by Jack Lewis
Cars were parked around us with dirty windows and dead batteries. Mel and Charlie’s kerosene lamps, almost empty, highlighted yellow markings on the road which years ago would have showed people where to park.
There was little movement around us. For the most part we walked in silence, not daring to utter words in case they reached the wrong ears. Rats scuttled around but disappeared from view when we walked within ten feet of them. On one street, as we followed it around a corner, a fox ran across the road. When it saw us it stopped and stared for a few seconds before making its escape.
The first pharmacy was just like the one in Larkton; shelves raided and dismantled, empty bottles and jars all over the floor. The second had paracetamol that would have been out of date when Henry VIII was alive, a bottle of cough medicine, and an unopened box of ear buds. In the back office behind the counter, the pharmacist had pinned a calendar to the wall. He’d crossed off every day of June before stopping abruptly on the 19th. I lifted the page and turned it to July and saw that he had written ‘Holly’s due date!’
Only one more pharmacy remained. It was in the centre of town, right in the middle of a shopping arcade. We came into contact with a few infected on our way to it, but Mel dispatched them with her cleaver and let their dead bodies fall to the floor. As we went inside the last pharmacy, I crossed my fingers.
“Didn’t have you down as the superstitious type,” said Charlie, looking down at my hand. I wondered if the scientist ever missed anything. I guessed that was what he was trained for; to be alert and aware of his surroundings.
My act of superstition didn’t amount to anything, and we found the third pharmacy as bare as the two before it. Gregor, at the far corner of the room, lifted something into the air.
“Found a crutch,” he said.
Lou was sat up now. After eating something and drinking a little water, she had seemed more alert. I wondered how long this would last, and whether the fever would come rushing back in full force.
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “Not a single damn place has anything worthwhile.”
“It’s sixteen years since they were last stocked,” said Mel. “Can’t blame them for running out.”
Reggie stood at the counter. He read a sign on the wall behind it.
“This place was owned by Anthony Green who had a Masters in pharmacy and was part of the GPhC.” He turned around. “Where are you, Anthony? When are you going to get some more damn pills in?”
A voice cried out in answer. At first I thought it had come from behind the counter, but when I heard it again, I realised it was coming from outside. I thought it might be Ben. We hadn’t seen any sign of him as we had walked through town. The plan had been to get the antibiotics for Lou, and then find the boy, but so far we were failing at both of them.
“Better go,” I said. “Gregor? Help me with Lou.”
Lou looked at Gregor.
“Hand me the crutch, big lad,” she said, her voice straining.
“Come on Lou, I don’t think – “
“Don’t treat me like I’m made of tissue, Kyle,” she said. “Hey. BFG. Give me the crutch.”
Lou put her hands out on the floor and tried to push herself up. Her face started to turn red. She shifted her good leg, but it was clear she wouldn’t be able to get up without our help. Gregor put his arm out. With his shirt sleeves rolled up his veins pushed against his thick arms, and his muscles twitched as he pulled Lou to her feet.
Lou stood up now with the crutch underneath her armpit. Gregor’s hands wrapped around her and held her steady. Although the colour had returned to her face, I could tell that standing took a lot of effort.
“What’s a girl got to do to get some pain killers?”
“There’s nothing here we can use,” said Charlie. “But if Mel will hand me my bag…”
Lou shook her head. “Not more of the clove and willow bark shit. Jesus.”
The voice cried out again from outside the shop. It was a desperate wail, angry almost. The voice was too deep to be Ben’s.
“We’re coming Anthony,” said Reggie. “Sorry we raided your shop.”
“Cut it out Reggie. We better go see what it is,” I said.
We left the pharmacy and stepped out into the shopping arcade. At the far side, next to a bargain department store, stood an infected woman. She swayed from side to side in the doorway of the shop as if she was waiting for it to open.
The voice cried out again. It was a thick cry that came from vocal chords that had been scratched raw. We followed the sound through the arcade as if it were a length of thread, turning when we came to a television shop on the corner. Lou hobbled on her crutch, her face straining with effort. Gregor and Mel were at her side and ready to step in if she faltered.
The air smelled dusty. Shops lined each side of us, and weeds had grown through the edges of the concrete flags beneath our feet. A glass roof covered the arcade, above which was the starless sky. At the end of the arcade there was a fountain, and sat next to the fountain, was a figure.
In the shadow of the night, I thought it might have been Ben after all. I started to run. The nearer I got the more the figure groaned and cried, and in my mind the voice twisted and took on a softer tone until it became Ben’s. I reached the fountain and stopped.
