Beneath the trees it was cool and we were being attacked by fewer flies than we had been out in the open air. My companions visibly relaxed a little and for a moment, I thought we might have a chance and then we came to a clearing.
“We’ll stop here for a bit,” Georgia said and I looked at her enquiringly. “Need water.”
“There’s none here,” I said as I scanned the clearing.
It was much the same as any of the countless others we’d been in over the past few months of travel. Tall trees formed a rough circle and at their base, scraggly bushes with wicked thorns. Leaf mulch and fallen branches covered the ground and there was little else.
“We have water from the stream,” she said. “We can spare some time to boil it.”
“Give us a chance to rest too,” Marie said as she cradled her child.
There was little I could say to argue against that so I nodded weary agreement and began to gather branches for a fire. While I did that, Jeremy cleared a spot on the ground for the fire pit and as he looked for suitable rocks, Georgia used her trowel to scrape out a shallow pit.
Finding plenty of branches and kindling was easy and it took Jeremy just a little while to find enough suitable rocks to provide a ring around the pit. No point starting a forest fire while we were in the centre of it, though that did give me an idea.
Since we didn’t have a stand for the one small pan we carried with us, we took turns holding it over the flame after Georgia poured the water in. While it would have been better to actually filter the water before pouring it into the pan, that was one thing we couldn’t do.
In our travels, we’d yet to find a camping store that hadn’t been looted and none of the houses we’d been able to scavenge through had much in the way of water filtration systems. If I’d had some sand, charcoal and gravel, I could have made a rough water filter myself but we were lacking those too. Our only option then was to boil the water with a tiny amount of bleach and hope for the best.
Once the water had been brought to the boil, we kept it over the heat for several more minutes before carefully pouring the water back into an empty bottle and repeating with the next lot of water. It wasn’t a fast process and since we’d had little in the way of water or food for some time, it was hard to sit there, tongue touching our cracked lips as we waited for the water to cool.
“I could make a tea,” Georgia said. “Might help with the taste of the water.”
“You have tea bags?” Lisa asked and the other woman shook her head.
“No, but there’s some nettles over there,” Georgia said with a tilt of her head to a clump of the stinging weeds. “Can boil them with the water and make a refreshing tea from them.”
“You sure?” Lisa asked. She looked suspiciously at the green weeds. “I’ve been stung by them enough times that I can’t imagine using them for anything.”
“It’s fine,” Georgia said. “Look I’ll show you.”
She reached into her pack and pulled out a couple of strips of cloth which she wrapped around her hands for protection before she went over to the weeds and began to strip the leaves from the stem. She carried a handful back and dumped them into the water that had just been poured into the pan.
We all watched as it rose to a boil, Georgia reaching in occasionally to stir the mixture with a twig. I grew bored of watching the water boil and wandered to the edge of the trees to watch for any zombies instead. It would be just our luck to have the Ferals turn up.
There was nothing moving through the fields though and despite a feeling of being watched that I couldn’t quite shake, I couldn’t locate any threats. Before long though, the undead would come into sight and we would have to keep moving. I was sure of that.
I stayed there for some time, watching and waiting. No matter how dry my throat, or how my stomach rumbled, a steady ache the constant reminder of my hunger, I kept watch until the first of the slow creatures stumbled into view. I turned on my heel and went back to re-join the group.
“They’re in sight,” I said as I entered the clearing. “Finish up.”
“Here, try this,” Lisa said as she offered a bottle of slightly murky water my way. “It doesn’t taste bad.”
“Looks like it,” I said as I noted that only a quarter of the two-litre bottle was full.
“I think you’d prefer the plain water,” Georgia said without looking my way and I hesitated, my hand halfway to the bottle.
Jeremy sat with his back against a tree trunk, his eyes closed and beads of sweat on his brow. His partner, Marie, stroked their daughter’s hair. There were dark rings under her eyes and a tightness that spoke of discomfort.
Lisa’s hand trembled as she held the bottle and Georgia had an air of satisfaction about her that sent a chill running through me.
“What did you do?” I demanded of her and she just grinned in response as Lisa looked confused.
Before I could say anything else, Marie sat bolt upright, panic clouding her features.
“Molly!” she said as she shook her child. “Molly, wake up baby!”
Jeremy’s eyes snapped open as he heard his wife cry out and all attention turned to the child laying limp in her mother’s arms.
“Georgia,” I said not bothering to keep the menace from my voice.
“Oh pish,” she said cheerfully as she emptied the contents of the pan into a bottle. “It’s better this way.”
“Please!” Marie cried. “Please, God, someone, help her!”
Lisa began to do some rudimentary CPR on the child. Checking first for a pulse and then pulling her from her mother’s arms and laying her down on the ground before holding the child’s nose and blowing air into her mouth. It wouldn’t help.
She looked at me as she began the chest compressions on the child, her eyes wild with something I couldn’t understand.
“Please!” she said. “Don’t just stand there! Help!”
