Fear the Dead (Book 3)

by Jack Lewis

  The stalkers moved closer. I could almost hear their noses sniffing as they caught our scent. I thought I could see the flashes of their teeth and their mouths set in sickening grins. My heart pounded.

  “Me, Ben, Justin and Melissa will go west. Alice, Lou, and Sana, you guys go east. Don’t fight them, just run. If you’re quick, you should be able to get away.”

  Lou nodded. Alice stood up, wrung her hands. She pulled Ben to his feet. She gave him a long, pressing hug.

  “What’s going on mum?” said his weak voice.

  She kissed his forehead. When she pulled away, a wet film covered her eyes.

  “Go with Kyle,” she said.

  “Remember,” I said. “The stalkers will follow you. Get as far in front as you can. Head for Bleakholt, and we’ll meet you there. Don’t stop running.”

  Lou nodded, and then turned away from us.

  “Just keep Ben safe,” said Alice.

  “I will,” I promised.

  We split away from the group and moved west. I carried Ben on my back, felt his head rest limp on my shoulder. Melissa and Justin walked at my side holding hands. None of us spoke. We didn’t dare look back. We just walked as quickly as we could through the darkness of the woods. Every crunch under my foot sent a shock of fear through me.

  I thought about Alice, Lou and Sana. Deep down, I knew they couldn’t outrun the stalkers. I thought about what they were giving up. Alice was sacrificing herself for her son. Lou was doing it for a complete stranger. It should have been me.

  I put one foot in front of the other. Yard by yard, we cleared the forest. My pulse wouldn’t set still, and every sound sent a shiver through me. Then I heard a shriek. Ben screamed so loudly that it hurt my eardrum. He dug his nails into my neck.

  I span round. There were three black outlines in the darkness behind us. The stalkers slunk along the floor, tracking us, their claws scraping over the earth. The diversion had worked, but not the way we planned. Instead of following Lou and Alice, the stalkers had followed us. They were hunting the wrong people.

  6

  Beyond the edges of the forest was a grassy plain that stretched for miles. In the distance hills jutted into the air, rocky crags that looked too treacherous to walk on. My arms were cold, my legs heavy, and my breath blew like wispy smoke in the winter air. Melissa and Justin turned around and looked the stalkers behind us. There were two of them following us, but I was sure there had been more of them earlier. Were they hunting us in packs?

  Melissa’s face turned white. She went to scream, but Justin clamped his hand over her mouth. They looked at me, as if asking what to do. Ben whimpered in my ear. His weight on my back threatened to drag me down.

  It was useless to run. I was carrying Ben, and at full sprint my leg was going to hurt like hell. Besides that, a stalker going at full speed could run faster than a car. It was even worse to stay and fight. I’d seen stalkers chew through bone like it was tissue paper and tear into flesh like they were opening a package. I reached for my knife, but I knew it was useless.

  Justin’s eyes were wide. Melissa’s face had drained as though her blood had been sucked away and replaced by chalk. The stalkers prowled closer, testing the ground, seeing how close they could get before we moved. We needed to make a decision.

  “We run,” I said. The words felt thick in my throat.

  Justin looked at me, and I could see in his eyes that he knew how useless it was. There was nothing else we could do.

  “Out of the forest,” I said. “Just run.”

  I turned, faced the edge of the woods and saw the open plain through the breaks in the leaves.

  “Hold on tight,” I said to Ben.

  We sprinted. Ben bounced on my back, and my leg began to ache. Twigs and roots hooked around my feet and tried to trip me. One stumble and that was it. The edge of the forest got closer. Outside of it, the sky was lighter; dawn was coming, but not soon enough. There was just enough darkness to keep the stalkers from going back to their nests. If there were just a little more light, they would retreat, but could we run for the thirty minutes it would take for dawn to break? The stabbing pain in my leg told me there was no chance.

  Claws scraped across the forest floor behind us. Branches crunched. A stalker gave a shrieking war cry that pierced my ear drums and sent a shock of fear through me. Melissa’s foot snagged a root and she tumbled to the floor.

  The stalkers made up ground. The edge of the forest was close but the stalkers were closer, near enough that I could hear their snarls.

  Justin picked up Melissa. They carried on running. We cleared the forest, ran onto the open plain. The absence of trees should have lifted the claustrophobic feeling, but the sky was dark and heavy. My chest burned, my leg ached. Ben clung onto my neck so hard that I couldn’t breathe, and my lungs struggled to pump air and made me wheeze. Just keep going. Every step keeps you alive.

  I couldn’t keep up the pace with Ben’s weight sagging on me. Pain exploded in my left leg, as if my bullet wound were fresh again. It felt like I was running through fire. Justin and Melissa overtook me. I couldn’t go on.

  Ben cried in my ear. “What’s wrong Kyle? What’s wrong? Keep going.”

  But I couldn’t. I pulled his arms away from my neck.

  “Go with Justin,” I said.

  They were young and they didn’t have wounded legs. They could keep running. I would let the stalkers take me. All of this was my fault anyway. That would be my sacrifice; buying them enough time to get away. I turned and faced the monsters.

