by Ryan Casey
Hayden shook his head and stepped back. “We’ve got a good place here. We can’t take any more risks. And what’s to stop whoever’s there just executing you like you worried about in the first place?”
“Maybe so,” Holly said, her voice raspy. “Maybe they will just shoot me on sight. Maybe my gut’s right and maybe you’re right. But you let me in. I didn’t … I didn’t expect you to let me in, but you did. Even after seeing my frigging wound, you let me in. Gave me a pillow to sleep on. My own frigging room. So I dunno. Call it a revival of faith. Something like that.”
Hayden pondered Holly’s words. She’d been bitten ten days ago and she was still alive. There was some kind of extraction point on the Holyhead coast.
But all this talk of transmissions and signals … He couldn’t take another risk. Not again.
“We’ll sleep on it,” Hayden said, with no intention to even debate Holly’s proposals. Way too risky. They couldn’t just sacrifice all the good work they’d done on the minuscule chance of hope.
“Please do,” Holly said. “Because … not to blow my own trumpet, but I’ve not met anyone else bit who hasn’t, like, turned. So yeah. Maybe they will just shoot me like I thought all along. But maybe there’ll be someone who sees beyond the bite. Someone who sees … I dunno. Potential, or whatever. Don’t you see that?”
Hayden walked back to the door. He smiled and nodded at Holly. “Get some rest. We’ll speak again tomorrow.”
Holly looked back at him with those glistening eyes. Beyond the grease and the sweat, he saw a hidden beauty. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
Hayden closed the door and stepped out into the dark silence of the hangar corridor.
A transmission. An extraction point.
A cure?
He shook his head. Walked down the corridor towards his room.
Faint hope had cost him too much already.
He wasn’t putting anyone else at risk. Not now. Not ever.
But a tiny voice in the corner of his mind whispered, “what if? What if?”
And as Hayden lay down his head and closed his eyes, he saw the person behind the voice. Saw Holly’s glistening brown eyes, her seductive smile, all the time repeating the same two words again and again.
What if?
What if?
Eight
Matt sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at his still wife, his even stiller son.
Karen had been sleeping for a while now. She’d laid beside Tim and wrapped her arms around his cooling body. And he knew it was wrong. He knew it was damned wrong, and he knew how weird it might look to other people, other people who hadn’t lost a son like them, other people who didn’t understand.
But Karen needed her time with their boy. She needed her time to grieve in her own way.
Matt needed his time, too.
He leaned back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. The cream paint was fading away. Mould was gathering in the top corners. It was something Matt had never noticed before. Something he’d been too overwhelmed by the positivity of the new world that Hayden and the others allowed his family to live in to even think of noticing.
But he saw it now. Saw it clearly. Thick black mould spreading across the corners of the room, swallowing it up from within with its endless darkness.
He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath. There was a lingering sour smell in the air, and Matt knew exactly what it was. He’d smelt it before when his Uncle Jim, a mortician, let him down in the mortuary one warm summer afternoon. As a six-year-old Matt walked past the endless stacks of bodies, tags attached to the toes, the one thing he’d never forget was that awful smell of sourness. Not strong, but subtle, like off-milk left to warm up in the next door neighbour’s window.
But he knew the smell. He recognised the smell and he smelled it again right now, and that just brought the reality home to Matt.
Tim’s gone. My boy’s gone. He’s dead and gone and he ain’t ever coming back.
He listened to the sound of his own raspy breaths rising and falling. In his right ear, a slight drone of tinnitus that he’d developed ten days ago when one of the bastards holding his family and him hostage blasted a gun right beside him. It seemed such a minor problem at the time. It kept him awake at night, but it was something he told himself he’d get used to. Something he’d adapt to.
But now, he felt the volume of the drone creeping up a decibel, felt it scratching at the side of his skull and threatening to rip his brain out of its shell.
Tim’s gone he’s gone you lost him you loser lost him gone gone gone.
Matt cleared his throat to shift the sound of the drone, even just for a split second. His throat was raw and dry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a drink or anything to eat, for that matter. He’d tried to eat some of the tomato soup Martha had made earlier, but the tanginess of it just made him want to puke.
And the redness. Rich, thick red, like blood.
Like the blood on Tim’s face.
Dripping out of his nostrils.
His eyes.
Bloodshot red.
Terrified.
Matt shook his head again. He could feel his heart picking up. He had to pull himself together. He had to be strong, for Karen. Karen was struggling. She was down there on the floor holding their fucking dead son while Matt just sat back on the bed and … and did what?
Nothing, as always. Nothing at all. You lost him. He’s dead. He’s—
“Karen,” Matt mumbled. But it was more to break the barrage of his own thoughts than anything.
He listened for a response.
Nothing.
He didn’t say her name again. Couldn’t bring himself to wake her up. She needed time. He’d be cruel to deny her that. And sure, it was wrong clinging on to their dead boy like she was. But those rules of right and wrong were made in the old world. The world where other people decided what was right and what was wrong based on their own messed up ideas of how society should be. Things were different now. It was rare that a mother got a chance to lay next to her boy, to say a final goodbye to him. Merciful, almost. Cause Matt had seen what happened to most of the kids Tim’s age. Bites all over their necks. Stuffing their faces in the family dog, and the dog’s sad eyes looking up and wondering what in the hell they’d done to deserve such a betrayal.
