by Ryan Casey
But Ivan couldn’t look away.
He was too focused on what was on the road ahead.
Covering the road ahead.
There were piles and piles of bodies. All of them were in varying degrees of decomposition. Some of them were charred, while the flesh of others hung from the exposed ribs.
They were zombies.
But they were all completely still. All piled up. All dead.
Ivan grabbed the gun, more to trick himself into thinking he was safe than anything. He stepped out of the car. Outside, in the cool spring breeze, he could smell burning. A sourness to the still, silent air.
There were hundreds of zombie bodies. Or maybe more than that. And yet, there they were, all stacked up and blocking the road.
There was no way a human—or a group of humans—could’ve done this. It’d take years to build a pile this big. And besides, why would anyone want to stack zombie bodies like this in the first place? It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t right.
“Are they dead?” Abigail asked. Her voice made him jump. He’d been so focused on the dead bodies lined across the road that he hadn’t even realised her and Nick had got out of the car.
Ivan gulped. The air was so sour he could taste it. The trees rustled together in the wind. It felt like there was something inside, something beyond in the darkness.
Something that was capable of killing hundreds and hundreds of undead in one swift move.
“I just don’t understand,” Ivan said, walking across the spilled blood, the loose flesh clinging to his shoes. “I don’t understand what could do this.”
“I don’t like it,” Nick said.
“Me neither, kid. Me neither.”
Ivan stopped walking a few metres away from the bodies. He didn’t want to risk anything. They could still be alive. Or undead, anyway.
But … no. Even for undead, they were too still.
Bone fragments, pieces of brain and skull, all scattered and mashed in the concrete.
He’d seen some weird shit since the world went tits up, but this just about topped the lot.
“Maybe they’re just sleeping,” Nick said.
Ivan scraped his shoe against the road. Some body part or another clung to the bottom of it.
Abigail tutted. “They don’t sleep.”
“But you said they don’t walk fast ages ago, too. And now they nearly run.”
Nick had a point. A point that shook Ivan to the core.
“Come on, kids. I think we’re done here.”
He headed back to the car, but he didn’t take his eyes from the pile of undead remains blocking the route.
He wasn’t even nearly done here. But he had no choice but to leave. A bad feeling radiated around this road in the middle of the trees. An un-shiftable sense of … well: wrong. There were a few moments Ivan had felt a sense of wrong like this in his life. Out on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. On holiday in the middle of a Canadian nature reserve with a massive grizzly bear stalking him and Mary. They’d hidden behind trees, under rocks, even inside a few conspicuous caves.
But the bear just kept on following.
The sense of wrong wouldn’t go away, no matter what they did.
That sense of wrong was stronger now than it had ever been.
They got back inside the car. Ivan started up the engine. There was a small gap at the right side of the pile of bodies. He didn’t want to turn back. He felt closed in, all of a sudden. Like these bodies were a towering, spiked wall that he just had to escape.
“Are we still going to Blackpool?” Nick asked. He’d got into the back of the Range Rover with his sister, and Ivan couldn’t blame him.
He put his foot on the gas and approached the pile of bodies as slow and as quietly as a Range Rover could. “I don’t know, Nick. We’ll see.”
“Mum always said ‘we’ll see’ when she didn’t want to say ‘no’ to something,” Abigail said.
Ivan couldn’t stop looking at the stack of bodies as the car took off the road and drove beside them.
He wanted to tell the kids not to look either, but they were sat up and staring out of the window, battling to get the best view. That horrified Ivan. This is what had become of the world—children looking and pointing at dead, butchered bodies like they were just entertainment.
What a world they’d live in if ever it did get fixed.
What a generation of psychopaths.
He focused on the opening at the end of the stack of bodies. They went on for a good ten metres. Ten metres square, two metres high.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands of them.
He thought he saw one of them move in the corner of his eyes, and that made him put his foot down harder. The darkness of the trees stared back at him on his right. He felt like something was watching him in there. A thousand dark eyes, just waiting to make him a part of this body pile.
He accelerated around them. Kept his eyes on the road ahead. He couldn’t let the zombies get to him. They were dead. Clearly dead.
But just seeing the shadow of that pile of bodies staring down at the Range Rover … it was eerie beyond belief.
He reached the very back of the pile of bodies. The road ahead was clear, except for another few dead ones lying on the concrete. Only these ones were still moving.
Ivan took his foot off the accelerator, then put it back on again when he realised he was in no mood to stick around the mountain of bodies behind him. There were just six zombies on the road up ahead. He could accelerate past them. They wouldn’t cause a problem. They wouldn’t …
The zombie to the far left of the road caught his eyes.
It was legless. Its veins and torn muscles were still on show, and the blood didn’t look all that old. It was wearing a black coat, which had been torn open with bite marks all down the front. It reached its shaking arms into the air, which were also peppered with teethmarks.
“Harrison?” Nick asked. “What is it?”
Ivan felt an intense sadness seeing this zombie lying on the concrete. His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
That bald head, chunks bitten out of it.
Those green eyes.
