by Ryan Casey
But that said, he did have to take some chances.
It was about finding that balance between risk and reward and hoping it paid the hell off.
“We need to get to the boats,” Ricky said.
Carly stopped. “The boats?”
“Look, Carly, I’m sorry. But the time for fighting is over. This place… it’s gone. We’re going to be chased down for as long as we’re here. So the best thing we can do is get the hell out of here before we’re swallowed up by this place.”
Carly shook her head. “We should fight.”
“Carly, we can’t—”
“This place is our home. These people here, they’re… they’re our friends. You’re on about just running away. Just leaving them.”
“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
Ricky sighed as gunfire and shouts peppered through the streets. “I wish there was an easier way, Carly. Really, I do. But you’ve seen what’s happening yourself. You’ve seen the kind of chaos this place is in the grips of. And I… I can’t help but feel it’s only going to get worse. So we need to get away from here.”
“We don’t have to flee this place if we get to the armoury.”
Ricky frowned. “The armoury?”
“You know about it. Down by the coast. The massive warehouse. If we can get in there, we can get the weapons. We can arm ourselves. We can defend ourselves. And we can defend this place. We can fight.”
Ricky rubbed his fingers through his hair. “I’m not sure that’s a viable solution, Carly.”
“You flee then. You get in your boat, and you float away. But I’m staying here. I’m staying here, and I’m fighting. It’s what my friends would want. It’s what… it’s what Marie would want.”
Ricky heard what Carly was saying. And in her voice, he heard shades of Melissa. Melissa, who’d given up everything to leave this place. Melissa, who’d taken the selfless decision of getting away from this place—from this sanctuary—and gone off into an uncertain, unknown world in order to help other people.
She wasn’t a quitter.
She was a fighter.
And wasn’t that exactly what she’d want Ricky to do?
He looked at Carly, and he sighed. “I think it’s mad. I think it’s absolutely bat-shit crazy.”
“But?”
He paused. “But… I want to be here for when Melissa gets back. So I can tell her everything I’ve been up to.”
Carly half-smiled. And Ricky smiled back at her.
He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to that armoury.”
She nodded. Started to walk away.
But as they went to cross the street at the end of the alleyway, Ricky saw something.
The troops were turning around in the alleyway.
He crouched down. Threw himself behind a bin at the side of the alley. Pulled Carly in close.
And all the while, he heard the troops getting closer and closer.
“We’re trapped,” he said as the footsteps got closer. “We’re fucking trapped.”
Chapter Four
Riley looked down from the roof of the building at the chaos below, and he felt the tension in his body growing more and more by the second.
Clouds had formed, covering up the afternoon sun. It looked like the sun was trying to break through, but the suffocating sky’s grip was tight.
Beneath him, Riley saw the splatter of gunfire hitting the bodies—the bodies of the living.
And he saw something else now, too.
Some of what he’d thought were the living weren’t living anymore. Or at least, they weren’t living in the traditional sense. They were infected, no doubt about it. But they seemed less like creatures and more like enraged humans.
And seeing this within their grounds—seeing this in their home… it just got to Riley.
The reality of it.
The horror of it.
But it was reality.
That’s something he had to face up to. That he had to accept.
This was reality, and he was deep in it.
He tried to take calming deep breaths as he held on to Anna’s hand, Kesha by her side. None of them had said a word. They just looked down, down into the surroundings below like they were staring through a looking glass into a world that was separate from their own, somehow.
And Riley heard the voice in his head shouting at him to just believe that it was separate to them. That if they stayed up here, waited for it all to blow over, they’d be okay. All of them would be okay.
He looked over towards the building where he and Anna lived, and he saw that all around it was quiet. And he started to think about getting over there. Because he could be safe over there. They could all be safe over there.
Withdrawing from this world. Locking and barricading the doors. Rejecting the reality of what was outside and waiting for the reality—the idyllic reality—they’d lived in for the past year to present itself to them, to return.
But as Riley tightened his fists, as the tension seeped further through his body, he saw again that there was no escape from the reality of what was happening. There was no hiding from it.
There was only facing up to it.
And that’s what he had to do.
That’s what they all had to do.
He took a deep breath, and he looked at Anna.
There was sadness in her eyes. Defeat in her eyes. Like she was coming to terms with the same reality as Riley. Making her own conclusions, in her own time.
Riley half-smiled at her, defeated.
And she smiled back at him. Defeated together.
“What’re we going to do?” she asked.
