by Jack Lewis
A clump of trees were to the left, just to the side of Steve. I pictured his boot hooking underneath a root and sending him crashing to the floor.
“Be careful,” I called over to Steve.
“You think I’m just going to trip and blow myself to hell? Don’t worry about me.”
He passed the clump of trees and stared at the floor to make sure nothing could make him trip. While he looked at the floor, he didn’t see the infected step away from one of the trees, its body so thin that the trunk had hidden it. After a few steps he heard it, but he was too late. The infected reached him and grabbed his shoulders.
Steve took a step back. The infected dipped its head at him, teeth gnashing, trying to get a bite of his flesh. Steve fell to the floor, and the infected landed on top of him.
My heart dislodged and leapt to my throat. My stomach filled with the chill of fear. The crow still swooped overheard but its swirls and loops were at quarter speed, as though time had slowed. I waited to see if the explosives would detonate after hitting the ground for a second time. Maybe he would be okay. Maybe we’d get lucky twice in one day.
A boom shook the ground as the explosives blew. The force of it, even thirty feet away, hit me in the chest and knocked me onto my back. The sound rang through my ears, jarred my head like a pneumatic drill on my skull. It echoed through my head so loud that my brain shook and I couldn’t see straight.
I looked up in the air and saw it fill with a gush of blood. Mud sprayed across us like a fountain and pattered against down against the floor. My eyes filled with dust and started to sting, so I put my hands over my face. Chunks of Steve’s flesh were tossed in the air and then rained down on the ground in clumps.
When the dust settled there was a sour smell in the air, like gun powder gone damp. I moved into a sitting position, thankful that I could still move. Overhead the crow still swooped and looped, unaffected by the explosion below it.
19
I shivered as we walked back into the settlement. Billy tapped Steve’s baseball bat against his shoulder like a player trundling off the field after a defeat. Lou seemed lost in thought. I wondered if she was thinking the same things as me. About how the wave were coming, and we’d just seen our best chance of stopping it blow up in a spray of bone fragments and body parts. We’d failed everyone, and we’d done it with the most ridiculous mistake possible.
Rain drizzled down, pattered on my coat and ran down my sleeves. It collected in the cracks of the cobblestones and mixed with the dirt. I wondered what I was going to say to Victoria. It seemed likely she would just throw us out of the settlement. Not only had we failed, but we’d let one of her guards get killed.
Melissa stood in front of a building in the town centre. It was an old bank with scaffolding erected around the sides. Before the outbreak they must have been doing work on it, and in the years since there had been no point taking it down. I doubted anyone was looking to open a savings account these days, so the bank didn’t need to look pretty.
Melissa stared up toward the roof. When we got closer, I heard her shout.
“Stop being an idiot. Just get down.”
There was a look of panic on her face. When I reached her, she turned and stared at me. Her eyes were red around the edges.
“Kyle, thank god. Can you talk some sense into him? He’s going to slip and kill himself.”
Justin sat at the top of the building with his legs hooked over the metal bars of the scaffolding. The only thing steadying him was a steel bar that he gripped. One gust of wind would blow him straight off and splatter him on the ground.
“What the hell is he doing?” I said.
“He didn’t say anything to me before he did it, just climbed up there.”
It seemed like Justin was always giving Melissa something to worry about, but this time was different. Her eyes were wide and her stare was hollow.
I’d known something was going on with Justin for a while now, but I’d let it slide. I’d just let him get on with things as though he would magically get better. I was his friend, and I should have done something long before now. He sat on the scaffolding with his feet dangling over the ledge, one slip away from falling to the ground. The height didn’t seem to bother him. Instead, he just stared blankly ahead.
Part of me knew I should have done something long before now. But another part of me thought, I’ve got other things to worry about. There’s a wave of infected headed straight toward the settlement and it’s not just going to kill you, Justin. It’s going to kill every man, woman and child living here.
I pushed the feeling away. I walked up to the bank doors, pulled the handle. It didn’t budge.
“How did he get up?” I asked.
“He climbed,” said Melissa.
I looked up at the building and gulped. Once, when I was a kid, I’d climbed an acorn tree. I used the footholds that stuck out of the trunk and hoisted myself up until the ground looked far away. Then I used the branches, testing their weight before pulling myself even further up. Before long I was so high that I could see half a mile across town. And then I looked at the ground. A shot of panic had hit me in the chest, and I felt dizzy. I realised I wasn’t going to be able to get down.
Never look down. Isn’t that what they always say when you’re climbing? After some pissed-off looking fireman had gotten me down, my dad clipped me around the ear and gave me a different piece of advice. Never go up.
“Please, Kyle,” said Melissa.
