by Jack Lewis
30
Lou pulled her coat up to her chin and shivered. She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Why did we have to set the meeting up at night?” She said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Better ask Alice that.”
Alice’s heavy boots pounded through the mud. “Ewan’s men would have seen us if we tried to do it during the day.”
The front of my boot wedged into the mud and became stuck. The mud squelched as I shook it loose.
“That’s doesn’t explain why we’re having it in Moe’s tent,” I said.
“It was the only way he would agree to the meeting,” said Alice.
Billy breathed heavily as he trampled through the mud. He walked on the right hand side, as far away from Lou as he could get. That left Alice and I in the middle. The four of us were strong people and seasoned survivors, but I still felt like we needed more.
The smell of the Vasey camp stopped just short of making me gag. It smelt like a crisis centre after an earthquake, with the homeless survivors squeezed together. The residents moved their tents closer for warmth, but many of them sank inwards at the roof and looked on the verge of collapse. It was as though they couldn’t be bothered to set them up properly, or maybe they just didn’t care anymore.
Most of the Vasey campers were asleep. Those who were awake stared into the night with empty eyes. They looked like Stalingrad soldiers shivering through a war, their bodies wasting away. Seeing them like this, it was hard not to feel sorry for them. After all, Moe had been the leader. Most of the people here had just followed him because he was a strong person. Was he stronger than me? Was it my fault that they’d followed him?
Moe’s tent was three times as high and twice as wide as even the biggest of the Vasey camper’s tents, and it watched over the rest like a monolith. The material was a yellow-pink hue, and in the dark it looked like flaps of skin that had been stitched together in the shape of a pavilion. The wind crashed against it and made a screeching sound as it rattled through the metal supports.
We stopped fifty metres away. Alice put her hand on my shoulder.
“Remember, Kyle. We need Moe’s help.”
“I know.”
“That means if he says something that pisses you off, you’ve got to keep control.”
An orange light flickered from inside the tent. Moe’s shadowy outline moved back and forth as he paced the floor. There was a figure stood to his side, slightly taller than Moe and not moving. As we reached the entrance my skin itched.
“This is it,” said Alice. “Stay calm everyone. Make the deal.
As I crossed the tent threshold a warm glow burned on my face. In the corner there was a black chiminea with logs burning in the middle. It seemed like a dangerous thing to have in a tent, but Moe had cut a hole in the top that allowed the chimney to stick out and carry away the smoke. It gave the tent a warmth that it had no right to have in the dead of winter. Moe’s tent was larger than the rest in the camp and it was a sick display of riches in a country of squalor.
Moe turned and gave a crooked smile. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
The figure next to him was Sana. She stood with her arms crossed. The steely features of her face were offset by the burning glare of her stare. As we all filed into the tent, Sana’s eyes ignored everyone else and followed me.
A table sat in the middle of the tent with eight places around it. I counted the number of people present. There was me, Alice, Lou and Billy on our side. That left Moe and Sana for Vasey.
“Expecting anyone else?” I said.
Moe shook his head. “Thought we’d keep this gathering cosy.”
He gestured to the table. “Take a seat”.
There were two bottles of wine and plates of fruit and vegetables on the table. Having seen the conditions of the camp outside, this amount of food seemed obscene. It was clear that Moe wasn’t sharing everything equally. I wanted to make a point of it, but I knew I had to stay quiet for now.
Alice, Lou and Billy took seats around the table. Moe pulled out a chair at the other end and lowered himself into it. Sana stood behind him, arms crossed, eyes fixed on me.
“Sit down, girl.” Moe said.
Sana shook her head. “I’ll stand.”
Alice and Lou picked up on the stare that Sana was giving me. The hatred in her eyes transferred from her eyes and fixed in the air. It made the atmosphere tense, as though things could snap with the slightest pressure. This wasn’t a good way to start.
“Are you armed?” I said, looking at Moe but really wanting to know about Sana.
Moe nodded. “I sleep with a knife under my pillow and shit with one by my side.”
“Then I think we better put our weapons away, for now.”
Moe smiled and stood up. He gave me a look as if he was being the most gracious man in the world.
“If you say so, Kyle. Forgot how paranoid you were.” He looked over at Sana. “Yours too,” he said.
Sana frowned and pulled a knife from her belt and passed it to Moe. He walked to the end of the room and dropped them in a box.
Alice looked at Billy. “Better take ours,” she said.
Billy collected our weapons and walked to the end of the room. As he walked near Moe, Sana moved in his way. Billy stared into her eyes and then bumped her out of his way with his shoulder.
Moe drummed his fingers on the table. “So here we are. Friends again and weapon-less to boot. What say we all have a drink?”
