by Casey, Ryan
“Then we just stay put here. Stay put in the cold and the damp. Stay put with no food. Then we die.”
“I thought you were with me on this place?”
Newbie looked at the radio. His eyes had gone even more bloodshot. “Yeah. Yeah, I was. I was. Until …”
He didn’t finish what he was saying.
A loud, blood-curdling scream echoed from outside.
Hayden’s sister’s scream.
Five
When he heard his sister’s scream, Hayden sprinted out of the comms room and through the hallway.
His heart raced. All his mind could focus on was that cry. It sounded just like it had in his nightmare. The nightmare where Mum and Dad and Annabelle and Clarice were all there, laughing at him, all bitten, all dead.
He ran into the main bunker, slipped around on the damp floor and raced towards the ajar door. He heard another shout. A shout for help. Somewhere behind him, he could hear Newbie following. He was saying things too, but Hayden couldn’t work figure the words out.
All he could focus on was his sister. Making sure she was okay.
Making sure the images of blood spurting out of her savaged neck didn’t come true.
He grabbed one of the sharpened metal pipes by the door. His stomach tensed. He almost didn’t want to see his sister just in case something terrible had happened.
Be there for her, Hayden. Don't fail her. She’s all you’ve got left. The one thing you have left to protect. Don’t fail her.
He ran out into the greyness of winter.
Held his breath.
Both Sarah and Clarice were beyond the fences. They were surrounded by undead. Fallen undead in the most part, but for three of them that were cornering them. Clarice’s sharpened pipe had wedged into the eye of one of the undead, and Sarah was busy trying to hold off one that was coming at her.
Hayden tensed his fists around the pipe and ran down the grassy verge towards the fence opening. A million thoughts flooded his mind. Why the hell were they beyond the fences? He’d specifically told Clarice so many times that she wasn’t to venture beyond the fences. Cleaning the fallen undead was Hayden and Newbie’s job, and sometimes Sarah’s. But not Clarice’s. It was too much of a risk for her. She wasn’t as strong as the others. Wasn’t as adept at killing the zombies.
The risk of losing her was way too high.
“Hey!” Hayden shouted as he ran down the bottom of the grassy verge and approached the gate. “Look here! Look here!”
The zombies lifted their wobbly necks. Their glassy eyes drifted in the direction of Hayden’s voice, but it wasn’t enough to stop them approaching both Sarah and Clarice.
Hayden grabbed the gates and tried to pull them open but … but shit. They were still padlocked. How the hell had they got outside if the gates were still padlocked? The vent at the back of the bunker? Shit. Sneaky shits.
Hayden rattled at the padlock then realised he wasn’t doing much good.
“I can get the key,” Newbie said. “I—I can get the—”
“No frigging time,” Hayden said. He lifted the pipe and swung it at the padlock as hard as he could. It wasn’t the toughest of padlocks so it had to break away with enough force.
But one blow wasn’t enough.
He pulled the pipe back and went to swing it at the padlock again.
Clarice tumbled over onto her back.
The zombie standing over her reached out its filthy hands, two of its fingers missing, the remnants of gnawed bone poking through the ends.
Hayden swung at the padlock.
Harder than ever.
It cracked away. Split and hit the ground.
The gate was open.
Hayden pushed it aside. Rushed out into the land beyond—the land beyond that always felt so uncharted, so unpredictable, so dangerous—and he turned to face the zombie that was standing over Clarice.
He pulled the pipe back and swung it at the back of its neck even harder than he’d cracked the padlock.
He heard a thunk as the metal connected with bone. Watched the zombie slip to its knees, its hands holding on to Clarice’s thighs.
Hayden pulled the pipe back again. He wasn’t in control of himself, his thoughts, his anything.
Just swinging at the zombie.
Putting it down.
Because it wasn’t taking his last living family member away.
It wasn’t taking the last person he loved away.
He shoved the sharp end of the pipe into the back of the zombie’s neck. He split through the rotting grey flesh and pierced the muscle, which was like the insides of an under ripe orange. He kept on pressing as blood spurted out, kept on pressing and shoving the sharp end of the pipe inside until he felt bone, and then he kept on pressing until he felt the bone crack and then the zombie went still.
It landed at Clarice’s feet. She shuffled away. Her grey jogging bottoms were smeared with blood. Sweat covered her face, dripped from her dark hair.
“Shit,” Sarah said. Hayden noticed Newbie had helped her take down the zombie that she was struggling with. “Thanks for the help. We could’ve handled them but—”
“What the actual hell were you doing out here?” Hayden shouted.
The release of the words took him by surprise. He reached down and dragged his sister up. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he looked in her eyes, his jaw quivering, his entire body shaking. He could see the way she was looking at him with narrowed eyes, too. Narrowed, curious eyes. Eyes that looked at Hayden in a way that told him she didn’t recognise him.
“It’s okay,” Sarah said. “We had a close call. We—”
“I told you not to come out here,” Hayden shouted. “I specifically frigging told you not to leave the bunker grounds in case exactly frigging this happened.”
“Hey,” Clarice said. She pushed her brother back. “Don’t shout in my face. I appreciate you helping me.”
