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

  “But … it isn’t twelve,” Stephanie replied dumbly. I jabbed a finger at the clock in the van without even looking up at her. She turned to follow my finger, and then said, “The clock is broken … it’s been like that since yesterday.”

  “What?!” I snapped, my anger laced with annoyance.

  “Yeah, I would have said earlier but didn’t think it was important,” she replied, not so dumbly.

  “Dammit,” I shouted, pounding the steering wheel and blasting the horn. I looked around at them all, “What time is it?”

  “No idea,” Kirsty said, and Stephanie shrugged. It was then I realised that they didn’t have a watch, nor any other possessions. They still wore the burlap sacks that had been forced on them during their capture – I had to fix that. I looked at the sky, trying to determine the time like days of old. The sun wasn’t at the midway point in the sky, so it was before twelve – if I was remembering that correctly. I rubbed my eyes and yawned. Tiredness was gaining on me. I wouldn’t be able to stave it off much longer.

  “Let’s go,” I yawned. “We’re gonna loot and I’m gonna look for a clock.”

  When we pulled over, I discreetly collected six items from the back of the van. Without saying a word, I handed Kirsty and Stephanie a t-shirt, boxer shorts, and jeans – they were sized for myself, so were far too big for both of the women. Kirsty gave me a silent nod that spoke more than all the works of Shakespeare combined. I left them both to put on their new clothes in peace, walking up to the first house with my machete in hand and pulled the door handle.

  It was an old-fashioned door – none of that PVC nonsense. Proper solid wood that swung inwards with no resistance – the prior owners hadn’t even locked the door on their evacuation.

  I stepped into the house and realised it was still warm and even smelled of food! Immediately, something didn’t feel right, but I didn’t know what it was. I clenched my hand around the machete and opened the first door I came across, peering in. I was ready for any undead that could be lurking inside, but what I saw threw me more than if there had been an orgy of the undead inside. Sat in the room, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, were two elderly women – and they were both staring at me.

  “Uhh,” I stammered, unsure of what to say.

  “What are you doing in here!?” one of the women shouted at me, reaching for the phone. The other screamed.

  “I, uh, I thought …” I fumbled. What could I say?

  “If you don’t answer me, I’m ringing the police,” she demanded, already typing in the emergency number. I doubted the emergency services would come, the military barely existed … but still.

  “I didn’t think anyone would be home,” I blurted out, as if that justified breaking into someone’s home with a machete, and backed out of the room. I kept backing out of the house and closed the door behind me.

  “What is it?” Kirsty asked, SA80 primed and ready to go. She was staring at the look of confusion on my face.

  “I’m not too sure,” I replied honestly. I turned and looked at the house before saying, “I don’t think they know what’s happening … they were drinking tea and chatting.”

  “The dead probably haven’t passed this way,” Stephanie shrugged.

  “That still doesn’t answer our questions though does it?” Kirsty said to her. She turned to me and said, “Get in the van and let me talk to them.”

  “Why get in the van?” I demanded angrily.

  “Because you’re the psycho who just broke into their home with a machete,” she snapped in reply. Then said, more softly, “Just trust me on this.”

  I sighed and climbed into the van.

  “Better let the women work,” I heard Keith say from the back of the van.

  “Jog on,” I huffed in reply, but heard Keith laugh in response. I slouched down in the seat and watched the interaction through the wing mirror. Kirsty knocked on the door, smiled sweetly, spoke briefly and then disappeared into the house. I smiled. Now that was skill.

  Thirty minutes later, or was it ten? I didn’t know, the clock wasn’t working! Eventually, Kirsty and Stephanie came out of the house. They walked to the van, and the elderly women waved them off.

  “So?” I prompted as they climbed in.

  “We told them that we were looking for a young man in a leather jacket and that he was on the loose,” Kirsty said, only to smile when I arched my eyebrows in surprise. “We didn’t say you were dangerous, just missing from your day-care group.”

