I opened my mouth and filled my lungs with air. “Let’s go.”
We walked down a path and toward the front door. I knocked on it, three taps that shattered the stillness of the air.
“David?” I said.
There was no answer. Maybe he had left.
I knocked again.
“David, you here?”
Nothing.
I turned the handle and opened the door. We stepped inside David’s home. It was a draughty one-floored building with a stone floor and walls that felt cold to the touch. In one corner of the room there was a pile of hay that was spread into a makeshift bed. There was a carpenter’s table with basin of water and a razor on one end, and some nuts scattered on the other. It seemed like this was his bathroom sink and his dining table all rolled into one. Scattered around all over the floor were bits and pieces David had scavenged; batteries, smoke alarms, jumper cables, screwdrivers, copper wire, rope.
“What the hell?” said Justin from the other end of the room.
I walked over. There was a table and two chairs. On the table there was a mug with coffee stains on the sides, and across from it there was an ashtray with a single butt stubbed out. I saw what Justin was looking at, what had confused him.
In one of the chairs female mannequin sat. She had long dark hair so slick that it looked like it had been brushed every night. In her left hand was a book, and it had been arranged so that it was open in the middle, as though she were reading it.
I shook my head. Had David really fallen this far? Was he pretending to have company?
“What is this?” said Justin. He ran his hand down the arm of the mannequin.
“I told you, David is strange.”
“Guess I believe you now. But why do this?”
I looked at the mannequin again. She was wearing a t-shirt that I swore was one of Clara’s. It couldn’t be, could it?
“Loneliness,” I said. “He misses people.”
Justin sat down in the chair opposite the mannequin. “Then why not go to town? What comfort can he possibly get from a doll?”
I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. “David is scared of being alone, but he doesn’t trust people any more.” I looked down at the floor and tried to blot out the memory that was coming back to me, unwanted. “Someone let him down,” I said.
Justin stood up. “But why the pretend people? What comfort does a block of plastic give you?”
I was about to answer, when I heard the door open behind me.
I span my body round toward it and reached down to my belt for my knife, but it was no use. David was stood in front of me, and he had a shotgun pointed at my head. His arms were shaking and his eyes were wild. I couldn’t even tell if he recognised me.
“Sit on the floor. Hands behind your heads. And get away from Leila.”
Chapter 14
He pointed the shotgun at us but he couldn’t seem to choose between me or Justin, and he adjusted his aim so that he was in the middle. Presumably this meant he’d be able to shoot either of us should he need to.
How long had it been since I last saw him? I must have been half a decade at least, and those five years hadn’t been kind to either of us. The hair above his temple had receded so that his fringe was reduced to just a small patch just above his forehead, and his once dark hair was flecked with grey. His cheeks were sunken and the bones protruded against them, and there was a lost look in his big brown eyes. He was six foot two inches tall, but his back looked slightly crooked, and his arms were definitely thinner. Although he was looking straight at us, there was something vacant in his eyes.
“C’mon, Dave, lower the piece,” I said. “If you fire that thing we’ll be covered in infected. You know that as well as I do.”
Instead of putting the gun down, he trained it on my face.
“Rather see an infected than you.”
He didn’t mean that, I knew. David was terrified of the infected, always leaving the killing to Clara and me.
“Where’d you even get it?” I said, trying to think of anything to say to calm him down.
He sucked in his cheeks. “Lots of farmers round here. Farm houses. Animals. Guns. You can get a lot of stuff, if you look for it. Found the generator outside a barn.”
His words spilled out of him in quick-fire succession, so fast that that it was like they were on a spinning conveyor belt that David couldn’t control. He’d always been like this; a little on edge, the wrong side of erratic. He’d gotten a lot worse since I last saw him.
He took a step forward. “Hands behind your head. Move away from there.” He jerked his gun to his left. He looked at Justin.
“You asked about Leila, about why I have her. Simple – I like people but I don’t trust the real thing. Leila doesn’t get angry, doesn’t talk back,” he said. He looked straight at me. “Leila wouldn’t just abandon me.”
The way he spoke worried me. David was the cleverest guy you could meet when it came to mechanics, science, and practical things like that. But, as Clara had explained to me before I met him for the first time, he had some problems growing up. There were some things about the world that he couldn’t comprehend and struggled to cope with, and things like emotion were always a foreign language to him. Clara always knew just how to handle him, but I was useless at first and it took me years to get on his level.
“Who are you?” asked David, looking at Justin.
“He’s with me,” I said.
David tutted. “Watch this one. Your sister will die and then he’ll just leave you to fend for yourself.”
Justin nodded. “Don’t worry, he’s already told me I’m on my own when we get to the -”
I interrupted him before he said the word ‘farm’. The last thing I needed was David knowing where we were going. If he knew we were going to his dad’s house he’d want to come with us, and I didn’t need that.
There was a small part of me that knew that I actually owed it to him, letting him come along, but I tried to suffocate that side.
Justin didn’t seem to be scared by David, but I was worried. Deep down he had a kind heart, but the problem was it sometimes got clouded by poison. He used to have rages that he struggled to control, and you didn’t want to be around when he took the lid off.
David took a step backwards, never taking his eyes off us for a second. He reached to the counter behind him, took hold of some rope and threw it at our feet.
“Tie your wrists together.”
I looked at the rope. It was ragged and worn, and there was what looked like a chicken feather embedded into it. I glanced up at David. There was an intense look in his eyes, and I could see his finger resting on the trigger of the gun. Would he really do it, I thought? Could he kill me? The old David couldn’t have, but it had been so long since I last saw him. A man can change a lot when he’s left to his own devices.
I put the rope on my wrist. The material was rough and scratched against my skin, and I struggled to tie a knot with one hand.
“No,” said David, “Not your own wrists. Tie yours to the boy’s.”
My head sunk. The last thing I needed was to be tied to Justin. He made enough dumb decisions for himself, and there was no way I was letting him get me killed too.
“No David,” I said in as calm a voice as I could. That was the trick with David when he was mad; calm words and soothing tones.
He walked across the room and stood over us, the shotgun bearing down on our heads.
“Tie them together. Now. Won’t ask again.”