by Ryan Casey
Maryam didn’t say anything. Not at first. As she stared at Cody, he got the sense that she was looking at him like he was ridiculous.
Then, she broke her silence. “The things that happened to you in the past. Your old group, with the man called Riley. The one that abandoned you.”
“They didn’t exactly abandon me—”
“And the people who buried you alive. They are good people? They are the people who make you believe the world is a better place?”
Cody didn’t want to accept her words or agree with them in any way. But he couldn’t deny the truth. He’d faced some nasty sons of bitches in the last few months. He’d encountered bad people. People that went beyond his worst nightmares.
But he’d seen goodness, too. He’d seen goodness in the group at the Manchester Living Zone. He’d seen hope in the darkest of moments.
He’d seen the potential for a future even when it seemed all but gone.
“Most people are dangerous,” Maryam said. “It’s how you have to be if you want to survive. You can’t just believe in other people. Belief plays people. Manipulates people. Kills people.”
“I’ve believed in you,” Cody said. “And what you showed me. The plane. The story of the outside world. How it’s all good out there.”
Maryam’s eyes narrowed. Her focus seemed to soften, like she was recalling a past that Cody didn’t know existed. “Yes. Well. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’re here. We must survive here.”
“I don’t believe we have to settle like that,” Cody said. “We shouldn’t just give up. We know the truth. You’ve seen the world outside. We should be spreading the word. Trying to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Just… just something. Anything. We can’t just give up like this. We can’t just accept that this world, these horrors, are all there is.”
Another silence followed between them. Another long stare.
Eventually, Maryam broke the silence again. “We’re here. We’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
“No,” Cody said. He wanted to give up his argument but wasn’t in the mood to. Not now. “It isn’t what matters. It can’t be. So if it means banishing me, then you’d better get it done with.”
Maryam snorted. Half of her face broke out into a smile.
“What?”
“Banish you?” she said. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
Cody felt his face blushing. “Then why did you…”
She leaned closer to Cody. So close that he felt her warmth in the air, smelled the sweetness of her breath.
“I just like talking with you late at night,” she said.
Cody looked into the beautiful side of her face and he felt his body tingling all over.
He looked at the beautiful side and he could block the burned side out. He could fill in the gaps, and see this woman for who she was.
The woman he believed in.
The woman he trusted.
The woman who’d saved his life.
“Then maybe I’ll stay and chat a little longer?” Cody said.
Maryam’s smile widened. She moved closer to Cody. Put a cold hand on his arm.
“Maybe you—”
Maryam didn’t finish what she was saying.
A deafening cry ripped through the fortress.
“Help!”
Chapter Six
Riley watched the armed group surround him and he knew his luck was up.
The oncoming group moved through the trees with serious pace. Most of them were armed, by the looks of things. Armed with pistols, some with knives. There were plenty of them, and possibly more that Riley didn’t know about yet. He could handle them one to one. Could probably stand a damned good shot at taking them down alone, too.
But he only had one bullet left. One bullet, and he was far away from the cabin.
He looked over at the cabin as the shouts of the group got nearer. As their eyes all looked at him, faces awash with anger and disgust. He saw Jordanna crouched right where they’d both been earlier, peeking through the glass. He wanted her to help him. But another part of him wanted her to stay there. To keep a low profile.
One thing was for sure: their home wasn’t safe anymore. And he couldn’t be doing with an unsafe home.
He felt something smack the back of his head. Something hard and metal that he recognised as a barrel of a gun.
“You’re gonna stay down there,” a quivery voice said, as the collective smell of human stench interfering with his perfect home grew more pungent by the second. The woman who he hadn’t shot. “You’re gonna stay down there on your knees and you’re gonna fucking beg.”
Riley looked ahead at the people heading his way. There were eight of them. He watched them walk through the trees. Men. Women. All of them looking at him like he was some kind of monster.
He didn’t speak. Not at first. A sour taste filled his mouth as he tried to keep his focus on them, hoping that in turn, it kept their focus off the cabin, off Jordanna. All around him, he saw the bodies of those he’d shot. The bodies that the creatures had ripped apart. He smelled the coppery stench of blood thick in the air.
A man stepped forward ahead of the other seven people. He walked right over to Riley, slowly. He was big. Well built, with a bald head and dressed all in khaki. He was holding a long rifle.
He stopped right opposite Riley. Stared down at him.
Riley kept his focus right back up at the man, never once turning from his steely grey eyes.
“You got a problem with my people?” the man asked, his booming voice breaking the silence.
Riley looked up past the man’s head to the tree above. He looked up at the branches, up at the darkening sky beyond.
He felt a crack on the back of his head. Then his mouth filled with the taste of blood.
“I asked you a question,” the man said, pulling his rifle back. “And when I ask a question, you answer. Okay? You get that?”
