Dead Days: The Complete Season One Collection (Books 1-6)

by Ryan Casey

  Chef sighed. His head was shiny bald and his face deathly pale. “Need I remind you your original plans for the group in the first place?”

  Ivan gulped. “Plans change. Circumstances change. We’ve come a long way since then.”

  Chef placed a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. He moved close to his face. His breath had a sickly sweet peppermint tang to it. “Sometimes we have to take a step back to move forward. You know that better than anybody.”

  Ivan bit his lip. The screams as he’d rammed the knife into their heads. Gutting them. Lifting them off the trolley and into the freezer. He’d hidden it away. He’d hidden it away for all these days in the back of his mind, pushed away in a padlocked room. He’d hidden it away but it was resurfacing, like demons always did.

  “So would you like me to get the first… the first meat? Or would you like to explain to the others why we’ve suddenly run out of food despite all those ‘heroic supply runs’ you told them about?”

  Ivan stared Chef in the face. Chef stared back at him, emotionless. “You really are a cold bastard, you know that?”

  Chef sniggered. “I will be once I’ve been in the freezer.” He reached for the trolley beside the counter and started to push it in the direction of the corridor. “Are you going to give me a hand with this?”

  Ivan looked out of the window. Ted mowing the lawn. Claudia and her little girl playing together. Giggling. Smiling. Family stuff. He had to keep them happy. He had to keep them fed.

  He nodded. “We have to do what we have to do.”

  “We do indeed,” Chef said.

  The pair of them walked out of the canteen, into the corridor, towards the freezer room…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ted was still struggling with the ride-on lawnmower as Riley approached. The mower was edging from side to side. Ted bit his lip and cursed as he tried to get it on course as a circle of grass formed beneath him.

  “Did your parents never have you do any jobs around the house?” Riley asked.

  Ted stopped the lawnmower and puffed a large sigh out as he hopped off it. “They made me do stuff around the house. Emphasis on house. Always more of an indoor type. I’m through with this thing. What ever happened to the good old fashioned handheld lawnmowers, anyway?”

  “Just as well you’re through with it, actually. Got a group of creatures dangerously close to heading our way in the distance.”

  Ted tutted. “How many?”

  “Fifty. Maybe more. Pedro’s keeping an eye on them. If they get too close we’ll have to lock up inside and keep noise at a minimum. Don’t want a repeat of—”

  “—last week. Right.” He wiped his grass-stained hand against his shirt. “We coped well with everyone inside last time though. As long as there’s food and water, which there is, we’ll be cool inside for a few days.”

  “Always the indoor type, like you said.”

  Ted twiddled his thumbs. “Not my fault the army boys love a good game of FIFA. Who am I to refuse?”

  Riley smiled. He looked around at the others. All of them were wrapped up in army camo coats. The winter chill had really taken a hold these last two weeks. If they’d still been stuck at the railway shelter, life would have been difficult. If the creatures hadn’t already attacked them, they’d have frozen to death. Drowned on melted icicles in their sleep.

  Riley tilted his head at Claudia. She and Chloë were giggling as they smacked the tennis ball to one another. “How are they doing today?”

  Ted leaned against the lawn mower. “Getting better by the day. Chloë’s really come out of her shell. Claudia, she’s hurting obviously. But it’s good that they’ve got each other. Don’t know how they’d have survived otherwise.”

  “Chloë’s tough. But she deserves a childhood. Glad to see her getting a chance at that again.”

  Ted gripped the back of the lawnmower and yanked it away from the badly-cut spot underneath. “Claudia’s tough too. Come a long way. I think being in here has done her good. A hand?”

  Riley crouched in front of the lawnmower and started to push it. “When we need to leave this place, it’s good to know she’s—”

  “If we need to leave this place,” Ted interrupted. He stopped pulling the lawnmower and stared directly at Riley. “‘If.’ Not ‘when.’”

  Riley shrugged and held back his thoughts as he continued to push the lawnmower towards the yard. They were going to have to leave this place at some stage. The food supply — it had served them well so far, but that would run out. Ammunition would run out. Water would run out. Nothing was infinite in this world other than the world itself. Infinite, endless nothingness. The Dead Days had powered on for over two weeks now. The TV stations were still down, the radios were down, the mobile networks were down. Nobody knew anything about anything.

  “You boys need a hand there?”

  Riley and Ted exchanged a disgruntled glance then tried even harder to move the lawnmower. “We’ve got it, Anna. Cheers.”

