Fear the Dead (Book 4)

by Jack Lewis

  “I say we think about this carefully,” said Charlie.

  “I say you shut up,” said Lou. Her voice was tense now.

  Ben squeezed my hand tighter. It was good to know that he trusted me. I felt like I was finally living up to my role as protector.

  “Come on guys. Settle down. We need to keep our heads.”

  A sound boomed out from behind us. I felt adrenaline rush through me as if it was injected with a needle. I pulled Ben nearer to me, and with my free hand I grabbed my knife. Mel spun around and lifted her lamp into the darkness behind us.

  Gregor stood there, with a rat squashed under his boot. Relief washed through me. Then, from the sides of the tunnel, another black rat scuttled out. Two more joined it. They kept their distance, looking at us with curiosity.

  To my right, Reggie shuddered.

  “Rats,” he said. “Hate them.”

  “Is there anything you’re not scared of?” said Mel.

  Reggie ignored her.

  “Seriously,” Mel carried on. “Why’d you come on this trip? You hate stalkers, you can’t handle the infected. And now rats.”

  “I’m just as much use as you.”

  “Oh, bullshit. You can’t even-”

  I held my hand up.

  “Quiet a minute.”

  From somewhere in the distance, deep in the tunnels, came a sound. It was faint, but seemed to be getting louder. It sounded like the tide, like water rushing over the concrete floors. Was it raining outside? Had the tunnels started to flood? Images crossed my mind of a torrential wave crashing through the darkness, ready to sweep us up and drown us.

  As I listened to it, I realised that the sound wasn’t coming from behind us. It was coming from the darkness ahead, just beyond the concrete that obstructed our way. It grew louder and louder, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I realised that it was a flood alright, just not a flood of water. Something else.

  “Oh fuck!” shouted Lou.

  It crossed my mind to tell her to watch her language in front of Ben. Then I saw the first rat squeeze its way through the holes in the obstruction ahead. It was followed by another and another, and soon dozens of furry bodies were squashing their way through the cave-in. They squirmed through spaces that seemed impossibly tight. Their clawed limbs guided them over damp stone. Soon the floor in front of us was writhing with them, a living carpet of dark fur, their squeaks and sequels echoing in the pitch black.

  Ben’s fingers trembled against mine. I heard him make a cry, a sound of fear so involuntary that it sent a chill through me.

  “We need to go. Now.”

  My words were clipped, my breaths short. As the dozens of rats became hundreds, we fled through the darkness and into the tunnels behind us. Our steps were panicked drumbeats that sprang off the walls. The rats followed behind us, so many of them that it sounded like a tidal wave chasing us into the abyss.

  We reached the point where the tunnel turned.

  “This way,” I said.

  “Not straight on?” said Mel, her voice tense.

  “We need to lose them.”

  I gripped Ben’s hand and turned the corner so quickly I almost flung him around with me. Charlie ran at my side. Mel and Lou followed, and at the back of the group were Reggie and Gregor. The rats followed us. The squeaks sounded harsh, as though they shouted threats at us as they chased us deeper into their lair.

  My lungs began to burn. The air turned impossibly stuffy. Ben stumbled and fell to the floor. I bent down and lifted him up and he put his arms around my shoulders. The bullet-wound scar on my leg cried out at me and sent pain tearing through my thigh.

  We followed the tunnel without taking much care in to making sure we were going the right way. Finally we saw daylight ahead of us, glowing in the darkness like a halo. Thank god for that, I thought.

  “They’re getting closer,” shouted Lou, her voice breathless.

  As I got within a few feet of the exit, there was a crashing sound behind me, followed by a shriek of pain. I turned around. I didn’t have a lamp of my own so I couldn’t see what had happened, but I realised that the others were no longer running. I couldn’t make out their figures in the darkness, but I saw the glows of Mel and Reggie’s kerosene flames.

  I ran over to them. When I reached them I stopped, and cold dread filled me. One of the tunnel walls had caved in and the stone had tumbled down. Next to it, Lou was on the floor. A concrete block was on top of her left calf, and it looked like it had crushed right through the bone.

  Lou didn’t make a sound. I expected her to scream or shout, but it was as if shock had already settled over her, blunting her nerve endings for now so that she could feel it later. If there was a later.

  Gregor walked away from us.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  Sure enough we heard the tidal wave of rats as they rushed towards us. Mel and Reggie set their lamps on the floor. They each took hold of the rock on Lou’s leg and lifted it. This time Lou did cry out. Her anguished shout bounced from wall to wall and melded with the patters of the rats to create a gruesome orchestra.

  I heard a groaning sound behind me. I turned around to see a crowd of infected walking down the steps of the tunnel exit. Daylight slid over their faces and revealed their open mouths and dark stares. Their features were quickly replaced with black shadows as they moved further down the steps, toward us.

