Free Fear the Dead: A Zombie Survival Novel by Jack Lewis Page A

all four of the infected ripped me to pieces.
     
    The infected was five steps away.
     
    “Behind you,” I said.
     
    Without even looking first, Torben
readied his knife and span his body, connecting with the stomach of the
infected and slashing a deep gash through its skin. Through the tear in its
abdomen the infected’s rotten guts slipped out and slapped onto the floor.
Torben sprang to his feet, hooked his right leg behind the infected and pushed
it to the ground. He walked around to its head, lifted his boot in the air and
brought it down with all his weight. The infected’s skull caved like a
watermelon and sprayed bits of blood and bone onto the road.
     
    Somewhere behind me, I heard the sound
of someone retching. I couldn’t move my head because that meant taking the
effort to reposition my whole body, and this would draw Torben’s attention to
what I was trying to look at. I knew who was being sick behind the barricade.
It had to be Justin. I just hoped he had the sense to keep quiet.
     
    In front of me, Torben lifted his leg,
propped it awkwardly on his knee and tried to balance. He picked at the grills
of his boots with his knife and dug out a piece of flesh that had lodged
between them.
     
    “These are great in the snow, but they’re
a bitch to clean,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, what’ve we got here?” He walked
toward my rucksack, unzipped it and began to look through it.
     
    The sight of the stranger fishing
through my things made my blood run hot. I tried to pull my leg toward me, but
the metal wouldn’t budge.  As Torben looked through my bag, I slowly moved my
body so that I could get a view of the other side of the barricade. I managed
to do it without him seeing, and on the other side of the barricade, there he
was.  Sure enough, it was Justin, and his face was pale.
     
    I flicked my head to the side, trying to
tell him to run. Justin took a few seconds to comprehend my instructions, but
he got them wrong. Instead of running, he started to climb the barricade. He
put his foot onto a metal dustbin and began to work his way up.
     
    To my left Torben pulled his hand out of
my bag, and he had my GPRS in his palm. My heart pounded.
     
    “Haven’t seen one of these in years.” he
said excitedly. “Good thinking, using one. Course I remember once getting
rerouted fifty miles and almost driving into a lake on account of one of these
buggers.”
     
    He pushed the on button. For a second, I
worried that it would work, and that the route to the farm would flash on the
screen. I didn’t want Torben to know where we were going.
     
    “Broken?” he asked.
     
    “It’s a piece of shit,” I said.
     
    He put it in his jacket pocket. The
sight of him taking what was mine made me want to get up and beat the crap out
of him, but all I could do was grind my teeth and keep calm.
     
    “Where were you headed?” he asked.
     
    “Just wandering.”
     
    “A fella from the town, leaving behind
those cushy walls with a GPRS and a bag full of food? I’m no Sherlock, but to
me that ain’t just wandering. ”
     
    What could I say to him? That I was a
scout sent by the town to see what I could find? That I just fancied a road
trip? I needed something to tell him; anything but the truth.
     
    “I got kicked out,” I said.
     
    Torben walked over to me. He raised his
boot and then brought it slowly down onto my arm, pinning it to the floor. I
could feel the moisture on his boots from where he had stomped on the
infected’s head, and the pressure of his foot made me drop my knife. I was
powerless.
     
    Behind him, the three remaining infected
were closing in on their meal.
     
    Torben’s eyes narrowed on mine now, and
his voice was rough. “Don’t fuck with me. Nobody leaves that town – nobody. And
to do it with a bag full of beans, means you got a plan. It must be pretty damn
important to risk the wilds.”
     
    He pushed down a little harder on my
arm, and I started to feel it go numb as