by Ryan Casey
He smiled back at her and wiped away his tears.
Then, together, they walked off into the distance.
“LOSING sight of them in a few seconds. You sure you want to do this, boss?”
Mattius stood alongside Sonny, one of his prime snipers, on the roof of the hotel.
He looked out into the distance.
Out towards the west.
Out at the disappearing figures getting smaller and smaller.
He felt bad about what he had to do. He could hear his wife, Cassandra, whispering in his ear on her deathbed, telling him not to lose his humanity.
“Never lose your faith in life. Never lose your faith in life.”
But this was the new world, now.
“Do it,” he said. “Got to teach him a lesson somehow.”
Sonny sighed.
He adjusted his rifle.
And then he pulled the trigger.
Mattius flinched when the blast echoed across the landscape.
In the distance, under the glow of the sun, Mattius saw two people become one.
Then he turned around and headed back inside.
He swore he heard a cry of grief way off in the distance…
CHAPTER SEVEN
Riley couldn’t think. He couldn’t focus. In the darkness within the confines of Mattius’ camp, he might as well have been anywhere in the world.
There was only one thing he could focus on.
The pain.
Kane leaned in towards him. And as he got close to him, Riley felt total fear fill his body. He didn’t feel vengeful anymore. He didn’t feel mad.
He just felt afraid.
Totally afraid.
Kane smiled at him. He laughed, like he’d got what he wanted all along. Like this was his plan, his intention.
“That’s what I wanted to see,” Kane said. He put a hand on the side of Riley’s face. “You. Broken down. In pain. But hell. I’m not finished yet. I’m not even started.”
“Please,” Riley begged.
And it was that moment, where Riley begged Kane to show mercy, that he realised how far the stakes had flipped. How much things had changed.
Kane tilted his head and sighed. “I appreciate you’re in pain right now. Really, I do. But you don’t get to decide when I’m done. You don’t get to call the shots. Not anymore.”
“Pl—”
Kane lifted the sharp pliers and wrapped them around the ring finger on Riley’s left hand.
“This little piggy stayed at home…”
There was a moment. A moment where time stood still. Where Riley was dragged right out of his thoughts and into the present.
Then Riley heard a crack.
He felt something sharp crunching through his finger. It wasn’t painful. It just didn’t feel right.
But the pain soon set in.
That agonising pain he’d already felt.
When he looked down, he saw that his little finger on his left hand was missing. It would’ve been bleeding out, if Kane hadn’t cauterised it already.
And the cauterisation was the most painful part.
He crunched those pliers down and Riley saw his mangled ring finger twisting away as Kane pulled at it, dragged it. Riley felt sick. Sick, right to the stomach. He tensed all over. Did everything he could to block out the pain and the nausea.
But he couldn’t go anywhere.
He couldn’t hide.
“Please,” he said.
Kane stopped applying pressure. Riley wasn’t sure whether that made the pain better or worse, though. He was beyond comprehending most of these sensations by now.
“See, you just don’t get it, do you? When you beg, you make me want to do these things even more. When you ask me for forgiveness, it just makes me all the more determined to put you through more pain. Speaking of which.”
Without a care in the world, Kane snapped the pliers together and severed Riley’s ring finger.
Riley screamed out. He’d cried out so much that he was losing his voice. He just thought of Kesha, now. The fact that if he was defeated—which it looked like he would be—then Kesha would be closer to Kane than she would be to him.
And that thought made him sick.
The thought of this monster, this beast, being close to Kesha was enough to make his entire body go cold with rage.
“You won’t win,” Riley said, panting, struggling for breath. “You—you might think you will, but you won’t.”
Kane leaned towards Riley. “Aw,” he said. “Isn’t that cute. Two fingers down and you still haven’t got the message. Unluckily for you, I know exactly the way to make you remember the message.”
Kane dropped the pliers and grabbed a hot iron that had been warming in front of an open fire.
Before Riley could even protest, Kane jammed it against the torn stump of his finger.
He screamed again, then. He screamed higher than he’d screamed in his adult life.
And then he stopped himself. Despite every instinct in his body telling him to carry on crying out, he gritted his teeth together and he took it.
He took it, despite the white-hot agony.
He took it, despite being able to smell his own burning flesh.
He took it because he didn’t want to die a screamer.
He wanted to go down fighting.
Kane pulled the iron away. “There,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it? Oh. It was? Well, my apologies. I’ll make the next one a whole lot cleaner.”
“You can torture me as much as you want,” Riley said. “But one thing will never change.”
“And what’s that?” Kane asked.
“You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll always be… you’ll always be nothing more than a parasite. A parasite feeding on people who are tied down. Who are fearful. But you’re not the monster you want to be. You’re a weak fuck. A weak fuck who preys on the new world because it’s easier to get away with things than it used to be. But you’ll get what’s coming to you. One day, you’ll get what’s coming to you. And I’ll be around to see it.”