“Just lay off her,” Newbie said.
Hayden turned and squared up to Newbie. “She’s my sister. My frigging family. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
Newbie lifted his heavy hands. Pressed them against Hayden’s chest. He stared down at Hayden. “Don’t. You don’t want to fight here. Believe me.”
Hayden backed away and turned to his sister. He stepped over the remains of the dead they’d been burning and grabbed his sister’s skinny arm again. “You stay inside in future. You stay—”
“Oh piss off, Hayden.”
Clarice’s words surprised Hayden. He’d never heard her swear at him. They never argued, not really. They didn’t even bicker much as kids, probably because they were bound together by the collective loss of their older sister.
“I’m just looking out for—”
“I don’t know what frigging guilt complex you have going on inside your head, but you’re right to be feeling it.”
Sarah stepped up to Clarice. “Hun, leave it.”
“No, I won’t leave it,” she said, pushing Sarah’s hand away. She looked Hayden right in his eyes. “All my late teens I’ve had to deal with disappointment after disappointment from you, bro. I’ve had to go through things alone because you were too damned lazy to show up. I’ve had to struggle through my exams, sleep on park benches because I was too scared to go home drunk to Mum and Dad, all because I didn’t have a brother there I could rely on.”
“Don’t you dare blame your drink and drug problems on me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of blaming them on you. But the fact is, you could have been there, Hay. And not just for me. You could’ve been there when Dad needed help retiling the kitchen. You could’ve been there when Mum had a seizure and needed some extra company in A&E.”
“A seizure? When did she—”
“Exactly, Hayden. Exactly. So whatever guilt problems or responsibility bullshit you’ve got going on, don’t take them out on me. I stepped out of these fences. I took that risk. That was my bad. But it’s not for you to criticise
like I’m some kind of disobedient child.”
She turned and walked back through the gates at the front of the bunker.
Then, she stopped. Turned around. Looked at Hayden with tearful eyes. “I don’t know exactly what happened in that bedroom with Mum and Dad. I don’t envy what you had to do. But you stepped up. Whatever you had to do, you stepped up. But this man I’m seeing now … I’m seeing nothing more than a coward. A controlling coward. Don’t be that man, brother. Don’t be that person. You’ve isolated enough people in your lifetime to know when to stop.”
She turned and walked up the grassy verge towards the bunker.
Hayden watched her disappear, and although he’d saved her, he saw her drifting further and further away, just like everyone involved with him did eventually.
Six
Hayden gathered the fallen bodies of the zombies and set them on fire a few hundred metres away from the bunker.
He didn’t like being out here on his own. The leafless branches of the trees scraped together and made noises like groans, voices. And there was the knowledge that zombies walked these woods. They had to do to reach the bunker in the first place.
But the undead had to be burned. If they didn’t burn them, there was a strong possibility their rotting bodies would harbour and pass on some nasty diseases.
And if not, it still made sense to burn the bodies because it was the only way of truly ensuring the undead stayed dead. It took neck damage to deal with them. But sometimes the neck damage was difficult. Sometimes they had to be burned away completely before truly stopping them, and even then their fingers or toes kept on twitching way after their skin and muscle had crumbled to ashes.
Hayden dropped the match on the pile of six bodies in the middle of the open area. It was far away enough from the trees that there wouldn’t be much risk of a forest fire. Or shit—maybe he was just making that up as he went along. There was a lot of that, now. In a world where everyone was adapting to new ways, there was a lot of improvisation. It was working okay for them so far, but Hayden didn’t want to curse their chances.
Hayden stepped back and watched as the flames pummelled out of the pile of bodies. He looked at the faces of the dead go up in smoke. If he closed his eyes, he could trick himself that the crackling and bursting of the skin were just logs on an open fire. That the smell of burning meat was nothing more than sausages and burgers at a barbecue.
But he could never fool himself for long.
He stepped further back from the bodies, all of which he’d spent the morning dragging down here away from the bunker himself. He thought about what Clarice had said to him. All that crap about him not being there for her when she really needed him. At first, he’d found it a bit unappreciative considering he’d just saved her life. But was she right? Was he only here for her now because of the guilt he felt for letting her and their parents down in the past?
No. Of course he wasn’t. Of course that wasn’t true.
But a part of it, just a small part of it, ignited a spark of recognition deep inside Hayden.
“Not still moping, are you?”
Hayden swung around. “Shit,” he said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
Sarah smiled. She stretched some torn leather gloves over her hands and rubbed them as the fire of bodies raged in front of them. “I dunno. It’s pretty funny. And fun doesn’t come cheap these days.”
They stood next to one another in the warmth of the fire. Hayden felt wrong just stood here. Warming himself up in the decaying, burning corpses of innocent people—people who had been living normal lives just over a week ago. Men. Women. Children. Dads. Mums. Grandparents.
“Strange, isn’t it,” Sarah said.
“What is?”
She rubbed her hands. “It’s kind of like a twisted circle of life. From fully fleshed people to nothing but disease-ridden fuel to give the fortunate us a bit of temporary warmth. Have you spoken to Clarice?”
Sarah’s question threw Hayden off. He started to turn around.
