by Ryan Casey
The cold breeze that had found its way underneath the gap of the door was strong outside. The brown leaves on the trees danced in the wind, a bitter chill stinging the back of Riley’s throat upon deeply inhaling. It wasn’t quite the thick of winter yet, but living in the wild would be difficult to handle when winter did come.
No. He couldn’t think like that. It could all be solved by then.
He walked around the front of the shelter cabin, which looked out over the railway. Ted was perched up to the wall. The gun dangled from his trigger finger as his head buried itself in his knees. His cheeks looked pale. It had been cold last night. Very cold. And they’d had a tiring day yesterday. A little fatigue could be forgiven.
Riley crouched beside Ted and patted his arm. At least he’d been the one to find him sleeping on watch and not Anna. “Ted?”
Ted jumped and gripped hold tightly of the gun, looking around with confusion. “Yes? Yes? Oh… Oh.” He winced as he propped himself further up against the wall. “Mate. I… I didn’t sleep long. I swear.”
Riley raised his eyebrow as Ted stood to his feet and let out a yawn. Ted’s breath frosted in the air as he exhaled. He rubbed his hands together and breathed on them. They were red and verging on chapped.
“Cold… cold out here. Can’t do this every night.”
Riley stared down the railway. It was endless, disappearing between trees gradually losing their orange leaves. Motionless. “We’ll find something. There’s still time until winter really kicks in. And they might sort things out by then.”
Ted’s eyes narrowed. “You really think so?”
Riley sighed. “No. But I don’t know what else to suggest.”
Ted brushed his fingers through his hair and stretched out. “At least… at least we’re still here. I guess.” He gulped. His eyes were glassy. Dark underneath — darker than Riley had seen them. Distant.
Riley held his hand out. “I’ll take the gun. If you want.”
Ted shook the gun in his hand then plonked it into Riley’s. “Starting to get bored of holding it. I just want to go back to fake guns. Fake zombies. Call of Duty style. Right?”
Riley slipped the gun into his pocket and crouched down at the side of the railway shelter. “Right.”
The pair were silent. The breeze was the only thing that cut through the nothingness. There could be creatures surrounding them, making their way down to the railway line. But the group wouldn’t know. No groaning, and they wouldn’t know a thing. They could’ve come in the night. Sunk their teeth into their flesh while they were sleeping. But they didn’t. They were still here.
“I’m just… I’m just getting sick of having no end goal,” Ted said. He paced from side to side.
“Is that what this is really about?” Riley asked. He tried to make the question sound as unsuspicious as he could. But the way Ted turned around and peered at him made him realise he’d probably failed.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, what we spoke about last night. What happened… with Anna.”
Ted waved his hand at Riley. “That was a mistake. We were all tense. It won’t happen again.”
“No. It won’t. But I just… I never thought you could do something like that. I never thought you had it in you to hit anyone. Let alone—”
“And I never thought you had it in you to try and kill yourself,” Ted snapped.
Riley tried to speak but the words weren’t coming out of his mouth. His cheeks heated up, resisting the cool wind that blew against them. Ted stared at Riley. His eyes were bloodshot and watery.
“I never thought you’d drive a car into a brick wall. There — I said it. I always thought you were tougher than that. So don’t talk to me about what I do or don’t have in me, okay? Just… just don’t.”
Riley was silent for a few moments. He could hear movement inside the shelter — voices. Life. The images began to flicker through Riley’s mind again. The collision. The pain he’d felt when the car had crashed against the wall. The rehabilitation, the recovery. But worse than anything, the looks he got from those closest to him. The reluctance of people who knew what he’d really done to joke around with him, or throw banter in his direction in fear that it would crack him like an ornament falling to the ground. The sense that, as much as he said he was okay, they really didn’t believe he was. The old Riley was gone. The new Riley was tainted.
Ted stared down the railway and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… You know you’re my best mate and I don’t mean anything by it.”
