by Ryan Casey
She could hear someone sniffing at the other side of the car. Probably Tamara. She was brutal when she wanted to be, but she was sweet too. Sweet and caring.
And what had happened to Doctor Ottoman was just …
Chloë felt sick as she tasted the blood in the air of the car. As she felt the dampness from his eel-like intestines still seeping through the seats even though they’d stopped off, dropped his body by the side of the road, left him out there with nature, to say goodbye to the world. She felt bad for Doctor Ottoman. He seemed a nice man. He’d helped them out of the BLZ so he had to be a good man.
All good men died.
She twiddled the necklace around in her right hand. Anna’s necklace. The one Riley had given to her, just like the one Mum used to wear. She thought about all the people who’d died—something she did a lot these days.
But every time she tried to think of those people she’d lost, she couldn’t help but think of the people who were still here.
The people who were in this car beside her.
Good people.
Good people who were alive.
Good people who hadn’t died.
A spark ignited in Chloë’s chest. Her tummy tingled. She looked around. Looked at James and Jordanna and Tamara and Riley, all squashed into the car, but all good people. All good people who were here for her. Here for each other. Here, together, no matter what.
Here to keep one another company right until the very end.
And deep inside, as they drove through more trees, Chloë didn’t feel sad anymore. She felt happy. Happy that these people were here with her. Here to help her.
That these people cared for her despite all the things she’d done.
Because they’d all done things. Bad things. Things they weren’t proud of.
But they’d done those bad things because they wanted to carry on being good people. Because they didn’t want to die. Because they wanted to survive and they wanted everyone else to survive with them.
They gave people a chance. That was the difference with this group.
“Look,” Tamara said.
Chloë turned and looked through the front windscreen, cracked from a collision with a monster earlier. Up ahead, she saw the trees opening. Saw the dirt track they were driving down giving way to a road. A wide, open road.
And above that road on a blue sign, the words: Manchester, 46 miles.
Riley turned to James, who was driving. Smiled. “Guess we know which way we’re heading, then.”
“Guess we do,” James said.
Light peeked through the clouds as they turned off the dirt track and onto the road. As they drove past empty abandoned cars, past fallen monsters’ bodies. Past blood and guts and death and destruction.
And in spite of all that, Chloë felt at home out here in the open.
She felt secure to be on the road.
To be travelling with her friends back to the MLZ.
Back to the place she’d destroyed.
To fix all her mistakes.
She reached over to Jordanna. Took her cold hand and squeezed it.
Jordanna looked at Chloë. Frowned slightly. Squeezed her hand back, not too hard. “You … you okay, Chlo?”
Chloë took a deep breath. She nodded her head. Smiled.
“I … I think I am,” she said. “I really think I am.”
And at that moment, as they drove down the road in the direction of the MLZ, the buzzing noises stopped.
* * *
“Shall we get ’em now?”
The dark-haired man watched the Smart Car depart. Watched the sunlight reflect off its exterior. Smelled the freshness of an oncoming summer in the air.
He turned to his group. “No,” he said. “Not just yet. We’ve got God’s work to do before then.”
He pulled the bag off the black guy’s head.
The black guy called Andy Wilmslow.
Grabbed his sweaty cheeks and squeezed them tightly, blood drooling out of his mouth where they’d forced his teeth out.
No arms to fight back.
A scabby scar on his chest where they’d etched the three sacred letters.
CoY.
“Are you ready to repent yet, brother?” the dark-haired man asked.
Andy Wilmslow didn’t say a word. He just shook. Stared at the dark-haired man with wide eyes. With defiance.
But with fear, too.
“Unfortunate,” the dark-haired man said as the Smart Car disappeared over the horizon.
He pulled a knife out of his pocket.
Stuffed his hand into his mouth and grabbed his tongue.
“Because the next time I ask if you’re ready, you’re not going to have a tongue to repent with, sinner.”
Andy mumbled something.
Struggled against the men holding his arms.
The dark-haired man pushed the blade down into his tongue.
Sliced it away.
Nobody heard Andy Wilmslow’s scream.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RILEY
Riley couldn’t help but feel a twinge of emotion in the middle of his chest when he saw the walls of the Manchester Living Zone up ahead.
The streets surrounding the MLZ were quiet. Unusually so. Riley saw the abandoned cars, the smashed glass lining the tarmac. Saw the dust-covered windows of derelict shops and flats. Buildings he used to walk past with Pedro. Buildings he used to hide in to hunt animals. Hunt deer, or even stray dogs. Not for food. Plenty of food back at the MLZ. But more for companionship. Companionship for the children of the MLZ. A slice of normality in a severely abnormal existence.
Riley thought back to the days of living at the MLZ. The days when everything was so perfect.
He wished he could go back to how it was.
But now he knew the truth—now he knew that Jim Hall had sent him to the BLZ on a lie—he knew for a fact he’d lived a lie.
Lies.
Lies all around.
Lies forming the backbone of the new world.
Lies costing lives.
“What’ll you say to him?” Jordanna asked.
Riley turned. Saw her squashed up to his right. Sure, the Smart Car was uncomfortable as fuck, but there were worse things than being pressed up against a woman like Jordanna.
