by Ryan Casey
She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She gained her composure, accepting that she hadn’t seen Riley and therefore everything was okay. There was still a chance he was out there. It might be a small, minuscule chance, but it was still a chance nonetheless.
When she opened her eyes, she saw there was a zombie standing right in front of her, flying towards her.
Melissa threw herself to the right. She rolled over, watching as the zombie landed face first against the tree. She pulled back the knife and stuck it into its head.
She just had to hope that the zombies distracted by the corpse were still…
Her stomach sank.
Her hope slipped.
The zombies around the corpse weren’t looking at the corpse anymore.
Blood and flesh drooling down their faces, their darting eyes were looking at her.
Right at her.
She thought for a moment that some of those zombies looked sad. Like they actually had emotions. That behind those darting eyes, there was something going on in their dead skulls—at least what was left of their skulls.
And then the zombies stood up and rushed in Melissa’s direction…
CHAPTER FIVE
Kane watched Riley struggle against the mass of zombies surrounding him and he was torn over what to do.
Torn probably wasn’t the best choice of words, in all truth. It just made him salivate at the thought of watching Riley get torn to pieces right now, and that was distracting.
Distracting, because he had greater plans for Riley.
Plans that he wasn’t ready to bring to fruition just yet.
He saw the zombies closing in around Riley. There was a mass of them. Nine, ten, eleven. More of the crowd they’d just run through to get to where they were also closed in, which made Riley’s odds of escaping slimmer by the second.
The zombies were also closing around Kane’s position, though. And soon, there wouldn’t be any option but to run away from here, leaving Riley behind.
But Kane had no intention of leaving Riley behind.
He at least wanted to enjoy watching this imbecile suffer for everything he’d done to him.
He looked at the pistol in his hand. He didn’t want to help Riley out. He didn’t want to waste any ammo. But he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Emotions, goddammit. Better to avoid them in future.
Riley was right, damn him. He had half a hand. And two of them surviving here gave the pair of them better odds of survival.
He lifted the pistol and pointed it at the back of the head of one of the surrounding zombies. Further ahead, he saw the crowd of these monsters was getting thicker. Kane knew how this was going to go. The crowd would keep on growing until eventually, there wasn’t a patch of free land left in this woods.
And judging by the current direction of things, these zombies would swallow up everything they hadn’t already swallowed up, and Kane and Riley would be nothing more than a part of this crowd.
He tickled the trigger of the pistol. Ahead of him, he could still see Riley swinging that knife wildly. He could see blood being splattered up all around him. He could hear gasping and grunting. He didn’t think Riley stood much of a chance of getting out of that crowd, at least not without a bite.
But then again, there was something tough about Riley. Something which, dare he say it, Kane admired in him.
It was part of why he hadn’t killed Riley yet. Admiration for how a man from such a straight background could turn towards darkness so rapidly.
But not just that turn towards darkness. That wasn’t the only thing. After all, anyone could turn towards darkness. The odds of turning towards darkness were surely greater in this world than sitting around and accepting the way things were. Sticking to failed morals and ideas of what constituted “goodness.”
No, the thing that fascinated Kane about Riley was his ability to channel that darkness to do good things.
That wasn’t an energy like any he’d experienced yet.
Riley came to view, just then. Just a flash of him, as he kept on kicking out and punching at the zombies around him. He was covered in blood from head to toe. Bits of rotten flesh dangled from his body. Kane could see the rage in his eyes. That primal rage, like this was his world after all, just as much as this was Kane’s world too.
He thought about doing his associate a favour, right then. Putting him out of his misery and ending him in his tracks.
And then he heard a groan right behind him.
Kane swung around, went to fire at the zombie.
But it was already too late.
He felt the teeth sink into his back. It was a more painful sensation than he remembered last time. Of course, that whole incident was shrouded in shock, so that was a little different. He’d lost half a hand after it’d happened. The pain of having that cauterised was a stark memory, for sure.
He felt the teeth getting deeper and deeper, like hot needles pressing into his skin and muscle. He struggled down onto the ground, trying to shake the zombie free of him as it clung on by its teeth.
He turned the pistol over his shoulder and he pulled the trigger.
The blast was deafening. He felt a cold flood of liquid cover his back. He felt like the zombie was still holding on to him, but he soon realised it was just the weight of its falling body.
He turned around and he saw the blood dripping down his back, his jacket torn.
Further behind, more zombies. Another crowd.
He looked ahead, his vision blurring. Riley. He had to get to Riley. Especially now he was bitten. He didn’t have long. He had to…
Riley was standing right in front of him.
The zombies around him had fallen. And sure, more of them were heading his way.
But Riley was on his feet.
Covered in blood, as red as a demon.
But free.
“Please,” Kane said. “Take me back to—”
“I don’t need you anymore,” Riley said.
He pulled back his foot and kicked Kane into the dirt.
