When he woke up, Nick was on a bare concrete floor. The room had been stripped out, the windows were barred and there was no furniture. The room seemed familiar, somehow.
He lay there, because that's all he had the energy to do. Everything hurt, from the desert in his throat to the barbed wire of his nerves from his withdrawal from the Herb.
His shoulder hurt. It glowed with dull intensity, like a furnace.
Nick tried to move it to relieve the ache, but that made it hurt even more, and he couldn't move his arms or legs. He saw they were bound with duct tape. Shaking and twisting didn't budge it, just really hurt, and he didn't have the strength.
He laid still and closed his eyes. The world spun when he did this and his eyes rolled around when he opened them. He wondered where he could be but struggled to think straight. It seemed somewhere like back in Huddersfield but he couldn't think how he'd got there. Memories flashed through his mind and he lay his head back and groaned.
Nick jolted back to consciousness. Was he even alone, or safe? Perhaps the Dead were nearby. He looked around, but everything was still in the bare room that seemed familiar somehow but which he couldn't place.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Swallowing was very difficult; there was a lump in his dry throat. He trembled and felt a cold sweat develop that stuck around his back and chest. He would give anything for one good breath of that lush, beautiful smoke.
There was a click of a door latch and Nick strained round to see Jack looking into the room.
'Ah there you are, come and untie me, maybe we can… um… go and drive a car. Hang out. Do stuff. That's what you like, isn't it? That's what you want,' Nick mumbled.
Jack made no move to go to help him. The door opened fully and Nick saw the rest of the group standing with him. Nick tried to remain calm. They all stood there and stared at him with a low, unmoving glare.
'Look, what kind of stupid game is this?' he snapped at them, but they didn't respond.
'We've got some questions we want to ask you. I think it's time we got some answers,' said Jack.
'We found your key to that house on the far side of the Castle, the one no one else was allowed to go to. We thought we would take a look. I wish we hadn't,' said Joe.
There was a pause. Maybe they were waiting for Nick to say something, but what could he say? It was all out now. Nick spotted an extra figure at the back of the group, whose head appeared to be covered with a bag. For some reason it filled him with dread.
'Get me a drink. You need to give me a drink of water. Right now.' No one moved from the doorway.
'Get over here and untie me! You'll regret crossing me!' Nick shouted in a sudden rage.
He kicked against the floor and in as loud a voice as he could manage started a countdown from five 'before I really lose my temper.' Jack wavered, like he was about to lose his nerve and let him go. Joe put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.
'Who were they, these people? The ones who made it to… your recipes?' asked Sarah in a low voice they could tell she fought to keep level.
'They were… bad. Bad people,' said Nick, and he looked away.
'All this time we were never alone, like you said. You were preying on people. You murdered them like a serial killer – and you made us eat them!' Emma said, her voice hollow.
'No, they attacked us. They tried to rob us one day and we defended ourselves.' Nick knew they would never believe him. How could he possibly explain?
'Yeah, sure. How many have there been?' said Emma.
'How many what?'
'How many people have you killed and butchered!'
'I don't know! A couple. Maybe four. One went bad. They don't keep long.' The others had to strain to hear Nick's voice. It didn't come out above a whisper.
The others were horrified. 'Oh my God,' they said, and they held their hands to their mouths.
'I mean – there's a few of groups out there, which we know of. There still is! Like the ones who shot at Jack and chased him and said those things, called him those names. It's not like we preyed on them. We fought them and gave as good as we got. They're our enemies.'
'Maybe after you started killing and eating them?'
'No, they started it! And it wasn't just me. Everyone was in on it, Matt too. And Ryan. But he couldn't go through with it and that's why he stopped and got sick—'
'Liar!' screamed Jane. 'My Matt would never do something like that, nor would Ryan! This is what you've been keeping from us all this time and wouldn't let us know. You lied to us and made up these stories. It was all you!'
Nick tried to protest but it was no good. Their anger had turned on him and they weren't listening any more. He'd tried to be a leader and now he was taking all the blame. All of them looked at him with hatred and accusation. Jack, Joe, Emily, Jane, Sarah, Andy and Emma, all the ones still left alive.
'We don't believe you,' said Sarah, and they brought the hooded figure to the front of the group.
'Look who we found locked in the cellar of that house across the gardens,' said Emma.
'We found him right next door to where you kept your pantry and God, what we found in there,' said Jane.
'God, what we found in there.' Joe shook his head.