He strained his stubby fingers for the wine bottle, but Alice leant across the table and dragged it away. Moe gave her a stern look.
“This isn’t the time,” said Alice. Her voice was strong and neutral. If she hated Moe as much as I did, she did a better job of hiding it. “We’ve got an agreement to make, and time isn’t our friend.”
Moe leant back in his chair. As he put his arms behind his head I saw how skinny his biceps were. Despite the fact that he had kept most of the food for himself, he had lost some of his bulk. Maybe it was just his age catching up to him.
“I’m guessing you’re here about our pal Ewan,” he said.
I sat forward, a dull ache cramping my stomach. A thought stabbed through my mind. Moe and Ewan are working together.
“You’re friends with him?” I said.
“Not really,” said Moe. “He used to come here and bitch about Victoria and try and get us to jump into bed with him. We turned him away. He’s scum.”
“You’ve got that right,” said Lou. Billy darted her a look, then turned his head away.
Moe beat a rhythm on the table. It sounded like a drumbeat that an army would march to. Outside the wind blew against the tent entrance and made the material of the door flap desperately against the sides of the tent. Through the open doorway I could see a sliver of the moon. The glow seemed impossibly bright tonight, as though the moon were hurtling itself toward the earth. A few miles away the hills stood large, like giant stone sentinels watching over the land.
“What do you suggest we do?” said Moe.
This was it. It was time to make the deal. Part of me still wanted to reach over the table and rip Moe’s throat out, but I knew that I just had to keep it together for a few minutes longer. Once the deal was done, we could get out of here.
Alice crossed her fingers and joined her palms together. Her shoulders were straight. She looked Moe in the eyes.
“If you and the rest of the Vasey people were to help us, we could get rid of Ewan tonight. I don’t know what would happen after that, but it’s imperative we get rid of him. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything about the wave of infected, and he’s ready to kill anyone who disagrees with him. He’s already sent Justin out into the Wilds. Our proposal is simple. Help us save Bleakholt by supporting us when we get rid of Ewan.”
Moe leant back and stared at the tent ceiling. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes. He looked at Alice and gave her a nod. Before he could speak, a shadow approached the
entrance of the tent. A man poked his head in. He scanned the room, lingering on us for a few seconds with a nervous stare, then spoke to Moe.
“There’s a problem,” he said.
Moe’s face flinched. “What kind of problem?”
“You know what kind,” said the man.
Moe looked at us. “If you’ll excuse me for a few seconds,” he said. “I hate to be rude, but I have to deal with this.”
Moe stood up and walked to the tent, with Sana following him. Before she stepped out into the night, she turned and looked at me. There was a cold smile on her face. “We won’t be long,” she said.
As soon as Moe and Sana left the tension deflated from the room. It was as thought we had all been holding our breaths under water, and now that we had surfaced we could suck in as much oxygen as we liked.
“I thought he was gonna say no,” said Lou.
Billy stood up and stretched his arms above his head. His joints cracked. “What’s with the woman? She wouldn’t stop staring at you, Kyle. Looked like she was trying to drill into your brain.”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
Alice crossed her arms. “I’m pleased with how this is going. You’re doing well, Kyle. Just keep it together long enough for us to work something out.”
Shadowy figures approached the tent entrance. I stood up and felt my blood pound. I was already annoyed. Had Moe decided to bring others with him? Was he intimidated by being outnumbered? The hairs on my arms rose, as though annoyance coursed through me like electricity.
The figures got closer. I felt my muscles tighten and prepared myself to start shouting.
“Kyle,” said Alice in a reprimanding voice.
I sat back down. I took a deep breath and tried to let the feelings settle.
As the first figure approach the entrance, my breath caught in my chest and a shard of fear stabbed through me.
“Oh shit,” I said.
Instead of Moe’s cruel face or Sana’s unblinking stare, something else stepped into the tent. It raised its arms and stumbled toward the table, a guttural groan sneaking out of its throat.
More figures bundled in behind it, and soon the infected were spilling into the tent and filling the space. It was starting to resemble a tent at a festival, but instead of music we listened to the desperate cries of the dead.
Billy got to his feet so quickly that his chair tipped over. The first infected lurched at him but he stepped back and let it swipe the air. Alice stood up and walked around the table, putting the wood between her and the infected.
The infected filed in. Within seconds the tent reeked of death. It didn’t matter how many times I’d smelt it before, the stench of decay always threatened to empty my stomach.
Lou looked at me. “The bastard set us up,” she said.
31
An infected span round, took a few steps and reached out for Lou. She moved to the side, grabbed the back of its head and forced it down onto the edge of the chair. The wood crushed through the infected’s skull like a hammer cracking an egg. Lou let it flop to the floor.
“Kyle. The weapons,” said Alice.
