by Ryan Casey
She looked outside. Looked at the shimmering water. And she hoped that where they were going, they’d find more peaceful shores. That where they were going, there wouldn’t be a need for violence. That there wouldn’t be a need for chaos.
But she went prepared, too.
Because if there was a need for it, she was perfectly comfortable with it.
She did whatever she could to protect her people. She did whatever she could to protect herself.
She’d spent too long in the old world trying to appease others, trying to broker deals, things like that, that she’d lost count.
So now she did whatever she could. Even if it did mean committing acts that some people frowned upon.
Okay. Acts that most people frowned upon.
She listened to the blades of the helicopters spinning above. She thought about the early days. The days when James was still around. He was her rock. He was always the “leader” in their relationship, as it were. And it seemed like he knew exactly what to do about the undead, about how to survive in this awful new world.
But now James was gone. He’d been gone a long time. Gone at the hands of people that Xanthe had taught herself to trust. Gone at the hands of friends who had proven themselves to be enemies.
It was since that day that Xanthe had started changing. That she’d stopped blindly trusting.
It was that day where everything changed.
Where the shift began.
“How long ’til we’re due to get there?” she asked, speaking down her microphone.
Gary looked to his side, smile on his face. He was a qualified pilot, and he wasn’t the only one in their party. Fortune favoured the wise.
They’d grasped their opportunity with both hands. Now it was time for a change. Now it was time to go back.
Back to where they’d been sent from.
Back for revenge.
She remembered being picked up by the scouts. Remembered being taken to Island 47. Remembered buying into all Peter’s charm, all his bullshit, all his lies. Remembered signing up to be a scout. To fight for the greater good, something like that.
But she’d got back to the mainland, and she’d been cut off. And she knew for certain that Peter had done it on purpose. It had been an intentional move.
And for that, she’d made a promise.
She’d make Peter pay.
She’d make the districts pay.
She’d make them pay for making her trust again after all the problems trust had already caused her.
“About an hour and a half,” Gary said. “Weather allowing.”
Xanthe felt a smile spread across her face when she looked at the coordinates.
When she looked across the sea, over towards the horizon, over towards the sun.
Because she was going back to Island 47.
And she was going to get her revenge.
Once and for all.
CHAPTER NINE
Melissa walked down the long road and wondered whether she’d ever get home again—and what she’d find if she finally got there.
The afternoon was giving way to evening. The thought of being trapped out here, so cut off from everything, so far away from home… it scared Melissa. She had to face up to it. Had to admit it. It scared her.
And sure. She’d been in worse situations before. She’d spent nights curled up in the woods or under park benches just hoping the dead wouldn’t stagger past and find her. But all that seemed so alien to her now. It seemed like something that’d happened to her in a past life, rather than in this life.
It was like somehow, living on the island… it had forced her to detach from the horrors of the past.
But she was back now.
She was back.
And it was even worse than she’d remembered.
“We keep going. We’ll find the helicopters. We have to.”
Melissa heard Harrington speak, and she couldn’t help but lower her head and sigh. They’d been travelling for quite some time now. Claimed she knew where a backup source of helicopters was.
But the further they walked, the more the idea seemed to be being challenged. The more Melissa started to doubt in her. And the more the remaining three people who were with them seemed to be doubting, too.
But she was right. They had to keep on pushing forward. They had to at least keep on trying to get away from this place. The rescue and scouting mission had been disastrous. A complete failure. And Melissa wasn’t proud of that. She’d seen a bigger purpose for herself out here. A reason she’d risked everything by coming here in the first place.
Sometimes life didn’t wait around for you to fulfil your dreams. That was just the way it worked now.
She looked to her left and saw the man called Ted walking alongside her. He looked even paler than she remembered when she first saw him. She wondered if maybe he was ill. If he was sick. She wanted to know what he’d been through. What had driven him to the point he was at. Who the bones on the floor of that room belonged to. How he knew Harrington. So many questions she had to ask. So many things she wanted to know.
But when Ted looked over at her, she saw the look in his eyes. The unmistakable look of guilt. Like there were so many secrets he was carrying. So many things he regretted.
So many things that he couldn’t share, no matter what.
“Hold up.”
Melissa turned around when she heard Harrington’s voice.
When she looked ahead, the dread built up in her stomach, and she knew why.
There was a group of the undead right ahead of them. A group around fifty, sixty strong, perhaps more. They looked like they were just standing there, suspended in motion, giving up the hunt of meat and waiting for someone to come to them.
“The choppers should just be the other side of them,” Harrington said.
“Convenient,” Alec—one of Harrington’s people—said.
