Jack Lewis - Fear the Dead - A Zombie Apocalypse Book

“It’s important to me,” I said, “Getting to the farm. And when you do something to fuck it up, I can’t help but get a little upset.”

He cleared his throat. His voice was the quietest I’d ever heard it. “What’s so special about it? You obviously can’t stand having me around, so what’s so good about the farm you put up with me to get there?”

His voice sounded hurt, and I knew everything he said was true. If I could have had my way, the GPRS would be working and Justin would have been back in Vasey. But things hadn’t worked out like that, and you had to work with what you had. Besides, there were some things he could do that came in useful, I guess. He wasn’t a total pain in the arse.

I looked at him and I suddenly saw him for what he was; just a lonely kid with no family. He wanted an escape route, and when he saw me, he took it. He knew he didn’t belong with the people in Vasey, that he was different from them all. Maybe Justin and I were similar after all.

I thought about his question and what to say to him. It was hard, the feeling of having to share something, but the hurt in the boy’s voice stung me. It wouldn’t kill me to tell him a little more about the farm.

“I promised someone very special to me that I’d get them there. It was a few years ago, after all everything kicked off.”

“Who was it?”

I took a deep breath. “My wife. The farm was her father’s. We didn’t live up North; we’d driven here to visit his farm when all of this kicked off. That’s why I still had it programmed into the GPRS.”

“You’ve got a Northern accent though.”

I smiled. “I was born here, but Clara and I left Lancashire and moved to London. My mates never forgave me.” I smiled to myself when I remembered the stick my friends would give me for becoming what they called a ‘London yuppie’.

Justin wiped his nose. “So you’ve been to the farm before then, if it was her dad’s?”

I shook my head. “All the time I knew her – Christ, a decade – Clara never spoke to him. No family meals, no birthday cards, nothing. They couldn’t stand each other, and it was over something so damn petty. And then one day, completely out of the blue, he picked up the phone. So we loaded up the car and drove up here.”

“How come you didn’t make it?”

I looked into the water of the reservoir and tried to see to the bottom, but it was too dense to make out anything but a dark brown tint. The wind nipped at my ears.

“Before we got there,” I said, “the world ended.”

There was a few seconds of silence as we both stared into the pool of water. Somewhere above, a bird squawked. I turned my head to Justin. The boy was leant forward with his elbow propped up on his leg and his chin resting in his palm. His eyes were deep and engrossed in thought.

I cleared my throat. “I made a promise; I told Clara I’d get us there; that whatever state the farm was in, we would fix it up and make it our own. It wasn’t the greatest plan in the world, but it was the best we had. Better than living day to day with a target on your back. We could get crops plants, fix the farm up. We’d never need anybody every again.”

“Sounds like a great plan,” said Justin.

***

We walked through the merchant path. Years ago it had been a stone walkway that cut a clear trail through the grass, but after fifteen maintenance-free years it was covered in weeds and the stone was cracked. The hills to either side of us offered a little protection from the cutting wind.

As we got nearer to David’s house, my heart hammered. I hadn’t seen him in years, and the way we left it hadn’t exactly been friendly. I knew he’d be pissed off at me, especially when I came to him asking for his car. If I could have thought of any solution, no matter how difficult, I would have turned around in an instant.

Justin kept his head down and walked, which hopefully meant his curiosity about me was satisfied for the time being. I still felt anger faintly twisting in my chest over what he’d done, but I knew it wouldn’t do us any good to take it out on him.

“Your steps are getting quieter,” I said.

He nodded.

I tried to smile at him. “Well done.”

Ten minutes later we reached what passed for David’s house. It was a red-bricked building that had once stored pumps that helped in some way toward filtering water from the reservoir. The pumps had been removed years ago, and ever since then the building had been left to fall apart. There were four windows cracked with dust, and at one side of the building there was a power generator, though it wasn’t switched on. There was space at the back of the building for a yard, which is where his car would be.

Justin started to walk ahead, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Steady on, kid. Wait a minute.”

“Isn’t this where your brother lives?”

“Brother in law.”

“Whatever, what’s the problem?”

I scratched my chin. “You’ll see. David’s…not quite right.”

I stared at the building for a few minutes, trying to find a sign of life, but I couldn’t see anything. I looked at the generator again. Despite that it wasn’t humming right now, I knew it would be a working power supply. David was a genius at things like that, mechanical stuff. Electronics, cars, computers, power, you name it, he had a working knowledge of it. These days, that was a valuable skill to have. It was a pity his personality made people want to get a hundred miles away from him.

I opened my mouth and filled my lungs with air. “Let’s go.”

We walked down a path and toward the front door. I knocked on it, three taps that shattered the stillness of the air.

“David?” I said.

There was no answer. Maybe he had left.

I knocked again.

“David, you here?”

Nothing.

I turned the handle and opened the door. We stepped inside David’s home. It was a draughty one-floored building with a stone floor and walls that felt cold to the touch. In one corner of the room there was a pile of hay that was spread into a makeshift bed. There was a carpenter’s table with basin of water and a razor on one end, and some nuts scattered on the other. It seemed like this was his bathroom sink and his dining table all rolled into one. Scattered around all over the floor were bits and pieces David had scavenged; batteries, smoke alarms, jumper cables, screwdrivers, copper wire, rope.

“What the hell?” said Justin from the other end of the room.

I walked over. There was a table and two chairs. On the table there was a mug with coffee stains on the sides, and across from it there was an ashtray with a single butt stubbed out. I saw what Justin was looking at, what had confused him.

In one of the chairs female mannequin sat. She had long dark hair so slick that it looked like it had been brushed every night. In her left hand was a book, and it had been arranged so that it was open in the middle, as though she were reading it.

I shook my head. Had David really fallen this far? Was he pretending to have company?

“What is this?” said Justin. He ran his hand down the arm of the mannequin.

“I told you, David is strange.”

“Guess I believe you now. But why do this?”

I looked at the mannequin again. She was wearing a t-shirt that I swore was one of Clara’s. It couldn’t be, could it?

“Loneliness,” I said. “He misses people.”

Justin sat down in the chair opposite the mannequin. “Then why not go to town? What comfort can he possibly get from a doll?”

I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. “David is scared of being alone, but he doesn’t trust people any more.” I looked down at the floor and tried to blot out the memory that was coming back to me, unwanted. “Someone let him down,” I said.