Blog of the Dead (Book 2): Life Read online

  ‘Christ, I need a fucking holiday,’ I mumbled under my breath. I spoke to the cigarette between my fingers as if it cared. I reasoned that the thin roll up had the ability to care and had the power to do as much as any human in my life. ‘What a fucking mess,’ I said to the cigarette again before taking another hard drag on it, killing it faster than it could kill me. I took another pull on the cigarette and then stubbed it out on the collection of 50 and 20 pence coins in the pot, and I lay down on the sofa. I stared at the ceiling, willing my groggy, muddled mind to focus on what I should do about Sean, but my mind kept wandering off, pulling me towards sleep. I mentally clawed my way back to Sean a couple of times until, exhausted, sleep won.

  The sound of the fence rattling woke me. I sat bolt upright, the thought of zombies attacking the camp shaking any grogginess from my mind, and I grabbed my knife from the windowsill, noting that at least it was daylight outside. I darted across to the door and flung it open. ‘Sophie! Misfit! Anyone!’ Flick’s voice carried across the camp towards me.

  ‘Flick, what’s wrong?’ I asked as I raced towards the fence and hurriedly fiddled with the lock. Flick clung onto the metal fence with her left hand, her fingers through the bars. In her right hand she held her shotgun. I scanned the area for zombies but saw none.

  ‘Inside. I’ll tell you inside,’ she said as I opened the panel a little way. Flick slid through the gap and we made our way towards the greying embers of the fire, though I doubted they’d do much to warm us in the frosty morning air. Misfit, Kay and Charlotte all stood outside the caravans by the time we got there, their brows furrowed in concern. Stewart came stumbling out of his caravan a few moments later, his curly hair standing up on one side.

  ‘Who has woken me from my sleepy time?’ he said. ‘This needs to be good.’

  ‘Sara spoke!’ said Flick, and a grin spread across her face like a mother announcing her child’s first words.

  ‘What? She spoke?’ I said, sliding my unneeded knife through my belt.

  ‘No fucking way,’ said Kay.

  ‘Clever pudding,’ said Stewart.

  ‘What did she say, sweetie?’ asked Charlotte, tucking her hair behind her ears and staring at Flick eagerly.

  ‘Well, when I say spoke, I don’t mean like you or I can speak,’ said Flick. ‘But, you know when she wants something she’ll groan? Well, this morning, she pointed towards the door and I swear she said “out”. Only it was more like “owww” but … but … she spoke!’

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t just make a new groaning sound … a growl without the grrr?’ asked Stewart.

  ‘No. The groans come from the back of her throat, but I saw her mouth make the shape of the “owww” sound, like she was forming a word,’ said Flick.

  ‘Fucking amazing!’ said Kay. ‘Good on her.’

  ‘Unbelievable. How exciting!’ said Charlotte, and she gave a little squeal and a jump.

  ‘This is big,’ I said.

  ‘Really big,’ said Flick, her blue eyes wide. ‘Her recovery could be greater than any of us imagined.’

  ‘She might heal … completely,’ I said. I put a hand to my forehead, trying to steady my spinning mind. Sam, my little brother Jake, my parents … any one of them could be immune like Sara and Shelby, who we left in Wales. ‘I have to find Sam,’ I said and headed for the fence panel.

  ‘Sophie,’ Misfit sprang in front of me. ‘Don’t. He’s gone. The chances of him –’

  ‘But there is a chance!’ I snapped, pushing past him. He grabbed my elbow.

  ‘Sophie, come on,’ he said, looking deep into my eyes. He never looked anyone else in the eye. I wondered if I was the only person who knew how deep and brown his were.

  ‘Sophie,’ Charlotte trotted over to me and put a hand on my free arm. ‘Misfit’s right. The immunity must be so rare. You’ll only risk disappointment if you look for Sam, let alone put yourself in danger. We’ve all lost people, sweetie. We all know how you feel. Maybe he is immune –’

  ‘Don’t encourage her, for fuck’s sake,’ said Kay.

  ‘Well, we don’t know for sure, do we?’ said Charlotte, glancing over her shoulder at Kay. She turned back to me. ‘We’ll find him together but not right now. You’re emotional and you’ll put yourself in danger. Don’t do anything silly.’

