Dead Days: Season Four (Dead Days Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 4)

by Ryan Casey

  “J—Jim. Jim Hall.”

  A bit of life sparked in Mr Fletch’s dead eyes. “And … and Jim is alive?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s bad there. Something happened there. But we found a cure. We found a cure and it’s … it’s coming to you. He’s coming to you. I promise I’m telling the truth.”

  Mr Fletch just looked at Chloë with those ghostly eyes. He seemed like he’d drifted out of his body and into another world completely, as he muttered and repeated Chloë’s words to himself.

  And then, after a few long seconds: “A cure, you say?”

  Chloë’s insides tensed up. She wasn’t sure how much to tell Mr Fletch. She just nodded.

  “Were you a part of the group in the military vehicle?” he asked.

  How did he know about that? Chloë nodded anyway.

  “Hmm,” he said. “A cure. That’s interesting. We’ll add it to the research list.”

  And then he turned his back on Chloë and walked up to the big mirror.

  Chloë tried to lean forward again but the chains around her wrists stopped her moving. “Wait.”

  “Oh I’m not going anywhere,” Mr Fletch said. He stood at the mirror. Stared into his grey eyes through the glass. “I’m staying right here. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  But the way Mr Fletch said those words made Chloë even more worried. She shook at the cuffs around her wrists some more. “Why do I have to be kept a prisoner?”

  Mr Fletch frowned again. His eyes met hers in the glass. He looked just as insulted as he had when Chloë had said the “F” word in front of him before. “You aren’t a prisoner. Never for a moment have you been a prisoner.”

  “But I’m—I’m chained up. And you won’t let me go.”

  Mr Fletch turned around and faced Chloë head on again. “You’re chained down for your own safety. And you’re staying here because the second you came through the doors of the BLZ, you volunteered yourself up to a system.”

  Chloë didn’t like the way he said “system.” “What … what sort of system? You shot me. Darted me. I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t—”

  “Quit the hysterics, child,” Mr Fletch said. His voice was loud and stern. “You don’t understand quite how lucky you are we found you. You don’t understand the efforts we’ve gone to these last few months to find a group of people willing to actually do something about the Influenza B/H3N4 that doesn’t involve Jim Hall’s method of sitting around in a lab twiddling his thumbs while the rest of his Living Zone lives under a blanket of false security.”

  “But Riley—”

  “And thanks to our research,” Mr Fletch interrupted, “thanks to all the methods and all the experiments and all the sacrifices, we’ve found something. Found a method. Made a breakthrough. Something that will tip the balance. Something that will end Influenza B/H3N4 and give humanity a real chance to start again.”

  He was smiling properly now. The most real smile Chloë had seen on his serious old face since she’d first set eyes on him.

  He turned around. Walked up to the mirror. Reached for a switch on the wall beside it “What you’re about to see may startle you initially. But I promise that, if you take the time to open your mind and understand, it will all make sense.”

  He lowered the switch.

  The mirror-glass lifted.

  It took Chloë a few moments to truly understand what she was looking at through the window opposite her, but when she did, she screamed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Six months ago …

  The Day of the Outbreak

  “So it’s true?”

  Jim Hall rubbed the sides of his head as he sat opposite Mr Fletch at the coffee table in central Birmingham. He looked paler than usual, which was quite something. He often looked pale as it was. He nodded. “It’s true.”

  Mr Fletch wasn’t sure how to feel upon learning that the Influenza B/H3N4 virus had found its way into the hands of thousands of medical professionals nationwide. That news had come just hours ago—hours after the first batch of the flu jabs were injected.

  The UK government had put all their efforts into withdrawing those dodgy batches, all their efforts into shutting down every medical practitioner in the country, but any efforts to contain were beyond them now.

  It was down to Plan B. It was always down to Plan B.

  “It still doesn’t feel real,” Jim Hall said.