Riley didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. He just looked back up into that man’s eyes and held his stare.
“You got a problem with my people?”
Riley took a deep breath of the cool September air. “Not your people.”
“Then why did you kill two of my—”
“Not your people,” Riley continued. “Just… people in general.”
The man smiled. Nodded. He started chuckling as he walked side to side, wavering in and out of the radius of the tree above. “Those heads on stakes. They people you didn’t like too? That what you do with people you don’t like?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I like them or not,” Riley said, trying his best to keep his composure. “People are dangerous.”
“Usually, the people who say people are dangerous are the most dangerous people.”
“Maybe so.”
The man stopped. He looked down at Riley. Smiled.
And then he pulled back his rifle and smacked it right across Riley’s forehead.
A burning, splitting sensation cracked through his skull. All sounds went muffled. His nose blocked up with the thinning flow of blood, which trickled down the back of his throat.
“You see, you can’t go around just murdering whoever the hell you want. It ain’t good for humanity. It ain’t polite.”
“What’s good for humanity stopped mattering a year ago,” Riley said.
“You see, I don’t believe that. None of us believe that. We believe in good manners. We believe in sticking together. And then there’s loners like you trying to set the rules.”
He grabbed Riley’s cheeks, squeezed his tender face, hard.
“I’ll bet you were just a normal guy before all this. ’Cause all the rulebooks of the end of the world says it’s the serial killers who go nutty. The prisoners. The ex-cons and the rapists. But no. The real bad guys are the ones who’ve been repressed in the old world. Who’ve been holding their fantasies in. This is their world. I’ll bet you
’re one of those people, ain’t you?”
For the first time, Riley looked over at the cabin. He looked Jordanna in her eyes as she crouched there, unknown to the surviving people here. She was shaking her head. Riley kept on nodding back at her. Nodding at her to do what she had to do.
The man looked around. Looked over at the cabin. “What? What you nodding at? Got someone watching me, loner? Fucking spirit animal or something?”
When he turned, Riley nodded at Jordanna again. Gestured at her to go ahead. To do it. Before they lost this place. Before they lost their lives.
“Anyway,” the man said, scratching his stubbly chin. “I don’t have time for this. You killed my people. Now I do what I have to do.”
He lifted his gun. Pointed it at Riley’s throat.
“Any last words?”
Riley glanced over at Jordanna. Smiled, and nodded. Then he looked back at the man. “Watch your head.”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
Riley held his breath as the silence grew stronger, building up until…
A crack of a blade against wood.
A snap of rope.
Then, above, Riley saw the wooden trap of sharp spears fall down from the trees.
The man looked up when he heard the branches snapping. Riley punched him in the stomach, then elbowed the gun from the hand of the woman behind him before using his final bullet to fire at her.
She fell to the ground, the bullet piercing her leg.
When Riley looked back around, he saw a look of delayed fear in the main man’s eyes.
And then the trap of sharpened wooden spears crashed down onto his body, stabbing him all over.
Riley heard the bullets then. The gunfire from the cabin as Jordanna shot down a few more of the people. He knew she wouldn’t like doing this. It wasn’t her thing. But survival was his thing, so sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
He went to head back to the cabin when he felt bullets whooshing past him. Two of the armed people were running his way, heading towards him. He reached down and grabbed the pistol from the woman he’d shot, who was bleeding out on the ground.
He thought about putting her out of her misery. But he figured he’d need the ammo.
He ran away. Ran into the trees. The branches lashed against his face. Above, he felt the darkness growing more intense.
“Come the fuck back here!” a voice shouted.
He could hear their footsteps approaching. As he ran further into the woods, he thought he saw people watching him. Creatures watching him. But no. He knew they weren’t. He knew this place better than any other. He knew what he had to do.
He ran over to the manhole cover in front of the cave. Pulled the cover aside. Fitted the loose one on there.
And then he ran past it.
Perched in the grass.
Waited.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting when he saw the two men appear. They looked around, panting. He saw the fear on their faces and wanted to put them out of their misery, but he had ammo to conserve.
“Where the fuck’s he got to?” one of them asked.
Riley watched as the first man, who had dark, curly hair and a bit of extra weight, led the way towards the cave. He saw him squinting inside it. He could feel his heart racing from all the way over here; sense the fear inside him.
He watched him walk closer towards that cave, his friend just behind.
Watched him push his face right up to the cave entrance.
And then the ground gave way beneath his feet.
He fell down, just the one leg. And then he let out a scream as a creature bit down onto his thigh, ripping the flesh away, then another creature joined in, and another, until there was barely anything left of the man’s leg in the space of a few seconds.
His companion stood there, stunned. Stood there, tears rolling down his face.
Riley lifted the pistol.
Pointed at the man.
Fired.
