by Casey, Ryan
Nothing they couldn’t handle, or run away from at least.
“Had time to properly think about the transmission yet?” Newbie asked.
Hayden’s stomach sank. He knew Newbie was always going to break the ice eventually, he was just hoping it wouldn’t be when they were out checking the old traps and placing new ones. Newbie seemed calm and composed enough, but he was a former hired killer. He’d killed people before. Hayden didn’t want to push his temper over the edge.
Besides, he was twice Hayden’s size.
Or more.
“I … I just think we should all sit down and discuss it,” Hayden said, remembering Sarah’s surprising reluctance on pursuing the source of the radio signal. “Discuss it properly, not just on a whim.”
“Have you told the others?”
Hayden didn’t like the way Newbie peered at him. He wanted to lie, and the old coward inside him probably would’ve lied. But he had to be honest. Truthful. Besides, what problem was it if he had told Sarah anyway? “Yes. I told Sarah when we were out burning the bodies. She said—”
“So you’ve had the chance to poison her against moving on.” He nodded. Half-smiled. “Nice one.”
Hayden felt his insides tighten up. “No. I just told her it as it was.”
“And what did she have to say?”
Hayden looked around at the trees. Again, he swore he saw movement way in the distance, but the movement was like the floaters you got in your vision sometimes. When you weren’t focusing, they were so ever-present. When you tried to focus, they slipped out of view.
“She … she said she thought it’d be better if we all discussed it too—”
“Bullshit. Try again. What did she say?”
Hayden stepped through a slushy section of the grass as the bare trees around them got thicker. “She … she’s not sure. But hear me out—she’s just worried about what happened to Frank. Worried it’s some kind of trap.”
Newbie brushed aside some branches scratching against his cheeks. “Hayden, when the hell will you see it? This is the trap. This is the trap that we’re in right now. Living this way. Barely fucking living at all. This is the trap. This is what the military want. Don’t you see that?”
Hayden was surprised by two things. One, to hear Newbie swear. He didn’t seem to swear much. Probably the least of them all.
But there was something else, too.
“Why the sudden change in tune?” Hayden asked.
Newbie lowered his head. He searched the leaf-covered ground for the trap they’d placed yesterday. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You—you were with me. With me on this bunker. On how it wasn’t such a bad place. How it’s secure at the very least. And now you’ve heard a few crackly words on a radio signal telling you to go to Warrington, you’re crazy about leaving. What is it? Why the sudden change?”
At a glance, it looked like Newbie was still searching the ground. But on closer inspection, Hayden could see that Newbie wasn’t really staring at anything in particular. He was shaking. Something wasn’t right.
“We’ve known each other over a week now. We’re living together until … well, until whenever the end of this infection is. You’ve told us things and we’ve all told you things. Why are you so desperate to leave all of a sudden? What’s … what’s in Warrington?”
Hayden saw something in Newbie’s eyes when he looked up at him. Tears.
Tears in Newbie’s eyes. Something that definitely didn’t come lightly.
He leaned back and rested his arms on his knees. He stared at the frosty grass in front of him. “Seven years ago, I … my ex-wife won custody of my kid. Amy, she was called. Only three when she went to live with her mum. And the courts, they … they accused me of being violent. Having a nasty temper. Spreading venom and saying I mouthed off about her mum. So … so Amy couldn’t come stay at my house anymore. She couldn’t visit her own damned dad’s house. I … I had to make do with contact centres or damned McDonalds trips. And I couldn’t hack it. It … it just wasn’t right.”
Hayden listened to the words pour out of Newbie’s mouth. He got the impression they weren’t words Newbie had uttered very often.
“So I gave up. I gave my own damned daughter up. Sent her birthday and Christmas money but I wonder whether her mum even gave her those. Martha could be poison when she wanted to be. But … but shit. She’ll be ten now. Nearly starting big school.”
Hayden crouched beside Newbie. The ground was cold on his already cold ass. “And she’s in Warrington?”
Newbie nodded just once. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I just … I couldn’t stop thinking about her when the infection broke out. Couldn’t stop wondering and worrying and hoping and praying. And … and then I heard the signal. I heard the signal and it gave me hope, y’know?”
He looked at Hayden now, and Hayden understood the pain behind his eyes. He’d felt that pain himself when his mum had called him and begged for help. He’d heard she was alive, and after that point, he had no choice but to try and save her.
“I didn’t want to say because I don’t like weighing other people down in my own emotional baggage. But now you know. I have to go to Warrington. With or without you all.”
The final words hit Hayden hard. Because Newbie said them with defeat. And in truth, it was probably defeat that was well placed. There would be a reluctance to move on to Warrington on a whim. And yes, it was awful of Hayden because Newbie had followed him when he’d gone to Preston to save his family.
But things had changed. Circumstances had changed. Their understanding of the dangers of the outside world had changed.
“We’ll talk about it,” Hayden said. “All of us. As soon as we get back, we’ll talk about it.”
Hayden knew from the half-smile Newbie gave him that he understood what he was saying. The radio transmission wasn’t enough to go on. It was speculative at best. Suicide at worst.