  And Mr Fletch knew exactly what he meant. He looked around the café. Saw a smiling couple holding hands and giggling about something. Saw waitresses serving delicious-smelling coffee that Mr Fletch wished he could drink without getting an upset stomach. He saw college students, pensioners, all kinds of people inside this Starbucks at nine a.m. in the morning.

  People that would all be dead soon.

  Dead, or worse.

  “And yet here we are drinking coffee and kidding ourselves that if we don’t get to the LZs in the next few hours, we’ll just be one of the infected too.”

  Jim Hall sipped at his coffee. Mr Fletch noticed that he was shaking.

  “You read the documents. You know how long it takes to incubate. I’m enjoying my last damned coffee before the world goes to shit.”

  “Before Britain goes to shit,” Mr. Fletch interrupted.

  Jim Hall nodded, but it was a rather half-hearted nod. “Never left the country for a holiday. Britain is my world.”

  They finished up their drinks and left an extra large tip for the hostess. Because although there would be financial systems in place in the Living Zones, they wouldn’t involve the pound sterling. There would be new systems. Futuristic systems. Systems that the phoney government—the Tory-Lib Dem coalition—insisted Britain wasn’t ready for yet.

  Just a pity they weren’t ready for Influenza B/H3N4 either.

  They passed a widescreen television by the door on their way out of the busy, noisy coffee shop. There was a headline about dodgy flu jabs. A public service announcement. But Mr Fletch knew it was too late. Way too late.

  Influenza B/H3N4 only had to infect a handful of people in a handful of locations, and the country would collapse.

  The army, they were just people doing a job. People with families. Friends. Morals. The first thing they’d do is run back to their family.

  There was no fighting Influenza B/H3N4. Not yet.

  There was just raising the walls of the Living Zones and studying. Studying, until they found a breakthrough.

  Mr Fletch and Jim Hall stepped outside the Starbucks. Mr Fletch listened to the sounds of car brakes squeaking, felt the cool autumn air against his freshly-shaven face.

  “Not sure I’m ready for this,” Jim Hall said.

  “Not sure any of us are. But we do what we have to do.”

  “It’s okay you saying that. You’ve drawn a long straw. You get the best research facility. All I get is a bunch of people to look after. A fake world that I pretend’s normal. A dollhouse of extreme proportions.”

  Mr Fletch nodded. “Or the short straw, as I said last winter. You get to relax in safety while at the BLZ, we do our studies. We try to find some kind of cure.”

  Mr Fletch caught Jim Hall looking at him with narrowed eyes.

  “Do you have a problem?”

  Jim Hall opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head.

  “If you have a problem, it would be wise to address it now. This is the final time we’ll be meeting in the normal world.”

  Jim Hall moved out of the way for a cyclist. Tightened the orange and grey scarf around his neck. “You seem so certain.”

  “Certain of what?”

  “A cure.”

  Mr Fletch looked up at the buildings around him. In the distance, he could hear sirens. Probably just a routine accident. But soon, those sirens would flare up when Influenza B/H3N4 finally took control.

  And then the sirens would stop, and the only sirens would be the undead moans of the infected.

  “We’ll find something,�
� Mr Fletch said, holding out a hand to Jim Hall. “We just have to remember our limits. Remember who we are. We must not lose sight of that in the search for any cure.”

  Jim Hall reluctantly took Mr Fletch’s hand.

  They shook hands. Looked into one another’s eyes.

  “You should go,” Mr Fletch said, still holding Jim’s hand. “You don’t want to get caught in the chaos.”

  Jim Hall nodded. “I should,” he said. “I should.”

  He turned away and walked towards his blue Honda that was parked on the kerb outside the Starbucks.

  “Good luck,” Mr Fletch said. “And see you in another life.”

  Jim Hall opened the door of this car. Shook his head. “Bad choice of words, Fletchy. Bad choice of words.”

  He closed the door and started up his car.

