by Lewis, Jack
David rubbed his eyes. “Back it up and I’ll take a look,” he said.
“Want me to –“
“I said I’ll take a look,” he said, cutting me off. From the way his eyebrows slanted I could tell he was annoyed.
I put the car into reverse and moved it away from the wall. Luckily it responded to my actions, but something about the engine sounded a little off. David got out front. There were a few rocks on the bonnet, which he picked up, with considerable strain, and threw onto the road. He popped the bonnet, and for a while his head disappeared behind it.
I put my hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Sure you’re okay?” I said.
He nodded.
I thought about what the kid had been through in the past month – getting choked by me, punched by Torben, twisting his ankle jumping thirty feet off the warehouse, and now getting in a crash. He didn’t complain much about any of it, and I knew he made an effort not to slow me down. The kid was tougher than he looked.
“How does he know about this stuff?” asked Justin.
I found the lever under my seat and moved it back a little to give my legs more room. “He used to be an engineer. He was always tinkering with stuff. When other people were out getting drunk, David would be in his bedroom bent over a soldering iron.”
“What happened between you two?” he said.
I looked out of the window. There was nothing coming up or down the road, not that I expected anything. This place was so remote that even if the world hadn’t ended fifteen years ago, cars would probably still be a rare sight.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I said.
Justin slammed his hand on the dashboard. “I’m sick of you, Kyle. That’s what you always say. You never tell me anything! All this time on the road and you won’t tell me a frigging thing.”
He opened the door, got out of the car and went to the front to watch David work. I wound the window down a little and let a breeze into the car. As well as bringing in a little wind, it also brought the smell of manure.
After a few minutes, David opened the car door and climbed in the back. Justin followed him, this time getting in the back to sit next to David rather than in the front with me. I rolled my eyes.
“Should be okay. I should drive now though,” said David.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“You’re going to fall asleep again and total my car,” he said.
“It’s only fifty miles.”
David grabbed hold of the seat in front of him and leaned toward me. “In your state you can’t drive five.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “I’ll be fine.”
“Sorry Kyle,” said Justin, “but I agree. You look like shit.”
***
The countryside floated alongside us and we wound our way through the roads, but this time I watched them from the backseat. I looked up at David and say that he was concentrating on the road, his eyes wide and alert.
“Sorry,” I said.
He turned his head slightly, still keeping his eyes on the road. “For what?”
I was going to say for everything, I was sorry about all the stuff that had happened and all the shit I had done. But when I tried to say that, my throat tightened and the words got stuck. I let out a sigh.
“Sorry for ruining the paintwork.”
David looked at the car bonnet. There were two big dents and a few scratches. “I was going to get an MOT soon anyway.”
I smiled and let my eyelids fall as the road and the hedges and the walls swayed past.
When I opened my eyes we had stopped in the middle of a wide road. In front of us and to the left was a pub with black and white walls and a sign on the outside that read ‘The Babe and Sickle’ and had a picture of a gleaming blade and a tiny lamb. Up ahead was a roundabout with overgrown grass spilling over the sides. A few cars were abandoned and on our right there were a row of shops, but the windows so thick with dust it was impossible to see inside.
David and Justin were already sat on the car bonnet. I unclipped my belt and got out of the car.
“Evening,” said Justin.
I looked up at the sky and saw that it was indeed evening. The light of the sun was getting weaker and the sky was losing its colour. Somewhere, wherever they nested, stalkers would begin to stir, ready to prowl in the night-time and look for their kill.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Edness,” said David, a pointed to a large sign in front of me that said ‘EDNESS’ in capitals.
I walked over to them and looked in the bonnet. Everything seemed okay. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“No juice,” said David.
I sighed. This was the last thing we needed, to be stuck in the middle of a village when night was coming. Even though there didn’t seem to be any infected nearby, this was a human habitat and that meant a good chance there would be stalkers in the area.
“What do we do?” said Justin. He put his hands in his pockets.
I looked around me. There weren’t any petrol stations nearby, that was for sure. We were only twenty-odd miles away from the farm so we didn’t need much fuel, just enough to last that short journey. It’s not like we needed anything for a return trip; for me, there was no return. This was it.
Across the road and parked near a shop, there was a white transit van. I nodded over to it. “Think you could siphon some from there? We only need a little.”
David put his hand to his chin and looked at the van. “Could do. Worth a try.”