  ‘My little brother …’ I said. But Charlotte just stared at me. ‘OK,’ I said after a moment. ‘OK, you’re right.’ Misfit let my elbow go and I turned to Flick. ‘I’ll get down to see her as soon as I can. But let me – us – know if anything else happens with Sara.’

  ‘I will,’ said Flick. ‘I’m going to work on language with her, now I think there’s a strong possibility she can regain it. But, Sophie, as far as Sam is concerned, even if he is immune like Sara, whatever physical developments happen and whatever basic mental functions return, whoever Sara was before she died is gone. Her soul would have left her body, like any soul does after death. Whatever she will be when she’s as healed as she can be, it’ll never be like before.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said more harshly than I should have.

  ‘OK. OK, I’ll keep you updated,’ Flick said with a strained smile and, with her shotgun at her side, she slid through the fence panel. I locked it after her and watched until her head bobbed out of view down the track to the Warren. My mind chose to delete the nonsense about souls disappearing and focus on Sara’s miraculous milestone. She spoke. That proved she wasn’t just healing physically but mentally too. But I realised tracking down Sam would have to sit on the back burner; I had a more pressing problem to deal with.

  Misfit left camp to take some of the supplies we picked up in Sainsbury’s down to Flick and Sara. He took his hunting stuff with him. I worried about him, with his head injury, but I let him go. Stewart had gone back to bed and Charlotte kept herself busy by practising karate moves on a patch of grass outside the Martello tower. After I had locked up the fence behind Misfit, I stood and watched her for a moment. These days, I could summon up energy when I needed to, like when I had to fight for my life, because adrenaline would kick in. But the rest of the time a lazy sombreness pervaded me. I can’t believe I used to run because I enjoyed it.

  ‘Where do you get the energy from?’ I said after a while.

  Without breaking the fierce concentration on her usually sunny face, Charlotte replied, ‘I’ve been doing this since I could walk. My big brother used to go to Karate lessons and I used to go along and watch with my mum. I started copying the moves and so my mum signed me up too. She thought it might save my life one day.’ Charlotte kicked out at what I assumed was an imaginary zombie. ‘She meant from a rapist or something but she had no idea how right she was … I couldn’t save my family though.’ She punched and kicked at the air, her face red – not just from exertion, I guessed. I thought better of continuing the conversation and left her to train while I headed further into camp.

  Kay sat on a filthy rug by the embers of the previous day’s fire, stoking it and adding fresh wood to build it up again, ready to cook on later. I strode over to her.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, sitting beside her. ‘But no one else can know.’

  ‘Secrets, I like it,’ she said, turning to me. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Sean. I don’t believe he killed that girl, Kay. And I don’t think you do either.’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe,’ said Kay, chucking another piece of wood onto the fire. ‘He turns up the worst for wear on the day a girl’s murdered. He’s cagey and defensive. I know how it looks. But … but I didn’t like the way that lot barged in here and marched him off with no promise of a fair trial. I want to believe he didn’t do it. I … I want him not to have done it.’

  I looked Kay in the eye. ‘You fancy him, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t know anything about the bloke. How can I know –’

  ‘Cos sometimes we just know,’ I said. ‘Just like I know we can’t give up on him.’ Kay nodd
ed at me. ‘But, the thing is,’ I went on, ‘I wasn’t completely honest with everyone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I chewed my bottom lip for a moment, wondering how what I was about to reveal would go down. ‘I saw scratches on his arms, before he could cover them with his coat,’ I continued. ‘Soph and Chris know about them now and it’s given them even more fuel to convict him. And there’s more. No one else knows this.’

  ‘What? Go on …’

  ‘The day me and Misfit found him on the beach I saw …’

  Kay let out a sigh. ‘For fuck’s sake, just spit it out.’

  ‘I saw blood on his hands. Red blood,’ I said.

  ‘What? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘Because it made no sense at the time and then when I heard about Lucy, I knew it would point the finger at him. And if I’d found out about Lucy before Sean saved me and Misfit I’d have been like, “He’s your murderer, string him up”. But the point is, he did save me and Misfit. He came back here. Why would he do that if he had killed Lucy? He would have got as far away as possible. He risked his life for ours in more ways than one.