Just a pity she was covered in blood.
A pity that the smell of Doctor Ottoman’s torn innards still lingered around the sweaty car.
“Say to who?” Riley asked.
Jordanna tutted. “Don’t give me that. You know exactly who.”
Riley’s stomach sank. He watched the walls of the MLZ get closer. So close that he could see the small outlines of guards standing on watch. Guards he’d stood with. Guards he’d fought with. They were alive. That was something. That meant the MLZ had defeated the Apocálypsis outbreak from within.
But of course it had. Jim Hall probably knew it would all along.
For some reason, he’d sent Riley and his group away.
For some reason.
“Talk to him,” Riley said.
“Talk to him?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
James grunted as he steered around some fallen debris. “Haven’t even met the bloke and there’s only one way I wanna bloody talk to him.”
“Oh yeah?” Jordanna said. “How’s that?”
“Through my bloody fists,” James said.
Tamara tutted. “I’m sure he’s terrified.”
James blushed a little at that.
They got closer to the wall. And the closer they got to this tall, grey structure—this impossibly sci-fi piece of construction—Riley felt a sense of unease. Unease at just how out of place it was. Of how otherworldly it was.
It wasn’t a part of his world. Not the world he’d grown up in. Not the world he’d tried to opt out of.
It was something that went beyond his true understanding.
His comprehension.
It was something else entirely.
�
��When we go in there,” Riley said. “You have to understand. I … I need to know why he sent us out here. But I might not … I might not be able to control myself.”
“Don’t worry,” Jordanna said, grabbing Riley’s kneecap. “We’ve got your back. One way or another.”
She smiled at Riley.
Riley felt the warmth of companionship, the flame of togetherness, igniting inside.
They got closer to the wall. Closer, but still not a peep from the guards. Nothing at all. He knew from spending a couple of months living in this place that there was a doorway. A doorway with three layers of passcodes. Passcodes Riley knew. Passcodes he’d been given. Been trusted with.
So why would Jim Hall send him away on a death mission if he knew there was every chance Riley could just walk back in here?
A sudden thought struck him. That maybe Doctor Ottoman had lied. Maybe he’d lied to turn Riley against Jim Hall. Maybe Riley was still infected and was still dying after all.
He didn’t have much time to finish his trail of thought because gunfire rattled at the tires of the Smart Car.
“Hold your position!” somebody shouted, their voice echoing from a speaker system against the walls of the high-rise buildings.
A speaker system Riley had heard many times before. A microphone he’d spoken through.
A position he was completely familiar with but felt alien to after all this time.
“What do we do now?” Jordanna asked.
“Stop the car,” Riley said, putting a hand on James’ shoulder.
Jordanna shook her head. “So we just walk in there like normal and—”
“Yes,” Riley said. “That’s exactly what we do.”
He smiled at her.
This time, he didn’t get a smile back.
He looked up at the guards and he climbed over the others, climbed out of the car.
The moment he stepped outside into the fresh late spring air, he heard the voice again.
“Hands above your head!”
“I’m from here, you dimwit,” Riley shouted. Said it jovially. Just jovially enough for the guard to understand him. To hear his humour.
Just jovially enough to cover up the anger bubbling under the surface.
Jordanna climbed out. So too did James, Chloë, Tamara.
“All of you, hands above your heads!”
“Hey,” Riley shouted up, his voice bouncing back off the wall. “I said we’re from here! And I’ve got the bloody security codes to prove it. Is that Jason? Or Sammy? One of you two?”
The guards watched. Riley swore one of the two looking down at him from directly above turned, said something to the other.
“It’s Riley. Riley, Tamara, Jordanna, Chloë. James, now.”
“Cheers for the footnote,” James muttered.
“This is our place. Our home. We’ve … we’ve been a while but we’re back now.”
Some of us are back now.
“Remember us?”
The guards watched a little longer.
Waited.
Didn’t say a thing.
The only sound a breeze blowing a can down the street.
The monstrous wall echoing every single roll of it.
Then the guards raised their guns.
Pointed them at Riley.
Riley lifted his hands.
“Woah!”
“Enter through the North entrance. We’ve cleared it all out so it’s the safest route for now.”
Riley let go of his breath. His heart raced.
“And watch out for infected. Might find one or two of the fuckers still wandering about our streets. Welcome home, Riley.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
As Riley walked through the Manchester Living Zone, he knew right away that no matter how safe this place may be, it wasn’t the same safe haven he’d spent two months living in.
Blood lined the pavements, sunlight reflecting off it. Pieces of flesh were caught up in the drains beside the street. Creature flesh. And every now and then, as they walked down Main Central Street towards Jim Hall’s apartment block, Riley saw someone step out dressed in quarantine gear. Flame throwers in their hands.
Cleaning up the mess.
The mess that forced Riley and his friends to leave this place.
The mess that seemed uncontrollable. The mess that Riley had to save this place from.
But nothing more than a mess. A mess well in the process of being cleaned up.
“Hardly looks the war-zone it was when we left,” Jordanna said.