  They stopped. They were ten feet away; close enough that I could smell the earthy stench of their skin. Their two rows of razor teeth glistened, and saliva pooled down onto their chins. Their black eyes stared at me and their lips curled in a malicious smile. If stalkers were capable of happiness, this was it. They had a meal waiting for them, and it wouldn’t take them long to gorge on my flesh.

  After sixteen years surviving the outbreak, this was the end for me. It wasn’t much of a conclusion. Thoughts flashed through my brain. What had I done with my life? I’d watched my wife die. I’d let Vasey be destroyed. I had led my group into slaughter. This was the end, and the only thing I felt was a dull ache in my chest from the darkness that seeped through my body.

  I gave the stalkers once last look, stared deep onto their lifeless eyes. I closed my own and let the darkness take over.

  Something rumbled in the distance, a vibration that ran across the ground. Not the stalkers. It was the sound of an engine. Two engines. Getting closer, the roar of an exhaust firing, wheels turning over the plain. I opened my eyes.

  Two quad bikes tore across the grass. Men rode them with their heads bent down. The heavy wheels of the quads rolled towards us. The stalkers stopped and turned to face the noise of the vehicles that screeched toward them.

  They were feet away now, so close that I could smell the smoke as petrol burnt. A stocky guy rode one of them, his muscles bulging as he gripped the handles. He rode with his back arched, but it was clear that at full stretch he would stand at six foot five. Pock-mark scars dotted the right side of his face, as though someone had stuck pins in his cheeks. He turned the accelerator handle, made the quad roar.

  He stared at the stalkers as he zipped toward them. His eyes were steel, his shoulders tense. One of the stalkers, the nearest to him, turned. It went to move, but it was a second too late. The quad smashed into its skull, hit the side of its face with the force of a heavyweight boxer. The stalker’s head swivelled to the side, spit flew from its mouth, and it crashed to the floor. The other stalker reared and retreated a dozen metres.

  The man killed the engine and got off the quad. The stalker writhed on the floor and tried to get up. The man stood on the grass. He pulled a mallet from a bag on the back of the quad, the type a butcher would use to pound meat. He walked to the stalker, his jaw clenched. He watched it struggle on its back like a fly, then lifted the mallet and brought it crashing down onto the stalker’s h
ead. Black blood spilled onto the grass and a hiss escaped the stalker’s mouth. Another blow and this time it stopped moving as the last of its life seeped away.

  My throat was thick and my heart pounded. I had to clench my hands into fists to stop them shaking. I got to my feet, felt a shock of pain run through my leg.

  The man scooped up the stalker’s body like it was a dog that had been hit by a car. He carried it to the quad and put it on the ground next to the tyre. He took a bin liner from a bag strapped to the back of the vehicle, opened it wide, and stuffed the stalker into it. He put it on the back of the quad and secured it with ropes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, the words scratching my throat.

  “No time,” came his deep response. “You and the kid get on my quad. The boy and the girl, you get on that one,” he said, and pointed to the other quad.

  He was right. There was no time to argue about it. The other stalker was getting braver, and soon its hunger instincts would overrule its sense of danger. It was still a threat. Even one stalker could tear us apart.

  “Come on Ben,” I said. I took his hand and heaved him to his feet.

  I got on the back of the quad. Ben sat behind me, his arms around my waist. Melissa and Justin got on the other quad.

  Behind us, the other stalker shrieked. It reared onto its hind legs and prepared to launch into a pounce. The man twisted the handle and the engine fired to life.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  The wheels tumbled over the grass. The air pinched at my face and made my cheeks wobble. Ben clung tighter onto my waist. I turned my head and risked a look behind us. The stalker ran full pelt, its legs springing it across the plain like a jaguar. The look on its face was pure determination, a burning hunger.

  “I’ll draw it wide,” said the man on the other quad. “You head for the passage.”

  The driver of our quad grunted a response. The other quad turned, split away from us. But the stalker didn’t follow suit. Instead, it picked up speed, bent its head and powered toward us.

  A gigantic hill lay in front of us. I was sure now that it was the one that we had seen on the map, and that meant that Bleakholt was beyond it. We were headed straight at it. I knew that quad bikes were good on rough terrain, but surely it couldn’t ride over the hill? The peaks of them were so high that they were almost mountains, and even the most experienced climber would struggle with them. The stalker closed the distance behind us, making retreat impossible. The rocky hill loomed in front, ready for us to smash into it.

  I held my breath and closed my eyes. Maybe dying on impact would be better than being torn apart by the stalker. If my choice was instantaneous death or getting eaten alive, it was an easy one. I bit my tongue, prepared for impact.

  It never came. Instead, the wind on my face dropped. I had the feeling of being enclosed in something. I opened my eyes.

  We were on a narrow dirt path. The hillsides pressed in close enough that one jerk of the steering wheel would send us crashing into them. It was a passageway through the hill system, a valley just big enough for us to escape. I hadn’t even seen it when we had approached the hill.

