by Ryan Casey
A hand on her shoulder.
She spun around, lifted her gun.
“Whoa!”
She lowered her gun, heart still racing. “Shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”
Stephen smirked, satisfaction on his face. “I’ll take that as your apology for how you walked off from me earlier.”
She pushed past Stephen, not wanting to humour him in any way. She knew what men such as him were like. Power crazy. Never felt like they were in the wrong. Pieces of shit, basically.
And she wanted to be as far away from pieces of shit like Stephen as she could.
He grabbed her arm.
“Get the fuck off me,” she said.
He let his grip loosen but didn’t totally let go. “You want to learn some manners.”
Melissa pulled her hand away. And inadvertently, she found herself seeing red. Found herself lifting her rifle. Pointing it at Stephen’s chest. “I’m not the one who wants to learn anything,” she said. “And don’t make me teach you the hard way.”
She saw the amusement in Stephen’s eyes switch to something else… something like fear.
And she knew he was going to make her regret him showing that soft side, one way or another.
“This isn’t over,” he muttered. “Bitch.”
Then he walked around her, past her gun, back towards the canteen.
She watched him walk away, join the rest of the group. And she stood there. She stood there for a few seconds and saw them searching inside the canteen area, planning where they were going to go next, where they were going to look.
She felt the tension of the situation she’d put herself in building up, welling in her chest.
Then she saw something.
It was only a minor movement at first.
But it was outside the window.
She walked over to the window slowly. Raised her gun. Held her breath.
“See something, Melissa?” Wilson shouted.
She stepped over to the cracked glass. Peeked out of a hole in it. Heart racing. Chest tight. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I just thought I saw—”
She didn’t finish what she was saying.
A creature threw itself through the glass and landed right on top of her.
Then another flew in through another of the windows.
And before she knew it, they were pouring in through the main door, out of nowhere.
“Back up!” Wilson shouted. “Back the fuck up and raise your weapons!”
Stephen looked around, panicked, as Melissa fought off the creature on top of her, whacking its soft skull with the back of her gun.
As she got back to her feet, specks of blood on her face, she looked at the creatures pouring in through the smashed glass.
She looked at the other creatures battling their way in through the door.
And as much as she didn’t know where they’d come from; didn’t know where they’d emerged from, it was the harsh reality of the words Wilson spoke that made her realise just how grave a situation they were in.
“We’re surrounded,” Wilson said. “We’re fucking surrounded.”
Chapter Three
Melissa saw the undead pouring in through the main doors, and she knew she was in the thick of it now.
They were piling in through the main door. Some of them were pushing themselves in through the broken glass of the windows. And the more of them came inside, the more trapped Melissa felt.
“Stay close,” Wilson shouted. “Stand your ground, and stay in pattern. Do not break it under any circumstances. This is how we get out of here. This is how we survive.”
Melissa stood beside Stephen and a woman called Ava. They were all standing in a circle, rifles raised. The idea of the “pattern” was for them to fire their rifles at the oncoming undead in unison, clearing the immediate surrounding mass of them. And then when they identified a weak spot in the wall of the dead, three of them would focus their attention on that spot, firing a path for them to escape through.
But right now, as they stood there and watched the dead surround them, as they got ready to fire, Melissa couldn’t see any escape. She couldn’t see any way out.
She could only see the dead, and the reminders of everything she’d gone to the island to escape from.
She saw the long, stringy hair of an old woman. One of her eyeballs was dangling on the side of her face.
She saw the sharp, broken teeth of a man in his twenties, half of his cheek torn away.
She saw all these horrible reminders of what she was destined to become if she made one wrong move, and she found herself thinking of home, thinking of the comforts that she hadn’t even allowed herself to be all too grateful for.
And she wanted that.
She wanted it more than anything.
“On my word, we fire, okay?” Wilson shouted.
Stephen shifted his rifle from right to left. “Isn’t it time we thought about firing already?”
“On my word!” Wilson barked. Melissa was kind of pleased he’d seen Stephen for what he was. At least it wasn’t just her who saw him as a creep.
But there was something disconcerting about the way Stephen was moving. There was something unprofessional about how he was tilting his rifle from left to right, like he wasn’t totally paying attention to the dead in front of him.
Like he was thinking about breaking rank.
“Hold your ground,” Wilson repeated as the dead got closer. “And fire on my word.”
But Melissa saw it.
She saw the way Stephen was looking over his shoulder, over towards the stairs on the left.
How his finger danced on the trigger.
“Stephen,” she said.
He looked at her. And she saw the fear in his eyes as the dead got closer.
“Keep it together,” she said. “Don’t even think about—”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really. I’m sorry.”
“Stephen!”
But it was too late.
He lifted his rifle, and he fired.
