by Ryan Casey
The boy peeked from under his sister’s arms. Looked up at him with curious, watery eyes.
“It’s … it’s okay now,” Ivan said. He wiped his hands together. Looked up and down the road. Being out here in the bright of daylight was a shock to the system after being holed up in a boarded up lounge for weeks. “It’s … You’re okay now. You’re safe.”
He lowered his head. Walked back towards his house.
“Mister?”
A voice. The little girl.
Ivan stopped. Tension built up inside him. He couldn’t let anyone in. He couldn’t risk losing anyone else. That, and he didn’t deserve to let anyone in. The kids deserved better than the monster he was.
But still, he turned around. Looked back at the kids.
They were both standing now. Both looking right at him.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked. “Because … because I’m Nick. And this is—”
“Abigail,” the girl interrupted.
Ivan opened his mouth to speak but nothing but a cloud of breath came out. He wasn’t used to speaking. Wasn’t used to human contact. The ache around his neck … He should be dead now. He should never have made human contact again.
But he had.
And he’d felt something.
That in itself was something.
Ivan sniffed up. Forced the best, most awkward-feeling smile he could.
“Harrison,” he said. “Harrison Fletcher.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Worthington’s Bike Emporium, Preston Docks
Three months later …
“Don’t shoot!” Tamara screamed.
It felt weird, just speaking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d opened her mouth and let out some words. Probably earlier that day when the group was on the road. Before Chloë and her had been taken by the bikers.
Before they’d raped her.
Raped Chloë.
She stared at the five bikers as they stood behind Pedro, Tiffany and another man who looked a bit like Sawyer from Lost, but much less handsome. Three of the bikers held guns to their heads. One of them, the guy with burns on his cheeks who’d been doing all the speaking—Samuel, she thought—had his gun right on the back of Pedro’s skull.
Pedro just kneeled there. Squeezed his eyes shut. Waited for the blow of the gun as Samuel tickled at the trigger.
“Don’t shoot him!” Tamara shouted.
All of the bikers looked over at her. Smiles lifted up at the corners of their mouths. “Jesus Christ,” Samuel said. He looked around at his companions. “She speaks!”
A few of the bikers laughed.
Tamara’s heart pounded. She gripped hold of Chloë’s cold hand. Tried to block out the stacks of women and children’s bodies piled up either side of them in this sick warehouse.
Tried to block out the thoughts of what she’d become if they didn’t get out of here.
“You … you don’t have to do this,” she said, realising how hopeless she sounded the second the words left her shaking lips. “Please. Don’t do this.”
More chuckles from the bikers. Samuel wiped his bloodshot eyes with the sleeve of his black jacket. The jacket that had smelled of chip pan fat and sweat when he’d pulled Tamara’s jeans off …
“Don’t do what?” he said. He pointed over at the body on the floor beside Tamara—the body of a biker with a bullet in his head. The fat faced one. The guy who hadn’t really seemed all that interested in abusing Tamara and Chloë when the others had leapt on them like un-caged zoo animals. A good one, perhaps, but one that Jordanna had dispensed with. “Don’t kill your friends like your friends killed my friends?”
“Nobody else has to die.”
Samuel let out his biggest laugh yet. He sounded like he was in hysterics, like Tamara had told him the best joke he’d ever heard. “Nobody else has to die?” he said, still laughing. He raised his hands. Pointed around the room. “Nobody else has to fucking die? Look around you, sunshine. Everyone has to die.”
He shook his head, lowered his gun and cracked it into the back of Pedro’s skull.
Pedro winced. Tumbled forward to the floor. He still had his eyes closed. He hadn’t once looked up at Tamara while the bikers beat him up. Blood poured out of a nasty looking wound on the back of his bald head. That, mixed with the gunshot in his shoulder just earlier that day … it couldn’t be good news.
“You know, it’s clear you care about this fella,” Samuel said. He grabbed the back of Pedro’s coat collar. Yanked him up again. “So maybe we won’t kill ‘im. Maybe we’ll find some way to put you both through pain. For killing two of ours. For not doing as you’re told.”