The fountain was carved out of stone that had once started out as a brown-grey colour, but was now dotted green through the spread of moss. There was a plaque on the front which dated it to 1885 and announced that it was commissioned by the mayor at the time, Terence Butler. Stone figures lined the top of the feature, six feet up from the ground. They were sculpted cherubs with demonic smiles. Some had their heads hung at the ground, while others stared ahead and challenged me to meet their gaze. Once, water would have flowed from their mouths and pattered down into the basin below, but now they were silent.
The only noise came from the figure that was sat in front of the fountain. It was a man. His face was soft and pink, but the skin around his lips had been stripped all the way back to reveal a full set of teeth. They clacked together as he gnashed them. His black hair was swept back over his head, and on the right side of his skull was a wound from where something had hit him. Blood covered his clothes, and there were rips in his sleeves.
He stuck his arms out and strained to reach us. I stepped back and pulled my knife from my belt. At first it stuck, but after wiggling it I was able to shake the hilt free. I prepared to plunge my blade into the infected, but then I realised it was struggling to move towards me. It bit its teeth together and squirmed forward in frustration, but there was a rope tied across its waist.
“Looks like someone left him here,” said Mel.
“He’s got a bloody big gash on his head. Someone did him in and left him here for the infected,” said Gregor. “He must have turned. God knows why they only took a few bites from him.”
“Maybe they didn’t like the taste,” said Lou, her voice weak. She slouched against a white pillar which supported the edge of the shopping arcade.
“Look at his skin,” I said. “He’s not been infected long. Someone tied him and left him here, and they did it recently.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” said Reggie.
***
We left the centre of Grey Fume and walked through the outskirts of the east end, opposite from where we had entered the town. It seemed that even the rats and foxes were sleeping on this side of town. A few infected saw us and groaned, but we dispatched them before they could become a nuisance.
My whole body tightened up as though someone were wrapping a rope around me. I felt anxious. With every step I wondered if we were walking nearer to Ben or further away. Maybe he was at the barn waiting for us, and by going to Grey Fume we could have made a big mistake.
“What’ve we got here then?” said Gregor.
He bent down in the street and picked something up off the floor.
“Come here with that lamp, lass,” he said to Mel. To save
fuel we had extinguished all our other lamps, and Mel’s was the only one cutting through the blackness.
Mel walked over with her lamp and illuminated Gregor. I saw the light flicker over his thick beard. He held up his hand to us all and showed us a shoe. It was a boy’s, and it had once been white but it was now brown with mud. It had to be at least a size six.
“Is that Ben’s?” said Reggie.
He looked at me, as if expecting me to answer. I didn’t have a clue if it was his shoe or not, and come to think of it, I couldn’t even remember what he had been wearing when I had last seen him. It showed how little attention I paid.
“It is,” said Charlie. “It’s definitely his.”
Mel put her hand to her head and rubbed it. “Where the hell did he go without a shoe?”
I felt a deep sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.
“We need to get a move on.”
We followed the road that went out of the town, leaving the shops well behind us. We passed a neighbourhood of urban houses, three-bedroom family homes with gardens in the front and at the back.
After hours of walking the sun started its rise in the sky, and little by little it chased away the darkness. We were at the edge of town now in an industrial area. It was a patch of concrete and brick and metal, and I could almost taste the steel in the air. Small units were to our right. A few of them advertised that they were for rent, and on our left there was a brick-walled warehouse with a giant metal shutter on the front. The shutter was almost fully closed, but there was a gap at the bottom. Large windows lined the front-face of the building, many of the panes smashed.
Mel stopped and stared into the building. Her eyes locked in concentration.
“Okay Mel?” said Reggie.
She answered without turning around. “Yeah, there’s just…”
I followed her stare. There was movement through the windows in the warehouse. My head leapt to one conclusion. Ben. Then I realised that the window was high up off the ground, so if we could see something moving then it had to be someone taller than the boy.
“It can’t be,” said Mel. Her voice sounded strange.
“Can’t be what?” said Reggie.
Lou was on the ground behind us. For the last few hours, we’d had to carry her on her stretcher. Charlie had taken off his coat and had asked Reggie to tie it around his waist. Reggie was the only one of us who didn’t look exhausted. He had let his beard grow out since we had left camp earlier in the week, and it gave his face a tougher look. It had been a while since his wife Kendal had taken her lonely walk, and it seemed that her absence had lifted a weight from him.
Mel walked out of the middle of the road and toward the warehouse. She didn’t take her eyes off the window for a second.
“We don’t have time for this,” I called after her. “It’s just infected. Don’t rile them up.”
