by Ryan Casey
Cody’s stomach sank. He liked Maryam. She was cold most of the time, but her methods produced results, and she seemed to have her heart in the right place.
But she was cold. And he feared what that coldness might mean for Steve right now.
“You can tell me things about the extraction point, though, right?”
“Within reason.”
“How many people have left through it?”
“Extraction hasn’t begun, but it will. Soon.”
“What modes of transport will people leave by?”
“If I told you boats, you’d know it’s by the coast. So I’d rather not say.”
“What makes you so stupid that you actually want to stay in this world when there’s the promise of a whole new existence just waiting for you?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“The extraction point,” Maryam said. “You could just stay there and wait to get picked up if what you’re saying is true. Any normal, sane person would. So why haven’t you?”
Steve closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. “Because—”
“Because he has the ‘crazy’ belief that there’s actually people worth saving in this world,” Cody interrupted. “Because he might just be a damned good person who doesn’t only look out for himself.”
Maryam turned. Glared at Cody. Then she looked back at Steve. “Is that true?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to blow my own trumpet, but—”
“How many people do you have to save before you finally decide to leave?”
Steve’s focus turned from Maryam to Cody. He had a different look in his eyes. A look of sadness.
“Look, I… I haven’t been completely honest. With any of you.”
Cody’s stomach sank. No. Not now. Don’t betray our fucking trust now. Not after he’d just taken a beating for him.
“My daughter. I told you about her. Well I have a son too. He disappeared a few weeks back. Vanished, into the woods. Now my head tells me he’s gone. That he’s gone for good. But my heart… well, I guess I’m just hoping I’ll see my boy again someday. And I won’t stop looking until I know for certain. Even—”
He sniffed. Shook his head.
“Even if it’s just for closure.”
A silence fell across the room.
“If he lied about that, he could be lying about fucking anything,” Gav said.
“You’re right. I could. But you’ll just have to do the hardest damned thing and believe me when I say I’m not. I just want to get back to my family. I just want to get back to them. And I just… I just wanted you to see that hope wasn’t dead.”
Steve’s head hung low. He looked pitiful. So pitiful that Cody felt sorry for him. He’d come all this way with news he thought was good, and how had their people treated him? With cynicism. With mistrust. With no belief or faith whatsoever.
What kind of people did that make them?
“If you banish me,” Cody said, “I’ll go with Steve to check out this extraction point. Then if it’s legit, I’ll make my way back here to spread the news. If it isn’t, I won’t.”
“Bullshit,” Gav said. “Let him go and he’ll just fucking do a runner like the coward he is.”
“Then you believe that, Gav. You keep on believing that the whole world’s against you. That there’s nothing good left out in the world, not anymore. See how far that gets you.”
They glared at one another. Cody couldn’t help the feeling that the fight between Gav and him had only just begun.
“We all go with him.”
Maryam’s voice made Gav’s face drop. It made Cody turn around, look at her, just to check he hadn’t hallucinated the words.
“What?”
“I said we all go with him. Every single one of us here.”
Cody’s head spun. He didn’t know what to think about any of this.
“That’s fucking madness, Maryam—” Gav started.
“Then you stay back here. You wait here for the walls to fall. You’ve already seen how it is. Food’s lowering. The walls are crumbling.”
“We can fix them.”
“This place isn’t going to stand forever,” Maryam said, raising her voice. “So now’s the time. The time to make a move. The time to… to take a leap of faith.”
She walked over to Steve. Released the cuffs from behind his back. He pulled his wrists out in front, revealing bruised, chapped flesh. But he just looked relieved to be out of those cuffs. To be free, finally.
“We eat. We rest. Then tomorrow morning, we leave this place. Steve takes us to this extraction point.”
Gav shook his head. “This is a fucking awful idea.”
“Even more awful than beating one of your group members half-to-death?”
“He put us all in danger—”
“Gav?” Maryam said.
“What?”
“Shut the fuck up and do as you’re told.”
Maryam nodded at Cody. He still didn’t know what to say.
“We leave tomorrow morning,” Maryam said, putting a hand on Steve’s back as he stood opposite Cody. “But this is on you. Both of you. Don’t let us down.”
“I won’t,” Steve said, smiling at Cody.
“We won’t,” Cody said.
GAV DIDN’T STAND.
He just sat there, the anger building up inside…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Man, you were lucky we showed up when we did back there. Hate to think what would’ve happened if we hadn’t.”
Riley walked alongside the group of strangers through the woods. Many of them were armed. He didn’t want to trust them. He wanted to do what he did to everyone who tried to win him over in some way.
He wanted to deal with them.
Jordanna was by his side, with Chloë beside her. She held Kesha in her arm. Kesha had been remarkably quiet on the three-hour long walk so far. A three-hour long walk with an unfamiliar group where few words had been spoken, where even fewer creatures had been encountered.
But an unfamiliar group who had saved their lives.
