by Ryan Casey
Harrington opened her mouth like she was going to respond.
Then she closed it. Sighed.
“There’s something about you,” she said. “I’m not sure what it is. Not entirely. But something intrigues me about you. Something makes me believe in what you’re saying. And… and hey. Maybe going across to the island isn’t such a bad idea after all. I hear there’s still districts standing over there. Maybe it’ll give us a chance to find out what’s actually going on.”
She held out a hand to Melissa.
And this time when Melissa took it, she saw vulnerability in Harrington’s eyes.
“What did you say your people were called?” she asked.
Melissa frowned. “Ricky. Carly. Anna—”
“Whatever,” Harrington said, glancing over at Ted now. “We’re going to get back there. We’re going to check it out. But first, we’re going to have to get to the choppers. But I have to warn you, Melissa. The stories we heard. The stories about the island. They didn’t sound good.”
Melissa nodded. She took a deep breath.
Because as terrified as she was about what she might find back home, she still had hope.
She had to have hope.
She looked at Ted and saw him gazing at Harrington like a spectre from the past.
“Now give us a second,” she said. “I need to talk with Ted. Alone.”
Chapter Two
Riley walked through the abandoned, derelict streets of the district, Kesha in his arms, Anna by his side, and he tried to figure out exactly what happened next; exactly how they were supposed to progress from here.
It was afternoon. The day felt like it had dragged on forever. And yet at the same time, it was still hard to believe the events of the day had actually unfolded at all. It was hard to believe how much they’d been through. It was hard to believe how much they’d faced up to. It was hard to believe how much they’d lost.
But they were still here.
Anna was still here.
Kesha was still here.
He looked at the empty stall where the marketplace used to be. He remembered Carly going there quite a lot in the early days. Remembered the smile on her face at the sheer normality of it.
How things had changed.
How things had fallen apart.
He looked at the smashed windows in the buildings beside the street. The fallen bodies that they hadn’t had the chance to clear up yet. In the windows above, he saw movement, people too afraid to leave their homes, too scared to step outside. Or maybe infected, now. Maybe turned.
There was one thing for certain.
This might have been their home. This might have been their idyllic paradise.
But it wasn’t that place anymore.
And it was never going to be that way ever again.
He looked down at Kesha as she lay in his arms. He saw the paleness of her skin. The specks of blood under her nostrils. She looked ill. Really ill. She wasn’t her usual cheery, chirpy self. She was weak.
And he knew what Anna said earlier was right. She might die on them. She probably would die on them. And facing up to that reality… it was something beyond what Riley could comprehend. Something beyond what he could take, especially after all the loss he’d already witnessed; all the struggles he’d already been forced through.
Kesha was the worst because she represented hope. She was the spark in the group, the one that kept them going, even when things were rough.
The knowledge that she might not have much longer left—that Riley had come so close to putting her out of her impending, inevitable misery—was devastating to face.
“We need to make a decision,” Anna said.
They were the words that Riley had been dreading. But they were the words he knew he needed to hear. Because they couldn’t just wander through these fallen streets forever. They couldn’t just let themselves be defeated by the world around them. They had to be pro-active. They had to make a move.
And if that meant leaving this place, then so be it.
There was no burying heads in the sand anymore.
There was no pulling the wool over his own eyes.
There was no running.
Only facing up to the reality of their existence—the nice blip of peace they’d had within the period of chaos—and learning to be survivors once again.,,,,,,
Because they were the living.
And they had to keep it that way.
“We need to get off this island,” Riley said.
It pained him to say it. He knew it would pain Anna to hear it, too. After all, he couldn’t pretend this was only a difficult decision for him. They had a lot invested here. They had a child of their own on the way. Anna giving birth to that child somewhere away from here; raising that child in that awful world outside… it seemed so wrong. So fatalistic.
But it was all they had.
He looked at Anna.
She was already nodding. Frown on her face, disappointment in her eyes, but nodding, nonetheless.
So he looked back towards the coast. Looked over to where the boats were being kept. And he knew there was no way around it. Now was the time to make a stand. Now was the time to make a move.
He started to walk, Anna by his side, Kesha in his arms.
And then he saw it.
The movement. Subtle, at first. Subtle, but there. Undeniably there.
Then he saw more movement.
Movement from the left.
Movement from the right.
Movement swarming in their direction.
“How the fuck did they…” Anna started.
But there wasn’t time to speculate.
There was only time for one thing.
The creatures were coming.
So they had to run.
They turned around and ran through the empty streets as fast as they could. But the footsteps behind them. The sheer mass of them. It could only mean one thing.
“Another district must’ve fallen,” Riley said.