  Anna held her hands on her waist. She examined the spot that Ted had attempted to mow with her eyebrows raised. “Yeah, good… good job, Ted. Definitely proving as useful an asset as ever.” She had a small smile on her face.

  Ted rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Ha ha. The ‘Ted’s a useless fat slob’ jokes. They didn’t get old a week ago.”

  “Well, I’m just saying,” Anna said. She widened her arms and laughed at the mess Ted had made of the lawn. “Seeing is believing, I think the saying goes.”

  “I was doing just fine, actually,” Ted said. His voice sounded irritated, like it did when he was losing on a video game. His cheeks reddened. “But there’s a ton of creatures outside. So by all means go deal with them if you have to, and I’ll finish my job. What do you say?”

  Anna’s smile dropped. She sighed, looked at Riley, and shook her head. “And there was me thinking we were going to be treated to another day of peace. How many of them?”

  “Fifty. Sixty. Probably more.”

  Anna stuck her bottom lip out in consideration. “Not great. Could be worse though. Should be fine as long as we get inside and keep ourselves quiet.”

  Ted held his arms out. “Which is why we’re wheeling the lawnmower back. Happy now?”

  Riley and Anna peeked at each other. Riley held back his laughter. It always was amusing seeing Ted so wound up, especially when it was by a woman he clearly had the hots for.

  “Does Ivan know?”

  “On my way to tell him after we’ve put this away. Hey, any progress with the vaccine?”

  “I wish. Me and Barney are at a dead end, really. Not a lot we can do without the flu jab. And, even then, it would be nigh on impossible to do any sort of medical research in this place.”

  “Before you suggest anything, no. We can’t leave.”

  Anna tutted. “It’s just—”

  “You know how they are about leaving this place. And with reason. It’s not worth risking any unnecessary attention. It was dangerous enough Lance and Stu leaving the gates. Lucky we got away with that. So no. Not until we absolutely have to.”

  “You’ve changed your tune,” Ted said. They reached the concrete ground and stashed the lawnmower into the garage. “Only a few minutes ago you were talking about scooting on out of this place.”

  Riley lowered his head to avoid eye contact with Anna.

  “Oh really?” Anna said. She walked up to Riley. “That’s interesting.”

  “I’m talking about food,” Riley said. “Food. We need it to survive.”

  Anna pointed at the greenhouse in the corner of the courtyard. “That’s what that place is for. Besides, Ivan said there’s plenty to last us the winter.”

  Riley tensed his jaw as Ted, Anna, and he stepped out of the garage and stared out at the courtyard. “I hope that’s the case. I really do. Anyway, I’d better go speak to Ivan.”

  “In his yoga hour? You’d have to be mad to interrupt that.”

  Riley looked at his watch. Ten minutes to ten. “I�
�m sure a horde is worthy of a bit of yoga postponement. Catch you guys inside.”

  Riley walked away from Ted and Anna and towards the entrance of the main building. The building wrapped itself around the courtyard in the middle. Riley and the group he’d come with had a room to sleep in in the west side, which was where most of the living quarters were. Ivan, on the other hand, slept alone in the corridor leading down to the canteen. He treated the room as an office, a gym, and a recreational area as well as a display room for some ancient weapons like C4 and AK-47s. He claimed the C4 was still active. Every man needed a way to keep his sanity at the end of the world.

  Riley stepped into the main building and into the canteen. There were two soldiers at the back of the room, hiding from the sunlight, playing chess. They glanced up at Riley as he passed and tilted their heads slightly. Riley offered a smile in return. Truth was, there were only a dozen or so left in these barracks, and not all of them were ultra-friendly. But that was understandable. Everybody had lost something. Bonds took time to grow.

  As Riley walked out of the canteen and towards the corridor leading to Ivan’s room, he could hear the sound of metal slicing through something. He looked over his shoulder and saw Chef behind the counter of the canteen in the kitchen area with his back to the rest of the room. Diluted blood dribbled down his hands as he sliced through the meat. He moved around the table, noticed Riley and smiled.

  Then, he stepped up to the kitchen door and pushed it so it was closed, and returned to chopping.

  Riley frowned as he headed down the corridor. Chef always had seemed a bit of an oddball. Completely pale bald head. Hunched shoulders, like a little squirrel or other kind of fat rodent. But he was a decent cook. Made some good stews and the occasional deep fried dish, as well as all the necessary things like fruit and vegetable smoothies. The kind of guy who was handy to know in a zombie apocalypse.