  “Great. I preferred them thinking I was a psychopath,” I sighed.

  “As for why they’re still there,” Kirsty began thoughtfully. “As far as they’re concerned, there isn’t anything going on. They’re convinced it’s no different to any other epidemic. They’ve seen swine flu and bird flu. They think this will just go away too.”

  “Poor buggers. Should we tell them or what?” I replied. What else could I say?

  “I don’t think we should,” Stephanie piped up suddenly.

  “Why?” I questioned.

  “It wouldn’t be fair,” she said, smiling meekly. “They’re old, they don’t have long left. Let their last days be happy.”

  I didn’t agree with that. I felt they should be told. Yet, there wasn’t anything we could do for them if we did. We would upheave their world, only for us to leave – it wouldn’t be fair.

  “Also, I got you something,” Stephanie continued after some silence, breaking my train of thought. I looked at her and, with that, she produced an old wooden clock. The size of a bag of sugar no less! With a smile, she exclaimed, “I swiped it on the way out! All you have to do is wind it and you’ll always have the time!”

  “Uh, thanks,” I said, taking the oversized clock and placing it on the dashboard with Thundy. We weren’t far from twelve – an hour and a half. I just laughed at the sheer absurdity of the size of the clock. It looked so out of place. My laughter felt manic, the result of sleep deprivation.

  “Did you sleep at all last night?” Kirsty asked sternly.

  “Not one bit,” I said forcing a smile.

  “Get some,” she demanded. “We’ll wake you at twelve, but we can’t have you falling asleep at the wheel.”

  She didn’t need to tell me twice. I climbed out of the driver’s side and into the back with Keith.

  “Don’t throttle me,” I slurred to him, as sleep gripped me.

  “I won’t,” Keith said, beginning to say something else but I didn’t hear a word of it. Sleep took me before I’d even laid down.

  CHAPTER 4

  It wasn’t a great sleep. I was hot and uncomfortable. Yet, I dreamed. I dreamed I was trekking through an apocalyptic wasteland. My world, many years from the present day.

  In dreams, you tend to have a weird dreamscape knowledge. You are aware of the facts and events in your dream world – knowledge that only works in the context of the dream. I knew I’d been searching for Alice for years. I’d turned down safe havens, fortresses, and journeys to safe islands, all to search for her. Thundy was tatty and broken – and had been fixed so many times that little was left of the original bear. I too was tatty and broken, but I wasn’t so easily repaired.

  We’d returned to Essex, most of it levelled from fire and war. I had nowhere left to go. A trail of dead friends and family behind me, I outlived them all. My quest the only thing that kept me going.

  I arrived back at Alice’s house where it all began. Houses either side of it were gone, but her house stood strong. I walked through the front door and back to her bedroom. There was no blood. No bodies. Nothing abnormal. I just slumped down on her bed with Thundy, and Alice walked in smiling. The death and terror … all that I’d seen, it no longer mattered. People like Harrington and Boss … it was ok.

  And then I woke up, a renewed vigour to find Alice. Yet it had also left me with something else – fear. Fear that I’d be wandering forever trying to find her. I’d end up delusional and alone with only a damn teddy bear to keep me compa
ny. Was that a warning for me of what was to come? Could I change it? Was my brain telling me it wasn’t too late to change the path I was on? I was in a van with three others, two of whom I trusted. What if I just stayed with them? I could keep them safe, they needed it … I needed it. We could be our own little family in the apocalypse. I didn’t need to find Alice – odds were she was already dead. Or, if she was still alive, she had her family. Maybe I needed to finally let go? It had always been a long shot trying to find her anyway …

  I pushed myself up from the bed of the van, feeling better than I had in a long time. No light filtered through the window – it was night time. The van wasn’t moving. I had a brief moment of panic as I sat up and looked around. Stephanie and Kirsty sat on the bed of the van with the doors wide open and their back to me. Keith sat outside on the floor. He didn’t look like he’d been treated cruelly, but he certainly didn’t seem welcome to sit with them either. They sat there, eating an MRE and drinking water. They certainly weren’t following the rationing rules that I set out, but who was I to judge them?