I nodded. My throat felt tight, so I swallowed. I was going to have to do this for my friend. I stepped forward and gripped the first steel rung of the scaffolding. The metal was cold and slick with the drips of rain, and it was going to make for a slippery climb.
I climbed up rung by rung. I didn’t look down. Instead I kept Justin firmly in my sights and focussed on why I was doing it. It wasn’t a sky scraper, but the higher I got I swore I could feel a breeze lapping around my head, as though I was scaling an office block. My heart hammered, and my hands gripped on the steel as though they were begging me not to let go. Finally I reached Justin.
We were thirty feet up now. There was a roof behind the scaffolding, but there was a metre gap between it. Short enough of a distance to make in a leap, but big enough to fall through and hit the ground. I hooked one leg through a bar of scaffolding and clung onto another bar with a steely grip.
Justin looked at me and nodded as if I’d just met him at the bus stop.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, not caring to hide the tremor in my voice.
Justin shrugged his shoulders. His face was grey, his skin tone faded. Little red flecks swam in the whites of his eyes, like tiny worms twisting through milk. I dragged myself across the scaffolding inch by inch until I was next to him.
“That’s an irrational response,” he said.
I made a mistake. As I moved closer to Justin I looked down and saw the top of Melissa’s head. I saw how far away the ground was. My chest was a sheet of ice.
“What?” I choked out.
“The way you’re gripping the bars. I bet your heart is hammering. You probably thinking you’re going to fall. Your brain is showing all these different ways your body will splatter on the floor.”
“No shit,” I said.
“It’s a survival mechanism. By making you think of how easy it is to die, your brain is trying to force you to be careful. A part of your brain doesn’t want to be up here; it knows how dangerous it is. But you’re also in control. And the rational part of you knows there’s no way you’re going to fall unless you actually decide to let go.”
I was fighting between panic and anger. Part of me was shot cold with fear of the height, and another part wanted to grab Justin and shake him.
Justin carried on. “Take a deep breath. Know that you’re in control. That you won’t fall unless you choose to.”
“So I guess nobody ever died accidentally?” I said.
Justin shook his head. “I think d
eep down, everyone has a part of them that wants to die.”
I wasn’t going to be able to talk to Justin while my body was screaming at me in terror. I needed to calm down. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and let it fill my lungs. I tried to let my nerves settle. Then I exhaled, and I imagined I was exhaling my fear along with it. A few more breaths and I started to feel a little less jangled.
“Do you actually care about her?” I said.
He looked at me. “Melissa?”
“No, the queen.”
“Of course I care about Melissa.”
“Then you’ve got to cut this shit out.”
Justin took one hand away from the scaffold, wiped rain off his forehead. “I feel different, Kyle. Like I’m not a person anymore. I see all these people living here and planning for their future, working together. And I don’t see myself being part of it. Everyone wants me gone. That Ewan guy would have thrown me out of Bleakholt if it weren’t for you and Victoria. I’m a freak.”
I hooked my arm around a bar and hoisted myself into a sitting position. My heart hammered while I adjusted my balance on the bar, and I felt like I was going to tip over. But Justin was right, it was an irrational response. If I was careful, I wouldn’t fall.
“You’re being a prat,” I said. “Melissa needs you. Do you think this is easy for her, seeing you like this? You act like you don’t give a shit about anything. Half the time, it’s like you’ve got a death wish.”
Justin hung his head. “I don’t know what Whittaker did to me, but there’s no going back. I’m changing. I can feel it.” When he looked at me, his pupils were black holes. “Why didn’t the infected in the farmhouse attack me? It could easily have gotten me, but it went for you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Am I one of them?”
More raindrops splattered onto my head and dripped down my neck. A chill spread down my spine.
“You can’t give in. You owe it to Melissa. Until I see you chewing on a person, you’re one of us. Now let’s get the hell off here before I start crying with panic. I’ve got to go see Victoria.”
***
Victoria’s office was filled with smoke. A dozen cigarette butts littered an ashtray on the desk in front of her. She listened to my story with a cigarette in hand and took hungry drags on the end of it. When I told her about Steve exploding, she pounded her fist on the table. The ashtray shook, and soot spilled onto the wood.
“For feck’s sake,” she shouted.
“I know how you’re feeling right now. But we’ve got to think of something else.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were squinty black marbles. The fury on her face reminded me of the look my mum had once given me as a kid when she caught me stealing money out of her purse.
“Know how I’m feeling, do you? So you know that I think you’re a feckin' idiot?”
My blood pumped hot in my veins. I’d expected disappointment or anger, but not this. I wasn’t going to be spoken to in this way; it wasn’t like it had been my fault. It was her guy who had messed things up, after all.
