by Ryan Casey
Riley lifted himself upright. His head felt weak and dizzy.
“Oh, hey,” Ted said. He nodded at Riley and reached for a half-empty bottle of water, pouring some out into a plastic cup. “You should drink. You… you don’t look great, man.”
Riley grabbed the plastic cup with his weak, jittery hand. The dried blood covering his arms caught his eyes. But no. He couldn’t dwell on that now. What was done was done. He held the cup to his mouth and poured the cold water down his dry throat.
“You… you were out for a good few hours. Trevor thought you’d turned but… There’s no bites. But you haven’t been… bitten. Right?”
Riley shook his head.
“Good,” Ted said. “One thing to be positive about I guess. Hardly… hardly wanted you to wake up as one of those things. Not that it’d make much of a difference. I’m dead anyway. Oh, and erm… Anna. She’s got the gun you brought back with you.”
Although Riley understood the words that Ted was saying, they didn’t really resonate inside him. Didn’t create any sort of emotional response. He felt numb. Cut off. Dead to the world. The things he’d seen, they’d made him more of a zombie than any of those creatures.
Voices echoed up the stairs from the lower section of the Chinese restaurant. Raised voices. Shouting. Anna. Claudia. Trevor. Children crying.
“They… We had a fall out. I did something stupid, mate. And—” He paused. Gulped. “Chloë. Claudia’s… Claudia’s daughter. She killed Jill. Said she’d turned and came at her and… yeah. Self-defence. Kid was too scared to say anything.”
Riley stared up at the ceiling. In the corner of his eyes, he saw a streetlight flicker to life outside. A breeze swept the autumn leaves down the road, further into the darkness.
“Anna’s pissed. I… I don’t know what to do. I… Riley. I hit her.” He stared at Riley with a pained grimace, as if he was waiting to be torn to pieces for his actions.
Riley could only shrug.
Ted frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to do it. I was just… Mate, I was worried about you. I thought she’d killed Jill. I thought she did it and I just flipped. I… I know it’s stupid. But I just want you to know I’m sorry. Because… well. I don’t know how much longer they’re going to let me stay here.”
Riley kept his mouth shut. Ted’s words swam around his mind, distant and unconnected. Diluted and watered down. The events at the farm. The blood and the screams and the struggles.
But more than anything, it was his realisation that spun around his mind. The flu jab that Jill had taken. The advertisement for the flu jab outside the room where the creatures gorged on a nurse, who held a syringe.
And Anna’s words. “I guess we really do all have our secrets.”
“I hate to go into this, but Stan. Is he… gone?”
Riley nodded.
Ted sighed. “And you… Are you—?”
Riley nodded again.
“Just if you want to talk about things. Because we’re going to have to talk about things at some point soon. Okay?”
Anna’s words. The look of guilt in her face when they’d stood in that bathroom before he left.
Ted tutted and hopped off the bed. He winced as he landed on his sore foot. “Look — I know what you’ve been through was no doubt bad, but now’s not the time to start cutting yourself off and hiding away from things. We’re in the shit. Okay? Deep, deep shit. You hear them downstairs? You want to know what they’re arguing about? They’re arguing about what to do with us. And no, not whether we’re staying or not, but whether to send us packing without any supplies or to tie us up to a railing and leave us to die. We’re in the shit. So you can’t just sit there and—”
“I just watched a man get torn to shreds by those creatures instead of shooting them. Instead of helping him.” A burning sensation rushed all the way through Riley’s body. He climbed off the bed. “I could have helped him. I could have. And maybe we’d both have got out of there. He was only a kid. Shot his own psycho brother because he didn’t agree with him. Saved Stan. Saved me. And I let him die. I listened to him scream and I didn’t do anything about it. And Stan, too. I could have shot him. Put him out of his misery. But what did I do? I saved the bullets. So sorry for my silence, Ted. Sorry for not being all bubbly or all, ‘Oh, I’m sorry Ted, don’t worry, Ted,’ but I’m dealing with some shit of my own here. I…” He looked at the dried blood on his hands. “This world. It’s two days in and I’ve already let so many people die. I’ve allowed that to happen. I haven’t wanted to, but I’ve had to. What does that make me?”
