by Jack Lewis
Billy’s face was as red with blood, and a look of fury overtook his eyes that made him seem more like a rabid bear than a man. He put his foot on the infected on the floor in front of him. He bent over, took hold of its arm and pulled. The infected’s bones snapped, and with one heave Billy pulled its arm away from the body. He held the limb in front of him, with jagged bones sticking from the end.
A wave of sickness took me again. I was dimly aware of Lou behind me, and I was sure I could hear her sobbing. I knew I should go to her and try and comfort her, but the misery welling in my body held me down like gravity on an alien planet.
The infected groaned and then stumbled toward Billy. He raised the severed arm over his head, waited for the infected to get closer and then brought it down, piercing its skull with the bone. There was a popping sound like a tyre getting punctured, and the infected dropped to the floor.
An arm touched my shoulder and tugged me up from the floor. I turned and saw that it was Lou. The cloud of sadness shifted away from my eyes, and I knew that that I had to say something.
“Listen, Lou – “
Lou lurched forward and wrapped her arms around me. She squeezed herself against me and then sobbed into my chest. She made deep sounds that were almost howls and her fingers dug into my sides. I thought of Alice and everything she had done for us, everything she would have done in the future. And there was Ben, the boy who had now lost his mum as well as his dad.
I wrapped my arms closer round Lou. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but it wasn’t. Right now my stomach was heavy with a welling sadness. Eventually that would start to leak out and when it did, I would be empty. What would replace the feeling? Hopelessness?
It was all because of Moe. He’d agreed to the meeting, and then he had set us up. He was happy to let us all get torn apart by the infected in his tent. He didn’t give a shit that he was making a boy an orphan, tearing a group apart. And for what?
My blood started to run hot. My shoulders tensed up, and my breath caught in my chest. I took hold of Lou’s arms and prised her away from me. She looked up, red rings around her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
My head was fogging over. My whole body shook as though the fury inside me was making my cells vibrate. Moe had to pay for this. He had to die for everything he had done.
I walked across the ground toward the centre of the Vasey camp. The colds wind slapped at me, but I didn’t care. I knew that as soon as I killed Moe, Sana or the other Vasey campers would want revenge. I pushed thoughts of my own safety into the recess of my brain. Right now, I was focussed on one thing. As I reached the tents in the centre I stopped and looked for Moe. This was it. Time for him to die.
The sound of a horn broke over the stillness of the night. It boomed over the plains and shattered the quietness like a sudden thunderstorm. The sound chilled my blood and knocked thoughts of revenge away, because I knew what the horn meant.
The wave of infected had reached the hills.
33
There was static energy in the air that electrified my skin. I stood on the plains just outside the fences of Bleakholt. I looked at the scared faces around me and tried to work out what they were thinking. Most of them looked panicked. Men with faces drained of colour, hands clenched around their chosen weapons. Women with expressions set in hard resolve. The last few hours had been a scramble to get everyone armed and to the plains, ready to fight. Now we watched and waited.
I felt a sickness deep within my stomach. The people needed a leader for the battle ahead, and I wasn't it. I thought of Alice, and sadness welled inside of me. I forced it back down. I wasn't the leader these people needed, but I would try to be.
The security of Bleakholt’s fences was too far behind us to give any comfort. The hills loomed a mile ahead, hulking masses of stone that watched us silently. They were here before us, and they would still be there long after our bodies rotted into the earth. How many of us would survive the battle to come? How long would it be before the infected spilled through the hill passage like pus seeping through a blister?
The wind whispered into my ears and blew down my back. The air was heavy with the sweaty stench of a hundred people. Hours earlier, when the horn blew and gave its signal, everyone picked up their weapons and headed to the front of the town. Some had delayed and others had to be dragged out of their homes, but ultimately everyone was here. Victoria had drilled them well.
Somehow the hills seemed even bigger than before, as though they had swelled until they covered the horizon. The people around me chattered with grimaces on their faces. Some zipped up their winter coats and rubbed their arms. Others stared at the ground and hoped it would swallow them up. These people were survivors, but they weren't fighters.
A man stood to my right, next to his teenage son. Grey had started to creep into the man's hair, and his thin frame showed that his daily rations weren't enough for him. The man stared ahead at the hills, eyes glazed. He looked like he would be better placed behind a table in an office boardroom.
His son looked more alert. He held two solid steel wrenches in his hand, the weight of them enough to shatter a skull if applied with enough force. He held one out to his dad, who had his arms at his side.
"Take it, dad."
The man didn't move or speak. It was like the hills cast a shadow over him, and the idea of the infected pouring out of them made him mute. I imagined this was what conscripts had looked like in the trenches before a push. White faces and faraway stares.
"Dad."
