Sleep, Think, Die, page 11
Lavender considered. In the end she chose not to reply, but spun on her heel and began to move forward again, her pace more measured as the gloom deepened, “I think our best bet is to head for the sound of the water. It can’t be far now, there must be a river up ahead if we just keep going,”
They reached the end of the narrowing side road, taking a right turn as the only option; the left led to a long-abandoned row of garages, the wide corrugated doors open and warped.
They left behind the weed strewn pavements for a scrubby verge that gradually widened into a stretch of spongy grass. The sound of rushing water was loud in their ears as they followed the grass down to the water’s edge, where it gave way to thick undergrowth and a tangle of bushes. Undeterred, Lavender pushed on, fighting her way through and making a path for Carson to struggle through with Bumper behind her.
Then they could go no further. There was a clearing of no more than a few feet where the bushes and vegetation seemed to hang back from the water, allowing them space to sit and catch their breath, beyond that only the river. Carson all but dropped Bumper, noticing the man did not yell at the rough treatment of his arm as he should have. Worn out and aching, Carson sank down gratefully beside him. The bank beneath him was muddy and damp; cool and welcome to his weary bones now, but it would be wet and uncomfortable if they had to stay there any length of time.
As if she had been reading his thoughts, Lavender said, “What do you think? Can we risk staying here the night? It’s almost full dark and there’s nowhere else to go, unless you want to recce one of the houses back there,”
Carson shook his head, “I can’t take another step just yet, my legs have turned to jelly, lugging him all this way. Besides, it’s too dark to wander about,” Ruefully, Carson realised it was going to be their overnight spot after all. “I feel pretty exposed here. If it rains we’re going to get a soaking,”
“At least we can jump in and take our chances in the water if a zombie should stumble upon us here,” Lavender said doubtfully, “We can’t both sleep at once though. We’ll take turns. I’ll take first watch, I’m too jumpy to sleep anyway,”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, you look done in. Get some rest. If anything happens I’ll wake you, don’t worry,”
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice in the matter. Okay, don’t let me sleep too long, you need some rest too,”
Carson stretched out onto his side, tucking his back as far into the scratchy, brittle bushes as they would allow. He shivered as the cold clamminess of the ground began to filter through his clothes and into his bones. Tucking his head into the crook of his arm, he thought he had never been more uncomfortable in his life. Dreading a sleepless night, he closed his eyes in a token attempt to at least try to nod off.
*
When Carson woke, the sky was bright with stars above him. He remained still a moment, allowing himself to fully come to, becoming gradually aware that he was chilled to the bone. His tired body warned him that his first movements would be painful. They were not wrong. The stiffness in his neck and soreness in his lower back caused him to cry out involuntarily as he sat up.
He froze, hoping he hadn’t alerted anything to their presence. One glance at Bumper told him the man’s condition hadn’t improved. Even in this light there was a grey pallor to his features. He looked around for Lavender. She was sitting on the edge of the bank, her feet dangling beyond his sight, presumably into the water.
“We must be in the early hours by now,” he said in a soft voice.
Lavender turned to him, “You were so deeply asleep, I left you. My turn now,” She tucked her legs up beneath her and stood in one lithe motion, her scuffed boots in hand.
“What were you doing?” Carson pointed to the boots.
“Freshening up. The temptation to just jump in and let the water do what it liked with me was nearly unbearable, but I’m still here,” There was a trace of regret in her voice, as if she wished she had found the courage to throw herself into the water.
“You ok?” Carson asked.
“Yep. just tired,” She crossed to the patch where Carson had slept, judged it too worn down and sludgy and moved down the row of bushes to a fresh patch, following his example of burying herself in them as far as she could go.
“I’ll never sleep like this!” She declared through a yawn,
“I think that was the last thought that went through my head before I nodded off,” Carson grinned.
He waited until Lavender was sleeping, as he had known she would, before going to the river’s edge and relieving himself into the water, confident the current would take away the all-too revealing scent of human urine. He zipped himself up, found a comparatively firm edge of banking, and knelt to splash some of the cold water on his face.
“I could do with some of that,” a voice from behind him.
Carson turned in amazement. Bumper was trying to push himself up on his good arm. He licked his lips and tried to speak again, “Dying of thirst over here,”
“Of course! Of course, just hang on,” Carson cast around for a way to convey water to Bumper. He spotted Lavender’s boots, placed neatly at her newly washed feet, now once again mud-caked where she had left the river’s edge to take up her chosen sleeping spot.
Knowing that she would argue if she was awake, Carson snatched up a boot, zipped it closed and dipped it onto the river. It served reasonably well as a vessel, only dripping slightly as Bumper slaked his thirst.
Bumper drained the boot, then asked for a second. Carson was happy to oblige.
When he was finished, Carson put the boot neatly back alongside its partner. When Lavender complained of its wetness in the morning, Carson would shrug it off as moisture from the river and the night air.
“We’re at a river?” Bumper’s voice already sounded stronger.
“Yeah, dragged you all the way here myself!” Carson said in a joking tone.
