Fear the Dead (Book 4) by Jack Lewis

and ITV. I
remember that during the day it was all antique shows and poorly-scripted soaps.”
     
    “You didn’t have a job?” said Reggie.
     
    I could feel the conversation start
to get tense. “Come on now. We’ve got more important things to discuss now,
wouldn’t you say?”
     
    Reggie nodded. “Sure.”
     
    Lou gave him a last look. Not so much
dripping in hate, but there was a flash of it. Had Reggie touched a nerve?
     
    “I was freelance,” she said, before
folding her arms and looking at the sky.
     
    The helicopter was smaller now. It
was hard to judge distance over the sky, but I thought it might have been thirty
miles away. The question was, where was it going? But that wasn’t the only
thing I needed to know. Asking one question was opening a door, and soon
everything else poured through the gap. Who was flying it? Where had they come
from? What did they want? Was it really a news crew? Who, after all these
years, had the know-how and resources to have a working helicopter?
     
    Just as quickly as the questions
rose, they were forgotten. As I stared into the sky at the helicopter which was
growing smaller and smaller, I watched it dip. At first it was like an airplane
hitting a patch of turbulence, bouncing up and down on the crest of invisible
waves. Then it jerked and fell twenty feet. It straightened and then veered to
the right, as if the pilot was struggling for control.
     
    Across from me, the woman with the
long fringe put her hand to her mouth. A sound let her lips. Not quite a gasp,
but the true sound of surprise, which was more of a choking exhalation of
breath. All around me were wide eyes and arched eyebrows. Even Lou stared at
the horizon in concentration.
     
    The helicopter wobbled up and down.
It dropped a few feet, straightened up, then dropped again. Suddenly this
didn’t look like turbulence, and I started to feel afraid for the pilot. From
the shaking movements of the chopper it was clear he was losing his battle. Keep
control , I thought.
     
    The helicopter plummeted. It happened
in seconds, but felt like it lasted hours. We stood and watched as the
helicopter disappeared from view, no doubt smashing into the ground miles away
from us.
     
    The group broke into nervous chatter.
One man looked inexplicably pale, as if he had watched a loved-one fall from
the sky. Gregor Horlock stood at the outskirts of the group, his head taller
than the rest of the crowd. He folded his arms, and he had rolled up his shirt
sleeves rolled up to show tense muscles with veins sticking out against the
skin. He started to walk forward. At first he gently pushed his way through the
crowd, but soon others moved out of the way for him. Some were scared of him, I
knew. Others felt he was a friendly giant. I still didn’t know what to think.
     
    Dead God, you give us back what we
lose. You take away what we love and return it, corrupted. Spare us, Dead God.
     
    Even remembering the words chilled
me. What did they mean? It sounded like a religious chant, as though that night
I had caught the butcher in prayer. Religion itself didn’t bother me, but his
choice of deity did. What the hell was the Dead God? Was it the infected?
Stalkers? Later I had heard Ben use the words. I didn’t know if he had even
spent that much time around Gregor, but I didn’t like it.
     
    Gregor reached the middle of the
group and then stopped. He folded his arms and looked thoughtfully at the sky.
His lips moved as he repeated words that I couldn’t hear.
     
    “So Kyle,” said Lou. “What do you
think of that?”
     
    The question of leaving camp was cast
aside amid the excited murmurings about helicopters and governments. Fingers
pointed in the air and traced the helicopters route and guessed where it had
landed. Others looked south and threw guesses at the helicopters origins. Was
it Birmingham? London? Further afield? France or Belgium maybe?
     
    The question that few seemed to ask
was the most important one. As I