Anna nodded in turn. She looked over her shoulder. The fear in her eyes said it all. “Shit.”
They kept on going, further down the streets, further away from the undead.
“We need to try and loop around them,” Anna said. “If we can distract them enough, maybe we can still get to the boats…”
Her speech trailed off.
She stopped.
As too did Riley.
Because there was no more pressing on.
There was no more moving forward.
A large crowd of creatures was standing right in front of them now.
The crowd behind them continued to race in their direction.
They were surrounded.
Chapter Three
Ted looked at the body of the medic lying by his side, and he knew he was going to have to make the most of it somehow.
It was afternoon. Or maybe it was morning. He didn’t really know anymore. Didn’t really care. All that mattered was staying hydrated. All that mattered was eating enough food to keep himself alive. All that mattered was staying safe.
Or at least, as safe as he could.
These four walls. If these walls could talk they’d be able to share so many things. Tell so many stories. And yet it would be the story of just one person. Of how he’d been making it. Of how he’d been surviving.
He had to leave these walls, of course. It was only when he returned to them that he truly realised what a state they were in. The blood on the floor, encrusted. The stench of rot, of decay. But then again, that’s what everywhere smelled like these days. That was the eternal smell of fucking everything.
At least he was still here, he sometimes told himself. At least he was still alive.
But was that true, really?
Just because he was one of the living didn’t mean he was alive.
He’d seen so many things, done so many things.
And all those things added up to a version of himself he didn’t know anym
ore. That he didn’t recognise anymore.
A version of himself that wasn’t even himself anymore.
But then wasn’t that going to be the same case for everybody?
Wasn’t that just the truth of the world they lived in now? The world he lived in?
No.
He was doing bad things. He’d done bad things. He’d been involved in so much badness.
But he had his four walls.
And that’s where he’d keep the badness.
That’s where the badness would stay.
He looked down at the medic. He didn’t like to think of his name too much. Because thinking of his name made him human. He couldn’t see him as human. Seeing him as human was dangerous. Because he wasn’t human anymore. He was gone.
Meat.
Meat that was too good to waste.
Ted felt total shame wash over him at even entertaining the idea of eating the medic’s body. For numerous reasons. The medic had helped him. He’d helped him get back on his feet. He was the reason Ted was still alive.
But he remembered something the medic said to him. Something he’d said to him a long time ago.
Don’t let sentimentality cloud your judgement.
And as much as he didn’t want to become the person who let his judgement get clouded in any way, he didn’t want to be the person who lost his sentimentality either.
Because sentimentality was good.
Sentimentality was emotion.
And emotion was what made him human.
But the medic wasn’t human anymore.
The medic was just meat.
So there was nothing immoral about it. It would be even more immoral to just leave him to rot. Right?
Ted felt his stomach turning as he leaned over the medic’s body. He pulled away his shirt. Then he rubbed his hand over his spotty belly. It didn’t feel like a human body anymore. It felt like wax. Every little touch of the skin, there’s a reaction, whether you think you feel it or not.
There was no reaction by the medic’s body.
There was just coldness.
Coldness that needed warming up.
Ted took a deep breath and looked at the bottom half of the medic’s body. He could smell the shit that he’d offloaded upon dying. Honestly, he didn’t know how he’d died. The pair of them had a good thing in here. And the medic was older, but he seemed okay, really.
Then Ted had just been out looking for food and supplies earlier that day on one of his rare ventures out of the walls, and he’d got back to find the medic dead.
And now here he was.
Holding a knife over his dead body.
Wondering what to do. Where to start.
You’ve got to make the best of what you’ve got.
He knew the man was right. And he knew he had to listen to his words, to embrace them right now.
He couldn’t let sentimentality get in the way.
He had to make the most.
He had to eat.
So that was what he’d do.
He held his breath. Then he lifted the medic’s arm. Even though they’d been living on scraps, there was still a good bit of flesh underneath his right bicep.
So he pressed the knife towards the skin. But there was something about it. Something different about the whole feel of doing this in comparison to stabbing one of the creatures.
And it was because in turning into a creature, the innocence of these bodies was already robbed from them. They became something different entirely. A creature, rather than a human. A monster rather than a corpse.
But this was different.
This was a body.
A peaceful body.
“But it’s still just a body,” he muttered under his breath.
He took a deep breath. Held it.
Then he started to cut into the skin, into the flesh.
The body became something other than a body. Something else entirely.
And when he’d done, when he’d finished, he started to remember the sickness he used to feel about what Ivan tried to make them do—what Ivan tried to make them eat. He remembered the disgust he’d felt, thinking he’d never sink that low, that he’d always be above that, always.