I wondered how people got like this. The man had survived the outbreak and the sixteen years that followed, so surely he must have been used to the infected by now? Or maybe you never got used to them. Perhaps living in Bleakholt so long, safe behind the fences, had taken away the dread of the infected. Now, faced with the reality of having to fight them, the dread was back.
A strong hand gripped my shoulder. I turned and saw Charlie Sturgeon. He wore a winter jacket that looked fit for arctic conditions instead of his blood-splattered lab coat. A thick scarf reached from his neck to his mouth, and his wispy hair lapped on the wind.
"You won't need that when the fighting starts," I said. “You’ll be boiling.”
Charlie looked over to the hills and grimaced. "There's something we need to do first," he said.
I looked across the ranks of the Bleakholt people. There were a hundred of them, but without the Vasey campers we didn't have the numbers to put up a fight. This wasn’t a battle that we would fight to win. We were on the edge of a cliff holding on, and our fingers were turning white with the strain. There was only one way we could hold out.
"We need to use the explosives," I said.
Charlie nodded. "I've got to ask, Kyle. Why have we left it so late?"
I looked to the ground. I thought of Ewan and the time we'd wasted on him. I thought of Moe and pictured him smirking to himself as he left us to die in his tent. Hot bubbles of anger filled my stomach. Sadness was one thing, but fury was another. Fury would see me through the battle, while sadness would lead me to my death. I left my anger to boil.
"I let us get side-tracked," I spat. "And look what happened."
Charlie squeezed my shoulders. "We better do it now. We don't have much time."
"How long until they get through the hills?"
"Thirty minutes at the most."
I swallowed, but my throat felt cracked and dry. "Then we better do this. Have you got the explosive?"
Charlie nodded.
"Where are Billy and Lou?" I asked.
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. His winter coat added bulk to his body, but he looked weak.
"No idea."
The pit of my stomach burned. Where the hell where they? Charlie must have sense how mad I was because he scratched the back of his head and added:
"Maybe they're with the kids."
I thought about Ben. I hadn’t even seen him since Alice died. "And where are
they exactly?"
"In the mayor’s office with a few of the older mums and dads."
I pictured them shivering in the office for hours, listening to the screams of battle, too scared to even look out of the window. Then, when everything went quiet, they'd step outside. What would they see? A litter of corpses on the battlefield and everyone they knew dead and eaten? Would the infected finish them off after the rest of us were dead?
"This won't work," I said. "We need to be able to get a message to them."
Charlie adjusted his scarf. "We've got a spotter on the roof. If the kids need to leave, he'll blow the horn."
"Then what?"
"They got on the bus and leave."
"Wait a minute. There's a bus?"
Charlie nodded. "We have a double decker fuelled up and ready to go."
"How many people can it carry?"
"Eighty, in a squeeze."
Maybe it would have been better to just leave right now. Was Bleakholt worth the fight? I knew that there was nowhere else to go, that Victoria had built the only place capable of giving us a life. But was it worth the sacrifice?
As if reading my thoughts, Charlie answered me.
"We've still got a chance Kyle. If we blow the hills, we can stop them coming. But we have to go now."
I felt myself fill with resolve. I'd spent so long running that I'd forgotten what it was to stand and fight. The infected had torn the world apart. They'd broken families and ruined lives. Those of us who were left had to take a stand. If we didn't, there was nothing else left.
I turned to my right and walked over to the scared man and his teenage son. The man's arms hung limply by his side, and now he stared at the ground rather than the hills.
"What's your name?" I asked.
The man turned his head slowly like a crane. He looked at me but didn't reply for a few seconds, as though the sound of my voice travelled miles before it reached his ears.
"What's your name?" I repeated, feeling irritation rise in me.
The teenager grimaced. "He shouldn't be here, he can't fight for shit. He should be with the others."
In contrast to his father, he was a stocky teenager. His face was chubby, youthful and flushed red, but in a cruel twist his hair was thinning at the back and receding at the front. He stood with one hand around the wrenches and another in his pocket, shifting his weight restlessly from one leg to another.
He gulped and his cheeks turned grey. His stringy hair blew in the wind and showed the pink of his scalp. He reminded me of Justin, in a way. He looked nothing like him physically, but he had the same lost look in his eyes.
"Then you'll have to do instead of your dad," I said. "What's your name?"
"Reece."
"Come with me Reece. It's time to save Bleakholt."
34
As we crossed over the plains time seemed to stretch out like a ribbon of twine slowly unravelling. It was like we were on a conveyor belt and it didn’t matter how fast we went, we never seemed to move forward. With every step on the frosted-encrusted grass dread built up in my stomach and then spread into my chest. If someone stabbed me now the dread would seep out of me, thick and black like oil.