  And then he drove away down the street and back up towards Manchester, where the walls of the Living Zone would be rising any moment.

  The first reported case of Apocalypsis came forty-five minutes later.

  The rest is history.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Quick! Let’s get out of here!”

  Riley ran as fast as his searing neck allowed him. He carried the heavy, research filled rucksack in his right hand. Behind him, James and Tamara jogged along carrying Jordanna’s body.

  The smell of the burning exhaust fumes grew stronger.

  The armoured vehicle would explode. Any second now, it would—

  Riley didn’t get the chance to speculate.

  He heard the blast a few moments before he felt it.

  It knocked him face first to the ground with a ball of immense heat and intense power. The sound of the explosion rattled through his skull. He heard James and Tamara shout out, watched as they fell over again, dropped Jordanna on the concrete.

  Riley rolled over. His head spun with the pain in his neck that had spread to his left shoulder. He looked back at the flaming armoured vehicle.

  He looked beyond it, expecting to see the “guardian angel” of a monster that had torn the flesh from his neck then left him.

  But it was gone.

  The monster was gone.

  And it had left behind the butchered remains of a hundred creatures.

  “Fuck,” James said. He held his back as he forced himself to his feet. He winced with pain as blood dripped between his teeth. “The fuck is it with you guys and explosions?”

  Tamara stood too. There was blood dripping from a scratch on the side of her left temple where she’d hit the ground. She, too, was wincing.

  “We’re gonna look a real sight hobbling along to the BLZ,” James said.

  Riley limped over to Jordanna. She was unconscious still. Her eyes were closed. He pressed his cold fingers against her neck. A pulse was still there, but only a light one.

  If they survived, they’d joke about how she slept through this whole shitty ordeal. She wouldn’t believe a thing about the monster that had bitten Riley; that had saved his life.

  “That … that thing,” James said. “Whatever it was, we can’t rely on it being around all the time to bail us out. And we can’t rely on it to be in a good mood when we see it again.”

  “It backed away from me,” Riley said. He touched the wound on his neck. It stung to do so, but the blood drooling from it was slowing down.

  “You think it had a last-minute moral crisis or somethin’?” James asked. “Think it fancied you?”

  “I think it … I think it thought I was a creature.”

  “Way to put yourself down,” James said, as he and Tamara struggled to lift Jordanna’s body.

  “I think it’s the Apocalypsis inside me. The Apocalypsis that’s taking over me slowly. I think that monster thought I was a creature. And then I … I think it realised I wasn’t. So it let me go.”

  “It chomped the fuck out of your neck, pal,” James said, pointing at Riley’s neck. “Probably gave you another blast of the old infection from its manky, infected-drenched teeth. Hardly the most merciful of beasts.”

  Riley knew James was right. The monster had bitten him in the neck. It had bitten a load of creatures after biting him, so hell knows how many creatures it had bitten before him. “We have to push on,” was all he could say. He knew his time might be numbered, but he had to get to the BLZ. He’d come so far. They all had.

  “Amen to that,” James said. “But we need a ride. We’re still about a half hour away from the damned place. Which makes it just over an hour on foot. Which makes it two hours carrying a bloody body and a bloody heavy rucksack. Which makes it three hours crippled to—”

  “Then we find a ride,” Riley said.

  “I like your logic.”

  They spent ten minutes or so searching for a vehicle. It dragged like an hour though—dragged with the pain in Riley’s neck, with the heat of the spring sun blazing down on them, stronger than usual.

  Riley couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at the mass of executed undead. The smell of crisp, burned skin drifted in the breeze. The creatures were so butchered that some of them had become one with the concrete in a mass of fleshy mush.

  It was eerie. And eerie was never good.

  He thought about Chloë and Tiffany. Hoped to God they were okay. But fuck—what good had hoping to God ever done him? Not just since the world collapsed, but his entire life?

  He’d spent way too many years hoping to God.

