by Jack Lewis
Lou reached across and squeezed my shoulder. The physical contact felt alien when it came from her.
“My brother didn’t love much,” she said, “but one thing he did love was heroin. Couldn’t get enough of it. He stole from me, my parents, and his friends. If he ever spoke to you, it was to use you, all with one goal in mind – getting more stuff. It broke my parents. My dad was fifty-six, but he looked eighty. White hair, sagging skin. It used to make me sick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“My brother disappeared for three years. My parents were sick with worry, and they aged even more. Mom got admitted to hospital, and dad’s hands started shaking, like, all the time. I hated my brother for that, and I used to imagine killing him. Think of that! A sister wanting to kill her little brother. But when he came to me asking for help, saying he didn’t want money this time, he wanted to quit, I knew I had to put those feelings to one side. For the good of my parents.”
“And did you help him?”
Lou nodded. “Took him to rehab the same night.”
“How did that go?” I asked.
“He stayed there a month. Came out looking fantastic. Clean skin, a smile on his face, talking about the future. Then within a week of being out he bumped into an old pal, and before I knew it he was using again.”
We got to the edge of the Vasey campsite. It was worse than when I’d last seen it. The tents were sagging as if they were lungs on the verge of collapsing. Litter was strewn around. There was a hint of faeces in the air, like a hundred unwashed bodies excreting their dirt and not being able to wash it off. I zipped up my coat and covered my chin, but the material wouldn’t stretch to my nose.
Moe had the biggest tent. It was a twenty-man tent, big enough to be a marque. It was like the Vasey settlers were a travelling army, and being the general, Moe had taken the war tent. Two men stood outside, guarding. I recognised them as the men I’d seen days ago tying another man to a tree. They saw me, and scowls crawled onto their faces.
I wondered if they were going to block my way, but when we approached they stepped aside. When we got into the tent, the putrid smell vanished. Moe’s tent was fragrant, like someone had shaken talcum powder over the floor. Moe lay in the corner on a camp bed, his head propped up by pillows, a book on his chest.
He put the book down. When he saw us, hate flickered on his face and then disappeared, like a flash of lightening that you weren’t completely sure you saw.
“Kyle,” he said in a syrupy voice, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
My blood boiled in my veins. I wanted to punch him. I could almost feel the warm glow that would spread through me when my fist connected with his nose. I wanted to cover his smug face in blood.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He moved into a sitting position, swung his legs over the side of the camp bed. In comparison to the rest of the Vasey campers, Moe looked well fed. Just past him, in the corner of the tent, was a stockpile of food. I wondered if the rest of the Vasey people knew that he had it. I wondered if anyone of them would even dare to stand up to Moe.
“You know me Kyle,” he said. “I love a good talk. So shoot.”
Bile slid up my throat. I needed to keep calm. Half of me wanted to kill Moe, and the other half wanted to get as far away from here as I could. But I needed to do this for the others. If I went back without making a deal, then Bleakholt was screwed.
Lou put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I appreciated the support, even if her touching me still felt strange.
“Victoria’s got a proposition,” I said, the bile thick in my throat. “I don’t know if you know this, but the wave is coming. It’s a week away at the most, and there’s no getting round it. We’re going to have to fight. Thing is, the only chance any of us have got is if we join together.”
Moe brushed his hair back other his ears. The long strands hung over his back like old rope. “Join together and do what?”
“Fight the wave. Together.”
He got to his feet, his knees clicking at the sudden movement. I realised how old Moe really was. He kept himself in as good a shape as you could expect for someone who lived in the Wilds, but there was a tiredness behind his eyes. His skin sagged like it was stretched by the horrors he’d seen, the things he’d put his body through.
“After we left Vasey,” he said. “I thought about you sometimes, Kyle. Wondered how you were doing. A part of me even felt bad for leaving you. But then I thought ‘No. He went off chasing the wave of infected. Clinging to the Vasey dream like it was actually going to work.’”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Moe held a hand in front of him.
“Let me finish. A few days after we left people started hearing things in the night. Cries in the forest that came from a hundred directions at once. The cries got closer every night. One evening, we heard something scraping on the floor. It was pitch fucking dark and we couldn’t see anything, but I knew what it was.”
“Stalkers,” I said.
He nodded. “What else? If it ain’t the fucking infected tearing you apart in the day, the stalkers come to finish the job at night. And boy did they finish it. Night after night they came. Didn’t matter how many lookouts we had, the sneaky bastards would always find a crack in our defence to crawl through. They’d take people in their tents. People would wake up to find one of the bastards next to them, tearing open their husband’s belly with their claws. Chewing on their kid's faces, giving them that sick goddamn grin while they did it.”