“Yeah, well,” Harrington said, loading her rifle. “We know what we have to do. We’ve faced worse. Come on.”
As they got closer to the dead, something struck Melissa. Something weird that she couldn’t deny. These creatures, they weren’t moving. They hadn’t noticed her or her people, even though they were well within the usual radius that these things had their attention piqued.
“What’s up with them?” Alec asked.
Melissa swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t know what was wrong with them, but she could see clearly that something was amiss.
“I mean, they don’t usually just stand there. They don’t usually just… just let people approach like this. Right?”
“No,” Harrington said. “But you know better than to let your guard down. We know what the virus is like. How it can change. Maybe this is just the next stage.”
They got within feet of the undead. They were making small ghastly noises, shuffling slightly. But there was something about them that seemed different, aside from the fact they were totally static. Something that seemed… off.
And then it clicked.
“Their eyes,” Melissa said.
Harrington frowned. She looked around at Melissa. “What?”
“Their eyes,” Melissa said. “They… they look different. They look…”
She didn’t want to say the word. But she had the right word in mind.
And she was sure she was right about her observation.
There was no look to their eyes anymore. There wasn’t even that glassiness.
There was just emptiness.
Complete and utter emptiness.
The words in her mind?
The eyes of the undead looked… well, dead.
“We still have to be careful,” Harrington said as they began to wade their way through the undead, the smell devastatingly bad. “We don’t have far to go. But one wrong move and these fuckers tear us apart. Okay?”
Melissa nodded. She didn’t want to do this. But then, what other option did they have?
She started to walk when she s
aw Ted, standing there, frozen.
He was staring wide-eyed at the undead. Staring at them with terror. With fear.
“Hey,” Melissa said.
She held out a hand to him.
He looked at it. Then looked up at her. Shook his head. “Can’t. Can’t.”
She took his hand. Squeezed it a little.
“You can. We can. We’re going to do this. We have to do this. Okay?”
He opened his mouth like he was about to protest.
And then something happened.
A scream.
Melissa spun around.
Alec was on the ground.
One of the undead was on him. Latched onto his neck. Digging its teeth right down into his flesh. Blood spurting out everywhere.
And then as Melissa looked around, she saw something. Something different.
The eyes of the undead.
They were returning.
The emptiness was filling.
The bodies were twitching a little more.
Their groans were getting a little heavier.
“We have to get out of here!” she shouted.
Alec continued to scream out, Harrington by his side trying to help.
“We have to get out of here n—”
But before she could finish, Melissa felt it.
The push against her back.
The fall to the floor.
Then hands of the undead moving up her body, getting ready to tear her apart.
CHAPTER TEN
Riley stared into the room where Kesha was, and he wasn’t sure how to react to what was in front of him.
He knew the creatures were on their way up the stairs. He knew that they would be on this floor, eventually. He could hope that they wouldn’t try this door. That they’d just pass by, try an easier door.
But he knew the odds were that they’d make their way up here. So they didn’t have all the time in the world. Their time was limited.
The first thing that stuck Riley, after the darkness of this room, was the smell. It was ghastly. So ghastly that Riley couldn’t believe it was actually an apartment on the island; that it was an apartment in his district. An apartment that must’ve been this way for a long time. Way before the disaster broke out. Way before any of the chaos and mess that had ensued over the last couple of days.
Then Riley saw the little bundles on the ground.
He knew what the bundles were without even having to go towards them. Three of them. Three little mounds, each of them covered in blankets—one with giraffes on, one with little cars on it. Buzzing around the blankets, flies. Lots of flies. Which could only mean one thing.
Under those mounds, dead.
He looked up into the middle of the room, where every curtain was closed, and he saw Kesha.
She was grinning at him. Grinning and chuckling away like this was all some kind of game.
“Riley,” she mumbled.
But it wasn’t a game.
Because someone was holding Kesha.
A man.
He had long, shaggy hair. A thick, bushy beard. Big plump bags under his eyes. Riley thought he recognised him. He was sure he’d seen him somewhere before. Probably on the street. Probably in the market. Probably somewhere around, some time before… well, before whatever tragedy had fallen upon him.
He looked at this man as he held onto Kesha, and the man looked back at him. And he knew one thing. He knew it, simply from the look in this man’s eyes.
He didn’t intend to hand Kesha back over.
He didn’t intend to play nice.
But Riley was going to have to try whatever he could to get her back.
“Riley?” Anna called. “What’re you…”
She stopped when she reached his side.
Stopped and stared into the room, the same level of shock on her face as was no doubt on Riley’s.
“You won’t get her,” the man said. “Not my angel. Not my Tania.”
