by Ryan Casey
DEAD DAYS: SEASON TEN
RYAN CASEY
Higher Bank Books
CONTENTS
Bonus Content
DEAD DAYS: SEASON TEN
EPISODE FIFTY-ONE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
EPISODE FIFTY-TWO
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
EPISODE FIFTY-THREE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
EPISODE FIFTY-FOUR
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
EPISODE FIFTY-FIVE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
EPISODE FIFTY-SIX
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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DEAD DAYS: SEASON TEN
EPISODE FIFTY-ONE
NOW AND THEN
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON TEN)
Riley lit a cigarette with his shaking hand and stared at the flames burning in front of him.
His heart pounded. The flames flickered up, the smell of smoke clinging to his nostrils, making him want to heave. He could hear crying beside him, so distant, so hazy. Everything was so hazy.
“I’m sorry, Riley. I’m so sorry.”
He recognised the voice, but it floated through one ear and out of the other as he inhaled the smoke of the cigarette. A buzz enveloped him. A calmness that he hadn’t felt for longer than he remembered. And that calmness. That stillness. It reminded him of another time. And then of another time.
All those times he’d stood there and stared at what he’d had.
All those times he’d stood there and stared at what he’d lost.
He felt a hand on his shoulder then, as the breeze began to pick up. He flinched when he felt it, snapped out of his momentary stupor, the taste of the tobacco strong on his lips.
“Come on,” the voice said. “There’s… there’s nothing left now. It’s done. It’s done. We have to go. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Somewhere ahead of him, Riley heard the splashing of rain against the water of the sea. He heard the waves picking up, growing more violent. And he heard a child crying. How had it ended up this way? After everything they’d worked for—everything they’d struggled so hard for—why did it have to come to this?
“Riley… really. We can’t stay here. We have to go. The longer we stay here, we…”
The voice drifted away. It might’ve continued, but Riley didn’t hear a word. He couldn’t hear a thing.
He could only focus on what was ahead of him.
Focus on all he’d had.
“IS THAT…” the voice started.
He looked up. And he remembered something. Something somebody had told him a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago, in fact. No, multiple lifetimes. So much had changed since then. So much was different.
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
He dropped his cigarette to the ground and looked at the person beside him. The way they stared at him. The way their eyes scanned him, wide and desperate. A face full of a need for one thing: answers.
“Is that what I think it is?” they said.
Riley took a deep breath. The warmth of the burning in front of him stung his skin like he was standing too close to a bonfire.
And those sounds.
Those sounds over the sea, getting closer, closer…
He looked up at the sky, and he watched as they approached. And those words filled his mind. Those voices circled his consciousness, over and over again.
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
And even though the circumstances were different now—even though, since that day so early in the apocalypse when Stan had said those words to him—things had changed dramatically, Riley still heard them. He still felt their truth, deep within.
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
Perhaps Stan had been right about that. But he was dead. And honestly, he was lucky to have gone so early.
There were so many issues that surviving all these years into the apocalypse brought along with it.
Riley looked up at the sky as the noises got closer.
He reached out a hand to the person beside him.
They took it.
Then he took a deep breath.
Prepared himself.
Prepared himself for whatever else the Dead Days had in store for him…
CHAPTER ONE
Now…
RILEY SQUEEZED his tingling hands against one another and tried to cover the patch of spilt coffee on his groin. On a clear white shirt, it would’ve been messy but manageable. A brown stain on a shirt was clearly food or drink. Shrugged off as an accident.
A colourless patch on the trouser groin was generally viewed as a different sort of accident.
Fuck. He felt like he’d been here before already, a long, long time ago.
Four years into the apocalypse, and it seemed like nothing really changed.
He looked at the street ahead. It was a nice day, bright and sunny, the middle of summer. He saw the people walking through the streets, smiles on their faces. He heard the chimes of the ice cream stands, the sounds of delighted children racing towards them. He looked at this perfect idyll, and he wondered how lucky a man he was that he’d ever got to a place like this. That he was one of the fortunate few who’d actually made it off mainland Britain and into this new existence.
Not everyone had been quite so fortunate.