  ‘Before the St Andrews lot took him, I asked him if he did it and he said no. I asked him if he knows who did and he said yes. He admitted he was involved. He was probably there when it happened but I don’t believe he did it. I don’t think he was searching for his sister, I think he was tracking the murderer. I’m worried the St Andrews lot are going to kill Sean and if he dies we’ll never know who did it. Then none of us will be safe because we’ll lose the only lead we have.’

  ‘But why would he be so secretive about the murderer if he was innocent?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I watched Kay, waiting for her reaction.

  ‘Blood on his hands,’ she said, with a shake of her head. ‘Talk about getting caught red handed.’

  ‘You think he did it, now I’ve told you all that?’

  ‘What I think or don’t think isn’t the problem. The problem is that we’re going to have a fuck of a job convincing anyone else.’

  ‘So you’ll help me?’

  ‘Hell yeah. So what’s the plan?’ asked Kay.

  ‘We break him out of St Andrews before they kill him. You and me.’

  Entry Eleven

  We slipped out once the others had gone to sleep. I gripped my knife tightly as me and Kay crept down the track towards Wear Bay Road in a darkness only slightly softened by the full moon; its light glistened on the tip of Kay’s axe as she held it against her chest.

  Our feet sounded like rakes across gravel, no matter how gently we placed them on the track. The night was silent, but no more than the day. The world didn’t give off much sound any more, other than dead feet dragging, groans, and the sound of tearing or slicing flesh … whether fresh or rotting. It’s just that the darkness gave the impression of greater silence.

  ‘You know your plan is pretty crap,’ whispered Kay.

  ‘I know, it sucks. But it’s the best I can do,’ I said. ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’

  ‘Ah, well, I like a challenge.’

  ‘Sssssh,’ I said. We had just emerged from the track, the road to our right, and to our left, an overgrown field stretched out along the side the cliff and down towards the tennis courts and golf course.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kay.

  ‘Shhhhh!’ I heard the sound of groaning to my right. I squinted into the darkness and I could make out movement a few metres ahead of us. How many zombies were in the road ahead of us, I couldn’t tell. ‘We need to walk through the field,’ I whispered to Kay. ‘Zombies. I don’t think they’ve spotted us, we can go around them.’

  Kay gave out a long and rather loud I-don’t-walk-through-long-grass-and-dried-up-brambles-if-I-can-help-it sigh. A zombie snarled, and I saw a dark shape change course and stagger towards us.

  ‘Ah, now they have,’ I said.

  Kay raised her axe and stomped towards the zombie. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could see maybe five more lumbering up behind the now head-split zombie, whose dried up, withered body crumpled to the ground at Kay’s feet. She went for another one, slam dunking her axe down on the top of its head, slicing it in two. Then she was onto the next.

  I raised my knife and steamed forwards, even though I felt like a chaperone with my big sister and her date and they’d rather I just pissed off and left them to it. I rammed my knife through a zombie’s ear. Cold, thick, sticky blood splattered onto my hand and I heard the suction pop as I pulled the knife out. I looked around for the next zombie to skewer but all I saw was Kay standing, axe by her side, looking at me, the last two zombies at her feet. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now I don’t have to risk a broken ankle walking through all that shit in the dark.’

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘I love that we’ve reached the stage in our zombie slaying careers that fighting zombies is considered easier than walking through an overgrown field in the dark,’ I said, trying to stifle my laughter for fear of attracting more zombies, or – worse – alert the others back at camp as to what we were up to. Then I remembered the job ahead and my good humour drained away. Kay must have felt the tension too because she managed only the tightest of smiles, just visible in the moonlight.

  We crept on down the hill, past the tennis courts and golf course, until we reached the corner of The Durlocks. ‘I can’t believe we’re going to do this,’ Kay whispered to me.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘But we have to. Just follow my lead.’

  ‘It’s right about now I should say something like, “It’s not too late to back out, we haven’t done anything yet. Let’s just forget all this, go back to camp and carry on with our lives just like before” shouldn’t I?’