When Kane hit the ground, he felt a searing pain split through his bitten back as the deafening song of the zombies got closer.
When he looked up, he saw Riley standing over him, Kane’s dropped pistol in hand. There wasn’t a look of sympathy in his eyes. There wasn’t a look of mercy.
There was just pure, cold-blooded ruthlessness.
Kane kind of liked that, if he wasn’t on the receiving end of it.
“Good luck,” Riley said. “But I’d get on the move fast, if I were you. Those creatures will be onto you in no time.”
“You won’t leave me,” Kane mumbled. He didn’t want to sound in pain, but that was to no avail. “You need me. You—you’re too attached. You’re too fucking good.”
“No,” Riley said, shaking his head. “No, you’re wrong.”
He turned around and started to head towards another gap that had formed just before the impenetrable wall of zombies.
“Good luck, Kane. You’ll need it.”
Kane staggered to his feet. “You’ll regret—”
It was at that moment that Riley turned around, out of the blue.
It was at that moment that Riley cracked Kane across the face with the butt of the pistol.
It was at that moment that Kane went falling back into the sea of undead, and his life flashed before his eyes all over again as Riley ran off, into the distance, out of Kane’s line of sight.
And as the zombies surrounded Kane, there was only one thing he could shout.
“You’ll regret it!”
And he believed it.
He truly believed it.
CHAPTER SIX
Amy saw the mass of creatures emerging from the woods ahead of her and she knew it was time to hide.
She ran down the ladders right away, being careful to be as quiet as she possibly could. The rain was lashing down heavily around her now, drenching everyone who hadn’t yet gone into hiding. She cou
ld hear both the footsteps of the undead and the groans. Both of them made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
They’d never seen a crowd of undead like this. They’d never had to deal with a barrage of infected like this before.
She didn’t want to lay low. She didn’t want to risk these fences being torn apart.
But she had no choice.
They couldn’t fight. They couldn’t hold them off.
They just had to lay low and wait.
And hope.
If it turned out they were heading towards their last stand, well… Amy just hoped that wherever Melissa had got to, she was okay out there.
She ran across the ground, pointing towards the cabins and the tents to the people still standing outside. She didn’t want to speak. She knew the rainfall was heavy and likely to block a lot of the noise that talking would create, but she just didn’t want to take any chances.
She held on to her bow and arrow and stood at the opening of her cabin. Her heart pounded against her chest. She was shaking, but she had to maintain an illusion of calm so that everyone else here didn’t just lose their minds.
She smelled the stench of decay building the closer the undead got to the camp, and she tightened her grip on the bow and arrow and prayed.
She thought back to her childhood. Thought back to the time she’d first met her new parents. She’d spent a lot of her childhood in foster care. Her mother, lovely as she was, wasn’t fit to look after her. Alcohol, drugs, men. You name it.
She’d enjoyed foster care, though. Sure, some of the other kids could be cruel, but there was always a certainty about it. And there was always that feeling like foster care wasn’t permanent. Like eventually, Amy would be going back home to her mum.
But when she finally went to live with her new mum and dad, Jill and Christof, well, things had changed for Amy. It was like a realisation clicked in her mind that this was her new life now. There was no foster care. There was no playing with the other kids. There was just pretending. Pretending Jill and Christof were her real parents. Playing at smiling. Acting as if everything was okay when it really, really wasn’t.
Jill and Christof were great people, make no mistake about that. The efforts they went to in order to keep Amy happy; to please her, they were second to none. Amy hadn’t exactly made things easy for them. She had her own difficulties and issues. Sometimes, she played the “you’re not my real parents” card, which made her gut churn when she looked back because of just how ungrateful and disrespectful it made her seem.
But ultimately, Amy had loved Jill and Christof. There was never a parent-child bond there, but she loved them for what they’d done for her.
If only she’d realised it and been able to thank them for it while they were still alive.
A bang snapped Amy out of her thoughts. She looked up, into the falling rain.
It was the gate.
“They’re—they’re pushing through,” Carly whispered.
Amy swallowed a lump in her throat. She lifted her bow and arrow and watched as the gate shook some more. It seemed like the wall was creaking, too. Like the fences were caving in.
“What do we do?” Carly asked.
“We wait.”
Amy heard Carly’s sigh. Carly reminded her of herself when she was younger, in a way. Sceptical of the world. Rejecting of how things were. Carly was also pretty torn up about what’d happened to Chloë; Amy was sure about that. She’d seemed fond of Chloë in the few days she’d known her.
What a cruel world to grow up in.
Stef, who usually guarded the gate, stepped to Amy’s side. “Want me to go take a look how bad we’re talking?”
Amy shook her head. “Out of the question.”
“They’re pushing their way through, Amy,” Annabelle called. “They’re going to get inside here. I know we don’t want to fight, but I don’t see any other way around this. Not anymore.”