“You did?” Bumper sounded bemused, “Thanks Carson. I don’t know why you didn’t just leave me to die where I was,”
“We weren’t about to do that now, were we?” Carson said, fighting back a wave of guilt at the knowledge that was exactly what they planned to do, should things get interesting.
Bumper closed his eyes a moment, breathing heavily against the pain.
“If we had a rod, we could fish,” he said when he finally re-opened his eyes, “I’m starving!”
“I’ll tell you what, that’s not a bad idea. There must be something round here we can use as a rod, or a net or something.”
“Hang on, before you go charging off looking for stuff, any chance you could make me a sling? You can use the curtain I brought with me,”
Carson looked about, flummoxed. The image of Bumper staggering down the street with something like a cape flowing behind him came into his head, “Ah, I get it. Sorry mate, you lost your curtain way back,”
“Shit!” Bumper declared through gritted teeth, “You have no idea what I went thought to get that,”
“Well if it was anything to do with the half-eaten zombie woman that was chasing you, then I think I can guess,” he looked over at Lavender, fast asleep under the filthy smock, “All might not be lost though mate. When Lavender wakes up, we’ll sort something out for you,”
“Okay,” already Bumper was tiring, his eyes growing heavy. Carson watched as he dozed off, satisfied that this sleep was of a healthier kind than the near unconscious state he had been in all day.
Loathe to sit down on the wet and muddy bank again, Carson stood with his back to his sleeping companions. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he squinted through the gloom, straining to discern what was on the other side of the river. It dawned on him that there could be anything, or anyone, on the opposite bank when daylight broke. Still too dark to go anywhere, he decided to wait until the sky had begun to lighten, when he would wake the others up and suggest they move on.
He mulled over his brief conversation with Bumper. Fishing was a damn good idea, if they could just find a way to do it. He stared down into the darkly rushing water below, wondering just how deep the water was.
Something about his earlier spat with Lavender niggled at him. He couldn’t help thinking the girl believed him a coward for staying right here and not heading out to look for help, or solutions, or whatever the hell they had all been looking for together. His subconscious mind told him that was because there was a grain of truth to that. Carson silenced that particular voice, reasoning that fear had nothing to do with it; it was just that he couldn’t even begin to think where he would’ve gone, or what he might have done when he got there.
He knew it was absurd to feel like he had something to prove, but he couldn’t quell the feeling. If he could find a way to implement the fishing plan and have a breakfast of sorts waiting when they woke, maybe she would start to look at him in a different light.
His stomach growled at the prospect of something to eat. It felt like days since he had last tasted food.
First to check how deep it was. Carson looked along the length of foliage they were hiding behind, brushing his way past a few brambles and ferns stretching towards the water, until he came to a small tree. Finding a branch of reasonable length, he reached up and, after a struggle and some twisting from side to side to wrench the limb free, he had a stick fractionally taller than himself with which to test the water. He wrestled a second, similar branch free of the tree, before returning to their spot.
Lavender had curled up into a foetal position and was murmuring something in her sleep. Bumper was just as he had left him, his breathing even and regular, the ominous grey pallor of earlier slowly leaving his features. Carson stood still and silent a moment, tuning in to the sounds of the night as best he could over the rush of the water. Satisfied that there was nothing close by other than spiders, insects and probably a rodent or two, Carson decided a certain amount of calculated risk on his part might turn out to be well worth it later.
He set the sticks down alongside one another and pushed his way back through the undergrowth, across the thin grassy verge, back out onto the street. The gaping wide garage doors seeming to eye him suspiciously. He had no intention of going anywhere near them, or into any of the houses hereabouts. His interest lay in the gardens.
Hoping his reasoning wasn’t wildly amiss, Carson pushed open a ramshackle garden gate, expecting it to be blocked the other side, or to screech open noisily. To his relief, it swung wide and easily; so easily that he had to lunge forward and grab it before it slammed against the fencing.
He took a few deep breaths to steady his nerve, then ventured into the garden. All was quiet. The house was as most houses these days; all the windows shattered, doors hanging loose or missing entirely. There was a small garden shed which, surprisingly, appeared to be relatively untouched. Emboldened, Carson took another step, scanning the garden ahead for what he was looking for. A child’s tricycle stood forlornly in a corner, its front wheel turned away as if in disgrace.
The first garden did not have what he was looking for. Determined to see his plan through he looked around, thinking. Although the entire row of gardens was surrounded by the six-foot wooden fencing he had just come through, internally they were separated by no more than a stretch of wire fencing, low enough to step over. Carson crossed into the neighbouring garden, where he was also out of luck, but in the third, there stood his prize; a rotary line, complete with wires.
Jubilant, Carson negotiated the second fence and approached the line. It was leaning slightly, some of the wires hanging in loose loops. Hoping that would make them easier to remove, he traced the wires in the half-light until he found an end that was tied off.
It was an effort to undo the stubborn knot, but Carson was unrelenting. Eventually it came free, falling apart in his sore fingers. With the growing sensation that he was being watched, Carson wasted no time in pulling the line clear of its constraining metal poles. He had a battle on his hands at the last, overcoming it with brute strength and desperation as he heaved on the wire until it snapped, sending him sprawling backwards into the dirt.
