The thought made her uncomfortable, but she pushed it aside. It didn’t serve any purpose to dwell on how alone they were, on how fragile she was in a world that had changed more than she could grasp.
She reached for Dawn’s hand and tried to focus on what was real and that helped, but it didn’t make the lonely feeling in her stomach go away.
“Where are we going?” Dawn said.
She shook her head because she didn’t know. It seemed as if she had fulfilled the entirety of Dale’s plan, at least what he had told her of it. But he’d had no more idea what the world was like now, than she did. In fact, he had probably known less. While she and Dawn had been travelling to Harmony, he had been locked up in an army hospital.
She wondered what he would have thought if he could have seen it. Then she tried to stop thinking about him, because doing so was bringing tears to her eyes, and she didn’t know if she would be able to stop once she started.
* * * * *
The corn field was bigger than she had thought and harder work. She had to push the closely growing stalks out of her way and then hold them for Dawn to follow. Progress was slow, and it gave her time to think, which she wasn’t sure she wanted.
“Beth?” Dawn said.
She slowed a little and looked at her sister. She didn’t say anything, but the expression on her face clearly invited Dawn to continue.
“Can we stop for a minute?”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“We’ve been walking for hours. I’m tired.”
Beth looked around. The rest of them (not a group, just people following her) had fallen behind, which suggested they were tired as well. They were halfway down a hill, but there was no sign of any zombies. She turned back to Dawn.
“Okay, but just for a minute.”
Dawn smiled.
“Sit down. There’s something to eat and drink in my bag.”
She pulled the rucksack off her back and dropped it on the floor in front of Dawn.
“Where are you going?” Dawn said.
“Nowhere,” she said. “Just for a look around. I need to make sure it’s safe.”
Dawn nodded and opened the bag. She pulled out the food that Dale had made her pack and seemed to forget all about her.
Beth didn’t go far, and she wasn’t really looking for zombies. She just needed some time away, a moment to herself, to think about everything that had happened. It was still difficult to believe that she had lost Dale, but the evidence was impossible to ignore; if he hadn’t been dead, then he would have been there with her.
When she could no longer turn back and see Dawn she stopped. She could hear the voices of the others, but not what they were saying. Standing beside a rotten corn stalk, she wanted to be alone, but she couldn’t bring herself to go further.
There were so many things to think about, but the most immediate was where to go. So far she had just been walking, trying to put as much distance between herself and the village as she could. Even if it had been safe there, and she knew from Dale that it never would be, she was glad she hadn’t gone back. There were too many memories there, too much sadness. But the realisation of that didn’t bring her any closer to working out where they should go next.
She needed to find somewhere that she and Dawn could be safe, but did such place exist? She had thought that Harmony was safe, but that had proven to be wrong. The best thing would be to keep moving, but that meant they would have to find somewhere new to settle down each evening and new sources of food and warmth. Perhaps even better would be to find somewhere they could defend, a castle would be ideal, but where was the nearest one of those and what were the chances that it would actually keep them safe?
The thoughts rolled through her head, and she let them. As long as she was thinking about what they were going to do and where they were going to go, she wasn’t thinking about Dale. But she felt the ache of having lost him and knew that it would become more painful as the days went on. Every decision that she made should have been one that they had made together. He would have stopped her from doing anything stupid, he would have been the one in charge—
A scream split the silent air and Beth gasped. She turned back towards Dawn, but she couldn’t see anybody there now. Her thoughts vanished, and she started to move. The only thing that mattered was getting back to her sister and making sure she was safe.
Beth pushed aside the corn and stumbled over the knotted ground. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her eyes became dry and painful because she didn’t dare blink in case she missed something important.
She pushed through the last stalk blocking her path and almost fell over Dawn. Her sister was standing there, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. Behind her, the others were trying to get away from the zombie that had somehow found them.
The zombie wasn’t fresh. It moved with slow irrational movements. It seemed most interested in the children who Rachel and David were doing their best to defend. The others in the group had moved away, hanging around the periphery and watching, but not trying to help.
There was one dead body on the ground. A man who Beth recognised as having worked for Wesley. She wasn’t sure whether he had been with them when they’d first tried to escape or with the villagers who had tried to stop them.
“Wait here,” she said.
“Where are you going?” Dawn said.
Beth didn’t answer. She didn’t even think. She went towards the zombie and pulled the gun out of her trousers.
The gun was empty, and she didn’t think that she could use it to scare the zombie away. Stopping it would mean killing it. She turned the gun over in her hand so that she was holding it by the barrel.
As she got closer, she picked up speed. She was practically running by the time she reached it. The zombie barely seemed to notice her coming.
