by Jack Lewis
Dan scoffed. “Left your wife and kid behind though, didn’t you?”
Faizel rounded on him. Anger flashed on his face, blood flushed his cheeks. He took a breath and it seeped away. “You either come with us, Dan, or you walk back to Vasey alone.”
“Moe’s going to be pissed at you.”
“Then let him.”
Adrenaline shot through my veins. I put my hand in my pocket, gripped my watch. Every minute we wasted was time we could spend looking for Justin, and I could feel the seconds slipping away.
“I’m leaving now. Faizel, Alice, if you come with me, I’m grateful. But don’t feel like you have to. You’ve both got enough to lose, and I’ve got nothing.”
Faizel put his hand on my shoulder. My back sagged underneath the weight, as though everything was catching up with me and my body couldn’t bear the load.
“You’ve got Vasey, Kyle. You’re trying to build something for us all, and it’s a higher calling than most.”
Dan scowled and shook his head.
“Decided what you’re doing?” I said.
He looked at the window, and then spoke through gritted teeth. “Guess I don’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice,” said Faizel. “Time you made the right one.”
My left leg ached and energy seeped out of me. Outside the black sky spat darkness onto the streets. I needed to sleep, but there was no time for that. I wanted to sink into the bed so badly, but I walked to the door instead.
“I’ll get our stuff together. We leave in thirty minutes.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until morning?” said Dan.
Soon, the stalkers would be leaving their nests. They would slink through the streets, sniffing at the pavement hoping to catch the scent of prey. It would be safer in the morning, but Whittaker could be long gone by then. I didn’t know what he planned to do with Justin, but unless we left right now, we would be abandoning him.
“We don’t have time to wait,” I said. “If we’re going to find Justin, check out the wave and get back before Moe leaves, we can’t waste any time.”
Faizel stretched his arms above his head, let his joints crack. “We’ll need a car.”
I shook my head. “No chance. Do you know how hard it is to find one that works?”
Alice nodded. “I used to check every one we passed. Gave up after the hundredth.”
Faizel smiled. “It’s lucky you brought a mechanic along with you, then.”
“You’re a scout,” I said.
“I’m a scout now. But scouting the ruins of post-apocalyptic villages wasn’t a job before the outbreak, Kyle. I used to own a garage with my brother.”
I’d known Faizel for a year, and I never realised he worked with cars. It showed just how little I really knew about the people of Vasey. Everything I did was for them, and I wasn’t even sure that they wanted it.
“You’re full of surprises.”
Faizel nodded. “We all used to be something else,” he said.
“Even so, working cars are thin on the ground.”
“Finding a working one isn’t a problem,” said Faizel. “It is getting the keys that is tricky.”
I realised I’d been here before. This was the second time Justin had been taken by someone. The second time I’d found myself needing a car. How did the same shit happen to the same guy twice?
14
We left the silent streets of Stowmouth behind. Darkness lingered black and angry in the sky, and a chill in the air licked at our faces. My shoulders sagged under the pack on my back and my leg ached, but I pushed through it.
A few years after the outbreak, when things got really bad and the population wasted away, I travelled back into a town after months spent camped in the Wilds. One thing that stuck out was the absence of noise, as if every sound had been sucked away and we walked through a vacuum. It was like that every night now. Stowmouth, and the countryside that branched from it, were mute.
My brain started to fill the gaps in noise. The rush of the wind blowing against a tree sounded like the movement of a stalker, the patter of its claws scraping on the pavement. Every shadow twisted into a creature, every shape in the darkness was a threat.
“Not a single one worked. I can’t believe that,” said Dan.
Faizel shifted the weight of his pack on his shoulders. “Sometimes you get lucky.”
“You’ll have to remind me what that means,” said Dan.
We walked out of Stowmouth, took a turn on a bypass that led to the motorway. The small country roads were the quickest way to Bury on foot, but there weren’t many houses on the way, and absence of houses meant there wouldn’t be any cars.
“Do you know where we’re going, Kyle?” said Alice. Ben tugged on her hand, gripping her as if she were about to leave him. In Alice’s other hand she held a crowbar that she’d found on the roof of a car.
The motorway stretched into the distance, an endless concrete path. Trees lined the side of it, their branches almost bare from autumn shedding. Ahead of us, a bridge stretched across all four lanes of the motorway, with the words ‘Tracy Lithgow I love you I’m sorry’ drawn on in white paint.
The motorway was curiously absent of cars save for a few that were parked haphazardly against the barriers, their doors opened in a state of abandon.
We looked at each one we passed. Faizel pried open the bonnets, checked for oil and other things that I was unaware of in my complete lack of technical knowledge. Each time, he shook his head.