Kane went quiet, then. Riley had stunned him to silence, it seemed. He could see Kane’s eyelids twitching as he tried to figure out what to say, how to respond. He didn’t look best pleased.
But in the end, Kane just narrowed his eyes, a new look of seriousness on his face. He tried to crack a smile, but he couldn’t. Riley had got to him. If he did die right now, at least he’d have something. “Better get back to work.”
Riley did something that went against everything.
He started laughing.
Kane stopped again then. He was halted, right away.
“What’s so funny?”
Riley’s laughs became more manic, more delirious. “You think you’re stronger than me. You think you’re the strongest fucker in the world. But you’re torturing a man who’s pinned down.” He laughed some more. “You’re torturing someone tied down to a table.”
“Stop your laughing. You’re distracting me.”
“Fuck you,” Riley shouted. He spat right in Kane’s face. “Fuck you, and fuck your bullshit. You might think you’re immortal, but you’re not. You’re really not.”
Kane’s face was red now. His eyes were bloodshot.
He took a sharp, deep inhalation and grabbed the pliers again.
Then, he reached into Riley’s mouth and yanked out his tongue.
“I think we’ll skip the fingers for now and get right to your tongue. See how that bleeds. How does that sound?”
He tightened the sharp pliers around the back of his tongue, so far back that Riley felt like he might gag.
He tasted blood dripping down into his throat as Kane brought those pliers together, and as he started to sever his tongue. But in a way, it didn’t matter. In a way, Riley didn’t care. Because he wasn’t going to scream. He was going to prove his point about Kane. Prove that he was a nothing.
He felt a tear roll down the side of his face as the pliers got tighter, and h
e saw Jordanna, Chloë, and Anna looking over him, smiling.
“Hey, fuckwit?”
A voice. A voice over by the door.
Kane stopped tensing the pliers.
He turned around and looked.
Riley saw who was there, too.
Melissa was standing by the door.
She was holding a pistol.
“I made you a promise,” she said.
And before Kane could do a thing, she fired a bullet into his left kneecap, knocking him to the floor.
She walked towards him. Crouched opposite him.
Then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him close.
“I’ll—I’ll kill you,” Kane said, gripping onto his bleeding leg. “You fucking bitch. I’ll kill you.”
Melissa smiled.
She pressed the gun to Kane’s head. Right between his eyes.
“Remember what I said? Remember what I told you when you were tied up in that cell of ours? Can you remember?”
“Bitch,” Kane said, frothing at the mouth with pain. “Bitch.”
“Wrong. I said, ‘Not if I kill you first.’ Goodbye, Kane. Nice knowing you.”
“Bit—”
Kane didn’t finish what he was saying.
Melissa pulled the trigger.
Gunfire exploded through the room.
The back of Kane’s skull opened up, and his brains splattered onto the floor.
He fell back, then. And when he landed, crunching his broken skull even more, Riley swore he could see Kane turning his eyes towards him, giving him one final smile.
Melissa stood up then, and rushed over to Riley’s side. “Now come on,” she said. “It’s time to get out of here while we still can.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ricky held his frail old mother’s dead body in his arms and he stood completely still.
The sky had greyed once again. There was a biting, icy chill to the air. If he’d had more time, he would’ve wrapped up some more, prepared for the elements.
But he’d been so eager to get his mother out of Mattius’ camp that he hadn’t even been thinking straight. He’d been so determined to get away that he’d cut corners. He’d find a thicker coat eventually, he thought. He’d find ways to survive out here, one way or another. Mattius had let him leave with some basic supplies—some food, some water, a sleeping bag. But even if it meant sneaking back into Mattius’ camp in the night to get some supplies, he’d find a way.
Now, Ricky didn’t want to do a thing. He didn’t want to think about a thing.
All he could do was hold on to his mother’s dead body.
He looked down at her. The front of her face was unrecognisable after a sniper bullet had pierced through the back of her head. It’d blown her face clean off. He covered it with a small towel he’d been carrying with him. He didn’t need to see her like this. Didn’t need to remember her like this.
He felt the weight of her body, so light, so frail. He could feel her bones pressing against him. Weirdly, it reminded him of when he was younger—when she used to hold him in her arms and rock him gently from side to side when he was having nightmares. “Ssh, my boy,” she’d tell him. “Don’t cry. The nightmares won’t get you if you show them how strong you are.”
He cried, then. Fell to his knees, onto the soily earth beneath, and he cried. It was the first time he’d properly cried since his mother was shot what must’ve been a couple of hours ago now. He’d had the initial despair. The initial realisation.
Now, after the dark cloud of shock had struck him, he was starting to feel the pain.
He’d fought so hard to protect her.
He’d battled so much to make sure that in spite of her deteriorating condition, she was okay.
And she was. She’d been happy when she died. She’d been holding Ricky’s hand, glad to be free of the confines of that room, glad for the fresh air, and the ground beneath her feet.
