Among The Dead (Book 3): Dwell In Unity Read online

  Had I tried to stay out in the open air of night when I first began my journey, I probably would have frozen to death. Luckily, my choice in clothing probably kept some of the chill out of my bones. A modified motorbike jacket, jeans and gloves. On top of it all was a tatty boiler suit with a slew of various coloured stains – mostly reds and browns, some fresher than others. I took a tentative sniff and decided that it would be better to dump the boiler suit somewhere far away where it couldn’t harm anyone anymore – like the centre of the goddamn sun. It stank and was tacky to the touch – despite the fact it had been recently washed. Insects hovered near me and I was convinced it was down to the aroma of the boiler suit. Plus, I didn’t want to walk around looking like a zombie – I’d probably get shot that way. Imagine surviving in the world of the undead, only to be shot by another survivor by accident? It would be so shameful! I laughed it off. If I was going to get shot by another survivor, it would be intentional. My thoughts returned to the present and a much more pressing issue: I had people’s blood on me.

  I’d always been afraid of blood – not just seeing my own, but others as well. I used to be terrified of any pathogens that could exist in blood – a phobia instilled in me by my mother. Being covered in it made me feel claustrophobic. There were open fields on both sides of me, the road in front and behind, and no undead about. I would just chuck the boiler suit into one of those fields and be done with it. I emptied the pockets, all my worldly possessions were in there. My phone, which was no longer of any use to me and had been dead for weeks. A small bullet marked with the letter H, reserved for General Harrington. Not from my pockets, but on the dashboard, was a small teddy called Thundy who I was hoping to return to Alice – the love of my life. Thundy had meant a great deal to her, and Alice meant a great deal to me – when I found him abandoned in her house, I knew I needed to get him back to her. Since I was heading that way, I thought Thundy would enjoy the ride also. Other than that, and the van load of supplies, I had nothing to my name. But at the end of the world, I was probably the richest person out there.

  Once I’d stripped out of the boiler suit, I threw it as far as I could. I’m certain it left brown stink lines in the air behind it as it moved. I was happy to see it go and even happier to make use of my modified clothes. I felt quite ingenious with the changes I’d made – protection from the undead without losing mobility. It was the start of something good. Spring was coming. I was protected. I had a vehicle and a destination. Supplies and weapons. People who could potentially aide me.

  “Or hinder you,” a voice in the back of my mind said. Oh joy, I hadn’t heard from my crippling doubt for so long. Little whispers in the dark, gnawing away at my certainty. Maybe being around others wouldn’t allow it so much freedom.

  “You look cool,” a voice said behind me, breaking me out of my deep thought. I turned around to see Stephanie staring at me.

  “What was that?” I said with an embarrassed smile. I ran my hand over my head, forgetting I’d shaved my dirty blonde hair previously. I missed it. I used to run my hand through my hair when nervous … I couldn’t even be afforded that luxury.

  “Your jacket and jeans, it’s cool. Like something out of Mad Max,” she said with a shy smile.

  “I suppose I do,” I said with a laugh. I did feel slightly badass, and I did understand the Mad Max analogy. But what was it about the apocalypse and leather? Or strapping every random tyre and garden ornament to yourself for protection? Modern cinema and video-games for you. Of course, I was stood there in the apocalypse, and I was clad in more leather than a scene out of BDSM orgy – if it had been myself and a middle-aged –

  “So where are we going?” Stephanie said, looking around at the landscape. She was probably thinking exactly what I had when the sun rose. Everything looked a lot different in the daylight.

  “Up north,” I said, repeating the same answer from the previous night.

  “But where up north?” Stephanie replied with a slight whine to her voice – the same way a child would ask a question.

  “I’ll explain when everyone is awake, just makes things easier on me,” I said with an unsympathetic shrug. I didn’t want to repeat myself for each person. I remembered the days I would have bent over backwards to please people – I was beyond that.