A figure moved in one of the warehouse windows. It was tall and skinny, with blonde hair that was messed up and stuck out around the crown. From its shuffling movements, I knew it was just another infected.
I looked around me. Where the hell had Ben gone? It seemed impossible that he would run to Grey Fume on his own, yet where else could he be? If he was here, surely he would have seen us.
“Kyle?” said Charlie. He crouched down in the road.
“Yeah?”
“You need to come see this.”
Across from me, Mel took a step toward the building. She couldn’t take her eyes off it, though I didn’t know what was so important that it had stolen her attention. The blonde figure in the window swayed from side to side. It seemed to stare out at us, though the darkness of the warehouse covered its face from view.
Charlie stood up. He held something in his palm.
“Kyle,” he said.
“What is it Charlie?” I said, without looking at him. I couldn’t take my eyes off Mel. She took a few steps forward toward the warehouse. The figure in the window was still.
“More beads from Ben’s necklace,” said Charlie.
I turned around. Charlie opened up his palm. There were little beads in it. The edges of them were smooth and plastic, and they had holes in the centre where a piece of string once connected them together.
“Is it definitely his?” said Reggie.
Charlie nodded. “He used to sit there playing with it all day while I was working. I’d recognise it anywhere.”
Reggie was sat on the floor next to Lou, his long grasshopper legs stretched out in front of him.
“Think he dropped it?”
The scientist looked at the beads, and then back at Reggie.
“He’d never lose it. I know that much. It was the last piece of Alice that he had. If he dropped it, there was a good reason for it. And he damn sure wouldn’t have let it break.”
“So what does this mean?”
Lou stirred.
“It means someone’s taken him,” she said, voice croaky. “And he left it as a sign.”
“How could he possibly know that we’d come this way?” I said.
“He’s a bright kid,” answered Charlie. “Or he has a lot of faith in us.”
To my left, Mel bolted into a run toward the warehouse. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t stop her, and I watched for a few seconds as she closed the gap and headed toward the shutter door. As she ran, she shouted out.
“Justin!”
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
“It’s Justin in the window,” she shouted, without even pausing to slow down.
The figure in the window had moved out of view. I thought about what Mel had said, but it was so crazy that the words wouldn’t settle in my brain. The figure in the window had blonde hair and it was tall and lanky, but that didn’t mean it was Justin. What would he be doing in a warehouse in Grey Fume? It didn’t make any sense.
“It’s not him,” I called out after her.
I was too late. Mel had reached the shutters. She put her fingers under it and her face strained as she pulled the door up. The clacking of the metal disturbed the calm of the night. The hinges squealed impossibly loudly, and I looked around me to make sure nothing lurking in the area around us had heard the noise.
When the shutters reached the top, Mel shouted out in alarm and took a few steps back. Her heel hit a rusted exhaust pipe on the ground, and she almost fell over. The squealing of the shutters stopped, but another noise replaced it. This one was quieter in volume but more terrible in what it meant.
Inside the warehouse, waiting to be freed, were a crowd of infected. There was so many of them that they seemed to fill the entire factory floor. They squirmed against each other and jostled forward. Their smell drifted out of the warehouse and spread over the street. Instead of the oil of the warehouse machinery and nose-wrinkling dust, the aroma was one of death.
Mel stepped forward. She grabbed the top of the shutter and tried to pull it down, but I could tell that the metal fought against her. She grunted and I saw her face turn red, but the shutter didn’t budge.
“Oh shit,” said Reggie. He got to his feet.
Mel backed away further. The infected, seeing her now, started to walk forward. A few at the front groaned, and the sound rippled through the crowd until those at the back made their own cries in answer. I was struck again with how much like communication it sounded. Had the ones at the front raised a question? Had they given an order?
Don’t be so stupid, I told myself.
They took slow steps toward us. There was too many of them to fight, and even if we could kill ten each, we would still come up short. I wondered if we even had enough time to run. We would have to carry Lou, and that meant that whoever supported her could only go at a pace not much faster than the undead.
Cold sweat dripped from my forehead and over my cheeks. I knew that whatever happened, I wouldn’t leave Lou. If I had to face my end, I would do it with my friend. The prospect still made me shudder.
Mel joined me at my side.
The infected took steps across the factory floor. I turned to Gregor.
“Help me pick her up,” I said.
I walked over to Lou and crouched down beside her. I took hold of a corner of her makeshift stretcher.
Instead of helping me, Gregor walked toward the warehouse. His strides were large and full of confidence and purpose. He was walking toward almost a hundred infected, but he didn’t show any fear.