by Jack Lewis
I gritted my teeth. On top of everything he was calling me a liar. I was going to risk my life just for the good of the town, and this old man didn’t trust me.
“No chance,” I said.
“No arguments, Kyle. They’re going with you. If you come back with them and they tell me the wave doesn’t exist, then maybe I’ll listen.”
Justin shifted. “I’ll come too, Kyle.”
***
The next morning I packed. I’d spent plenty of time in the Wilds in the past, underprepared and low on food, and I wasn’t taking that chance again. I looked at the supplies laid out in front of me.
My knife
Four gas lighters
Food to last two weeks
Water
A sleeping bag
Flares
20 metres of rope
Nothing I packed would ever be enough, because you never knew what you were going to run into out there, but this was the best I could do. I’d been out in the Wilds for a lot longer with a lot less plenty of times before now.
By the time I got to the town square it was lunch time. It was an overcast day, and the sky wanted to send us off in a torrent of rain. A chill ran through the air, as if trying to drive me back indoors. I was glad I’d put on an extra layer.
Dan waited in the square. He sat on a small bag, the kind you’d take for a weekend city break. His hair stuck of in tufts, and his red cheeks puffed out. When I got closer, I picked up the sour smell of alcohol. Mean-looking bags sagged underneath his eyes.
“You stink of booze,” I said.
“Had a few drinks last night to celebrate our grand voyage,” he said, sarcasm undercutting his words.
“And a few this morning too?”
“Never leave the gate with a clear head,” he said. “Because anyone thinking straight would turn around.”
I dropped my bag to the floor, glad to lose the weight. “You seen Justin?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Why’s the kid coming with us anyway?”
“No offence, Dan, but I trust him a hell of a lot more than you.”
“Yeah, I heard you two were best friends. You’re an idiot, taking him with us. Kid’s a liability.”
Maybe he was a liability once, but he’d changed. Ever since we’d spent time on the road together, Justin had toughened up. He knew how to handle himself in the Wilds.
“What about Faizel?” I asked. I hadn’t expected him to be late.
Dan shrugged his shoulders.
Two figures approached the edge of the square. One was Justin, the other was a girl. I recognised her face. Mary? Maxine? Something like that. She linked her arm through Justin’s, and the two of them walked so closely together it looked like you’d need a crowbar to prise them apart.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Justin.
His face was unshaven, but his hair was combed back as much as his mop would allow. He wore army cargo pants that were too long in the leg. His coat was thick and waterproof, but it seemed like it was going to drown him. He had a rucksack on his back that was so heavy it looked like it would tip him over.
“This is Melissa,” he said.
She grabbed his hand, linked it tightly with hers. When she looked at me, her eyes flinched with scorn.
“Why does Justin have to come with you?” she said.
It all fell into place. Slacking in his duties, asking me if he could clock off early. Turning up late to the meeting. He’d gotten himself a girlfriend, and like all teenage boys who got laid for the first time, she had become the most important thing in his life. Despite how much the world had changed over the last sixteen years, some things stayed the same. A pretty girl still had the power to reduce a man to a buttery mess.
“I don’t have time to deal with this,” I said. “Dan, stay here and watch our stuff.”
***
I stood at Faizel’s door and knocked. His living room window was open, and I heard a boy crying. The door opened, and Faizel gave me a nod.
“Kyle, come in.”
His house was spotless. The carpet was clean and a flowery smell lingered in the air. Paintings lined the walls of his living room, some of them with their price tags on. One of them, a wooden boat swimming against a raging sea and with a captain stood on the stern holding a wheel, was worth ten thousand pounds.
Faizel saw me looking. “I got them from the art gallery in town. Nobody wanted them, and the owner is dead. It seemed a shame to let something so beautiful collect dust.”
He led me into the living room. His little boy was sat on the sofa, tears pooling from the corners of his wide eyes. His face was red, and he clutched a cloth rabbit in his hand.
“Just getting the last of my things,” said Faizel.
He pulled a key out of his pocket and opened a wooden cabinet that was pushed against the wall. He pulled out a fire axe. The handle was wooden and had dozens of little notches carved into it. The blade was clean, but it had been dulled through use. Faizel slipped it into a loop on his belt.
He bent down toward his son and took his hand. “You be good and look after your mother. You’re the big man now, and you can’t cry. Okay?”
The boy sniffed.
“I need to talk to Sana,” said Faizel. He walked out of the living room and toward the hallway to find his wife.
The boy’s eyes were puffy and his nose was raw from crying. I wanted to say something to comfort him, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I walked to the window, brushed back the curtains and looked out onto the town. Rain rolled over slate roofs and collected into the gutters.
