I took a step forward and grabbed the infected by the hair, but the scraggly strands tore from its skull too easily and sent the infected’s face closer to Justin.
“Hold it up,” I said.
The infected snarled and gnashed its teeth. Justin let out a grunt, and with all his strength he held the infected’s head toward me. I gave one short, strong stab with my knife and pierced its skull, sending the metal deep into its brain.
I took a deep breath and let my heartbeat settle.
“You can put it down now,” I said.
Justin let the infected’s body drop to one side. His eyes were wide with shock and he was panting.
“Deep breaths kid,” I said.
I looked around me. I couldn’t see any more of them, nor could I hear the tell-tale moans that said they were near. That didn’t mean we were alone, though. I looked up at the shelf next to me, and suddenly my eyes were as wide as Justin’s.
“Think we got lucky,” I said.
Justin followed my gaze and saw what I was looking at. The shelf next to the tent was empty, all save one row at the top, on which were several boxes full of tins. I couldn’t see what they were and I didn’t care; they could be tinned fruit, beans, chili or spaghetti, it didn’t matter. It was food, that’s all we needed. That would be enough.
“Okay monkey boy, time to climb again.”
Justin put his hand on the shelf and shakily pulled himself up. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Think you can do this?” I said.
He nodded. His breaths were steadying and his eyes came into focus.
“Good. I’ll let a little light in here,” I said. I didn’t want him climbing twenty feet up the shelf in the dark, because the last thing we needed was him falling and breaking his leg.
I walked past a row of shelves and to the back of the warehouse. There were two enormous metal shutters, which as I suspected, were used for trucks when they made deliveries. If I could open them and let a little light in, it might just give enough visibility to let Justin to climb safely to the top of the shelf. Then we would get the hell out of here.
I unhooked the bolt, took hold of the door handle and put my weight behind it. Slowly, the shutter started to move open and cracks of daylight seeped in. I strained against it and slid the door all the way to the end, then stood to admire the afternoon sun. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I stopped dead. My breath choked in my mouth, and I my throat was tight.
In the yard outside, a mere twenty feet away, there were over fifty infected walking around. They all saw me and then turned in my direction, their arms outstretched and their teeth clamping together. They starting moving in my direction, toward the warehouse.
I turned and ran over to Justin. He had started his climb onto the shelf, and he was about halfway up.
“Jump down, we need to get the hell out,” I said.
“What’s wrong, we need to –“
“Just get down!” I shouted.
My heart was pounding and my body was covered in sweat. From the other end of the warehouse I could hear the infected moaning. It didn’t matter how dark it was in here; their hunger was so powerful a drive that they would find their way to us eventually. If we stayed, we would die.
Justin looked back toward the shelf, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him along with me. I wasn’t taking any chances. We just had to get out, and we’d figure out what to do later.
“Kyle!” Justin said, and he stopped. I tugged at him again, but he wouldn’t budge.
“What is it?” I said
“Listen.”
Despite the blood throbbing in my eardrums, I listened. That’s when I realised how screwed we truly were. From the front entrance, our only way out of the building, I could hear laughing and voices. One voice was louder than all the rest.
It was Torben’s.
Chapter 12
The vice around us tightened with the infected on one side, and Torben and his hunters on the other. Without any clear escape and certainly no chance of winning a fight, I was struggling to work out what we could do. I knelt down in front of the shelf and tugged at Justin’s coat. He got to his knees.
Torben turned the corner and entered checkout area of the warehouse. One of the hunters walked next to him, and two others hung behind. From their faces, and their lack of curiosity about the place, I got the impression they’d been here before.
“You reckon they’re still around?” said one of the hunters. It was the driver of the pick-up truck. He was tall and his belly pressed tightly against his shirt and spilt over his belt.
Torben looked down and spat on the floor. “I imagine that on foot and with nothing to eat, they won’t get far. Come on, let’s load up and head out. I want to be back on the road before it gets dark.”
The driver shoved his hands in pockets. On his left arm he had a tattoo sleeve, but I couldn’t make out any other detail of it in the dark other than the fact it covered all of his skin. “Not many shelves left.”
Torben brushed his thumb across his moustache. “Just find one with food and take it all. I don’t want to kick my heels here when I could be out there finding them.”
Listening to Torben talk about us like that made it hard to stay hidden. I’d never let a man make me hide before, and doing it now was like swallowing glass. All things being equal, I could take Torben. That was the problem though; nothing was equal. The gun slung around his neck and the three guys he had with him guaranteed that.
I looked at Justin. “We can’t hang around,” I whispered.
Justin turned away from me and looked back at the shelf. The food crates were twenty feet up at the top. “We’re not going to get another chance like this. Look at it all, it’s enough to last a month.”
“A month of food is no good if we’re going to die in a few minutes. We need to leave.”
Across the warehouse Torben’s footsteps echoed up to the rafters. He coughed, cleared something from his throat and spat again on the floor. He turned to the driver. “They’re still around here, I know it. Lancashire’s a big place, and they won’t have left it yet.”
“What if they don’t want to be found?”
“Just cause someone doesn’t want to be found, doesn’t mean they can’t be. “
He was talking about us, I knew, and he was right. There was no way on earth I wanted him to find us, but then again, that didn’t mean he couldn’t. This was a prime example – here he was, just metres away. We were both here by coincidence and with the same goal, but nonetheless it showed how easy it was to slip up.
Fifty yards behind me, toward the back of the warehouse, I heard the faint cries of the infected. The ones from the yard were piling in now, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached us. With them on one side and the hunters on the other, we didn’t have the luxury of choice or time. We either fought our way out of either side, or we found another way to escape.
I turned back to Justin. “You see any other way out?”
He looked around him, but his gaze drifted back to the food behind us. “No,” he said.
“Forget about the tins,” I said.
In front of us, Torben pulled a torch from his belt and turned it on. The beam of yellow cut through the shadows and moved through the shelves like a search light. The driver walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Torbs,” he said, “It’s been two months. Think we gotta accept that Alicia and Ben are gone. I’m not saying they’re…no longer with us…, but if they’re still breathing then they don’t want to do it around us no more.”