He cracked the butt of the pistol against Pedro’s head again.
Pedro fell face first against the filthy, solid floor.
Blood streamed between his teeth.
Jordanna and Chloë were still. Tamara could see Jordanna was struggling, too. She saw the wound in her shoulder. A gunshot wound by the looks of things. Not as nasty as Pedro’s, but nasty enough.
The rifle strapped around Jordanna’s neck. If she could just get to it. Find a way …
Samuel lifted Pedro up again. Pedro’s eyes were still closed. Blood trickled down his chin, and he looked barely conscious as his body flopped about like a rag doll.
Samuel smiled. “Why don’t you look at her, huh?” he asked Pedro. “You had any of her snatch? ‘Cause I did earlier. Tasted so damned good. Damned good for a woman these days, anyway. Sweaty and a bit grubby, sure, but there’s a sweetness there. You ever tried it?”
Pedro kept his eyes shut. Tamara could see his cheeks going red. His jaw was shaking.
Samuel pointed the gun away from Pedro’s head and right over at Tamara. “I’ve got my gun pointed at her. How’s that make you feel? How about you have a taste of her dead snatch when I’ve shot her, hmm? Dead snatch ain’t so bad, not really. Better if it’s still warm though. Still warm and juicy.”
“Sick bastard,” the Sawyer lookalike whimpered.
Tiffany just sat there, gun to her head, and cried.
“How about you, princess?” Samuel asked. He leaned over to Tiffany. Crouched down beside her and sniffed her hair. “You look like you got some real nice gifts for me. Want to let me have a play with them?”
Chloë edged forward. Tensed up.
Tamara squeezed her hand even tighter, and she stopped.
Samuel laughed. Looked over at Tamara, Jordanna, Chloë. Shook his head. “Didn’t have to be this way. Coulda just let us take these ladies. Besides, you two enjoyed it, huh?” He nodded at Tamara and Chloë. “Bit of fun while the world goes to shit, righ—”
The gunshot came from outside.
It blasted right through Samuel’s chest.
Sent blood spraying out of a hole in the middle of his body.
He tumbled face first to the floor.
The bikers looked around in shock.
Looked up at Tamara, Jordanna, Chloë.
Lifted their guns and pointed them at the hostages.
More bullets fired in through the doorway. Two more bikers dropped, but there were still three standing.
Tamara rushed over to Jordanna. Grabbed her rifle. Pointed it at the lanky guy, fired straight in his neck, sent him falling to the ground and choking on his blood.
Two standing. More bullets firing in through the doorway. The bikers looked around, disoriented.
The Sawyer lookalike swung around and knocked one of them to the ground with his bound legs.
Tiffany stayed on her knees, eyes squeezed tightly, crying.
Pedro stayed face first on the floor.
Tamara pushed Chloë and Jordanna back. Reloaded her gun as more shots fired. Some of the bullets pierced the skin of the dead women lying in a pile at either side, sent a ghastly smell of burning rot right through the warehouse.
Tamara lifted the gun. Pointed it at the last of the bikers.
“Wait!” he shouted.
He had h
is hands above his head. His gun was there, too. Around him, his biker friends were on the floor. Some of them were dead, some of them still wriggling in their own blood.
Sweat ran down from this guy’s dark, curly hair. He shivered. His jacket was covered in blood. He looked terrified. “Please,” he said. “Don’t kill me. I … I’ll just leave. I’ll just go away. Please.”
Tamara tightened her grip around the trigger. In her mind, she saw Cameron, the man who had killed her Josh. She saw the evil people that walked this world now, the things they did to stay alive.
“Please don’t do this,” he said. He dropped to his knees. Sniffed up snot. “I didn’t … Please. I didn’t mean to—to … they just took me. They took me and they made me do the bad things.”
Tamara tickled the trigger a little tighter.
“I have a girlfriend and—and a baby girl out there somewhere. Let me go. This is over now. They—the bikers. They’re dead, so we can both leave. Please.”
