by Ryan Casey
Chloë spooned more porridge into her mouth. “It’s just something we have to get used to.”
“You’ve changed your tune.”
“What?”
Riley smiled. Shook his head. “You used to be so… distrustful. Of everyone. Even of those closest to you.”
Instead of turning away and blushing like she used to, Chloë kept her focus on Riley. “I went through some bad things when I was with you guys before. But I went through some worse stuff when I was on my own. The things I saw. The things I had to do.”
“You can talk about them. If you—”
“I saved my dad’s life. I went to an island with him and his people. My people. And then things went wrong. My dad was killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I feel sad. But… but I learned a lot. From everything that happened. I learned that not everyone’s bad in the world. Everyone just wants something. There’s no good and there’s no bad, there’s just people who all want different things. And if you can find a way to give it to them, then you can survive in this world.”
Riley thought about Chloë’s words as she ate her porridge. He couldn’t believe she spoke with such a profundity. Such intelligence for a kid her age.
But then she wasn’t a kid. Not if she’d grown up in this world. Not if she’d survived in this world.
Nobody was a kid and nobody was an adult anymore.
There were only survivors.
“What about Kesha?” Riley asked.
Chloë looked over her shoulder. “She’s with Jordanna right now.”
“But what about her… well. What you said. About her being… bitten.”
Chloë paused. “It’d be nice for Kesha to be put to good use. For her to cure people. But I know she might never.”
“How can you say that?”
“It’s more important that she lives a good life. That she grows up. Because she’s a person. A human, like everyone else. Hopefully one day she’ll be put to good use. When she’s older, maybe she’ll be able to give blood or whatever. But not now. We have to find the right people to look out for her. We have to make sure she’s with people who care. Then we can think about the future.”
“You’ve grown up, Chloë,” Riley said.
“So have you.”
When Chloë said it, uncertainty in her eyes, he wasn’t sure whether she meant it as a good thing or a bad thing.
“Never been good with kids, but damn. This girl’s a dream.”
Jordanna appeared at the table, Kesha in one arm and a bowl of porridge in her hand. She sat down, rocked Kesha side to side. And as Jordanna and Chloë smiled, the whole room seemed to drift away around them. Riley saw Jordanna with a kid in her arms and he saw the mother she should be. The mother she was supposed to be.
He saw his family around him. Jordanna. Chloë. Kesha. His true family in this world.
And then he heard some commotion at the back of the table and saw a woman holding a gun.
She was pointing it right at Riley. Beside her, three other people, all holding guns, all pointing them at Riley.
He wasn’t sure what to do. What to say. But he swore he recognised this woman somehow. He swore she was familiar.
“What the fuck’s this?” Jordanna asked. She stood up. Stepped in front of Kesha, in front of Chloë.
“Back away,” the woman said, limping towards him. She tilted her gun around them, pointed at Riley again.
“I won’t back away until you—”
“Back the fuck away before I do to you what he did to my people. To us.”
Riley didn’t understand. Not at first.
Then, when Jordanna looked around, when Chloë looked around, he realised who this woman was. He recognised her.
Oh fuck.
Oh fucking fuck.
“Stand the fuck up. And put your hands on your head. Wouldn’t want you to stick ours on a stake.”
Riley recognised the woman.
She was the woman he’d shot in the leg yesterday when the group had surrounded his cabin.
She was one of this community.
She was one of these people.
And she was pointing her gun at him.
CHAPTER TWO
After three hours of morning walking, Cody’s feet were in agony. But he couldn’t complain. He was on the way to the extraction point. He’d convinced Maryam that following Steve was the right thing to do.
There was still hope in this world.
They walked down a long country lane in the middle of nowhere, the clouds thickening overhead. There were no trees either side of them, just open, grassy hills, which they could see across for miles. It was like walking along the back of an alien landscape, and Cody figured they were crossing the Pennines. The good thing about a landscape like this? You could see anyone coming for you.
The bad news?
They could see you too.
Cody heard the huffing and puffing of the group walking with him. His lips were dry, and his stomach hungry, but none of that mattered, not really. They were heading to the extraction point Steve told them about. They were going to get there, and they were going to get out of here.
All of them.
Cody looked over his shoulder. The group from the fort were all walking behind him, trudging along. Some of them smiled at him. But he saw the glares he got from the others in the group. From people like Gav, Matt, Lewie. They weren’t happy with this arrangement.
If anything, they were probably shocked. Cody was shocked himself that Maryam had not only agreed to send someone to follow Steve, but to bring her whole group along. They’d been on the road before, sure. They’d searched for safe places. And the fort was hardly in the best condition.
But the whole group?
That was a leap of faith. That was a level of trust that Cody found admirable. A level of trust that gave him hope going forward.
He looked at Maryam. She wore a constantly serious expression as she walked alone. Nobody spoke to her, and she spoke to nobody. There was always distance between her and the rest of the group.
