Torben closed his eyes and shook his head. “You make it sound like we’re monsters. All we’re doing is surviving, just like you. We’re a pack. We trust each other with our lives.”
I scrunched up my face. I couldn’t shake the feeling of disgust. “There’s something rotten at the core of your ‘pack’. “
Torben stood up and perched against the dining table. Through his open jacket I could see a revolver in a holster. I recognised the gun – it was mine, the one I’d kept in the rucksack that Torben had stolen.
“It’s not man versus man anymore, Kyle. There are no cliques, no armies. Its man versus infected.”
“So why hunt people?”
“Some men just don’t belong in a pack” he said, and stared at me. Then he turned to Justin. “But others fit right in.”
I struggled against the ropes on my wrist, but I barely had a centimetre to move. My skin burnt from rubbing against the rough material.
Torben reached into the holster and took out the revolver. He opened the chamber and checked the bullets, and from my chair I could see gold circles filling two of the holes. The other four were empty. Torben span the chamber round to line up the bullets and then closed it with a snap.
My breath caught in my lungs now, and my chest felt tight. The bullets had only one purpose; I knew it, and Torben knew it. I was tied to the chair so tight that there was no way I was going to move. I looked over at Justin and tried to get a sense of what he was thinking. Had he really joined them, or was he just playing along? Maybe he had weighed up his options and come to the conclusion that sticking with the hunters was the only way to stay alive.
Torben walked over to me and stopped just inches away. He reached forward with the revolver and pressed it into my forehead. I felt the cold metal dig into my head, and Torben pressed it harder so that it broke the skin. It was like he was trying to push it all the way through my skull and into my brain. The metal pressing against my head stung, but I wasn’t going to show him that. I took a deep breath and held it in.
“The farm’s ours, and so are you. You lost.”
I opened my mouth and spat at him. Torben took a step back and wiped his khakis with his hand. He turned, put the gun on the table and slid it over to Justin. The boy looked up in surprise.
“Pick it up,” said Torben.
Justin looked at the gun and then at Torben. I could tell what he was thinking; he was wondering if he should pick it up and fire it in Torben’s face. At least, that’s what I hoped he was thinking. Then again, there were six hunters outside who would come running in the minute they heard a shot. Whether Justin was on my side or not, we were still outnumbered.
Torben nodded at Justin. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can do it.” His voice was soft. He pointed over at me. “This guy doesn’t give a crap about you, but you’re one of us now.”
Justin’s picked up the gun, but his hands were shaking.
Torben stood up and put an arm around his shoulder. “Every man has to die, Justin. At least you won’t have to do it alone.”
Justin raised the gun at me. His pupils were so big that it seemed like his eyes were completely black. His arms were trembling, and his cheeks were white. He pointed the gun at my head. I looked deep into his eyes and tried to guess what he was thinking. Despite him aiming the gun at me, I knew that there was no way he would do it. There was no chance that Justin could shoot me.
There was a yell outside, and the farmhouse door burst open. A worried-looking hunter ran in.
“They’re here, Torben. There’s hundreds of them!”
Chapter 21
Torben walked over to the door slowly, as though he were in no hurry. He opened it and went outside. The hunter trailed after him. As soon as Torben left the room, Justin walked over to me. He pulled a knife from his belt and sawed at the ropes around my wrists, and as he cut them away I felt my skin loosen.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He nodded. “They’re a bunch of idiots.”
Torben and the hunter walked back into the room. Justin straightened up and backed away from me, hiding the knife behind him.
I grabbed the ropes and held them so that it looked like I was still tied up.
Torben looked at me. “He wasn’t kidding,” he said, his voice controlled. “Never seen so many before.”
I twisted my head to get a look. I could only see through the square doorway, but across the farm and over the fields I spotted them; there was a sea of infected headed in our direction. Was it the same ones we had seen in Edness? If it was, then there were thousands of them, and none of us stood a chance.
Torben turned and looked at me. His face was void of emotion, a stark contrast to the hunter next to him who looked terrified.
“This is what happens when you fire a shotgun out in the open,” he said.
I thought about David outside. I wondered how he was doing, how hurt he was. The bite hadn’t been bad, but I knew enough about the infection to realise that eventually, whether it be in hours or days, the bite was going to kill him. And when it did, he wouldn’t stay dead for long. I felt something welling up inside me, but now wasn’t the time for that. I couldn’t afford to feel anything now.
Torben looked over at Justin. “Come on, boy, time to earn your place.”
“What?” said Justin.
Torben pointed at the door. “We didn’t drive all the way here just to give it up. Come out and fight.”
He strode outside. Justin looked over at me, and I nodded. He walked after Torben and out of the door.
When the room was empty I let the ropes fall off me and stood up. My legs ached and my skin around my wrists was raw. I had a pain in my lower back, and my neck was stiff. I looked around me for my belt and knife, but I couldn’t see what Torben had done with them.
I walked over to the dining table, pulled out a chair and tipped it on its side. I need some sort of weapon if I was going outside. I didn’t know what my plan was yet, but going out there unarmed would be crazy. Any weapon would do, any blunt instrument; it just had to be solid enough to smash through bone. I lifted my foot and brought it down on the chair leg, snapping it from the base. I picked up the block of wood and twisted it in my hands.
Outside the sky was black. The first wave of the infected had reached the farm and their faces were illuminated by the dim glow of the lamps on the porch and the flashes of the hunter's guns as they fired at them. The sound of the gunshots made me flinch, but it didn’t matter about the volume now. There were already enough infected coming our way, and drawing in a few more wouldn’t make a difference.
The hunters and the infected engaged in battle. The driver held a machete in his hand and swung it at the head of an infected, splitting into down the middle. Across from him the hunter with the long fringe held the neck of an infected woman as she struggled to bite him. With his right hand he lined up a screwdriver and drove it into her eye socket, splitting her eyeball like an onion.
A man to my right cried out, and I span around and saw him fall to the floor. Two infected fell on top of him and didn’t waste a second in tearing pieces out of his neck and chest, their teeth clacking as they tore through his skin. One took a big bite of his chest, chewed and pulled away a long strip of flesh. The man’s screams of agony rose above the collective cry of the infected, but were quickly silenced as the infected ate his vocal chords.
“Kyle!”
I turned round and saw David with his back against the porch. His face was drained of colour and he held his bitten arm tight against his chest. When he saw me look at him, he pointed to my left. I turned and saw an infected man inches away and lunging right at me.