by Jack Lewis
“We’ve got a decision to make,” I said. “There’s a promise of salvation here. But we don’t know who left the message or when. It could have been a decade ago for all we know.”
“Someone was here recently,” said Lou.
“Look at the state of the place,” said Alice. “Nobody lives here.”
Lou sneered. “So where did the fresh veg come from?”
Melissa sat back and let the couch take her weight. She rested her head on Justin’s shoulder. Justin sat there, his face glum, eyes disinterested. Every so often Alice cast her glance to the stairs. Ben was asleep in one of the bedrooms.
“So we accept that someone wrote the message within the last month?” I said.
Alice shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so.”
I pressed down a corner of the map, but it sprang back into a curl. “Now we need to know who left it.”
Lou leaned forward and ran her hand through her hair, stopping when her fingers hit a knot.
“Does it matter who wrote it? It was probably some woman who got sick of waiting for her husband to come back.”
“Could have been a man,” I said.
Lou huffed. “Whoever. It doesn’t matter who left it.”
“Then let’s consider the map,” I said. “The positioning of the place looks fantastic. Remote, water nearby. The range of hills will make it hard to approach from the south.”
Alice crossed her feet. “I feel like you’re already sold on this, Kyle,” she said.
Justin smirked. I almost rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It was the first time in weeks that I’d seen him look anything but glum.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Just thinking how distrustful you were when I first met you. And now you trust a message written in lipstick on a map.”
I nodded. “I realise that. But we’re running on empty here. I think we need to get to Bleakholt, get food, rest a little and then we can set out again full of energy.”
Lou leaned forward. She put her feet on the floor with a thud. Her eyes narrowed and her forehead creased.
“What the hell do you mean, ‘set out again’? Once we get to Bleakholt, that’s it, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Think the wave is just going to rest because we found somewhere nice to live? They’ll keep coming.”
Lou slammed her fist on the table. The glass shook. “I’m sick of this damn wave,” she said. “Sick to the teeth of hearing about it. Part of me just wants it to catch us and get it over with. At least it would spare me another lecture.”
Her angry words buzzed in the air. I let the silence hang. Outside, ivy clung to the window panes on the front door and covered half the glass. The wind groaned, and when it drifted through the cavities in the farmhouse walls it turned into a screech. I couldn’t believe that Sana preferred freezing outside to being in here with us. How much did she hate me?
“Are they okay out there?” I asked.
“They’re wrapped up in blankets in the shed,” said Lou.
Alice shook her head. “Stupid woman.”
I put my hands together. “Look guys, we need to decide. I think we should press on. The minute we see daylight we move.”
Alice’s eyebrows narrowed. She put her hand down on the table. “Not this time, Kyle. You’re not pushing us on again.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Ben isn’t going anywhere until he’s better. I don’t care if it takes a week.”
I sighed. Having the same argument over and over again took it out of me. In a perfect world, we’d get plenty of rest and we’d have enough to eat. But this world was far from perfect. It was the kind of world where resting even a few hours too long could get you killed.
“I know how you feel Alice, but – “
She hit the table. Even Lou jumped. “You don’t have a bloody clue how I feel! You never had kids. You don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for someone, because you don’t have anyone.”
The words shocked me. She was right, but hearing them sent a stabbing sensation across my chest. I had no one. She’d summed up my existence in just a few words. I hung my head and let ill-feeling seep through my brain. Thoughts of Clara smouldered in my mind like a spent forest fire.
It was Melissa who spoke first. “She doesn’t mean it that way,” she said. She moved her head off Justin’s shoulder and sat up straight, facing me. “You’ve got us. Without you, we’d be dead. But at the end of the day, we’re still not your responsibility. Not the way that Ben is Alice’s responsibility.”
She gave me a smile. Alice turned away and looked at the wall. Lou rested her chin on her hand and tried to look in any direction but ours. Emotional scenes were never her thing.
“Lou,” I said. “Do you think we should stay for a while?”
She nodded. “Yup. Give everyone chance to get their shit together.”
I didn’t want to rest. The Bleakholt settlement was hundreds of miles away, and the sooner we got there, the sooner we could rest. They didn’t have the same drive as me, though. They didn’t understand how dangerous the wave of infected were. They said they did, but if that was true, how could they even contemplate resting? It wasn’t worth arguing, because I knew they had made up their minds.
I straightened up. “Okay then,” I said. “Guess that’s settled. We rest for a couple of days, and then we set off toward Bleakholt.”
Lou nodded. Justin blinked. Melissa rested her head back on his shoulder, moving so that his shoulder blade didn’t stick into her cheek. Alice turned and looked at me. She opened her mouth to say something, but then we heard a cry from outside.
“Hear that?” I said.