“Don’t apologise,” Riley said. He rose to his feet and stood beside Ted. He stared down the railway line. A section of the line was missing beside them. But the rest of the line — completely clear. No sign of creatures either side of them. A moment of respite.
“Just… just sometimes I think it’s mad, that’s all. Like, when I see you making these decisions. Running out on your own after Stan. Dangling out of the window on the rope ladder. A part of me wants to believe you’re just trying to help. But another part of me… Yeah.”
Riley’s throat began to well up. Ted faced the ground, unable to look Riley in the eye. Riley planted a hand on his back. “Whatever happened then, it happened. Nothing can change that. But now?” He could still see the bloody marks on his arms, but they didn’t trigger the same images of betrayal and abandonment that he’d grown so accustomed to. “Now, I’m different. You’re different. We all are. We have to be.”
Ted raised his head. His eyes were filled with tears and his lips were shaking. “I just don’t want to be the bad person. I just… I want to be the good guy.”
Riley nodded. The decisions he’d made. The decisions he’d made to survive, sometimes at the expense of others. They were clearer now. Made more sense. “We all want to be the good guy, Ted. We all want that. You… you should apologise to Anna. If we’re going to make this work, you should apologise.”
The door of the railway shelter cabin squeaked open. Ted looked over Riley’s shoulder and rolled his eyes. “Speak of the devil…”
Riley turned around. Anna was at the door. She stretched her left arm out, followed with her right arm, before doing a little jog on the spot. “Morning, boys.”
Riley nodded at Anna. He looked at Ted and gestured at Anna, widening his eyes.
Ted took a few deep breaths and straightened his back, then walked in Anna’s direction. “Hey, Anna… I just wanted to—”
“Don’t,” Anna said. She half-smiled at Ted. “We were stressed. I can give you the benefit of the doubt for now.” She stretched her right leg out in front of her. “Just don’t do it again. Don’t even dare.”
Ted nodded. His eyes were focused on her long legs underneath her tight jeans. “I… I won’t. I wouldn’t. I’m not… That’s not me.”
“Whatever,” Anna said. She finished her stretches and scratched underneath her eye. It was bruised where Ted had hit her. “Hey… Riley. Can we talk?”
Riley and Ted exchanged a glance. A look of rejection in Ted’s eyes. He couldn’t be cast off anymore. He couldn’t let his friend be somebody who was tossed onto the sidelines.
“Ted can be a part of this too,” Riley said. “He’s a good guy. Smart. Might not show it sometimes, but he is.”
Ted scoffed. “Might not show it?”
Anna’s eyes twitched between the two of them. “Okay. Well… It’s about last night. About what you said to me. About… about the flu jabs.” She lowered her gaze.
Riley gulped. Anna knew something about the flu jabs and their relation to the creatures. They way Jill had died just a day after being injected with the vaccination. The creatures in the supermarket pharmacy. Anna was a doctor. She knew something about it.
“When we… when we received the latest batch of vaccinations, we were put under specific order to give them to the most vulnerable. The old. The weak. Standard procedure for flu jabs. But… but something was strange. We were told only to use this experimental ba
tch — that’s what they call all new batches — over one specific week. This week. And then we were to stop.”
Riley frowned. “So you’re saying the jabs definitely had something to do with this?”
Anna shrugged. “I… I can only guess. I started giving my patients the jabs three days ago and it was two days ago that the reports started flooding in. And then I gave Jill her jab two days ago, and it took her a day, so… yeah.”
Ted’s eyelids twitched. The three of them stood completely still at the side of the railway line. “You… You knew about this?” Ted started. “You knew and you—”
“No,” Anna interrupted. “I put two and two together. But I didn’t know. And I thought maybe it wouldn’t affect everyone. I dunno.”
“You should have told us. If you’d told us about Jill, we’d have been able to do something about it quicker. She could have killed somebody. Destroyed the group.”
Anna lowered her head like a disciplined student in the head teacher’s office.