Those dog tags that he always used to wear so proudly.
“Stay here,” he said.
He opened the passenger door and stepped out into the warm spring sun. The smell of the bodies was so much more intense now he was out in the open, but he couldn’t focus too long on that smell.
Only on the body on the road in the distance.
“Harrison?”
Ivan walked towards the body. He stepped over the sludgy, charred remains of the other zombies’ bodies that looked like they’d taken a bucket load of napalm. His footsteps squelched and crackled through their rotting flesh. They gargled at him, tried their best to reach for him, but they were so stuck to the ground that their finger bones just sliced through the tips of their withered fingers.
He stopped right over the body he’d recognised.
The zombie tried to reach for him.
Opened its chewed-up mouth, and blood dribbled down its cheeks.
He still couldn’t believe what he was actually seeing. Who he was actually seeing.
All his other senses dulled as he crouched down and took a closer look.
Pedro.
Pedro’s zombie scratched its bloody hands against the concrete when Ivan crouched opposite him. Its eyebrows were stuck in a frown-like shape. Fuck. Probably the angriest Ivan had ever seen Pedro look.
He swallowed a lump in his throat as Pedro’s zombie growled and moaned at him. It wasn’t right, seeing Pedro like this. Pedro was always so tough. Always so strong. But most of all, he was always full of banter and humour.
Seeing his rotting body splayed out on the concrete torn to shreds by zombies … that wasn’t the Pedro he knew.
It was just a dark mirror image of what this world would turn everyone into eventually.
Ivan searched the road for som
ething he could use to put Pedro out of his misery. Because he wasn’t leaving him here like this. Pedro wouldn’t have wanted it. Shit—would anyone want it?
He found a loose wrench a few feet away from Pedro’s body.
Picked it up and crouched back down over Pedro.
He stared into Pedro’s vacant eyes as he gargled out more blood. He wanted Pedro to see him. Wanted him to look up and see him looking down at him.
But shit. If he looked up and saw Ivan looking down at him, he’d probably try to kill him. Not much changed in life and death.
“I’m sorry, brother,” Ivan said. “Sorry it had to end this way. And sorry I never got the chance to apologise to you. Not properly, anyway.”
Ivan wanted Pedro to say something back. To snap out of this, start laughing and say all was forgiven.
But he didn’t. He just reached his contorted fingers up at Ivan and tried to grab any part of his body he could. Gasped and gargled and groaned some more.
Ivan took one final look into Pedro’s eyes. Saw the good soldier who’d always tried to do the right thing. The soldier everyone liked—the long-term veterans, the new recruits. He was twice the man Ivan would ever be.
Just a good man.
Ivan looked ahead at the road as it spiralled on into the distance and through the trees.
He lifted the wrench above Pedro’s head. Held it in the air, got as tight a grip of it as he could.
Readied himself.
He took in a deep breath. Felt warm tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Sorry, brother.”
He swung the wrench down as hard as he could into Pedro’s skull.
And then he did the same again and again and again until Pedro’s zombie finally went quiet.
He didn’t look back down at Pedro’s body. He didn’t have to—he could feel the evidence of what he’d done all over his hands in the form of blood and gore.
He took a deep breath, immediately regretted it when the smell of the putrid bodies returned.
He stood back up. Turned around, wrench in hand.
And he froze.
He’d seen a lot of weird shit today. The massive horde of zombies unlike anything he’d ever seen. The pile of bodies stacked atop one another. The zombies on the road that looked like they’d been hit by napalm.
Pedro, as one of them.
But this…
He started to shake. He reached for his gun and then remembered he didn’t have one.
His heart raced. It raced because he understood now. Understood what this was. What it meant.
He had to get to Riley.
He had to warn them.
He had to—
Everything went black.
CHAPTER FOUR
They reached the section of the motorway they’d first crossed paths with the bikers at sunset.
James insisted they pushed on, but Riley wanted to stop. He’d made a promise. A promise to someone that when he came back here, he’d not just leave them behind to rot.
Now he just had to find Jamal’s body.
“He must be around here somewhere,” Jordanna said. She followed Riley, searched the bodies of the bikers that were untouched. A good sign. Meant there were no zombies around here.
Not yet.
The motorway was perfectly silent. That was something Riley could never get used to. Whenever they were on a motorway, he just expected everything to start up again out of the blue—cars flying down it, horns honking at him to get the hell off the road.
But it never happened. And Riley knew it was stupid to even think about it happening.
It was just one of those parts of reality that was hard to shake.
“I’d rather get to Birmingham tonight, if possible, man,” James called from the front of the armoured vehicle. “Been with you lot long enough to know I don’t wanna take my chances on the road much longer—”
“I’ll be a minute,” Riley said.
James sighed and disappeared back inside the vehicle.
The smell of gasoline from the vehicle was strong. It had been ever since Pedro had fixed the fuel filter. And that smell of gas, Riley knew it would forever remind him of Pedro.
Of the sacrifice he’d made for the rest of the group.
