Dead Days [Season 11]

by Casey, Ryan

  He didn’t know what to think. He’d watched Alison fall. Watched her take a blade to the neck.

  But she was here.

  She was standing above him.

  Her body drenched with bright, shining light.

  “You need to wake up, Riley,” she said. “You need to get away. You need to get away while you still have the chance. Because you haven’t turned, Riley. You haven’t turned and Rhubi hasn’t turned. Which means you—”

  The door opened, and Mum and Dad walked inside.

  Riley wasn’t sure how long he’d been in this bed. But he knew everything that had happened now. He’d come to terms with what he’d done. What he’d tried to do.

  End his life.

  End it all.

  And the strangest thing about it?

  He didn’t think he was “depressed” per se.

  He didn’t have the attitude that there was nothing left to live for, or feel like his life was in disarray.

  He just didn’t see any point anymore.

  He’d felt the peaks. He just wasn’t sure he would ever go there again. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to.

  Because the peaks didn’t rise without the pain.

  And the pain was something he never wanted to experience again.

  He saw his mum standing there beside his bed. Blonde hair glistening in the bright hospital lights.

  He saw his dad just behind her. Tall. Neck leaning forward like always. Hair thinner than Riley remembered, glasses perched on his nose.

  He looked at them both, and he saw the way they looked at him. The expression in their eyes. And it filled him with guilt. With embarrassment.

  Because he hadn’t done this to them.

  He hadn’t done it because of anything they’d done.

  “My boy,” Mum said. “My little boy.”

  But as Riley laid there, tears rolling down his cheeks, he knew something. Something awful.

  He’d survived.

  But to his parents, he’d already died.

  The image they’d had of their son had died in that crash.

  They’d never look at him the same way ever again.

  They’d—

  “Now, Riley!” Alison screamed.

  But there wasn’t just a scream.

  There was a bang.

  A deafening bang, surrounding him, making the creatures scream and cry.

  He didn’t know what it was.

  Didn’t know who it was.

  Not until he saw Rhubi approaching him.

  Grabbing his hand as she fired at the surrounding masses.

  “We need to get out of here. We need to…”

  “You’re a survivor,” Mum said.

  Riley heard those words and he wasn’t sure how to feel about them. He resisted them at first. Tried to push them away. Because he didn’t want to accept them. Didn’t want to believe them.

  “You’re a survivor. And you’re always going to be a survivor. Always.”

  He swallowed a lump in his throat as Mum tightened her grip around his hand.

  Rhubi squeezed his hand. “Riley, we don’t have long left. We need to go. While we have a chance. Now!”

  He felt his heart racing as the creatures began to spark back to life.

  He felt his muscles tightening as Rhubi stood there, rifle in hand, picking them off one by one.

  He felt that urge to fight, to survive, taking over him once again.

  He dragged himself upright and made a break free of the creatures.

  He felt Rhubi grabbing his arm.

  Felt himself moving one step after another down the road, towards Kesha, towards Melissa, towards where it had all gone so wrong.

  He looked back. Saw Alison lying there.

  Saw Anna standing there. Grey-faced. Eyes completely transformed.

  The Anna he knew—the Anna he loved—gone.

  He watched her standing there. Holding her ground. Resisting.

  He saw the way she looked at him with those wide, tearful eyes.

  The way she smiled at him, like summer nights at the beach, like winter mornings walking hand-in-hand through the park.

  She opened her mouth to say something.

  Then she disappeared into the mass of creatures.

  “Come on,” Rhubi said, holding on to Riley’s arm. “We need to get away from here. We need to…”

  He heard the ringing in his ears.

  Then he fell to the road, his vision blacking out.

  He was back in that hospital bed.

  He heard the footsteps stop at the door.

  Watched as that door opened up.

  And then he saw who appeared.

  Smile on his face.

  Rifle across his shoulders.

  “Fucking hell, bruv,” Pedro said. “You look like shit.”

  Chapter One

  One moment, Riley was in that hospital bed.

  The next he was somewhere else familiar.

  He was on a beach. A rocky, pebbly beach. He recognised it, but he wasn’t sure where from. Recognised the woodlands on the hill ahead of him. Recognised the caravans looking over.

  He recognised it all.

  And then it clicked.

  “A while since we were last here, huh?”

  Riley turned to Pedro and saw his smile.

  The caravan site.

  Heathwaite’s Caravan Park.

  “Come on,” Pedro said. “I haven’t come all this way to stand on a beach and fucking doss around. About time we went for a walk, don’t you think?”

  Riley walked along the beach with Pedro by his side. He drifted from one location to the next with seemingly little effort. Up through the woods. Towards the entrance to the caravan site. The sun beaming down.

  And there was something different about the caravan site, now. It was peaceful. Empty. Different to how he remembered. It felt like they’d gone back to a time before Rodrigo lost his shit; before the conflict with Mike and his people tore things apart and changed everything.

  They stopped when they reached a particular caravan.

