by Jack Lewis
1
Michael was the first to die. We buried him a week after leaving Vasey, but I didn’t know enough about the man to get upset about it. He was one of the survivors of the Vasey stalker massacre, but we’d barely shared a word since leaving town.
We were outside a block of flats on the outskirts of Dolington. Michael stood with his back to a doorway and held the doorframe as if he was going to do a pull-up. He was telling us about why he and his wife split up, completely his fault, when a pair of hands reached out of the shadows. They dragged him screaming into the black mouth of the building.
I ran in. I sunk my knife into the first infected’s skull and cracked the second one’s head with my steel toecaps. I pushed away the third so hard that it stumbled and fell, but it was too late. Blood leaked out of Michael’s neck, the skin on his throat torn open like a Christmas present.
For weeks we walked in a tight formation, like a unit of marines on patrol. I was the spearhead. Lou walked beside me full of energy, but she never said much save the occasional profanity. Alice took big strides, whisking her son Ben along with her. Justin trailed behind, his head hung, feet dragging. Melissa held his hand so tight the skin turned white. I didn’t know what was wrong with Justin, but ever since his coma, he hadn’t been the same. Sana and her son were at the back. They didn’t speak to the rest of us much. She never smiled, especially not at me. After what happened to her husband, Faizel, I didn’t blame her.
The sky was a milky white, but clouds dribbled across it like runny paint. The wind was biting. Flecks of snow drifted down, stung my skin and then melted. The further north we got, the colder it was. The ground was tougher and it was harder to walk for long without taking breaks.
Something thudded against the ground behind me.
I span round. “Oh shit.”
Ben, Alice’s son, had collapsed. Alice bent down and put her hand against his pale skin. Her forehead creased with concern and her eyes narrowed.
“Come on lad,” she said. “Open your eyes.”
Had we not heard him collapse, I could swear Ben was just asleep. His chest was thick from the four layers of clothing that Alice had forced him to wear. His ghost-like face poked out between the hat on his head and scarf around his neck.
I dropped my stuff and walked over to them. I bent down and touched his cheek. It was ice.
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
Alice leant both hands against the floor. “We’ve been pushing him too hard. He’s worn out.”
I nodded. Our journey had been tough on him.
“We need to stop,” said Alice.
Those words sent a shiver through me, made my chest feel heavy with panic. I hadn’t rested for a second for the last three weeks since we left Vasey, save to eat and sleep. I was like a shark, if I stopped moving I would die. If we stopped moving the wave of five hundred thousand infected would catch up to us.
Lou threw her bag to the ground and sat on it. She wore a white tank top with only a black cardigan covering her arms, as though the cold didn’t bother her. Her neck tattoos, a diagram of the inner sinews of her neck muscles and throat, made her look half infected. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair and then stared at the ground.
Justin dropped his bag to the floor. Melissa followed, and then Sana. It looked like we were stopping. Ben was silent on the ground, his chest rising and falling.
“Do you think we can just get outside of Dolington and then rest?” I said.
Anger flashed through Alice’s cheeks. Almost too quick to notice, like the sting of a scorpion.
“He needs rest now, Kyle,” she said in a firm voice.
“How about there?” Lou said, and pointed.
A church was to the left, past a crowd of oak trees with bare branches. There was a graveyard outside, and the heavy wooden doors of the church were closed. Stained glass windows stretched along the side of the building, and the spire ran forty feet into the air. It was the kind of church where the same parishioners turned up every Sunday. Nothing changed save for the creases of age that time cut into their skin.
I looked at Alice. There was concern and a hint of anger on her face. Lou sat down. She tried not to show it, but I knew that she was feeling the strain. Justin always walked at the same slow pace, never saying much unless prompted. Sana walked sullenly at the back, stopping every so often to wipe her son’s wet eyes.
We’d covered hundreds of miles since leaving Vasey but it wasn’t enough. A wave of five hundred thousand infected walked somewhere behind us, like an army falling into step. Any infected they passed were sucked into it like a vortex. They would never stop. Never take breaks. There were only two instincts in their brain. Either eat something, or walk until you find it.
“Let’s take him inside,” I said.
Every step toward the church felt like two steps back. The wave of infected wouldn’t have a rest, I knew. Every minute we spent idle was a minute they gained on us. If only we didn’t need to sleep or eat.
The frozen grass of the graveyard crunched as we waded through it. It reached up to our knees and covered the gravestones, hiding the names of the dead etched into them. Alice carried Ben in her arms. I had her pack on my shoulder, though it didn’t add much weight. We were running out of food.
Lou gripped the black handle of the door and pulled. The metal creaked and her face strained, but the door didn’t budge. She let it fall back and knock against the wood.
“Guess God’s not home. Does anyone have his number?” asked Lou.