The second the bullets blasted against the undead, their attention was immediately distracted.
Stephen broke rank, leaving a gap between Melissa and Harvey.
A gap that the undead started to plug right away.
“Everyone for themselves, god-fucking-dammit!” Wilson shouted.
Melissa knew there was no other way then. The pattern was broken. They were on their own, all of them.
So she pulled away from the group as Stephen battled his way through the undead, over towards the door, and she fired.
She fired at the dead in front of her.
She fired at the ones to the side of her.
And with each one she fired at, she looked into their eyes.
Because she knew they could see her.
And deep down, she couldn’t help shake the guilt with every one that fell.
But she had to put that guilt to one side. She had to compartmentalise; to separate herself from the reality of what she was doing.
“The stairs!”
She heard the strained voice from her right. And although she was focused on firing at the undead surrounding her, closing in, she couldn’t help looking to her right, because she recognised the voice.
It was Wilson.
He was completely surrounded. Completely overwhelmed by the dead. He was firing at them, but they seemed to be circling him at an alarming rate.
A rate which Melissa wasn’t sure he could hold off.
“Wilson!” she shouted. And she didn’t even feel any comedy in the moment at just how much like a famous film her words reminded her of.
He looked at her. His eyes met hers. And she didn’t see fear in his eyes. She saw anger. Anger that this whole plan had fallen apart more than anything.
“You fight your own battle,” he said. “You get the hell out of here. You look out for yourself, and you keep up the mission.”
More undead surrounded him.
“No!” she shouted.
She fired at the undead in front of her. But she saw then that was only breaking their attention from Wilson, who fired in turn to attract them back.
“You go, Melissa,” he said. “You go. We’re all crazy in this world. But there’s craziness, and there’s—”
He didn’t finish what he was saying.
One of the undead sunk its teeth into his neck.
Blood spurted out as Wilson closed his eyes and let out a scream.
Then another reached his arm, bit down on it.
Slowly tore through the gaps in his body armour.
Cracked his mask, chewed at his face.
Ravenously devoured him.
Melissa tried to take a clean shot at him as tears built in her eyes. She wanted to put him out of his misery. She owed him that much.
But then she heard the gasping to her left, felt the grip on her arm, and she knew right then her chance had gone.
She spun around and fired at the undead. She didn’t look them in the eye now. She didn’t face them anymore. She just fired at them, showing no caution, no mercy.
And as they fell, as the sound of gunfire echoed around her from various members of her group, all she thought about was Stephen and how he’d broken rank, how he’d chosen himself over the group, and how Wilson had fallen because of that decision.
She fired through more and more of these monsters until her route to the staircase was clear.
She raced up there. Didn’t want to look back. Didn’t want to face the chaos below.
But when she looked, she felt herself go dizzy.
The barracks was full. The dead had swarmed it completely.
She couldn’t see any survivors.
She took a few sharp breaths, tried to keep herself together, keep herself composed.
Then she turned around and ran up the stairs as the undead started to make their way up there after her.
She marched down the corridor. Searched for a door or a window or anything—anything that would get her out of here, or just somewhere she could hide until she was sure she could make a break for it.
She was close to the end of the corridor when she heard a shuffling behind her.
Then she felt a sharp pain crack against her head.
And after that, as someone caught her fall and dragged her away… Melissa felt nothing.
Chapter Four
Melissa opened her eyes and shuffled up closer to Ricky.
She could feel his body warmth beside her. She could hear him muttering something to her; whispering in her ear. And just hearing his voice, even though she couldn’t tell what he was saying, was enough to put her mind at ease.
But there was a pain. A crippling pain right on the top of her head. She could taste something on her lips, too. Something familiar. Something metallic. Something like…
Blood.
Her eyes opened with a sudden bolt, and fear hit her.
Her consciousness returned full-fold. She tasted that blood even stronger than ever. Caught a smell of burning in her nostrils—burning flesh, burning food… and rot. The stench of rot. A reminder of so many days she’d been trapped out in the open; so many awful things she’d been through and seen.
“Ricky,” she called, but her throat was dry and sore. She realised then that she was seriously thirsty. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out. Just that she was thirsty, but the thought of drinking made her want to puke; she was starving but had no appetite.
She squinted, tried to look around the room she was in. But it was dark. And it was cold. She tried to listen outside for some sign of life, but there was a strong ringing in her ears, probably because of the knock she’d taken to her head. She closed her eyes, moved them around, opened them again to try and see.
And this time, when she opened them, she saw the body.
It was right beside her. A withered, skeletal corpse that looked like it had been dead for some time. The person who had obviously died long ago was wearing soldiers’ gear and had a “medic” strap around his arm. Whatever had happened in here, it didn’t look like he’d faced a good death. Not with the mass of blood wrapped around its skeleton.