When she saw Cody looking at her, she smiled.
She never smiled at anyone.
Cody smiled back. There was something between them. He couldn’t deny it. The feelings were… confusing. But he felt it. And he knew from the way Maryam looked at him that she felt it too.
He caught Gav glaring at him through narrowed eyes and knew he was going to have to watch his step.
“So how long’ve you been the rank outsider?”
Cody turned to his right. Steve grinned at him. He looked much better today. Dark, floppy hair that sat upright on his head. Narrow cheekbones. An infectious smile.
Just a pity about the big bruise on the side of his face that Gav’s crowbar had given him.
“What’re you saying?”
“You. You’re not a part of this group really. Not like the others. Right?”
Cody glanced down at the road. As much as he wanted to trust Steve, he was trying to maintain an illusion of distance, so the rest of the group didn’t think he was completely caught up in Steve’s words. Just in case. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Course you do. Can see from a mile away that you ain’t been here all that long. It’s written all over you. Written all over the faces of the others, too. So go on. You threw me in a cell for days. Not a good place for an extrovert to be, I swear. Humour me. How’d you wind up with this crowd?”
Cody wasn’t sure how in depth to go with his past; how deeply to open up to Steve. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea at all.
But he decided to trust his gut anyway.
“I was alone. Well, not exactly alone. With family. Wife. Daughter. We were just… well, surviving around the Manchester area for the first few days.”
“Surviving around the Manchester area. My sympathies.”
“We were one of the lucky ones. Got taken into the Manchester Living Zone.”
Steve slowed down. His eyes widened. “A Living Zone?”
“Yeah. Heard of ’em?”
“Course I’ve heard of ’em. Well, I’ve heard rumours. Rumours of these places that were already built before the apocalypse started. What the hell was it like living in there?”
Cody thought back to the bustle of the streets. The sound of laughter he heard when he went for his morning runs. He remembered looking up at the walls and knowing they were keeping him safe. They were keeping the horrors outside away.
But then, in a flash, he saw the undead filling up the streets. He heard screams. He saw his wife, dead. His daughter, crouched over her, as she’d turned into an early form of one of the Uglies.
“It was good,” Cody said. “For a time. And then like everywhere it just fell apart.”
“So it fell apart and you ended up at the fort?”
“Not at the fort, exactly. I… Something went down. Some trouble. With another group. Cut a long story short, Maryam saved my life, and I’ve been with her people ever since. I guess I owe it to them to try and find them a better future.”
Steve nodded. “And you’re doing that. You’re doing exactly that.”
They kept on walking as the roads narrowed, trees emerging in the distance. There were signs for a town up ahead, Alston. They’d have to watch out. Towns could be dangerous.
Then again, so could everywhere.
“So how about you?” Cody asked.
Steve smiled. “Ah, not half as interesting.”
“Everyone has stories to tell, remember?”
Steve glanced into Cody’s eyes, scratching the back of his neck. “My family and I survived. Started in Carnforth and just moved from place to place.”
“Carnforth? Didn’t get too far from where you found us then.”
“We didn’t need to. Like you know, when you find something good, it’s hard to walk away from.”
“Right.”
“There’s been some good times. Some… moments of light. But there’s been bad times too. We’ve done bad things. But even with all the bad things we’ve done, we’ve kept hold of our hope.”
“Hope of what?”
“That there’s still goodness in this world.”
Cody nodded. Speaking to Steve felt good. It reassured him that he wasn’t the only person with idealistic visions for the future; that he wasn’t just living a fantasy.
“I believe that too,” he said.
“Watch out!”
The voice came from behind. But just as soon as Cody heard it, he heard a snarl from his right.
When he turned, he saw a group of undead stumbling his way.
Cody lifted the heavy spanner. Steve raised his crowbar.
“Ready?” Steve asked.
“Ready,” Cody said.
He stepped up to the oncoming undead. The first one was a wrinkly old man with no clothes. It was pitiful to see the bites and sores all over his body, a complete loss of dignity.
He lunged at Cody.
Cody cracked his skull with one hit of the spanner.
He caught his breath, moved onto the next undead. A ginger woman with curly hair, also old, also nude. It dawned on Cody then that all these undead were nude, all of them stripped of their dignity. He wondered what’d happened to them, how they’d ended up looking this way.
He cracked the spanner across the back of this woman’s head.
He turned around to take on the next undead.
The undead ploughed into his legs.
Dragged him down to the road.
The spanner flew out of his hand.
He shuffled. Twisted and turned. Tried to break free of the grip of the undead.
But the undead opened its mouth.
Moved it towards the flesh on the back of Cody’s leg.
Behind, all around, as the undead grew in number, he knew everyone was occupied, everyone was fighting their own fights.
He tried to punch the undead away. Tried to kick it, as its teeth wrapped around its leg, as it started to clamp down.
He closed his eyes and thought of Sasha and Kelly.