This wasn’t her job, she thought, she wasn’t responsible for these people, but at the same time, she couldn’t just stand by and watch the children get killed. If no one else was going to stop the zombie then she would have to do it.
Beth swung the gun and felt the shockwave reverberate along her arm as it made contact with the zombie’s jaw. It stumbled away from her, but it didn’t go far, and when it stood back up it was looking at her.
Its eyes were sunken and jaundiced. The skin on its face had begun to peel away and blacken. It smelled like rotten meat. A part of her wanted to shout at the zombie and tell it to leave them alone, but she knew that wouldn’t work. The only thing she could do was hit it until it stopped getting back up, and hope that it didn’t get a chance to bite her in the meantime.
She hit it again. This time on the top of the head. Its skull gave way like a piece of bruised fruit, and the butt of her gun became imbedded so she had to yank hard to get it out.
The zombie looked at her. It managed to stand up. When she took a step back, it moved towards her.
Its arms came up and it moaned as it tried to grab hold of her, but perhaps she had damaged some part of its nervous system, because now it was shaking. Its movements were jittery and its eyes unfocused. Beth stepped aside, and when it came towards her, she swung the gun again and hit it in the left temple.
The zombie turned, and she hit it again. The top of its head seemed to be the weak point, and when she pulled out the gun, it fell to its knees. The zombie continued reaching out to try and grab her, so she hit it again, and again.
At some point, she stopped being aware of what she was doing. The zombie had become something else. It had stopped being an individual and started being a representative of its kind. Its kind which had first killed her parents and most recently Dale, as well as a lot of other people in-between. It had left her with nothing except Dawn, and she was damned if she was going to let it take her too.
She felt hands on her arms and gradually came back to herself. When she looked down she saw the zombie on the ground, its head and face pulverised so that it resembled nothing so much as uncooked mince. She turned
away and buried her face in whoever was standing there. Finally, she began to cry.
* * * * *
Noel muttered soft, comforting sounds in her ear while he rubbed her back. Beth kept her head buried in his chest and tried to stop the crying without success.
When she felt the tears begin to slow and then stop, she pushed herself away from him and wiped her eyes. She looked up at Noel and offered a humiliated little smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t need to be,” he said.
She remembered that Noel had lost Oscar, and the two of them had been together years longer than she and Dale. It should have been her comforting him. “I got carried away,” she said.
Noel nodded. He was a tall, slim man with short brown hair and intense eyes. He put a hand on her arm. “I’m finding that the best way to deal with death is to carry on living,” he said.
Beth nodded and, rather uncharitably, thought that it was okay for him to believe that. He’d had years with Oscar, she hadn’t even had one with Dale. She couldn’t cope with the end of his life by getting on with hers, because they hadn’t had enough time to be together.
She looked for Dawn and saw her with Rachel and David, helping to calm down some of the younger children. Other people were standing together in small groups, talking in whispers and making it clear that they weren’t looking at her and Noel.
“A lot of people are relying on you,” Noel said.
“I’m not a leader,” she said. “Dale was, but I’m not.”
“You don’t know what you’re capable of until you try,” he said.
They stood in silence for a moment. The smell of the zombie corpse drifted on the lazy breeze, and she thought that it might attract more of them. She needed to get Dawn and keep moving.
“I’m not a leader Noel,” she said.
“You got us out of the village,” he said. “You got us away from the soldiers.”
She almost told him that it had been Dale, not her, that had accomplished those feats, but what was the point? If he wanted someone to lead the group so badly then why wasn’t he stepping up to it? He had as much right to do so as she did. Instead, she shook her head and turned away.
“Dawn?” she said.
Her sister looked up and over the small clearing that they had made. She was kneeling in front of a little blond girl.
“It’s time to go,” Beth said.
Dawn nodded and turned back to the little girl. She said something that Beth couldn’t hear and then walked over.
“We need to find somewhere to rest,” Dawn said.
“We will,” Beth said.
“Soon,” Dawn said. “The children are exhausted.”
“They’re welcome to stop wherever they like,” Beth said. “We’re not stopping until we find somewhere safe.”
Dawn said nothing to that and they started walking again. Predictably the others followed. Although, she reminded herself, she had not told them to do so.
* * * * *
At the end of the corn field, there was a dirt path covered by overhanging trees and bushes. It might have made a suitable place to stop and rest, except for the fact that it was overlooked on both sides, and they had no way of protecting themselves. Beth wasn’t even sure that she would be able to stay awake to look after Dawn while she rested.
She continued up the hill on the other side. It was only grass, but it was overgrown and awkward to walk on. She could feel rocks through the soles of her shoes and twice she almost fell over.
