Fear the Dead (Book 4) (14 page)

“Maybe we can go see the solicitor’s
office that you helped buy,” said Charlie.

Reggie gave him a look of disgust.
“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

***

Gloom covered the streets of Grey
Fume. Street lamps stuck up from the ground, their bulbs dead and never to be
used again. Brick buildings lined both sides of the street, three stories high
and squashed together so that not an inch of space was left to spare. On the
fronts of the buildings were ventilator fans that hadn’t turned in years, and
shop signs advertising businesses that had long gone out of trade. A bookies
gave good odds that the England football team would beat France, and a charity
shop displayed three-for-two romance books.

Cars were parked around us with dirty
windows and dead batteries. Mel and Charlie’s kerosene lamps, almost empty,
highlighted yellow markings on the road which years ago would have showed
people where to park.

There was little movement around us.
For the most part we walked in silence, not daring to utter words in case they
reached the wrong ears. Rats scuttled around but disappeared from view when we
walked within ten feet of them. On one street, as we followed it around a
corner, a fox ran across the road. When it saw us it stopped and stared for a
few seconds before making its escape.

The first pharmacy was just like the
one in Larkton; shelves raided and dismantled, empty bottles and jars all over
the floor. The second had paracetamol that would have been out of date when
Henry VIII was alive, a bottle of cough medicine, and an unopened box of ear buds.
In the back office behind the counter, the pharmacist had pinned a calendar to
the wall. He’d crossed off every day of June before stopping abruptly on the
19th. I lifted the page and turned it to July and saw that he had written ‘
Holly’s
due date!’

Only one more pharmacy remained. It
was in the centre of town, right in the middle of a shopping arcade. We came
into contact with a few infected on our way to it, but Mel dispatched them with
her cleaver and let their dead bodies fall to the floor. As we went inside the
last pharmacy, I crossed my fingers.

“Didn’t have you down as the
superstitious type,” said Charlie, looking down at my hand. I wondered if the
scientist ever missed anything. I guessed that was what he was trained for; to
be alert and aware of his surroundings.

My act of superstition didn’t amount
to anything, and we found the third pharmacy as bare as the two before it.
Gregor, at the far corner of the room, lifted something into the air.

“Found a crutch,” he said.

Lou was sat up now. After eating
something and drinking a little water, she had seemed more alert. I wondered
how long this would last, and whether the fever would come rushing back in full
force.

“I don’t believe this,” I said. “Not
a single damn place has anything worthwhile.”

“It’s sixteen years since they were
last stocked,” said Mel. “Can’t blame them for running out.”

Reggie stood at the counter. He read
a sign on the wall behind it.

“This place was owned by Anthony
Green who had a Masters in pharmacy and was part of the GPhC.” He turned
around. “Where are you, Anthony? When are you going to get some more damn pills
in?”

A voice cried out in answer. At first
I thought it had come from behind the counter, but when I heard it again, I
realised it was coming from outside. I thought it might be Ben. We hadn’t seen
any sign of him as we had walked through town. The plan had been to get the
antibiotics for Lou, and then find the boy, but so far we were failing at both
of them.

“Better go,” I said. “Gregor? Help me
with Lou.”

Lou looked at Gregor.

“Hand me the crutch, big lad,” she
said, her voice straining.

“Come on Lou, I don’t think – “

“Don’t treat me like I’m made of
tissue, Kyle,” she said. “Hey. BFG. Give me the crutch.”

Lou put her hands out on the floor
and tried to push herself up. Her face started to turn red. She shifted her
good leg, but it was clear she wouldn’t be able to get up without our help.
Gregor put his arm out. With his shirt sleeves rolled up his veins pushed
against his thick arms, and his muscles twitched as he pulled Lou to her feet.

Lou stood up now with the crutch
underneath her armpit. Gregor’s hands wrapped around her and held her steady.
Although the colour had returned to her face, I could tell that standing took a
lot of effort.

“What’s a girl got to do to get some
pain killers?”

“There’s nothing here we can use,”
said Charlie. “But if Mel will hand me my bag…”

Lou shook her head. “Not more of the
clove and willow bark shit. Jesus.”

The voice cried out again from
outside the shop. It was a desperate wail, angry almost. The voice was too deep
to be Ben’s.

“We’re coming Anthony,” said Reggie.
“Sorry we raided your shop.”

“Cut it out Reggie. We better go see
what it is,” I said.

We left the pharmacy and stepped out
into the shopping arcade. At the far side, next to a bargain department store, stood
an infected woman. She swayed from side to side in the doorway of the shop as
if she was waiting for it to open.

The voice cried out again. It was a
thick cry that came from vocal chords that had been scratched raw. We followed
the sound through the arcade as if it were a length of thread, turning when we
came to a television shop on the corner. Lou hobbled on her crutch, her face
straining with effort. Gregor and Mel were at her side and ready to step in if
she faltered.

