued, "But I learnt lots of stuff growing up; things you couldn't learn out here. For example, I can remember every Prime Minister and the term he served going back to 1721.”
I could feel him poking at my patience. “Take a look outside. I can’t think of a more useless skill to have these days than knowing who ran the country in 1968.”
Justin’s eyes darted to the corner of his eye sockets for a split second. “Harold Wilson. But that’s not the point. I’ve got a memory palace.”
Maybe he couldn’t sense how brittle my will power was and how bad it would be for him if it broke, because he took my silence as a sign that he should explain himself. He looked me in the eyes, gave me a beaming grin, and then spoke. “What I’m saying is, I’ve got an amazing memory.”
"Then maybe you better remember how close I was to snapping your neck."
"I do. And there's all sort of other things I can store up here.” He tapped his temple. “Really interesting things. When you were unconscious in Vasey, for example, I memorised the route stored on your GPRS tracker."
I lifted my head. "What?"
"Your route - I memorised it, every single step."
"Are you screwing with me?"
Justin smiled, and I could see one of his teeth was missing on the bottom row. Too bad there were no dentists around these days. "Nope. I can tell you every step you need to take to get to wherever it is you're going." He cleared his throat. "But just where it is it we’re going to end up, exactly?"
"You should know, apparently," I said, ignoring his use of ‘we’ for now.
"I know the route, but I don't have a clue what's waiting there. The end point you set means nothing to me."
It was clear what he wanted. The GPRS unit was broken, and the kid had memorised the route. He was my only lifeline to get where I needed to be, and he knew it. I only had two options - give in to him and let him come with me, or give up on the farm.
Was he worth the risk? The boy was as naive as it got when it came to surviving, and not only would I have to look out for him, but any wrong move he made would put me in danger as well. At some point, too, I was sure that I was going have to dig a grave for him, because nobody lasted long in the wilds. And I had already done too much digging.
I thought about the farm and my promise to Clara. I thought about having to see yet another person die, and then having to bury him.
When the time came, I would do it. Until then, I didn't have much of a choice.
I stared at him intensely and kept my tone firm. "You don't move unless I tell you to. You don't do anything unless I give you permission. You don't use this genius brain of yours to decide anything for yourself, and you definitely don't speak unless it's an answer to a question. Got it?"
Justin nodded and gave a faint smile.
"And the second we get to the end of the route, you're gone."
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."