“Don’t get too cocky,” Alexis said. She led Riley and co down Main Central Street. Short dark hair and bulky arms. Butch. Tattoos all over her arms. Always wore army camo, always carried a hefty rifle. “We’ve ’ad too many people get cocky lately. Too many people drop their guard.”
A shout up the road. A creature closing in on a man in a black coat.
Knocking the man down.
Pushing him into the road.
And then just to his right, the sound of gunfire. The creature’s head exploding all over the fallen man.
A guard in the shop window eliminating the threat.
The illusion of safety that once permeated the MLZ, gone.
“As I was sayin’,” Alexis said.
They walked further down Main Central Street. Riley looked through the smashed shop windows, through the cracks in the boarded up wood, down the darkened alleyways. Everywhere he went, it felt like he was being watched. Like someone was watching him, creature or human. Didn’t matter which. Both as dangerous as one another. Both as much of a threat.
“Thought you said you were bringing me to some safe haven,” James said, walking by Tamara’s side. He looked around the MLZ with scepticism. Not the wide-eyed scepticism that Riley remembered when he’d first walked around the MLZ, but cynicism. The BLZ could do that to a person, he guessed.
“How’s Alan?” Riley asked.
Alexi turned. Frowned. “Alan?”
“Old guy. Wheelchair—”
“Oh, Cripple Al. Yeah, yeah. He’s alright. Still rollin’ around, y’know.”
“As people in wheelchairs tend to do,” Jordanna added.
A hint of relief built up inside Riley. Alan Mixter was a good man, for all his flaws. He’d given Riley’s life purpose back in that bunker. Given him a mission, given him meaning. He’d given him hope when all hope was gone.
Riley just hoped he didn’t know more than he was letting on to. About his condition—or his lack of infection, rather. About Jim Hall’s supposed lie.
He hoped Alan didn’t know a thing because he didn’t want to have to snap Alan’s neck.
“The fuck’s that smell?” James asked, as they turned a corner by an old convenience store—a store Riley used to buy fruit from. Now barren, abandoned, fallen apart in a few short but no doubt exhausting days.
“Bodies,” Alexi said. “Burning. Gotta get rid of ’em somehow.”
Riley caught a whiff of the putrid smell. The smell that just didn’t go with the MLZ. Because the MLZ was supposed to be a respite. It was supposed to be a place where you forgot the smells, the sounds, the horrors.
But the MLZ had been compromised.
It had been tainted from within.
“And I’m guessing Jim’s okay?” Riley added.
Alexi turned. Smiled. Smoke billowed over her head. “Jim’s fine. Don’t see a lot of ’im. But he thought highly of you, y’know.”
“‘Thought?’”
Alexi’s smile faltered. An understanding glimmered in her vibrant blue eyes, just for a second. “Thinks,” she said.
Riley didn’t say anything in return. He just smiled back at Alexi.
He’d kill her if he had to, too. If he got the truth from Jim Hall and she stood beside him, he’d kill her.
He couldn’t have any hesitations anymore. Couldn’t risk the lives of those close to him, those he loved.
It was his people or their people. He’d tried to make it so it was
another way, but that’s just how it was now.
How it was always going to be.
They walked further down Main Central Street. Anticipation built up inside Riley’s chest when he saw the tall grey structure up ahead. Jim Hall’s apartment block. His apartment, right on the top floor. He looked up there and he hoped Jim was watching. Hoped he was looking right at him. Shitting his fucking pants as his entire world fell apart.
“Hold up,” Alexi said, holding a hand out to stop the group.
She walked on. Gun raised. Looking at something in the alley on the right. Focused.
Riley scanned the street. Eyes watching through the windows. The sound of whispers, of shouts from far away. The smell of death lingering in the air. Heart racing in his chest.
“That’s—that’s Tiff’s parents,” Chloë said.
Riley wasn’t sure what Chloë was talking about at first. Wasn’t sure who she meant.
But then he saw Alexi walking towards the alleyway with her rifle raised and he understood.
In the alleyway, right up against the red brick wall of the building, there was a man. He was sat back against the wall. Perched up against it.
His neck had been torn apart.
Blood covered his white shirt. His dark hair was filled with sweat and grease.
And standing over him in a blue hoodie and grey jogging bottoms, a bitemark on the right of her stomach, his wife.
Tiffany’s mum and dad.
Riley watched as Alexi stepped closer to them. As Tiffany’s mum feasted on her husband’s emaciated body as he groaned and mumbled, paralysed and unable to do a thing to fight back.
“I—I need to tell him,” Chloë said.
She pushed forward.
“Chloë, you—”
She struggled forward some more. “I need to tell him about Tiff—”
A blast.
Followed by another blast.
Tiffany’s mum leaning against her dad.
Blood splattered all over the red brick walls.
No more groaning. No more struggling.
Nothing.
Chloë stopped. Stopped and stared.
“It’s … it’s okay,” Jordanna said, squeezing Chloë’s shoulder. “It’s … They’re not suffering. None of them are suffering. Not anymore …”
Riley heard Jordanna utter some more words to Chloë. More reassuring words. More comforting words.