by Ryan Casey
Noah opened his mouth. He wanted to defend himself. Wanted to stand up for himself.
But he knew there was nothing he could say.
He had no argument.
He closed his mouth. Sighed. “I know you don’t like it when I say it. But I do it for you.”
“Then stop,” she said. “I’d rather you didn’t do it for me. If that’s what it takes, if that’s what you have to do, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“So you’d rather get hurt? You’d rather they abducted you? Rather they strapped you up to one of those machines again and sucked the brains from your skull?”
Iqrah looked into Noah’s eyes, and she smiled. “I’d rather nobody died. I’d rather just... live. No matter what it takes.”
She turned around and started walking. Bruno walking along by her side.
Noah stood there. Stared off down the road. Beyond the abandoned buildings. And right ahead towards the western coast of the country.
He saw the Blackpool, 8 miles sign staring down at him.
Rust and blood splattered across the metal.
He took a deep breath, and he walked.
Chapter Four
Noah saw the “Welcome to Blackpool” sign staring down at him and felt a wave of tension fill his body.
The sky had clouded over, which seemed typical of Blackpool. All his memories here of his childhood were never sunny. He never used to like coming here. Didn’t like roller coasters, so a trip to Blackpool was always a stellar exercise in the most acute kind of dread. Even the smell of fish and chips triggered him to the day, mostly because it reminded him of those fruitless, torturous seaside trips.
There was no smell of fish and chips anymore, of course. Just a smell of bitterness to the air. A damp taste, a humidity.
He stood at the entrance to the seaside town and marvelled at just how ghostly it felt. It’d always been a weirdly ghostly town. Felt the kind of place that was only ever kept alive by tourists. The chiming of music from the arcades. The smell of warm candy floss. And the screams from the roller coasters in the distance.
But look beyond the surface, and you saw a different kind of reality. You saw the boarded-up hotels stacked next to one another. You saw the grimy brothels stuffed away in plain sight. Under the lights of the illuminations, you saw drug dealers and people walking the streets.
It was a dark place. A dangerous place.
It only took a shift in perspective to see it.
But right now, it felt even darker and more dangerous than ever.
“You sure about this?” Noah asked.
Iqrah stood by his side. Looked ahead. Her eyes were wide. Truth be told, she looked uncertain, too. Like she was also facing up to the reality that they were actually here. That they’d actually made it here, after all this time.
She glanced around at Noah. Nodded.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re okay. I know this is a big deal to you.”
She opened her mouth like she was about to dismiss Noah again.
And then she just closed it.
Her eyes lowered.
“I’ve just... I’ve waited for this moment. Waited for so long. I’ve imagined it, so many times. It’s kept me going. And now it’s here, and I... I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m ready to see whether they’re even still here at all. Or...”
She stopped. Noah knew what she was going to say. Or dead.
He put a hand on her shoulder.
Patted her back, just a little. Marvelled at how much he’d changed. Allowing himself to be close. Allowing himself to connect. How far he’d come.
“I found my parents a few years in,” Noah said. “It... it was always a mystery to me. Where they were. How they were doing. Whether they were even still alive out there. It tortured my thoughts. Kept me awake at night. Part of me wanted to know the truth. The other just wanted to believe they were okay out there. Never wanted to know.
“But I remember when I found them... there was this grief. This wave of utter, unshakable grief. But then there was something else.”
“What?”
“A kind of... peace. Of acceptance. Because at least I know. At least my mind wouldn’t torture me. Not anymore. So I’d say it’s always better knowing. You can never be ready to know the answers to something like this. Not truly. But it’s always better knowing.”
Iqrah stared at him, wordless for a while.
“What?”
“You sounded then like you’re actually starting to, like, be okay with this?”
“With what?”
“Being here. In Blackpool. Looking for my family.”
Noah’s stomach turned. “I don’t want to be here because I know it’s not the safest place to be. But I know how important this is to you. How much you need this. And I wouldn’t ever stand in your way of that. Just as long as it doesn’t get us killed, okay?”
Iqrah looked up at him. Nodded. “Okay.”
She turned around.
Looked ahead at Blackpool.
Noah beside her.
“You ready?” he asked.
She reached out.
Took his hand.
Squeezed it, just a little. “Ready.”
Noah swallowed a lump in his throat.
He took a deep breath.
And then he took his first step beyond that “Welcome to Blackpool” sign and into the unknown.
Chapter Five
The second Noah stepped onto the Blackpool promenade his whole childhood came charging back in.
The skies were grey and cloudy. Specks of cool rain sprinkled down from above. All the old sights were still there, only the town was less populated now, somehow even more ghostly than it used to be.
Wind swept across the promenade. The Ferris Wheel on the pier stood stationary, empty, dead. The little stalls that used to serve Blackpool Rock and sell souvenirs were all closed and boarded up, some of the small roadside shacks tumbled down to the ground long ago.