Someone screamed. It was faint, as if the wind carried it away into the night. I stood up and knocked the glass cover of the coffee table with my knees. Lou steadied it.
“That’s Sana,” I said.
My blood pumped and my heart pounded. I rushed to the door. Lou followed me, but Alice went upstairs to check on Ben. Melissa and Justin stood at the doorway.
Outside, the wind hit me like a slap and the cold reddened my cheeks. I shivered and felt the hairs on my arms curl up. I looked across the garden for Sana and her son. When I saw them, an even bigger chill spread through me.
They were at the end of the garden. Sana’s son was on the floor. Two infected knelt by him and tore at him with their teeth. Agonised gurgles bubbled from his mouth, and terror was cut into his face. Sana stood beside him. She didn’t scream or shout. She grabbed one of the infected and tugged the collar of its shirt. The infected looked like it weighed a few hundred pounds and no matter how much Sana strained, she couldn’t get it away from her son.
“Ohmygod” said Melissa, and then her cheeks bulged. She bent over. She heaved, and liquid splattered the ground.
I pulled out both my knives and ran over to the end of the garden. I lined up my first knife and pierced the infected's brain. It hissed as though it were a punctured tire. The second infected looked at me, its mouth full of flesh. It blinked. I swung the second knife and lodged it in its temple. The infected fell onto its back and its black eyes stared at the sky.
Sana fell to the floor and hit the back of her head on the shed. She didn’t even seem to notice it. The colour drained from her face and made her look sick. She stared at her boy. His arms were torn apart, his flesh marked by teeth imprints like a nibbled block of cheese. Dark blood trickled from his veins and seeped into the grass. His eyes were shut. I grabbed his wrist and pressed my thumb into it, but I couldn’t feel a pulse.
With the amount of bite-marks on him, there had to have been at least a dozen points of infection. That meant the transformation process would be quick, and we only had a couple of minutes to act. I looked at Sana.
“You know what I have to do?” I said, more a statement than a question.
She didn’t say anything.
It was a moment where I knew that my actions in the following mi
nutes would imprint themselves on my brain forever. I looked at the dead boy, his blood trickling into the mud, red smears across his face. It was moments like that that drained a little bit of you away, but I had to do it.
I pulled my knife out of the first infected’s skull. I wiped the blade on my jeans, staining them with brain fluid. I held the boy’s chin and lined up my knife. I took one last look at Sana. Nothing registered on her cold face. I took a deep breath. I plunged my knife into the boy’s temple, felt it cut through the tissue and stab into his brain.
For a few seconds I let the adrenaline swish around my body. My hands shook, and a chill spread across my back. I stood up and turned to Sana. I offered out my hand. At first she reached out and took it, and I felt how freezing her fingers were. Then she drew back. Her eyes moved into focus, the fire in them burned.
“You killed him,” she said.
I looked down at the ground. I had to let her have this. She’d just lost her boy.
Sana got to her feet. She stared at me, her shoulders straight and her face as hard as stone. “I’ll kill you for this,” she said.
When I looked into her eyes, I could tell she meant it.
5
We had to keep moving. They were the only words I thought about these days, and I said them so much that I even started to annoy myself. Walking was all we had done since leaving the farmhouse in the dead of night. It had taken three days to get into Scotland. We moved non-stop during the day and rested at night, clinging to whatever fitful sleep we could manage. A fog of grief hung over the group, each of us dealing with what we saw in our own ways.
Darkness seeped into the sky and made it the colour of charcoal. I spread the map on my knees, careful not to worsen the tears that had begun to appear in the folds.
“I don’t get it,” I said, scratching my head. “It should be here.”
“Sure you’re reading it right?” asked Lou.
“Course.”
Lately we spoke in as few words as we could, as though every extra syllable consumed valuable energy. My stomach growled at me, demanded food. To my left, Alice and Ben lay on the ground. Ben stirred in his sleep, kicked his leg out. Sweat mottled his forehead.
“He can’t keep going,” said Lou.
I nodded. Ben had gotten worse since we left. Alice shot me dirtier looks with every passing mile. She blamed me for Ben’s condition, and I blamed myself too. But what was I supposed to do? They had wanted to rest a few days at the farmhouse, and look at what had happened there. Despite how remote it was, it just proved that nowhere was safe. We had to find Bleakholt, and until we did, we couldn’t rest.
The flame of my lighter flickered over the map, set an orange glow over the green contours that depicted Scotland. Lou’s face, locked in a grimace, was half-illuminated, but the other half was shadow. Alice sat up and rubbed her eyes. Bags hung underneath them.
“Can you put that out? Some of us are trying to sleep,” she said, her words clipped.
“Just trying to get our bearings,” I said.
