Chloe Zombie Apocalypse series (Book 2): The Journey Page 2

  Alice frowned. “Something in where?”

  Chloë opened her mouth to respond.

  And then she saw it.

  The awkward stagger.

  The greying skin.

  A monster.

  A monster inside the children’s home.

  Her heart picked up when she saw the monster. Because if monsters were getting inside, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it meant other people weren’t in there. Because other survivors didn’t usually let monsters just wander around their grounds. Other survivors didn’t usually just leave the monsters to do their own thing.

  Which may be a good thing.

  Because it might mean no one else was in there.

  Which meant that…

  Her thoughts immediately ceased when she heard a gunshot crack through the air.

  She saw the monster’s head explode.

  Watched its ragged body tumble down onto its knees, then land face first onto the tarmac.

  Then, silence.

  “Did you hear that?” Alice asked.

  Chloë didn’t reply. She just watched.

  The anticipation inside started to turn sour.

  Because she knew what gunshots meant.

  Gunshots meant other people.

  And other people meant trouble.

  She watched the glass. Watched the grounds. The monster had shuffled to its left when the bullet hit it. Which meant someone inside the abandoned children’s home must’ve shot it.

  She waited.

  Waited.

  Waited for movement.

  For a sign of life.

  For…

  And then she saw it.

  Saw a man by the window. A gun in his hand.

  She watched him creep out from behind the glass. Watched him, all dressed in black, crouch beside the monster. Inspect its exploded head. Turn around and stick a thumb up behind him.

  And then, a few seconds later, two other people emerged.

  They weren’t the well-armed guards Chloë was expecting. They weren’t even armed.

  They were just a woman and a young boy. The woman with patches of hair missing from her brown mane. The young boy peaky, skinny, his Newcastle United shirt barely dangling on to his thin frame.

  They were just a family of three.

  Just a trio.

  “You see them?” Alice asked.

  Chloë wanted to say yes. She wanted to tell Alice she saw them. That they didn’t look dangerous. That they were just normal people. Just a normal family. That they could be safe with them.

  But instead, she lowered the binoculars.

  Turned to Alice.

  “They’re armed. They look dangerous. We should go.”

  She stood up. Turned away from the scene of the gunfire. Away from the children’s home.

  “But—but shouldn’t we all be the judge of that?”

  “They’re dangerous,” Chloë said, heart racing. Her mind took her back to the other people she thought were okay. The other people she’d trusted.

  They either turned bad, or they died.

  And Chloë couldn’t risk anyone tearing the nineteen apart. Not now they were all she had left.

  She wanted to tell Alice they were okay. That they looked like normal people. That she could go back there and she could ask them to join up with their group. That they could be safer in numbers.

  But she didn’t believe that was true.

  Not anymore.

  So she dropped the binoculars to the ground.

  Picked up her knife.

  Squeezed the handle tightly.

  And then, she walked back towards her group.

  Away from another potential safe haven.

  Away from everything.

  3

  THREE

  For all the hope of finding a truly safe place to rest, Chloë knew it was never going to be as simple as that.

  She walked barefoot in the mid-afternoon heat. It was another warm day. Always did seem warm, these summer days. She didn’t remember it being this warm when the world was normal. Summer holidays were always a letdown for that reason. Or maybe she was just remembering them wrong. Maybe they were a letdown because she never had any real friends to play out with during them.

  Maybe now was the first time she’d ever led a group in the middle of summer.

  “That place back there. The one Alice told me about. Not look safe to you?”

  Chloë looked up at her dad. She looked at his shaven head, something Harriet, one of the group members who used to be a hairdresser, had seen to. She looked at his brown, deep-set eyes. She didn’t like to look into them when she lied. So she turned back away. Looked at the grass ahead. Looked at the fields. Looked at the hills they made their way across. At the villages and towns in the distant horizon. “No. The people there had guns. They looked nasty. They looked—”

  “You don’t have to lie to me, Chlo.”

  Chloë’s throat tingled. She wasn’t sure what Dad meant. She definitely couldn’t lie to him again, not now. He always knew. Always had been able to tell when she was lying. “What… what do you—”

  “I went back there. When I said I was going to the loo. I saw the people there. The father. The woman. The boy.”

  Chloë’s stomach sank.

  “They weren’t bad people, Chlo. In fact, when I saw them, they weren’t even people at all. The dead had already got to them.”

  Shame intensified inside Chloë. The three people. The three poor people. She’d wanted to help them. She’d wanted to join up with them in some way. Change the children’s home so it was safer. So there were more people on guard. More people on watch.

  But she’d walked away.

  She’d turned around and she’d walked away.

  And now they were dead.

  “Please don’t tell them,” Chloë said.

  Dad looked over his shoulder. Looked at the following group. Looked at Alice and Dean walking side by side. Looked at Hassan and Anisha. At Dave and Dan, the two men who liked each other. He looked at Jackson. Jackson always looked back at him. Always looked back at Chloë, too. Chloë knew he didn’t like her very much. He was always the one who wanted to bring other group members in. Always wanted to make the group grow and expand.

  She looked into his hard face and then she looked ahead again.

