by Jack Lewis
On the street around the corner were a group of infected. On the split second I had to count, I thought there must have been thirty of them. As quick as I saw them, I spun back around the corner and leaned against the wall. Mel went to take a look, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“Don’t look. Trust me.”
The next few seconds would tell us everything, I knew. It only took one infected to see you, and sure enough you would have an entire gaggle of them sloping down the street after you. I must have only been in view for a matter of seconds, but that was all they needed.
I listened. I heard them cough and splutter. I heard their sighs. I heard them groan through torn vocal chords. There was another noise, but what was it?
Footsteps.
The noises of the undead grew louder, and I knew that they had seen me.
“We need to move. Now,” I said.
“What’s around the corner?” said Mel.
“Can’t you hear it?”
She paused. She put her hand around her ear, as if this would amplify the sound. Then her stare grew hard as she recognised what headed our way.
“Think he knew they were there? Maybe he led us into a trap.”
“How do you know it’s a he?” I said.
“I don’t know. I just get the feeling.”
“I guess I did too. Let’s go back the way we came.”
Mel shook her head.
“We still have to hit the pharmacy.”
An infected groaned. It was long and drawn out, almost as if it was trying to make us hear it. I wondered if their primitive brains allowed communication. After all, why did they groan? There had to be a reason that the infected’s brains thought it was useful to let these sighs of despair leave their mouths. Was it communication? And if it was, who was it aimed at? Was it directed at us, or each other? When an infected saw you and let out a moan, was it one filled with hunger and desire? Or were they begging you to end their misery?
“Kyle. The pharmacy,” said Mel.
I knew we couldn’t go back without the antibiotics. “Shit. We don’t have much time.”
We turned and ran down the street toward the pharmacy. As we got nearer to the sign with a green cross painted on it, I stopped. I turned around and saw that the infected had rounded the corner and were walking our way, steadily gaining ground.
Mel moved to the pharmacy door. She stopped and put her hand to her head. Then she looked up and punched the glass of the door.
“Shit shit fucking shit,” she said.
I joined her at the doorway and saw the cause of her frustration. The pharmacy was completely bare. Every single shelf had been stripped, and some had been pulled apart and left on the floor. On one side of the room there were pills littered all over the carpet, but otherwise it was empty.
***
It was nightfall by the time we got back to the barn. Every yard closer we had gotten, the sky had darkened and each footstep seemed heavier. I almost didn’t want to face everyone. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to look at Lou and tell her that we had failed.
“It’s not our fault,” said Mel. “It was probably stripped years ago. Hell, it was ridiculously optimistic to even think there would still be anything there.”
The moon was blocked by a creeping cloud. Insects chirped around us, and the grass blew in the night time breeze. When we reached the barn, we found everyone outside. Charlie was a hundred yards away walking along the nearby wall. Reggie walking around the outskirts of the barn. None of them noticed us as we got near.
“What the hell’s going on?” said Mel.
Gregor was the first to see us. He took big strides across the grass. His beard, thick and curly, covered most of his face and made him seem expressionless. He reached us and stopped in front of us.
“It’s lad,” he said. “He’s run away.”
I looked behind Gregor. I noticed that Charlie wasn’t just walking alongside the wall. He was studying it and leaning over to see if there was anything behind it. Reggie’s face look worried, and he paced around the barn.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I better go see,” said Mel, and rushed away from us and toward the barn.
Gregor put his hand on my shoulder. He was such a heavy guy that even the slightest pressure from him felt like he was trying to squash me.
“Reggie was on watch while the rest of us tried to get some shut-eye,” he said. “Guess Reggie dropped off, and the lad must have gotten the door open somehow. Charlie was the first to notice. He opened his peepers and then starting shouting.”
Over at the barn, Mel shouted to me.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Are you telling me you let Ben run away?” I asked Gregor.
The butcher nodded. “We didn’t let him. But aye, he’s gone.”
Chapter 15
The countryside around us hid a lot of things, but it didn't hide Ben. We searched all through the night, and before we knew it the weak morning sun was looking down on us.
As the day wore on, we combed the fields of knee-high grass. We searched through thorny bushes and inspected any tangled undergrowth that was big enough to conceal a boy. The sunlight changed from white to yellow to red, finally draining of colour. We had split up so that we all covered search areas of our own. At each side of me Charlie and Mel walked in parallel lines. It reminded me of the search parties that we used to see on television. The news crew would show footage of volunteers scouring the nearby woodland and marshes, before cutting to the crying parents who would beg their child to come home.
The grass around us was yellowing with the approach of winter. I doubted Ben would be in it. I just couldn’t figure out why he would run away. I knew that he wasn’t happy; he’d lost too much over the last couple of years to wear the smile of a normal kid. Surely he didn’t think that he would be better on his own?