I ran over to the side of the tent where Moe had put the weapons, but I couldn’t see the box. I turned round and shouted to Billy.
“Was it here?” I said.
“Yeah” he said, and took a few steps back to get out of the reach of an infected.
There were dozens of them in the tent now. In such small quarters we couldn’t have hoped to kill them all, even if we had our weapons. At some point the bastard had managed to get the box taken outside the tent. How had he done it, when we had all been looking in his direction?
Thoughts of revenge burned through my mind, but the groans of the infected cut in. The tent filled with the sound of their gnashing teeth. One of them lurched forward, stumbled and fell at my feet. I lifted my boot up and brought it crashing down on the infected’s head, splitting through its skull with a sickening snap.
“Shit!” shouted Lou.
My heart rate spiked and my whole body felt electrified. The smell of decay crept up my nostrils and made me retch. My heart banged so hard that I thought it was going to burst through my chest and splat onto the floor.
As the infected shambled toward us we backed into a corner of the tent. With no more room to move, we all pressed together.
“We need to force our way out,” said Billy, his voice strained.
“We don’t have any weapons,” I said.
Alice put her arm on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If we stand here, we’re dead either way. Don’t let him get us like this.”
Alice’s words seemed to fill my chest with air and send adrenaline coursing through me. It rushed through my veins and gave strength to my muscles, feeding them with a steroid of fury and hate. I wasn’t going to die in the corner of a tent.
“This is it,” I said. “Don’t let the bastard win.”
We fought our way to around the table. I pushed away any infected who grabbed for me, taking care to avoid their teeth and they clacked together with each bite. One infected squeezed my shoulder with a sticky palm and then leaned in, like a horny teenager diving for a love bite. I grabbed it by the neck. My thumb pierced its skin and pushed through into its vocal chords, and I saw the stringy tendons move as the infected groaned. I smashed its head down onto the table.
The tent was alive with the shrieks of the infected and the snap and cracks of their bones as we fought them. The smell of clotted blood was thick in the air, look a week old jug of pig’s blood spilled on a carpet and left to dry.
We worked our way around the table. Billy picked up a chair, raised it over his head and smashed it down on the ground. He picked up a few shards of wood and stabbed them into the oozing flesh of the infected in front of him.
“Almost there,” said Lou in a breathless voice.
As we reached the entrance of the tent I had never been more thankful for the feeling of the cold Scottish wind on my face. We got out of the tent and spilled into the night air. Billy bent over and wheezed. My pulse fired so fast it felt like my veins were going to rupture.
Alice shouted to us. “Don’t stop now guys. We need to get the hell out of here before Moe sees that we made it.”
She was right. Moe had probably assumed that the infected had gotten us. After all, faced with dozens of them in such a cramped space and with no weapons, we couldn’t reasonably have expected to survive. It was a miracle that we all had.
I turned to Billy and Lou and was going to tell them to get ready to move. As I opened my mouth, I heard a horrible scream behind me.
I span round in time to see an infected loom behind Alice. It grabbed her and ripped a chord of flesh from her neck. Her face warped in a knot of agony as blood spurted out from her.
I ran over, but before I got there two more infected had lurched out of the tent. They grabbed hold of Alice and pulled her down to the ground. Within a second they had sunk their teeth into her face, clamped down hard and then torn away her cheeks in a spray of saliva and blood.
The next minutes were a blur of gushing crimson and shrieks of agony. Hot sick filled my throat, and my veins pulsed to the point of bursting. Lou and Billy rushed past me. Alice struggled on the floor for a few seconds, shrieking out noises that were inhuman.
Alice’s thrashing settled into a weak shake and her cries dripped into a sob. Blood poured off her face and neck and stained the mud. With great effort she turned her head and looked at me, her stare so intense it looked like her pupils could puncture.
Somehow, I understood the meaning behind the look. She was begging me to find Ben and take care of him. In her final seconds, with her face ripped apart and blood seeping out of her, Alice’s thought were on her son. Her body shook, spasmed and then she was still.
32
I sank to my knees in the mud. My stomach burned, and acid slid up my throat. I bent over and vomited on the ground. I felt sadness run up to m
y face and into my eyes, where it welled up and streamed down my cheeks. It was so deep that it felt like a force pressing me to the floor, and it was going to keep me there until my body started to rot. I didn’t want to get up, and I didn’t know if my body would respond even if I tried.
Billy walked ahead of me to Alice and the infected. He grabbed one of them by the hair and lifted it an inch off the ground. The infected turned its head and gnashed its teeth. Billy smashed its face into the floor with such force that it exploded like a watermelon.
The other infected stood up. Chunks of Alice’s flesh dropped from its mouth like crumbs. It turned to Billy and hobbled toward him.