“It was night after night after night. Got to the point where I started to tune out the cries. Thought I could accept it, like it was just another part of life I had to chew down. But you can’t tune it out, Kyle. You can’t ignore the sound of a mother weeping because she’s watched a stalker eat her son’s face and then drag him away to its nest.”
I gulped, felt a wave of pity wash over me. I knew what it felt like to be in the Wilds at night listening to every noise, scared that it might be an infected or a stalker. I’d watched people get eaten, carved up, torn apart. Nothing could prepare you for it, and it never got any easier.
“All the more reason we have to help each other,” I said. “We have to get together and fight. Otherwise, the same thing is going to happen.”
Moe’s face was pale. The strands of his beard looked greyer and seemed so weak they might fall out and scatter on the tent floor like feathers.
“No,” he said. “It won’t happen again. Because we’re going to take Bleakholt. Run back to Victoria and tell her Moe’s coming. And he’s going to take everything from her. Bleakholt is weak, but I’m going to make it strong. And I’ll kill everyone who blocks my way.”
21
“Four days,” said Victoria, and tapped on the desk. Her nails were chewed up to the skin and she’d even started to work on that, nibbling away at her fingers like they were pieces of chocolate.
“Five at a push,” said Charlie.
Lou and I had gone straight back to Bleakholt. We told Victoria what had happened with Moe. I expected her face to go red and for her to order us out of the settlement. Instead she just nodded, took the news and chewed on it. Finally she had sent for Charlie. He arrived in his lab coat, a trail of dried blood splattered on his sleeve.
“We don’t have much time to act, and there’s not a hell of a lot we can do,” said Victoria. “But Charles has a plan.”
“You’re not going to like it,” said Charlie.
I sat in front of the desk, and Lou was to my right. She crossed her legs and leant back like she was relaxing in a bar. The thing about Lou was that if you caught her on her own, she was a hell of a lot more open. Put her in front of a crowd and the sarcasm returned, her body language got cocky.
“There’s not much I do like these days, so you might as well spill it,” I said.
Charlie walked to the front of the desk and perched his ass against it. He looked like a biology professor explaining a theory to a cou
ple of students. His cheeks reddened, as though having everyone’s eyes on him heated up his skin. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed.
“Blowing the pass is still the best way to head off the wave. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Look how that worked out last time, Charlie. We blew a guy to the moon. There’s no more explosives left.’”
He raised a finger in the air, as though one of us had actually asked the question. “But wait,” he said, “Because Charlie has a plan. He knows where there’s some dynamite.”
I leant forward. “Cut the crap Charlie, get to the point.”
Victoria tapped her fist on the desk. Her face was screwed up and her body was tense. She’d either run out of tobacco, or stress of the impending charge of half a million infected was getting to her.
“Come on Charles. If we’re doing this, Kyle will need to go soon.”
I flinched. “What do you mean ‘Kyle will need to go soon?’ I don’t know what the hell you’re proposing, and you’re making a hell of an assumption.”
Victoria took a breath. “You’re the only one capable of doing what we have in mind.”
“Then you better tell me what it is.”
Charlie adjusted his collar, unfastened a button as though his shirt was strangling him. “There’s a quarry a dozen miles away. We sent a scout party there once. Six men. Only one of them came back.”
“You’re really selling this to me,” I said.
“The man who came back didn’t speak for a week. He’d seen something there that sent him into shock, but whatever it was, he couldn’t talk about it. It must have been traumatic, because his brain had evidently blotted it from his memory.”
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“He couldn’t tell us. He was, however, able to tell us that the quarry had a storage shed where they stored old dynamite.”
“And you’ve never gone back to get it?” said Lou.
Charlie shook his head. “Couldn’t get anyone to go.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” said Victoria. “But Moe won’t help us. And the wave are days away. There really is nothing else we can do. I’m afraid it’s once more into the breach for you, Kyle.”
I looked over to Lou, wondered if I could ask my friend to go out there with me again. But I didn’t need to ask. Lou grinned, as though we were about to take a trip to the carnival.
“We better get going,” she said. “I’ll put on my Sunday best.”
22
Our quads zipped across the plain, the tough wheels trampling the grass. Trails of smoke gushed out of the exhausts and filled the winter air with the smell of burning petrol. The wind stung my face and stretched my cheeks. Billy and Alice rode one quad, Lou and I rode the other. It took me a few minutes to get used to the acceleration, but I worked out the balance.
I’d been quad biking on a stag party in Prague once. It was fifteen guys riding motors around a field. By all rights we shouldn’t have been allowed to do it because most of us were blind drunk. Things came to a head when the stag took a slope too quickly, span in the air and landed on the side of the grass. His quad turned over and the weight of the metal pressed against his leg. Once we’d made sure he wasn’t hurt we all had a laugh about it.