  I rose and looked at the clock that Stephanie had stolen – it read nine, which clearly was nine at night. I’d been waiting for something … what was it? My mind took far too long to get going. I cast my gaze across the front seats and saw maps and the compass and the memory of the broadcast came rushing back! They didn’t wake me up for it! I was about to demand why, kick up a fuss and shout, but then I remembered my dream induced revelation. Maybe it wasn’t so important. Maybe that was meant to happen. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was willing to hold off my verbal attack as I climbed out of the van.

  “Scoot over,” I said as I sat on the edge of the van with the women. I popped open the airtight MRE and began to eat, ignoring my own rationing rule also. I had no idea what the mess was supposed to resemble, but it tasted awful regardless.

  “Sorry we didn’t wake you, but you were out for the count,” Kirsty replied, without even looking up. They were all circling a flashlight as if it was a campfire.

  “No problems,” I said with a smile. The air was warm, and the world felt peaceful.

  “We marked the next stop on the map. The checkpoint that is … we won’t get to it in time,” Stephanie added, she was swinging her legs like a child.

  “Yeah, they have such a lead on us that we won’t get there. If we keep a steady pace though, we’ll be able to meet them for their next stop – now that we have a destination,” Kirsty added, flashing a look of annoyance at Stephanie. “We spent most of the day plotting the best routes. Keith added some, uh, suggestions.”

  “All I suggested was to keep away from main roads and motorways. They’ll be packed with abandoned cars in some areas. Lesser-known routes would be best,” Keith added, and said with a smile, “You don’t have to say it like I was planning a murder.”

  “Well, sorry that I can’t trust you at this current time!” Kirsty exploded, the atmosphere in the camp suddenly changing. She slammed her food down, the container clattering, and then she marched into the darkness and out of our safety net of light. None of us moved, nor knew how to react. I waited a few moments, realising no one else was going to move.

  “I better see if she’s ok,” I sighed, putting my food down and following her.

  I didn’t have to go far to find her – sat off to the side of our group in a layby which dipped away from the road. I suddenly became aware of how unprotected we were. Wooded area either side of us and a long winding road separating the trees with concrete. The van was opposite to us in another layby. Surely a little farther would have been better? Even the middle of the road would have been preferable – undead coming out of the woods was a very real threat. However, I wasn’t there to question our safety, I was there to check on Kirsty, who was staring into the woods. I didn’t know what she was looking at, because she certainly couldn’t see anything. Her night vision wasn’t even there yet, and neither was mine. She was just looking beyond whatever was in front of her.

  “What do you want?” she demanded without even looking round. I could hear that she’d been crying in the way she spoke her words.

  “Just thought I’d admire the view with you,” I said, attempting to lighten the mood.

  “There’s a time and a place, Sam,” she said angrily, but a flash of a smile that never touched her eyes illuminated her face.

  “So, what’s up?” I asked, sitting beside her. I already knew the answer. I didn’t turn to face her and we just both stared into the darkness.

  “Forget it,” she sighed and wiped her face.

  “You’re angry, I get it,” I replied simply. I saw her head whip round and smoulder me with an enraged look out of the corner of my eye. “I know I could never possibly understand it, but I get it. I get the anger – it’s deep and eats you up and turns to hate. You just want to lash out and destroy. Whether it’s the monster who hurt you or someone else who you can blame. You want some sort of justified revenge.”

  She squinted at me in the dark and said, “You’ve been–”

  “Hurt. I’ve been hurt,” I interrupted. “Not in the same way you have, but I’ve been … yeah.”

  “What happened?” Kirsty asked. She wasn’t crying anymore.