Then he saw the undead’s head explode.
The jaw around his leg went limp. He pulled his leg back, stood up again, his heart still racing.
He saw Steve standing over the undead that’d almost killed him, crowbar dripping blood. He looked at Cody and he nodded.
Cody saw more undead approaching. He reached for his spanner and nodded back at Steve.
Then he swung it at the next of the undead.
They kept on going and going, all of them, until every single one of them was down.
The group stood. Stood in the silence. Tasted the bitterness of blood in the breeze. The undead smell tarnished what was such a freshness not long ago.
“Look,” someone said.
Cody looked ahead. Looked down the hill, into the distance, past the trees.
There was a town. A small town, with grey-bricked buildings and a narrow street.
The streets were empty. Everything was quiet. Silent.
Alston.
“You sure about this, Steve?” Maryam asked. She walked up beside Steve and Cody, wiping the blood from her long blade onto her black coat.
Steve looked into the distance as blood dripped from his crowbar. “It’s the only way.”
Maryam’s eyes shifted from Steve to Cody. “Then that’s where we go.”
The group headed away from the massacre of undead, towards the ghost town.
GAV KNEW his moment was close.
CHAPTER THREE
Cody wanted to feel like walking through a silent town was a good thing. Like it was a positive. Because walking through anywhere quiet in this world had to be a positive, right?
But there was something off about this town. Something unsettling.
Specks of rain drizzled down. Alston was a classic old town—grey-bricked buildings either side, one narrow high street leading right through the middle of it. Traditional shops selling all sorts of antique products like ancient sweets, souvenirs, that kind of thing. The streets were lined with cars, which were covered in dust. There were no smashed windows. Not even a single boarded up window.
Just quiet.
Cody listened to the sound of his racing heart, the only sound he could hear besides the nervous breaths and heavy footsteps of the rest of his people. He looked up at every window, at every opening in the street, eager not to let anyone or anything take advantage of him. Because it felt like he was walking into some kind of trap. Nowhere was this quiet. Nowhere was this safe.
This place had secrets. Secrets it was eager to hide.
“Not far,” Steve whispered, his voice still echoing against the walls of the buildings. “Should be out of this place in no time.”
“Was it like this when you were last here?” Maryam asked.
Steve nodded. Then, shook his head. “It’s hard to say. Lots of little places like this on the way. But it should be…”
He stopped. And Cody wasn’t sure why at first.
Not until he saw what was ahead.
There was blood smeared across the road and up the walls. Blood, guts, and what looked like pieces of bone. There were bodies. Bodies that had been chewed up and torn apart by something strong, something powerful.
Churned up beyond recognition.
Seeing the mess made the hairs on Cody’s arms stand on end. It was in such contrast to the rest of the town, which was so clean, so quiet. The smell of death cut through the air. He wondered what could cause such chaos, such death. There was only one thing. But he was pretty certain all of those things were gone by now.
At least he hoped so.
They kept on walking down the bloodied road, squelching through the sinewy pieces of muscle covering the tarmac below.
“It’s fresh,” Steve said.
“What?”
“This blood. It’s fresh. This happened… this happened recently.”
The whole group
stood in the middle of this bloodbath, this pit of death. They all looked around. Looked at the windows. Between the buildings. Cody swore he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He swore he saw things moving quickly, just out of focus. But then he dismissed it. Put it down to his mind, or a trick of the light.
They had to get through this town. They had to get to the extraction point.
They had to get away. Fast.
“So this definitely wasn’t here when you last came this way?” Maryam asked.
Steve shook his head, walking a little faster now. “Definitely not. Think I’d remember something like this.”
“And what about that?” Maryam asked. She raised a finger. Pointed into the distance.
“Shit. Oh shit.”
It took a while for Cody to work out what he was looking at. But the more he focused on it, the more he looked at what lay ahead, the more nervous he grew about making it out of this ghost town.
There were spikes. Metal spikes, all pressed up against each other, so close that squeezing past them was going to be very hard.
Judging by the bodies that were pressed onto them by their torsos, bleeding out, many people had already tried.
“So what now?” Gav asked. “What the fuck now?”
Cody heard the panic and the frustration building up in the group behind.
“You seriously fucking telling us this spike pit wasn’t here when you last came through?”
Steve raised his hands. Backed away from Gav. “Look, I’m only telling you what I saw and how I saw it—”
“Bullshit.”
“This wasn’t here. It wasn’t here at all.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“Quite a while.”
“Enough time for bodies to start rotting on the spikes?” Gav shouted. His voice echoed against the buildings.
“Those rotting bodies could’ve been put there at any time,” Cody interrupted.
Everyone turned. Looked at him. Some of the group shook their heads, rolled their eyes.
“You seriously fucking believe that?” Gav asked.
Cody stood his ground. Held his head high. He looked from Gav to Steve to Maryam. “I have to.”