“Hold up,” Hayden said. He stood up and walked over to where the trees thinned. He crouched down at the edge of the woods and lifted up the plastic bottle trap that they’d lain yesterday.
Inside, a grey squirrel was rustling around trying to escape.
Newbie smiled and walked over to Hayden. “What’d I tell you? These traps are foolproof.”
Hayden looked at the squirrel, looked at the fear in its beady black eyes, and he felt sympathy for it. Survival of the fittest had multiplied since the fall of society. “Just got to be careful not to let it go—”
“Wait. What’s that?”
Newbie’s voice diverted Hayden’s attention from the squirrel. He was squinting through the trees to the dip in the hill. Hayden looked too, and he swore he saw movement.
Only this time, the movement didn’t slip from his vision when he focused on it.
Newbie and Hayden walked slowly through the thinning trees to the edge of the hill. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to. The cold wind blew stronger against the trees. The smell of the burned bodies earlier drifted into their nostrils.
They stopped at the edge of the hill.
Stared down the hill.
Hayden couldn’t quite understand. He couldn’t quite comprehend.
But he dropped the trap to the floor and the squirrel scrambled free.
And none of them even tried to stop it fleeing.
Not with what was ahead of them.
At the bottom of the hill.
Heading their way.
Eight
“We … we need to get back to the bunker. We need to let the others know. Hayden.”
Hayden heard Newbie’s words. But he couldn’t focus on them. He couldn’t comprehend them. He was too focused on what was heading up the hill, heading towards the trees, heading towards the bunker—towards their safe haven.
“Hayden, we can’t stand around here. We have to let Sarah and Clarice know. And we have to get away from here.”
Hayden stepped back over the
frosty grass. He kept his eyes on the things approaching. The stench of rotting was strong, the cold wind making it even more intense. The sound of them was unlike anything Hayden had heard, too. A thousand gasps, all echoing over the landscape.
He blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Tried to make sense of what was marching up the hill.
It didn’t make any more sense when he saw it this time, but he understood what it meant.
The fields at the bottom of the hill were filled with undead. They were clearly undead because of the way they were staggering along, the way some of them at the front of the pack jogged up the hill and in Hayden and Newbie’s direction. There were so many of them. More than Hayden had ever seen in one single place.
Shit. More than Hayden had ever seen put together.
Coming for him. For his friends. For his sister, and for the bunker.
He turned and jogged back towards the bunker. His legs were like jelly. As he moved, he couldn’t avoid the sounds of the echoing groans drifting up the hill, drifting towards him. He didn’t know what to do. Where to go. The fences of the bunker had to hold. They just had to lay low. Keep quiet.
The fences would hold strong.
Hayden and Newbie ran through the grass and saw the bunker close by. Hayden just wanted to get back. Back to his sister. He had to know she was okay. He had to be there for her. They had to fight through this, one way or another.
Hayden was so focused on getting back to the bunker that he didn’t see the three zombies approaching through the trees on the left until they were clutching at the sleeves of his coat.
He swung around at them. Pushed the one grasping him away and sent it crashing into the two behind it, and then he kept on running, kept on moving towards the bunker. It seemed like the nightmare he had where the stairs felt like they were stretching further above him. He was tired. Exhausted. He wasn’t sure how much further he could run, only that he had to.
He had to, because he had to get back to Clarice and Sarah.
He had to get back.
Hayden and Newbie emerged from the edge of the trees. Hayden could see both Clarice and Sarah in the grounds in front of the bunker, but they hadn’t seen him yet. He wanted to shout, but he knew shouting wasn’t a good idea because it would only draw the mass of zombies right to their doorstep.
He pushed the gate aside with shaking hands and noticed that the padlock was broken from earlier. Shit. They hadn’t had time to replace it. It wouldn’t hold. The doors in the bunker wouldn’t hold.
Shit shit shit.
Clarice and Sarah saw Hayden and Newbie when they rushed inside the yard of the bunker. Sarah smiled, Clarice frowned. “Guys, what’s—”
“We need to get out of here,” Newbie said, panting. He turned and looked at the trees. So too did Hayden. No movement. No sign of the oncoming mass of zombies yet.
But they were coming.
They’d be here for them soon.
“Wait, slow down,” Sarah cut in. “What’s going on?”
“At the bottom of the hill,” Hayden said, struggling to catch his breath. “There’s …” He tried to put what he’d seen into words. “Zombies.”
“We can handle—”
“More zombies than we’ve ever seen,” Hayden said. “I mean … hundreds. Probably thousands. All—all together as one big group. All coming this way.”
Clarice frowned. She had a bemused look on her face like she couldn’t quite take her brother’s words seriously. “How … what …”
“I don’t know how, I don’t know what and I don’t know why. But we need to get inside the bunker. We … we need to get inside the rear exit tunnel. We need to hide down there and wait for them to pass.”
Newbie turned and frowned at Hayden. “You can’t be serious.”
Hayden could hear the footsteps of the oncoming zombies getting closer. “We … we can’t leave this place. We can’t give it up. We have to hide.”
Newbie’s eyes went red. His lips quivered. “After everything we just spoke about. After everything I just told you.”
