Year of the Zombie (Book 2): The Plague Winter Read online

  Eddie stumbled down the hallway and when he reached the back of the house he found that the back door had been ripped from its hinges. He followed drops of blood outside and tried not to think it was Sam’s.

  The sound of more windows smashing from the front of the bungalow. The cracking of wood as the front door began to splinter under claws and mouths.

  Eddie saw that the blood-trail led into the woods beyond the back garden. The light was fading from the sky. Dusk would be soon, and then night, and by then Sam would be lost in the cold dark.

  Eddie left the house behind and he did not look back.

  ***

  Into the woods with the night on his heels. He stumbled through scratching branches, shielding his face with his arms. Far behind him, the infected were upon the house and there would be no going back there. His legs were heavy and throbbing, and the pain in his knees would only end when he collapsed.

  Through stinging limbs of bracken. Dense thickets and wet, rotting foliage. Broken branches and sticks where the Yost-beast had travelled. Eddie looked for blood but there was none, not even on the floor of dead leaves. He turned around and became lost and all about him was the dying light and tall trees. The canopy thickened and the animals of the wood fell into silence and there was nothing but the gasping of his mouth and the failing of his heart. He cried and called for Sam. Called for Yost; called him a monster and a coward. Kicked at the leaves and wept into his hands. Then he clutched his chest and stumbled, and when he finally fell amongst the trees and surrendered to the ground the last thing he saw was Sam’s face.

  ***

  He woke shivering violently in the frost of the next morning. For a moment he had no recollection of himself and the world, and he was all instinct and fever in the detritus of the woods.

  A glimmer of grey light through the trees. Songbirds chirping and calling. The pistol was cold in his hand. Insects scurried beneath the brown and brittle leaves. Spiders lived there. Tiny beasts. The canopy saved him from dying of exposure during the night. He sat up and pulled his limbs into his body and tried to massage some feeling into his arms. There seemed to be no moisture in his throat. He gasped for water. Hunger scraping at his insides as he struggled to take the whiskey flask from his back pocket and unscrew the cap and tip the bottle to his mouth.

  He thought of Sam and it only brought tears to his eyes. He rocked back and forth until he could work his legs and stood. And then he swayed on his feet and turned as he pointed the pistol at the surrounding trees. He waited for the infected to arrive, to finish things at last. But they didn’t. He was alone.

  Eddie walked, even though some part of him wanted to return to the place where he’d slept and accept a quiet death.

  ***

  When he broke through the edge of the woods and into the fields, he saw crows circling in the far away sky.

  He checked the pistol and moved on.

  ***

  He wished it to be over. He wished for the sky to fall and the sun to come down and burn the earth. Turn it all to ash.

  He walked with his head down, only glancing up to make sure he was heading towards the place the scavengers circled above.

  It took him most of the morning to walk there and when he arrived the sun was at its highest in the sky. Eddie prepared himself, each foot following the other, the frost crackling under his boots. For a while his mind went away and he was back in the shoe shop with Ruth and there was nothing in the world to separate them.

  Several yards to his right, he noticed something small on the ground. A shape of red and blue amongst the dull shades. Eddie went over and stood looking down at it, biting his lip.

  He picked up the Transformer and held the toy close to his face. Then he continued towards the horizon.

  It was Yost’s body that he found in the hard field further on. Sprawled and half-frozen. The fallen beast. Tendrils and limbs coated with frost. Split open by his transformation.

  A knife was buried in his forehead.

  ‘Sam,’ Eddie whispered, and the fields took his voice, but gave him hope.

  ***

  Eddie held the toy in his hand and close to his chest, as if to summon a figment of Sam. His heart hurt.

  He stopped and swept the low countryside with the binoculars. His breath knotted in his throat when he saw the figure of the boy beyond a line of blackened ditches. Sam stood facing the falling sun and he didn’t move even when Eddie called out to him.

  ***

  Eddie staggered over the ground and didn’t take his eyes from the boy. He would not look away because he would not lose Sam again.

  He halted several yards away from Sam and held out the toy, like an offering, whispering Sam’s name.