Riley listened to the sounds of the footsteps. He kept on scanning every single person around him, questioning why they were looking at him, at Jordanna, at Chloë, and at Kesha. What their motive was. He licked his dry lips. He didn’t want to accept any of their water. Didn’t want to risk it.
But the truth was, these people had saved them. Riley and his people had run into them when they’d been fleeing the hybrids. These people, with their guns, had pulled the triggers. And for a split second, Riley was convinced they were shooting him, Jordanna, Chloë and Kesha down.
But they hadn’t. When he’d opened his eyes, he saw what they’d fired at. The hybrids. Every single one of them, all of them taken down.
Then they’d told Riley and the rest of the group to follow, quickly. To get the hell out of that place.
Riley hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t wanted to trust the man with the long, ginger hair called Mattius, or the rest of his people. He hadn’t wanted to put his faith in anyone else.
But he’d had to.
And here he was.
Here they all were, three hours later. Still walking. Still alive.
“Not talkers, are you?” Mattius asked, dropping back to join Riley and the others.
Riley glanced at Jordanna, who rolled her eyes. “We appreciate it. Really.”
“Wary. I get that. I get why people would be wary in this world. Just down by where we saw you, we saw a loada heads on stakes. One of them was an old friend of ours. Mad world. Mad what happens to people when they’re worried about their own lives. So worried that they don’t give a damn what happens to other people.”
Riley figured it’d be wise to keep the fact he’d put the heads on the stakes really quiet right now.
“Glad we ran into you when we did, anyway. We could do with some new faces.”
“New faces?” Jordanna asked.
“You bet. Got a decent sized camp a cou
ple of miles from here. Thirty, forty people, so pretty nicely sized. Used to be bigger, but… well, if you’re alive in this world, you know what happens to bigger groups.”
Jordanna nodded. Riley got a flash of all the bigger groups he’d been in, all the people he’d lost.
“What’s your story anyway, chatterbox?” Mattius said.
It took Riley a few seconds to realise he was looking right at him.
“Oh. Um. Nothing interesting.”
“Hundreds of days into a zombie apocalypse and you ain’t got anything interesting to tell? Ain’t that a pity. You ain’t one of those baggage guys, are you?”
“Baggage guys?”
“You know. Someone who lets the past get to ’em. Lets it tear ’em up.”
Riley didn’t want to say yes. But he didn’t want to lie, either.
“Look,” Mattius said. “Whatever’s happened to you people, whatever the hell you’ve been through, we’re going somewhere safe. You don’t have to come with us if you really don’t want to. But, well. You’ve come this far. And it’ll be good to have some new faces. As long as you ain’t always so mute.”
Jordanna smiled. “Thank you. Seriously.”
Mattius nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll leave you to your sponsored silence.”
Mattius walked ahead, joining the rest of the group and leaving Riley, Jordanna, Chloë and Kesha alone.
“What do you think?” Jordanna asked.
“You know what I think.”
“He saved our lives. All of his people saved our lives.”
“People have different reasons for keeping others alive. Sometimes it’s not always clear at first, but it makes sense in the end.”
Jordanna sighed, shaking her head. “Or maybe he’s just trying to do the right thing. Maybe he really does want some new faces in his group.”
Riley paused. Didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, “Maybe.”
“What do you think anyway?” Jordanna said, looking at Chloë. “After all, you’re the one with the kid in your arm. You’ve got to make the big call.”
Chloë’s narrow eyes focused ahead. She looked just as sceptical of these people as Riley, which reassured him. Maybe Chloë would be on his side. Maybe she’d convince Jordanna not to trust—
“I won’t tell them the truth. About Kesha. But you’re right. They saved us. We should… we should give them a chance.”
Riley couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Chloë used to be so cold, so distrustful. What had happened to her out there on her own? And what had it done to her?
“Then that’s settled,” Jordanna said. She looked at Riley. Shrugged. “Looks like you’ve been outvoted.”
“We’ve not asked Baby Kesha yet,” Riley said, half-joking, half-honest.
Riley looked around at the group. Kept on following them as the trees thinned out. He didn’t want to believe them. Didn’t want to trust them. But he felt himself struggling to argue with the evidence, with the truth.
They seemed like good people. Good people who’d saved his life and the lives of his people.
And even if they weren’t, well, he’d find a way to kill them all, somehow.
“We’re making the right move,” Jordanna said. She grabbed Riley’s hand. “And by going along with this… you’re making the right move. I’m proud of you.”
Riley looked into Jordanna’s eyes. Saw them twinkling in the dimming sunlight. Everything felt okay again.
“Hold up,” Mattius called. “Here we are, folks.”
Riley turned and expected to see some kind of creature-laden trap.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t at all.
Mattius pointed at a multi-storey car park right at the edge of the woods. There were barbed wire fences all around it. It went up around five stories, and on each of the stories, Riley could see people.
Mattius went up to the gates, as did the rest of his people. They took down three, four creatures lurking around the entrance, then the gates started to roll open, the grey brick of the multi-storey car park and the grey sky above making Riley feel sick. He really, really didn’t want to do this.
“You ready?” Jordanna asked. She squeezed Riley’s hand.
