by Ryan Casey
A smile twitched across Ivan’s face. “Riley. You don’t have to question anything like that. You know how open I am with you people.”
“No,” Riley said. He squared up closer to Ivan. He could smell Ivan’s sickly sweet breath in his face. Pedro moved away from the window ledge, like a bouncer keeping an eye on troublesome youths. “I don’t think you are being completely open. Something doesn’t strike me as right around here. Not after today. We’ve been living in this bubble. This idyllic bubble. And after this, it’s burst. And I think I can see something isn’t right. I wanted to believe it was, but now I’m not so sure.”
Ivan waited before responding. The rest of the room stared on, waiting for the stand-off to continue. “Such as?”
“I don’t know,” Riley said. He looked around the canteen. Looked down the corridor near Ivan’s room and to the freezer room that he hadn’t even known about before a matter of hours ago. “But this group you sent out this morning. I’d like to know who they were. That would be a start.”
A door clattered open at the canteen area. Riley turned around.
“Sorry. Have I missed something?” It was Chef. Sweat dribbled down his shiny bald head. His typically pale face was greyer than ever. And his fingernails were coated with blood.
Ivan cleared his throat. “Chef, I was just telling Riley and everybody here about the… about the run this morning. For food.”
Chef wiped his hands. “Yes? About it? I managed to make a lovely stew out of it, if that’s what you’re wondering?”
“How low on supplies were you?” Riley asked as he walked in Chef’s direction. “Low enough that it was worth ‘putting us all at risk’ to send some people out there? Low enough that we can so suddenly become completely comfortable allowing a child and mother to die in cold blood? Low enough to—”
“We were empty.”
Pedro walked up to Riley. He bit his lip.
“We were all out. Completely empty. And I… I went out there this morning. I went alone. I knew a place that I figured would have some meat lying around. And I got it all and I brought it back here.”
Pedro’s words knocked Riley back. He hadn’t been expecting Pedro to be the one keeping things from him. “But… Weren’t you on the wall?”
“I covered for him,” Ivan said. “Skipped my early jog.”
The room descended into silence again. Guilt welled in Riley’s stomach. He’d caused a fuss over nothing. They were completely empty. They absolutely needed to leave for food.
“But… but if we were completely empty,” Ted said. His jaw shook. “What’s to stop us getting empty again?”
“I assure you Ted, that’s not going to—”
“We can’t go starving here,” Gaz, one of the soldiers, said. “Didn’t sign up to starve.”
“We’ve—we’ve got enough now,” Ivan said. He was trying to smile but the voices began to rise in volume as the room became awash with panic.
“What about if we do run out? What then? What do we—”
“We’ve got enough!”
Ivan’s voice brought the room to an abrupt silence. It took Riley by surprise, too. It was the first time he’d seen Ivan flip. He didn’t think he had it in him.
Ivan huffed and puffed. His cheeks were red and his body was fidgety. He didn’t look like the same man who had been trying and failing to restore a sense of order just moments earlier. “We’ve got enough. You have to trust me with that. And when we do run out, we go out again. That is just the way things work now. And you have to deal with that.” He paced around the room like an angry teacher. “We don’t have an unlimited supply of food. We had a good supply of food, but nothing’s unlimited. Nothing. Never was, never is. So we cope. We’ve got the greenhouse set up now. We’ve got fruit and veg growing in there. It won’t be a fast process, but we cope. We survive. But I am not risking the safety of this group on a heroic power trip.” He turned and faced Riley. His eyes peered right through him. “I hope you’re proud,” he whispered, before storming out of the canteen and slamming shut the door of his private room.
The canteen was silent. The wind had dropped. Nobody was looking at one another. The strange, taken aback sense of calm after the storm.
“Well,” Chef said. He rubbed his hands together and stepped back into the kitchen. “Suppose I should get that stew warmed up.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and the room descended into silence once more.
CHAPTER FOUR
Riley lay with his head on his hands and stared up at the bunk bed above him. At first, he’d heard the groans outside, in the distance but so present. But they’d faded away now. The sun had moved over to the window side of the barracks, which meant it was afternoon. Nobody had bothered him, not since the dispute with Ivan.
The door creaked open. Riley closed his eyelids and tightened them together so that whoever it was would just leave him alone. He just needed some time on his own to work things out in his head. The mother and child, screaming for help. Ivan’s coldness as he lifted the gun and pulled the trigger, not a glimmer of doubt in his eyes. And the way he’d defended his actions. The way he’d covered up Pedro’s little run for food earlier that day. They’d been living under a curtain of security for two weeks now. When things were good, they were good. But when the apple cart rattled from side to side, sending a few ripe pieces of fruit to the ground, tensions always rose.
But nothing like today.
“I know what you look like when you’re pretending to sleep.”
Riley sighed and opened his eyes. Anna was standing with her arms folded at the foot of Riley’s bed. She had a look of mischief on her face. A little smile in the corners of her mouth, but it was fading. Faltering after the stresses of today. A forced illusion of safety and peace shown for what it was: a sham.
She fell back on her bed and yawned. “Don’t mind me. Just don’t think I could take another game of fucking chess.”