  The stalker followed behind us. It shrieked and gave chase, its muscles bulging, clawed limbs pounding on the ground. I saw the end of the passage way, a crack of light that promised escape.

  “Keep your head down,” called the man.

  We reached the end of the passageway, and the quad tumbled out onto yet another open plain. The stalker followed behind, the pursuit having no effect on it. How long could they run for? Would it ever stop?

  A crack rang in the air, and I heard something tumble behind us. I turned and looked. The stalker lay on its back on the ground, its arms and legs twisting. Blood leaked out from its skull.

  The man driving the quad held his thumb up in the air and gave a whoop. There was a building in front of us. A man was on top of it with a sniper rifle balanced on a wall in front of him. The roofs of houses stuck into the air behind him. A chain link fence was spread half a mile wide across the plains. In front of it a large green sign read ‘Welcome to Bleakholt. A shining light in bleak times.’

  7

  This wasn’t the welcome I expected. Ben was unconscious by the time we reached Bleakholt. A group of men stood at the gates and formed a welcome party. They lifted Ben off the quad and took him away without saying a word to me. The man on the quad led me to a fenced area, pushed me in and then left. Another one stepped forward, slammed the fence gate and clicked a padlock shut. I wanted to ask what the hell was going on but my body felt too weak. Instead, I sank to the ground.

  The floor was hard stone with weeds poking out. A ten foot chain-link fence surrounded it, making it look like a prison yard. There was a wooden shed in the corner, and inside there was a cracked toilet and a mattress with a yellow bed sheet.

  Every six hours someone came and give me a bottle of water and some food. It was some kind of gruel, a water mixture that tasted like sawdust. The guy who brought the food didn’t look at me or talk to me. He wore a makeshift hazmat suit of thick gloves and a body-length clear plastic coat. As he handed over the supplies he kept a wary eye on me as though I might leap up and attack him. The truth was I didn’t have the energy.

  The first day I paced the yard. I shouted for someone’s attention, but nobody came. I started to wonder what kind of place this was. I had some grim thoughts. Were they cannibals? Were they crazy? I pushed the thoughts back.

  From here, all I could see of Bleakholt was a few houses a hundred yards away. The bricks were coloured to look like sandstone and thatched roofs sat on top of them. A main road twisted around a corner, presumably toward the centre of the settlement. The whole place reeked of mud, a sour smell that was thick in the air and pinched at my nose. It could have been a normal country town, were it not for the fence that ran the perimeter and caged it in.

  As the sun set and the wind chilled me, I went into the shed. Through a dirty glass window I watched the sky turn dark, and my thoughts darkened along with it. I had a twisting feeling in my stomach. I thought of Ben and how sick he was. I wondered where they’d taken him and what they had done with him. I thought of Alice and Lou. Alice was separated from her boy, and she and Lou had two stalkers chasing them. I couldn’t shake the thought that there was no way they could have escaped. What about Justin and Melissa? They had gotten on the other quad. Did they make it?

  It was all down to me. A twisting feeling of guilt made my stomach cramp. Anger burnt through me, but the fire of it spread inwards because I knew it was my fault. Everything I did was for the others. But somehow, I always got it wrong. Made the worst choice every damn time.

  Dammnit Kyle!

  I pulled back my fist and smashed it into the glass window. The glass cracked and splintered out of the shed. A searing pain spread through my hand, and blood welled though a cut on my knuckles.

  ***

  A day later, Melissa and Justin arrived. My heart pounded at the sight of them. As the fence gate shut, Melissa shouted at the guard who had escorted them.

  “What do you think you’re doing? What is this place?”

  Justin looked up and saw me sat on the ground. He tapped Melissa on the shoulder.

  “Mel, look.”

  She turned round. A brief smile flickered when she saw me, and then disappeared.

  “What the fuck’s going on Kyle?” she said.

  The profanity jarred me. It didn’t seem to fit her somehow, as though all this time I’d seen her as a quiet girl who wasn’t capable of saying bad things. You never truly knew someone until something bad happened. When you put the squeeze on someone, their real personality seeped out. Melissa was tougher than she acted.

  I got to my feet. My right hand throbbed. I’d taken off my t-shirt, torn off the sleeve and wrapped it around the cut. The bleeding had stopped, and now I just had to hope it didn’t get infected.

  “Did you get…”? Melissa said. Her eyes widened at the
sight of my makeshift bandage.

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t bitten.” I jerked my thumb behind me to the shed, to the shattered glass on the ground. “I’m doing some remodelling.”

  Justin rubbed his hand across his beard. “How long’ve you been here?”

  “A day or two, I lost track,” I said. “What happened to you guys?”

  “A stalker got the guy driving the quad. We climbed on the quad and took off.”

  “I wonder how long he took to die,” said Melissa, scorn in her voice.

  Justin looked at her. His eyes were stern, the first real expression I’d seen from him in a long time. “We didn’t have any choice, Mel. Would you rather it was us?”

  He turned to me.

  “We drove through that narrow little passage in the hills. But as soon as we got to the edge of the settlement, a bunch of guys showed up and marched us here.”