Fear the Dead 2 by Jack Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

world had changed over the last sixteen years, some things
stayed the same. A pretty girl still had the power to reduce a man to a buttery
mess.
     
    “I don’t have time to deal with
this,” I said. “Dan, stay here and watch our stuff.”
     
    ***
     
    I stood at Faizel’s door and knocked.
His living room window was open, and I heard a boy crying. The door opened, and
Faizel gave me a nod.
     
    “Kyle, come in.”
     
    His house was spotless. The carpet
was clean and a flowery smell lingered in the air. Paintings lined the walls of
his living room, some of them with their price tags on. One of them, a wooden
boat swimming against a raging sea and with a captain stood on the stern
holding a wheel, was worth ten thousand pounds.
     
    Faizel saw me looking. “I got them
from the art gallery in town. Nobody wanted them, and the owner is dead. It
seemed a shame to let something so beautiful collect dust.”
     
    He led me into the living room. His
little boy was sat on the sofa, tears pooling from the corners of his wide
eyes. His face was red, and he clutched a cloth rabbit in his hand.
     
    “Just getting the last of my things,”
said Faizel.
     
    He pulled a key out of his pocket and
opened a wooden cabinet that was pushed against the wall. He pulled out a fire
axe. The handle was wooden and had dozens of little notches carved into it. The
blade was clean, but it had been dulled through use. Faizel slipped it into a loop
on his belt.
     
    He bent down toward his son and took
his hand. “You be good and look after your mother. You’re the big man now, and
you can’t cry. Okay?”
     
    The boy sniffed.
     
    “I need to talk to Sana,” said
Faizel. He walked out of the living room and toward the hallway to find his
wife.
     
    The boy’s eyes were puffy and his
nose was raw from crying. I wanted to say something to comfort him, but the
words wouldn’t come. Instead, I walked to the window, brushed back the curtains
and looked out onto the town. Rain rolled over slate roofs and collected into
the gutters.
     
    “Is daddy coming back?” said the boy.
     
    The boy’s eyes stared expectantly.
There was a time when we lied to children and protected their innocence against
the horrors of the world until they were old enough to handle them. But that
was before the infected destroyed everything. Now, children couldn’t afford the
luxury of innocence. 
     
    “I don’t know,” I said.
     
    A door slammed out in the hall, and
Faizel marched back into the living room. His face sagged a little, the corners
of his mouth turning ever so slightly down. It was the closest thing to emotion
I’d ever seen him show.
     
    “Everything okay?” I said.
     
    “Sana isn’t talking to me.”
     
    He bent down and put his arm around his
boy. The boy held his father and squeezed, as if he were trying to hold him
back and keep him from going away.
     
    I felt a pang in my chest. This was
because of me. It was my fault that Faizel was leaving his family behind and
going out into the Wilds. If he didn’t come back, the guilt would be mine.
     
    Faizel gently pushed his son away. He
picked up his bag, swung it across his shoulder and then gave his fire axe a
tap.
     
    “Ready?” he said.
     
    I gulped. “Look, Faizel, I can’t ask
you to do this.”
     
    Drips formed around the boy’s eyes
again.
     
    Faizel looked me square in the face.
“I believe in what you’re doing Kyle. Sometimes a man has to do something
unpleasant if it’s the only way forward.”
     
    ***
     
    We left Vasey without any fanfare.
Nobody said goodbye to us save Melissa, who held onto Justin’s arm until we
reached the gate. The guard on the turret pressed a button and the pulley
system activated.
     
    As the chains rolled and the black
bars opened, Justin gave Melissa a long kiss. When they broke, he put his hand
on her cheek.
     
    “I love you,” he said.
     
    She bit her lip. “Wish you’d found a
better place to tell me,” she said, a bitter