Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel Read online

  I flicked my head to the side, trying to tell him to run. Justin took a few seconds to comprehend my instructions, but he got them wrong. Instead of running, he started to climb the barricade. He put his foot onto a metal dustbin and began to work his way up.

  To my left Torben pulled his hand out of my bag, and he had my GPRS in his palm. My heart pounded.

  “Haven’t seen one of these in years.” he said excitedly. “Good thinking, using one. Course I remember once getting rerouted fifty miles and almost driving into a lake on account of one of these buggers.”

  He pushed the on button. For a second, I worried that it would work, and that the route to the farm would flash on the screen. I didn’t want Torben to know where we were going.

  “Broken?” he asked.

  “It’s a piece of shit,” I said.

  He put it in his jacket pocket. The sight of him taking what was mine made me want to get up and beat the crap out of him, but all I could do was grind my teeth and keep calm.

  “Where were you headed?” he asked.

  “Just wandering.”

  “A fella from the town, leaving behind those cushy walls with a GPRS and a bag full of food? I’m no Sherlock, but to me that ain’t just wandering. ”

  What could I say to him? That I was a scout sent by the town to see what I could find? That I just fancied a road trip? I needed something to tell him; anything but the truth.

  “I got kicked out,” I said.

  Torben walked over to me. He raised his boot and then brought it slowly down onto my arm, pinning it to the floor. I could feel the moisture on his boots from where he had stomped on the infected’s head, and the pressure of his foot made me drop my knife. I was powerless.

  Behind him, the three remaining infected were closing in on their meal.

  Torben’s eyes narrowed on mine now, and his voice was rough. “Don’t fuck with me. Nobody leaves that town – nobody. And to do it with a bag full of beans, means you got a plan. It must be pretty damn important to risk the wilds.”

  He pushed down a little harder on my arm, and I started to feel it go numb as the blood drained from it. I said nothing.

  “Now either you tell me where you’re going, or you can talk to the freaks behind me instead,” he said, gesturing toward the infected.

  As I contemplated what to tell him, there was a clang of steel from the top of the barricade and Justin leapt off it, slamming straight into Torben and knocking him to the floor. The man led there for a second and tried to suck in a deep breath, but he was winded.

  Justin was the first to his feet. He readied his knife in his hand with an awkward grip. Torben looked up at him from the floor. A smile spread across his face, and he laughed.

  “Look at the little stalker boy,” he said.

  Justin looked like he was shaking, and his face was still white, but he didn’t take his eyes off Torben.

  “Come to rescue your dad?” said Torben.

  “He’s not my dad.”

  “No, you got more guts than him by the looks of it.”

  Torben took a step toward Justin, but as he got closer, he held his hands up to show there was nothing in them.

  “Come now, let’s play nice. No need for us to get off on the wrong foot.”

  I was about to tell Justin not to trust him, but Justin had already dropped his knife, suckered in by Torben’s gesture of peace. Torben took another step, raised his fist and clocked Justin in the face, sending him to the ground.

  I tugged at my feet but the metal wouldn’t budge. I still had my knife, but it wasn’t going to help much. My thoughts were flying through my head as the blood rushed through my skull. What was I going to do? Was he going to kill Justin in front of me and leave me for the infected?

  Somewhere in the distance, there was the drone of an engine. I tried to reposition myself to see where it came from, but the effort was too much for me. Justin sat up now, and he shuffled away from Torben. The sound of the engine got louder. Torben turned his attention toward it, and a vehicle drove round the corner. It was a four-by four pickup truck with two guys sat inside and a man and a woman sat on the back. Next to them were lots of bags and crates. The truck smashed into the three infected, sending their frail bodies flying.

  The driver wound down the window. “We found it, Torbs,” he said.

  Torben nodded. He turned and looked at me, and gave me a smile so cruel that it froze my blood.

  “I have to go now. But don’t think this is the end for us. I still have this,” he said, and patted his pocket where he had the broken GPRS. “I’ll find out where you’re going, and whatever it is you’re looking for, I’ll take it for myself.” Then he looked into my eyes. “As for you, you’re too good to waste with a bullet. You belong on my belt.”

  He patted his belt and I saw the animal parts sway. He walked over to my rucksack on the floor, picked it up and threw it onto the back of the pick-up truck. Then he turned back to me.

  “Get your little boy to help you loose, and then go. We’re going to play a game, you and me. You’ve got a head start, but you’re going to need to hurry. From now on, you’re hunted. Try and give a better game than this one,” he said, and pinched the human ear on his belt with his fingers.