  “I won’t tell them,” Dad said. “But Chloë, these people trust you. And trust isn’t infinite. You can’t just expect them to blindly follow you forever. That’s how enemies are made.”

  “I’m trying to keep them safe.”

  “And you’re doing a good job of that, angel. But sometimes respect isn’t just earned by showing how tough you are. Often, respect and trust are made in other ways.”

  “What other ways?”

  “Well, true leaders show mercy. They take risks on people. They might be strong, but they’re understanding, too.”

  Chloë watched her bare feet wade through the grass. She preferred to walk barefoot. Meant she could sneak up on monsters and people quicker. “How do I be understanding?”

  “By stopping at somewhere safe. By stopping to rest when the group tires. By earning their trust.”

  Chloë stopped. She looked back at the group. Saw them gasping. Struggling with every step. Saw Harvey, the old man, with his arm around his even older wife, Suzy. Saw the tired faces. The exhausted bodies.

  She saw them all following her and she wanted nothing more than for these people she’d saved from the Church of Youth’s clutches to be safe.

  But sometimes that meant doing things she didn’t want to do.

  “We’ll find somewhere eventually.”

  “Another night camp?” Dad asked.

  “If we have to—”

  “And then what? More people die? Another zombie attack? Another bandit raid? And then what?”

  Chloë heard the tone in Dad’s voice. He was annoyed with her. Annoyed with her way of doing things.

  But she didn’t
say anything back to him.

  Instead, she just looked ahead at the trees.

  Pushed on.

  Dad sighed. Scratched his neck. “I’m just worried about you, Chlo. I mean, you’re still a kid. You’re a kid and you’re taking on a big responsibility.”

  “I’ve been through worse.”

  “And I don’t doubt that. But just know there’s… just know I’m your dad. And I’m here for you. And I’ll always stand by you, but I’ll tell you when I think you’re going about something the wrong way. At least allow me that.”

  Chloë glanced up at her dad. Saw a softness to his eyes.

  He smiled.

  She nodded. Smiled back at him.

  “So when’re we stopping?”

  The voice cut through the moment between Chloë and her dad; snapped it in two.

  Chloë looked back and saw Jackson walking right behind them.

  He always smelled of sweat, so Chloë always knew when it was him before even looking at him. He never seemed to get tired. Not like the rest of the group. So Chloë didn’t know why he was always going on about stopping or whatever. He never seemed to lack any energy.

  Dad looked from Jackson to Chloë.

  “We’ll… we’ll keep on the lookout,” Chloë said. “For somewhere safe.”

  “I see a lot of grass and a lot of room to be attacked. Don’t see a heck of a lotta safe places.”

  “We’ll find somewhere.”

  “And then if we’re attacked again?”

  “What?”

  “If we’re attacked again? We’ll be down to eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. We won’t be a group. Just a buncha people.” He turned around. Looked at Harvey and Suzy limping along. “A buncha old people, knowing our luck.”

  Chloë stared at the grass as she walked. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “But if it does… we really need to start thinking about expansion.”

  “Expansion?”

  Jackson nodded. He had a gun in his right hand and a heavy bag of supplies over his left shoulder. “Growing the group again. Bringing it back to optimal levels. Making ourselves big enough to be strong again.” He paused for a second. Birdsong and wind filled the silence. “Then taking what we need.”

  Dad shook his head. “We discussed this, Jackson. We don’t attack other—”

  “But that’s what everyone else does. And that’s how everyone else survives. So you maybe wanna mention that to your kid here. Maybe wanna tell her how the world works. How it’s always worked.”

  He put a heavy hand on Chloë’s left shoulder. Chloë shrugged it away immediately. She didn’t like it when Jackson put his hand on her. It made her feel weird.

  She thought about what Jackson said. About how attacking others kept her people alive. And she thought, if only he knew. If only he knew what she’d seen. If only he knew what she’d done to be here today.

  But when you’d done the things Chloë had done—when you’d stolen, killed, used people as bait—it took a long time to come back from that.

  A long time to feel human again.

  Which is why Chloë just avoided people now. People meant trouble.

  And trouble meant slipping away again.

  “Shit.”

  She heard her dad’s voice and lifted her knife immediately.

  She looked around the field. Scanned for a monster. Or for another person. Dad had sworn. He only ever swore when something bad was about to happen. When he saw a threat.

  But there was nothing.

  She lowered her knife slowly. Looked up at her dad. Saw him staring into the distance, wide-eyed.

  “What’s…”

  And then she saw Jackson staring ahead, too.

  She turned around, heart thumping. Squinted ahead. Tried to get a look at what it was they were so surprised, so amazed, about.

  And then she saw it.

  The town.

  The town right at the bottom of the hill.

  Not a person in sight.

  No movement in sight.

  Quiet.

  Empty.

  “Guess this is our place for the night,” Jackson said.

  And as he walked past her, as the group followed, excitement in the air, there was nothing Chloë could do to stop them.

  Only stare at the empty town.

  The bad feeling building in her chest.

  4

  FOUR

  The town was called Hopeforth.