I nodded. “Good. Take the kid with you, show him how to do it.”
While I watched David show Justin how to siphon fuel from the van, I leant against the car and smiled. I hated to admit it, but part of me was starting to like having them around. Sure they annoyed the hell out of me sometimes, but it was occasionally nice to have the company.
I wondered if I would still be able to dump them off, when it came to it.
Fifteen minutes later David poured the petrol into the car, closed the cap and gave the roof a tap. I sat in the driver’s seat.
“Start her up,” he said.
I twisted the key. The car coughed, but the engine didn’t roar. I twisted it again. It sounded like the spluttering sounds of a dying man.
“What now?” I said.
David shook his head. “Must have been the crash. I thought it would make it to the farm before it died. I was wrong.”
I thumped the steering wheel with my hand. This was all my fault, I knew. If I’d just kept my eyes open and not crashed into a wall, we’d be fine.
I got out of the car and looked up at the sky. The sun was gone now, and we only had a couple of hours before the sky turned completely black and the stalkers came. I looked over at the Babe and Sickle pub. Should we shelter in there? We could have a pint and wait for all this to blow over.
“Guys,” said Justin.
I span round and looked at him. His arm was outstretched and pointing at a turn in the road less than fifty metres away.
“Oh shit,” I said, and felt my blood run cold.
Walking down the road was a sea of infected. There were more than I had ever seen in my life, an endless procession of rotting faces.
Chapter 16
I saw the sheer number of them, and my mouth fell open. There were at least a hundred dead faces, some with their lips torn off, eyes missing, arms cut in half, entrails hanging loose. Some stumbled into one another and fell to the floor, only to be trampled on by those behind them. There were so many that it was like a travelling battalion marching to war, except this army had no purpose or aim.
I looked at David. He was leant so far back against the car that it was like he was trying to melt into it. His hands clutched for the door handle behind him, as though he didn’t dare turn round to find it in case one of the infected pounced.
We needed to escape or fight, those were our only choices. The car was dead, so that was out of the question, and I didn’t want to be walking on the ro
ad on foot during the night. There were other things to worry about apart from the infected.
Fighting them would be foolish. I could take three of them, at a push, Justin could handle one and David was only good for standing there in shock. That left a hundred of them still left to fight.
Above us a sheet of black had covered the sky and blotted out the light so that not even the stars were shining.
I took a step forward, grabbed the handle and opened the car door. I shoved David’s shoulders down so that he didn’t bang his head and pushed him into the car. Justin followed suit and opened the passenger door, got inside and shut it as quietly as he could.
I looked at the infected getting closer, their numbers large enough to trample anything in their path, and something inside me wanted to shout out. I felt a cold panic in my chest, and my skin was tingling. I had never seen this many in my life.
“Kyle, get in,” said Justin.
I opened the driver door, sat down and tried to get my breath back.
“Now what?” asked Justin.
From the back of the car, David spoke. “Seen this lot before. They’re like a shoal of fish, they wander around and any infected they see get swept up. When I saw them there was half this many.”
“How do you know they’re the same ones?” I said.
“Recognise some of them.”
The infected got closer, so that now they were ten metres away from the car. It was clear that they were going to walk in our direction. I gripped the sides of my seat and sucked in the insides of my cheeks.
“What can we do?” I said.
David looked at my eyes in the rear view mirror. “Just wait it out.”
I shook my head. “No fucking way I’m just sitting here with a hundred of them close enough to spit on.”
He leaned forward a little. His voice was a whisper. “Nothing else you can do. You can’t run. You can’t fight. You have to trust me. Just wait it out.”
I leant my head back and banged it against my seat. Yet again I was put in a position where I had to go by someone else’s word. I never wanted any of this; I was just fine on my own. Well, not fine, but I survived.
It was the end of the frigging world and it was still impossible to avoid people.
I sighed. “Not much of a choice.”
The infected stumbled past us. It was clear now that there was way more than a hundred of them; it was possible we were even looking at a thousand. How had they all collected together? Was it a conscious decision to group up, or did they just go with the flow?
As they walked down the road some of them brushed against the car. A rotten smell drifted in and clogged up my nostrils, and I realised the driver window was still open. As quietly as I could, I wound it up. The infected let out an orchestra of moans as they passed us.
“It’s going to take an hour by the looks of it,” I said.