  ‘But you don’t say defeatist things like that,’ I said.

  Kay nodded to me. ‘True,’ she said, and the pair of us jogged out from behind the hedge and down towards St Andrews.

  I could make out a shadowy figure standing at the top of the fire escape inside the car park. When I saw the end of a cigarette glow brightly as the figure took a drag on it, I knew it had to be Max. ‘Who’s there?’ he said on hearing our feet pounding the pavement. He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the car park, switched on a torch and shone its small beam in our direction.

  ‘Max, it’s Sophie and Kay,’ I said squinting against the light in my eyes. I tried to sound panicked but kept my voice low so as not to wake anyone inside. ‘Our camp … the others … me and Kay were the only ones who …’

  Max clanged down the fire escape and I cringed at the racket his booted feet made. ‘No fucking way,’ he said and he shoved the torch under his arm as he fumbled with the lock on the gate. ‘Zombies?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Our camp’s gone, Max,’ I sobbed – total Oscar nominee stylee. ‘Everyone’s dead.’

  ‘It was terrible,’ added Kay and I shot her a look.

  ‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ said Max. He halted, key in the lock and looked up at me, running a hand over his shaved head. ‘You’re not … neither of you got …’ He looked from me to Kay.

  ‘We’re not bitten,’ said Kay.

  Max nodded and carried on with opening the gate. ‘Sorry. I have to check,’ he said, pulling the gate open.

  ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘But we need help – shelter,’ I added, believing myself so much that a tear ran down my cheek.

  ‘Yeah, no problem. You got it,’ said Max. He turned his back to me and Kay, locked the gate and slipped the keys into his pocket. ‘Hang on and –’ Kay put her arm around his neck from behind and held him in an arm lock, even though she stood half a foot shorter than him. She held the blade of her axe to the side of his face. ‘What the fuck …?’ The torch fell from under Max’s arm to clatter on the tarmac. I clenched my teeth at the sound, hoping no one inside had heard it.

  Before Max had a chance to react further, I raised the tip of my knife to his throat. ‘Don’t say another word. Hand me that cro
wbar.’

  ‘Fucking mental bitches,’ said Max. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘I said don’t say another fucking word!’ I hissed. Max hesitated for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he glared at me. I worried he was going to be difficult but he pulled his crowbar from his belt and held it out to me. Without taking my eyes off him, I took it in my free hand. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them. Don’t try and struggle or this will go through your jugular,’ I said, hoping to fuck he didn’t call my bluff. ‘You won’t be the first human I’ve killed,’ I added in a vain attempt to avoid him calling my bluff. Max didn’t know me well enough to know I’m a big softy who once saved a worm from drying to death on tarmac in the sun. And I had killed humans, just not nice, friendly ones. Max nodded very carefully, what with having an axe and the tip of a knife so close to vital pieces of flesh.

  ‘All we want is Sean. Is he still alive?’ I asked. Max nodded, but as his eyes bored into mine I could see a challenge in them. ‘Do you know where he is?’ Max didn’t move. ‘If you don’t know where he is, you’re useless to me and I’ll kill you and find someone else that does.’ Despite his attempt at bravado, I saw a lump in Max’s throat as he gulped. Shit, he was buying this. ‘Now, do you know where he is?’ I asked again. Max nodded. ‘Is there anyone on guard in there?’

  Max shook his head ‘no’, a barely visible movement. ‘OK. Walk. And remember this blade won’t be far from your throat.’ Max staggered towards the side entrance of St Andrews, his movements hampered by Kay hanging around his neck. ‘My keys,’ he said, stopping in front of the door. ‘In my pocket.’

  I put the crowbar between my legs and slipped my hand into his pocket and pulled out a large set of keys. I handed them to Max, not really wanting to figure out which was the right one myself. He selected a silver Yale key and slid it into the lock. ‘And you’ll need that.’ He lightly kicked something on the ground, in the corner by the door. I looked down and saw a gas lamp, the type you take camping. I ducked down and swiped it up, my blade barely leaving his throat. I turned it on and lit it with my lighter, the glow illuminated the contempt in Max’s face.