  I looked at Stephanie with a sideways glance. She reminded me a lot of my sister – the annoying cow … my sister, not Stephanie. I had pangs of homesickness. I missed my family. I regretted leaving them. What I hated more was not knowing their fate. The last I heard, Bristol had broken quarantine and had fallen due to the undead. If they’d died, I knew it was my fault. I’d abandoned them when they needed me most. Of course, I’d return to them eventually – whether to hug them or bury them had yet to be seen.

  “I’m hungry,” Stephanie said absentmindedly. I’d immediately pegged her as irritating, but there was something endearing about her.

  “Let’s see what we have to eat,” I smiled and put my arm around her to guide her to the van. She flinched and shoved me away from her – a petrified look in her eyes. I froze, a sudden realisation of what I’d done. After what she’d been through, being touched by another human was probably the last thing she wanted. I apologised profusely, “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking and–”

  “Don’t worry about it!” she said quickly, holding up her hands to silence me. She forced a sickly smile and said, “Let’s see what food we have, yeah?”

  I nodded and smiled uneasily.

  We walked, and Stephanie kept a good four feet between us at all times. I had to keep reminding myself that something terrible had happened to her – even if she didn’t outwardly show it at every moment. Sometimes, people can have a war going on inside them. It's human nature to assume that’s all they’d think about, that it becomes a key piece of their identity. You expect them to wake up wounded, eat breakfast wounded, talk to friends wounded, but they can have a temporary release from the pain in some moments as well. Sometimes a wounded person is still wounded, but they just aren’t hurting right at that moment. Stephanie was wounded, but she would have good days too – maybe not so many in the beginning, but it would get better. It had too.

  We approached the van, I knocked on the back of it.

  “Wakey wakey,” I called to Keith through the door. Sure he was our prisoner, but he still deserved some privacy. I opened the door slowly – he was bound, so I didn’t know what I expected him to be doing. He certainly wasn’t touching himself inappropriately with how we’d left him.

  “Morning,” he said to me, squinting at me due to the sunlight.

  “How’d you sleep?” I asked him out of politeness. He was sleeping on the metal bed of a transit van, what more could I expect, other than ‘awful’?

  Ever the optimist, Keith replied, “I’ve slept on worse.”

  He proceeded to stretch, his binds making it awkward. He snorted a quick laugh and shuffled to the edge of the van.

  “Hungry?” I asked him. I felt bad for the way he was tied up – feet joined, as were his hands. He had no room for movement.

  “Pretty much,” he nodded, “You’ll have to feed me though.”

  “That’s not happening I’m afraid,” I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t be stopping to feed him and help him pee, or whatever else he needed. I would have to adjust his binding. I then moved onto my other companions and called, “Steph, wake up Kirsty up. I need her up here.”

  “Already awake,” Kirsty called to me from the front of the van. I heard movement and then she appeared from the side of the van with a gun in hand. She looked exhausted, this was confirmed by her statement of, “I barely slept all night.”

  “Up for helping me?” I asked, sympathetic to her lack of sleep. If she felt like I did, doing anything would be a struggle.

  “Sure,” she shrugged and yawned.

  “Can you stand guard over Keith while I adjust his binds?” I asked her with an uncomfortable smile. I was expecting a ‘no’ but she m
erely nodded and stood watch.

  “I’ve been here the whole time, why didn’t you ask me?” Stephanie huffed angrily.

  “You’ll be more likely to shoot him for just scratching his nose,” I said, phrasing it as a joke, although I was also completely serious. I felt as though Stephanie would take anything as an opportunity to kill him.

  “Keith, no funny business, ok?” I told him, and he nodded, maybe even rolled his eyes. I whispered to him, “Best not be giving me sass.”

  He smiled and I unbound his feet first, only to re-bind his hands and feet. The way I’d redone it meant he was still tied, but with a foot of rope between his hands and feet. He looked the way criminals did on television when they were being transported. He would be able to walk and use his hands, but he wouldn’t be able to run and fight.