  Of all the shitty luck, I thought. Rats on one side, infected on the other.

  “This way,” said Charlie. He glanced at the infected, and his eyes widened.

  His voice had a tremor to it. He pointed to his right, to another branching of the tunnel.

  “She can’t walk,” said Mel, bending down to Lou.

  Ahead of me, Reggie gave a shout of pain. There was a booming sound, and then a horrible, flat squeak as he crushed a rat under his foot.

  “Bloody git bit me,” he shouted.

  I dragged Ben behind me and stopped above Lou.

  “Look after him,” I told Charlie.

  As the rats moved nearer and the infected closed in from the other side, we lifted Lou to her feet. She gave a scream of pain as she put her weight on her left leg. With one of her arms over my shoulder and the other over Mel’s, we carried her to the branching tunnel. The others followed behind us, and we all fled into the darkness with the screams of the rats and groans of the infected echoing behind us.

  Chapter 13

  It seemed like we fled for miles after we left the tunnel. With Lou unable to run and the rest of us moving on fumes, we crossed a field, climbed a crumbling wall and skirted around another field until we reached a building. It was a small barn standing desolate in the grass, and when we pulled on the doors they resisted against us. It took me, Mel and Gregor to heave them open.

  The infected from the tunnels had pursued us some of the way, but I couldn’t see them now. I knew that they wound find us eventually, but that was a problem for another time. We went inside the barn and shut the door. It was dark save from patches of daylight which poured in through the glass-less windows and a hole in the roof. The floor was muddy and damp, and there was a foisty smell in the air. In the far left corner there was a sleeping bag, but the mold that had grown on the fabric indicated that whoever had used it was long gone. Next to the bag was a copy of an old horror paperback. On the cover was a demonic-looking child stood in a doorway, dark shadows gathering behind her. The paper of the pages had curled from the damp in the air.

  We put Lou on the floor, directly under the stream of daylight which bled down from the roof. I knelt beside her and felt my heartbeat begin to level out. Lou’s face was the colour of snow. Her eyelids were half shut, making her look like she was waking from sleep. I traced my gaze across her face, down over her jacket, stopping when I saw her legs. I couldn’t help a quick intake of breath.

  Ben stood next to me. He was crying. I looked up at Mel.

  “Take him over there, will you?”

  She
gave a nod and led the boy to an overturned bathtub near the door. She made him sit down and then took her place next to him. She drew him close to her.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  Ben tried to get up.

  “Charlie,” he said.

  Mel drew him back down.

  “Charlie’s busy.”

  The scientist joined me beside Lou. His hair looked thicker, and it stuck out in curls. He saw me staring at him.

  “It frizzes in the humidity,” he said. “At school they used to call me Brian May.”

  “Brian May?” said Mel.

  “You know. The guy from Queen.”

  “Bet you got all the girls.”

  Charlie scratched the back of his neck and then looked at the floor.

  “Yeah, well, not quite…”

  Reggie paced back and forth on the muddy floor. His eyes were serious. The bruise had gone now, but he still had dark rings under his eyelids. He held one hand in the other, rubbing the skin between his finger and thumb.

  “Can we focus?” he said. He winced in pain.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?” I said.

  “Bloody rat bit me in the tunnel. I told you it was a bad idea going in there.”

  “No you didn’t,” said Charlie. “Make sure you wash the bite.”

  Gregor walked across the room. He stopped in front of a ladder which led to a wooden platform suspended above us. There didn’t seem to be much up there except a dark shape which might have started as a hay bale, but after sixteen years untouched was a tangled mess. Gregory climbed up the ladder. At first I wondered if it would hold his weight. The last thing we needed was for someone else to get injured.

  Lou moaned. She moved her head to the left, and opened her eyes.

  “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Mel, hand me my rucksack,” said Charlie.

  Mel passed the bag to the scientist. He rummaged through it, finally pulling out a plastic packet with a yellow-brown powder mixture in the bottom.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Charlie shook the bag.

  “Willow bark, turmeric and cloves.”

  Lou tried to sit up but the effort was too much for her.

  “Are we making a casserole?” she said. She didn’t so much speak the words, as sigh them. She leaned her head back against the ground.

  Charlie knelt beside her. He swept the edge of his coat away from his knee. His joints cracked as he got closer to the ground.

  “You should take up yoga,” Lou sighed. “What’s the powder for?”

  “Natural pain remedies. We don’t exactly have a pharmacy round here. Chew some of this. It will taste bitter, but it’s worth it.”

  Lou chewed some of the mixture. She grimaced, and then coughed. I could smell the cloves in the air; they were sour, and sharp enough to cut through the aroma of damp. I looked at my friend and I started to worry. I had tried to avoid staring at her leg, but it drew my gaze.