Ted stared at Riley. He was silent for a few moments. Then, he cleared his throat and placed a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “Alive. That’s what it makes you. Alive.” He turned away from Riley and walked towards the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?”
Ted stopped at the door. “I’m going to the bathroom and then I’m leaving this place. You… you should stay. You’re good with these people. You’ll be better here with them.”
Riley walked after Ted, swaying a little. His head spun and his stomach churned. “You aren’t going anywhere. You don’t have to leave.”
Ted turned to Riley. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was grey. “I hit Anna across the face. Bruised her. Right in front of… of the girls. That’s the image this group has of me now. That’s who Ted is. Not the clown who keeps the kids entertained. Not the fat slob who lazes around while his best mate does all the hard work. I’m Ted the woman-beater. And even in this world, I can’t come back from that image.”
Riley stared down the corridor. The voices grew louder and angrier. “There’s a few things in this world we can’t come back from.” He walked down the corridor towards the staircase.
“Where are you going?” Ted shouted. “There’s… Now’s probably not the best time to go down there. You need to rest. You need… The blood on your hands. You need cleaning up.”
Riley let Ted’s words disappear into thin air and climbed down the stairs. The arguing voices and the crying got closer. Through the window at the top of the stairs, he could see nothing but complete darkness. He had to mention what was on his mind now. He couldn’t let it brew inside him any longer.
“Riley, come on, man. This is ridiculous.” Ted’s new training shoes that Trevor had grabbed from the supermarket for him squeaked against the stairs. “We need to do this together. We need a plan.”
Riley pushed the door to the reception area open. The room went silent.
Behind the counter, Anna was crouched opposite Claudia. Tears streamed down Claudia’s cheeks as she held Chloë in her arms. Trevor paced around the room with his hands behind his head. Elizabeth sat on her own by the front door, sulking.
“Nice of you to join us,” Anna said, rising to her feet. “I suppose your friend’s told you everything there is to know about what’s going on here?” She pointed a finger at her face. A red bruise was protruding from her cheekbone.
Riley walked further into the room. His heart raced. Adrenaline rushed through his body. Claudia looked at him as she held her daughter. There was no reassuring smile or nod, not anymore.
“And you’ve got a nerve showing your face in here again,” Anna said. She looked past Riley.
“I’ve told him what’s going on,” Ted said. “I tried to stop him. I—”
“The truth is, Riley, your friend here showed his true colours. In front of all of us. I don’t want a person like that staying with us. Claudia, the girls — they’ve been through a lot. And I don’t trust him. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Riley said.
Anna looked taken aback. “Is… I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying here. You have a choice. You can take the road with your friend, or you can stay here with us.”
Riley stuck his bottom lip out. Nodded his head from side to side, weighing up Anna’s proposal. “What if I choose another option?”
Anna frowned. Trevor and Claudia looked on, silent
ly. “Which is?”
Riley stepped up to Anna. Stared her in the eyes. “Remember in the bathroom before I left to find Stan? Remember what we spoke about?”
Anna narrowed her eyes. Squinted as if searching her head for the memory. “I’m not sure what you—”
“Secrets. We talked about secrets. About how we’re… how we’re entitled to our secrets. Remember?”
Anna’s cheeks flushed. She turned to Claudia and then to the floor. “I don’t get the relevance to be honest.”
Riley smiled. “Well, I was wrong about secrets. I said we’re all entitled to them. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. Look at what secrets have done to us. They got Stan killed.”
Anna lifted her head. “Stan… he’s…?”
