Free Plague Of The Revenants by Edward Chilvers Page B

epidemic claiming millions of lives and the dead rising to claim the flesh of the living it appeared that I and I alone had been given a new opportunity. For me this epidemic was a positive godsend. All my life I had yearned for acceptance. Now, in the space of a single day, it seemed I had found it by virtue of doing very little at all.
    I slept surprisingly well, all things considered although I can hardly say I felt safe here in the church. Even with the high walls and windows the revenants could come, and if they came in numbers and all attacked at once we were surely doomed. I woke up just before dawn, went downstairs and heated myself up some leftover tea, hoping nobody else would mind. After a while Kit got up and came to join me. I poured her some tea. “So,” she said sardonically. “What’s the plan, hero?”
“We’re going to go out and find ourselves some supplies,” I told her, deciding not to rise to the bait. “Just as I said we would last night. Now I don’t know how much of the countryside you’ve seen but the parts I’ve travelled through contain a lot of cars lying abandoned by the side of the road.”
“Desperate survivors fleeing for their lives,” said Kit. “I remember it well.” She shuddered at the memory.
I went to one of the seats along which books and other potentially useful artefacts had been stored and dug out a dog-eared map of the area, opened it up and examined it closely. “Where are we?” I demanded.
“You mean to say you’ve promised to save us all and you don’t even know where we are?” Laughed Kit sarcastically. She reached forward and poked a finger on the page. I studied the map closely for a few moments.
“Well at least we’re a few miles from the towns,” I murmured.
“It’s a curse as well as a blessing,” replied Kit. “We’re not as vulnerable to revenant attack but at the same time we have to head further for supplies.”
“A small price to pay,” I told her. “Especially as we’re only about twelve miles from the main road.”
“So let’s hear the plan,” said Kit doubtfully.
“Everybody fled in their cars when the epidemic hit their villages which is why the roads are blocked,” I said. “When they fled they will have taken supplies with them, supplies which you people have thus far left alone. If there are cars on the road it is because people were fleeing and the first thing they will have taken with them before anything else is food. All the tins we need will be in those cars we see crashed by the side of the road, and the more cars there are the richer the pickings will be.”
“If the people were attacked in their cars it means they must have turned there,” said Kit doubtfully. “The area will be crawling with revenants.”
“This is so,” I acknowledged. “But they’ll be visible, and they’re slow. In a way it’ll be easier than looting those farmhouses. At least there are no walls you can’t see around. Your mistake so far has been entering the houses. There’s not likely to be much there, not enough to feed all the people we have and what’s more a building is loaded with pitfalls and inbuilt traps, as we discovered just yesterday.”
Kit bit her lip, as though searching for objections. “How many of us to go?” She said at last.
“That pick-up truck out there is only a three seater,” I said. “Thus the choice has been made for us.”
“And the three are?”
“You, me and Paul,” I replied simply. “The three strongest and fittest we have.”
“Bad idea,” said Kit. “What if we all get killed? So far myself and Paul have been kept apart for precisely that reason.”
“I understand the risks,” I acknowledged. “But we’re not just going for a smash and grab raid here. If we pull this off we’ll have enough food to last us for weeks. After that we can still engage in a little careful scavenging to make the supplies last even longer and better still we’ll be able to turn our