Shapes burst from a bush at the side of the road. I flinched and reached for my knife, the drum of my heartbeat racing. It was for nothing. A scatter of rabbits darted across the motorway ahead of us, tiny shadows with bulbous eyes. One stopped dead, stared at us, and then followed the rest of its family.
“What are you looking for?” I said. “When you pop the bonnet.”
“No science to it. If the car looks healthy, there’s a slight chance it’ll have enough battery to start. But even that is a one in a thousand chance. Did you ever go on holiday for a while, get home and try to start your car?” said Faizel.
I thought back to all the trips Clara and I had taken. What a novelty that was, the idea of a holiday. “I guess.”
Faizel continued. “You must have come back at least once and found that your car choked. And that’s when it hadn’t been used for a few weeks. Imagine what they are like after sixteen years.”
The black sky was compounded by clouds thick enough to cover the glow of the moon. Darkness seeped down from above and covered our faces in shadows.
Ben stood still, pulled Alice back. “Can we stop, mum?”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got to keep going.”
He screwed up his face, looked like he was about to cry. “But I’m tired.”
Dan stopped now. He dropped his bag on the floor, let out a huff of air. “Can you shut that kid up?”
Alice gave Ben a gentle squeeze. She walked over to Dan and without saying anything, she punched him in the gut.
Dan bent over and took hoarse breaths. He blinked and then lifted his head. He held his fists at his sides and his face glimmered with anger.
I stepped in between them. “Cut that shit out,” I said. I turned to Alice. “Don’t ever do that again. That isn’t how we do things.”
Alice’s face was twisted, her body tense. “If he talks to my child that way again I’ll do worse.”
Faizel dropped his pack on the ground too. It seemed we were stopping, but this was the wrong place to do it. The motorway was completely in the open, and we had no cover. If any infected saw us, or God forbid a stalker, we’d have nowhere to hide.
“We need a plan, Kyle. We can’t just walk down the motorway.”
I nodded. I’d driven down this road a few times before the outbreak, and I knew how far it stretched. I didn’t have any intention of walking all the way to Bury, because it would take too long and Justin could be long gone by then.
“There’s a service station up ahead. Maybe we can find a car and get some sleep for a couple of hours. But we’re moving at first light.”
Dan bent down and rubbed his calf. His heavyset body shook with each breath, but I didn’t know whether it was through exhaustion or through anger at Alice.
“You’re pushing us too much. I’m sick of this shit.”
I picked up my pack, heaved it on my back. I was moving no matter how much he moaned. “Just a little bit longer. Man up.”
***
The service station consisted of a petrol garage and a large complex that housed fast-food chains and shops. Truckers and long-distance commuters went there to fill up their cars, use the toilet, grab some food or just have a nap before continuing their journeys. I’d been a few times myself when I travelled for work. There was something lonely about the service station; everyone who used it was usually hundreds of miles away from their families, spending nights away from them for a job that made them miserable. If only we’d realised how precious that time was.
The crazy thing was that during the first years of the outbreak, when things turned bad and got progressively worse, people carried on with their jobs. They kept going to business meetings, wearing suits, travelling to work. They pretended everything was okay. If only we’d looked around us and seen how screwed things really were, maybe we could have prepared better.
We’d taken the outbreak too lightly, but there was no reason why we wouldn’t; we’d heard it all before with Swine Flu and Ebola. There was always a fresh reason the world was going to end. Even as the news reports flooded in, most people still got dressed and went to work. They thought someone would find a cure. They believed that if they just acted like everything was okay, then the whole mess would blow over.
A dozen cars were parked up outside the services, various models ranging from tiny hatchbacks to four wheel drives. Maybe one of these would work. We were here, so it was worth checking.
The rest of the group lagged behind. Ben slid his feet on the floor so that Alice had to drag him along. Dan idled at the back, staring at the floor. Faizel stood and took in his surroundings, drinking big gulps of air. The weight of his pack and the miles we’d covered didn’t seem to bother him.
“What do you think, Faizel?” I said. “Reckon any of these cars will work?”
He sucked in his cheeks. “Maybe.”
“How about we check them first, then we get some sleep? We could smash their windows and get some rest in the back.”
Dan caught up to us. “Can’t we check in the morning?”
It would have been better to wait until morning, when we were all refreshed, but my arms and legs were filled with agitation. I kept imagining Justin in the back of the van, wondering about what Whittaker was going to do to him. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t abandon him to it.
“The quicker we check, the sooner you can rest.”
We went to each car, opened the bonnets by force and waited while Faizel did his checks. My eyelids felt heavy after we worked through ten of them without getting lucky.