I imagined him walking alone through the countryside at night. The wind lapped around his head and crawled down his coat collar until it could spread itself over his back. Shivering, he would see dark shapes move in the shadows, and he would wish for a mum and a dad who he knew were long gone and never coming back.
We had to find him. If something happened to him, I didn’t think my conscience could take it. To my left, Charlie stopped. He seemed to be studying the ground in front of him.
“Anything?” I asked. The gust slapped my words out of the air.
Charlie put his hand to his ear.
“Have you found anything?” I shouted.
Charlie shook his head. He lifted his hand to his forehead and swept away a mess of curls that almost hung over his eyes. Beyond him, Gregor took relaxed steps through the field, more like a man on an afternoon walk than a member of a search and rescue team. Mel walked quicker than the rest of us, her head moving from left to right. Finally there was Reggie. He walked with wilting shoulders, as though the gravity around him was heavier than for everyone else. Lou was in the shed, sleeping her way through the pain.
As I walked forward, the grass in front of me shook. I stopped. My blood rushed through my veins that little bit faster. Part of me wanted it to be Ben, but my instincts made me reach for my knife. The blades of grass vibrated.
I took a cautious step forward. I gripped the hilt of my blade and drew it an inch out of my belt. I swallowed, but my throat felt dry. A rage started to pump through me, the leftover toxin of two days of hell. First there was Lou's accident, then Larkton, and now this. I was worried for Ben and I needed to find him, but at the same time I wanted to shake him. Why put us all in danger like this?
I moved further forward. Whatever was in front of me must have sensed my presence because the grass quivered.
My knife gleamed in the dying light of the day. My heartrate spiked.
A shape burst out of the weeds. It was small and black, and as it bounded away, I felt like it was me who needed shaking, not Ben.
“What was that?” shou
ted Mel, with her hands cupped around her mouth.
“A hare,” I said.
“Did you catch it?”
I shook my head.
“I like hare,” said Gregor. “A salty meat. Good with roasties and red wine.”
The fields stretched out for miles ahead of us until they reached a slope, which then cut a twisting path down into the Redeye Valley. A stream snaked through the valley and slithered for miles across open fields, finally reaching an aqueduct that stood a hundred feet over the rest of the countryside.
Ben couldn’t have gotten that far, I knew. We would only search in this direction for only an hour more, and then we would need to turn back and look the opposite way. We had to be quick because the colour was bleeding out of the sky and I didn’t like my own chances in the dark, let alone those of a boy.
I turned around to look at the barn. The glassless windows in the side were dark. The two near the roof looked like eyes staring back at me, and the smaller ones on the ground level reminded me of a crooked grin. The roof was slanted, and there was a hole in the middle.
There was something beyond the barn, a shape moving through the fading light. At first I thought it might have been a tree, but when I concentrated, I saw that it was definitely moving.
“Charlie,” I shouted.
The scientist stopped and looked at me. The bottom of his coat trailed over his knees and blew in the breeze. The sleeve of his left arm was tied up in a knot at the stump.
I pointed over at the barn. Charlie turned around and followed my finger. When he saw what I was pointing at, he nearly fell over.
I turned back around. There wasn’t just one figure now. More of them had joined it, bulky dark shapes moving in the fading afternoon light, heading our way from the direction of Larkton. They were about a hundred metres away from the barn now.
The breeze around me seemed colder; the sky took on a darker edge. On the other side of me, Mel had stopped.
“They followed us,” she said.
“You led them here you mean,” said Reggie.
There was no doubt that it was the same crowd of infected that we had seen in Larkton. When Mel and I had left the town we had made a series of detours through road turnings and back alleys so that no infected followed us. It clearly hadn’t worked, and now the stench of thirty undead creatures blighted the countryside air.
We rushed back to the barn. Reggie reached it first, his long legs vaulting him across the open fields as if he was on stilts. Mel joined him and ran into the barn. When I reached the door, the scar on my leg throbbed. I put my hand out against the barn wall and let my breath catch up and the pain fade away. Finally, Charlie joined me.
The infected were close now. Their moans were messages of hunger delivered by the wind. I stepped into the doorway of the barn.
Lou was stretched out on a sheet of wood on the floor. The others must have found it while Mel and I were in Larkton. The bottom of her jeans on her left leg was cut away, and a patch of them was tied over the wound where her shin bone had cut through her skin. Her face was white and her head was covered in sweat. Lou opened her eyes and there was confusion in them, as if she was waking from a long sleep and taking time to adjust to her surroundings.
