Jack Lewis - Fear the Dead - A Zombie Apocalypse Book

"Tell me what you did. Show me how to fix it."

He took the GPRS out of my hands, flipped it over and slid a finger along it. A plastic latch started to open.

"This is the battery compartment. See how it's empty?"

If I weren’t so furious, I would have felt stupid for not checking that. "So you took it."

Justin nodded. "Not only that," he said with pride, as though I was supposed to be happy with what he had done, "I broke it so you can't put a fresh one in.”

I could feel my face start to burn, and I clenched my teeth. As if picking up on my cues, Justin carried on explaining himself. “Before you go crazy, hear me I out. I did it to help you. I took the battery, so that way, if someone were to find it they'd have no idea where you're going."

The blood was pounding in my ears so loud I almost couldn't hear what he was saying. I might as well have turned the cooking stove off, because right now my face felt red enough to start a fire. I tightened my fist and felt my skin wrap around my knuckles. I looked at Justin and the placid smile on his lips, and suddenly I wasn't seeing a kid anymore, I was seeing a face that I wanted to smash. How dare he do this? Did he even realise just what he had done? Without the GPRS route everything was ruined, because I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Without that, without something to aim for, I was lost.

I felt the vein in my temple twitch. "Are you actually trying to get me to kill you? Do you have a death wish? Because there are easier ways, I promise."

He dropped the GPRS to the ground. My stomach jumped at the thudding sound it made on the wooden floor. Justin looked up at me. "I gave you a chance to say yes."

"You're trying my patience."

"I asked you nicely to take me with you. I even brought supplies, but you're so stubborn. You're like Moe - you don't listen to anyone but yourself."

I could almost have laughed if it didn’t feel like my throat was tightening up. "And you think I'm going to take you with me now? I’d rather kill you," I choked out.

My shoulders shook and there was a tension in my legs, a restlessness that made me want to pace around the room. I could hear the chicken soup bubbling over in the corner and knew it was going to start spitting out onto the floor soon, but I couldn't concentrate on anything but the smug boy in front of me. My physical advantage was so big as to make the idea of a fight laughable, but all I could think about was punching him in the face.

For a whole year I had travelled alone toward the farm, and in all that time I had stayed away from people. Well, look how right I was. The second I came into contact with someone, he had purposefully messed with my plans.

My head throbbed and it was getting harder to think. All I could feel was the rush of anger, the hot feeling as my blood flooded to my head. I raised my hand, extended it toward Justin and wrapped it around his throat.

I pushed him back, and his head hit the wall with a thud. I squeezed my hand against his windpipe and I felt the jagged contours of his neck bones as they met his Adam's apple. Justin let out a choking sound, but he didn't struggle against me. His eyes watched me in an almost interested way, as though he were curious as to what was going to happen. I squeezed his neck tighter. It felt so fragile, as if I could completely snap it if I applied more pressure.

"I'm giving you once chance here," I said, "If you don't give me the battery and fix it, I won't just kill you; I'll squeeze until you pass out, and when you wake up you'll be in the middle of the forest, alone and far from here, and I'll make sure the infected can smell you. It won't be a quick death. You'll scream so loud that you'll wake Moe from his sleep."

He stared at me with his wide bug eyes. He blinked once but said nothing, and this made my temple throb even harder. I tightened my hand a little and felt the sinews of his neck move like gristle. It would be so easy now just to squeeze a little more and snap his neck. My breath caught in my chest, and I could feel my heart pounding.

As I squeezed his neck, I felt consciousness came back to me, and my head started to clear. I looked at my hand and realised what I was doing. The image disgusted me, the idea that I’d fallen this far. I wasn't this sort of man. I might be many things, but child killer wasn’t one of them.

I loosened my grip. Justin's body sagged a little, and he took in a deep breath. From the raspy sounds he made I could tell he was struggling to fill his lungs, and I could see red marks from where my fingers had been wrapped around his neck. He looked at me calmly, which made my anger rise again. I gave him a hard shove into the wall then walked away from him, scared of what I would do next.

"Dammnit! When a man is strangling you, you better show some fear," I said to him. "Because next time it won't be someone like me, and your stupid stare will make them go all the way."

I was sat on the floor with my back against the wall. Justin walked over to the end of the shack. He looked at the chicken soup bubbling in the cooking pot.

"It's boiling dry."

"Leave it."

He turned off the stove, wrapped the sleeves of his jacket around his hands and picked up the pot. As he moved it onto the floor the smell of the chicken wafted over to me, and the way my mouth salivated reminded me of how long it had been since I had eaten.

Justin walked over and sat in front of me, cross legged. His eyes stared straight at mine. "I know I've not seen much of the world, and I know in some ways I'd hold you back, but I've got skills. Sure, I'd need you to look out for me with the infected for a little, but I'd get used to them. And there's other stuff I can do to help you."

His voice sounded as young as he actually was, but the way he spoke was so much older. He was obviously intelligent, a trait I could never really say I had. I was more of the practical type, a reactionary kind of guy. I could fight fires, but I sure as hell couldn’t figure out a way to stop them from happening.

I looked down at the ground, because I couldn't look at Justin’s face anymore. The GPRS was broken, and on my last count I was four hundred miles away from where I needed to be. If I was closer – maybe ten miles away - I could have gotten lucky and found it myself. But four hundred miles was impossible. There was someone else who knew where the farm was, but going to see him wasn't an option.

"I can tell you're a little sceptical," he continued, "But I learnt lots of stuff growing up; things you couldn't learn out here. For example, I can remember every Prime Minister and the term he served going back to 1721.”

I could feel him poking at my patience. “Take a look outside. I can’t think of a more useless skill to have these days than knowing who ran the country in 1968.”

Justin’s eyes darted to the corner of his eye sockets for a split second. “Harold Wilson. But that’s not the point. I’ve got a memory palace.”

Maybe he couldn’t sense how brittle my will power was and how bad it would be for him if it broke, because he took my silence as a sign that he should explain himself. He looked me in the eyes, gave me a beaming grin, and then spoke. “What I’m saying is, I’ve got an amazing memory.”

"Then maybe you better remember how close I was to snapping your neck."

"I do. And there's all sort of other things I can store up here.” He tapped his temple. “Really interesting things. When you were unconscious in Vasey, for example, I memorised the route stored on your GPRS tracker."

I lifted my head. "What?"

"Your route - I memorised it, every single step."

"Are you screwing with me?"

Justin smiled, and I could see one of his teeth was missing on the bottom row. Too bad there were no dentists around these days. "Nope. I can tell you every step you need to take to get to wherever it is you're going." He cleared his throat. "But just where it is it we’re going to end up, exactly?"