Straining to see, Nick saw that they'd pulled the bag off the head of the unfamiliar figure and stepped back. It was the old man, the visitor to their house from what seemed like so long ago. Charlie. His skin had taken on a deathly pallor, one not so different from the group of friends around him. For some reason the old man stood among them and paid them no mind, but he became enraged at the sight of Nick. He sputtered and growled with fury and the others had to hold him back.
'You remember this fella, don't you? Of course you do. Turns out he didn't get far after all. You caught him and locked him up. It seems he didn't have long before he got sick and succumbed to it. He's one of them now,' said Jack.
'That was Matt!'
'We remember how famously you two got along. We thought it was time for a reunion,' said Sarah.
'It seems he doesn't feel the same way about you, though,' said Emma.
'It w-was Matt!' Nick stammered. His mouth opened and closed with no sound coming out in his panic. He couldn't move. He struggled from side to side, which sent dull flares of pain up his wounded arm and ribs, even through the numbness of his body, but the bindings held fast.
The others let the man go and he came at Nick. He lurched down on to his knees and started to pummel Nick with his fists. He grabbed Nick by his collar, slammed him up and down against the floor, and twisted him painfully against his injuries. Nick tried to kick him away but there was nothing he could do. He was immobile, defenceless. The old man came in to bite the side of Nick's head and neck, exposed above his armour. Frantic, Nick screamed for them to get the old man off him.
'Makes us wonder what you did to him. And the others. Or the parts left of them that we found hanging out there to dry.'
Nick moaned in horror as he felt the cold slobber of the slimy, grey mouth against his skin and strained to turn away from the mucoid wetness as much as he could. He ground his head into the concrete floor. There was no getting away as the man wetly, slimily tried to devour the side of Nick's head, but there was nothing there between the slug-like, flaccid lips to pierce the skin. He was toothless.
'Turns out those pearly whites were falsers,' said Jenny. 'We took the liberty of taking them out because we're not arseholes like you, Nick, but we're not going to call him off until you tell us the truth! So say it!'
Nick moaned and yelled from the horror and sick wetness on the side of his face, and the more he tried to twist away the more his injuries hurt.
'There was no deer!' he yelled. 'The deer I said we caught, there wasn't one. It wasn't a stag. Or a pony. There was no pony. Ryan, Matt, me – we came out of a house one day to find a group of youths. Chavvy little scumbags. They had weapons and said we were on their turf and they wanted… they wanted everything we had.' Nick gabbled, wishing they would believe him as he felt the cold, sloppy gums chew on his ear.
The rank stink of the man's breath filled his lungs.
'They were very sure of themselves. Dead cocky. They laughed it up about our warpaint. We wouldn't back down and it turned into a fight. We downed one but the others ran.'
'But why the hell did you kill and eat him? There's all this other food out there,' demanded Joe.
'Her. It was a she. I don't know what gave us the idea. We couldn't take our eyes off her. She seemed fascinating, somehow. She was the first living person we had seen. She was hurt badly in the fight, she was done for… We can't eat the other food. It's like trying to eat dirt, or coal. It's inedible, and we were so hungry.'
The group were horrified, furious. Some turned to each other, unable to take what they heard. Nick shouted out as the old went back to pounding him with his hands. The man didn't have much strength but he was getting tenderised like a side of steak.
'It's the Herb! I can't explain it! It makes you think and act differently. And it makes you hungry, deeply hungry, for something, like you've never known. It seemed to make so much sense right then. It was Ryan that gave us the Herb in the first place!' Nick wailed. 'You remember how fascinated we were with this old fella and didn't want him to leave. You girls were all over him. You couldn't take your eyes off him, even though he's well past his best before date… now get this thing off me!'
'He's not a "thing". He has a name. His name is Charlie,' Emily said through gritted teeth. Lines of paint streaked down her face.
'It's a fucking zombie!' yelled Nick as the man went back to gum him once more.
'His name is Charlie,' said Emily.
'If he'd stayed, things would have got out of hand – you would have done it yourself!' Nick cried.
'Go on,' said Jack in a low voice. 'Tell us more.'
'Matt was in on it with me the whole time. Him, me and Ryan, but Ryan couldn't hack it. That's why he stopped eating and got sick. So sick. I didn't want you to see. I didn't want you to figure it out. Maybe if you'd kept getting high and hadn't asked questions… I didn't know what to do.
I thought maybe you shouldn't know… what we had to do. We have to eat. I think we need it to replace cells the body can't make any more. It's that or fall to bits like Ryan.' Nick groaned and kicked feebly against the floor. He started to gag and felt like he would throw up.
'Get it off me,' Nick pleaded, reduced to tears, all dignity gone.