Jeremy had hold of his wife, pulling her close to him as she wept, the tears forming streaks in the dirt on her face. I glanced once more at Georgia who was calmly putting the full water bottles into her rucksack. She turned her face to me, a smile on her lips and mischief in her eyes.
“The kid was weak so it was quick,” she said. “The others will take longer and it’ll hurt, I didn’t have enough herbs for a quick end.”
“What’s she talking about?” Lisa demanded. “What’s happening?”
“Stop this,” I said to Georgia, ignoring the questions. “Before it’s too late.”
“Couldn’t, even if I wanted to,” she said as she sealed up the rucksack and threw it onto her back. “They might be lucky and be dead before the zombies get here.”
“Why?” I asked her. I grabbed her arm as she turned away and she looked back over her shoulder, revealing just one-half of her face to me as she laughed.
“You really need to ask?” She said. “Because I could and because it pleased me.”
“Oh God!” Lisa cried out as she stopped the chest compressions and clasped both hands to her stomach. “Fuck, that hurts!”
“Leave them,” Georgia called from the edge of the clearing. “Much as I’d love to watch them die, it’ll take too long.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” I snapped. “And to a child!”
“Oh, grow up!” she snarled right back at me. “The kid was half dead anyway. I did it a favour. I did us a favour!”
“You did this!” Jeremy cried as he leapt to his feet and ran straight at her, arms outstretched and hands curled into fists. She barely glanced at him as she drew her Hori Hori and almost severed his head with one strong blow to the neck.
“No!” Marie cried out as she saw the last of her family die.
“Damn you,” I said as I drew my combat knife. She wouldn’t kill them unless they attacked her and a slow death by poison was undignified.
Marie didn’t resist or even try to fight me as I sliced my blade across her throat. Blood sprayed out, misting the air of the clearing and
spattering the clothes of Lisa who happened to be in the way. She at least tried to fight, but I blocked her clumsy swing with one hand and sank my knife into her chest.
I checked for a pulse on the child but she was definitely dead. When I looked over to Georgia, she flinched a little from what she saw in my face and lifted her weapon towards me.
“Why are you so mad?” she asked. “We’ll move quicker now.”
Mad was an understatement for what I felt. There was no joy, no satisfaction at having taken another life, just an unrelenting rage for why I had been forced to do it. I raised my own knife and took a step towards Georgia.
“Well now,” a voice called from behind me. “That was fucking interesting.”
I whirled towards the sound, knife at the ready and scowled at Amos and his two companions. The man was six feet at the least and solidly built, but he’d moved silently through the woods.
“What the hell do you want?” I demanded. I was in the mood to kill and despite that, knew I didn’t have the energy to fight them all.
“Not to be eaten by the zombies,” he said with a shrug of broad shoulders. “Same as you. We’ve been following you for a while.”
“Why?”
“We were going to kill you and take your women,” Amos said casually.
“Take her,” I said with a nod to Georgia as I lowered my knife. “She deserves you.”
“You can try it but I’ll kill you,” Georgia said.
“Ah, no worries lassie,” Amos said. “After what I just heard, I’m guessing you’re too interesting to waste. My friends now, they might think differently.”
“Your little butt-boys come near me and I’ll castrate them,” she said as she eyed the two other men who scowled at her tone. “You on the other hand… maybe.”
“Seems like we’re all headed the same way and you have nothing worth killing you for,” Amos said to me. “Might as well travel together.”
“What! Why?”
He looked at the bodies that surrounded me and arched an eyebrow as he smirked. I studied him for a moment and considered his suggestion. I couldn’t trust him or the others but if I left I’d have no one to watch my back. If I did stay with them, then I would either rediscover my joy for killing or be killed by them. No matter what I decided, it would have to be quick and besides, I wasn’t done with Georgia.
“Fine,” I said and reached down to pull a burning branch from the campfire.
The woods were so dry with the heatwave we’d had, that they went up almost immediately and we left, leaving a growing conflagration behind us. None of us were quite ready to present our backs to the others and it was in a tense silence that we headed north.
Chapter 14
“What do you think?” Kareem asked.
I took a swallow of the brackish water that was all that remained of the bottle I’d claimed for myself and swished the liquid around my mouth as I tried to ignore the gnawing hunger that seemed to be clawing at my gut.
“Definitely occupied,” I agreed as I stared at the building in the distance.
Kareem clapped his hands together and said, “yes! You think they’ll have food or what?”
My companion’s excitement was understandable. It’d been a day since we’d burnt the woods to the ground and even then, if I’d chosen to look to the south I’d have seen the plume of smoke rising towards the sky. I’d also see the tens of thousands of undead that hadn’t perished in the flames.
Amos had opted to wait at the bottom of the hill, getting to know Georgia a little better he’d said and one of this crew, a youngish lad called Harper, had stayed with them. Which left me and the remaining member of his group to scale the hill and spy out the land.