“No.”
Jordanna squeezed his hand tighter. “That’s the spirit.”
Together, Riley, Jordanna, Chloë and Kesha walked towards the gates of the multi-storey car park.
Together, they walked into their new home.
Together, they tried—they tried really fucking hard—to believe in something. To hope.
To trust.
KAYLEIGH SIMMONS GRIPPED on to her leg and felt her stomach sink when she saw the people walking through the gates and into her home.
The man who’d shot at her, killed all her people, as they’d approached that cabin in the woods just a day ago.
The man who must’ve put Larry’s head on a stake. Sick fuck.
And here he was, walking into her home.
“That’s him,” she said.
Colin stepped to her side. Looked down at the people stepping inside the gates from the third storey of the car park. “Who?”
“That’s him. That’s the man who shot me. Who killed Mike and Dave.”
A pause from Colin. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure.”
Colin sighed. Rubbed his fingers through his thinning hair. “Then you know what we have to do.”
Kayleigh stared down at the skinny man with his dark hair and felt the lust for revenge building up inside.
“We kill him,” Kayleigh said.
EPISODE THIRTY-NINE
GHOST TOWNS
(THIRD EPISODE OF SEASON SEVEN)
PROLOGUE
Riley looked back at the cloud of thick, black smoke emerging from the multi-storey car park, and for the first time in a long time, he felt a real sense of guilt over what he’d done.
As they stared back through the trees, over towards the burning fumes of the car park, Riley tasted vomit as the smoke spread even higher.
The screams erupted all around them.
“Come on,” Jordanna said. She took Riley’s hand, her eyes wide and clearly traumatised. “Let’s… let’s find someplace else.”
Riley swallowed a lump in his throat as the flames and the smoke grew thicker.
As the screams grew even more pained, even more terrified.
As another town of life—another town of hope—became another ghost town in a world of ghost towns.
He took a deep breath.
Turned away.
And together with his people—with the very last people on this earth he could trust—he walked out into a world of ghosts.
HE LIFTED the machete and swung it through her skull.
When he heard it crunch, he didn’t think of the horrors of what he’d done. He didn’t even think of the horror it brought to the people around her.
He just thought of his wife’s final words.
“Never lose your faith in life.”
He thought of what these people had done to the lives of those he’d loved.
“Never lose your faith in life. Never lose your faith in life.”
And then he pulled the blade from her head and watched her blood pool out onto the ground…
CHAPTER ONE
Earlier…
IF RILEY JAMESON had learned one thing since the start of the apocalypse, it was to never feel comfortable. Ever. Because feeling comfortable was usually a sign that something terrible was on the horizon.
It was morning. A night had passed since he, Jordanna, Chloë and Kesha arrived at Mattius’ community at the multi-storey car park. Ever since they’d got there, there’d been a greyness to the sky. A greyness to the entire place, in fact—it was claustrophobic, sitting here on the first floor, petrol canisters for stools, staring out of that narrow opening towards the woods that they’d spent hours walking through just a day ago.
There were people all a
round, tucking into their breakfasts. It wasn’t the most appealing breakfast—porridge oats—but then Riley wasn’t sure he’d be able to enjoy even his favourite meal right now. He couldn’t relax. He felt like eyes were on him at all times, weighing him up, studying him.
He put a little of the porridge into his mouth. It made him heave. All around, he heard chatter. People looked in his direction. Some of them nodded, smiling. He didn’t know who to trust. Who to believe in.
This place was okay, sure. It was home for some. But Riley couldn’t help feeling there had to be something more than this place—that there had to be something more than just hopping from safe place to safe place, seeking out some kind of temporary security until it was bags packed and onto the next next place. There had to be more than this to life. There had to be some kind of endgame.
But then, why would there be? When was there ever an endgame in normal life? The only three certainties in life are that we’re born, we live, and we die. Death is the endgame. There are no turning points. There is no new equilibrium; a resolution after the climax.
Just death.
And in this world, a nice little epilogue of undeath.
There had to be something more. There had to be something… else.
“You okay?”
Chloë made Riley jump. She put her bowl of porridge down beside him, sat next to him.
Riley put another spoonful of the porridge in his mouth, forgetting how fucking awful it was. He nodded.
“You’re lying,” Chloë said, as she spooned some of the porridge down. She certainly looked more into it than he did.
Riley put his spoon down. When nobody was looking, he spat his porridge back into the bowl.
“Ew,” Chloë said.
“Don’t tell.”
“Nobody’ll know any different anyway. It’s fucking disgusting.”
“You seem to be doing a good job of eating it?”
Chloë shrugged. “We have to eat. Food is fuel. Just like we have to settle down somewhere. Settling down is survival.”
She side-glanced at Riley. He knew what she was referring to right away. She’d grown up. She seemed so much more confident, so much more mature.
“It’s just hard,” Riley said. “After what happened to the MLZ. Then what happened to Heathwaite’s before it, and all the places we were together before that. Just makes you wonder if this is all… if this really is all there is.”