by Ryan Casey
Riley leaned against the steaming, smoking engine and stared inside it, pretending to know what the hell he was looking at. Really, he was just getting dizzy off the fumes. Always had been a sucker for car fumes.
“Anyone a mechanic?”
“Yeah,” James said, wiping his oily hands together. “Gus was. But Gus is gone. So we’re screwed. Gonna have to let this lump of old metal go and find something a bit snazzier. Audi TT, perhaps? Nice red one with a—”
“This is the safest vehicle there is,” Riley said, walking back around the side of the vehicle. Twigs snapped under his feet. Either side of him, tall evergreen trees hid the secrets of the forest. The road went on as long as he could see in each direction. No sign of any cars, no sign of any life.
Or any dead.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mr Luxury, but we don’t always get what we want in this world anymore.” James shook his head and stormed away from the engine. He spat onto his hands and rubbed hard against the black mark on his jacket. “Don’t get why you need to be all safe-mad all the time anyway. Fact is, we’re only as safe as our surroundings. That’s just the way it is.”
Riley stopped. Looked inside the armoured vehicle. Chloë was still curled up in a ball. Beside her, Jordanna sat, attempting to talk to her. Tiffany sat on the top bunk twiddling her thumbs. Tamara lay next to Pedro, who was just about awake now.
And in the corner of the armoured vehicle, Riley saw the black rucksack. Dr. Wellingborough’s research. The information on the cure.
The answers to everything that they needed to get to Birmingham, fast, to save the MLZ.
To save everyone.
“I mean, yeah, this vehicle ain’t all bad. Decent to drive. Handy for smashing the zombs down with. But it ain’t all that. We could find somethin’ much more snazzy. Something’ with a bit of oomph.”
Riley turned and stepped up to James. “Can I trust you?”
James lifted his hands. The bruise on his forehead he’d got back at Worthington’s was getting more prominent by the minute. “Hey, I just helped you guys out back there. I put my life on—”
Riley grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and pushed him up against the side of the armoured vehicle. “Simple question. Can I trust you?”
“Jesus Christ—yes!” James struggled from side to side. Pushed Riley back. Readjusted his jacket collar. “Man, you’ve got issues. Real issues. Nobody else has the balls to say it, but I do. You’ve got—”
“We’re travelling in this vehicle because we’re going to Birmingham. There’s a Living Zone there. A walled society. I’m taking some research there. Some very bloody important research. Research on the cure to the virus. Research that’s … inside me.”
James stared at Riley like he was even crazier than before. The sound of the trees rustling together in the wind was about the only thing breaking the silence. A cold breeze brushed against Riley’s face.
“You … you have the cure. Inside you.” James spoke like he was addressing someone with mental health problems.
Riley nodded. “Believe it or not.”
“I don’t believe it. It sounds to me like bullshit. This Living Quarter crap, too. Nowhere’s safe. There’s …”
James stopped talking when Riley lifted the bottom of his black trouser legs up, one after the other. “The first bite I got hurt the most. But now I think back, I’m not sure if it was just the shock of it, y’know? The sudden … sickening shock of knowledge: I’m going to die. This is it. This is the end.”
James looked on at Riley’s legs, his jaw almost scraping the road.
“The second bite hurt, sure. But there was a kind of … of inevitability about it. Like when you get rejected for a job and it hurts like mad, and then you get rejected for the follow-up job too. It just seems typical. Like it’s fate, or some bullshit like that.” He let his trouser legs drop back down. “In a way, it kind of was.”
He told James about the Manchester Living Zone. About how they’d stayed there for three months, about what had happened there. And James didn’t seem convinced. He seemed doubtful, like anyone would be.
But gradually, the more Riley told him, the more hope glimmered in his eyes.
“So that’s why we’re travelling in the safest fucking vehicle we possibly can,” Riley said. “Now are you gonna stop whining and take another look at that engine or am I gonna have to make you?”
This time, James nodded and went right back to looking at the engine.
It felt strange bossing people around. Riley had never had the authority to boss anyone around before the Dead Days. He’d never had the confidence or the assertiveness. He’d never really liked confrontation, not really.
Funny how the worst of situations brought the unexpected out in you.
He stepped back inside the armoured vehicle to the smell of sweat. Jordanna nodded at him, half-smiled, as she continued to talk to Chloë.
Riley walked over to Tiffany, who dangled from the side of the bunk. He didn’t know her well, and he’d only agreed to let her come along because Chloë insisted, and she’d volunteered. “How you keeping?” Riley asked.
Tiffany glanced at him, didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m … I’m okay.”
“Bullshit,” Riley said. He climbed up the ladders of the bunk bed and perched down beside her. “You’ve barely said a word this whole journey. Something on your mind?”
Her cheeks turned red. She rubbed her hands against her skinny thighs. “I just … my mum. And Dad. And—and home. I miss them. I miss it.”