Riley was dreading hearing those words. Because he didn’t want to be the one to have to make these decisions. He’d grown so used to taking a back seat in this last year. Leadership was something he’d never really had as natural but something he grew into instead. And now he’d left leadership behind, behind in that awful old world, he wasn’t totally ready to take it back up. Not again.
But it wasn’t about whether he felt ready or not. It was simply about being ready.
He had a job to do.
And he was going to fulfil it.
No matter how painful it was.
He leaned over the side of the building, looked down at the drop below.
He thought about the balcony. Peter had one, and it’d be directly below here, on this side of the building. And there were others, too. There had to be.
He swallowed a lump in his throat as he listened to the sirens, listened to the gunfire, listened to the cries.
“We’re going to have to find a way off this building,” Riley said. “Then we’re going to have to find a way off this island. For good.”
Chapter Five
Ricky held his breath as the military stepped around the corner.
He kept himself as small as he could as he hid behind the bins right in the middle of the alleyway. Carly was by his side. He thought he could hear her muttering stuff under her breath—sobbing, perhaps. He wanted to reassure her. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t because he didn’t even believe it himself.
He heard the footsteps getting closer and closer. The voices, too. He couldn’t make out what they were saying properly, only that they sounded… strangely jovial. Which made Ricky feel all the more uncertain, made his skin crawl.
Was it possible these troops were strangely comfortable about the actions they were committing?
That they were happy hunting people down and slaughtering them?
And sure. Ricky knew something was wrong. He knew the infection had transformed, once again. He could tell from the uptake in the gunfire that the infected—probably in the form like he’d seen Marie turn into when she’d attacked Carly—were on the loose now. And he knew damn well if th
ere was any certainty that he was going to come back as one of those things, he’d want to be put out of his misery.
But that laughter. That certainty.
The troops seemed far too comfortable about all of this.
And besides. Ricky didn’t know if he was going to turn. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t infected. And neither was Carly, despite her bleeding nose and the symptoms she’d shown back in Marie’s place—all of which had subsided now.
So he wasn’t just going to roll over onto his back.
He wasn’t just going to give up.
But the troops were marching this way. And they were going to shoot on sight. He’d seen it already. He’d got away from it already. He wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this one.
So what could he do?
“We’re going to have to go back the way we came,” Ricky said.
Carly looked at him. Frowned. “What?”
“It’s not going to be easy. They’re going to fire at us the second they see us. But we don’t have a choice. We’re going to have to make a break for it. And we’re going to have to be quick about it. Because there’s really not much time left.”
Carly looked down at the ground ahead of her. The troops, they weren’t far away now, not at all. A matter of seconds and they’d be upon them. Ricky had to make sure that wasn’t going to happen.
He grabbed Carly’s hand. Held her close. Looked into her eyes. And for a second, he saw a flash of a younger Melissa. After all, Carly had grown up in Melissa’s camp. She’d been a part of her group, and she’d been through the same education, the same training, as Melissa.
He saw strength in Carly’s eyes that he knew was going to pull him through. It was the same strength that was going to pull Melissa through the mission that she was on back on the mainland.
I’m going to see her again.
We’re going to be together again.
No matter what.
He smiled at Carly as the footsteps got a matter of feet away, and he nodded. “You ready?”
Carly looked back at him, just for a second. Then she nodded too.
“I’m…”
She stopped.
Stopped speaking completely.
And Ricky didn’t know why it was. He didn’t understand.
Not at first.
Not until he saw the colour draining from Carly’s face.
Not until he saw the glassy way she was staring into space.
Dread built up inside him. Because this was how it went. The glassiness of her gaze. The paleness of her face. The deadness of her expression.
She was right.
She was turning.
Right here, right now, she was turning.
But then he realised something else.
The footsteps. The footsteps of the troops.
They’d stopped.
Completely stopped.
And then he realised Carly wasn’t staring into space. Her eyes weren’t dead.
She wasn’t looking at nothing.
She was looking at something.
Right at something.
Something at the end of the alleyway.
Ricky swallowed a lump in his throat. He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He didn’t want to see it.
But he knew he had to.
He turned around. Slowly.
When he saw it, he wasn’t sure what to think. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Part of him felt a relief. Because what he was looking at changed things entirely.
But on the other hand, Ricky felt dread. Total dread.
Because he knew the destruction these things were capable of.
The tall, upright posture.
That tar-like skin.
And the terrifyingly human gaze.
An Orion.
“Stay quiet,” he muttered. “And stay still. Very st—”
It was already too late.
The Orion launched itself at the troops.
Gunfire pelted it. It fell back a little, but not enough to stop it.