But before the bullet could make contact, the man moved. He dropped everything he was carrying and he ran.
Riley gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to let this man get away.
So as much as he wanted to conserve ammo, he fired another shot at the man.
He waited. Waited for the man to shout out. For him to cry with pain.
He heard a thump.
A thump, then a sudden stop in movement.
He waited a few seconds as the man in front of him was ripped apart by the creatures, then he went over there and slammed a boot between his eyes. Hard.
Then he went off in pursuit of the man who’d got away.
He ran in his direction. Powered through the silent trees. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been searching. He put his hands on his knees, gasped for air. He had to go back to the cabin. Had to make sure Jordanna was okay. The man could be a threat, but he’d heard him fall. He must’ve taken a bullet. He wouldn’t live long—
He heard something.
A shuffling in the undergrowth behind him.
Riley crouched, lifted his knife in one hand and the gun in the other. He crept over through the thick bushes, over towards where he’d heard the sound.
Then he heard it again.
Like someone shuffling their feet.
He pulled his knife back as he focused on the source of the sound. Got ready to swing it at whoever was there.
He held his breath as the shuffling continued. As he heard a… a voice. Only it sounded higher pitched. Less like a man and more like a…
He pulled the branches aside.
When he saw what was there—who was there—he didn’t understand. He thought this must be some kind of nightmare—as if he’d woken up in the middle of some weird dream.
But then he saw the way she looked him in the eyes with her malnourished, emaciated little face.
He saw that flicker of recognition.
“Riley?” she said.
Riley dropped his gun. Dropped his knife.
“Riley?”
It wasn’t the man sitting there. It wasn’t any of that armed group at all.
It was Chloë.
And she had a baby in her skinny arms…
No, wait.
In her skinny arm.
Chapter Seven
Kane ran away from the zombies as fast as he could.
Just a pity “as fast as he could” wasn’t fast enough in this damned world.
The night was rapidly approaching. Another dark, horrible night that he had to look ahead to. The nights were the worst. When he slept, he had horrifying nightmares of zombies ripping the people he loved apart. When he was awake, he saw them everywhere, even when they weren’t really there. He saw them closing in on him. Heard their throaty cries as their lust for blood grew ever stronger by the day. He smelled them, in that way that always made sick rise up into his mouth, ruining his taste buds.
Right now though, he had to run, because they were coming for him.
He wasn’t sure how much further he could keep on running. The black shoes he’d salvaged a few weeks back were way too small for his feet, the leather rubbing against them and blistering them with every movement. He couldn’t stop shaking and shivering, and constant heaviness hung over him. He’d barely eaten in days, and the last time he’d eaten, it’d been nothing more than a cereal bar he’d found in an abandoned tent right in the middle of the woods. He’d savoured that cereal bar. Savoured every single bite.
He wished he had a cereal bar to savour right now.
Kane put his hands on his knees. A crippling stitch ran right through his body, more intense than any stitches he used to get in the old world. Not that he used to get many—he avoided running where he could. Although, his body wouldn’t tell that tale. He’d always been tall at six foot five right now, and incredibly skinny. People used to say he looked creepy, with his dark hair and gaunt cheekbones. At least that was one positive in this world. He wasn’t the creepiest thing out there anymore.
He looked around at the woods. Listened to the total silence other than the trees creaking in the wind. He had no idea where he was. He was used to feeling totally lost since the world went to pot. In a way, everyone was. The era of the smartphone was over. Google Maps couldn’t help anymore. Humanity had lost a limb, and those who were the most attached to that old world were the ones who suffered the strongest.
Kane was one of those people. A bona fide thirty-nine-year-old nerd. Single, eternally. No friends. No pets. Nothing. Just himself. Himself, just trying to survive in a strange world, like he’d always been.
Himself and his thoughts.
His lovely thoughts.
He put his hands back on his knees and gathered his breath. He looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. Couldn’t hear anything coming for him from back there. Must’ve lost the infected. But you never truly lost them, not really. Even when you thought you’d lost them, there were always more of them, waiting to creep up on you, waiting to…
He heard a groan to his left. Heard the heavy footsteps crunching through the fallen autumn leaves.
His body turned to mush.
He took a few deep breaths, braced himself to run again.
Then he felt two icy hands on his back and fell down to the ground.
He felt the cold drool fall onto his neck. Smelled the rot and heard the last of summer’s flies buzzing around this messy concoction of rotting flesh.
“Help!” he shouted, as the zombie pinned him down. He saw her long, stringy dark hair, full of grease and grime. He saw the sores on her skin, then realised there were maggots chewing at them. He saw the rotting bite mark on her bare neck and heard the snapping of her jagged teeth.
“Help!”
He waited for the teeth to clamp around his throat.
Then he heard something. A thump, right above him. He felt cold blood cover him, the taste of sour rot fill his mouth.