Now, I only had one. This time I wasn’t going to miss.

I squinted and pulled the trigger.

Three hundred metres away the tank exploded, and an orange fireball spread into the sky. The bodies of the infected were flung in every direction. Flames engulfed the field and started to spread to the farmhouse, the heat licking at the old timber and setting it alight.

I sat back. Even so far away, I could feel the heat on my face as the farm burnt to the ground.

Chapter 23

Five miles in the distance the smoke billowed into the air in thick grey columns that diluted the blue of the afternoon sky. At the farm, the night before, the air had been so heavy that I felt myself choke on it. Now, with a little distance between us, the air was cleaner.

I sat back on the grass as Justin lifted the shovel and piled the last of the earth back onto the mound. The milky brown soil cut a contrast to the green of the lawn, but I doubted the owners would care. I looked behind me at the house. The windows stared back at me, dark and empty, and nothing moved inside. We had already checked every inch of the place, of course, but it didn’t hurt to be wary.

I looked at David’s grave. He was buried in a garden that belonged to someone who we had never even met, but I don’t think he would have felt hard done by. To have any sort of burial at all was a rarity these days, and David had never been a sucker for attention.

“Think anyone will see the smoke?” asked Justin.

He rested on the shovel. He wore a blue shirt that he had taken from one of the bedrooms, and he had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. Tucked into his belt was a long hunting knife, but the blade was dull.

“Who told you that you could take my knife?” I said.

“Someone had to take care of the owners,” he said, and jerked his thumb back at the house.

I felt a jolt of pain in my leg. Last night I’d cleaned out the wound and wrapped a bandage around it, which I hoped to god would be enough to stave off infection. In the meantime, though, until it healed, walking was going to be tough.

“What now?” said Justin.

I stretched out my leg and felt a scream of pain. “We’re not going anywhere in the near future.”

“And after that?”

“I can’t see that far.”

Justin sat down next to me. In the oak tree opposite me, at the end of the garden, I saw something move in one of the branches. I couldn’t tell what it was.

I cleared my throat. “I’m thinking we go back to Vasey.”

He turned and looked at me. His right eyebrow arched. “Really?”

I nodded. “They’re not bad people, “ I said, “They just need someone to set them straight.”

I thought about the journey back to Vasey, about the hundreds of miles we’d have to travel, and my leg ached in anticipation. It would be a hell of a tough trip, but we’d do it. The town wasn’t the greatest place in the world, but right now it was all we had.

A breeze blew on my collar and the sun began to disappear behind a cloud.

“C’mon, let’s go inside,” I said.

Justin got to his feet. He stood in front of me and held out his hand.

“What do you think I am, a cripple?”

He laughed. “That’s exactly what you are.”

I took his hand, got to my feet and let him support me inside the house.

The sun set and the darkness trickled into the sky until soon everything above us was black. Outside, in the oak tree, an owl hooted. Something about the sound reassured me; that owls were still a thing, that the stalkers and infected hadn’t gotten all of them. I wondered if there were a parliament of them out there somewhere.

I stretched my leg out on the couch. My eyelids were heavy and my eyeballs felt itchy.

“One of us needs to stand watch,” I said.

Justin drew his knife in one hand  and then dragged a wooden chair over to the window. Outside there was a clear view of the garden. He turned to me. “You can hardly stand, so guess it’s going to have to be me.”

I tried to sit up. I wanted to argue with him, tell him that I was going to do it, but my weary body dragged me back. As soon as I hit the couch I felt every last scrap of energy seep out of me as though all the cells in my body had given up trying to pretend.

I thought about the night’s sleep I was going to have. I thought about the next day, and the day after that. About how my leg would heal, and soon we’d set off back to Vasey. We would make something of the town, I decided. We’d make a real go of it.

I glanced at Justin. He gripped the knife tightly in his hand and he looked out into the night, the depth of his stare making him seem much older than he was.

I closed my eyes and let myself drift into sleep, for a brief moment not caring about the darkness that waited for me outside.