It was peaceful to give Tim a goodbye like this. Different. Precious.
So Matt opened his eyes and pulled himself to the edge of the bed. He’d be damned if he didn’t get a chance to kiss his boy on the head one last time, stroke his dark, curly hair, hold him and Karen and pretend they were back at home on a Sunday morning when Tim used to hop in with them and they’d all just lay there, all sweet and perfect and together.
He reached the edge of the bed and he saw Karen move.
“I was just coming down there,” Matt said, and he realised then just how weak his voice was; how damned wiped out he sounded.
Karen looked at him. And at first, Matt thought he saw complete sadness and grief in her bloodshot eyes. They were so red. Red like he’d never seen.
And then he saw the blood drooling from her lips and he knew something was wrong.
“Karen? What’s …”
But Matt trusted his wife enough to allow her to stand.
Allow her to throw herself at him.
And when he started struggling, when he understood what was happening, he was already too late.
He felt Karen’s teeth stab the left side of his neck, heard his flesh tearing like scissors through a chicken fillet. And then he felt the blood. The warm spray of blood that fountained from the point of agony on the side of his neck covered his wife’s hair, covered the bed, covered the sleeping bag that his dead son lay under.
As Matt struggled to the edge of the bed, his wife scratching and snapping at him, he saw his son’s eyes staring up into nothingness. His body was still, his eyes were vacant. There wasn’t a glimmer of life in him.
And then he felt another bite sink into his left shoulder and he knew it was over.
Nine
Hayden woke suddenly and painfully.
He jolted upright. He looked around the darkness of his room. Nothing to see but the slight glimmer of light from under the door. His heart was pounding and he was covered in sweat. He wasn’t sure what had woken him—a bad dream or … or something else.
He took in some deep breaths of the cool air through his nostrils and out through his mouth, like he’d learned from some guided meditation video a few years back. Four seconds in, hold for seven seconds, release for eight, repeat—
A thumping noise.
It came somewhere from his left. Somewhere outside his room and down the corridor. And that scared him a little. This place was usually so quiet. Every now and then, you’d hear the sound of gunfire as whoever was on night duty shot down oncoming zombies before they became a problem.
But this thumping noise inside the hangar. It was different. It was unsettling.
He climbed to the edge of his bed—a tall metal desk with a thin sleeping bag on top—and he listened. The arrival of Holly had lifted his guard. She appeared honest. Her story seemed genuine. But there was something about the situation—not necessarily about Holly—that Hayden found difficult to trust.
In the same way, he found everyone and everything difficult to trust these days.
He wiped his sleepy, heavy eyes and yawned. He had no idea what time it was, and he had no clue whether he’d drifted off for a few minutes or several hours. All he knew was that it was dark, and yesterday had taken its toll. Losing Tim. The arrival of Holly. Her talk of being bitten and some extraction point in Holyhead. It was a lot to take on board, a lot to understand.
They had to talk. All of them. They had to discuss the next step. Just not now. Not while this place was still standing. Leaving was too risky. They’d left the bunker and look at the losses they’d suffered since then.
No. They couldn’t trust anyone. They couldn’t—
Another thumping sound, again from the left.
Hayden stopped rubbing his eyes and stayed perfectly still. He listened to the silent hum of the corridor. That thump was definitely not the sound of a gunshot. It was the sound of someone hitting a wall.
Hard.
He reached under his bedsheets, pulled out the seven-inch knife, and he climbed down from his bed and walked over to his door.
He opened his door as quietly as he could. If someone was awake and doing something they shouldn’t be doing, Hayden didn’t want them to know he was coming. He looked down the left of the corridor. Dim light flickered from the halogens lining the walkway. The silver doors which made up Sarah, Martha, Gary, Matt and Karen’s, and now Holly’s rooms were all shut.
But there was a thumping sound coming from one of them.
One of them on the left.
Hayden crept slowly down the corridor, knife in hand. He felt the cold tiles seeping through the hardened skin of his feet. He thought about Holly, about how they’d left her locked inside that third door on the left all on her own. It was windowless, and there was no way she could break the lock.
Unless that’s what the banging was. Someone trying to break the lock.
Hayden had flashes of her being a part of the Riversford group who had fled this place.
Visions of her breaking out of her room.
Stabbing Martha and Amy to death in the night.
He felt his heartbeat racing as he stepped closer to Holly’s door. His mouth was dry. The sound of his own feet patting on the floor made him look forwards, backwards, convinced someone else was out here in the darkness, watching, waiting.
He stood outside Holly’s door. Looked at the rust around the circular handle. He watched the door. Watched and waited for it to thump forward.
He lifted his knife. Readied himself. If she was a threat, he had to be willing to neutralise the threat. There was no room for blind sentimentality anymore, only for action.
He held his breath.