Riley kept on scanning the concrete. He swore Jamal’s body was around here somewhere. He didn’t know Jamal too well. He’d seen him back at the MLZ a few times. Knew him to nod at in the pub and say hi to.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was, he was one of their own. He’d given up the safety of the MLZ to escort Riley and the group to Birmingham. He’d lost his life, sacrificed himself for the cause, just like Pedro had.
They weren’t leaving another body stretched out on the concrete to become another part of the country’s morbid scenery.
They couldn’t leave Jamal to rot like they’d been forced to leave Pedro.
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up,” Jordanna said, as she dragged a body over—another body that turned out not to be Jamal’s.
Riley crouched down and checked another body himself. Not Jamal. “About what?”
“About Pedro and Jamal.”
“How can I not beat myself up? They came with me. They died because of me.”
“You’re right,” Jordanna said. “They came with you. We all did. And that was our decision. We’re here because we think it’s right to be here, Riley. You aren’t expected to be our bodyguard or anything like that. We knew the risk we were taking just leaving the MLZ. You have to just accept that.”
Riley didn’t say anything else. He turned over another body, checked it in the darkness. Not Jamal, again. Truth was, he was struggling to “just accept it.” And that was because of the elephant in the room—the cure running through his system. He’d seen the way the others looked at him. With hope, sure, but with scepticism, too.
He was just as hopeful but just as sceptical.
What if they got to Birmingham to find the place in tatters?
Or worse: what if they got to Birmingham to find out they could do nothing for him? That he’d just die and turn and die again?
The thoughts froze in his head when he saw Jamal’s body by the side of an abandoned green Fiat.
Riley gripped the lighter in his hand. “Over here,” he said.
Jordanna looked up from the body she was inspecting and nodded. She jogged to Riley, oil canister in hand. “Waste of oil, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
Jordanna poured the oil over Jamal’s body. Riley looked at the splattered brains on the road in front of him. The smearing of blood. Is this all life came to? Was this moment the one that defined Jamal? Because before the Dead Days, he had to have had a life, a family, people he loved and cared about.
But now …
This was all he was. All he’d become.
Splattered brains and shattered skull in the middle of the M56.
Riley had a hard time believing there was much of a purpose to anyone’s life when he faced up to that reality.
They were all just ants with their own little self-important journeys, their own little missions and goals, problems and setbacks.
But they were all going to die.
And they were all going to rot.
All curing the Apocalypsis virus did was delay the inevitability of death a little longer, kept the illusion of mortality strong for another ten years, another twenty years, until death struck and life ended.
He flicked the lighter as the smells of the oil filled his lungs and he thought about his parents. Thought about his mum and his dad over in wherever they were. America, he thought. But they liked to travel.
He wondered whether they were still alive. Whether perhaps, there was somewhere in the world that was safe. Some corner of the world that had been lucky. Sure—he hadn’t seen his parents properly for seven years—seeing them after trying to kill himself over a year ago didn’t really count with the blur he was in. Sure, he hadn’t been a great so
n to them. He hadn’t ever got on too well with his dad. His mum never seemed to be there for him.
But he saw the truth, now. His dad had tried to get on with him, but it was always Riley who’d pushed him away. His mum—she’d always tried her best to be happy and smiley and jolly, and every time, Riley had just snubbed her. So eventually she’d just given up. Given up, left Riley to his own devices, like any parent would do.
He listened to the silence, smelled the oil, tasted the salty tears on his lips and he lit the lighter again.
He dropped it on Jamal’s body.
Took a step back.
Let it burn.
He turned away from Jamal’s burning body, smelled the charred flesh. Burning him was the least he could do. The closest thing to a funeral. Because everyone deserved a send-off.
They had to deserve a send-off. Riley couldn’t believe that nothing had a purpose, nothing at all had any meaning.
They had to hold on to some kind of purpose, otherwise what was the point?
He felt something touch his hand. A warmth. Looked to his right and saw Jordanna. She half-smiled at him, the scar above her lip stretching with the move. She tightened her fingers around his as they walked away from the warmth of the fire in the cold of the early night. “We’ve all got your back. We’re all here for you.”
Riley nodded. He walked, Jordanna in hand, back to the armoured vehicle. “I know. I believe that. And I …”
He felt Jordanna’s fingers go limp in his.
And then he felt the weight of her body drifting away.
She tumbled to the road. Smacked her head right against the blood-soaked concrete. Her eyes were open. She was shaking. Drooling.
Just like Pedro had before he’d died.
“Someone!” Riley called. He turned Jordanna round onto her back, but it was no use. She kept on shaking and thrashing. He was convinced it had to be the combination of Pedro’s gunshot and head wound that had caused him to fit. But Jordanna … she had a light surface gunshot wound in her shoulder, sure, but nothing else.
And yet here she was, shaking and drooling on the concrete.
“Shit,” James said, as he climbed out of the vehicle. “The fuck’s up with her?”
“I … I don’t know,” Riley said. He tried to look into Jordanna’s eyes. Tried to get her to look back at him, but it was no use. There was nothing there. She was unconscious. Fitting. Blood dribbled down her top lip now.