I remember once Clara and I were driving home from the Lake District when we got stopped in the road by a herd of roving cows. The farmer leading them apologised, but we were stuck in the road for half an hour waiting for them to pass. I remembered being pissed off at the time, but looking back I didn’t realise how lucky I was. After all, cows couldn’t eat you.
Justin leaned his head back and spoke to David. “What do you call a group of infected? Is it a pride?”
“Probably a herd,” said David.
“More like a murder,” I said.
David frowned. “That’s crows.”
“Still fits.”
“A parliament of infected,” said Justin, and laughed.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Justin smiled. “A group of owls is called a ‘parliament’. I think it fits the infected, too.”
Soon David caught on and let out a chuckle, and even I found it hard not to smile.
I felt my calf muscles start to cramp a little, so I stuck my leg forward and stretched out the muscle. I looked to the trees in the distance and wondered if any owls were nesting in there, whether there were even any owls still living. I guessed that most of them would have been killed by stalkers.
The night wore on and the infected carried on shuffling past. We were about halfway through now, and it gave me the feeling of being in the eye of a tornado. I felt my stomach sink. Next to me, Justin was asleep. I looked at him and blinked, marvelling at how the kid had managed to sleep with hundreds of infected just feet away.
David cleared his throat, and leant forward.
“Kyle.”
I turned round. “Yeah?”
He paused for a second, as though he were trying to compose his words.
“I still need to know why.”
I let out a long sigh. I knew what he was asking me; he wanted to know why I had left him after Clara died. For years I tried to bury the memories of that night – of our group being attacked, people being ripped apart, turning round and seeing one of the infected tearing flesh from Clara’s arm. I gritted my teeth and tried to push the images back.
“What does it matter now?” I said.
David hung his head. “You know me, Kyle. Better than anyone. Like a brother.”
I nodded.
“So I need to know why you abandoned me. We were the only survivors. I needed you, and you left me to die alone.”
Outside the sky looked bloated with darkness, as though any second it was going to vomit it out on top of us. The faint moans of the infected floated into the car.
“I’d just lost my wife. No, not lost. I’d let them kill her - I couldn’t protect her. And when it was all done, and it was just me and you, I couldn’t even look at you. “ I put my hands on the steering wheel and gripped it. “I failed her, David. I failed everyone.”
For a while the only sounds were the scuffling of the feet of the infected. I sat and took in deep breaths. I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. I’d never spoken about this before. I’d barely even allowed myself to think about it.
David leaned forward and pout a hand on my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
I let the words sink in. I could feel my whole body start to shake, and emotion overtook me. I felt it run through my arms and legs, like adrenaline but thicker and heavier. I blinked and put a hand to my eyes, wiping away the moisture.
I turned round and looked at David. Although they were brother and sister, he looked absolutely nothing like Clara.
“I’m sorry, David,” I said. “After it happened, I couldn’t face anyone. I didn’t trust myself to protect anyone again, because I knew that I’d only let them down and lose them.”
He nodded and squeezed my shoulder.
A weariness overtook my body and I felt the energy seep out of my arms and legs. I felt my eyelids start to drop. Then I took one look at the infected outside and I forced my eyes open. Now wasn’t the time for sleep.
“Go ahead,” said David. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch tonight.”
I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t let myself sleep.
***
Five hours later I watched the sun rise to the east of us, in the direction of the farm. We were only twenty-five miles away now, which was walkable in a day or so. As long as we avoided the parliament of infected, we would be okay.
I reached across and shook Justin’s shoulder. He groaned, lifted his head and rubbed his eyes.
“Jesus, what time is it?” he said.
“Time to go.”
I looked behind me. David was awake and picking at a loose thread on his coat. I stretched my arms and legs, feeling my joints crack and my muscles expand. I took a deep breath and tried to fill my lungs with air, but I spluttered.
“So stuffy in here,” I said. “It stinks.”
I grabbed the window handle and twisted it, and the glass wound down. As the cold morning air blew into the car, something else also drifted in.
It was the sound of an engine. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the vehicle getting closer.
&nb
sp; “Shit,” I said.
It was a pick-up truck, and it was driving down the road toward us. Torben Tusk was behind the wheel.
Chapter 17
I slid down in my seat as much as I could and left only the top of my head on show. Behind me on the back seat, David was curled up and his eyes were shut. Next to me, Justin was asleep in the passenger seat. Too much of him was on show, and if Torben glanced at the car as he drove past he was sure to see him.