Listened to the sound of the wind whistling under the main corridor door.
Waited for—
A thump. A bang. A rattle.
Only it wasn’t from Holly’s door.
Hayden looked to the right of Holly’s room. He looked at the door that was six, seven feet away. It couldn’t be. Why would that be banging? Why would they be …
And then he saw it for real.
The door to Matt and Karen’s room shaking on its hinges.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Hayden lowered his knife a little, but not out of ease. If anything, it made him feel more uneasy that it was Matt and Karen’s door that was shaking. Because why would it be? They were grieving, yes. And they had their son in there with them, which was completely wrong, but …
Unless …
Hayden’s gut hardened. He felt every muscle in his body tighten up.
Tim hadn’t been bitten. They’d checked him for bites.
A thump at the door.
And then another.
But what if?
Hayden wiped his nose and blinked heavily. He lifted his knife again and approached the door to Matt and Karen’s room. A shiver enveloped him, and it only dawned on him then that all he was wearing was his black and white striped boxer shorts. He stepped further across the cold tiles, closer to the door, closer and closer until he was right in front of it.
He stood there in the silence and waited for another thump.
Waited and waited.
Nothing.
He looked to his left. All the other bedroom doors were closed. He felt that sudden sense of uncanny which so often slipped into his dreams. This was a dream. It had to be a dream. It had to be.
But then he looked at his hands and the palms weren’t moving and morphing like they did in dreams, his visual cue to drift into Inception-like lucidity.
So he turned back to the door. Stood outside it a little longer. Listened.
“M … Matt? Karen?”
His voice sounded so loud in this corridor. It echoed off the metallic walls. Echoed so loudly that surely everyone had to hear him.
Unless everyone was dead.
No. He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t even contemplate it.
“Matt?” he said again, a little louder this time. “Karen? I-I heard banging. Are you …”
And then he saw the handle turn.
He lowered the knife, too, felt relief trickle through him. They were just grieving. Matt was just banging the door in the agony of his loss, the frustration. They were just …
And then he saw Matt staring at him with bloodshot eyes, and the next thing Hayden knew he was on the floor, and Matt was on top of him.
Hayden struggled with Matt. Matt was gasping at him, bloody saliva dripping down from the corners of his mouth.
“Some-someone!” Hayden shouted. He tried to swing at Matt with the knife but then he felt something grab his right arm—and that something was Karen.
He saw Matt’s teeth get closer to him, his mouth wide and his breath ghastly. He saw him closing in and he had to move, he had to act.
So he pulled his head back and cracked his forehead into Matt’s as hard as he could.
He heard a mini-explosion in his head. He thought for a second he actually felt his brain shake.
Matt fell back a few inches, blood drooling from his broken nose, covering his pale lips.
And then Karen, flesh and skin dangling from her teeth, went to wrap her mouth around Hayden’s arm.
Hayden grabbed the knife with his left hand while Matt still struggled to bite his neck. He stuck the knife in the way of Karen’s mouth. She bit down on the blade so hard that her teeth cracked, the roof of her mouth split, blood spurted out.
Hayden tried to pull the knife away but it was stuck. It was wedged.
Matt pushed Hayden’s arm down.
Went into Hayden’s neck, to his jugular, readied for the kill.
And then Hayden heard a blast and he felt blood spill over him.
And then another blast and his knife came free from Karen’s mouth.
Hayden pulled himself away. His cold, half-naked body was drenched in blood. He looked to his left, saw Sarah standing there holding a pistol and pointing it at Hayden. Her face was pale. “You … are you …”
“I’m-I’m okay,” Hayden said, standing up, although that was a complete lie. He was anything but okay. He was shaken up. Trying to understand how this had happened. “I-I think Tim’s bit. I think he must’ve—must’ve been bit and …”
He lifted his knife and walked over to Matt and Karen’s door. He had to be ready for Tim. He had to be willing to put him down. It was the right thing to do. The peaceful, kind thing to do. Tim must’ve been bitten. He had to have been bitten. And then he’d woken and bitten his mum and his dad and …
Hayden stopped at the door.
He tried to understand what was in front of him, but all he felt was nausea welling up inside, nausea and adrenaline and fear.
Tim was on the floor. He was exactly where he was when Hayden had last been in this room. He was still staring up into nothingness with those bloodshot, dead eyes. There wasn’t a sign of blood on his mouth aside from that which had trickled down his face earlier. His body looked clean. Yellowing, but clean.
“Is he there?” Sarah asked. “Is he … shit.”
She stood beside Hayden and she must’ve seen it too. She must’ve, because it’s the only way anyone could ever be knocked into silence after what they’d just witnessed, what they’d just experienced.
“What—what does it mean?” Sarah asked.
Hayden swallowed a sickly tasting lump in his throat and stared at the blood-smeared letters on the floor in front of him. “I don’t know. But I … I think we need to get out of here.”
He wasn’t exactly sure how far out of here he meant just yet, but the blood-smeared words in front of Tim’s body sent a skin-crawling alarm bell ringing through Hayden’s thoughts.