Fear the Dead (Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

weight on my shoulders, it was one I knew I couldn’t shed. It wasn’t just a
case of rubbing my hands together and disappearing into the night. If I left
here, I’d leave with a stained conscience.
     
    “I can’t,” I said. “They need me. And
they need you. Nobody here has survived like you have, Lou. Don’t give up on
them.”
     
    “They’d get along just fine if I was
gone.”
     
    “Just think on it,” I said.
     
    “And you think on it too.”
     
    “Like I said. They need me.”
     
    Lou bent down and picked up her
rucksack. She slung one strap over her shoulder.
     
    “This isn’t about them, Kyle. It’s
about you. You need to be needed. You won’t admit it, but it’s true.”
     
    It was a thought that I couldn’t face
right then. Personal truths and startling epiphanies were the luxury of someone
who had nothing to worry about, and that wasn’t me. Besides, it couldn’t have
been true. Since when did I need to be needed? Maybe when Clara was alive I
felt good knowing I could keep her safe, but look how that had ended. It
couldn’t have been further away from the truth.
     
    “Anyway,” I said. “I’m going to set
out tomorrow to find the stalker nest. Mel’s coming, and I was hoping you would
too.”
     
    “Sure,” said Lou.
     
    I smiled. “You realise it’s gonna be
dangerous? That we might have to deal with the stalkers there and then? We’re
gonna be gone days and it’ll be rough.”
     
    Lou swung the other strap over her
shoulder and took the weight of the bag on her back. Her neck tattoo was a
shadow that disappeared under coat as she zipped it up. She fixed me a stare
that seemed to go right through me.
     
    “Did you think that would bother me?
Let’s go take our rage out on something that’s already dead.”

Chapter 5
     
    The sky burst with light and then
sank into darkness twice before we got back to camp.  My leg throbbed from my
gunshot wound and reminded me that I wasn't cut out for long scouting trips and
hunts. Mel and Lou matter-of-factly told me that I wasn’t, with smiles on their
faces at first, but later with scowls. By the time we got back, after endless
hours, we had nothing to show for our efforts but sore feet and glares.
     
    We walked back to camp through the
woods on the west end. These were the Grey Basin Woods, a thirty acre expanse
of mud and trees made famous by the murder-suicide of Atton-Wool. He was a
Scottish landowner whose business ventures went sour. In response, he turned a
shotgun on his wife and then, despite having a shell left, hung himself from
the branch of a birch tree.
     
    As soon as we got back into camp, Lou
walked off without a word. We’d bickered during the hunt and things had gotten
a little frosty. Stood beside the first camp tent, Mel turned to me.
     
    “I would say it’s been fun, but I’d
be lying,” she said.
     
    “And I’d say it’s good to be home,
but I’d be lying too,” I said.
     
    As Mel walked off toward her own tent
I looked at the camp around me. Some of the tents were big enough for a group
of adults to stand up and walk around in, others so small it was a squeeze for
two people to sleep. The grass had given way under the feet of the people
trampling over it each day and it had turned to mud.
     
    I used to go to a lot of festivals
when I was younger. It amazed me that the farmers  let thousands of people jump
up and down on their fields to rock music. The grass would start pea green and
then gradually morph into a murky brown. There would be beer bottles
everywhere. If you were unlucky, there would be bottles of urine lying around,
and if you were spectacularly unlucky, one of the bottles would have flown
toward your head at some point.
     
    I smiled to myself for a second, and
then I looked at the scene before me. With the mud and the tents, this wasn’t
so dissimilar to the scene of the festivals I used to go to. Except that now
there was no joy to be had. People tried to force a sense of