“Yes. He is. And I’ll tell you another secret of mine.” Riley raised his blood-coated arms. “I let somebody die today. I could have saved him, but I didn’t. I chose my own life instead. And when we met you people. The bullshit I told you about finding the gun on a police officer—that was a lie. The truth is Ted and I bumped into a girl. She had a gun. She got out of our car to save us and we let her die to save ourselves.”
The rest of the room looked on.
“So there. That’s my big secret. I’m a coward. I’ve let people die. Now, you know who I am. You can judge me. Does anyone else have any secrets they want to share? Trevor? Aside from the letting your friends die thing, anything else?”
Trevor flinched and shook his head.
“What about you, Claudia? Have you anything you want to tell us? Nothing you’re hiding, is there?”
Claudia glanced at Anna then back at Riley. “No. No, I don’t.”
Riley nodded. “Good.” He stepped back up to Anna. “And what about you, Anna? Doctor Anna. Do you have anything you want to tell the rest of the group?”
Anna raised her head. Her bottom lip quivered. Riley knew she was hiding something just by the way she peered at him.
“Nothing at all? Nothing… flu jab related?”
Anna’s shoulders dropped. She shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t.”
“What are you talking about?” Claudia asked.
Riley turned to Claudia and Chloë. He took a deep breath. The words were spouting from his mouth like somebody else was speaking through him. A man possessed. “Chloë, I know you think it was you who killed Jill, but it wasn’t. Not really.”
“Please,” Anna said. She grabbed Riley’s arm. “Please.”
Riley stared at Anna. He had to tell the truth. There could be no more secrets. It’s all they had left. “Jill was already dead when you found her. I know that and you know that. And that’s because—”
“Arrrgh!”
Glass smashed at the front of the Chinese restaurant.
Elizabeth fell to the floor.
“Holy shit,” Trevor said. He rushed over to Elizabeth and scooped her up. “Upstairs! Now!”
The sound of footsteps running up the staircase echoed behind Riley. Blurred faces rushed past him. Voices called out. The children screamed.
“Riley, quick!”
He stared at the smashed glass of the restaurant door.
A creature pulled itself in.
Another followed.
And another.
“Riley, we have to close this door. Get in here, now!”
Riley stumbled back as more and more creatures swarmed into the entrance area. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Groaning. Walking in his direction.
He ran through the door to the stairway and slammed it shut.
“We’ve lost this place,” Trevor said. “We’ve lost it.”
EPISODE FOUR
“Riley, we need to get the hell upstairs. Now!”
The groans grew in number behind him. It sounded like a deathly choir. A sing-off. The sheer number that had crashed their way through the entrance. More than ten. More than twenty. And there were more of them behind him, all making their way in the group’s direction. They’d seen which way the group had gone. They’d heard it, too.
There was only one place the group could go, and that was upstairs.
Riley rushed up the staircase. Trevor was at the top, following the rest of the group. The children cried out and shouted at one another in panic. Anna swore and bossed people around at the top of her voice.
“Then where the fuck do you suggest we go?” Anna struggled with the window at the end of the corridor. “You’ve seen them — they’re coming for us. And unless we move, we’ll be one of them too.”
Ted shook his head. “I just think we should talk about this. Properly.”
“We don’t have time to talk about this, ‘properly.’ We have to move. Riley?”
Riley stared down the corridor at the group. All of their eyes were on him. Even after what he’d told them about abandoning people. Even after how close he’d come to exposing Anna’s secret in front of all of them. Still, they looked at him. Looked to him.
“I… I think—”
The door crashed at the bottom of the staircase. The groans were getting clearer, which meant the door must have cracked. So many of them, like flies buzzing ‘round shit. All their supplies. Everything they’d worked for. All of it, gone to waste.
“We need to try and salvage something,” Ted said. He limped down the corridor in the direction of the staircase. “Everything. The food and the water. We can’t just let that go. We have to collect what we can while we can.”
Trevor held his hand up as Ted started to walk past him. He shook his head. “You can hear those things. We can’t go down there.”