But as he stood there at the end of the street, seeing ev
eryone so content, so happy, he knew he had a problem. And that problem came in the form of several things. One, he had an interview for a new post. Two, he was late for that interview, part of the reason why he’d spilled his damned coffee in the first place. Which he didn’t even like, by the way. Never had been a fan of coffee. So why did he have to insist on drinking it? Why did he let it dictate his mood, his life, like it did?
And three… well, the streets were packed with people. And streets packed with people were always a fucking ballache, that was for sure.
Because people were obstacles.
And not just that…
Crowds of people made the hairs on Riley’s arms stand on end. Any crowds did, really. After all, with the things he’d been through on mainland Britain—the things he’d seen—anyone would be nervous around crowds. Anyone would be wary of infection.
He took a few deep breaths, steadied himself, tried to calm and compose himself. You’re okay. You’re safe here. You’ve been safe here for a whole year.
He had to remind himself of that. He had to stay aware of that, at all times.
He couldn’t let the memories get a grip.
Because that’s all they were now. Memories.
He started to walk through the crowd.
The second he stepped inside it, the sounds of the voices seemed to grow louder, more intense. The laughter of the children. The smells of the food cooking over street side barbecues. And all of it seemed so dizzying. All of it seemed so… intense. But all of it seemed so unreal. Like a technicolor daydream that Riley knew he shouldn’t be a part of; that he knew he shouldn’t be living.
But he was.
This was his life now.
And it was much more real than the similar technicolor existence he’d had at the Manchester Living Zone all that time ago.
He pushed further through the crowd, his breathing getting more difficult. He looked at his watch. Five to eleven. Shit. He had to get a real move on, or he’d be late. And the last thing he wanted was to be late. People who were late didn’t get promotions. People who were late got sent back to mainland Britain to do the shitty work. To do the rescue missions. The research missions.
Because that’s what life was now.
He’d been here for twelve months, and as much as people tried to convince him that they were getting off this island someday, Riley had long ago started to accept that wasn’t the case. They were too dangerous. They’d been in direct contact with the infection for too long. It wasn’t safe for them to go back into the normal world, not while that risk of infection was still so high, so strong.
A relapse. That’s what people worried about. A relapse into the infection. And if that relapse occurred in the wider world, it would be devastating. If it occurred on this island—Island 47—then it was containable. Manageable.
Yes, Riley was an animal trapped in a cage in a zoo. But that was way, way better than being out there in a dangerous world.
The world where he’d seen so much.
Done so much.
Lost so much.
A sudden pain thrust into his chest right at that moment, stopped him dead.
And that pain was coupled with images.
Strong images that he’d been trying to press back against. Images he’d been trying to resist and deny for so long.
Ted’s death.
The sight of his throat being cut.
Lying beside his body as he spluttered and went still.
Then Anna. Anna and the pain he’d felt as he watched her fall… only she was still here. She’d made it. Somehow, she’d made it.
But the other images. The ones of Chloë and Jordanna. They were the ones that kept him awake at night. The ones he’d never be able to move on from.
And that was what made him feel so uncomfortable in this crowd. That was what made him feel so trapped; so out of breath.
Because it wasn’t the creatures who frightened him so much. They were terrifying, no doubt about that.
It was people who terrified him more.
Because people were the ones who did awful things to one another.
People were the ones who had tipped over the edge at the first sight of things going out of control.
And they were all in on it.
All of them, with their laughing faces.
All of them, with their family acts.
People.
The crowd he was surrounded by.
He heard a child crying as they dropped their ice cream on the hard ground, a seagull swooping in and eating the remains, and he was snapped out of his stupor.
He took a few deep breaths, the warm air soothing his lungs.
Then he swallowed a lump in his throat and shook his head.
He had to keep himself together.
He had to remind himself he lived in a different world now. A totally different world to the one he’d left behind.
The one that he’d never return to.
Ever.
He looked up at the office buildings ahead of him and took a deep breath.
It was interview day. And he was going to smash it.
Stained crotch and all.
CHAPTER TWO
Then…
“YOU SHOULD QUIT the whole fishing bullshit while you’re ahead, Riley. It’s not a good look for you.”
Riley yanked the fishing rod back from the water. He was sitting at the edge of the extraction boat the group was on—him, Anna, Melissa, Ricky, Carly, and Kesha. They’d been travelling across the rough Irish Sea for a good few days now, that was for sure. And although the military had provided them with plenty of rations, fishing was something Riley had always enjoyed. He’d always found it therapeutic, somewhat.
