Read Online Fear the Dead (Book 3) by Jack Lewis - Free Book Online

that. I know they’re people, but we still can’t
support them.”
     
    Billy
screwed his face up. “I could get rid of them in a day if you’d let me.”
     
    Victoria
nodded. “I know you could, Billy. But we’d be cleaning blood of the streets for
weeks if we let you have your way.”
     
    She leant
forward on the table, crossed her arms. She held my gaze, her stern expression
locked onto mine.
     
    “But I hope
you’ll understand that you and your friends can’t stay, Kyle. I’m afraid you
will have to leave. The boy should be better in a day or two, and once he is,
I’m afraid it is back into the Wilds for you.”

 
    9
     
    Dawn
cracked, and weak sunlight spilt through the sky. The rise of the sun marked
another night survived, and it should have been a celebration. After hearing Victoria’s
words, I didn’t feel like throwing a party.
     
    I’m
afraid it’s back into the Wilds for you.
     
    Staying in
Bleakholt was never on my agenda. I knew that the infected would catch up to
us, whether it took them a week or a month. I looked round the room. Alice
stood in front of the horrible horse painting, wincing when she put weight on
her injured leg. Justin’s expression was blank. Melissa’s face was grey, her
eyes tired. I thought of Ben, wherever he was in Bleakholt, recovering from
exhaustion. Our group couldn’t go back into the Wilds. Not yet. It would be the
death of us.
     
    Victoria
drummed her fingers on the table again and waited for a response.
     
     “Look,” I
said. “Let us stay awhile. We’re running on empty here, we need a bit of
respite.”
     
    Victoria
shook her head. “Sorry folks. I gave charity to strangers once, and now we
can’t get shut of them. I’ve got my own people to worry about.”
     
    “You don’t
know what’s out there,” said Melissa, and started to get to her feet.
     
    Justin put
his hand on her shoulder, pulled her back into her seat. “You’re not going to
persuade her,” he said.
     
    Victoria
pushed her chair out a little. “I know too well what’s out there. There’s the
infected. If that’s not enough, we’ve also got the stalkers to worry about.”
     
    Billy crossed
his arms. “Loads of the fuckers around here,” he said.
     
    Lou looked
at me and arched her eyebrows as if to say ‘do something’. Victoria didn’t seem
like the kind of cold hearted person who could let someone die. She wasn’t like
Moe. But then, she was leader of this settlement, and I knew too well what it
took to be a leader. You had to make sacrifices. For me, it had meant giving up
a little bit of my conscience and killing a man named Whittaker. I hated doing
it, but it had been for the greater good. Victoria had made an error in letting
strangers stay in Bleakholt. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again no
matter how bad it made her feel.
     
    There had to
be a way to persuade her. What did we have to offer? We were seasoned
survivors, and we knew how things worked in the Wilds. Maybe that would be
useful to them. Then again, Bleakholt had people like Billy in it. He looked
like he could rip a stalker apart with his hands. So we needed something else.
     
    A bookcase
ran the length of one wall of the room. The wood was stained dark brown like
the sides of a casket, and the shelves sagged underneath the weight of the
books. The books were of varied subjects, and they were organised in categories
like a mini-library. Fiction, photography, politics, science.
     
    Science.
That was it.
     
    I leant
forward. “You said you had a scientist here?”
     
    “Yeah,” said
Victoria, and opened her tobacco pouch again. I noticed that the tip of her
index finger was stained brown. “Charlie Sturgeon. He worked with the Scottish
government researching renewable energy. But his forte is biology.”
     
    I nodded.
“We have something that might interest him.”
     
    “What’s that
then?”
     
    I looked at
Billy. “Did you keep my pack when you put me in the