  And if this was “God’s test,” then Riley was taking the fail grade and moving on to something more productive.

  “Here—this looks stable enough.”

  James was crouched beside a white minivan. The door was open, and there was clearly some blood on the seats. But blood was something that Riley was used to. They were all used to a bit of blood.

  As long as there was enough room in the minivan to fit them all, they’d be fine.

  And if there wasn’t, well. Riley remembered a fond memory where he, Pedro, Anna and a kid called Aaron all stuffed inside a Smart Car on the Morecambe promenade.

  Riley was the only one still alive of that group.

  “Keys in the ignition, too,” James said. He turned the keys. Started up the van. “Looks like there’s a bitta fuel in the tank. Enough to get us to Birmingham. Hell, Riley. Maybe your guardian angel is shining a bright light at us after all.”

  Riley walked up to the back of the vehicle and put the cure documents down on the ground beside him. He lifted his pistol out of his pocket. He didn’t have much ammo left, so he didn’t want to waste any. He pointed it at the back door of the van. Put his hand on the black handle. Turned and lowered it.

  When he pulled the back doors of the mini van open, he stumbled backwards with the sound.

  There were six creatures in there. Two men, two women, and two unidentifiable. They were all cuffed to the metal bars lining the van. The smell was absolutely atrocious. Flies buzzed around and flew out at Riley.

  “Anything back there?” James asked.

  Riley covered his mouth and put his gun away. He lifted a small pocketknife out of his pocket and stuffed it in between the eyes of the man closest to him. “Just a small hurdle,” he said.

  He stabbed the second creature and then the third creature in the head, moved on to the ones on the other side, and that’s when he lost his balance and wobbled towards them.

  He put a foot down just before he fell into the jaws of the struggling creatures. His eyes filled with colours—a head-rush that always followed dizziness. He could hear a slight screeching sound in his head. The remnants of the weird noise he’d heard earlier—the noise that had exploded the heads of all those creatures. The noise that he was still struggling to get his head around and understand.

  He stabbed the remaining three creatures in the head, silenced them, but did nothing to silence the flies.

  But then as he turned around, he saw the men in the light blue outfits watching him with guns all pointed in his direction.

  There was something part
icularly eerie about the way they were standing there. As still as statues, like they’d been watching for days.

  Riley’s heart raced. He stood still. He had to get to the back doors of the van. Close them. They had to get away from here.

  “Finished back there or d’you need a hand?” James called.

  Riley just kept quiet.

  Kept his focus on these men with guns.

  And then he lunged towards the back doors of the van and swung them shut.

  Before the doors closed completely, he heard a few little blasts from the men and before he had time to figure out what they were, he felt a sharpness in his neck, his arms, his chest.

  He slumped onto his knees. He could feel the life drifting out of him. He tried to call out for James or Tamara, tell them to get the hell out of here, but his mouth was weak and his speech was slurred.

  He reached out to close the doors as the men in the blue uniforms got closer.

  He missed the handle.

  Slipped out of the back of the minivan and fell face-first on the road.

  At that moment, Riley didn’t care about anything. He didn’t care about the cure. He didn’t care about the creatures. He didn’t care about the monster that had bitten him.

  All he cared about was the warmth that was spreading through his body.

  Like sinking into a hot, bubbly bath …

  But the last thing he saw before he drifting off into unconsciousness was the BLZ logo on the blue uniform of the man standing over him.

  He didn’t have the strength left in him to panic.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Manchester Living Zone

  Present Day

  Jim Hall listened to the gunshots and the cries outside his top storey apartment block and hoped Riley and the group were at Birmingham already.

  He looked outside his window. Saw the streets of the Manchester Living Zone filled to the brim with infected. The Apocalypsis had spread fast. But of course, he knew that. It always spread fast.

  A serious outbreak in the MLZ was always just a matter of time.

  He’d drawn the short straw. He was right about that all along.