  Her left calf was a mess. Her shin bone had been snapped by the rock which had fallen on her, making the bottom of her leg sit in a grotesque shape. Even worse, a jagged fragment of bone had pierced the skin. The bleeding had stopped, but her calf was covered crimson.

  With a delicate touch, Charlie inspected the wound. He tried to push Lou’s jeans up her calf, but when he got near the wound, she flinched. Charlie put his hand to his forehead and stared at her. The wooden treads above me groaned under the weight of Gregor’s boots as he walked across the platform.

  Charlie stood up and walked away from Lou. He stopped by the door of the barn. Daylight peeped in through the slats and cast bright lines on his face.

  “Kyle,” he said.

  I joined him by the door. Next to us, on the bathtub, Mel and Ben watched. Charlie stepped closer to me. As he spoke to me in a hushed tone, I smelled the cloves from the bag in his hand. It reminded me of all the times I had tried, and failed, to make decent jerk chicken for Clara and me. After the fifth failed attempt, no doubt wanting to protect my ego, Clara had told me she was allergic to cloves.

  “Must be a new allergy. It’s not your cooking, I swear.”

  I didn’t really believe her, but it was convenient to pretend that I did. It meant that I could stop trying to perfect a dish that just wasn’t my forte. I never forgot it though. I wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to admit defeat.

  “What do we do?” I said. We were already in unspoken agreement that things had gone wrong.

  “It’ll get infected for sure if we don’t treat it. She could even lose her leg.”

  Ben’s eyes widened. I was going to ask Mel to take him somewhere else, but there was nowhere else to go. I felt trapped. After being in the tunnels and now holed up in the barn, I completely understood Lou’s claustrophobia.

  “So what now?” I said.

  “We need to try and set the break.”

  We made Lou chew some more of the pain remedy. At one point she looked like she was going to be sick, so I tipped some water into her mouth. She took one gulp, swallowed it, but then spluttered when I tipped more in.

  “This is going to hurt,” I said, “But it’ll be okay.” I didn’t know who I was trying to reassure; myself, or Lou.

  I took hold of her leg. My hands shook, and I kept looking at her face to see if she flinched.

  “Do it quickly,” said Charles. “Quickly but carefully.”

  There were more footsteps overhead as Gregor walked over the platform. Reggie paced back and forth, sliding his boots along the mud. Mel held Ben close to her, but she didn’t take her gaze away from Lou. Sounds came from outside the barn and at first I thought it was the infected. Listening more intently, I realised it was just the wind.

  I held her leg. I started to move it, but Lou cried out in agony. Her face turned even paler.

  “I can’t do it,” I said. “Look at her. She’s in agony.”

  “I’m fine,” spat Lou. Even her lips were losing colour.

  I grabbed her leg again, but as soon as I touched her she shrieked in pain. I moved away from her.

  “There’s got to be another way,” I said, standing up.

  Reggie stopped pacing.

  “Sure. Just take her to A and E.”

  “You’re not helping,” I told him.

  “And you’d know all about help, wouldn’t you?”

  The words left his mouth and then hung in the air. They seemed to take on weight as we all thought about what they meant. The words were sharp, and I felt the sting of them more than anyone. I knew exactly what Reggie was saying.

  Mel gently pushed Ben away from her.

  “For God’s sake,” she said.

  She walked across the barn and knelt by Lou.

  “I’ll do it.”

  I turn my head toward Ben.

  “Look away,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Look away, Ben. You can’t watch this.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you.”

  Mel held Lou’s leg. She took a deep breath. She had steely look in her eyes. In one swift motion she pushed on the leg, and there was a sickening crack as the bone slid into place. Lou screamed out, put her hand in her mouth and bit down on it until blood welled on the skin.

  “We need a splint,” said Charlie.

  Reggie rushed around the barn until he found a piece of wood. He held it out to the scientist, who turned it over in his hand.

  “Before we do anything else, we better disinfect the wound.”

  Lou’s cries of pain turned into sobs, and then faded away as she choked them back. Ben looked away. I sensed he wasn’t doing it because I told him to, but because he couldn’t stand the scene. His outburst had reminded me once again what a lousy guardian I had been. He was right; he didn’t have to listen to me.

  “How do we disinfect it?” I said.

  “Here,” said a voice from above us.

  Gregor leaned over the wooden railing. He had something in his hand.
>
  “Catch.”

  He tossed it toward me, and I caught it. It was a three-quarters empty bottle of Bell’s whiskey. Charlie took it off me, and then turned toward Lou. He unscrewed the cap and took a sniff. He brought the bottle to his lips and let some of the liquid drop onto his tongue. He closed his eyes. When he re-opened them, he kept his gaze on Lou.