Gregor climbed the wooden ladder until he reached the platform above us. His footsteps thudded overhead, and the wooden support creaked under his weight. Dust fell from cracks in the platform and sprinkled onto the ground. Gregor leaned his head over the railing.
“Kyle. Catch,” he said.
Before I had time to get ready, Gregor threw his guitar over the railing as if it were a ball. I reached up and caught it. One of the ends of the strings trailed out from the neck, and it scratched across my face as I took the weight of the instrument.
On the floor, Lou moaned.
“We need to move her,” said Mel.
The groans of the infected didn’t need to sail on the wind anymore; they were strong enough to reach us through the hole in the roof and walls. Soon enough it wouldn’t just be their moans greeting us at the windows. It would be their bodies too, their thin fingers gripping the frames as they climbed in, their mouths open and baring their teeth.
“Lou, can you walk?” said Reggie.
Lou looked at him with unfocused eyes.
“We need to carry her. Gregor, grab one side of the board,” I said.
We lifted Lou up on the wooden board and took her out of the barn. Mel and Reggie carried most of our bags, and Charlie managed to sling one rucksack over the shoulder of his good arm. We left the barn and stood in front of it.
“Which way?” said Reggie.
“Larkton’s a no-go,” I said. The rough edges of the makeshift stretcher dug into my hands. “And we’ve explored as much of the fields as we need to. If we’re going to get away from the infected and try to find Ben, there’s only one road to take, I guess.”
I looked to my left, to where a thin road tore through the hills. It curved away from the hills and then ran straight for a mile, where it turned a corner beside a hill and then disappeared from view. I knew where that road led.
“Ben wouldn’t have gone to Grey Fume,” said Mel.
I looked at the road. I didn’t want to walk down it any more than the rest of them, but I didn’t see what other option we had.
“I’m done guessing what that boy will do. We’re going to have to go to town.”
***
We had been on the road for fifteen minutes when Reggie stopped and bent over. Three heavy bags of provisions swung from his shoulders, but he wore them well. Since we had gotten back to find Ben missing, Reggie had been full of energy. He had helped us search for the boy, and he had volunteered to carry our bags while Gregor and I moved Lou on her stretcher.
Reggie bent down to his knees and scraped the tarmac of the road in front of him. He picked something up, and then rose to his feet. The moonlight shone down on the countryside like a torch running out of batteries. Reggie pinched something between his fingers and held it up to the streak of silver light.
“What’s that?” said Mel.
Reggie twisted his fingers.
“Look,” he said, and handed it to her.
“Can we set her down a second?” I said to Gregor.
We lowered Lou to the floor. Relieved of the weight, my arms throbbed. I stretched them out in front of me, and with one hand I felt how tight the muscle on my bicep was. Gregor stood with his arms folded, not showing any sign of discomfort whatsoever. Somewhere, a cricket chirped a love song to its mate.
Mel looked at me.
“It’s one of the beads from Ben’s necklace. You know, the one Alice gave him.”
“I wondered where he’d gotten that from,” I said. “So that’s good, then. We know he came this way.”
“Only…” began Reggie.
I felt my muscles begin to slacken a little. “Only what?”
“We’re headed to Grey Fume. So he’s not exactly safe.”
Lou coughed. Her forehead was dry and a tiny bit of colour had seeped back into her cheeks. She said something, but I couldn’t make it out because her voice was too croaky.
“You sound like you’ve been smoking a twenty pack,” I said.
I took a bottle of water out of my jacket pocket. There were only a couple of swigs left in the bottom. I handed it to Lou. She was well enough to reach out for the bottle, unscrew the cap and then drain it dry. Charlie had told us that Lou would swing back and forth from burning fever to top-of-the-world.
“If we’re going to Grey Fume,” said Lou, “There are a couple of books I wanna find.”
She gave me a grin. It was good to see a smile on her face, but the feeling didn’t last long. I stretched my arms out again.
“Let’s go then. We know that Ben came this way. He won’t have gone far into Grey Fume, if he went in at all. But unfortunately we’re gonna have to go into town. Don’t look at me like that Reggie. I don’t want to set foot in that place any more tha
n you do, but there are a couple of pharmacies.”
“Maybe we can go see the solicitor’s office that you helped buy,” said Charlie.
Reggie gave him a look of disgust. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”
***
Gloom covered the streets of Grey Fume. Street lamps stuck up from the ground, their bulbs dead and never to be used again. Brick buildings lined both sides of the street, three stories high and squashed together so that not an inch of space was left to spare. On the fronts of the buildings were ventilator fans that hadn’t turned in years, and shop signs advertising businesses that had long gone out of trade. A bookies gave good odds that the England football team would beat France, and a charity shop displayed three-for-two romance books.