  “Much better,” he said with a smile. He looked me in the eyes and said, “Thanks, Sam.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I replied with a curt nod. I turned to look at the women – Kirsty was still stone-faced and unreadable, Stephanie looked horrified. I said, “He won’t be able to get far, it’s ok.”

  “We’ll see,” Kirsty said, lowering the gun. “Did I hear you mention food?”

  “You did,” I said with a smile. Stephanie, Kirsty, and Keith gathered around me to listen. “As always, it comes with issues.”

  “Which are?” Kirsty sighed. She seemed easily frustrated and extremely untrusting.

  “When I packed the van,” I began to explain, “I’d planned for only my travel. I’d packed about a months’ worth of supplies for me, and only me, to get me where I was going.”

  “Which is?” Stephanie chimed in.

  “In a minute Steph,” I said, quietening her. She bounced on the balls of her feet impatiently. I continued, “Obviously, plans changed and now I have you fine folk with me. The food isn’t going to last for a month. Nowhere near. Same goes for water. We need to ration it. I’m hoping we find food and water on our journey.”

  “Do you have any water purification capsules?” Keith asked, surprising me as the first to speak.

  “No, none,” I replied. I wish I’d thought of it before – it would have saved me a lot of trouble going forward.

  “We need to be careful with water then,” Keith explained. “Diarrhoea will be a real issue for us.”

  I, unintentionally, laughed. So did Stephanie. Keith smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m serious,” he reiterated. “Have you ever seen someone crap themselves to death?”

  “Can’t say I have,” I replied, a smile lingering on my lips.

  “I have,” Keith said, he wasn’t joking. “It’s all well and good when you can go to the chemist and get something to help, but we’re not exactly in a situation where we can do that. If we drink contaminated water, and we can’t do anything about it, you can die.”

  “Goddamn, that is how you go about getting gagged,” I said and laughed in disbelief. A few moments of stunned silence passed where no one else laughed. I then added, to reassert my seriousness, “But we will be careful about that.”

  My sense of humour didn’t go over particularly well and everyone stood around staring at me. I took the break in the conversation to go into the van, pulled out two MRE’s and a five-litre bottle of water. I handed out the meals, Kirsty and Stephanie sharing one, and Keith and I shared another. Everyone dug in hungrily and I took a moment to watch them in amusement as they realised how disgusting the military meal was. Kirsty and Stephanie both screwed up their faces. Keith, on the other hand, didn’t react in the slightest and just carried on eating. He’d clearly had them before and knew what to expect. It was then I began to connect dots about the man as he passed me my half.

  Keith was a mystery, his pre-apocalypse life was unknown. What I did know was that he had a wicked shot with every gun I’d seen him use. He was also well-built, and very much in shape considering his age. I’d always expected a man in his late thirties to be on the heavier side, but he wasn’t. He’d eaten MRE’s previously. He knew what military equipment was by their official names. I had a very strong suspicion he was military – ex-military at least. Even how he held himself seemed very rigid. I continued to watch him, trying to figure things out about him. I’d find out eventually, but where was the fun in that?

  Once we had finished eating, everyone helped themselves to water. We had to drink out of the same bottle, which played on my germaphobia. Like, far too much. Unlike the others, however, I had a toothbrush and toothpaste with me – and I sure as hell wasn’t sharing that! While the others were doing their morning business, I brushed my teeth and peed. I felt grotty but thought it was lack of sleep rather than not washing, something I missed also.

  “So, where are we going?” Stephanie asked once again. Everyone had gathered around me, although Kirsty hadn’t let Keith out of her sight once.

  “First off, I would like to say, you’re all welcome to stay with me on this journey. We all know the position with Keith,” I said, eyeballing him. “Now, as for where I’m going … do you want the long version or short?”

  Kirsty answered short. Stephanie and Keith said long; she gave him a filthy look for agreeing with her.