I wasn’t drunk this time. Instead I had a deep ache in the pit of my stomach, a foreboding feeling about what lay ahead. It made me want to ease down on the accelerator, turn the quad around and drive home.
The storage facility was a dozen miles west of Bleakholt. We rode ten of them, and then stopped at an expanse of forest. When the quad engines died their drone was replaced by the sounds of wildlife. Birds screeched in the trees, and something snapped twigs on the forest floor.
“It’s through here,” said Billy.
I got off the quad and looked at the forest in front of us. The bare-limbed trees were bunched so tight that they blocked out all sunlight save for a few rays that struggled through. It seemed endless; a horizontal well of darkness that looked like it could hide anything within. The idea of walking through it made my feet heavy. I was done with forests. Nothing good ever happened in them.
Lou bent over, touched her toes, and stretched her calves. Then she sprang upright like a jack in a box.
“Remind me again why nobody came out here after the first scouting party,” she said.
Billy scratched his chin nervously, and then folded his arms as if to hide the gesture.
“Only one of them came back,” he said, “And he was scared shitless.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. “Why?” I said.
Billy looked at me, raised his eyebrows as if I should already know the answer.
“Stalkers,” I said.
He nodded.
The forest looked like the perfect place for them. It was dark enough to smother any daylight that dared to shine. The thick tree trunks hid the forest’s secrets from us. Tangles of bushes and thorns poked out from the ground, ready to snag on loose clothing, scratch the skin and draw blood. Stalkers nested in darkness, everyone knew that. As I stared into the forest, I couldn’t imagine a darker place.
“The quarry is on the other side of the forest,” said Billy. “We should make it back well before sundown.”
Alice took a step closer to the first tree. “So we find the storage shed, get the dynamite and then go home?”
“That’s the plan.”
I looked at Alice and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t be here, like something bad was going to happen.
“Why did you insist on coming?” I said.
“It can’t just be you who puts himself in danger all the time, Kyle. I didn’t go with you last time, and that was a mistake. I’m here to make sure you don’t blow yourself up.”
We walked forward, our chests heavy with a grim resolve. It felt like we were stepping into a shadow, as the daylight washed away in a shower of black and disappeared into a plug hole.
We walked for twenty minutes. Every twig that snapped sent a shiver down my spine, but I didn’t turn around. It felt like something was watching and listening. Like being a kid in a dark bedroom, knowing that there was something in your closet watching you. It waited for you to acknowledge it. If you admitted it was there you gave it power, and it took on a darker form in your imagination. It was better to put your head under the covers and pray for sleep.
The further in we got, the more the darkness drowned the light. Roots stuck up from the forest floor, twisted toward our feet and tried to trip us. We passed a fallen log, the insides rotted into damp mulch. Something skittered out of a bush and ran away from us.
“Shit,” said Lou.
It was a dark shape the size of a hare, but it bounced along the forest floor and out of sight before we could confirm what it was. I gave a sideways glance to Alice. She had her hands tucked into her pockets. Billy took careful steps at the front, his butcher’s mallet in his hand, his arm tensed like he was ready to strike. The darkness wrapped around my neck like a noose.
“How much further?” I asked.
Billy stopped suddenly. He held a hand in the air.
“What’s wrong?” said Alice.
“Shh.”
Billy’s breath left his mouth in a plume of steam. It was light at first, but as he scanned the forest ahead of us, the plumes grew thicker and left his mouth quicker. I could almost feel his heartbeat speed up and start to pound, like it echoed off the trees.
I followed his gaze and let my eyes adjust to the darkness in front of us. At first it seemed like the rest of the forest. Rotted trees, tangled roots. Leaves scattered on the forest floor like dead flaps of skin, hollow branches like amputated limbs. My eyes adjusted more. They filtered the darkness, gave the shapes of the forest definite forms.
My breath caught in my throat. Icy hands closed around my neck, and frozen fingers tapped up and down my spine.
There were shapes on the forest floor. At first they seemed like black sacks strewn around us. But then I started
to pick out features. Arms sticking out, legs curled at the knee. The rise and fall of chests. Oil black skin that glistened when a rare slice of light stabbed through the trees.
We had walked into the middle of a stalker nest. I felt the urge to turn around, like an unseen hand was pushing on my chest and begging me to leave. Instead of lessening the horror my brain dialled into it. It tuned out every other sound in the forest so that I heard the raspy breaths of the sleeping stalkers. They sucked in air and exhaled it with the choke of a hundred a day smoker. Dozens of the sleeping black forms were scattered around us.
Lou’s face was covered in shadow, but I could see the whites of her eyes as they widened. Her shoulders tensed, and she took a silent step back. Alice moved closer to me, so that there was only an inch between us. I felt like grabbing her hand.