The old hotels that lined the promenade looked as dead as ever. The arcades were closed up. Over in the distance, no screams of kids flying around on the roller coasters echoed through, as used to be so commonplace.
No donkeys walked the beach. Only the water crashing against the shore now. That’s all there was.
And there was certainly nobody else here.
Nobody walking the promenade.
No signs of life by the old, derelict trams.
Nothing.
Noah stood there, Iqrah by his side. Bruno stood between them. All of them were still, all of them looking on at the scene ahead. No Society at least—well, as far as they could tell. Which struck Noah as weird. Surely they’d expect Iqrah to go looking at the place she’d been kidnapped from in the first place? Maybe they’d already been here. Maybe they’d waited, mistimed their ambush.
Or maybe their ambush was still coming after all.
Noah looked at Iqrah. He didn’t want to say anything. He wanted her to realise the truth of matters in her own time. Wanted her to come to terms with things in her own way. Didn’t want to put thoughts in her head or words in her mouth. He just wanted her to realise that this place was empty. This place was derelict. This place was dead.
And then she had to decide where to go from there. Interpret things in her own way.
“The trams,” Iqrah said.
Noah frowned. “What?”
Iqrah lifted a finger, pointed, wide-eyed. A pale, ghostly expression to her face. “The trams. We used to stay over there. We moved around a lot. But that’s where we were when they came for me. When they took me.”
Noah looked over at those empty, abandoned trams. Something about them gave him the creeps. In this ghostly seaside town, where not even the seagulls seemed to swoop down anymore, there was something about those trams that freaked him out more than anything.
He tasted bitterness in his mouth. Felt tension in his throat.
There was something about those trams he didn
’t want to see.
And yet he couldn’t explain what it was.
Just a feeling.
Just a sense.
A sense that something wasn’t right there.
That there was something unsavoury there.
Something they really didn’t want to find.
“I can go,” Noah said.
“What?”
“If you want me to check the trams... I can do that for you.”
Iqrah reached over. Squeezed his hand, just slightly. “Thank you. But... but I have to do this. You know I do. You know how it is.”
Noah wanted to protect this girl. And that included protecting her from the horrors of life as much as it meant protecting her from the Society and the infected.
But he knew she was right.
This was her discovery to make. As nice or as nasty as it may be.
And Noah couldn’t help thinking this discovery was going to be anything other than nasty.
“Okay,” he said. “But I’ll be here. I’ll be by your side. No matter what.”
She squeezed his hand again, lightly this time.
“Thank you,” she said.
He squeezed it back. Felt that resistance to connect, to bond, and knew there was no hope trying to suppress that resistance with this girl. Not now. Not after all this time.
They walked together, over towards the trams. Their footsteps echoed against the concrete. Names of celebrities stared up at them from the Comedy Carpet, like Britain’s own version of a Hollywood walk of fame, except far tackier and less glamorous. That was the charm of Blackpool. It was a bit shit, but it knew it was a bit shit and wasn’t afraid to brand itself as some kind of shit Vegas. That was part of the joke. Part of its appeal. Its self-referential sense of humour was one of the only things going for it.
As they walked, Noah swore he saw movement between the hotels. Figures watching through the dusty, cracked windows. He felt the hairs stand on the back of his neck. A sense that this was wrong. That something was coming. Something was watching.
He turned around and looked ahead at the trams. And the closer he got, his footsteps echoing more through the silence, he saw flies. Flies buzzing around the trams. A slight smell to the air; a hint of rot and decay.
His stomach turned again. The sense something was wrong intensified. The knowledge they were going to find something they really didn’t want to find was at a peak.
But still he walked. Bruno walking by his side, ears lowered.
And Iqrah. Focused intently on the trams ahead.
The sound of the buzzing flies intensified as they got closer. The smell was so bad he wanted to hurl. There was a disturbing inevitability about this walk. A knowledge of what they were going to find.
He wanted to step in.
He wanted to protect Iqrah from it.
But he knew he couldn’t.
He knew there was nothing to stop this march now.
They reached the side of the tram. Saw the open door. And on the footsteps onto it, he noticed something. A brown stain. Flies wandering along it.
Something like blood.
Noah put a hand in front of Iqrah. Stopped her progressing.
She looked up at him, momentarily shaken from her trance.
“Are you sure about this?” he said, looking down into her eyes. “Are you sure?”
She opened her mouth. Like she was torn. Like she didn’t know what to say.
And then she closed her mouth, and she nodded.
Noah’s stomach sank.
But he understood.
He took a deep breath.
Then he stepped around the front of the tram, over to the open door.
When he saw what was inside, he wished he’d never looked.
And he wished Iqrah had never looked.