Ted opened his mouth to protest. His eyes reddened. He looked past Trevor and at Riley. “Mate? What d’you say? The stuff you came back with. The run to the supermarket. We can’t just—”
The door downstairs crashed again. Wood cracked and even more groans and cries echoed up the stairway. Claudia held her hands over Elizabeth’s ears. She tried to get Chloë to join her too, but she looked on, wide-eyed and distant.
“I’m sorry, Ted,” Riley said. “We can’t risk it. We can’t lose anything else.”
Ted cringed and shook his head. “Damn. Damn it. Then what—”
“Get back!” Anna shouted.
Riley spun around. A creature was waddling up the stairs. It looked like it had been a bald man once upon a time. Fresh blood and bits of skin were smudged across its mouth. Cracked glasses sat on its nose.
Anna struggled with the window some more. “We’ve no choice. No fucking choice.” She pulled the gun that she had taken from Riley out of her pocket and aimed at the glass.
“We need to get in the bedroom,” Claudia said, backing up towards Anna with Elizabeth’s hand in hers. “We need—we need to hide. Somewhere. Anywhere!”
Behind the bald creature, another emerged. A woman with thin peroxide blonde hair. Huge chunk missing from her neck. A wonder her head was still balancing on her shoulders.
A loud bang exploded. Glass shattered and rained out of the window that Anna shot. Shards sprinkled to the ground outside like icicles on a cold day. Anna leaned out of the window and squinted into the darkness.
“Can we make it?” Ted asked. He lifted his foot. “It’s just… my foot. It’s…”
Anna narrowed her eyes at Ted. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. The look said it all. Tough.
Another creature staggered up the staircase, tumbling forward and knocking the other two down, like dominoes.
“Mummy, I don’t like them.”
“Don’t be so soft,” Chloë said to her sister as the three of them moved right up to the smashed window. “We have to learn to be tough!”
Riley’s heart raced as he watched the creatures get further and further up the stairs. And yet, he felt strangely calm. Strangely in control. The moans of the creatures seemed to blur into the background. He looked down at his arms. Stared at the sleeves of dried blood. The things he’d done, he wasn’t proud of. Nobody could be. But Ted was right. He was alive. That
’s what his decisions made him.
“Riley? Mate? We don’t have long.”
Riley turned away from the growing queue of creatures and walked up to the smashed window. He placed his hands on the edge and stuck his head out. A wall of cold hit him as he stared down into the darkness below. No groans. No light. Nothing.
“We need to find a pipe. Some way of getting out there.”
Riley took a deep breath in through his nostrils and swung a foot over the side of the window ledge.
“Wait — Riley! What are you—”
He closed his eyes and he fell.
CHAPTER ONE
“Mate, what the fuck are you doing?”
Riley gripped his shoulder. A shooting sensation rushed down it as he winced and stood to his feet. Ted’s head was sticking out of the window above. Anna was beside him, frowning into the darkness as shouts and screams sounded behind her.
“Is he—what did he—”
“I’m okay,” Riley called. He kept his tone hushed and gripped hold of his ribs. The impact had hurt, but he’d been sure not to tense any muscles as he tumbled to the ground. A school friend of his used to sleepwalk as a child. Jumped out of a third story window several times and didn’t break a single bone. Decided to show off to his mates at a party and ended up breaking his legs and shattering his pelvis. Doctor told him it’s because he was tensing his muscles when he was awake. The key was to be as floppy as a rag doll.
But that wasn’t easy.
A gunshot sounded in the window above. And another. The creatures were getting closer to the group. They had to get out of there. They couldn’t all jump — it was too risky. Not everybody would be able to quit tensing like he could. It was a relaxation trick he’d learned. Focus on the breathing. Steady the mind. And… release.
“Riley!” Anna shouted. “I… We can hold them off for now but…” Another gunshot fired. “Shit. We’re gonna have to jump too.”
Riley’s heart raced. He looked around the area in front of him, lit up by the bright light of the full moon. An abandoned white minivan. On top of it, a ladder.