Melissa started to feel the tension of this situation building up. The urgency of getting out of this situation, of getting away somehow. Because she didn’t want to suffer the same fate as the man on the floor in front of her. She didn’t want to die a prisoner in here.
She tried to move her hands.
Then she realised something that made her whole body go colder than it already was.
She was trapped.
Her hands were tied behind her back. Her ankles… they were tied too.
Someone had hit her.
Someone had dragged her into here.
And someone had tied her up.
She didn’t know who it was. She didn’t know what they wanted.
But she knew one thing for certain.
Whatever they had planned for her couldn’t be good.
She tried to pull against the ties, tried to drag herself to her feet, tried to get away from this place no matter what it took.
And then she saw him.
He was standing by the door. He was so thin that honestly, she hadn’t even noticed him before.
His face was so gaunt that she could see the contours of his skeleton. His hair was patchy, some parts long right down past his shoulders, other parts of his head completely bald. His body was bony, but it wore baggy clothes. It looked like he’d given up a long time ago.
He was looking at her with curious eyes and muttering things. Muttering things under his breath. But she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
But the thing that struck Melissa most was that he didn’t look like he was… well, threatening to her.
He looked like he was afraid.
“Please,” Melissa said. “Just let me go. I’m not here to hurt you. None of us are here to hurt you. We’re here to help you. Please.”
The man muttered more words, more gibberish. She thought she heard him say something about a “chef” and then something about “the freezer”. And it was at that moment that she saw the mark on his neck—a scar. Except it didn’t look good. It looked swollen and infected.
“Your neck,” Melissa said. “We can help you with that.”
“Brought the dead here,” he said.
Melissa frowned. It was the first thing he’d said that had any kind of coherence to it. But it sounded mad. Accusational.
“What?” she said.
“You,” he said, pointing towards her with long, bony fingers. “You brought the dead here. Should’ve stayed away. Far away. My home! My home!”
He threw himself towards her then. And Melissa waited for a punch. She waited for a kick. She waited for whatever violence he was about to throw at her.
But when Melissa peeked through her swollen eyes, she realised he wasn’t hurting her at all.
He was actually holding something out to her. A pan of water. The pan looked filthy like it was covered in bird shit. But he was offering it to her.
“You should drink,” he said. “And sorry. About the head. It’s just… people. Hard to trust people.”
Melissa leaned forward towards the pan. She wasn’t sure whether to trust this man. She wasn’t sure whether to just suddenly believe in the guy who had knocked her over the back of the head then left her for dead.
But she could see the sensitivity in his eyes, and she took a sip of the water.
It was ghastly. Probably rife with infection. But she didn’t care. She just drank it anyway.
She looked up into his eyes, and she saw a half-smile on his face.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded. “Good to see. New person. New friendly—”
A bang.
A bang at the door.
“Melissa! Are you in there?’
Harvey’s voice.
<
br /> Shit.
Shit.
The man turned around and frowned.
“Get away from the door,” Harvey shouted. “We’re gonna take out whoever’s got you in there. Don’t worry. We’re coming for you.”
She saw the way the man turned and looked at her like he’d been betrayed.
She saw the confusion, saw the hurt.
And she knew right then she had to do something.
“No!” she shouted. “Please!”
She didn’t finish.
Not when the man wrapped a greasy hand over her lips.
Not when she saw the tearful look in his eyes.
Not when she heard him whispering in her ear with such pity.
“Why?” he said, again and again. “Why?”
Chapter Five
“Get back from the door! We’re coming in!”
Melissa tried to struggle free of the feral man’s grip as he held her down, hand over her mouth. She could see the tears in his eyes, hear the pain in his questioning voice.
“Why?”
And she felt sympathy for him. She felt desperately bad. Because it seemed like this man had spent so long alone just waiting for someone to come along—someone he could trust—only to be betrayed right at the bitter end.
That was how it seemed to him.
Somehow, Melissa had to convince him that wasn’t happening.
But that wasn’t easy when he had a tight grip around her mouth.
She tried to shuffle free. But that wasn’t easy, not with her hands and ankles tied. She tried to mumble, to shout out. Because the last thing she wanted here was for this man to kill her. And the next last thing she wanted was for this man to die.
Because he didn’t have to die.
That didn’t have to be the way this went. It wasn’t the only way. It couldn’t be.
She heard the banging at the door, and she knew damn well that her people would be in here soon. They might even shoot through it, piercing this man’s back, perhaps even shooting her accidentally in the process.
But she knew for certain that if they came in here and saw this man with his hand around her mouth, they’d kill him.
And Melissa didn’t want him dead.
Because she’d seen something in this man.