He looked over at Melissa and shook his head as she grinned at him. “You won’t be saying that when I drag a shark out of this water.”
“Please, mate,” Ricky said, sucking on a cigarette as he leaned back against the side of the boat, one arm around Melissa. “For the sake of all of us—and for the sake of the sharks—don’t bother dragging one of them up here. It’ll be no good for any of us.”
Riley smirked. He pulled the fishing line back over the edge of the boat, put it down to one side. “For the sake of the sharks, who I happen to care about.”
“Oh, that’s what this is, is it?” Anna said. “This is you caring about the fish.”
“Absolutely,” Riley said, smile across his face. “I mean I could catch an absolute boatload of them. But I wouldn’t want to do that. It’d be cruel.”
“Of course. Of course. Always full of excuses, aren’t you?”
Riley smiled back at Anna as he looked into her eyes. There was a change between them, of course, as familiar as this situation felt to him. On a boat together, travelling to somewhere he didn’t totally understand. Only the circumstances were different of course. Back at the start of the apocalypse, they’d been crammed into a narrowboat. Him. Anna. Claudia. Chloë. Pedro. Just one of them left. One of them who he’d thought had died.
The rest of them, gone. Memories.
He looked away from Anna for a moment, and he knew she’d seen the shift in his face as he turned to look at the choppy, grey water. The clouds were thickening. The smell of salt was strong in the air. There was a chill to the air. Or maybe that was just the adrenaline that still hadn’t settled down completely. The adrenaline after he’d found his way into the extraction point. When he’d got onto the boat. When he’d looked back at Britain for one final time… and then he’d stepped into this new reality, and whatever secrets it held.
“Kind of feel like we’re in limbo,” Riley said. “Like we’re heading down the River Styx.”
Melissa tutted, rolled her eyes. “Says a lot about your frame of mind if that’s the way you think.”
Riley sat down by Anna’s side, looked across the boat at Melissa. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up is all. Not after all the times I’ve done that already. Not knowing… knowing there’s still a
world out there where things aren’t good. Where people are still dying. And where the dead…”
He shuddered when he thought of the creatures. Because of what he’d learned about them, mostly. They weren’t totally dead. In fact, they were the very definition of undead. Some degree of consciousness remained inside them.
What a horror to imagine. Trapped away in a flesh-craving body, forced to witness every single horrifying kill, unable to do a thing about it.
He might be heading away from that right now. He might be on a boat doing all he could to get far away from it.
But he’d never forget.
Never.
“We’ll never forget that world,” Ricky said, the smoke from his breath drifting over in Riley’s direction, catching on his chest. “And we shouldn’t. We should let it fucking define us if that’s… sorry kids. Didn’t mean to swear. But what I’m saying is, we shouldn’t ever lose sight of what happened to us. Because we’ve learned lessons. Lessons that’re gonna stick with us forever. Lessons we’ll never forget. And so we shouldn’t. Because they keep us strong. But at the same time, we shouldn’t be caught up about the past either. We shouldn’t be guilty about what we’re leaving behind. Because this is our chance. We’re lucky to be able to take it… and we should make the most of it. ’Cause not everyone’s gonna get the chance to. Not even nearly everyone.”
Riley looked away from Ricky, out at the water. The clouds were thick and misty now. And as he felt Anna’s hand tighten around his, Riley knew Ricky was right. They couldn’t let the Dead Days haunt them forever. They couldn’t live with the guilt that they’d lived. Because sure, they’d done bad things. Horrible things. Things they’d never forget.
But they were still here. So they owed it to the rest of the world to make sure they lived their lives in full.
Riley looked up at Anna. He saw that smile on her face, that book on her lap. And as a flash of light came from the stormy skies above, he saw her just as he saw her on that narrowboat, just before he lost her for good—so he thought.
“We’re going to do this,” she said. “We’re going to make it. All of us. Together. And it’s going to work, Riley. It’s going to work.”
Riley took deep, sharp breaths. He looked at the misty sky above, felt the rain beginning to fall. And as much as he felt the fear clinging to him, as much as he felt the urge to resist letting his guilt drop and just allowing himself to be a part of whatever world lay ahead, he still felt that guilt. He still felt it.