  The boy was staring at the darkening sky as the stars began to appear and constellations formed and glimmered coldly. His clothes were filthy and wet, as though he’d been running through ditches and hedgerows. His hands dangled by his sides and the fingers were busy. Dirt smeared on his palms. He was trembling. Eddie just wanted to hold and comfort him.

  ‘Sam…’

  The sudden movement of the boy’s head, jerking to one side. Eddie spoke again. Told Sam he was loved. Offered him his favourite toy.

  And Sam turned around to show Eddie what he had become.

  ***

  The days passed in the slow toil of winter. Eddie found another house and it became a shelter. Rain upon rain and the sky never brightened. The sun was never seen and was forgotten.

  Eddie stood in the old kitchen and took the last of the food from the cupboard. A tin of corned beef. He started to open the tin with the little key taped to its side but gave up halfway through and threw it against the wall and before he’d even thought about it the whiskey flask was at his lips and he drank. There wasn’t much left, and he had looted all the houses in the area.

  The rain upon the windows. The shadows on the walls. In the small light of the candle he climbed the stairs and walked to the bedroom where he spent the best of each day. He closed the door after he entered and sat down on the nearby wooden chair. He put the candle on the floor and looked to the far side of the room where Sam crouched wheezing and fumbling.

  The boy regarded him but made no move towards his side of the room. He had learned he could only move as far as the chains holding him to the radiator allowed.

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  There was no reply; there never was and never would be. Eddie swigged from the flask and watched the boy and wondered what he would do when the whiskey ran out.

  He didn’t know.

  ***

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rich Hawkins hails from deep in the West Country, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter's THE THING. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015.

  The sequel, THE LAST OUTPOST, was released in the 2015. The final novel in the trilogy, THE LAST SOLDIER, is due for release in March 2016.

  He currently lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire, with his wife, their daughter and their pet dog Molly. They keep him sane. Mostly.

  ALSO BY RICH HAWKINS

  THE LAST PLAGUE

  THE LAST OUTPOST

  THE LAST SOLDIER

  BLACK STAR, BLACK SUN

  ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

  My first novel, STRAIGHT TO YOU, was released in 1996 and promptly disappeared from view. 500 copies were printed, and I still have a couple of boxes from the original print run in my garage! The experience taught me several valuable lessons about writing, most notably that both the hardest and most important task for a new author is to find people to read their work. In those dim and distant pre-Internet, pre-ebook days, that was no easy task.

  When it came to releasing my second novel, AUTUMN, in 2001, I was already making my first tentative steps online. It struck me that the easiest way
to get people to read my book was to give it to them for free, so that was what I did. And with no real plan or design, my first zombie novel generated around half a million downloads, a series of sequels, a radio adaptation and even a (not so great) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine.

  Self-publishing was frowned upon in 2001 (and still is today in some quarters), so I decided to take a different approach. I talked about ‘independent publishing’ instead, and I set up INFECTED BOOKS, my own publishing company. I hit the market at just the right time and managed, through luck more than judgement, to capitalize both on the sudden growth of ebooks, and also on the massive popularity of zombies.

  In the fifteen years since AUTUMN was published, zombies have become a global phenomenon. In the same decade and a half, the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the day, myself, Brian Keene and David Wellington were just about the only folks putting out zombie fiction. Now that’s changed and there are many brilliant zombie authors delivering the goods. I thought the fifteen year anniversary would be a great opportunity to celebrate both the enduring appeal of the living dead and the massive success of zombie authors worldwide.

  2016 is Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, and over the course of the year you’re going to be treated to brand new zombie novellas by some of the very best in the business. Check www.infectedbooks.co.uk at the beginning of each month for each new release.

  David Moody

  January 2016

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM INFECTED BOOKS

  YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

  KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker

  THE PLAGUE WINTER by Rich Hawkins

  STRANGERS

  LAST OF THE LIVING

  ISOLATION

  THE COST OF LIVING

  STRAIGHT TO YOU

  AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

  TRUST

  by David Moody

  GIRL IN THE BASEMENT

  by Wayne Simmons

  VOODOO CHILD

  by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza

  FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.INFECTEDBOOKS.CO.UK

  SPREAD THE INFECTION