  It was small. It didn’t cover much ground. So much so that Chloë and her group had literally bumped into it in the middle of a bunch of fields and hills. But it was big enough to house a number of buildings. Big enough for a main street with newsagents, grocery stores, supermarkets. Big enough to hold a cinema.

  And it was untouched.

  Completely untouched.

  Chloë walked slowly down the main street of Hopeforth. The mid-afternoon sun was blotted out by thick clouds, but it was still warm, still muggy. There was a taste of dust in the air. The smell of mustiness that always came with territory that hadn’t been touched in quite some time.

  There was food. Water. Supplies.

  And not a sign of life.

  “It’s a gift,” Suzy said, grinning from false tooth to false tooth. “A sign from above.”

  “Heaven sent,” Harvey muttered. Dave and Dan held hands, laughed, their voices echoing in the nothingness. Hassan and Anisha wrapped their arms over one another’s shoulders. The delight of the group was clear to see. The joy of the discovery.

  But still, Chloë couldn’t feel good.

  She couldn’t feel good because something wasn’t right.

  “What’re you thinking?” Dad asked.

  Chloë looked over at the supermarket to her right. Looked at the spiral door just waiting to be pushed open. Beyond the glass, which was covered in bird dirt, she saw food. Lots of food.

  Real food.

  “Hold back before…”

  But it was too late. Jackson and some of his mates, Colin and Arnold, hurtled towards the supermarket doors. They pushed them open, spurring on many other group members to follow. When the spiral doors swirled around, Chloë caught a sour whiff of rotting vegetables, of decaying meat.

  But the tins in there. The water bottles in there. The shelves stacked with biscuits and cereals and long life milk.

  They had supplies.

  They had food and water.

  They had somewhere.

  Chloë saw Alice jogging towards the shop. They exchanged a glance, then Alice shrugged. “Never thought I’d crave baked beans with mini pork sausages again. But hey. I’m sorry. Allow me this one.”

  Chloë nodded.

  It didn’t take Alice a moment to rush inside the supermarket.

  Chloë stood outside. Stood beside her dad. She looked around the empty street. Looked at the silent roads. She glanced up at the buildings. The flats. No sign of life. Not even a sign that anyone had tried to board themselves in. Cars still parked up on the kerbs. No smashed windows. Nothing like that.

  “Like this place just went to sleep and never woke up,” Dad said.

  Chloë nodded. She didn’t speak her mind, but she could only think one thing.

  But if they didn’t wake up, then where did they go?

  She walked down the pavement at the left hand side of the main street. Followed it right down. Past bakers. Past locksmiths. Past an old video rental shop that had a few films in the window she’d really wanted to see. She saw all this stuff. All these clothes. All these books. And she started to wonder if maybe this was the place. Maybe, if nobody had found this place, they really could settle here.

  Maybe they could be safe here.

  But something still didn’t feel right.

  She heard a cheer back at the supermarket. Looked around, saw Simon covering himself in Coca Cola, a crowd circling and whooping. She saw her group. Saw the happiness of her group.

  “You led them here,” Dad said. “You should be ba
ck there. Celebrating with them.”

  And Chloë wanted that. She wanted so much to be with her people. Because that’s who they were. Her people.

  Then she heard the crackling sound to her left.

  She stopped. Looked back where she’d heard the noise.

  “Chloë?” Dad said.

  Chloë ignored him. She walked back. Back to where the sound had been most prominent.

  A door. A cracked old wooden door. Partly ajar.

  Coming from inside, something crackling.

  Chloë turned. Looked across the street. Saw a garage door. She thought she saw movement behind one of the parked cars. But the longer she looked at it, the more she realised nothing was there. Everything was okay.

  No. Everything wasn’t okay.

  Something was wrong.

  She pressed her hand on the wooden door.

  Pushed it open.

  “Chloë, what—”

  “Ssh.”

  Chloë walked inside the building. It looked like the entrance to a flat. There was a lounge area to the left. A kitchen area up ahead.

  Some wooden stairs on Chloë’s right.

  Chloë calmed her breathing. Listened for the crackling noise.

  And the more she listened, the more she realised where it was coming from.

  Upstairs.

  She looked up the stairs. Looked up at the closed doors. Somewhere up there, a clock ticked.

  “I’m not sure we should go wandering up there,” Dad said.

  “Then don’t,” Chloë said.

  She started climbing up the stairs.

  Every step she took, a different creaking noise emerged, each and every one of them making her jump. She felt the foundations of the house shifting as she got higher. Felt eyes on her—eyes she knew weren’t really there because she couldn’t see them.

  But most of all, she heard the crackling getting louder.

  Like a television. Or a radio.

  She climbed the last few steps. Reached the top of the stairs.

  The crackling noise was coming from right at the end of the hallway. The two doors on her right were closed. Outside, in the distance, she could hear the excitement as her group continued raiding the supermarket.

  Chloë held her breath.

  Took a step.

  She heard her dad rushing up the stairs. Heard him chasing her. But she had to get to the room. She had to know what that noise was. Something wasn’t right about this town. And something told her the answers were in that room in front of her. The answers were the crackling noise.