She huffed and lay back down. I’d never seen Alice like this. She was pissed off at me, but there was nothing I could do. Sana slept a few feet away, as far as she dared stray. She had isolated herself from us. She walked on autopilot during the days, her eyes blank, dragging her feet. She never spoke, and if she ever looked my way, it was to give me a stare that burned with malice.
Between her and Alice, the hostility they held for me added an extra ten pounds to my load. It lowered my shoulders, made each step that little bit heavier. Where was Bleakholt, dammit? I folded the map away and hung my head.
Lou stood up and shuffled over to me. She sat an inch away.
“What’s wrong Kyle?” she said.
“Sick of being lost.”
She shook her head. “It’s more than that. There’s something on your mind. I can feel it.”
Her tone seemed kind, but there was no reason for her to be nice to me. I’d pushed her just as much as the rest of them. But feeling like I did, I would take whatever niceties I could get. I could use a bit of comfort.
“It's all down to me, isn’t it? I’m the reason we’re lost. It’s my fault Sana’s boy is dead. And Ben’s sickness is on me.”
I couldn’t hide the self-pity in my voice. I expected nice words to come, some kind of comforting gesture. Lou looked at me.
“Yep, it’s your fault. I’m not gonna lie to you, Kyle. You’ve pushed the boy too far. Hell, you pushed most of us adults too far. We’re not machines.”
I put the map in my pocket. “I just need to get us somewhere safe. They don’t understand, Lou. “
She stuck her palm out in front of me. “Please don’t start with the wave again. We’ve gotta stop soon. If we don’t, people are going to drop.”
I sighed. I knew she was right. Maybe I should let them get a little more rest and cover a few less miles each day. Perhaps I should just let the wave catch up to us, maybe then they’d realise the position we were in. I turned away from Lou. I lowered my back to the ground, looked up at the charcoal sky. It was time to get some rest.
Across the woods, something shrieked. There was a crash, like a branch falling from a tree. I bolted upright. Another shriek pierced through the trees. My chest flooded with panic. I knew what had made that shriek.
I looked to Lou. Her eyes were wide.
“Is that – “
My voice was a whisper, the words cold on my throat. “Stalkers.”
I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and tried to tune into the silence. Twigs snapped. Somewhere in front of me, I couldn’t tell how many feet away, a slick black outline slunk along the ground. My stomach lurched.
I gripped the handle of my knife. “We’ve got to move,” I said.
Another black outline joined the first. And then another. The faint shape of a head sniffed the floor. A body slid over the bracken. Another shriek pierced my ears, jolted my brain and wrapped around my spine like a cold hand.
To my right, Melissa sat up. She shook Justin awake. She looked at me, her eyes as wide as discs.
“What was that?” she said.
I held my finger to my lips. Justin lifted himself from the ground and rubbed his eyes. His skin was grey and his hair stuck out in curly clumps. There was another shriek. Justin turned in its direction, and recognition shot his eyes.
It had been stupid to camp here, but there had been no choice. The Scottish wilderness was so remote that houses were few and far between, and the woods had at least offered a little cover. Stalkers stuck to populated areas where there would be people to hunt, and I didn’t think there would be any out here. Yet here they were. My skin felt frozen.
“We need a plan,” said Lou.
I put my fingers to my temples and rubbed them.
“We can’t run,” I said. “Ben can’t even walk, so we’d have to carry him. And none of us can outrun stalkers with a kid on our back.”
The black shapes slunk closer. Their heads sniffed the floor and tried to pick up our scent. Right now they were probing the ground, not sure what it was they smelled, but it wouldn’t take long for them to confirm it.
“You’re not saying we leave him?” said Melissa.
Alice’s eyes snapped on mine. Her face turned into steel.
“Hell no,” I said.
“Then what?” asked Lou.
There was another crunch as a stalker trampled the twigs on the forest floor. The darkness above pressed in on us, so thick I felt like I was drowning.
We needed a plan. We couldn’t all run, not with Ben. But we needed to escape. It was my fault we were in this mess, and I owed it to them to do something. I had to make it up to them, especially to Alice and Ben.
I looked at Alice. “A diversion is our only chance. Some of us will split off and draw the stalkers away. I’ll volunteer for that. Alice, Ben, Melissa and Sana will go the other way, away from the stalkers.”
Alice shook her head. “I can’t carry him as fast
as you Kyle.” She looked down at her son. His eyes were open. His breaths were raspy. “You take him. I’ll create the diversion. Just get my son away from here.”
I couldn’t believe how fast Alice made the decision to leave her son. I was in awe of the guts it took to do something like that. Maybe when the choice was leave your son or watch him get torn apart by stalkers, the decision was easier to make.
“Okay,” I said.
Lou stood up. “I’ll go with you, Alice. “