In the place of Cameron and all the bad in the world, Tamara saw a boy, barely into his twenties by the looks of things. A boy who had been taken in by the bikers. Promised protection.
A boy who had been led astray and was just waiting for a moment like this when he’d get the chance to leave.
Josh could have been that boy when he’d grown up, or if he’d lost everything else.
Tamara’s heart raced. She loosened her grip on the trigger. Lowered the gun slightly.
“Please,” he said, sobbing and crying. “Please.”
She lowered the gun completely.
“Get the fuck out of my sight.”
The man stood up. Put his hands together. “I’ll remember you for this. I swear I’ll remember you for this.”
He turned around and started running out of the warehouse door.
And then a blast sounded.
The man’s neck cocked back.
Blood splurged out of the opening in the back of his dark hair.
He lost his footing and fell back onto the floor.
As blood pooled from the guy’s head, people rushed inside the warehouse. But looking at that guy on the floor, looking at his dark hair, his still body, Tamara saw Josh. An older Josh.
Josh lying there outside the MLZ, little army helmet pierced with a bullet.
“Tamara? You okay?”
Tamara recognised the voice. She looked up. Saw that it was Riley. Shit, he looked worse for wear too. Big bruise on his forehead. He was wearing a cream jumper that looked way too big for him.
There was someone else behind him. A man in a white shirt. Quite bulky. Slick, dark hair and a greying beard. He walked around the warehouse and popped caps into the skulls of the bikers who were still living, still begging for mercy.
“It’s … it’s him,” Chloë said.
Riley crouched down beside Chloë as the bearded man untied James’ cuffs.
“Chloë, you have to—”
Chloë surged forward as the bearded man moved on to Tiffany. “Get him away from her!”
“Chloë!”
Riley reached out and grabbed Chloë before she could get any further towards this stranger. She scrapped and kicked out like a feral animal until Tiffany ran over to her and they both hugged and sobbed.
Tamara looked over at the man. He was crouched down beside Pedro now. He went to put a hand on Pedro’s back, then shifted away. It looked like he was welling up.
“Who … who is he?” Tamara asked as Riley examined Jordanna’s shoulder. Seemed like Chloë knew him. And there was a degree of familiarity with him and Pedro, too. Speaking of which, he carried himself similarly to Pedro. Chest puffed out, shoulders back.
Carried himself like a soldier.
“That’s … that’s Ivan,” Riley said.
Ivan glanced over at Tamara and the others. Nodded.
“Do you … do you know him?” Tamara asked.
Riley puffed out his lips and shook his head. “Don’t even get me started.”
***
Riley walked outside the entrance to the Worthington’s Bike Emporium and towards the four bikers kneeling down in the middle of the concrete, hands tied behind their backs.
He closed the door after Ivan had helped Pedro out and all the others had made their way outside. The armoured vehicle was just in front of the entrance to Worthington’s, so he made James take Pedro and Jordanna back to the vehicle to be checked on.
He made sure he sent Tiffany and Chloë back, too. He didn’t want them to be a part of what was next.
He looked back inside the warehouse. Stacked wall to wall with the bodies of women and children. The floor was covered with blood, five dead bikers sprawled in various positions.
“Close the damned thing,” Ivan said. “Not sure I can stand another minute staring at piles of dead bodies in this lifetime.”
Riley looked at Ivan. Looked right into his face, into his brown eyes. He still couldn’t believe Ivan was actually alive. He’d left him as good as dead in the freezer room back at the Fulwood barracks over three months ago. And he’d freaked out when he first saw him again. Freaked out, for all the horrible things he’d done.
For killing Ted.
But as he slammed the warehouse door shut, Riley thought about what Ivan had told him. About how he’d got out of the barracks. How he’d gone back to his family and found them overdosed. How he’d been moments away from suicide when two kids screamed from the road outside.
How he’d been looking out for them ever since. Protecting them.
Starting from scratch.