“You better watch what you’re saying.”
She picked up the cigarette from the table. It was bent out of shape from being pounded against the wood. She flicked her lighter, lit the end of the cigarette and sucked on it. Finally she faced me, and her eyes were a little calmer.
“I used to have a son,” she said. “He had a condition. I’m not going to make you listen to the details, but it was bad. We could manage it with medication and surgery every few years, and we got by. Then all this shit happened. Suddenly, medication and surgery weren’t available. Hospitals were emptied, and the doctors died just like everyone else. I had to watch him die.”
I pulled out a seat from under the table, sat down in it. I rested my arms on the desk and leant forward.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Victoria took a deep breath. The cigarette burnt between her fingers, close enough that it would scorch her skin soon.
“I failed my son. And I can see Bleakholt going the same way, Kyle. I couldn’t protect him, and I can’t protect the people out there.”
I knew exactly how she felt. I’d promised to protect my wife, and I had failed. And when I thought of it, my stomach burned. I knew what it was like to blame yourself.
“We won’t give up,” I said.
Victoria straightened up and shook her shoulders as if casting off her mood. The steely glare was back in her eyes.
“Then the only way we can stop the wave is with pure numbers. With my Bleakholt people, we don’t have a chance. But if the Vasey campers were to help, the odds change a little.”
“No way,” I said.
“I know how you feel about them. I know how they betrayed you. I know about Moe, and how you feel when you look at him. But you’ve got to put your feelings to one side for the good of Bleakholt.”
She didn’t know the half of it. She couldn’t possibly understand what happened when I thought of Moe. The acid that poured through my veins and feelings that blinded every thought except one. When I thought of Moe, I was like a shark in a feeding frenzy. I wanted to tear him apart for what he’d done.
“Kyle?”
“I can’t do it Victoria.”
“Think of all the lives we could save if you can put your feelings to one side.”
I thought about what Justin said. That there’s two parts of you; one that acts on instinct, and another that is rational. The rational part of me knew that saving the lives of everyone in Bleakholt far outweighed my need for revenge. No matter how much hate burned through me, I was going to have to do it.
“I want you to speak to Moe,” said Victoria. “And offer him a place in the settlement.”
20
I found myself walking to the Vasey camp site again. Dawn was rising on a new day, but the same old feelings bubbled up through my stomach. When I thought of Moe my body flinched with hate. I knew I had to swallow the feelings down like a sour medicine. As much as I hated Moe and everyone who had followed him, Bleakholt needed their numbers.
The scout who had first seen the wave had taken it upon himself to be Bleakholt’s infected watchman. He reported on their progress by radio every few hours, and his voice was always full of shock. I knew how he felt; ever since I’d first seen the wave, I hadn’t been able to get them out of my head either. It was a sight that was horrible and incredible in equal measures. Half a million dead faces pointed in our direction, half a million dead legs dragging hungry corpses closer. They were a week away, at most. That’s all the time we had to prepare.
Victoria had decided that the scouts needed to give a signal when the infected got to the hills. The scout, a military memorabilia enthusiast, had chosen a war horn. He couldn’t demonstrate it for me because he said it would shatter my ear drums, but he said he would blow it when he saw the wave reach the hills. When we heard the noise of the horn, we knew that things had gotten bad. We needed to figure something out before we heard it
Lou walked beside me. She’d been quiet lately, saving her usual sarcastic cracks in place of silence. I couldn’t forget what she and Billy had done, but I was thankful for her coming with me to see Moe. If anyone knew how I felt about the man, it was her.
“I need you to watch me,” I told her.
“Isn’t Moe the one to watch?”
I shook my head. My feet crunched on the frozen plains. “Keep an eye on me. If I’m starting to lose it, get me out of there.”
“Is it really that bad?”
I’d always been a calm guy. Back when I was a teacher, a kid called Damien Brown always tried to wind me up. As well as teaching English I was also stand-in for the school football team when the PE teacher was off. For one match I decided to leave Damien out of the side. His attitude was just wrong, and he was a bad influence on the other boys. Damien didn’t take too kindly to that.
He spent the next year doing everything he could to piss me off. He missed homework
assignments and scratched my car with his keys. He talked rubbish about me and my wife on social media. At that point I could have exploded, but I didn’t. I let it wash over me. I remembered a proverb about being a rock in a stream, keeping steady while you let all the shit trickle over you until it was out of sight.
I couldn’t do that with Moe.
“I can’t control myself when I see his smug face,” I said. “I’m worried that if he says the wrong word I’ll just kill him right there. And then the Vasey campers will run riot, and Victoria won’t get the bodies that she needs.”