I put the car into reverse and moved it away from the wall. Luckily it responded to my actions, but something about the engine sounded a little off. David got out front. There were a few rocks on the bonnet, which he picked up, with considerable strain, and threw onto the road. He popped the bonnet, and for a while his head disappeared behind it.
I put my hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Sure you’re okay?” I said.
He nodded.
I thought about what the kid had been through in the past month – getting choked by me, punched by Torben, twisting his ankle jumping thirty feet off the warehouse, and now getting in a crash. He didn’t complain much about any of it, and I knew he made an effort not to slow me down. The kid was tougher than he looked.
“How does he know about this stuff?” asked Justin.
I found the lever under my seat and moved it back a little to give my legs more room. “He used to be an engineer. He was always tinkering with stuff. When other people were out getting drunk, David would be in his bedroom bent over a soldering iron.”
“What happened between you two?” he said.
I looked out of the window. There was nothing coming up or down the road, not that I expected anything. This place was so remote that even if the world hadn’t ended fifteen years ago, cars would probably still be a rare sight.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I said.
Justin slammed his hand on the dashboard. “I’m sick of you, Kyle. That’s what you always say. You never tell me anything! All this time on the road and you won’t tell me a frigging thing.”
He opened the door, got out of the car and went to the front to watch David work. I wound the window down a little and let a breeze into the car. As well as bringing in a little wind, it also brought the smell of manure.
After a few minutes, David opened the car door and climbed in the back. Justin followed him, this time getting in the back to sit next to David rather than in the front with me. I rolled my eyes.
“Should be okay. I should drive now though,” said David.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“You’re going to fall asleep again and total my car,” he said.
“It’s only fifty miles.”
David grabbed hold of the seat in front of him and leaned toward me. “In your state you can’t drive five.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “I’ll be fine.”
“Sorry Kyle,” said Justin, “but I agree. You look like shit.”
***
The countryside floated alongside us and we wound our way through the roads, but this time I watched them from the backseat. I looked up at David and say that he was concentrating on the road, his eyes wide and alert.
“Sorry,” I said.
He turned his head slightly, still keeping his eyes on the road. “For what?”
I was going to say for everything, I was sorry about all the stuff that had happened and all the shit I had done. But when I tried to say that, my throat tightened and the words got stuck. I let out a sigh.
“Sorry for ruining the paintwork.”
David looked at the car bonnet. There were two big dents and a few scratches. “I was going to get an MOT soon anyway.”
I smiled and let my eyelids fall as the road and the hedges and the walls swayed past.
When I opened my eyes we had stopped in the middle of a wide road. In front of us and to the left was a pub with black and white walls and a sign on the outside that read ‘The Babe and Sickle’ and had a picture of a gleaming blade and a tiny lamb. Up ahead was a roundabout with overgrown grass spilling over the sides. A few cars were abandoned and on our right there were a row of shops, but the windows so thick with dust it was impossible to see inside.
David and Justin were already sat on the car bonnet. I unclipped my belt and got out of the car.
“Evening,” said Justin.
I looked up at the sky and saw that it was indeed evening. The light of the sun was getting weaker and the sky was losing its colour. Somewhere, wherever they nested, stalkers would begin to stir, ready to prowl in the night-time and look for their kill.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Edness,” said David, a pointed to a large sign in front of me that said ‘EDNESS’ in capitals.
I walked over to them and looked in the bonnet. Everything seemed okay. “Why’ve we stopped?”
“No juice,” said David.
I sighed. This was the last thing we needed, to be stuck in the middle of a village when night was coming. Even though there didn’t seem to be any infected nearby, this was a human habitat and that meant a good chance there would be stalkers in the area.
“What do we do?” said Justin. He put his hands in his pockets.
I looked around me. There weren’t any petrol stations nearby, that was for sure. We were only twenty-odd miles away from the farm so we didn’t need much fuel, just enough to last that short journey. It’s not like we needed anything for a return trip; for me, there was no return. This was it.
Across the road and parked near a shop, there was a white transit van. I nodded over to it. “Think you could siphon some from there? We only need a little.”
David put his hand to his chin and looked at the van. “Could do. Worth a try.”
I nodded. “Good. Take the kid with you, show him how to do it.”
While I watched David show Justin how to siphon fuel from the van, I leant against the car and smiled. I hated to admit it, but part of me was starting to like having them around. Sure they annoyed the hell out of me sometimes, but it was occasionally nice to have the company.
I wondered if I would still be able to dump them off, when it came to it.
Fifteen minutes later David poured the petrol into the car, closed the cap and gave the roof a tap. I sat in the driver’s seat.
“Start her up,” he said.
I twisted the key. The car coughed, but the engine didn’t roar. I twisted it again. It sounded like the spluttering sounds of a dying man.
“What now?” I said.
David shook his head. “Must have been the crash. I thought it would make it to the farm before it died. I was wrong.”
I thumped the steering wheel with my hand. This was all my fault, I knew. If I’d just kept my eyes open and not crashed into a wall, we’d be fine.
I got out of the car and looked up at the sky. The sun was gone now, and we only had a couple of hours before the sky turned completely black and the stalkers came. I looked over at the Babe and Sickle pub. Should we shelter in there? We could have a pint and wait for all this to blow over.
“Guys,” said Justin.
I span round and looked at him. His arm was outstretched and pointing at a turn in the road less than fifty metres away.
“Oh shit,” I said, and felt my blood run cold.
Walking down the road was a sea of infected. There were more than I had ever seen in my life, an endless procession of rotting faces.
Chapter 16
I saw the sheer number of them, and my mouth fell open. There were at least a hundred dead faces, some with their lips torn off, eyes missing, arms cut in half, entrails hanging loose. Some stumbled into one another and fell to the floor, only to be trampled on by those behind them. There were so many that it was like a travelling battalion marching to war, except this army had no purpose or aim.
I looked at David. He was leant so far back against the car that it was like he was trying to melt into it. His hands clutched for the door handle behind him, as though he didn’t dare turn round to find it in case one of the infected pounced.
We needed to escape or fight, those were our only choices. The car was dead, so that was out of the question, and I didn’t want to be walking on the road on foot during the night. There were other things to worry about apart from the infected.