  “Recently? A man … a military man who I thought I trusted … took me and a friend in, killed my friend and left me, for all intents and purposes, dead,” I said through gritted teeth, anger welling up in me and I instinctively reached for the bullet I’d designated for Harrington before remembering it was in the van with Thundy. “Before that? My father, who was a monster in his own right.”

  “Some people are just evil,” Kirsty said after a few moments. Maybe I hadn’t helped her come to terms with what had happened, but I’d certainly helped distract her.

  “I don’t think people are evil,” I responded, choosing my words carefully as the philosophical side of me came to the forefront. “Evil isn’t some sort of magical thing that some people are born with. Most people go through life with the mindset that they would never do an evil thing because they’re a good person. People think only evil people do evil things. Evil isn’t like that. Evil is seeing your own beliefs as so perfectly justified, that you see it as reality. Imagine seeing something as so right and true that you can justify harming others for it. That is what the guy at the container site was like. He was so convinced that what he was doing was right, to protect his men, that he didn’t see that he was harming others.”

  “So, you’re saying that the man wasn’t evil?” Kirsty snapped at me.

  “Not at all. It’s just so easy seeing a man as a monster, or something beyond human that sometimes we forget that he was just a man and that man can do terrible things. His actions were evil,” I replied calmly. I looked at her and asked, “Have you ever seen the movie Downfall?”

  “No,” she sighed.

  “Good movie … not that it matters now. It was about Hitler's last days in his bunker. The film made a lot of people uncomfortable, mainly because it showed Hitler as who he was, a human being … something a lot of people found hard to swallow. It was easier to think of him as some larger than life villain because, that way, we ignore that any of us can have evil inside us. The film doesn’t show Hitler as a good person, but shows that he was just a person. He was crazy and deluded, but a person nonetheless. At any point, we could become convinced we are right and everyone else as wrong for not following the same playbook as us. The impulse is inside all of us … it’s just how we address the emotion that matters,” I said, trying to explain what I wanted to get across.

  “The same water that hardens the egg softens the potato,” Kirsty replied quietly.

  I looked at her and smiled sadly, “I don’t know what I’m trying to say … I guess I’m saying is that he was a human, who did evil things because he believed they were right. Same as the guy who hurt you. You’re human too, on a quest for revenge against someone who’s dead. I don’t think Keith is a bad person, he might have done bad things,
but never to any of us. He isn’t one of the guys who hurt you, ok? Don’t justify your own actions because you believe they’re right.”

  Kirsty started to sob. Maybe that was part of the healing process? I couldn’t fix what had happened to her in the past, but maybe I could help her future. I needed to keep my own advice in mind, otherwise, I could end up on the same slippery slope.

  I sat with Kirsty for a long time while she cried. I never said a word. I waited until she was ready and we walked back to the van together. Stephanie had already retired to her seat in the van, and Keith was sitting up with the torch.

  “Sorry I’ve treated you the way I have,” Kirsty said to Keith curtly, and just carried on into the van with Stephanie. Keith just smiled in reply.

  “What are you still doing up?” I said to him as I sat in the back of the van to finish my food.

  “Waiting for you,” he yawned. Then added, “You know I’m not a bad person, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Please don’t prove those two right, ok?”

  “I’ll try not to,” Keith smiled, before climbing into the back of the van to sleep. I listened to the gentle breathing of my companions. It was relaxing almost … who would have thought the apocalypse could be peaceful? I was surrounded by the sounds of nature. Owls hooting. Wind blowing a warm breeze through the trees. I could almost imagine I was on a camping trip. Before our journey was over, we’d have to roast marshmallows over a fire. Alice would like that … an intrusive thought. Moving on wouldn’t be as easy as I’d hoped.

  Interlude One – Stephanie

  When you travel with the same people long enough, you start to learn things about them. Not just the little things that make up their personality, but facts about their life. Stephanie was more than forthcoming about her life while we travelled together. She enjoyed talking about herself, and I didn’t, so it worked. Plus, she really did like to talk. I mean, a lot.