  He walked to the truck, put his foot on a tire and heaved himself onto the back. He gave the side of the vehicle a knock with his hand and the driver started the engine.

  “Been a while since I got to hunt. Good luck!” he said, and smiled.

  Chapter 9

  I needed to find shelter before the sun completely disappeared and covered the countryside in darkness. We left Blackfoot as far behind us as we could, and as we climbed a muddy hill I looked over my shoulder from time to time, checking there was no movement coming from below. There was no sign of Torben and the hunters.

  I didn’t know where they were headed but I knew one thing – they were hunting us now. Torben wasn’t just a survivor in this world, I realised; he actually relished it. The trophies that hung from his belt said as much. Everyone in the wilds had to hunt to survive, but I hadn’t yet met anyone else who wore the spoils of their hunt around their waist.

  And I had never met a man who hunted humans before.

  Justin took big strides beside me. He had his hands curled into fists at his side, and he seemed full of nervous energy.

  “Did you see it? The way I smashed into him?”

  “I saw him punch you in the face.”

  Justin’s cheek was red from where Torben’s fist had connected with it, though mercifully the hunter had missed his eye.

  Justin turned his head to me. “You could at least say thanks, you know.”

  “For nearly getting us killed?”

  He shook his head. “For saving you.”

  I stopped walking. The side of the slope was slippery and the quickly darkening sky didn’t give us much time to waste, but I felt if I didn’t straighten this out right now I was going to end up pushing the kid down the hill.

  “When we set out, when I agreed to let you come with me, what did I say?” I prodded his chest. “I told you that you do exactly what I tell you.”

  He scratched his ear. “But you weren’t – “

  “Shut up,” I said. I felt my body tense up and my pulse quicken. “If it weren’t for you climbing through the barricade like some clumsy chimp, we wouldn’t be in half the shit we are now.”

  “I just thought – “

  “Shut. Up.” I said, through clenched teeth.

  We walked up the hill for thirty minutes, enough for my calf muscles to start to throb. It would have been more of a struggle of course, if I had my rucksack with me. But thanks to Torben, that was gone, and along with it were ninety per cent of our supplies and the GPRS tracker.

  A freezing breeze lashed at my cheeks and nipped at my skin. I felt my chest and arms go cold, but I didn’t zip up my coat. I was thankful for it, truth be told, because it would make it much easier to stay awake, and I had a long ni
ght’s watch ahead of me. The sky was completely black now save for the glow of the moon and stars.

  “Here’s good,” I said.

  We stopped fifty metres short of the summit, where some natural force had carved a small recess into the side of the hill. It wasn’t a four-star room with a king-sized bed, but it would be good enough to give us some protection for the night. Besides, there wasn’t much likelihood of stalkers all the way up here.

  Justin threw his pack on the ground and was about to sit on it.

  “Wait. Open that up and tell me what we’ve got.”

  He knelt down and unzipped his bag. He put his hands in and fished through it, and then sighed.

  “Pass it here,” I said.

  With my rucksack gone, whatever was in Justin’s pack was all that we had. With the shortcut through the village now out of the question due to the barricade and the presence of the hunters, taking the motorway route was our only course. I needed to see if we had enough supplies to make it.

  I opened the bag and tried to see what was inside by the dim glow of the moonlight. I couldn’t read the labels on the tins, but I could see how many we had, and it didn’t look good; a few tins, some water, a can of fizzy pop and a bar of chocolate. We had enough for a few days at most, nowhere near enough to make it to the farm. All things considered, we were screwed.

  “What’d you reckon?” asked Justin.

  I looked at him. He was already a skinny boy, despite living in the safety of the town where food wasn’t much of a pressing concern. He was probably just a naturally thin person. God knows what he was going to look like after a month in the wilds.

  “I think you’re going to need to get a belt soon,” I said.

  Justin rubbed his hands together. His coat was thick and it was zipped all the way to the top, but his body still shook.

  “Can you light a fire?” he asked.

  “No chance.”

  “But I’m freezing.”

  I clenched my fists, breathed in, and fought back the rising irritation. I couldn’t afford to spare the energy it would take to be angry with him. “Weren’t you listening back in the village?”

  “Course.”

  “Then use this genius memory of yours and tell me what Torben said.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “That they’re going to hunt us.”

  I nodded. “And evidentially, this is a game to them. If we light a fire up here at night, we might as throw them a welcome party. Wait ‘til the morning”

  It was pitch black and the only sound was that of the wind as it blew through the grass. From our shelter we had a perfect view of the countryside for miles around us, though in the night time, that didn’t help much. Even the most innocent of shadows took on a menacing form; the branch of a tree became the spindly arm of a stalker, the swaying of a bush in the wind became the movement of an infected. Now though, we didn’t just have the stalkers and the infected to worry about. For all I knew, the hunters could be sneaking up the hill side ready to attack. Maybe Torben would tire of making this a game, and would just decide to kill us instead of toying with us.