At the top of the hill, she could see a road. There were more zombies on it and, although she was confused enough not to know which way was which, she wondered if they were travelling towards Harmony. She watched them for a moment until Dawn caught up with her.
“People are talking you know,” Dawn said.
Beth looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“They saw what you did to that zombie.”
“What did I do to it?”
Dawn looked at her as if the answer should have been obvious. Maybe it was, but she didn’t feel like having this conversation with her twelve-year-old sister.
“They’re wondering whether it’s a good idea to keep following you,” Dawn said.
“I didn’t ask them to follow me in the first place,” she said.
“Yes you did,” Dawn said.
“No—”
“Yes, you and Dale. You told them you could take them somewhere safe.”
“Dale’s dead,” Beth said. She glanced down the hill and saw the others huffing and puffing as they climbed it. Was it her imagination or were there fewer of them now?
“But you’re not,” Dawn said. “You told them it wasn’t safe in Harmony, and they believed you.”
“It’s not safe,” she said. “Where do you think they’re going?”
She watched Dawn look down at the zombies and then she turned back to look at her.
“They’re safer here, but they’re not my responsibility. You’re my responsibility.”
Noel was the first to reach them at the top of the hill, closely followed by Rachel and David. One by one they all looked down at the zombies as they made their way along the road. There were hundreds of them now.
“Let’s go,” Beth said, reaching for Dawn’s hand again.
“We need to rest,” Dawn said, refusing to take her hand.
“Not here, it’s not safe.”
“Nowhere’s safe,” Dawn said.
Beth considered that and realised that it was probably true. At least here they were in the open and on the highest ground around. If anyone came, they would have plenty of warning, provided she could stay awake.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll stop here, but not for long. An hour tops.”
“Thank you,” Dawn said and then she turned away to go and give the news to the others, as if Beth had made the decision for them as well.
They were still on the top of the hill when the sun began to set. There was little protection from the weather and few of them, including Beth, had brought blankets. She sat on her own, away from the others and watched those who had shared with those who hadn’t. They were doing a good job of looking after themselves, she couldn’t see why they needed her.
She looked up when a shadow fell over her. Noel smiled down.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it.
“I’ve got a blanket,” he said. “Oscar insisted I bring it. It’s not much but if you want to share…”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. I need to stay awake.”
“If you change your mind,” he said. “You know where I am.”
Noel walked away, and Beth turned to look at Dawn, who was sleeping on the ground beside her. Although she had feared that she wouldn’t be able to stay awake, that no longer seemed to be an issue. After the first dream, she decided that she wasn’t going to sleep, not if it meant replaying the final moments of Dale’s life over and over in her head.
* * * * *
She occupied herself through the long night by planning their escape. The two of them might have fled across the field in the pre-sunrise with only the sound of distant birds for company. She thought they could have made it as well.
The trouble was that she was no longer sure whether the rest of the group was a liability or an advantage. It would have been easy to make a case for either argument: the more of them there were the greater the chances of a zombie seeing them; the fewer there were, the lower the chance of surviving an attack.
She didn’t wake Dawn, and as the sunlight spread across the field, the others began to stir. Her indecision had created its own answer to her question of what to do. Whether she liked it or not they were all together now, but that didn’t mean she had to be the leader.
They walked for most of that day. Beth tried to keep herself apart from them and evaded the questions that were occasionally asked. When the night arrived again
she found a copse of trees where they would be protected from the cold, but vulnerable to sneak attacks from zombies.
Beth sat beside Dawn, and she didn’t notice Noel until he sat down beside her. “Can we talk?” he said.
She glanced at Dawn, who was already asleep, and then back at Noel. She shrugged, and he seemed to take that as agreement.
“Did you sleep last night?” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said.
His expression suggested that he didn’t believe her but, she realised, that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about anyway. Her hostile response probably just proved to him that she wasn’t okay.
“What do you want to talk to me about Noel?” she said, hoping that she didn’t sound as irritated as she felt.
“Do you know how many people were with us when we left Harmony?” Noel said.
Beth shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe thirty?”
“Close. There were thirty-nine of us. Minus Simon of course. That should mean there are thirty-eight of us here now, right?”
“I suppose,” she said.
“I just counted Beth. There’s only thirty-two.”
She was not as surprised by this as she thought Noel expected, and he wasn’t as confused by it as he had initially appeared.
“I tried to get them to stay,” he said.
“You know who left?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I’m trying to tell you, Beth.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
He sighed. “They’re losing faith in you. They think you’re only looking out for yourself.”
“Where did they go?” she said. She had no intention of going after them, it was just curiosity.
“I don’t know. Back to Harmony maybe, or somewhere else.”
Zero Hour (Zombie Apocalypse Book 2) Page 2