Because it landed in the middle of the troops.
It grabbed the leader of the group, lifted his neck upwards and his legs downwards, slowly splitting his body in two, innards tumbling out everywhere in a jelly-like mess.
The man was still screaming when he was just half a body.
Then the Orion swung around, slashed the throat of two of the troops in one swift move.
It grabbed the gun of another man and bashed it against his head until it was nothing but a pulp on the ground.
Just one troop was left.
Standing there.
Staring at the Orion.
Terror in his eyes.
The Orion looked at the man. The man looked back at the Orion. A stand-off, only there was only one potential outcome. Only one winner.
The troop dropped his gun. Like that would be admitting surrender to the Orion.
But the Orion wasn’t in the mood for surrender.
It grabbed the man by the sides of his head.
Lifted him up, temples in his hands.
The man started to cry out, to scream, to turn red and then to turn blue and—
A splat.
The man’s head split in two like a watermelon.
His body fell to the ground in a heap of blood and bone.
The Orion looked down at the mess, looked down at the blood, growling, gasping.
And then it spun around and looked right over at the bins.
Right into Ricky’s eyes.
Chapter Six
Earlier…
Riley held on to the rope as he dangled at the edge of the building, and he was convinced by now—if the things he’d already done weren’t enough to convince him—that he really was completely fucking batshit crazy.
The wind was picking up, the clouds still thick around the afternoon sky. Wind never helped. And it only ever seemed to crop up when it was most unwelcome.
Right now, it was definitely fucking unwelcome.
Riley gripped the rope tight. So tight that it was hurting his palms, cutting right into them. Of course, he needed to pull himself together because what he was doing was the only way, especially now the doors inside had locked behind them.
But it was a risky game to play. Not only might he fall… but he might not find the kind of escape he was looking for.
He knew Peter wasn’t exactly going to welcome him if he reached his office. He’d already told him once that he wasn’t welcome if he returned.
But there was a time and a place to worry about that. And currently, dangling down the side of this building, was neither the time nor the place.
Just surviving the descent was ambition enough right now.
Riley looked up. Anna was on a rope beside him. She was holding on to Kesha. Just seeing the pair of them there on a rope was enough to send Riley’s stress levels into overdrive. The knowledge that should Anna slip, the two things—no, three things—he cared about most in the world would fall to their deaths below… the thought was barely worth entertaining.
They were in this. All of them were in this.
He just had to hope like hell they got out of it one way or another.
“Keep it methodical,” Riley said. “And keep it slow.”
“Didn’t you say something about conserving your energy?”
Riley frowned, easing himself further down the rope, feet on the windows. “Yeah. Make your energy last.”
“Then isn’t talking kind of getting in the way of that?”
Riley opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. He could tell Anna was deep in concentration, trying eagerly to focus on the task at hand. And of course, her task was even bigger than Riley’s—she had Kesha to think about, too.
“I would’ve taken Kesha,” Riley said.
“I know you would.”
“Then why didn’t you let me? Really?”
“Really?” she said. “Probably something
to do with your history of butterfingers in situations like this.”
“My history of butterfingers?”
“Pretty much every time we’re climbing down some wall in a situation almost certain to bring about death, you get close to your target and then you get over-excited and slip.”
“I never slip.”
“Famous last words.”
He could hear the humour in Anna’s voice. And in a way, he was grateful for it. Grateful that she could be so light-hearted considering the circumstances.
And in a way, she had a point. He did have a history of slipping in situations like these. Which, really, didn’t bode too well for him.
“Yeah, well, the proof’ll be in the pudding,” Riley said as he edged down even further, the wind picking up, causing the rope to sway a little. “Let’s just… focus on getting down here. Preferably without any of us splatting on the ground below.”
“I’m all for that,” Anna said.
They descended further. And the more progress they made, the more uncertain Riley grew. Mostly because Anna was right—it was usually when he was right on the brink of victory that failure finally struck.
But he could see a balcony right beneath him.
Close enough beneath him that even if he fell, he’d fall down on it.
Probably.
He looked up at Anna. “We should stop here. Take a break. See if there’s a way inside, even.”
Anna nodded. She looked so unstable, dangling there with Kesha, who looked terrified. Scarily unstable. But he believed in her. He had faith in her.
Then he looked back down.
And something happened.
The rope snapped.
Riley went flying down below.
He kicked out. Every muscle in his body tensing up. Every inch of his body striking out.
He felt himself falling. Heard Anna somewhere above, crying out.
And he waited for the contact with the ground.
Waited to smack against the—
He hit.