She’d held Ricky’s hand and again, it took Ricky back to when he was younger, to when he’d been just a kid. The picnics his mother used to take him on. The time they’d spend together. She was his best friend, after all. Right into his twenties, even though he had a life of his own, she’d stayed his best friend.
And now that was all gone.
Now, that was nothing more than memories.
He lifted his head and wiped away his tears. He looked at his mother’s peaceful body lying there in front of him. And then something struck him. She wasn’t suffering anymore. She wasn’t frightened anymore. She wasn’t confused.
She’d died happy.
She’d had those final moments of happiness, and then she’d died.
And realistically, thinking from a completely logical perspective, she wouldn’t have survived this world outside long. She wouldn’t have liked it out here.
She’d gone at the best possible time, in a way.
But still, that wasn’t Mattius’ decision to make.
That wasn’t his call.
Ricky decided the only way to get his thoughts off the death of his mum was to put his mind to work, or his body to work. He’d read a book once that told him the best way to avoid worry was to crowd it out of the mind with other things.
So that’s what he had to do right now.
He dug up the earth beneath him. He did it with his bare hands. He didn’t mind. It was tough, and progress was slow, but that was good, in a way. It meant longer to be distracted. Longer not to have to face up to the reality of what had happened, of what it meant.
He kept on digging and felt specks of rain against his back. He wanted to get this done before it started properly throwing it down. He didn’t want to say goodbye to his mother and leave her in a muddy bath.
He was about to dig some more when he heard a groan up ahead.
He looked up. There were two undead heading his way.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”
He started digging some more, and it suddenly dawned on him how short-sighted he’d been. He expected to find something to defend himself with eventually. A tree branch that he could sharpen, turn into a spear.
But now that he was faced with it, he didn’t have enough time.
He pulled his mother’s body over to the grave he’d dug. It was still too shallow for her to fit fully inside.
He tried to cover her with some of the earth, but there wasn’t enough. Not really. And if he didn’t act fast, those two zombies would be upon him.
When he looked up again, he saw there were more zombies.
They were approaching from every direction. A large group of them, but like they’d broken off from some other even larger group. That scared Ricky. It reminded him of the group he’d seen a week ago. He didn’t want to be out here if another group like that was around.
He dug more of that earth over his mother, but he knew what was happening here. He knew where this was leading. There were ten of those zombies, and there was only one of him.
One of him and a freshly dead body.
He felt tears fall down his cheeks and drop onto his mum’s body. He looked down at her, bottom lip shaking, and swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so, so sorry.”
He looked up, his jaw quivering, and he faced up to what he had to do.
He wasn’t going to die here. He couldn’t die here. So he only had one choice.
He had to get away from here and leave his mother’s body behind for the zombies to… do whatever they had to.
He had to run.
He had to—
He saw movement, then. The nearest zombie to him.
Its skull split in two.
Then the one beside it fell as well.
There was someone here.
There was someone helping him.
“Catch!” she shouted.
It took him a few seconds to register, but he realised the woman had thrown something to him. A knife. Small, but big enough to take out a few of the dead.
He stabbed a
zombie in its temple, its wayward eyes flickering all over the place.
Then he got another, right over the head. And before he knew it, they were down. All of the zombies were down.
He stood there, a circle of zombies around his mum’s grave, and he looked over at the woman.
She was wearing brown shoes, blue jeans, and a hooded waterproof jacket in blue. Ricky couldn’t see her face.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She pulled back her hood, and he saw that she was missing an eye.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is we get away from here and get to safety, fast. There’s something coming. Something big. And it’s heading in our direction.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Come on, Riley. I know it hurts. I know this isn’t easy. But we have to move. Right now.”
Riley eased off the edge of the table that he’d been strapped against until Melissa’s arrival. When he moved, he realised his back was stiff, and his neck was aching like mad. There were sores on his skin, too. Sores that’d rubbed into him after however long he’d been tied up down here.
But nothing was worse than the stumps where the two fingers had been severed from his left hand.
Kane’s last laugh.
“We have to get to Amy,” Melissa said. “And the others. Your fingers. You think you’ll be okay?”
“Kesha—”
“We’ll get to Kesha. But Amy’s locked down here, too. She’s a few doors down. They probably heard my gunshot, though, so we don’t have much time. Did you hear what I just asked about your fingers?”
Riley nodded. He still felt sick and dizzy from the pain, but he had to pull it together. He had to rescue Amy, Siobhan, and Carly. They’d come this far with him. They’d helped him. He couldn’t just leave them behind to die.
He staggered towards the door and puked up right beside Kane. He felt better for it, in truth. Sure, it reeked, and sure, the taste was so bad it made him want to throw up again, but it was good to get it out of his body.
He felt like he was getting rid of all the badness that had been in his system, purging himself of the encounter, the showdown with Kane.
He looked at Kane’s body, then. Every now and then, his finger twitched, and it made Riley’s stomach turn with fear.
But then he remembered he couldn’t show fear. If he felt fearful, then that meant Kane had won.