“Is daddy coming back?” said the boy.
The boy’s eyes stared expectantly. There was a time when we lied to children and protected their innocence against the horrors of the world until they were old enough to handle them. But that was before the infected destroyed everything. Now, children couldn’t afford the luxury of innocence.
“I don’t know,” I said.
A door slammed out in the hall, and Faizel marched back into the living room. His face sagged a little, the corners of his mouth turning ever so slightly down. It was the closest thing to emotion I’d ever seen him show.
“Everything okay?” I said.
“Sana isn’t talking to me.”
He bent down and put his arm around his boy. The boy held his father and squeezed, as if he were trying to hold him back and keep him from going away.
I felt a pang in my chest. This was because of me. It was my fault that Faizel was leaving his family behind and going out into the Wilds. If he didn’t come back, the guilt would be mine.
Faizel gently pushed his son away. He picked up his bag, swung it across his shoulder and then gave his fire axe a tap.
“Ready?” he said.
I gulped. “Look, Faizel, I can’t ask you to do this.”
Drips formed around the boy’s eyes again.
Faizel looked me square in the face. “I believe in what you’re doing Kyle. Sometimes a man has to do something unpleasant if it’s the only way forward.”
***
We left Vasey without any fanfare. Nobody said goodbye to us save Melissa, who held onto Justin’s arm until we reached the gate. The guard on the turret pressed a button and the pulley system activated.
As the chains rolled and the black bars opened, Justin gave Melissa a long kiss. When they broke, he put his hand on her cheek.
“I love you,” he said.
She bit her lip. “Wish you’d found a better place to tell me,” she said, a bitter smile on her face.
“I mean it.”
She put her hand on his. “I love you too.”
I coughed. “We have to go.”
Outside the Wilds loomed. The midday sun was smothered by a cloud, and the rain tipped down onto our waterproofs. I gripped the steel bars of the gate, knowing that for the journey ahead I would have to do without the safety of them.
7
We walked for an entire day with a raging wind p
ounding at our ear drums, but when we stepped into the village of Stowham there was only silence. The volume dropped so suddenly that it made you question your ears, and though it was eerie, it was not entirely unwelcome. Better the settling of the silence than the moan of an infected.
Stowham was on the way to Manchester. We could have taken the motorway, but we decided that if we were making the trip, we may as well scout out some of the terrain. After all, we could find something valuable.
Now that we were here, it didn’t look like we were going to find anything. Stowham was made up of a few houses, a high street dotted with small shops, a grass-banked roundabout and a pub. A patch of ivy covered one of the houses, and in the last sixteen years it had been allowed to grow unchecked so that the green leaves smothered the face of the house and had spread onto the ones next door. Weeds grew through cracks in the pavement, and the stone wall of a general shop was caked with black dirt.
Justin walked beside me, shouldering the weight of a rucksack that was too big for him. Faizel moved in silence, his eyes engrossed in something I couldn’t see or hear, as if he was listening to a tune in his head. Dan carried his overnight bag that I was pretty sure had nothing in it but whiskey and cigarettes.
He stopped, bent over and rubbed his calf. “Why couldn’t we have taken a car?” he said.
The village was completely still.
“Let’s take a break guys,” I said to everyone. Then to Dan, “Vasey’s only got two cars and Moe wouldn’t let us take one.”
We sat on a row of benches outside a pub called the Slaughtered Calf. The wooden door of the pub was shut as though it was in the middle of a sixteen year-long lock in. I wondered if we should go inside and see if any of the booze was still good. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, but I had a thirst for a beer. That wouldn’t have been a good idea with Dan around.
Dan took off his right shoe, rolled down his grey sock and rubbed his toes. “You’re supposed to be the leader, aren’t you?” he said, hanging a trace of contempt on the word ‘leader’.
I unzipped my coat and let air blow against my chest. “The cars don’t actually belong to Vasey. They belonged to Moe, and he loaned them to Vasey. He wouldn’t let us use them for this.”
“So I get stuck walking all the way to Manchester just because you pissed him off?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a scout?” I said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a leader?”
Faizel leant forward. “Dan,” he said, in a tone that stopped further conversation.
I scanned the village for any signs of the infected. Despite how small the village was, there were bound to be some hanging around. I wasn’t worried; alone, the infected weren’t much of a problem unless they caught you by surprise. I couldn’t see any on the high street, but there were a few alleyways that twisted off from it, and infected could easily be waiting there.
