Read Online Fear the Dead (Book 4) by Jack Lewis - Free Book Online

jagged hole gouged into its torso.
     
    “The way I see it,” Kendal carried
on, “You have the right idea with the exiles. But it’s not people like me you
need to shoo away. When you’re at war, you don’t cast away the strong. You
identify the weak and then rid yourself of the weakness.”
     
    “We’re not at war,” I said, unable to
take my eyes away from the dead sheep.
     
    “Our whole lives are war. When you
wake up and force yourself out of bed, even knowing what shit you’ll have to
face, that’s war. When we get through the day and reach night and then go to
sleep knowing the whole sodding mess will repeat itself the next day, that’s
war. When we can’t let children play in the fields for fear something will eat
them, that’s war.”
     
    “And when you beat the crap out of
your husband and son?” I said, not caring to hide the scorn from my voice.
     
    Kendal turned her head in my
direction, though she couldn’t see me with the hood on and her head wasn’t
fully facing mine.
     
    “That’s war,” she said.
     
    In truth, when I had made the camp
rule that violence meant banishment, I hadn’t contemplated a situation like
this. I had made the law to stop people thinking that just because society had
fallen, they could get away with violence. In my time in the Wilds I had seen
people murdered for their sleeping bags. I’d stumbled upon a group of women
forcing themselves on a scared teenage boy, and intervening had cost me a
beating. With the fall of society, morals had begun to dissipate.
     
    People thought in extremes these
days. Every passing morning was the start of a battle for survival, the odds
forever changing but never for the better. The infected population was
self-replenishing, and the stalkers bred as much as time would allow. Normal,
healthy humans were the minority now, and that meant we couldn’t turn on each
other.
     
    “You know, I kind of admire you in a
way. You’ve got guts, Kyle. More guts than most of those ball-less wasters. I
can count on one hand the people I’d back in a fight.”
     
    “Those being?”
     
    “Gregor Horlock. He seems simple, but
he’s scary as hell. Mel, too. I’ve seen that girl butcher a pig, and I’ve never
seen such hate in someone eyes. Funny, now that I think about it. Didn’t the
bodies start to turn up when Gregor taught her how to butcher meat?”
     
    Her voice was calmer than it had any
right to be. When she spoke of bodies, I knew that she wasn’t just talking
about strangers. Her own son had been the latest body to appear, his chest torn
open and his organs removed. Her boy had been murdered and mutilated, and she
talked of the killings as if she were reading a newspaper column.
     
    I stopped walking. I tugged on the
rope. Kendal didn’t move so I tugged again, harder. Her shoulder jerked, but
this time she took steps toward me. I took hold of the rough edges of the hood
and slowly lifted it over her nose and then up over her head, letting it drop
to the floor.
     
    I looked properly into Kendal’s eyes
and searched for something in them. Emotion, sadness, anything. Instead all I
got was cold, blue glass. Hers was a gaze so dead that she could have been an
infected staring back at me.
     
    “You’re an icy bitch,” I said. “Your
son was killed. Hell, this whole time you’ve never said anything about why
we’re here. About what you did to Reggie and Taylor. I’d even prefer it if you
denied beating them, at least that would show something.”
     
    “Oh, I beat them alright,” she said,
her eyes never leaving mine.
     
    I shivered. I felt like I was staring
into the frozen tundra, falling deep beneath the ice to places where daylight
couldn’t follow. There was something wrong about this woman.
     
    “You need to watch your friends,
Kyle” said Kendal.
     
    “What?”
     
    “Your friend Lou. She’s a bomb
waiting to explode. I wouldn’t put any faith in her.”
     
    “Lou’s never let me down,” I