Riley nodded. Outside, he could hear James clanging away at the engine, the fumes drifting in and calming him like it was some kind of herbal remedy. “We all miss what we don’t have anymore. And I’m sorry about your parents. Really. We’ve all lost. But that doesn’t make it any easier, I know.”
Tiffany met his eyes and they held eye contact for a little longer this time.
She smiled, but it didn’t sit right on her face.
Riley reached into his pocket. Beside Anna’s necklace, he could feel Chloë’s ring. He thought about asking Tiffany about it. About what Chloë had done. About whether Tiffany had been involved in the escape of Dr Wellingborough’s creatures in any way, and if that’s the reason she was here right now.
He let go of the ring. Brought his hand back out of his pocket.
What Jordanna said about revenge. About holding onto some things and letting other things go. She was right. Chloë and Tiffany didn’t need scalding for the past right now.
They were here. Here on this journey.
And right now, that’s all that mattered.
“I wish I was strong,” Tiffany said.
“Hey. You are strong.”
Tiffany sniffed. Stared down at her knees. “I’m not strong. Not like you. Not like—not like Chloë.”
Riley reached over to her. Tilted her chin up. “Anyone who’s made it this far is strong. Only the strongest people in the world made it this far.”
“Or the nastiest,” she said.
She blushed soon after saying those words. Looked at Riley briefly, then went back to looking at her knees.
Or the nastiest.
Maybe Tiffany was right.
Maybe only the bad people made it this far.
But in this world, there was no such thing as a universal good or bad anymore. Only your own sense of good and bad.
And in a way, that was really just a magnified version of how life had always been.
Riley was about to tell Tiffany to keep her chin up when he heard a spanner clatter outside.
He heard James swearing, heard him running around the side of the armoured vehicle.
He appeared at the side door. He was gazing right into the woods. He was shaking all over.
“James?” Riley said.
James backed up the first of the steps into the armoured vehicle. Riley could hear him breathing short and loud gasps.
Riley hopped down from the bunk. Walked up to James. �
�James, what’s …”
And then he saw exactly what James saw.
In the thick, evergreen trees, there was movement.
Movement on the left.
The noise of twigs and pinecones crumbling away beneath feet.
Riley reached for his rifle. Readied himself to take the creatures on …
But then he realised the movement was coming from everywhere.
From down the left side of the woodlands as far as he could see.
From the right side of the woodlands.
A huge mass of creatures all stepping through the trees, all heading in their direction.
An incomprehensible mass of creatures walking side by side, tumbling over one another, the first endless row of them just yards away from the edge of the forest …
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ivan gripped tight hold of the rifle he’d taken from Worthington’s and pointed it at the apartment door.
The kids were in the bedroom. He’d told them to get under the covers and keep very, very quiet, but he could hear them whispering from here. He perched on the end of a stool, his lumbar aching like it always did when he sat in awkward positions. Sweat dribbled down his forehead. He kept still, kept the gun pointed at the door.
It was the only thing he could think to do with the immense mass of zombies passing by the apartment.
He could hear them outside. Hear their footsteps rumbling against the ground, like horses racing at the Grand National. Occasionally, he heard a splash when one of the zombies tumbled into the water of the docks.
He didn’t see them, but he saw them clearly in his mind.
Thousands of them, all cramped together.
So cramped together that they were falling over one another.
All staggering past the apartment blocks, filling up every available space on the walkway like they were a collective fluid.
The smell was dreadful. Imagine the stench of a rotting person and times it by a zillion and you pretty much have it, except somehow it was much, much worse than even that. Ivan felt more and more nauseous and dizzy the longer he sat on the wooden stool pointing his rifle at the door. And no matter how much he told himself he’d adapt to the smell, that he’d get used to it, it just seemed to grow stronger and stronger, worse and worse.
He wondered if it was possible for a smell to knock a man unconscious. If it was, he didn’t have long to go before he headed that way.
He’d thought about leaving this place with the kids when he first saw the zombies. Thought about fleeing, finding a vehicle of some kind and going the way Riley and co had gone. But the zombies were too quick. They seemed to move faster as a group. And the chances of finding a car with fuel was hit and miss to say the least.
He couldn’t risk leaving this apartment.
He’d made the call to stay here.
Now, he just had to live with that.
Or die with it.
Ivan hadn’t felt so uneasy about the zombies since the day he’d first seen them. Of course, he was always wary and cautious of them, but like anything dangerous, you found a way to adapt. Grew used to stabbing them in the head or shooting them. You found ways to manage them.
But this. This horde of zombies was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
For the first time since the start of the end of the world, he truly didn’t know what to do.
He was terrified.
“Harrison?”
He looked over at the door beside him. Nick was standing there, peeking through the opening.
“Go back inside,” Ivan whispered.
“Are … are they nearly—”
“Nick, go back inside and be quiet.”
Ivan regretted snapping at Nick right away. He saw Nick gulp and lower his head. But it was only for his own good. Only for his safety.
He couldn’t risk anything happening to these two kids.
He couldn’t lose them.
As Nick pulled the bedroom door back, Ivan heard something outside the apartment block.