A farmhouse sat at the top of a road that span away from the village centre. A conservatory window stretched the entire length of one side of it. Three blue solar panels glinted on the roof. A balcony stretched from one side of the house, probably positioned for premium sun-catching.
“Justin,” I said, and pointed at the farmhouse.
He followed my finger, saw the house and shrugged. “What?”
“Think you can learn how to use the solar panels?”
He put his hand to forehead, as though he were trying to block out sunlight, but there was none. Any sunlight was smothered under grey clouds that teemed with rain.
“Maybe,” he said.
Dan slapped his shoes on the bench, shaking off flecks of dust.
“We should check it out. Farmers have guns,” he said. He slapped his shoe a few more times.
“Would you stop that?”
He gave his shoe another thud on the bench and then set it aside.
I gave the village one more scan, making sure that Dan’s noise hadn’t drawn anything out. There were definitely some infected here. I had a sense for these things. Something just didn’t sit right, but what was it?
Movement out of the corner of my eye. Something on four legs.
My heart almost detached from its valves and slipped up my throat. The only things I knew that walked on four legs were stalkers, but those only came out at night. The sky was dark and grey, but it wasn’t night-time yet.
I gulped. A chill spread through my arms. Please don’t tell me the stalkers are starting to come out earlier.
“Did anyone see that?” I said.
“What?” said Faizel.
Dan yanked his sock onto his foot. “He’s seeing things.”
Justin sprang off the bench, walked to the steps that led down from the pub. “Look,” he said, turning to look at us. Then he pointed to the street. “It’s a dog!”
I got to my feet. Faizel joined me, but Dan stayed sat on the bench. Justin walked halfway down the stairs. A smile spread across his face.
“Justin, get back here,” I said.
I used to love dogs, but they were different now. Most of them roamed in packs. They’d learnt to be suspicious of anything they saw, and they were aggressive. Food was so scarce that when dogs looked at humans they didn't see their friends anymore; they saw a meal.
“He’s alone,” said Faizel.
It was a black and white border-collie. Its fur was overgrown and caked in mud, and it walked with a slight limp that originated from its hind legs. I thought I saw a red collar buried in the fur around its neck, but that couldn’t be right. If it had a collar then it had once had an owner, but there was certainly nobody living in Stowham now.
“Here boy,” said Justin, and whistled.
The dog turned in our direction. It sniffed the air, and its ears sprang up. It started to run at us in an uneven trot.
I took a few steps forward and stood in front of Justin. I drew my knife from my belt.
Justin looked worried. “What’re you doing?”
“We’re going to eat it,” called Dan from the back.
“Just in case it’s vicious,” I said.
There was no need for the precaution. As the dog got closer it wagged its tail, and as soon as Justin bent to his knees the collie ran straight into him and was showered in strokes. I bent down and ran my hand along its fur. Dried mud shook off and fell to the floor. Somewhere, underneath this mess, was a fine looking dog.
The collie gave a warm lick across my hand, and then put its paws on Justin’s knees. The teenager buried his head in the dog’s fur.
“Give me a break,” said Dan.
Faizel stood back, silent. He watched the dog intensely.
“First dog I’ve seen that didn’t want to eat me,” I said.
He nodded. “This one has had an owner until recently.”
Justin looked at me. “Can we keep him?”
I thought about it. Having a dog could certainly be handy. They had better senses than us, and the collie would be able to smell the infected before we saw them. It couldn’t hurt to have an early warning system. As long as the dog was quiet and well trained, this could actually be a good thing.
Dan put his bag on his lap, pulled out a strip of cured beef. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said, tearing off a shred of the meat with his teeth. He chewed, and then swallowed. “We can’t drag a mangy dog around with us. Are you mad?”
I took a few steps toward him. For a minute, I wasn’t focussed on what he was saying, more on what he was eating. “Been meaning to talk to you about this, Dan. Where the hell are you getting all your meat? Because I know you’ve gone through your ration already.”
The collie slipped from Justin’s arms, bounded up the stairs and sat at Dan’s feet. It stared at him, watching every movement of the meat as though it were transfixed.
“Get lost,” said Dan.
The collie lifted its paw toward Dan as though it had been trained to beg for food.
“Fuck off dog,” Dan said, and stamped his foot on the ground.
The collie started barking. The sound was gruff and booming, and much louder than I expected. It echoed through the stillness of the village.
“Come on Dan, give it something,” I said. “We can’t have it making this noise.”
“Fuck no.”
The collie carried on barking. Infected lurched into the daylight from the alleyways and open doorways, and I felt a jolt of panic run through me.