Riley felt his stomach sink then. Not only because this man was clearly in grief over what he could only assume were his kids who had died. But he was also confused. Confused about reality.
And that was dangerous.
It was always dangerous.
“You need to listen to me,” Riley said softly, approaching step by step. “That kid there. It’s not your Tania. I’m sorry, but it’s not your—”
“Liar!” he shouted. He pulled Kesha closer toward him. “Liar. Always liars. Promising. Making promises over and over again. But liars. Always.”
Riley knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He wasn’t going to get any sense out of this guy. He didn’t even have force to bargain with because he figured this guy would go down before he had a chance to let Riley get anywhere near Kesha—and would probably let Kesha fall too. He looked like someone at his wits’ end. Like someone bereft of hope, willing to do whatever he could in order to cling to his final source of hope.
But Riley couldn’t just walk away. Riley couldn’t just give up.
He took a few steps further into the room. He knew it was dangerous. He knew it was a risk. But it was a risk he had to be willing to take. A life might just depend on it. Kesha’s life.
“I trusted in this place,” the man said. “I—I believed in this place. But when things started going wrong, this place left me behind. This place betrayed me. No hope. No hope at all. Everyone betrays me. Everything betrays me.”
As Riley started to get closer to the man, to Kesha, he realised something stark. Something he hadn’t seen until now. And that was that the whole idea he’d been living some idyllic life here on the island had been nothing more than an illusion. Because there had always been chaos, behind the scenes. There had always been personal crises, individual crises; Riley had just been too blind to see them.
People had been fighting their own battles. And Riley had buried his head in the sand.
But he had to step up.
He had to face up to reality.
The reality he’d been running from.
The reality that could hide no more.
He stepped right up to the man, who held Kesha tightly now.
It was then that he saw the glint of the knife, and his stomach sank.
“You don’t step a foot closer,” he said. “Or we die. We both die.”
Riley’s heart started to race. A lump swelled up in his throat. He had to think quick. He had to act.
So he made a bold move.
A move that he knew could end everything.
He put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
The man flinched.
He lifted his knife. Raised it up to Kesha’s neck. Looked Riley right in his eyes like he was confused, like he didn’t truly understand.
“You stay back,” he said.
Riley half-smiled. “I’m not staying back. Because what you said. What you said about betrayal. What you said about there being no hope. There is hope. There’s always hope. Put the knife down, and we’ll show you. Please.”
The man glared at Riley a little while longer. And for a second, Riley thought he was going to do it. He actually thought he was going to kill Kesha, right here, right now.
Then he sighed and lowered his knife.
“I—I can’t,” he said. “I c—”
He didn’t finish what he was starting to say.
Riley would never know what this man was going to tell him.
He would never know whether he’d be a threat or not.
Because he lifted his gun, and he shot him in the head.
He looked at the blood on the wall. Looked at the fragments of the man’s skull, some of which had exploded over Kesha’s face. His ears rang as he stared at Kesha, at her startled face.
He reached over. Picked her up. Smiled. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
He lifted her up. Then he looked at the man lying there, eyes open with a final look of fear.
He looked at the mounds, the flies still buzzing around them.
And then he stood up and walked over towards Anna, Kesha in his arms.
He was the monster.
He had to accept it.
He had to embrace it.
Because that was going to keep him alive.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ted watched as the life returned to the eyes of the creatures around him, and he felt his body freezing.
Freezing.
The freezer at the barracks.
The bodies he’d seen in there.
The look on Ivan’s face.
Food.
And then the medic’s body.
What he’d done to it. What he’d been forced to do to it.
Because everyone had to do what they had to do to survive, right?
Everyone had to do things they didn’t enjoy. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be here.
Right?
And now he watched as they turned.
Now he watched as the light returned to their eyes.
As the man called Alec cried out, surrounded, engulfed.
As Melissa fell to the ground.
Melissa who had helped him.
Melissa who had found him.
Melissa who had saved him.
He couldn’t let Melissa fall.
He couldn’t let Melissa die.
He tightened his fists. He wanted to go in there. He wanted to fight. He wanted to help.
But that block.
That block stopping him from stepping forward. Stopping him from progressing.
That block that had been in front of him, bringing his life to a halt, for so so long now.
But he didn’t have to be a victim. He didn’t have to keep on being a victim. He could find the strength inside him to stand up. He could find the strength inside to fight back.
Because Melissa had helped him.
And if he had to die helping Melissa… then maybe it was just his time.
Maybe he’d survived for too long.
Maybe it was his turn.
His turn to join the dead.
No longer one of the living.
He lifted his rifle as more of those undead started to regain their consciousness. As their eyes began to spark to life.
He looked around at what he could do, the steps he could take, one by one.