Faizel stood away from the bonnet of a red Peugeot. He smiled.
“Think we have a winner,” he said.
Dan gave a sarcastic grin, too wide to be genuine. “Fantastic.”
I walked over, patted Faizel on the back. “Good stuff. Now we just need the keys.”
Alice pressed her head into the back window of the car and peered in. “There’s a business jacket hung up on the back seat.”
I nodded. The service station was the size of a warehouse and stood at the end of the car park. “Must have been a business man who went for a piss. He’ll have the keys on him.”
It amazed me, at first, the way that some people kept on going right to the end. Even when the country was falling apart some people still put on their suit in the morning and headed off to work, as if clinging to their normal life would somehow keep it from slipping away.
Dan scoffed. “You’re saying we go in there?”
It was the only way. He would still have the car keys on him. The business man would have parked up, gone into the services and died. That’s what happened back then; the start of the outbreak was a slow progression, but when things got really bad, it happened without warning.
I didn’t want to do it any more than Dan did, but we had no choice. Every second we wasted we let Whittaker get further away, and even after getting Justin back, we still had to see if the wave of infected existed and then return to Vasey before Moe left.
I took a deep breath, held a confidant pose. “We have to do this. It won't be so bad.”
Dan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So all we’ve got to do is go in there,” he said, pointing, “Find a suit-wearing infected among God knows how many monsters are in there, kill it and take the car keys?”
I took my knife from my belt and tightened my grip around it.
“Exactly.”
15
The dark glass doors of the service station loomed ahead. Adrenaline washed through my body and soaked my veins in a nervous energy that made my fingers twitch. Dan walked behind us, his reluctance showing in each slow step. Faizel slipped his fire axe out of his belt, held it casually at his side. He looked like he was taking a walk in the park.
“Need to ask you something,” I said.
Faizel turned his head to me. “Go ahead.”
“Back at your house, why wasn’t Sana talking to you?”
Dan scoffed. “Is this really the time for a chat?”
We had better things to think about, but I needed to know. Faizel was always calm no matter what went on around us, and I couldn’t understand how a guy like that could have upset his wife so much.
Faizel’s tightened his fingers around his axe. “I promised her I wasn’t going out again.”
“To the Wilds?”
He nodded. “I told her I’d give up being a scout. Actually, I was going to ask you if I could help in the fields.”
“Faizel the farmer,” said Dan.
Faizel grimaced. “You would understand if you had anyone to think about but yourself.”
I slid the service station door open. Inside, the darkness looked thick enough to wade through, but we couldn’t risk flashlights because of the unwanted attention they would bring. I closed the door quietly behind us.
“Stick to the walls,” I said.
The main lobby was the size of a school hall. Fast food chains, newsagents and coffee shops split off from it, and benches were spread out in the centre. Next to them, plant pots the size of boulders stood empty, the plants having wilted away years ago.
“How the hell are we meant to find it?” said Dan.
The darkness thinned as my eyes adjusted. Black outlines of the infected lay prone on the floor. Some of them stirred, kicked their legs out, rolled their heads to one side. It was like they were sleeping.
You got so used to thinking of the infected as being devoid of brain function that it was amazing to see the differences in their behaviours. In the Wilds, most of them would stumble around until they found someone to eat. But when they were indoors, they usually shut down, only rising when something jolted their senses.
We were looking for an infected wearing a business suit, minus the jacket. Hopefully there weren’t too many of them around because I wanted this done quickly. A weight sat on my shoulders as though the darkness was pressing down on me.
“They should stay dormant if we’re quiet,” I said.
We followed the curve of the wall until it stopped outside a newsagent shop. A rack of magazines lined one wall. On the other, bottles of spirits were stacked together. Dan eyed them like a wolf watching a flock of sheep.
“Nope,” I said, reading his intentions.
“Give me a minute.”
“I swear to God, Dan, if you even think about – “
As the words dropped from my tongue Dan had already moved away, his brain guiding him straight to the alcohol. It was hard to believe that a f
ew minutes ago he had been reluctant to even come in here, and now he was shopping for whiskey. To a man like Dan, life was about the small pleasures. The future was a hard concept to grasp, but the warm glow of whiskey as it slid down his throat was something he understood well. I guess some instincts overruled fear, no matter how banal they were.
I turned to Faizel. “Looks like it’s down to us.”
I could see more of the lobby now that my eyes had grown used to the darkness. The infected at the far end of the room were still vague black forms that wriggled every so often, but I could make out the features of the ones nearby; a woman in a Costa Coffee uniform, a man wearing a janitor apron. I couldn’t see our business man.