'Say his name,' Emily said.
'Get him off me!'
'Say it.'
'Charlie! Charlie-e-e!' Nick openly cried and kicked on the floor.
Nick couldn't take any more. He surrendered and ceased to struggle.
Emily laid a hand on Charlie's shoulder and closed her eyes. The man knelt upright although he still bellowed fury at Nick, who rolled and squirmed back against the wall.
'H-how are you doing that?' Nick stammered. 'Why doesn't he go for you?'
Emily didn't respond.
'Who are these people then, that it's okay to kill and cannibalise, and feed to everyone?' Jack asked him.
'We never took someone young or defenceless. We only took those who-who wronged us, or maybe if they got unlucky and spotted us. We couldn't let them know where we lived.'
'I'm going to be sick. We should kill him,' said Sarah.
'These people, they're probably looking for us right now, but they don't like to stray far from home. Everyone hates them. The other living too, the decent ones, not just us. It's like a bitter feud going on between them,' Nick tried to explain. 'They hide from us as much as we do from them, but they started it. We have to defend ourselves. And that's why I always said we should break out of here before they track us down. They're total bastards, believe me, and we're not the only ones who hate them! They're bandits, like gangsters, real hyenas. They prey on people. Then Matt lost his nerve and wanted to keep us here and hide away. He wanted us to stay here until we all died. That was his plan. That was his actual plan. He wanted us to stay here and die. I was the only one who had any plan for us to live. This was the only thing we could do.'
'Matt became domineering, abusive. He beat me and told me to keep quiet,' Jane confessed. 'That's why I cover up all the time, so you can't see the bruises. And anyway, they always go away after we eat so what does it matter anyway, right? They heal right up again,' she said, bitterly. 'He wasn't like that until you started to agitate him and get him wound up with your big… fucking… ideas.' She punctuated each word with a kick. 'He wasn't a bad person. You didn't have to kill him.'
The others were horrified. None of them had any idea that this had gone on behind closed doors to one of their best friends.
'Who are the vampires this fella talked about? Is it them?' Joe demanded. Nick didn't reply until they shouted and swore at him to do so with the threat of setting Charlie back on him.
'The rumours going round of vampires, or psychos, that this fella said? That's us. That's you. We're the vampires. We don't wear hands for decoration, you decorate hand prints on your suits. With all the other markings you paint on yourself, they must have seen that and imagined the rest. Then they told tall tales and others believed them. We don't drink blood, but we have to eat. Chinese whispers.'
The others held their heads, held the walls for support, sat down heavily in disbelief. Their legs gave out beneath them.
'You can't pin this all on me. Andy, why don't you tell them how you grow the Herb?' Nick said.
The others turned to see Andy crying, with tears that rolled down his cheeks.
'It's true. The Herb can't grow without… it needs…' Andy struggled for words. 'We made so many attempts to get it to grow but the shoots kept dying, batch after batch of them. I gave it my blood, sweat and tears and we were down to the very last pinch of seed. We couldn't figure out what fertiliser or conditions it took. In the end it was the blood that did it. I cut my finger over one and it doubled in size overnight when it had been at death's door. That's why I wore gardening gloves so much, and still do, very often. And plasters. Lots of plasters.' Andy rolled up his trousers to show masses of scabs like crosshatch. 'The Balti makes them heal up fast, but eventually my own blood wasn't enough. I didn't have enough to spare. Matt, Ryan and Nick brought me fresh parts from bodies and they worked a treat. I didn't ask questions they wouldn't answer anyway, but I think I knew. At the back of my mind, I think I knew. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' Andy broke down, and to Nick's vexation they forgave Andy right away, but they wouldn't forgive him, or believe anything he said. The double standards blew his mind.
'W-what's going on?' Nick stammered. 'Why did he – Charlie – do what you say?'
Again, Emily didn't respond. She held Charlie by the arm and guided him out of the door. Charlie turned back towards Nick and groaned at him in his incoherent anger, but he walked with Emily as she led him past the friends and outside.
The rest of them huddled around in the corridor and discussed something outside that Nick couldn't hear. They didn't reach a unanimous decision, though, and this is what spared Nick's life.
'We're leaving, Nick. We've packed what we need and we're going. This is goodbye. Forever,' Joe said.
'Go to hell, Nick,' Sarah told him.
'Everything I did, I did it for you,' Nick murmured up to the ceiling.
He saw them close in at the edge of his vision. There was a moment before he felt the blows coming in from all sides as they let loose a volley of kicks, and then he ceased to feel a thing.