Riley turned onto his side. “When the world goes to shit, play a game of chess. That the new motto of this place?”
Anna puffed out her lips. “Something like that.”
The pair was silent for a few moments. Anna tapped her fingernails on the metal headrest at the top of the bed.
“Thanks. By the way. For before.”
“For what?” Anna asked.
“For having my back. With regards to… to the woman and her boy. Thanks.”
“You sound almost surprised that I’d stick up for you.”
“Well,” Riley said. He perched up on the bottom of his bed. “Not to pull a bunch of examples out of the bag, but you were the woman who told me that if I didn’t finish my duties in that supermarket quick enough, you’d leave without me. Warm girl.”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “And did I abandon you?”
Riley smiled. “Fair point.”
Another awkward silence. Except Riley couldn’t tell whether it was really awkward or not, or just one of those silences that apparently were comfortable. Riley never found any silence comfortable, unless it was self-imposed and on his own. How could silence with another person possibly be comfortable?
“Listen,” Anna said, thankfully breaking the silence. “I know things were tough today, and I know I was the first person to doubt the legitimacy of this place, but it’s okay, you know?”
Riley turned to the door. He could hear laughter downstairs. One of the soldiers, no doubt. A sense of normalcy returning to the place. Or, at least, as normal as it could get anyway.
“And…” Anna gulped. “I guess that attitude I have. I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Holy shit,” Riley said. “You’re admitting you have an attitude problem? Well that’s a start. Hats off to you.”
Anna sent daggers in Riley’s direction. “I said I have a bit of an attitude. Not a problem. There’s a difference. Don’t make me prove it.”
Riley raised his hands as if to calm Anna down. “Okay, okay. Carry on.”
Anna exhaled and returned to her laid down position. “I dunno. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot. About how I can… how I can be a bit short. A bit defensive. And—and I think it’s gone away a little since we came here. Since I started… started trusting people.”
Riley thought about making a jokey comment about how it was rare for Anna to be opening up, but he could sense in her voice that there was sincerity about it. He got the impression that she didn’t open up all that regularly. He was a fortunate one. A chosen one.
“I’ve spent my life fighting. Fighting to prove I’ve made the right decision. When I was growing up, it was just me, my mother, and my sister. And my sister was always the more academic one. Naturally academic one. Anyway, I’m blabbering on. But I guess what I’m trying to say is… that fight in me. That scepticism. I had to do it when I was growing up. I had to do it when I was getting into nursing. I worked hard. And then I became a nurse and all of a sudden I was the achiever in my family and my sister’s working in a clothes shop. And then… and then this. And all of a sudden I’m forced to fight again.”
Riley wasn’t sure whether now was a good opportunity to make a comical remark or whether he’d have to maintain the serious tone. He never was sure.
Anna sat up again and stared out of the window. The sun was peeking through the clouds again. The rain had stopped sprinkling to the ground. “I won’t go on, anyway. Just… I don’t think people get that sometimes.”
“I get that,” Riley said. He didn’t, but it seemed like the right thing to say in his head. “You… you struggle getting the correct image across to people. People interpret you as aggressive when really, you’re just trying to prove yourself to them. Prove yourself to… to yourself.” Riley cringed. The words sounded better in his head. She’d know he was just rambling now.
But to his surprise, Anna’s eyes met his. They were watery. Her face twitched and she nodded, then turned away, her cheeks blushing. “Yes. That’s… that’s about right.”
Riley cleared his throat and tugged at his shirt collar. Maybe he was getting good at this motivational talking stuff in the apocalypse.
“Anyway,” Anna said. She stood up from the bed and brushed down her clothes.
“Yeah,” Riley said. He pretended to look at something on the wooden table beside his bed, as if he were preoccupied with something else.
Anna walked over to the bedroom door. Towards the voices down the corridor, and down the stairs. She stopped by the door. “Thanks, Riley. Thanks for understanding. It’s not easy. Knowing I might have been involved in this virus or whatever it is in some way.”
Riley nodded. Offered a reassuring smile. “You weren’t to know what was in those jabs, if that’s what it is that caused this thing. You were just doing your job.”
Anna bobbed her head. Smiled back at Riley. “Yeah. I was. Game of chess?”
Riley looked around his bed for some sort of excuse to get out of the banal, mind-numbing activity that was chess. “I, er… I—”
“Scared of being beaten?” Anna winked.
Riley took a deep breath and stood to his feet. “Go on. Why the hell not?”
“Checkmate.”
Ted pumped his fist. Anna had a grin on her face, as did Barney, who watched them closely. Barney was a little older than the others. A self-proclaimed chess expert, or ‘chesspert,’ as he called it. Sounded like something out of a Steve Coogan sitcom, and yet he still continued to tag himself with that label, time after time.
Riley stretched out. Darkness had descended on the barracks. The groans had all disappeared. Pedro had been out earlier and confirmed that the horde of creatures had ‘finished their jobs here.’ Riley thought of the woman and the child and shuddered. He knew exactly what Pedro meant.
“You might as well have stayed in bed,” Anna said. “An empty chair might have done a better job than you.”
