Jack Lewis - Fear the Dead - A Zombie Apocalypse Book

My infected launched at me clumsily, hoping to grab onto some part of me with its outstretched arms. It was tall and its belly was bloated, and it wore a ragged football shirt. I stepped to the side and let it stumble past me. I reached forward and grabbed the back of its collar, but the material was so rotted that it tore clean out of my grasp.

To my left, Justin cried out. I snapped my eyes on him and saw that he had lodged his knife in the smaller infected's chest just below the collar bone, and he was trying to push the straining monster away. I took three strides toward him, raised my knife in the air and then planted it in the top of the infected's head, caving in its skull a meringue. I let it drop to the floor.

Justin sank to the ground, his eyes wide and his face a deathly white.

The infected to my right growled. I turned toward it but it was already in my face, so close to me that when it snapped its teeth I could hear the sound of them clacking together. I took hold of it by the neck with my left hand, raised my right and then brought my knife down into its skull. As the dead body fell to the floor, I let a long breath escape my lungs. After a few seconds, I got myself together.

"Did it bite you?" I asked him.

He shook his head. His face was pale and I could see that his hands were shaking. This was the first time that I had ever seen the kid scared - he hadn't even blinked when I'd strangled him back in the shack. I knew I should ask him if he was alright, show a little concern, but I didn’t have time for that.

"Pull yourself together," I said. "There will be more."

Sure enough, behind us at the bottom of the high street a couple of infected had gathered and were slowly picking up our trail. More would appear before long, I knew, and soon we'd have a crowd of them chasing us. The chase itself wasn't a problem, because they could never pick up enough speed to catch you. The problem was that they were relentless. Once they got on your trail - that was it. They wouldn't stop and rest, they wouldn’t sleep. They were driven by only one basic impulse, and they would stop at nothing to get it.

"Pick up your pace." I said.

We moved quicker down the high street. I looked behind me and saw that the two infected were now six. Ahead of us, the street twisted round a corner. I knew that round it there was another short walk and then we were out of Blackfoot. I couldn’t wait to leave.

I looked behind us again. Now there were ten of them. Where the hell were they coming from?

"Just round this corner then we're home free. Come on, speed it up. And don't look back."

As soon as he heard me say the words, Justin looked back. "Shit," he said.

We were moving just short of a jog now. We travelled through the high-street and turned the corner, after which we would be golden.

As soon as we turned the corner though, I froze.

"Oh, fuck," said Justin.

I would have scolded the kid for his language, but his sentiment was right, because in front of us was a giant makeshift barricade that completely blocked the exit to the village. It stretched twenty metres from either side and was made of various items of scrap metal - steel sheets, kitchen sinks, shopping trolleys - that were arranged like a madman's game of Tetris. There was no way through it, and there was sure as hell no way to move it.

Behind us, a couple of hundred metres and closing, fifteen or so infected chased us.

"Now what?" said Justin.

"Give me a minute," I said, and put my hand to my forehead.

Justin stared at the makeshift barricade that blocked us in. His eyes seemed to light up, and a little of the colour came back to his cheeks. "There's a way through," he said.

I looked at the barricade again. It might not have been air tight - there were gaps in it here and there - but there sure as hell wasn't enough room for a person to fit through.

"Don’t be stupid," I said.

He looked at me with a wounded look on his face. "I'm telling you, Kyle. There's a way. Stop being so stubborn and listen to me." He walked over to the barricade. "Lemme go first then, and prove it."

I was going to tell him to shut up and let me think, but before I could say anything he moved a shopping trolley as much as he could to one side to work enough room to squeeze into. With that, he squirmed his way through the barricade. I looked at the hole that he had left, and there was no way I was going to fit my frame through it. I was considerably bigger than Justin, and I was nowhere near as agile. The kid was like a rat.

I bit my tongue and tried to fight back the rising anger that I could feel building. Why had he gone off like that? Way back when we started, hadn't I specifically told him that he had to do everything I said, that he mustn’t act on his own? Yet he had gone and done just that, leaving me stood on my own, trapped and with twenty of the infected closing in. Just wait until I got hold of him; the strangling was going to seem like a treat compared to what I would do this time.

The infected were close enough now that I could make out what passed for their faces. I could see their expressions - blank for the most part, yet there was something like desire in their eyes, something in their stares that glimmered. It was likely a hunger for my flesh, but it was proof enough to me that something about them was still alive, even though they weren’t people.

At their pace, I had five minutes until they reached me. I still had my knife, and with that I could probably take a few of them out, but with no space to fight and nowhere to run, this was a battle I was sure to lose.

Above me the sky had taken on a late-afternoon grey tint. It was getting dark, and we were supposed to be out of the village by now. I looked at the barricade. Where the hell was the kid?

"Justin?" I shouted, no longer caring about making a noise.

There was no answer.

I weighed up my options. As I saw it, I only had two; fight the twenty infected on my own, or try and get through the barricade.

I put my knife back in my belt and walked up to the wall of scrap metal. I found the part that Justin had squeezed through, and I pushed on the shopping trolley to try and make a little more room for myself. Blowing out as much air as I could to make my body smaller, I crawled forward. I worked my way slowly through the barricade, squeezing my body into a much smaller space than it had any right to fit. Through squirming carefully and sucking in my stomach, I could almost see an exit.

And then I got stuck.

I tried to move my body, but it was wedged right between two blocks of metal. I felt my chest tighten and adrenaline shot through me as the panic took over. No matter how much I tried I couldn't move. Outside the barricade and on the high street, the infected were so close that I could hear them moan. My legs poked out of the barricade and soon they would be an open target for the infected to chew on. I was going to be eaten alive.

Or half of me was, anyway.

I started breathing noisily heavily though my nostrils, and it was all I could do now to shout out madly. "Justin," I said in as calm a voice as I could. "If you're here, I need your help right fucking now."

When no reply came, I suspected the worst for him. For now though, his wellbeing was the furthest thing from my mind. This was it for me. The infected were getting closer to my outstretched legs, and I was completely stuck.

From outside the barricade, a gun popped off. There was the sound of bodies hitting the pavement as the gun exploded several times, and then it stopped. My heart hammered. I twisted and turned and slowly shifted the metal off me and backed my way out. I managed to move my body around so that the top half of me was out of the barricade, but my leg was still trapped. I looked up and saw what the sounds had been.