Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel by Jack Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

it would have been even better would be to get some sleep.
     
     I looked over
at the kid. He had his eyes focussed on his hands, and he seemed to be picking
dirt from underneath his fingernails. Could I trust him to keep watch tonight,
I wondered? I really needed to get some shut eye, even if it was just for an
hour, but I didn't want to go to sleep and leave the kid watching out for me.
     
    No, I couldn't
do it. No matter how scratchy and red my eyes were, no matter how much my
shoulders felt like a weight crushing me down, I couldn't sleep while he sat
watch. I was just going to have to snatch ten minutes here and there when it
was light. My body ached at the thought of the next morning, of another day of
hiking on tired limbs.
     
    "Justin,"
I said.
     
    He looked up.
His eyes were puffy. "Yeah?"
     
    "You
should get some sleep."
     
    He put his
hands on his lap. "How long've you been out here Kyle?"
     
    "Don’t
talk, just go to sleep. I'll keep watch."
     
    Justin put his
bag in front of him then led his head on it. He wrapped his green raincoat
round his body and tucked it tight up to his chin. It only took fifteen
minutes, and then he was out for the count. As the kid lightly snored the night
away, I began to wonder how we were going to cope for the next few hundred
miles. He wanted to experience what it was like out here in the wild, in the
real world, but he had no idea whatsoever how to live in it. If we were going
to make it to the farm without further incident, then I was going to have to
teach him how to survive.
     
    The fact was,
as soon as we reached the farm he was on his own, and whether he decided to
carry on living in the wilds or he decided to go back to Vasey, he was going to
have to do it independently. I knew I would never buckle from the decision to
leave him, but I could at least prepare him better for when the time came.
     
    The night sky
reached its peak of darkness and the visibility in the forest was less than a
couple of metres. The temperate had plummeted, so I zipped up my coat and
tucked my chin inside. In a way I was thankful for it, because the cold helped
keep me alert.
     
    Despite having
potential hypothermia as an ally, though, my eyelids were starting to feel
heavy. My head was light, my body drained of energy, my eyes closing. I
struggled to keep them open as my brain coaxed me into a soft sleep, and soon I
felt myself surrendering against the feeling.
     
                                                            ***
     
    I opened my
eyes. My brain felt fuzzy from the sleep I had just accidentally taken.
Somewhere to my right, I heard something crunch. I felt my face drain of blood,
and one word automatically leapt into my brain: Stalker.
     
    My shoulders went
tight and my hands were clammy, but I took a deep breath, held it in and tried
to control myself. I looked at Justin. The only movement coming from him was
the rise and fall of his chest. I turned my head to the right and listened
intently. If it was a stalker, it probably wouldn't make another noise, I knew.
There were two possibilities: either it had caught our scent and it was working
its way toward us, in which case the first we would know about it would be when
it tore one of us apart. The second possibility was that it was a lone
infected, just another corpse shambling through the forest.
     
    Please be an
infected, I thought.
     
    Justin stirred.
No, I thought, don't wake up. That would be the worst damn timing ever. To my
right there was another crunch, and the sound of something dragging. I stared
as intently as I could but my eyes couldn't puncture the thick curtain of
darkness. Whatever it was could be metres away, and we wouldn't have the
slightest idea. I looked up at the sky. Never in my life had I wished more for
a little bit of moonlight.
     
    Justin moved
again. I got to my knees and crawled toward him as quietly as I could, taking
care to brush my path