“She didn’t tell anybody because she wanted to see if Jill turned. Isn’t that right, Anna?”
Anna shook her head. She brought her fingers through her dark hair, which was shiny with grease. “I didn’t want her to kill anybody. I hoped it wouldn’t get to that point. But I suspected and I… I needed to see. See how it worked. Try and figure out if—if there was a way of reversing it. That’s why I had her go in the room on her own. That’s why I was upstairs having a ‘lie-down’ after the supermarket trip. Just so happens I did fall to sleep, dammit, and you went and found her first and complicated the situation.”
Ted turned away and shook his head. He kicked a stone into the railway track. “When you were at the supermarket, she could have turned. She could have turned and got us all. What then?”
Anna stared at Ted. Her big, brown eyes were glassy and distant. “I… I hoped that wouldn’t happen. I really did. But… but sometimes we do things we’re not proud of. We’re all guilty of that.”
Ted shook his head and sighed. The door of the railway shelter creaked open again. Claudia and her daughters stepped out. “Everything… everything okay?” Claudia asked.
Riley and Anna’s eyes met. They’d all made rash decisions. Decisions they were uncomfortable with. But Anna was being honest now. She was opening up. There was no more room for secrets. Just had to get Ted to see things that way too.
“We… We’re just discussing our next move.”
Riley and Anna swung around. It was Ted who spoke. He was facing Claudia, chin up and smile on his face. He stuck his tongue out at the girls. Elizabeth grinned while Chloë frowned and rolled her eyes.
“Probably a good idea,” Claudia said. “That place — it’s good. Good shelter. But it was cold last night. And it’s only going to get colder as winter progresses.”
“Plus, we’re down between two ditches,” Anna interrupted. She pointed up at the mounds of dry, dying grass either side of the railway line. “If any of those zombies find their way to the top and surround us from either side, they’ll have the advantage of the upper ground. We’ll have nowhere to run, not really.”
“The question is, where do we go from here?” Ted asked. He looked down both sides of the railway line.
Anna sighed. She pointed in the direction they’d come from last night, once they’d found their way off the road and away from the crowd of creatures. “No use going back the way we came. It’s a death trap. Gradually gets busier and more populated the further we head that way, so that’s a write off. Agreed?”
Claudia nodded her head fast. “Yes. Yes. Agreed.”
Anna turned to the other direction and lifted her arm. “That way takes us towards Garstang. It’s less busy there, but it’s still a risk. Right now, we’re in pretty much the best place we could possibly be, but it’s not ideal. Nowhere near.”
Ted shrugged. “Then where do we go? What next?”
“A kid I met mentioned a place,” Riley said. “When Stan and I were… when we were at the dairy farm. A kid we met. He didn’t make it, but he mentioned somewhere they were headed to. Some disused old bunker that the family owned.”
“The old MOD bunker?” Anna interrupted. “Yeah. It’s down by Goosnargh. Probably a good five mile walk across the fields though.”
“This kid,” Claudia said. “How… how do you know we can trust him?”
Riley thought back. Aaron holding the gun in his hand, pulling the trigger. His brother falling to the floor. “He… he tried very hard to save me and Stan. Kept me alive. Stan wasn’t quite as lucky. But I’m here because of him. And what other option do we have?”
Anna paced around with her hands on her hips. She nodded her head. “If the family owned it, there’s a good chance it hasn’t been taken yet. And it’s way in the country, so that gives me a bit of hope.”
“But what about keys?” Ted asked. “Surely these places have, like, keys? I’d like to think if I’m going into a bunker that I’m locked in, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Anna said. “Did this guy say what they used it for?”
Riley shrugged. “Stashing ammo, old equipment, something like that. Why?”
“I remember hearing about this bunker,” Anna said. “MOD put it up for sale a few years back. Restaurant owner put a bid in for it but couldn’t get the proper planning permission. As far as I know, nobody won the bid for the place.”
