Jack Lewis - Fear the Dead - A Zombie Apocalypse Book

I took my hands out of my pockets and turned back toward the car.

I noticed that the passenger door was open, but there was no sign of Justin. I looked around, but couldn’t see anything, and he certainly hadn’t followed us onto the field. So where was he?

***

When we got to the car it was empty. The passenger door was open, and on the floor beside it there were blobs of blood. I looked around us but I couldn't see Justin anywhere, nor could I see any infected. Besides, if an infected had got him, they would have started eating him there and then. They didn’t drag away their kill to eat it later.

David walked round to the boot and popped it open.

“It’s gone.”

I shut the passenger door and walked around. I saw what he meant; the boot, where I’d left all the supplies, was now empty. Who had done it, and why hadn’t we seen them?

How did things get screwed up for us at every turn?

I slammed the boot shut so quickly that David had to yank back his hand so that it didn’t get caught. He turned round and lent on the car.

“Who could have –“

“The hunters,” I said.

I had been stupid to think that the hunters would drive so close to us and not see anything. Torben was a hunter, so he certainly wasn’t oblivious to the clues and trails that people left behind. I guessed that their stop at the Babe and Sickle probably wasn’t about checking it for supplies. It was more likely that they stopped because they wanted me to know that they had the GPRS and were headed to the farm. Torben was laying a trap for me.

I snapped my head toward David. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “They’ve taken Justin, and they want us to come find him.” I said.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

The old me would have taken what supplies I could, turned round and walked in the opposite direction. But I knew what the hunters were and what they were capable of, and I couldn’t just abandon Justin to that. Whatever the risk, no matter the cost, I was going to have to try and do something.

I was going to be running into a death trap, but it was better to sprint into a quick death than walk into a lingering one.

“I can’t ask you to come,” I said.

David nodded solemnly.

I opened the car door and looked around for what supplies I could find. I looked under the passenger seat and let out a gasp. Tucked underneath, was our shotgun. Justin must have hidden it before the hunters had grabbed him. I took it out and showed David.

“Clever kid,” he said.

I nodded.

“I’m coming with you,” said David.

“You sure?”

He nodded his head. “You have to be able to depend on people.”

I slammed the car door, took a deep breath and looked to the east, where the farm was waiting. I could already feel the adrenaline flowing inside me. This was it.

I looked up. Above us, a mean-looking black cloud loomed.

Chapter 19

We ducked down into a ditch so that we had a wide view of the farm but couldn’t be seen by the hunters. I counted six hunters patrolling the farmland, and past the fields there was a farmhouse where there would probably be even more of them inside. Outside the house there was a large tank with ‘petrol’ written in red letters, no doubt used in better days to supply the tractors with fuel.

The farm wore the scars of fifteen years of neglect. The fields were choked with weeds, a lot of the fences had blown over and water poured into the farmhouse roof through the gaps left by missing slates. The place had gone to hell, but I still saw some potential in it. If you looked past the weeds and the mess, the heart of the farm was still there and it could be turned into something good.

Some of the hunters walked up and down the fields, stopping occasionally to stub a cigarette under their boots or talk with another hunter as they walked past. Across the fields and under two branching elm trees there were two tractors, their paintwork flecked with rust.

Next to me, David was quiet. “Wishing you hadn’t come?” I said.

He shook his head. “Wishing we had a lorry or something. We could just ram into them.”

“If we’re going to wish, then let’s go big. A tank would be pretty handy right now.”

David smiled for a second, but the gesture soon dropped from his face. “We’re going to have to fight, and I’m gonna hold you back,” he said.

I looked at him. His body was wiry and his pants were held up by the last rung on his belt. His eyes were small, his hair receding. His hands were curled into fists, bony and white at the knuckles. I tried to think of something to tell him, something I could say to reassure him, but the fact was that he was right. He wasn’t a fighter.

I picked up the shotgun and passed it to him.

He waved his hands. “No Kyle, you have it.”

I pulled out my knife from my belt. “I know how to use this,” I said. “You’re more use to both of us if you’re armed.”

He nodded, took the gun from me and then laid it down next to him. He pointed out across the field, toward the tractors, and whispered. “Suppose we steal a tractor. Smash into the farmhouse. They won’t know what’s happening.”

A distraction would be good, I knew, but it was risk. “You think they’ll still be working?”

David shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, Maybe not. Probably not, really. But we won’t be worse off for checking.”

We snuck over to the tractors. Along the way, we got within a few feet of two hunters as they stopped for a chat. Their eyes looked dark and their skin was pale. I guessed that lately the world had been as harsh to them as it had been to us. Their voices were hushed.

“He’s got a thing for the lad,” said one of them, and took a long drag on his cigarette. The wind whipped at his coat and made the material flap.

The other hunter screwed up his face. His long fringe blew across his forehead. “Nah, he’s using him for bait. He’s obsessed with catching the other fella.”

“So he don’t really want the lad to join us?”

The other one shook his head. “Once we catch the bloke, Torben’s gonna gut the boy.”

I shuddered at the idea of what Torben had in mind for us all. I knew they were hunters, and that Torben loved his trophies, but were they also cannibals? From their tired eyes and their sunken cheeks, I guessed the hunters weren’t getting their five fruit and veg a day. Hunters tended to eat what they killed, and there was no reason for these guys to be any different.

We moved slowly around the sides of the farm and to the tractors. One of them was so rusty that the body was practically orange, and it looked like if I tapped it the whole thing would fall apart. Next to it was a newer one that looked slightly more stable, though I didn’t know if it would start.

“I never found a car that worked, “ I said. “That’s why we had to come to you. So I doubt we’ll have much luck here.”

David held his hand to his chin. I knew he was scared of the hunters and the potential of fighting but right now, stood in front of this machine, he was going into engineer mode.

“Hang on,” he said.

He walked to the side of the tractor. The vehicle was fifteen feet tall and the wheels were large enough to crush a man. David put his foot on a step on the side of it and reached up and grabbed the handle of the driver door. The door opened, and something large spilled out from the seat. David screamed.

He crashed to the floor and landed on his back with a thud, followed shortly after by an infected. David’s face went white and his usually-small eyes widened. The infected struggled on top of him, trying to get a grip on his limbs.

It all happened so quickly that I struggled to process it. My veins ran cold and my breath caught in my chest. I grabbed my knife and moved toward them as quick as I could, but I was already too late.