Amy heard the growing dissent around her and she had to remind herself of a truth that was sometimes difficult to face up to in situations like this. She was in service to these people. She wasn’t their overarching leader. She made tough calls, but she didn’t dismiss them. She listened to them. That’s how they’d managed to get as far as they had.
“Then we check the rear wall,” Amy said. “See if there’s any way we can reposition ourselves.”
“You’re on about abandoning this place?” Stef said.
“Not abandoning. Just…”
Amy didn’t know what else to say, as the gates crashed together some more, as the pressure on the wall grew. She supposed she was suggesting they abandoned this place. But that wasn’t an easy reality to face up to. Not now this place had become their home.
She let go of emotion and looked at Stef. “Come with me. We scan the perimeter for our best option. Everyone else, bows and arrows at the ready. You need to be ready to fight.”
“And if they get in here?”
Amy looked around at her people. “If they get in here, then you do everything you can to keep them out of here.”
She stepped outside with Stef. Stepping outside was a gut-wrenching thing, mainly because Amy suddenly felt so exposed. There really was just a wall separating her group from the biggest group of undead she’d seen since the beginning.
“We can head to the west if there’s a chance,” Stef said. “See if we can still find that log cabin over in—”
“Wait,” Amy said. She lifted a hand.
“What is it?”
“You hear that?”
Stef squinted. “Hear what?”
“Exactly,” Amy said. “They’ve… they’ve stopped.”
The pair of them stood in the rain for a few seconds, which was easing. The sky above was brightening a little.
“They can’t have just gone,” Stef said.
Amy walked slowly towards the gate. She held her breath as she got closer. Tried to remind herself that they had control of this situation. That everything was going to be okay.
Stef crept just ahead of her. “I mean, they were here. So many of them. They can’t have just…”
Stef peeked through the tiny crack in the gates.
One second, she was standing, squinting outside.
The next, a bony hand pushed its way through the crack and grabbed on to Stef’s neck.
Stef screamed. And it was that instinctive scream, in that fragment of a second, that resulted in an eruption of groans and cries.
“Stef!” Amy shouted. She pulled back the arrow and went to fire.
But then another hand stuck through.
And another.
And another.
All of them pulling Stef further up against the gate.
All of them digging into her skin.
Amy tried firing at them. More people joined her. Some ran up to her, tried to pull her away.
But the grips of the hands were too tight.
There were too many of them.
Amy saw Stef’s face going blue. She saw the hand wrapped around her neck, around her arms, around her legs.
She saw that look of understanding in Stef’s eyes as she realised what was happening to her.
And then the hands pressed through her skin and into her body, ripping through her.
Stef fell, then. She wasn’t bitten, but she’d had whole limbs pulled away. She lay on the ground coughing and spluttering for a few seconds, then went silent.
“Shit. The gate!”
Amy didn’t acknowledge the cry. Not at first.
It was only when she looked to her left that she was that Stef wasn’t the only thing that’d been torn apart.
The gate was opening.
The metal was slipping away under the weight of the hundred—or thousand—strong army of the dead.
And the roaring, crying mass of undead were stepping inside.
They were here.
They were well and truly here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Meli
ssa stumbled back as the zombies threw themselves at her.
She lifted her knife and swung it at the nearest zombie, slicing its softened skull clean in two. Then, she pushed it down into the neck of the next zombie, driving it up through the back of its head. She couldn’t take all of the zombies on, though. They were a part of the larger group, which by her estimations would have reached camp by now.
She wanted more time. Time to search for Kane. Time to try and locate Riley.
But she wasn’t going to be afforded that anymore.
The most important thing was that she got away from here.
She stabbed another zombie right between its eyes. Then she brought the knife through the temple of the next zombie that approached her. She wouldn’t be able to take every one of them down, but she could at least give herself something of a head start.
She looked over her shoulder, back at the woods, just to make sure she was still in the clear.
Then she put her knife away and lifted her bow.
She had over one hundred arrows. They were made out of solid metal, and she’d got pretty damned good at firing them.
She held her breath, pulling back the string.
And then she fired the first of the arrows through the head of the nearest zombie.
The more of those arrows she fired, the swifter she got. It was like she’d entered a flow state. She wanted to draw attention to herself, divert attention from the route ahead that the zombies were inevitably going.
And as she fired more of those arrows, the majority of them hitting the target, Melissa remembered what Amy said once again. She remembered what she’d implied.
She thought Melissa was going out on a suicide mission.
Well, maybe that’s what this was.
If it made up for her sins, then so be it.
She fired a few more of those arrows and then looked over her shoulder again. The rain had eased, and through the trees, she could see a lot of emptiness up ahead. No sign of movement. No sign of life. Or death. Which was already a good thing.
She put her bow over her shoulder and pulled out her knife again, which still had chunks of flesh dirtying it.
Then she took a deep breath.
As much as she wanted to fight these things, she knew there was only so much she could do.