He was sure something moved in the recesses of the house. Heart racing, Carson stood, winding the washing line around his hand in a messy ball and racing to the fence. He had a moment of near panic when the line caught, but it came free easily. He raced on, almost reaching the gate, when he glimpsed again at the relatively undamaged shed in the corner.
He had come this far. Garden sheds could be a treasure trove if they hadn’t been looted. He checked over his shoulder. Despite his fear, nothing seemed to be following him. Deciding it was another calculated risk that might just be worth it, Carson tried the door.
It wasn’t locked, just pushed to. Carson gingerly pulled it open, expecting to come face to face with an undead or an awful corpse any second.
There was no one in there. Whilst far from tidy, the shed had evidently not been looted. Various rubble littered the floor, but of more interest was a row of roughly built shelves.
Carson smiled. Reaching up, he took down a set of gardening shears, still sharp looking despite months of disuse. He swept his hands across the shelf, searching for more valuables. His hands found a small rectangular box which he pulled down to examine more closely.
Nails, of various size. Carson’s grin widened. It was about time a little bit of luck came his way.
He ducked back out of the shed, this time running back to their temporary hiding place by the river, unable to shake off the feeling all the way back that he was being watched, though nothing came lurching at him from out of the dark.
*
Pleased with his haul, Carson unwound a length of the washing line, snipped if with the shears, then attached it to one length of stick. He pushed one of the longer nails through the wire at the other end. There was no way of securing the nail on; it was the best he could do.
The shears were already proving invaluable. Using them to dig into the wet mud of the bank, he uncovered a fat worm, which he impaled on the nail. He had never fished in his life, had no idea what he might catch with an earthworm, if anything at all, but he had to try. He used the shears to help curl the end of the nail into something resembling a hook, to prevent the worm from slipping off.
As ready as he would ever be, Carson discarded his shoes, worn socks and jeans and sat on the river bank much as Lavender had done before him. He noticed that the sky had begun to lighten considerably; if he was to wake the others before full light, then he didn’t have long.
He gave a gasp as the unexpectedly icy coldness of the river closed about his feet, retracting them hurriedly in unpleasant surprise. Remembering his determination to catch breakfast he lowered them in again, this time readying himself for the shock.
It wasn’t so bad after a minute or two; it was even quite pleasant. More focused, Carson grasped the measuring stick and lowered it into the river alongside his feet, holding it as straight as he could. He pressed down until he felt it meeting the softness of the river bed below. Pretty shallow here; barely a third of it was wet.
Encouraged, without giving himself too long to think about it. Carson threw his T shirt off over his head, grabbed the fishing stick in his other hand and sank down into the water. It came to just above his knees, the river bed oozing unpleasantly between his toes.
A good start. He extended the arm with the measuring stick and checked the depth further out. Hardly deeper than where he was now. Carson continued the process, checking for depth with the stick before venturing further into the river, until he was standing waist deep in the water. Reasoning that he stood a better chance of catching something here rather than close by the bank, Carson raised his improvised fishing rod with one hand, an awkward movement since he was still holding the measuring stick in the other, and cast out his line.
It fell with a feeble plop into the water. Carson wasn’t even sure that the nail or the worm were still attached. Disheartened, he began to feel foolish for trying.
Unbelievably, just moments later there was a tug on the line. Clueless as to how to proceed, Carson gave in to knee jerk reaction. He grasped the rod with both hands, still holding the other stick, and jerked it up and back with a motion that was almost violent.
A small fish dangled wildly above his head. Forgetting himself, Carson let out a satisfied “Hah!” He hurried to the bank, threw the fish down, then watched as it flopped madly as it tried to get back to the water.
“Oh no you don’t! I know that much!” Carson told it, raising it by the tail and bringing it down hard, smashing its head against the metal of the shears.
It seemed to work. The fish lay still and glossy eyed, staring up at the sky.
Enthused, Carson dug up a second worm and tried again. He had more misses than hits, he even began to enjoy himself, hence his surprise when Lavender’s voice hailed him from the bank, full of derision.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He looked across at her, seeing that Bumper was awake too, and was watching him with an expression of mild amusement. To Carson’s surprise he had missed the dawn, so absorbed was he in his fishing experiment.
“Catching breakfast!” He called back, holding up his fourth catch of the night as if to prove it to her.
Bumper looked impressed, “You’ve been busy! Well done mate, now get out of there before you catch cold too,”
“Great,” Lavender said begrudgingly. Bumper pretended not to hear when under her breath she added, “I hate fish.”
Carson waded back to the bank and clambered out, hastily dressing, shivering against the morning.
“I had meant for us to get going by now,” he confessed, “We’re exposed to who or whatever might appear on that opposite bank, plus I have a feeling the houses behind us aren’t as empty as we first thought. You think you can walk unaided today?”
This to Bumper, who nodded, “If Lavender gives up that ridiculous smock for a sling then yes, I think I can,”