He kept that in mind as he cooked the flesh.
As he bit down into it.
As he chewed.
Swallowed.
Cried.
Because this was who he was now.
One of the living.
And this was what he had to do to remain one of the living.
No matter how low it felt—
“Ted?”
He shook his head. Looked around.
He was back on the helicopter. Back beside Harrington and Melissa. Back in the present day.
They’d walked here. He knew they’d made their way here. And he knew he was about to go to another place now. Another place where there’d be a whole new set of rules, a whole different code.
Harrington half-smiled at him. “Are you ready?” she asked.
And he wasn’t. How could he be? How could anyone who had been through what he’d been through be?
But he swallowed the lump in his throat, fought the resistance in his body, and he nodded.
“I’m ready,” he said.
But the helicopter didn’t get far.
Because when he looked outside, he saw another group emerging.
Another armed group.
Guns raised.
Pointing at them.
Surrounding them.
Chapter Four
Riley saw the creatures racing towards him from both directions and, not for the first time, he thought it might finally be the end.
He looked behind him, saw the mass of the dead surging forward. It looked like they were moving quicker and quicker by the second. And the ones in front of them, they didn’t seem to be moving quite as quickly, but they were a thick, impenetrable mass. Anna was by his side. Kesha was in his arms, her fearful noises just normality now. He wanted to break through these crowds. He knew he’d faced worse odds in the past, surely.
But no.
He’d seen how randomly people had fallen.
He’d seen that the odds really didn’t count for much when it all came to it.
People fell for the strangest of reasons. The most unpredictable of reasons.
Who was to say this wasn’t his turn?
But no.
He couldn’t just stand here.
He couldn’t give in.
He had to fight back.
If it was the last thing he did, he had to fight.
“We have to try the apartments,” Riley said, looking to his right, the window of opportunity disappearing rapidly by the second.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t think there’s enough time.”
“Then we have to make time,” he said. “It’s this or we get torn apart by them. And I know which I choose. Come on.”
He ran, Anna by his side, Kesha still in his arms. And either side, he could hear the oncoming undead getting closer and closer. He knew that one slip would mean the end—for him, for Anna, for Kesha.
He’d already come so close. So close, so many times.
Not now.
Not now.
He reached the door to the flats. The creatures were just a matter of metres behind him now. He could smell their dead mass, even though some of them were only recently infected. There was a smell about them, Riley realised, even when they hadn’t been turned long ago. A sweetness, almost.
And as he looked into their eyes, dragging down the apartment door, Riley thought he saw sadness. He thought he saw fear. And he wanted to put as many of them out of their misery as he possibly could.
But he couldn’t.
It wasn’t his duty.
And he didn’t have the resources to do so.
So instead, he opened the door, dragged himself, Anna and Kesha inside the apartments, and he slammed the door shut.
He pressed up against it. A
nna pressed up against it too.
“It’s not gonna hold,” Anna said.
“It has to hold.”
“Riley, it isn’t going to hold.”
Riley stared down the corridor as the undead raced nearer and nearer, their footsteps so close. Soon, their mass would be slamming against that door. It would be so heavy that it would break through, whether he liked it or not.
He had to face up to the reality.
They were cornered.
They were going to have to keep on running.
There was no other way around it.
“Come on,” he said. “We have to try something. We have to—”
It was already too late.
The creatures slammed against the door.
Riley flew forward, fell face flat on the floor. The groaning mass of the monsters, angrier now than he thought he’d ever heard them, was resonating louder and louder from behind.
“Run, Riley!”
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t because he was pinned down. Trapped.
And Kesha was still in his arms.
She looked up at him with fear in her eyes. With hurt on her face. And Riley felt so bad. He felt so bad that this girl was going through yet another horror at such an early stage of her life.
He looked at her, and he prayed she’d find a way to pull through. That they could rescue her.
And when they did, that they’d find a way to make it so she never suffered for another moment in her life.
“Take her,” Riley said.
A look of sheer horror on Anna’s face. “Riley?”
“Just take her, Anna. Please.”
As she looked at him, lying there, he saw it. He saw that look in her eyes. The look that he’d given so many people. That look of defeat that he knew he would’ve had in his eyes so many times when he’d seen people fall.
And the way she looked at him now, he knew this was it.
He knew it was his time.
His time to step down from the ranks of the living.
His time to join the dead.
“Just go, Anna.”
He saw the grief on her face as the undead pushed harder against him, harder against the door. If he was pressed here for much longer, he knew it would be Kesha who would fall first. And he couldn’t have that. He just couldn’t.