5. The Farm

After the meeting, Kurt sat alone by the fire for a while. The quiet flickering of the flames was calming to him. He stared absentmindedly into the black smoke, which twisted upwards in wild waves. They were not that far from the sea, actually, only about three miles. The last time he’d gone had been a month or so before The Invasion, when Katie had a Geography project on measuring waves. Kurt longed to taste the salty air once again, feel the rough wind whipping against his skin, but there was no way of knowing what was out there. For all they knew, the entire town of Aberystwyth had been taken over by now. They were safest here.

His family always used to have bonfires. Any occasion was an excuse for one: birthdays, anniversaries, sometimes even at Christmas. The last time they had one was the night before the bloodbath, and even that was tainted. His dad had been burning anything that his grandfather had touched: sheets, pillows, blankets, books, even the photo albums. Kurt’s mum had screamed at him for that, really screamed, and tried to fish them out with her bare hands. But his dad hadn’t flinched. He just kept tossing page after page into the flames, staring into them like he could see something no one else could. Of course, his dad was only doing what he had too, trying to stop the infection, or whatever it was, from spreading.

The day after, Kurt had dragged their bodies onto the fire. 

‘Hey,’ came a soft voice, and Katie appeared beside him. She sat down, patting him gently on the knee. ‘You okay?’ she said, pushing her silky red hair behind her ears.

Kurt smiled back. ‘Yeah. Of course. You?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Kurtis Theodore Blake,’ she said, wagging a finger at him in a mock telling off. ‘I can see right through it. You’re like Mum,’ she laughed, leaning in. ‘It’s in the eyes.’

‘If I’m like Mum, then you’re like Dad,’ he said, nudging at a loose bit of kindling with the toe of his boot. 

‘Don’t say that.’ Katie gave a little snort. ‘That’s cursed.’

‘No, for real. In a good way, I mean. You’re level-headed. Quiet. Calm.’

‘That’s you, silly,’ she smiled. She found a smooth stone in the grass and picked it up. ‘Remember that old children’s storybook Mum used to read to us when we were little, and there was a story about a kid who had a stone called Bonting?’ 

‘Yeah?’

She placed the stone in Kurt’s hand. It was warm and smooth. ‘And I was so obsessed with the story that I wanted my own Bonting, and Mum tried to find a similar stone, but I rejected every single one?’

‘Yeah, I remember. It sent Mum insane. She practically dug up half the garden trying to please you. But then she started yelling, which made you cry.’

‘And then you methodically sorted every single stone you could find in the garden into piles until I had a bucketful of potential Bontings?’

Kurt tossed the stone up and down, feeling the weight of it in his palm. ‘Of course I remember, what’s your point?’

‘Well, my point is that you’re the one who held us together. Even when you were small. Even when it wasn’t your job, because you were just a kid too,’ she said, her voice almost lost in the crackle of the fire. ‘Even when everything’s gone to hell, you still… try to make it make sense. For all of us. You’re like, basically the dad of the farm.’

Kurt didn’t reply. The stone felt heavier in his palm than it did before, and his methodically turned it over, feeling every inch of it. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that keeping things together was just his way of putting off the inevitable, that he felt like a fraud pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Instead, he pocketed the stone alongside his feelings.

‘Just don’t go making me out to be some hero,’ he said, forcing a crooked smile. ‘I’m just good at pretending I know what I’m doing.’

Katie smirked in a way that made her look like the spitting image of their mum, a small dimple appearing in the crux of her pale cheek. ‘I think that’s what Dad was good at, too.’ 

‘Did you come here just to reminisce, or did you have a point?’ 

For a second, Katie dithered, and Kurt knew that look: the scrunched-up cheeks, the squinting eyes, tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. It was the look that meant she was deciding whether to tell the truth or wrap it up in something softer. 

‘I’m worried,’ she said, finally. ‘About the farm. I think Lola is right. I don’t think the fences will hold, even if we reinforce them. Not if more of the invaders come. What about the winter? We barely have enough wood as it is; we can’t use up all our supply on the fences. Or what about when the animals die? We haven’t got a ram anymore; we can’t breed the sheep, so once they’re gone we’ll have no meat, no wool…’ she trailed off.

‘What are you saying?’

She took a deep breath. ‘You know what I’m saying. I think we should leave the farm and find another group, another place, before it’s too late.’

Kurt didn't answer straightaway. He looked at the fence, like he could just about will it taller by staring. ‘You’re right about the ram. I don’t have an answer for that. But leaving? What, we take the kids and a few bags and hope for the best? Where would we go?’ Kurt shook his head, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair. ‘We’ve got no guarantee we’d be safer anywhere else. At least here we know the ground, the fences, the escape routes.’

‘Yeah, but what if they do too?’ Katie said quietly. Her eyes flicked to the fence as though she expected something to move there. ‘You said it yourself, they’re learning. Next time, it might not be a sheep that gets killed. It’ll be another Jamie.’

‘We’re fine,’ he warned, staring back into the flames. 

‘You’ll have to talk about him one day, brother,’ she said as she stood up, brushing ash and grass from her blue jeans. ‘Anyway, I think Lola wants you. She’s by the gate. Something about the CryCast.’ 

The gate was at the back of the farm, overlooking the industrial estate. Kurt grabbed a shotgun from the house and slung it over his shoulder before heading down there. He knew deep down that Katie was probably right, but he also knew that if he was going to die, he wanted to die on the farm, like his grandad, and like his dad and his mum. 

