The door of the shack burst open. I snapped my head to the doorway and felt every nerve in my body fire. Within a second I tensed my muscles ready to snap on anything that moved toward me.

A thin figure appeared in the doorway and stepped out of the night. It was Justin. He looked at me, and then looked at the GPRS on the floor.

"Damn, that's too bad," he said, his voice hollow, his lips curled into a smile.

That was when I knew it was him.

Chapter 5

Before I could even recognise my actions I had stomped across the room. I towered over Justin, my nostrils flaring as I took big breaths. I knew that he had done something with the GPRS but I just didn’t know what, and I knew it was going to take every ounce of my self-control not to beat it out of him.

 I wasn’t a violent man, and he was just a kid, but if he had broken the GPRS then I was screwed. Stupidly, I didn't know the way to the farm by heart; I relied on the machine to tell me. I’d once tried to learn the way so that I’d have a back-up in case the worst happened, but after two days of straining I had to give it up. I guess my brain just doesn’t work that way. It’s not like I could just ask someone where it was either; of the two people in the post-infected world who knew the farm, one of them was dead and I never wanted to see the other again.

I poked a finger into Justin's chest. His body was so soft that my finger seemed to sink in, and he took a faltering step back toward the wall. He looked strangely calm.

"What the fuck have you done?" I said with a tight voice.

Despite how I loomed over him, Justin didn't shrink away. This was a far cry from the kid I had seen in town, the one with the awkward gait who couldn't even balance his own shoulders. He cleared his throat. "Does it really matter, now, huh? It’s done either way."

I turned away from him. I could feel my face getting red. I walked across the room in three strides, picked up the GPRS and then walked back. In front of Justin, I pressed in the 'on' button, but the screen stayed dead. Justin watched me with a bored expression. I shook the GPRS in his face.

"Tell me what you did. Show me how to fix it."

He took the GPRS out of my hands, flipped it over and slid a finger along it. A plastic latch started to open.

"This is the battery compartment. See how it's empty?"

If I weren’t so furious, I would have felt stupid for not checking that. "So you took it."

Justin nodded. "Not only that," he said with pride, as though I was supposed to be happy with what he had done, "I broke it so you can't put a fresh one in.”

I could feel my face start to burn, and I clenched my teeth. As if picking up on my cues, Justin carried on explaining himself.  “Before you go crazy, hear me I out. I did it to help you. I took the battery, so that way, if someone were to find it they'd have no idea where you're going."

The blood was pounding in my ears so loud I almost couldn't hear what he was saying. I might as well have turned the cooking stove off, because right now my face felt red enough to start a fire. I tightened my fist and felt my skin wrap around my knuckles. I looked at Justin and the placid smile on his lips, and suddenly I wasn't seeing a kid anymore, I was seeing a face that I wanted to smash. How dare he do this? Did he even realise just what he had done? Without the GPRS route everything was ruined, because I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Without that, without something to aim for, I was lost.

I felt the vein in my temple twitch. "Are you actually trying to get me to kill you? Do you have a death wish? Because there are easier ways, I promise."

He dropped the GPRS to the ground. My stomach jumped at the thudding sound it made on the wooden floor. Justin looked up at me. "I gave you a chance to say yes."

"You're trying my patience."

"I asked you nicely to take me with you. I even brought supplies, but you're so stubborn. You're like Moe - you don't listen to anyone but yourself."

I could almost have laughed if it didn’t feel like my throat was tightening up. "And you think I'm going to take you with me now? I’d rather kill you," I choked out.

My shoulders shook and there was a tension in my legs, a restlessness that made me want to pace around the room. I could hear the chicken soup bubbling over in the corner and knew it was going to start spitting out onto the floor soon, but I couldn't concentrate on anything but the smug boy in front of me. My physical advantage was so big as to make the idea of a fight laughable, but all I could think about was punching him in the face.

 For a whole year I had travelled alone toward the farm, and in all that time I had stayed away from people. Well, look how right I was. The second I came into contact with someone, he had purposefully messed with my plans.

My head throbbed and it was getting harder to think. All I could feel was the rush of anger, the hot feeling as my blood flooded to my head.  I raised my hand, extended it toward Justin and wrapped it around his throat.

I pushed him back, and his head hit the wall with a thud. I squeezed my hand against his windpipe and I felt the jagged contours of his neck bones as they met his Adam's apple. Justin let out a choking sound, but he didn't struggle against me. His eyes watched me in an almost interested way, as though he were curious as to what was going to happen. I squeezed his neck tighter. It felt so fragile, as if I could completely snap it if I applied more pressure.

"I'm giving you once chance here," I said, "If you don't give me the battery and fix it, I won't just kill you; I'll squeeze until you pass out, and when you wake up you'll be in the middle of the forest, alone and far from here, and I'll make sure the infected can smell you. It won't be a quick death. You'll scream so loud that you'll wake Moe from his sleep."

He stared at me with his wide bug eyes. He blinked once but said nothing, and this made my temple throb even harder. I tightened my hand a little and felt the sinews of his neck move like gristle. It would be so easy now just to squeeze a little more and snap his neck. My breath caught in my chest, and I could feel my heart pounding.

As I squeezed his neck, I felt consciousness came back to me, and my head started to clear. I looked at my hand and realised what I was doing. The image disgusted me, the idea that I’d fallen this far. I wasn't this sort of man. I might be many things, but child killer wasn’t one of them.

I loosened my grip. Justin's body sagged a little, and he took in a deep breath. From the raspy sounds he made I could tell he was struggling to fill his lungs, and I could see red marks from where my fingers had been wrapped around his neck. He looked at me calmly, which made my anger rise again. I gave him a hard shove into the wall then walked away from him, scared of what I would do next.

"Dammnit! When a man is strangling you, you better show some fear," I said to him. "Because next time it won't be someone like me, and your stupid stare will make them go all the way."

I was sat on the floor with my back against the wall. Justin walked over to the end of the shack. He looked at the chicken soup bubbling in the cooking pot.

"It's boiling dry."

"Leave it."

He turned off the stove, wrapped the sleeves of his jacket around his hands and picked up the pot. As he moved it onto the floor the smell of the chicken wafted over to me, and the way my mouth salivated reminded me of how long it had been since I had eaten.

Justin walked over and sat in front of me, cross legged. His eyes stared straight at mine. "I know I've not seen much of the world, and I know in some ways I'd hold you back, but I've got skills. Sure, I'd need you to look out for me with the infected for a little, but I'd get used to them. And there's other stuff I can do to help you."