Ted shook his head. “But Riley just told you — this guy’s family…”
“Right,” Anna said. She smiled at Ted and Riley. “Did this bloke strike you as the sort of bloke who might use somewhere that isn’t technically his?”
Riley remembered Sam. The way he’d hung his ‘sisters’ up by the flesh of their necks on the meat hooks. “He’d pretty much claimed Stevens’ Dairies as his own. So yeah.”
“Then I don’t think we’ll be needing a key after all,” Anna said.
Claudia sighed a huge breath of relief. A grin spread across her face. “We have a chance? We have a chance. You hear that, girls? We’ll be able to be warm tonight.”
“I don’t care about being cold,” Chloë said. She folded her arms and frowned. “I’m tough. Not like this softy here.”
“Hey!” Elizabeth said. She smacked Chloë on the arm. Chloë squared up to her and tugged her hair.
“Girls!” Claudia stepped between them. “Chloë — apologise to your sister now.”
Chloë turned away and walked up to Anna. She tried to grab Anna’s hand, but Anna flinched her hand out of the way as if her reflexes had been triggered. “I’m tough like Anna. All she ever does is moan and cry.”
Claudia narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. She gripped Elizabeth’s hand. “Just because you… because you’ve dealt with one of those things doesn’t automatically mean you can be horrible towards your sister. You’re still my little girl. Remember that.”
Chloë mumbled something under her breath. She looked up at Anna and smiled.
Anna smiled back at Chloë with uncertainty before nodding her head at Claudia. “So…” She cleared her throat. “We head to this bunker. It’s a long walk and we need to be on our guard. We all know damn well after last night how those things can just appear out of nowhere. Trevor… he—he found that out too well.”
Ted sighed and nodded. “Seemed a good dude. Wish I’d had a better chance to get to know him.”
“And there’s no guarantee we’ll even be able to get into this bunker once we get there. It might be locked up. It might be taken. But I’ll wager a bet that it isn’t. It’s in the perfect location. Better than the restaurant. But we just need to be aware that this might not go to plan.” Anna looked directly at Claudia. “Okay?”
Claudia nodded her head in understanding. “Yes. Yes. I understand. We have to try.”
“Good. We’ll cross the road and make our way through the fields. I have a rough idea of where it is. We’re going to have to cross a motorway to get there, though. That’s not going to be easy, but…”
>
Anna’s words drifted away. Her mouth continued to move, and the others carried on nodding in approval, but something else had Riley’s attention. Something in the distance, at the bottom of the railway line, moving towards them. The railway line was beginning to vibrate. A high-pitched screeching sound was heading in their direction.
“Riley? You got that?”
He lifted his arm and pointed down the railway line. “Train.”
Anna and Ted turned and squinted down the line. “What—”
“Train. It’s… It’s a train.”
The curiosity on their faces disappeared the second they saw it. Heard it. Felt it.
The train was heading in their direction. Which meant that somebody could be alive inside, driving.
But the speed. The vibrations. The high-pitched screeching getting closer and closer.
A sense of dread started to build up inside Riley’s body as he looked down at the missing piece of line in the train track right beside them. The train was heading right for it. It didn’t look like it was slowing down.
“We need to get away from here. Quickly.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Quick, up the ditch!” Riley shouted.
“What about the weapons?” Anna asked.
“No time. We’ve got the gun. That will have to do. Go!”
Claudia made a run with Elizabeth for the grass verge that ran along the side of the railway line behind the shelter they’d stayed in last night. The train was speeding towards them. The front of the vehicle looked like it was wobbling from side to side. Wherever it had come from, it didn’t look like it was stopping. And it was heading right towards a sudden break in the line. It would explode. Send debris flying at them. They had to get away.
Ted and Anna jogged up to the side of the railway line, Chloë beside them. “We make a run for the field up on the left,” Anna shouted as she started to climb the verge. “We can get to the bunker if we all head in that direction.”