Charlie stared at the hills. I could tell he was scared from the way his fingers twitched, but he kept his focus on what lay ahead and where we were going to set the dynamite. Reece took clumsy steps and gripped his wrench so tight that his finger bones stuck against the skin.
The pathway cut into the centre of the hulking hills. It was a crevice the width of a bus, and it looked like it had been carved by the gods. I tried to look all the way along it and see the other side, but the sides of the hills cast a shadow over the pathway and hid what lay beyond.
Despite the gloom it seemed so calm, and it was hard to believe that thousands of infected would soon groan their way along it. I put my hand to my forehead as if to guard my sight from rays of sunlight that weren’t there.
“What’s wrong?” said Charlie.
“I can’t see them.”
Reece folded him arms and shivered. His nose twitched, and he screwed up his face. A second later, I realised why. The wind had changed, and with it came the smell of rot. It was light at first, like a blocked drain, but then it thickened. The putrid smell crawled up my nostrils, down my throat, and made my stomach tumble.
Then came the groans. The gust carried an orchestra of twisted wails, becoming louder and more terrible as the seconds passed. It was the tormented cries of half a million infected. The passage was too shadowy for me to see them, but they were there.
Reece looked like he was about to be sick. I stepped forward and put both my hands on his shoulders. They shook beneath my grip.
“You know what we have to do?” I said.
He looked past me and over my shoulder, as if he wanted to be back with his dad at the safety of Bleakholt. That’s not a good idea, I thought. Bleakholt won’t be safe for much longer.
“Charlie’s going to set the dynamite,” I said. “We need to keep him safe while he works. If any infected reach us before he’s done, we hold them off. Understand?”
He gave a weak nod. I tightened my grip on his shoulders and felt his skin squeeze between my fingers. I shook him.
“Reece, I need to know that you understand me. This is the most important thing you will ever do. No matter what happens, we hold them off.”
Finally he gave a stronger nod.
“Good,” I said. I turned to Charlie. “Better get to work.”
Charlie walked to the left side of the path and started to feel the rocky sides of it, testing for a place to put the dynamite. Reece and I stepped into the passage way and walked into the darkness. Despite being the middle of the afternoon, the sides of the hills stood so tall that they blocked out almost all the light. It made it seem like we were walking through the thick of night. After five minutes of following it, we stopped.
“This is far enough,” I said. “We wait here until Charlie shouts that he’s done.”
If any infected came before Charlie finished, we were the first in line. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I wanted us to get this done, blow the path and then get to Bleakholt without even seeing any infected. I just wanted some good luck for a change.
The wind gushed past and with it brought the odour of rotting flesh. This time it was stronger. I clamped my mouth shut and tried not to breathe, but the smell was so strong it worked its way through my closed lips. I gagged as I tasted the rot in the air. Reece put his sleeve to his mouth and coughed.
I strained my eyes into the shade of the path but it was like looking into a tunnel. I turned round and saw Charlie behind me at the other end of the pathway. He was stood against the side and pressed something into the rocks. Hurry up, I thought.
A sense of dread crept up my arms and made my hairs stand on end as if unseen hands stroked me. I shivered. The dark of the pathway gave it the feeling of a crypt with the lid pried off. It felt like any second we could be plunged into total darkness.
The wind whooshed past me again. The sick smell invaded me. The groan of an infected wheezed into my ears and made it seem like they were much closer than they actually were. I didn’t know how long we had before they arrived, but I wasn’t sure I could cope with the smell and the noises.
A desperate cry wormed into my ears. Another one sounded like it came from behind me. Another one to my right. Then to my left. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and finally I saw them. They weren’t at the end of the passage way. They weren’t making their way towards us.
They were already here.
Reece cried out and stumbled back as an infected sprang at him from the shadows. Another one reached at me and tried to grasp my coat with desperate fingers. I slid my knife from my belt and gripped it. I slashed at the fingers and sliced through the flesh. Clotted blood oozed from the skin, and the fingers hung from the bone.
The smell was overpowering. It was like being deep in an abattoir with rotting carcasses
piled knee high. No matter which way I turned the air was foul with the taint of the dead.
An infected stumbled toward Reece. He swung his wrench wildly and hit it on the collarbone. The infected didn’t even register the blow. It kept reaching out to him, eyes hungry, teeth bared behind its lips.
I strode over to him.
“Move” I shouted, and pushed him out of the way.
I raised my knife, tensed my arm and sunk it into the infected’s brain. I tried to pull it out but the blade snagged on bone. Another infected cried out and reached for me. Panic bubbled inside me and turned my insides to water. I shook my arm wildly and tried to wiggle free my knife. As the infected got within an inch I knew I couldn’t get it loose. I tensed up and waited for the inevitable bite.