Sana closed her eyes and sighed. I pulled mine and Alice’s packs off my shoulder and put them on the floor. I walked up the steps to the door and sized it up. The wood itself was sturdy, though the paint had long since become crusty and started to rot. The door was at least four inches thick. I took a breath, tensed my body. Lou looked at me with her eyebrow raised.
“I’ve had worse ideas,” I said.
I rushed forward and heaved the full weight of my body into the door. A shock of pain ran through me when I smashed into the wood. It exploded in my shoulder, made my stomach churn. I sat on the steps, caught my breath, and rubbed my aching muscles.
“Done being the tough guy?” said Lou.
I waved her away. “No jokes,” I said between gulps of pain. “It’s killing.”
“You realise you’re more John Major than John McClane?”
“I’m not that old.”
“The apocalypse hasn’t been kind to you.”
Maybe she had a point. Over a year ago a hunter called Torben Tusk had chosen Justin and me as his prey. I killed Torben, but not before he’d sunk a bullet in my left leg. Since then, I got shooting pains through in my leg when I walked for long periods of time. Lately it seemed all I ever did was walk.
Brawn wasn't going to get the door open, but brains might. Justin was always the clever one, and he would know what to do. I looked up to talk to him, but panic hit me in the chest. There was an infected wading through the grass of the graveyard with hungry eyes and an open mouth.
I got to my feet, ignoring the stabbing in my leg. The infected stretched out its arms and twitched its fingers. The skin around its mouth had fallen away to reveal cracked chin bone and gnashing teeth. Torn rags clung to a chest made sticky by blood, sweat and decay. It was a foot away from Justin, but it wasn’t stretching out at him. It was going for Melissa.
I sucked back the pain and prepared to jump in, but before I could Lou got to her feet and closed the distance. She pushed Melissa out of the way so hard that she fell to the ground, just about managing to put her hands out to stop her fall.
Lou grabbed the infected by the shreds of its t-shirt and slammed its head down onto the stony edge of a gravestone.
The mold-covered stone smashed through the infected’s skull. The light in its eyes dulled and its brain shut down. Lou brought its head up and then slammed it down again. There was another crunch as bone met stone.
She smashed it again and again. Bone fragments split off. Blood splashed over Lou’s chin and brain segments flew away like chopped cauliflower. Lou’s face turned red, her eyes burnt.
Melissa watched with her mouth open and rubbed a graze on her elbow. Justin looked with disinterest. Alice held Ben in her arms, showing no signs of struggle with the extra weight.
I stepped forward and put my hand on Lou’s shoulder, felt her muscles tense underneath. I pulled her away. The infected’s neck had come away from its body, and as I pulled Lou back she kept hold of its head.
“Drop that,” I said.
She opened her hands. The head fell and landed on the grass.
Melissa closed her mouth. She stood up, pointed a finger at Justin.
“I can’t believe you did nothing,” she said.
Justin looked up like a dog responding to his master’s call. “What?”
Melissa strode over to him. She stood in front of him, looking up. There was a gulf of four inches between their heights. She poked a finger into his chest.
“What the hell is wrong with you? There's an infected coming at me, and you don’t do a bloody thing? It takes Lou to save me?”
Justin rubbed his mouth. “I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t see it because you’re in a world of your own, thinking about god knows what,” said Melissa.
She was right. In the last three weeks Justin had slipped into a dark hole. He didn’t speak much. He never smiled. He took watch when it was his turn and he walked without complaining, but it was like he was going through the motions. He and I were close, but I hadn’t spoken to him about it yet. The words just wouldn’t form.
Alice got to her feet. “I’m freezing my tits off. We need to get inside right now.”
She pointed to the side of the church. “Lou, you walk round there and check for a side entrance. Justin. Make yourself useful and check the other side. Mel, go with him please.”
There were no arguments. When Alice asked someone to do something, they did it. She had a natural authority about her, an inner confidence that demanded respect. It was strange to think that she was once married to Torben Tusk, the sick man-hunter. What the hell had she ever seen in him?
***
Lou smashed a window and opened a side door that let us into the church. We might as well have stayed outside though. The church was a wide space, the ceiling stretching twenty feet above. A cold draught circulated, and the room smelt like dust had mixed with mildew and thickened the air. We checked the priest’s room, but we only found a dirty bed, an oak desk and a tattered bible. There was no sign of the priest, and not even a scrap of food.
That wasn’t much of a surprise. Tinned goods, back when they were still produced, were good for several years. Manufacturers put ‘best before’ labels on the sides advising how long the food should last for. It was usually a few years, but a tin of sweetcorn, for instance, could last a lot longer. A tin of food – covered in water, not sauce – with no marks or dents could last over a decade. If it smelt okay when you opened it, you better start eating. The problem was that you didn’t find many of those around.