The air smelled dusty. Shops lined
each side of us, and weeds had grown through the edges of the concrete flags
beneath our feet. A glass roof covered the arcade, above which was the starless
sky. At the end of the arcade there was a fountain, and sat next to the
fountain, was a figure.

In the shadow of the night, I thought
it might have been Ben after all. I started to run. The nearer I got the more
the figure groaned and cried, and in my mind the voice twisted and took on a softer
tone until it became Ben’s.  I reached the fountain and stopped.

The fountain was carved out of stone
that had once started out as a brown-grey colour, but was now dotted green
through the spread of moss. There was a plaque on the front which dated it to
1885 and announced that it was commissioned by the mayor at the time, Terence
Butler. Stone figures lined the top of the feature, six feet up from the
ground. They were sculpted cherubs with demonic smiles. Some had their heads
hung at the ground, while others stared ahead and challenged me to meet their
gaze. Once, water would have flowed from their mouths and pattered down into
the basin below, but now they were silent.

The only noise came from the figure
that was sat in front of the fountain. It was a man. His face was soft and
pink, but the skin around his lips had been stripped all the way back to reveal
a full set of teeth. They clacked together as he gnashed them. His black hair
was swept back over his head, and on the right side of his skull was a wound
from where something had hit him. Blood covered his clothes, and there were
rips in his sleeves.

He stuck his arms out and strained to
reach us. I stepped back and pulled my knife from my belt. At first it stuck,
but after wiggling it I was able to shake the hilt free. I prepared to plunge
my blade into the infected, but then I realised it was struggling to move
towards me. It bit its teeth together and squirmed forward in frustration, but
there was a rope tied across its waist.

“Looks like someone left him here,”
said Mel.

“He’s got a bloody big gash on his
head. Someone did him in and left him here for the infected,” said Gregor. “He
must have turned. God knows why they only took a few bites from him.”

“Maybe they didn’t like the taste,”
said Lou, her voice weak. She slouched against a white pillar which supported
the edge of the shopping arcade.

“Look at his skin,” I said. “He’s not
been infected long. Someone tied him and left him here, and they did it
recently.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” said
Reggie.

***

We left the centre of Grey Fume and
walked through the outskirts of the east end, opposite from where we had
entered the town. It seemed that even the rats and foxes were sleeping on this
side of town. A few infected saw us and groaned, but we dispatched them before
they could become a nuisance.

My whole body tightened up as though
someone were wrapping a rope around me. I felt anxious. With every step I
wondered if we were walking nearer to Ben or further away. Maybe he was at the
barn waiting for us, and by going to Grey Fume we could have made a big
mistake.

“What’ve we got here then?” said
Gregor.

He bent down in the street and picked
something up off the floor.

“Come here with that lamp, lass,” he
said to Mel. To save fuel we had extinguished all our other lamps, and Mel’s
was the only one cutting through the blackness.

Mel walked over with her lamp and
illuminated Gregor. I saw the light flicker over his thick beard. He held up
his hand to us all and showed us a shoe. It was a boy’s, and it had once been
white but it was now brown with mud. It had to be at least a size six.

“Is that Ben’s?” said Reggie.

He looked at me, as if expecting me
to answer. I didn’t have a clue if it was his shoe or not, and come to think of
it, I couldn’t even remember what he had been wearing when I had last seen him.
It showed how little attention I paid.

“It is,” said Charlie. “It’s
definitely his.”

Mel put her hand to her head and
rubbed it. “Where the hell did he go without a shoe?”

I felt a deep sense of dread in the
pit of my stomach.

“We need to get a move on.”

We followed the road that went out of
the town, leaving the shops well behind us. We passed a neighbourhood of urban
houses, three-bedroom family homes with gardens in the front and at the back.

After hours of walking the sun
started its rise in the sky, and little by little it chased away the darkness.
We were at the edge of town now in an industrial area. It was a patch of
concrete and brick and metal, and I could almost taste the steel in the air.
Small units were to our right. A few of them advertised that they were for
rent, and on our left there was a brick-walled warehouse with a giant metal
shutter on the front. The shutter was almost fully closed, but there was a gap
at the bottom. Large windows lined the front-face of the building, many of the
panes smashed.

Mel stopped and stared into the
building. Her eyes locked in concentration.

“Okay Mel?” said Reggie.

She answered without turning around.
“Yeah, there’s just…”

I followed her stare. There was
movement through the windows in the warehouse. My head leapt to one conclusion.
Ben. Then I realised that the window was high up off the ground, so if we could
see something moving then it had to be someone taller than the boy.

“It can’t be,” said Mel. Her voice
sounded strange.

“Can’t be what?” said Reggie.

Lou was on the ground behind us. For
the last few hours, we’d had to carry her on her stretcher. Charlie had taken
off his coat and had asked Reggie to tie it around his waist. Reggie was the
only one of us who didn’t look exhausted. He had let his beard grow out since
we had left camp earlier in the week, and it gave his face a tougher look. It
had been a while since his wife Kendal had taken her lonely walk, and it seemed
that her absence had lifted a weight from him.