  I looked at Justin. His eyes were wide open, and he was staring into the distance.

  “You sure they can’t fix it?” I said.

  He turned and looked at me. I could see faint rings under his eyes, the beginnings of the marks of those who live in the wilds. He was starting to realise that sleep was hard to come by out here.

  “I told you, I took the battery out and I broke it. Even if they got another one, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. I’m not stupid.”

  I let out a long breath. “I hope you’re right.”

  Justin picked up a stone from the ground. He twisted it in his hands, moving his fingers along its surface. Then he pulled his arm back and threw it down the hill.

  “None of this would have happened if you’d listened to me,” he said.

  “’Scuse me?”

  He scrunched up his face. “I wanted to take the motorway route. I told you that’s the route the GPRS programmed. But no – you didn’t listen to me. Because you never listen to anyone.”

  “Listen to people and you start to hear the wrong things,” I said.

  “If your way was right, then I’d hate to be around when you’re wrong.”

  “Shut up and get some sleep.”

  He was right, I knew. This time, just this once, he was right. If we had taken the motorway route, none of this would have happened. But then, how was I supposed to know Blackfoot would be barricaded? There was no way to predict something like that, and on paper it was a good short cut.

  Still, I should have listened, and because I hadn’t our situation was a hundred times worse. We had hardly any food, and as well as the stalkers, infected and whatever the hell else was out there, we also had a group of men hunting us for fun. We were hundreds of miles away from the farm, and the idea of getting there seemed so far in the distance that if it weren’t so damn cold, I would have said it was a mirage.

  “Want me to take watch tonight?” said Justin.

  “No,” I said, my body screaming at me as I spoke the word. I felt tired all the way down to my bones, and my eyelids were lead weights, but it was too dangerous for me to sleep.

  It was going to be another restless night.

  Chapter 10

  Dawn broke and the sun hung weakly in the sky, the gas giant finding it as hard to rise as I was. My back ached from a night spent propped up against the side of a hill, and there was a deep pain in my stomach. When I moved I felt a pang in my stomach, and I couldn’t stop the groan that escaped my lips.

  Justin was already awake. He’d arranged a pile of twigs in front of him and he was furiously rubbing two stones together.

  “Why didn’t we just take the stove from the scout shack?” he asked.

  I shook my head, trying to clear away the fog.

  “It wasn’t ours to take.”

  “It would have been easier.”

  I stretched out my arms and felt my elbow joints crack. “Tell me I didn’t fall asleep.”

  He nodded. “You were out when I woke. I thought I’d let you get a couple of hours.”

  That worried me. I knew my body needed sleep as much as the next man, but I couldn’t ever let myself drop off while there was nobody on watch. I didn’t know what to do. I needed some rest, and I didn’t know where I was going to get it. My head pounded.

  Justin carried on banging the rocks together, and I almost laughed.

  “What’re you trying to do?”

  His cheeks were tinted red. “I was going to cook us some beans.”

  “By smashing rocks together?”

  “Thought that’s how you did it.”

  I grinned. Through all his learning and his amazing memory, he still had no clue. “Where’d you get the sticks from?”

  He gestured toward the pocket of his raincoat. “Collected them when we were in the woods. I got sticks and kindling, now I just need the spark.”

  “You’re not going to get it that way. Hand me the chocolate and the soda from the bag.”

  He passed me the items and I spent twenty-five minutes painstaking showing him the chocolate-soda can method of lighting a fire. It took a hell of a lot of patience, but if you were in the wilds with nothing to set a fire going, it was as good a method as any. All you had to do was use the chocolate to polish the can until it was all nice and shiny, then angle it toward the sun and use it to get the tinder smouldering. It acted like a crude magnifying glass.

  “Wow, where did you learn that?” he said.

  “I used to do a bit of camping back in the old days. It was just a hobby then. Never thought it would become my life.”

  Justin had a wide smile on his face. “I love learning this stuff.”

  “Remember it for when I cut you loose,” I said.

  I hated to admit it, but a small part of me got a kick from teaching him. He was an eager student, and he seemed to be getting the ha
ng of knowing when to shut up. Back when I was a hiking enthusiast, I’d always looked forward to the day me and Clara would have a child – obviously a boy – and I’d get to teach him things like this. Then the world decided to give us a big ‘fuck you’ and any plans for the future rotted away.