“Whatever we do, we can’t frigging stand around here,” Sarah said. “Into the main bunker. Gather our stuff and—”
“There’s no time to gather our stuff,” Newbie said sharply. “Not a moment of damned time to gather our stuff. They’ll be here any second. And we don’t want to be trapped in this place when they get here.”
Clarice looked at Hayden, waiting for his response. Sarah wandered towards the bunker door. The smell of decaying corpses got stronger.
“Hayden,” Newbie said. He stared at Hayden intensely. “You saw them. You stood beside me on the edge of that hill and you saw them. There were hundreds of them. Thousands, like you said. Don’t be stupid here. We need to leave. We need to get as far away from here as possible while we still have the chance.”
Hayden didn’t respond to Newbie. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. Because he knew deep down that Newbie was right. Holding onto this place was stupid. Reckless. Suicidal. And sure, leaving the bunker complex was all those things, but a little less so than sitting here like cattle waiting for the slaughter.
Unless they hid, and hid fast.
“Quick,” Hayden said. “We need to get to the tunnel. We … we decide what our next step is down there.”
The four of them jogged to the entrance of the bunker. Hayden didn’t once turn around. He didn’t want to risk looking at one of the zombies, didn’t want an undead corpse staring back at him. It was like playing hide and seek with his older sister as a kid. He was convinced that if he squeezed his eyes shut, he was more disguised in some way. Didn’t matter if his foot was sticking out or a bit of his hair was on show, he just had to squeeze his eyes and the luck of the game would be on his side.
Only he knew now that was bullshit. That was fantasy.
Reality wasn’t a game of frigging hide and seek.
They rushed inside the door of the bunker. Hayden swung around, looked at Clarice as she got closer to the door, sprinting as fast as she could. She didn’t look scared, just … bemused. Bemused, like she always did in horrible situations. Like life was one big cruel joke and she couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of it.
Hayden grabbed her hand when she reached the door and pulled her inside the bunker. He pushed the metal door shut, but it wouldn’t close properly, another screwed-up lock. Just what they needed right now.
He thought about sliding a table in front of it or something. Not that a desk would do much to stop the progression of a thousand zombies, but it’d give him more peace of mind.
But there wasn’t any time for peace of mind.
“Hayden. Come on. We need to get out of here.”
Hayden turned. He saw Newbie standing by the rusty grey door to the dark tunnel. He was looking at him with fear, or was it disappointment?
Or happiness at finally getting a valid enough excuse to push on to Warrington?
Hayden started to walk towards the tunnel door.
And then he saw the shadows cutting through the light on the tiles in front of him.
He held his breath. Turned around. Looked through the rectangular ventilation hatch that the group found more useful as a window.
The mass of zombies was right outside the fences.
Pressing themselves up against the metal.
The fences creaked under their mass of rotting weight, and the undead got closer to the unlocked gate, so so close …
Nine
Hayden tried to blot the sounds of the undead groans echoing through the tunnel from his mind as he walked into the darkness.
Clarice, Newbie and Sarah walked with him. They were all holding weapons of choice—the sharpened metal pipes, as well as an individual weapon each. Newbie had an axe. Sarah had a long blade. Clarice had a wrench.
Hayden clasped his hands around the mallet and walked further into the unknown.
“So we’re leaving this place,” Newbie whispered, his voice echoing against the claustrophobia-induci
ng brick walls. “I’m guessing that much is settled right now.”
“Let’s just … let’s just make our way through here as quietly as we can without tearing each other’s throats out,” Sarah said. “We’re okay for now. But we don’t know how long ‘for now’ is gonna last.”
Hayden and Clarice walked close to one another. He couldn’t hold her hand because they were both carrying two weapons each. But he felt her warmth beside him. Heard her shaky breathing contrasting the grunting, the gasping, the rattling of the fences that surrounded the bunker.
He was here for Clarice. It didn’t matter how weak or how strong or how whatever she was, he was her big brother and he was here for her. And that’s what mattered.
Newbie coughed a little as they walked further into the dark pit of the tunnel. The temperature seemed to dip completely in here—which said a lot considering how damned cold it was outside. The smell of damp was strong, so strong that it made Hayden want to heave. His stomach churned with hunger, the thought of a spicy curry or spaghetti Bolognese teasing his senses, but his appetite was barely present as the taste of sweat lingered on his tongue.
“Swear I don’t remember this tunnel being this long,” Clarice whispered.
“That’s ’cause you weren’t hiding from zombies when you last came this way,” Hayden said. “It … it can have that kind of effect on a person.”
But Clarice was right. The tunnel was longer than Hayden remembered it being too. In a way, that was a good thing. It meant that the zombies would have some work to do if they were to reach them.
But in another way, it was a bad thing. Because like in his nightmares, Hayden couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter how far he ran, how much he tried to hide, the monsters of the dark would always catch up with him.
“If we’re gonna stop, now might be a good time,” Sarah said.
“We aren’t stopping,” Newbie said. “We get out of this tunnel while the infected are surrounding the fences. We get the hell away from this bunker complex, preferably before they find the entrance to this tunnel.”