Chapter Six
Noah stared into the tram and wished he could take back what he was looking at.
Or rather, he wished he could stop Iqrah from seeing what they were both looking at.
Cold rain sprinkled down from the thick grey rain clouds overhead. The whole promenade of Blackpool was silent, apart from Bruno’s heavy panting. Apart from Noah’s heart thumping in his chest.
And apart from Iqrah’s heavier, shakier breathing as she came to terms with the scene before her.
The tram was dark. The windows that were still in place, not smashed, were covered in dust, cobwebs, and grime. There were flies everywhere. Rats scuttling around the floor of the tram, clearly undisturbed for quite some time.
Blood covered the floor of the tram. It was a deep brown shade, but it didn’t look like it’d been there all that long. Relatively fresh. Which meant this scene was recent.
The smell in the air was ghastly. It reminded him of the time he’d come across a dead sheep walking through the countryside. There was no way to describe it, no way to really explain it other than to say it was ghastly. It was something you really needed to experience to truly understand. The worst smell he’d ever smelled.
And that said a lot, since he’d come across so much death in this world already.
Bodies were sitting in the chairs of the tram. They all sat there pretty upright, pretty peacefully. At first glance, it looked like these dehydrated, prune-like figures might just be sleeping, taking a breather.
But at a closer look, it was clear they were dead.
What wasn’t clear was how they’d died.
There were no gunshots. There was only blood. Signs of the infection? Maybe.
And it was hard to tell how old the bodies were. They looked dehydrated like they’d been here a while. The flies buzzing around them painted the same picture. But again, there was also a freshness about them. Like something had happened to make them like this, rather than going this way naturally.
But there was something else, too. This film. This weird, sticky film, clinging to their skin.
Noah looked down the length of the tram. So many of them. Thirty in this carriage alone.
Men.
Women.
Children.
And there was something about the way they all sat there, agony across their faces, that told Noah something very different had happened to them.
Something he didn’t quite understand.
Iqrah walked down the length of the tram. Noah wanted to stop her, but he knew it’d be in vain. This kid used to live here. She’d held on to the hope that her parents were still here, all along. No doubt there were faces she recognised amongst this crowd of dead.
And as much as he wanted to hold her back and stop her witnessing this path of horror and terror... he knew she needed to see it. For herself. He knew there was no stopping her.
She walked right to the end of the carriage. Stared at someone, just for a moment. And Noah wondered if this was it. If this was the moment she saw them. The moment she set eyes on her parents, once and for all.
But then she just looked around. Tears in her bloodshot eyes. Jaw shaking.
“They’re not here,” she said.
Part relief washed across Noah. Because at least if she didn’t see her parents, she wouldn’t have to think of them in this state. She wouldn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night knowing what’d happened to them, and visualising their final, clearly painful, moments.
But at the same time, Noah knew the power of the unknown. He knew the hold it could have. He knew how it could keep you awake at night, keep you hoping, keep you focused on one goal. Finding answers.
He knew if Iqrah didn’t find her parents here, she would never stop searching for them. She would keep on going as if they were alive out there. Keep on wondering.
And as much of a positive as hope could be... it could also be a dangerous killer in a world like this.
“Come on,” Noah said. “We need to get out of here.”
But Iqrah looked distant. She looked elsewhere.
“Iqrah?”
“I need to find them,” she said, stomping past him, towards the tram
door, over towards the next carriage.
“Iqrah, please—”
“This is where we stayed, okay? This is where we stayed. I need to find them. I can’t just give up on them. I can’t.”
Noah stumbled after her, almost slipping on the metal floor. “Iqrah, don’t do this to yourself. Please. You’ve seen all you need to see. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But we need to leave here.”
“I’m not leaving here until I find them,” she shouted.
She stopped. Stood there in front of him. Tears in her eyes. Body shaking. He’d never seen her like this before. He’d seen her lose her composure, sure. He’d seen the child inside this teenage body several times, a child who had been forced to grow up fast in a dark new world.
But right now, he saw a lost child. A child who had nobody.
And he felt so distant from her.
He reached out. Put his hand on her shoulder. “Iqrah, please,” he said. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t put yourself through this.”
She looked up into his eyes. And for a moment, he thought he saw recognition. He thought he saw an acknowledgement in her eyes that he was doing the right thing for her. That he knew what was best for her.
But then she pulled her shoulder away. Went to walk to the next carriage. “I have to. I...”
She stopped.
And for a moment, Noah felt relief.
Because she’d stopped. She’d heard him. He’d got through to her.
But then Bruno looked around and whined.
Somewhere overhead, thunder rumbled.
Lightning flashed.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Something wasn’t right, and he knew Iqrah felt it too.
He looked into her eyes. Went to open his mouth to say something.
That’s when he saw them.