As people went, I had no real feeling of threat from Kareem. He seemed personable enough and I could guess that he’d been caught up with Amos and led astray. He had a backstory, like everyone I met had, and like everyone I met, I couldn’t care less and so hadn’t bothered to listen as he chatted away on our ascent.
“You listening mate?” he asked and I glanced at him.
A narrow face and close-set eyes with thick, bushy black eyebrows that matched the mop of matted hair on his head. He was slim and apparently a fairly devout Muslim if his constant whining about being unable to stop and pray was anything to go by.
“No,” I said and those thick brows of his turned down in a frown.
“I said, do you think it’s safe to go to them in the open?”
“Do you really think we have a choice?” I asked in a bored tone.
It had become apparent fairly quickly that Amos was the brains of the group and the only really dangerous one. The others were followers, that’s all. Made it easier for me to decide on who I needed to kill first.
“Well yeah man, I mean, they could be dangerous.”
“We have somewhere near a hundred thousand or more zombies following us,” I said with more than a little exasperation. “Do you really think that they will care too much about us when we tell them that?”
“Maybe,” he muttered and I held back my sigh.
The rage that had burned within me when Georgia had killed the child and forced me to kill my companions had subsided a little. It was more of a smouldering ember, waiting once more to ignite and at the same time, a source of confusion.
I didn’t kill children, without good reason, I amended to myself as an image of Emma floated to the forefront of my mind. But why should I care that she did? You know why, that treacherous voice in the back of my mind said in a voice that sounded far too much like one I’d been trying to forget.
“Go get the others,” I said as I continued to watch the building and tried to clear my mind a little.
From what I could tell, it was at least four storeys tall and made of brick. The roof was flat and likely made of the thin plastic moulding that most industrial buildings were roofed with. There were some windows high in the side of the walls and a single door on one of the two sides I could see.
There was a wide swathe of land separating the building from the M74 that ran past the eastern side of it. That land was covered in a thick screen of wild growing undergrowth and trees that formed a natural barrier from the undead.
It was situated on the south-eastern edge of an industrial estate and someone had taken the time to use some heavy machinery to provide a fairly robust looking barrier of steel containers and even train carriages, all around the building.
That same someone had the smart idea of fixing scaffolding poles around the roof to make the frame for walkways which were used by sentries from what I could see. They had also made some modifications to the roof in the form of chimneys. The bright aluminium tubes were out of place and clearly new, while thin wisps of smoke rose from them which probably indicated food preparation since they wouldn’t be needed for heat in the summer weather we’d been having.
A quick count revealed at least twenty people visible from my vantage point atop the hill opposite them and that likely indicated a great deal more inside. The road that led from the entrance of the building went south-west for a short distance before turning sharply to the north and the town beyond.
According to Amos, the town was called Larkhall and home to around fifteen thousand people. That was a lot of potential undead but apparently, not enough to stop at least one group of people from turning a building into a small fortress. I just wondered if it would hold off the mass of undead that was following us.
Probably not.
“Better be worth my climbing this damned hill, laddie,” Amos said from several metres below me.
“It is,” I said without bothering to turn to look at him.
He stared across at the building, squinting his eyes against the glare of the sun and grunted.
“Might be right at that.”
“Let’s go say hello then,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet. A quick look to the south was enough for me to understand the need for haste.
“Hold now laddie,�
� Amos said as he pushed himself up with another grunt. Kareem, Georgia and Harper had reached the top of the hill. “You’re not in charge, so don’t ye be giving orders now.”
“Oh? And you are in charge? I don’t recall having that vote.”
“Now look here,” he sputtered. “We let you live when we could have killed you…”
“You let us live?” I didn’t bother to hide my smile and from the way his face flushed, it upset him. “Would have been interesting to see you try and kill us.”
To be fair, if he’d pressed the issue I’d have taken one, perhaps two of them with me but I wouldn’t have beaten them all. Not that I was going to admit that.
“Don’t push me boy!” he snapped. “There’s something I like about you but I’m in charge here and you’ll respect that and fucking obey me!”
I knew what he liked about me. There was a connection, a familiarity that you have when you find someone who is just like you. A recognition of their own inherent evil. That he didn’t grasp that told me a lot. He wasn’t quite the same as Georgia and me.
“Whatever you say,” I acquiesced with a grin.
There’d be ample time to kill him after all. No need to push it right then. Besides, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to murder someone. What was the point when there was little pleasure involved? I wondered if that was how normal people felt and why they didn’t kill others.
“Now then,” the older man said when he seemed certain I wasn’t going to push. “We’ll take a wee walk down to them and let them see us coming. That’ll give us an idea of their reaction to strangers.”
“Think they’ll let us in?”
“Us Scotsmen can be bastards to have a fight with, but so long as you don’t do anything to piss us off, you’ll be right.”
“Which means?” I asked after a moment's silence.
“That so long as we don’t piss them off, they should be fine with us.”
“Let’s just hope there’s no Rangers fans,” Harper said with a grin as he tugged on his green and white striped shirt that I assumed had some meaning.
March of the Dead (Killing the Dead Book 11) Page 10