He turned around. Looked at the curtains. He swore he could hear glass cracking.
His heart thumped. He knew he couldn’t sit here all day. He had to know just how many zombies had got into the courtyard. It was the only way of working out what the next step would be. Because if a mass of them found their way into this apartment, he was fucked. They were all fucked.
There was only so many zombies a rifle could take down.
He lifted himself up off the stool, his back aching. He stepped slowly across the room, past the kitchen area, over the Monopoly board on the floor.
He crouched down right by the curtains. He could hear the zombies outside, shuffling, splashing, some of them groaning.
He knew he had to have a look. Just one peek.
He knew he had to see what he was dealing with.
With the tip of his rifle, he pulled the curtains apart, ever so slightly.
When he saw them outside, he wished he’d never looked.
The zombies were all walking down the walkway at the side of the docks. Some of them were so compressed that they were squished right up against the blue metal railings beside the water. Their bodies contorted and bent in all kinds of horrid shapes. One of them, rotting and decomposing, was pushed so far against the railing that its body split in two, its upper half tumbling down into the water below, leaving a trail of intestines behind.
There were zombies as far as the eye could see in both directions. A large group of them, like a colony of migrating birds. Ivan wondered what had brought them here. What was sending them in that direction, all marching on like sheep.
And then he heard the cracking noise again and he saw the zombies in the courtyard.
There was just a few of them, but the courtyard was gradually filling up. Like the bottom of an egg timer, the more zombies flowed past the opening to the courtyard, the more would fill it up, and eventually there’d be no room left.
Nowhere for the zombies to go but through the main apartment entrance, cracking the blockade under their mass weight.
Inside the apartment complex.
Up the stairs and through each door until …
Ivan stood up. Walked across the room and to the bedroom door. He couldn’t wait around here. He couldn’t stay here, not anymore.
He opened the bedroom door. Nick and Abigail were both right behind it, ears pressed against the wall. They looked up at him like they’d not been doing anything wrong, drifted back over to the bed with their shoulders slumped.
“Come on,” Ivan said. “We can’t stay here.”
He held the door open and waved for the kids to follow him.
Nick’s curious frown was at an all-time extreme. “But where will … the dead. How will we get past the dead?”
Ivan listened to the sounds of the footsteps outside. The sounds of the lone zombies staggering into the courtyard entrance, filling it up like a balloon and getting ready to burst.
He forced a reassuring smile. “I have an idea. Don’t worry.”
Nick smiled. Walked past him.
Abigail looked at Ivan with those piercing, knowing eyes.
And Ivan didn’t even attempt to hide his true emotions from her.
He was clueless.
They were screwed.
But he had to try something. They all had to.
“I want you to stay behind me at all times,” Ivan said. “Hold on to me. Hold on to each other. You got that?”
The kids both nodded as Ivan held the handle of the flat door, Nick a little more enthusiastic than Abigail.
“Just a big adventure,” Nick said.
Ivan turned away. Felt a lump welling up in his throat. “That’s right,” he said. “Just … just a big adventure.”
He held his breath.
Lowered the handle.
Opened the door.
***
“Shut the door. Quick!”
Riley rushed over to James and dragged him back inside the armoured vehic
le. The mass of creatures, which spread from one end of the woodland at the side of the road to the other, were heading right in their direction.
They were getting closer to the road.
Closer to the armoured vehicle.
Closer to them.
“Everybody get their weapons and stay quiet!”
Riley pulled James’ feet out of the doorway. Reached for the handle.
When he started to pull it, he got a true sense of just how many creatures there were.
He could smell them. The worst stench he’d ever smelled in his entire life, and that was rich coming from someone who used to live with a mate who called himself “Sir Shitalot.” The sheer mass of creatures working their way through the trees, tripping up over and stamping on one another …
More creatures than Riley had ever seen.
“Riley.”
Jordanna’s voice snapped him out of his trance. He pulled the door of the armoured vehicle shut. Flicked up the lock, not that it’d be much use against the oncoming mass of creatures.
He looked around at the group. Looked at the bewildered, puzzled faces of Jordanna and Pedro. Looked at Tamara as she reached for a gun and pointed it at the door. Looked at Tiffany, the fright returning to her shaking face, at Chloë, finally lifting her head after being curled into a ball for so long.
It was the fear in Pedro’s eyes that got to Riley the most though. Pedro was usually the tough one. The leader, if there was such a thing in this little group. His sarcastic spin on the worst of situations gave the rest of the group an energy.
But right now, he looked at Riley with wide, fearful eyes.
Eyes that asked Riley the question: what the fuck are we gonna do, bruv?
“Get down. Everyone. Down on the floor.”
“We should go up there,” Tamara said, pointing to the roof with the hand missing two fingers. “Take some out—”
“There’s too many,” Riley said. He grabbed the quilt from his bed. Set it out over the floor and started to get under it. Kept his eyes on the rucksack of cure documents. His head spun. The sound of the oncoming mass of creatures dizzied his thoughts. “There’s … we just have to wait.”