Tamara wandered up from the side of Ivan. She’d gone quiet again. She stared over at the line of four bikers kneeling down. The ones that Riley and Ivan had captured, the ones that had given in.
“What do we do about them?” Tamara asked.
Riley listened to the sounds of the bikers whimpering underneath the duct tape on their mouths. He saw what they’d done in the bike emporium. He saw the way Tamara looked on, distant. The way Chloë had acted just as they’d left, clammed up and unable to speak. It didn’t take a genius to work out what the bikers had done to them, and what would have happened to them if the group hadn’t bailed them out when they did.
Riley stepped up to them. A gentle breeze brushed against his face, as the lukewarm spring sun heated up his cheeks just like it used to when he visited the docks on sunny days. He lifted his rifle he’d taken from one of the bikers and pointed it at the ponytailed head of one of them. “We get this done fast.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Ivan cut in.
Riley lowered his gun. Looked Ivan right in his eyes. “Are you for real?”
Ivan gulped. There was a sincerity to his voice. Riley could see that whatever had happened after the barracks fell had changed him. Everybody changed in the Dead Days, for better or for worse.
The hard part was figuring out the good from the bad before it consumed you.
“They stood down. We can leave them here. The zombies will come for them—”
“Like they came for you?” Riley asked.
Ivan opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again. Then, “People change, Riley. I can see you’ve changed. We have to change in this world. It’s what keeps us alive.”
Riley listened to the whimpering, begging noises coming from the bikers. He looked at them all lined up on their knees. He knew that somewhere inside them all, there were people. Real, live people. People with pasts, with histories. Maybe some of them had families before the world collapsed. Maybe some of them had normal jobs and were “good” people, in the old world’s much simpler paradigm of good and bad, right and wrong.
But all that past history, that attempt to view what they were before the Dead Days, it’d all been muddied by what they were right now.
What they’d done.
So Riley lifted the gun.
Pointed it at the back of the ponytailed biker’s head.
Fired.
The other bikers started to shake, s
tarted to panic, but Tamara shot two more of them down.
Riley pressed the gun to the back of a ginger biker’s head. Sent his brains out of the front of his skull.
Tamara took out the last one.
And then there was no more whimpering, no more struggling.
Silence.
Riley listened to the sounds of the wind brushing against the trees. He looked up into the sky. Imagined he could see planes up there, leaving lines as they travelled to faraway countries. He imagined the smells of the hot dog stall. Imagined the chatter from the cinema as people left, discussing the plot twists at the end of the film. Imagined young lovers smooching in the dark corners of the car park …
And then he imagined Ted.
Ted, who Ivan had killed.
Who Ivan had slit the throat of.
Riley turned to Ivan. Lifted his rifle. Pointed it at him.
Ivan just stared back at Riley. Shook his head. “You don’t need to do—”
“Just because you helped me out doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
Ivan remained still. Kept hold of his rifle.
And then, he lowered his gun to the floor. Put his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect anyone to forgive me. I just expect you to think of those two children I’m looking after. They’re over at the flat waiting for me right now. Don’t make me keep them waiting.”
Riley felt a wave of nausea crash against him. His trigger finger started to shake. “I … I threw his ashes into the docks. Ted’s ashes. I threw them into the docks right here. He loved this place. He…”
Ivan nodded. “I just want you to let me go back to Abigail and Nick. Please. Not for me, but for them.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Riley said.
“Maybe so. But you didn’t. You found something inside that left me for dead instead of taking away all my options, all my hope. Like you just did to these bikers—”
“They deserved it.”
“Again, maybe so. But maybe not, too. You don’t know how involved these bikers were in what happened in that warehouse. You don’t know anything about what they’ve lost, what they’ve been through, what they’ve done to keep the ones they love alive. You don’t get to make that decision. Well, you do. And you made it. And you can live with that, just like I’ve lived with the things I’ve done for months. I’m just asking you not to make that decision again. We’ve all done bad things, Riley. But we all have a choice. Let me go back to Nick and Abigail. For them, not for me.”