  “Democracy wins. Long version it is,” I said with a shrug. I looked at the bright sky and frowned. We’d been up for far too long and had made zero progress. I walked to the driver’s side and said, “Let’s get going and then I’ll talk. We’re burning daylight.”

  We all climbed into our respective seats, Keith in the back, me driving and both women in the passenger’s seat. I started up the engine and began to drive.

  CHAPTER 3

  I began the story by saying how I was travelling from Bristol to Essex to find someone. I didn’t mention the horrors I’d seen along the way, nor how trusting people wasn’t high on my priority list anymore. I said how I followed a lead, which took me to the container site. I skirted around details of my time there – they didn’t need to know and they already knew the outcome. And that brought me to the present, and how I was following various radio broadcasts from a military convoy heading north. I was certain Alice would be with them.

  Not once did I share who Alice was to me. They just knew I wanted to find someone and the best bet was with the military convoy. It made sense, right? They seemed sceptical of my plan but never voiced it – I could sense it though. Regardless, they all decided to stay with me on my journey. I don’t think their decision was because they felt compelled to help me, but because they didn’t have anywhere else to be. Even Keith was happy to meet with the military convoy, despite the fact he was our prisoner. It looked like I’d be having my companions for longer than I’d hoped.

  So, there we were, driving along in the apocalypse. All of us were lost and had nowhere better to be – just like every apocalypse movie ever made. It did feel pretty cool cruising along the mostly empty roads, undisturbed by anyone. Not another car in sight. Just watching the countryside fly by … it was almost relaxing. But I did have a destination and I couldn’t just drive aimlessly forever – as much as I’d have liked too.

  “Can either of you two read a map?” I asked the women, pointedly ignoring Keith.

  “I can,” Kirsty replied instantly.

  “I need you to find where we are because I need some guidance,” I explained, and began to reach for the space between her legs for the atlas – both of them tensed up. Instead, I turned my reach into a point of the finger and said, “There’s a map down there. Fancy reading it for me?”

  “Sure,” Kirsty replied through gritted teeth – visibly struggling to relax again. “Keep an eye out for a road sign so you can tell me where we are.”

  We kept driving, much longer than expected, before I even saw a road sign. There was a town, only two miles away, with a name I couldn’t even say – let alone spell. For a moment, I thought I was in Wales, which would have been one hell of a wrong turn. Luckily, Kirsty was able to find it on the map – thankfully located in England. T
he obscurity of it made it that much easier to find. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, so much out of the way that it didn’t even have a supermarket of any well-known franchise. What it did have was Jim’s Grocers, Butcher Dave and a Post Office – because the Post Office, much like the plague, seemed to end up in the most unusual of places. I never believed villages like that existed anymore – because that’s what it was, a village, not even a town. There were only about nine houses, and that included the ones above the butchers and grocers. On top of that, there didn’t even appear to be any zombies! It was so idyllic and peaceful! It didn’t even look like the infection had passed through the village … yet.

  “So, are we going to loot some of the houses?” Stephanie asked after we pulled over. I was stopping to get my bearings with the map and tune the radio to find the military broadcast. I remembered them saying to tune in every day and night at twelve for updates. The analogue clock in the van was mere minutes away from hitting twelve – I couldn’t believe how fast the morning had gone!

  “In a bit,” I replied absentmindedly, far too busy with focusing on the task at hand. I was scanning through the wavelengths, looking for the right frequency – which I couldn’t seem to find.

  “What’re you doing?” Stephanie asked, watching me closely.

  “Trying to find a broadcast,” I sighed, casting a sideways glance at Stephanie. I didn’t want to be distracted. Stephanie was frustrating me.

  “Why?” she asked again. I took a deep and calming breath through my nose before turning to look at her.

  “Because, every time the clock hits twelve, some guy from the military tells everyone his location and that is who I’m trying to find,” I explained as if talking to a child, and then turned back to the radio.