***

Sitting on top of the gate, Lola could see for miles. Aside from the grey concrete jungle of the industrial estate, which sat nestled between two hills, the view was a sea of green, rolling fields stitched together with hedgerows and small, drystone walls. It was beautiful. She’d only moved to Aberystwyth from London two years ago, in what was supposed to be a fresh start, just her and her dad, away from it all. Even the apocalypse couldn’t force her to miss the traffic, the sirens, the busy crowds. Out here, the silence was wide and heavy, but it was hers.

‘You okay?’ came Kurt’s voice from behind her. ‘Katie said you were looking for me. It’ll have to be quick, because I need to start the new fence.’

‘We need new guns,’ she said, hopping down from the gate and landing in front of Kurt. She held up her shotgun. ‘This is not going to defend us enough. I put the CryCast on just now. Cry said the Invaders seem to be leaving the cities now. Heading west. He’s advising people in the countryside to be careful.’

Kurt glanced at the shotgun, then at her, his brow furrowing. ‘It’s defended us so far. And Cry…’ Kurt hesitated, clearly trying to choose his words carefully. ‘Cry isn’t always right. We can’t just rely on that. He’s just some bored tech-savvy kid who’s probably never even left the city.’ He tried to smile reassuringly. ‘Not like you and me, eh?’

‘You can’t just live in denial, Kurt!’ Lola said, her voice sharp. She held up her gun. ‘This is a close-range weapon. It’s fine when there’s just one of the damn things, but what if Cry’s right? What if all the Crawlers are leaving the cities? A horde of those bastards could be heading straight towards us right now. I think we’ve got, what, four shotguns between us?’

‘We can hold fort, like we always have.’ 

‘Enough with this ‘we’ bullshit!’ Lola spat, unable to contain what was bubbling up inside her. Kurt was stuck, repeating the same points over and over whenever she confronted him with the truth, and it was agonising. ‘WE need more weapons,’ she said with a deep breath. ‘WE could go into town. Take the horses. WE could raid the police station or some other farms, get food and medical supplies. It’s not that far. That’s the goddamn ‘we’ you should be talking about.’

‘Lola,’ Kurt began. He looked around for a second, out at the hills. ‘You know we can’t risk it. I can’t risk it. Katie was just saying something similar, and…’

‘You dismissed her like you’re dismissing me?’ Lola cut him off, angrily. ‘We can’t stay on this farm forever, you know that. If the Invaders are learning, adapting, then that’s a pretty good sign that we need to as well!’

‘Fine! What if we adapt ourselves right into an early grave?’ he said, his voice low but angry. ‘What if everyone follows me right into another bloodbath? Maybe you, me, Rev, we’d be okay. But what about the toddlers, or Bryn and Cai, or even Katie? They’d slow us down, and it’d be our fault if they died.’

‘Like Jamie?’ Lola said, drawing out the two syllables of his name, letting it dance on her tongue, as much as it stung to say it. Horrifying images flashed quickly through her mind and she shook her head violently to be rid of them. ‘You want to make the same mistakes that got him killed?’

‘We stay,’ he said, firmly, looking away at the mention of Jamie’s name. ‘What happened to Jamie was my fault. I know. And it’s because we – I – wasn’t prepared.’

It was the answer Lola had been expecting, but it still made her stomach twist. She hated feeling small and stuck when the world was moving fast beyond their fences. They were like sitting ducks, just waiting for the Invaders to come. Out there, at least there would be a chance to do something. What if Kurt was right? What if running away meant certain death for the weakest? But what if staying meant certain death for all of them? It made her angry, not really at Kurt, but at the world. At God, if there was one. 

A flurry of heavy footsteps approached them, accompanied by the sharp, ragged sound of breath caught between gasps and the soft jingling of jewellery. Rev appeared, having run around the barn from where Lola had sent him to be a lookout over the other side of the farm.

‘Guys,’ he panted. ‘We have a problem.’

Without hesitating, Lola sprinted the way Rev had just come, Kurt close behind her. Rev produced a pair of binoculars and shoved them into her hands as they arrived at the fence on the east side of the farm, where the sheep pens used to be. Lola had been too scared to let the sheep out today.

‘Look, straight ahead, between those trees over there,’ Rev said, wheezing. 

She held the binoculars up to her eyes and squinted, looking for whatever he was saying. ‘Where?’

‘Past the big oak, just beyond the dip in the hill,’ Rev said, pointing with a slightly trembling hand. 

Finally, she found them. A cluster, a herd, a writhing mass. A dozen or so Invaders were heading straight towards the farm, crawling and staggering like a grotesque, shambling parade, limbs jerking out at unnatural angles. They were worse than the pale ones Lola had seen so far. They were rotten, with large flaps of skin peeling off, revealing the dead flesh underneath. Their mouths gaped wide open, exposing cracked, blackened teeth slick with gore. She passed the binoculars to Kurt.

‘Told you,’ she said, her voice shaking.

Kurt cursed under his breath. ‘We’ll be fine. I’ll get Malcolm and Katie and Bryn, and as soon as they’re in range, shoot them.’

‘What if-’

‘DON’T!’ Kurt yelled, shoving the binoculars back into her hands. ‘It’ll work. It’ll work. It has too.’

She raised the binoculars again, but this time she saw something else. Another figure, a few yards ahead of the Invaders. Not crawling, but running.

It was a girl. 

Her clothes were soaked dark red, the blood glistening in patches on her arms and face. She, too, was heading towards the farm, leading the Invaders directly behind her.