Riley mimicked Anna’s jibes. The rest of the table had smiles on their faces. In fact, the whole of the canteen area looked in better spirits after the heightened tensions of earlier. They’d had some food in their stomach. A nice beef stew. The meat was richer than anything they’d had in the previous couple of weeks. More tender. Maybe Pedro’s venture out of the barracks hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
“Up for a thrashing?” Barney asked. He peered at the others through his bristly grey eyebrows. “Or you lot afraid of the chesspert?”
Riley cringed.
“I’ll give you a game,” Ted said. He re-laid the pieces and shuffled over so he was opposite Barney.
Riley looked around the canteen. Although the majority of the room had returned to good spirits, with Claudia and Chloë laughing as they were entertained by Stocky and Gaz, Ivan was missing. He usually had a couple of hours to himself in the evening, but not when everybody else was around. It was uncharacteristic. Riley thought back to the way he’d stood up to him earlier. The embarrassed look on Ivan’s face as he stormed into his room. He hadn’t seen him since, not even for dinner.
Riley raised from his chair.
“Off somewhere?” Anna asked.
“Yeah. I should… After earlier. I should go see Ivan.”
The words went over Ted and Barney’s heads, who were already deeply engrossed in their game of chess.
Anna whistled. “Courageous git. Good luck.”
“Oh,” Barney said, as Riley started to walk towards the corridor. He searched his pocket and pulled out a key. “Replacement key for him. Old one went and snapped in some padlock. Tell him I got it sorted for him.”
Riley grabbed the key and shoved it in his pocket. “Thanks. I’ll make sure I get it to him.”
He smiled once again at Anna, who tilted her head in a ‘good luck’ sort of manner.
“I’ll need it,” Riley said, as he walked out of the artificially lit canteen area and into the corridor leading to Ivan’s room.
As he walked down the corridor, he steadied himself with a few breaths in through his nostrils and out of his mouth. Deep breathing techniques were something he’d been taught by the doctor after the accident. Accident. Who was he kidding? Himself? There was nothing accidental about slamming one’s foot on the accelerator and plummeting a car into a wall. Accident. Everybody referred to it in that way, even him.
He stopped outside Ivan’s door. The lights in the corridor hadn’t been switched on yet. It was completely silent in there, the only sounds the gentle hum from the end of the corridor from the generator room, and the echoes of the cheerful voices in the main canteen. He raised a hand and started to move it towards Ivan’s door.
But then, an idea came into his mind. He turned to his right. The door that he’d found open this morning. The room where they were storing things. The room with the blood outside. A freezer room, judging from the way clouds of cold air puffed out of the door earlier.
Riley reached into his pocket. The key that Barney had given him. “Replacement key for him. Old one went and snapped in some padlock.” He looked at the key. Long, silver, and perfectly shiny and smooth. And he looked up at the padlock. There was nothing wrong with him taking a look, right? A brief peek around the door, just to check how much they had in the way of supplies.
Right?
He moved away from Ivan’s door. There were no sounds inside. No hints of movement or life. He could be sleeping. Doing his meditation thing that he always seemed to rave on about. There was nothing wrong with a quick look. He could take a look, and then he could leave. Simple.
He stepped down the corridor. The gentle humming noise grew closer and closer as he approached the padlocked door. He squinted in the darkness. The voices seemed further away. He could hear and feel nothing but his heart racing in his chest, and yet he still couldn’t work out why.
He grabbed the padlock. It was rusty. Rough around the edges.
And he heard footsteps close by.
He stopped. Turned his head towards the canteen door. Held his breath.
A soldier whose face he c
ouldn’t recognise scooted past and pushed through the double doors into the canteen. The sound from the canteen picked up again, then dropped as the double doors swung shut.
Riley exhaled. His pulse rattled around his head. He gripped the padlock again and moved the key towards it. It might not even fit. It might be the wrong door.
But the key slotted into place. Fit snugly, like a glove on a hand.
Riley stepped back. He shouldn’t be doing this. He’d come to apologise to Ivan. To put things right and try to talk out a diplomatic solution of some sort. He shouldn’t be snooping around. It wasn’t the right way to go about things.
But still, he grabbed the padlock again and turned the key.
Nothing wrong with a look.
Just one look.
He pushed the door open. His body tensed. A cloud of cold air engulfed him, making him shiver right away.
But as the door swung open, something else made him shiver. Made his muscles loosen. Made an intense sense of dread claw its way up through his legs and into his stomach, turning every area it touched into jelly.
He dropped the key to the ground. It echoed against the floor. Bounced on the hard tiles. He couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t comprehend it.
Bodies. Legs and arms intertwined. Faces coated with specks of frost. Eyes as hard as glass and skin so pale that it looked like it might crack like an eggshell if something brushed against it. Army uniforms. Pained faces. Missing limbs.
Somewhere behind him, as he stared at what was in front of him, unable to turn away, he heard a whistling.
And then a door to his right opening. Movement.
Then, the whistling stopped. The movement stopped.
“I wondered when you’d find out,” a voice said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Riley turned away from the room and looked back inside. He blinked rapidly. Held his eyelids shut for a few moments in hope that the images in front of him would just wash away.