Read Fear the Dead (Book 4) for Free Online

his fingertips red.
     
    “Reggie’s lad, isn’t it?”
     
    I nodded.
     
    “I’m surprised he hasn’t been by
yet,” said Charlie.
     
    “Reggie and Kendal are grieving.
They’ve got a lot of hurt and it’s going to be a long time before it stops
stinging.”
     
    Charlie’s curly black hair flopped
over his fringe and then stayed there, stuck in place by the sweat. I was
always surprised that Charlie was as clever as he was. I don’t know why, but I
found it difficult to picture him as a scientist. I imagined him more suited to
an office job, stuck far back in the corner where nobody else went.
     
    That impression couldn’t be more
wrong. Charlie was devoted to science in a way that I have never seen with any
person in any vocation. Truth was, Charlie was starting to worry me a little
lately. He had missed council meetings despite knowing how much I needed him,
and he had spent more time in his make-shift lab with the corpses that we had
found in camp.
     
    Still, Charlie’s knowledge was
indispensable to me. He wasn’t a qualified medical doctor, but he had spent a
year training as a clinical scientist with a pathology specialty. He only
dropped out because his mum had gotten ill. Charlie’s input was vital if we
were ever going to find out what was happening to these people.
     
    “So what do you think did it?” I
said. “Stalkers?”
     
    Charlie pinched the bridge of his
nose as though he were squeezing answers from it. “Perhaps. They’re getting
more sophisticated in the way that they hunt, and that scares me.”
     
    I thought about the stalkers. I
pictured them crawling through the grass, their black bodies blending into the
shadows. They were agile and they made even less noise than the whisper of the
wind. In the Wilds, if a stalker had chosen you, then you rarely found out
about it until it leapt on you and tore strips away from your neck. Even now
they sent a shudder through me.
     
    “I’ve doubled the watch. I’ve
allocated everyone a time to take watch, and that includes you, Charlie.”
     
    Charlie went to speak, but I put my
hand up to stop him.
     
    “I can’t play favourites,” I said.
“And at the minute, I owe you nothing. Your chair’s been empty at every meeting
this week, and that makes me look bad. But until we find out what the hell is
going on, everyone takes a watch. I’m going to send a work party out to cut all
the grass in the fields around us. It’s too high, and we’re leaving too many
places for stalkers to hide.”
     
    “I guess that makes sense,” said
Charlie.
     
    “I’m no military leader, but I’m
doing my best.  It’s hard enough looking after myself sometimes, let alone
everyone else. If there’s anyone I owe it to, it’s Ben. It’s my fault he’s
alone.”
     
    “Really Kyle? So I suppose you were
the one who ate his mother?”
     
    I shot a look at Ben.
     
    “Damn Charlie, keep it down. You think
he needs to hear that?”
     
    “He’s asleep.”
     
    Sure enough, Ben slumped in the chair
with his head tucked forward and resting on his chest. His right hand was in a
fist in his lap, with the bead necklace wrapped around it.
     
    I lowered my voice. “Does he blame me? 
For what happened to her?”
     
    “This going to be hard for you to
hear.”
     
    “Just tell me.”
     
    Charlie put his hand on the table.
“Yeah. He does blame you.”
     
    “I thought as much.”
     
    Charlie looked up at me. “Nobody else
does, Kyle. It was the infected, for Christ sakes. We’ve all lost someone to
them. We all know what they’re like, what they can do.”
     
    I turned by back on Charlie and tried
to collect my thoughts. I wondered if I should sit down with Ben and talk about
it with him. Maybe if I told him exactly what happened that night, it might
make a difference. Or maybe it would be better to just let him blame me, rather
than give him graphic images of how his mum died.
     
    As I tried to let my mind settle I
looked around the