“Wait,” Sarah said. “Just … just wait. We’re grown adults. We can have a civil discussion that doesn’t involve adolescent foot-stomping.”
Hayden felt like answering her back or mimicking her, but he didn’t want to prove her right from the off.
“She cares about you. Your sister. She’s very grateful you’re here for her. That you’re helping keep her safe.”
“With no thanks to you,” Hayden said.
“We went out to clear the bodies because that’s what Clarice wanted to do. I wasn’t sure, but she was eager to help out.”
“Then why didn’t you try and stop her?”
“Because it’s not my duty to stop her, Hayden. And it isn’t your duty to stop her either. She’s a twenty-year-old adult. A grown up, just like us. And she can make her own decisions. Sounds like she’s been forced into being tough for a while now, too.”
“Thanks for that. Just sprinkle a little more salt in the wound on a topic you have no idea about, will you?”
“I’m not trying to tell you how to look after your own sister. I’m not telling you how to go about your lives. But I am telling you that you have to loosen your grip. Because she just wants to help. She wants to contribute. She wants to be a part of what we’ve got going on here instead of some … some charity case.”
Hayden covered his mouth with his sleeve as the fumes of the burning bodies got stronger. Branches of trees whistled and danced in the wind, and every few seconds, Hayden swore he saw movement beyond them. “You saw how she was. She needed saving and bailing out right away. She’s … she’s not tough like you.”
“None of us are tough. I remember when we first picked you up. Vividly remember the stench of piss coming from you, the tears in your eyes. And we’re all the same. We’re all just scared little kids who’ve woken up in a horrible new world without a tit to suckle on. We’ve just got to figure out how to crawl as comfortably as we can before it all catches up with us.”
Hayden didn’t want to accept Sarah’s words, but he knew deep down they were right. Something else was niggling at him too. Something he couldn’t keep hidden for much longer. “Newbie found … found a transmission.”
“He found a what?”
“A radio signal. Some safe haven calling all people to wander on down there. Somewhere near Warrington, so not even that far away. He … was telling me about it just before you got attacked. But yeah. We might have somewhere.”
Hayden watched as Sarah’s eyebrows raised. He knew how keen she was on getting out of the confines of the bunker. He knew how eager she was to find somewhere new, somewhere safer and more adept to housing the four of them.
“What do you think about it?” she asked.
Hayden wasn’t sure whether to be honest or what being honest even meant anymore. “I … I dunno. I just don’t have a good feeling. I know that won’t surprise you. But I just think it seems too … too easy. Like, everything since the undead started walking has been a struggle. And a mythical safe haven that just so happens to be thirty miles from here? It just seems iffy to me. And I can’t help but keep on thinking of Frank. What the military did to him. And what the military did to the whole of Smileston and other cities, too.” He raised his hands, which shook through a combination of cold and hunger. “So yeah. Call me tin hat brigade or cynical or whatever. Can’t help but feel that way. Shall we head back?”
Sarah looked at him for a few moments. She didn’t say a word, as Hayden walked away from the smouldering fire, coughing as the ashes of the dead tickled his chest.
“I think you’re probably right, y’know,” she said.
Hayden frowned. “About what?”
“About this safe place in Warrington. I think you’re probably right to be cautious. I know I’ve made my position perfectly clear in the past but … maybe a bit of cautiousness isn’t such a bad thing after all.”
“Wow,” Hayden said. “Didn’t expect that from you. Now just
to convince Clarice and Newbie to stay put at the five-star delight that is Hotel Bun-keur.”
Sarah snorted and shook her head. “You really aren’t funny.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“The same reason people laugh at Alan Partridge. The key word being ‘at’ there.”
“I’ll take it,” Hayden said. “Just about.”
“Please just … just lay off your sister a bit. You can’t wrap her in cotton wool. The sooner you understand you aren’t solely responsible for her, the better.”
Hayden didn’t respond to Sarah. Because he disagreed—he did feel solely responsible for her. And maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was some pent up long-standing feelings of inadequacy.
Whatever it was, it was going to keep Clarice from danger.
Sarah and Hayden walked back up the frosty hill towards the bunker as the pile of bodies crackled and hissed in the flames.
They didn’t see them coming.
Not yet.
Seven
To Hayden’s disappointment, he didn’t get to stay in the “safe confines” of the bunker long before he was out in the treacherous wild again.
He walked across the grassy hill with a fresh trap in hand. It was an idea of Newbie’s—an empty plastic bottle with a small bit of food inside. A little window was cut into the side of the bottle, which small animals could crawl in through but struggled to get out of.
In theory, anyway. The traps had only really been successful once, and even then they’d only managed to catch a mouse with barely enough meat on it to feed a small kid, let alone four fully grown adults.
Newbie walked beside him. They hadn’t said much since their little disagreement back in the comms room was interrupted by Clarice and Sarah. Their footsteps both crunched against the frozen ground. The sun was low but there was a gradual refreshing warmth to it, a welcome change to the ice cold they’d grown used to. The trees blew in the breeze, which kept on distracting Hayden.
But there was nothing beyond them. He was just being paranoid.