  Pedro looked at Riley. Pointed at the caravan. “Remember this place?”

  Riley felt tension in his gut. Because he could see movement in there. He could hear a little high-pitched voice. He wasn’t sure, though. Wasn’t sure whether it was a voice or whether it was a snarl.

  Thomas.

  The kid he’d had to put down.

  “Of course I remember,” Riley said. “Why would you bring me back here?”

  Pedro laughed, then. And as he did, Riley saw a flash of something else. He saw a flash of Rhubi in his face. A flash of this world disintegrating around him. A flash of walking down a road. Of Rhubi helping him along. One foot after the next.

  And then the world of the caravan park returned again. “I brought you back here to remind you what you’re capable of,” Pedro said.

  Riley looked in through that caravan window.

  And he felt himself drifting inside even though he didn’t want to.

  He felt himself being transported through that door, into that lounge, where Pedro had told him all about his kid.

  And then into that bedroom.

  Thomas.

  That poor kid who’d lost his parents. Who’d been bitten.

  Lying there.

  Bullet in his head.

  Totally still.

  “This is what you are capable of, bruv,” Pedro said, standing by his side. “A hard-ass motherfucker, that’s what you are. Knew it from the first day I saw you.”

  Riley looked at the dead boy, and he saw him shifting. Shifting into other dead kids he’d seen in this world. So many since the start. “I don’t feel like this makes me tough in any way.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Pedro said. “You’re a survivor, man. You’re the survivor. And I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna keep on surviving. ’Cause it got you this far. And it ain’t over yet. As much as you think it might be over, it ain’t ov
er.”

  Riley shook his head. The caravan started to disintegrate around him. The walls collapsing. The brightness of the hospital appearing once again.

  He was back in the bed.

  Pedro by his side.

  “It’s time for me to go now,” Pedro said. “But I hope I’ve taught you a lesson. Taught you summat you can use. Summat you can take into the world with you.”

  He started to walk away. Tension built inside Riley. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

  Pedro stopped when he reached the door. He turned around, smiled. “You’re a good’un, bruv. A tough’un. But you’re not the sharpest fucker in the shed, are ya?”

  He smiled, then.

  And then he nodded. Looked at his watch.

  “Anyway. I’ve gotta shoot. But someone else is coming. Maybe they’ll be able to tell you a little more. Maybe they’ll help you see.”

  “No,” Riley said. “Don’t go. Don’t—”

  “It’s been a pleasure, Riley. Really. But now it’s time for someone else to visit. Now it’s time for me to go back to where I came from. I’ll see you around, bruv.”

  “Please,” Riley said, leaning out of his bed. “I don’t understand. I don’t…”

  But then Pedro closed the door.

  The door slammed shut.

  Riley snapped back to consciousness.

  He was walking. Walking down a road. A road that looked familiar. One of the side streets off the main road.

  Rhubi was by his side.

  She looked at him with concern. “You okay?”

  Riley nodded, although he was anything but.

  “You blacked out on me for a second there. You gonna be okay to keep walking?”

  Riley nodded again. But he looked down at his stomach where he’d been stabbed, and he saw the blood. Saw it seeping out. He knew the truth. He wasn’t going to make this. He wasn’t strong enough. The knife. It’d stuck deep into his body. It wasn’t the sort of wound he could just ignore. He wasn’t going to make it.

  And even if he did… what was the point anymore?

  The virus had been triggered.

  Kesha was gone.

  What was the point to anything anymore?

  “Why are we doing this?” Riley said.

  Rhubi held on to his arm even tighter. “We’re doing this because we’re still here. The world around us has changed. And it’ll be changing more and more by the second. But we’re still here. Which means we have to be important. We have to… we have to be able to help.”

  “But how?” Riley said.

  Rhubi sighed. Looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I don’t know. But that’s what we’re going to figure out. That’s what we’re going to figure out together. Okay?”

  Riley didn’t see the point in agreeing. But he didn’t see the point in arguing, either.

  Like Pedro said. He was a tough bastard. He’d been through tough shit before.

  How was this any different?

  He gritted his teeth, and he kept on walking, Rhubi by his side.

  “We can still get to Melissa,” Rhubi said. “We can… we can still get to Kesha. We can still find out what’s happened.”

  Riley nodded. He knew it was all they could do. The only option they had left.

  Even though it was clear what’d gone down. Even though it was clear that time had already run out.

  So he kept going.

  Kept walking.

  Clock ticking.

  Time running out.

  And then he heard something.

  Chattering.

  Voices down the alleyways either side of him.

  Like there were people there.

  Or something else.

  Rhubi looked to her left and to her right, wide-eyed. “We need to keep moving. We need to…”

  Then she stopped.

  She stopped because she’d seen it.

  Just like Riley saw it.

  A group of creatures emerging from the alleyway on the right.

  That look of cognition in their eyes.

  Of the new wave of the infected in their eyes.