Farming was the future. I’d known it in Vasey, a settlement of two hundred survivors where we’d tried to grow our own food. It could have worked had things not turned sour, had that bastard not ruined everything. I thought of Moe. Heat rose in my chest, and I had to suck it down. It didn’t matter how hungry or tired I was, my body always had enough fuel to burn to keep my hatred of Moe going.
“He’s waking,” said Alice.
We’d put Ben down on a pew. Alice loosed his layers a little, gave him room to breathe. He stirred now. He opened his eyes, twitched his fingers. Blood seeped into his cheeks, just enough to colour the white.
“Mum?”
Alice kissed his forehead and pressed him close to her chest. The kid struggled. He pushed her away, and shook his head.
“Leave it out mum!” he said. He glanced around and settled his eyes on me.
He was trying to see if I’d watched him getting a hug from his mum. Lately Ben had started walking alongside me. He studied me as if I was a waxwork and tried to copy my mannerisms. I guessed since he and Alice had left his dad, the kid lacked a male role model. I didn’t think he needed one; Alice was a better example for him than anyone could be.
“Let’s talk,” said Alice, looking at me.
Alice, Lou and I walked to the front of the church. The altar loomed above us, and Jesus hung from a cross on the wall behind it. The thorns dug into his head and blood dripped from his skin. There was a haunted look on his face.
“How’s Ben?” I asked.
Alice bit her lip. “He needs some downtime.”
“Does he seem okay?”
“As good as he can be, given the circumstances,” said Alice.
I folded my arms. “Then we better get going.”
“Bullshit,” said Lou, the harsh echo of her words bouncing off the roof. I looked up at the statue of Jesus as if I expected him to be shaking his head disapprovingly. There’s a lot more shit than swearing to worry about these days, buddy.
Alice put a hand on my shoulder. “I get what you’re doing Kyle. You want to keep ahead of the wave. But we’re not machines. We need to rest.”
A hot feeling rose in my chest. I tried to let my thoughts settle. “Do you think they’ll ever rest?” I said. “Or will they just keep coming?”
Lou shifted her weight onto her other foot. “We’re running on empty, Kyle. We’ve got nothing left.”
“The infected are never going to stop.”
“No, but we have to,” said Alice. She frowned. “What’s our end goal? Where are we running to? Is there a point, or do we keep dragging our arses ahead of the wave just long enough to survive?”
I thought of what to say, but Alice jumped in before I could open my mouth. Her face was red. “This isn’t living. We’re not dead, but we’re not alive. We’re just running. Existing. We’re no different than the dead buggers out there.”
I knew this wasn’t much of a life for them. What was the alternative? Stop and hope that for some reason the wave of infected decided to turn around and go home? That didn’t seem likely. I was the only one willing to push us through this. I was keeping us alive.
“We can rest a couple of hours, and then we’re moving,” I said.
Alice opened her mouth.
“No arguments,” I said. “Two hours.”
Alice stormed away. Lou turned to leave, but she looked me in the face before she did.
“Dick,” she said.
I felt bad about Ben. Travelling was harder on him than it was the rest of us, because he wasn’t old enough to handle it. And I knew that tempers were starting to wear, and most of them were pissed off at me. I just had to swallow it. If I gave in, and we stopped, the wave would catch up to us and we would all get eaten. Maybe I was going to have to play the bad guy.
I couldn’t answer Alice’s questions. I didn’t know what we were aiming for or where we were going. I didn’t know what the point was anymore. The only thing I thought about were half a million infected who followed us.
2
We walked through cycles of cold days and black nights, the lack of street lighting giving the darkness free reign. Ben clung onto my back, his knees around my waist. I lead from the front while the glares of the other six bore into my back. Ben rested his forehead on my shoulder, and soon my t-shirt was damp from the sweat that dripped off him and seeped through. We stopped every thirty minutes. Ben felt sick. Alice needed to stop for a pee but she couldn’t go. Sana’s boy fell over, cut his knee and cried.
Our steps crunched on grass that had hardened from the cold. Clouds gathered overhead, mean-looking and full of hate, ready to rain down on
us. The chill in the air spoke of winter, and the odd snowflake that fell down promised there was more to come.
“I don’t feel too good,” said a voice in my ear.
I shifted Ben’s weight on my back.
“Can you hold on another couple of miles, buddy?”
“I think so,” he groaned.
A deep ache of guilt sat in my stomach and spread into my chest. I didn’t like driving them so hard. The boy was sick, and I was only making him worse. Did this make me a bad person? Would it be better if I let them have a rest, but then the wave of infected caught up to us? Would it be any consolation for my conscience to be clear but for us all to die?
The couple of miles didn’t happen. Ben wheezed and then sprayed sick over my shoulder. I stopped and put him down. His head was burning, but his skin was chalk. Alice rushed over. She glared at me, and then knelt beside Ben.