  Rhubi handed Riley a rifle. Then she lifted her own. “Stand your ground, Riley,” she said. “Stand your ground. I need you here. I need…”

  But that pain intensified inside Riley.

  His head spun.

  He wanted to stay on his feet.

  Wanted to stay standing.

  But he felt his vision blur as he wobbled to his left and—

  Fell back into that hospital bed.

  He could see the door opening again.

  Another visitor.

  His stomach tensed.

  His fists tightened.

  He couldn’t keep going through this.

  This couldn’t keep happening.

  But then the door opened as he tried to fight, as he tried to resist.

  And when he saw who was standing there, he stopped.

  Long dark hair.

  Scar under her eye.

  Smile on her face.

  “Hello, stranger,” Jordanna said. “How you keeping?”

  Chapter Two

  One moment, Riley was lying in that hospital bed staring at Jordanna as she stood by the doorway.

  The next, he was back in his old flat.

  The flat he’d lived in with Ted.

  She was standing there pointing a gun at him, just like she had when they’d first met. Only she wasn’t threatening anymore. She was smiling.

  “Bring back any memories?” she asked.

  Riley smiled back at her. He wanted to go over to her. To hold her. Because the last time he’d seen her… No. He didn’t want to think about the last time he’d seen her. Didn’t want to think about the way she’d died.

  He just felt himself focusing on the now.

  Focusing on the present.

  Focusing on the fact that she was still here.

  After everything, she was here right now.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” Riley said. “I don’t understand.”

  Jordanna shook her head. Rolled her eyes. He could see that scar still under her eye. “You do,” she said. “Don’t you be stupid. Don’t you be daft. You know exactly what I’m trying to tell you. What we’re trying to tell you. You just haven’t seen it yet.”

  He could feel himself growing frustrated. Just seeing Jordanna here was sparking too many memories. Dark memories. He tried to get out of this bed. To climb out onto the floor, to get closer to Jordanna. “It’s lovely to see you lot. Really, it is. But I wish you’d stop speaking in riddles.”

  Jordanna laughed. “Never one for subtleties, hmm?”

  “Not while I’m stuck here, no.”

  Jordanna sighed. “The life you’ve been living. The way you’ve honoured what Chloë wanted. Her final wishes.”

  Riley’s stomach turned. He looked away. “I’ve not really done that, though, have I?”

  Jordanna frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because she’s gone. She’s gone and… and everything I ever fought for is gone. Everything I cared about is gone.”

  Jordanna tilted her head and smiled. “Is it? Really?”

  Riley frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You fought. Fought until the end. Fought with everything you had. And that’s what you need to keep doing. That’s the difference, Riley. That’s what sets you apart from everyone else. You haven’t failed. You never stopped trying. You never gave up. And you’ve got to keep on fighting like that.”

  She held out a hand.

  “Now go on, you bloody hero. Get back to it.”

  He reached out for her hand. He wanted nothing more than to be with her right now; to be by her side.

  His fingers were inches from hers.

  He stretched out further.

  And the next thing he knew, he was back on the street again.

  He could see the creatures emerging from down the alleyway.

/>   He could see Rhubi by his side. Rifle raised. Shouting at him.

  “Riley!” she shouted. “I need you here. We need each other, here.”

  He looked at Rhubi, then at the rifle in his hand.

  And when he looked up, he saw Jordanna right by his side.

  “You know what to do,” she said. “What you have to do. What you’ve always done. Now do it.”

  He narrowed his eyes when she said those words. Because for a moment, he thought he felt it. He thought he felt what Pedro had been saying to him. What Jordanna was saying to him.

  He pushed aside the pain in his stomach, and he lifted his rifle and fired.

  He watched the creatures run towards them.

  Watched them dodge the bullets.

  Watched them try to avoid them making contact.

  But with him and Rhubi both firing, he saw them falling.

  Didn’t matter how tough they were. Didn’t matter how shifty they were. How much they drifted from side to side.

  The bullets hit them, and they fell.

  One after the other.

  He held his ground and looked to where Jordanna had stood. But he didn’t see her anymore.

  He didn’t see her, but he felt her presence.

  And that kept him on his feet.

  That kept him standing.

  That kept him alive.

  He fired at the creatures; Rhubi fired at the creatures.

  And then there was no more.

  They stood there. Stood in the alleyway. Riley’s heart racing. The blood from his stab wound crusting his clothes, now.

  He looked at Rhubi, and she nodded.

  “Now come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Before…”

  He was somewhere else.

  He recognised this place.

  The road.

  The road where he’d left Jordanna behind.

  He was in a car. He could see her still back there in that truck. Creatures surrounding her.

  And he wanted to get out of his car.

  He wanted to go back there.

  He wanted to fight for her.

  But he could see something.

  Something he’d never seen before.

  Jordanna.

  She was smiling at him.

  “You can’t change the past,” she said. “You can’t change what you’ve done. But you can change now…”