  As he continued to head towards Ivan’s door in the dimly lit corridor, which was on the left, he noticed something up ahead. The usually padlocked door was ajar. A cloud of cool air was seeping out of it into the corridor. Riley slowed down as he approached it. He never knew it was a cold store room. He always assumed there must be a freezer somewhere, but this door was usually padlocked shut. Why the extra security measures for food? Control? Keeping things in order? Made sense.

  He slowed down as he approached the door. He noticed something on the floor beside his feet. It was just a small speck at first, and he thought it was a mark on the tiles. But as he crouched down and dabbed his finger in it, he knew exactly what it was. Red. Thin. It trickled down his fingertip. Blood.

  “Everything okay there?”

  Riley jumped up and spun around. Ivan was standing by his door. His eyes diverted to the usually padlocked room then to the blood on Riley’s fingertip. He started to approach Riley, slowly.

  “What’s… This blood. Where is… What is it?”

  Ivan pushed past Riley and grabbed the handle of the door. He slammed it shut. Then, he leaned against the door and folded his arms, staring right into Riley’s eyes. “Look, I didn’t really want to let anybody in on this, but I suppose I’m going to have to be completely honest.”

  “Has… has something happened? Has somebody been bitten?”

  Ivan smiled. “No. No. Nothing like that.” He moved away from the door. “Look — this room here is our freezer room. This is where we’ve been storing our meat. All that nice food that Chef’s been cooking.” Ivan crouched down and wiped the specks of blood from the floor with his sleeve. “I didn’t want to say anything but I… A small group left the barracks first thing today. We had to. Food, it was getting low. And they knew of somewhere with… with some fresh meat.”

  Riley’s muscles loosened. “Why didn’t you say anything? We could have helped. We could have—”

  “It was too dangerous,” Ivan said. He stood up again. “This group that went out, they weren’t even sure if they were going to find anything… anything live. But they found some meat. Dragged some frozen cow and pig from meat hooks in this store room they knew of. Brought it over here. And yeah. I guess they just didn’t clean up so good after themselves.” He raised his sleeve. The deep red blood stained right through it.

  Riley shook his head. Heat burned through his cheeks and his chest. “We just want to pull our weight around here. You… You’ve got to let us try to do that sometimes.”

  Ivan planted a heavy hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You are pulling your weight. But you aren’t soldiers. So stop pretending that you are. You’re good on wall watch. The rest — they’re good at their own individual things. Seriously, let us do the stressing out about the technicalities. Um… did you want something, anyway?”

  “Yeah, the… Wait. You said a small group went out. Who were they?”

  Ivan grinned and shook his head. He eased Riley around and walked back in the direction of the canteen, his hand on Riley’s back. “Like I said, don’t worry about these things. Let us do our job, and you keep on doing yours. Now what’s the problem?”

  Riley remained silent for a few moments. Ivan might not have been completely open about the supply run, but he had every right to stay silent, really. He was trying to run this place. Trying to keep it calm. He couldn’t have people panicking over food. He couldn’t have a crisis from within. The humanity of this place — that was its strong point. “And we have enough food? To last us?”

  Ivan winked. “Yes. But I’d say that even if we didn’t. So you’ll just have to trust—”

  The canteen door barged open. It was Pedro. He was panting, out of breath as sweat dripped down his face. “Thank God I found you. Thank God. Have you told ‘im?”

  Ivan frowned. He looked from Pedro to Riley and back again. “Told me what?”

  Riley’s stomach churned. He hadn’t even told Ivan about the horde yet. But they weren’t so close. It wasn’t a major emergency. “Oh — I… There’s a horde in the distance. Over by the shops. Just thought we should keep an eye out and stay on guard just in case—”

  “Yeah. That was five minutes ago.” Pedro rested his hands against his knees and winced. “But—but something caught their attention. They noticed something, and… and…”

  “Slow down, Pedro.” Ivan stared down at Pedro. “What is it?”

  Pedro took a few long, deep breaths and pulled himself back upright. “We need to lock down. The horde. It’s coming our way.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Everybody inside!”

  Riley followed Pedro as he sprinted across the grass. The gentle November sun and the way the clouds calmly floated across the sky placed a blanket of false security over the barracks, and over the whole of the city. It was easy to forget there was even a world gone-to-shit out there when everything seemed so peaceful inside here.

  “What is it?” Claudia asked. She gripped the two bats as Chloë tossed the tennis ball in the air.

  “Get inside.” Riley pointed to the door. “Take everybody inside. We’ve got a horde.”

  Claudia’s mouth opened wide. She looked at her daughter in disbelief, then back at Riley, snapping her mouth shut and nodding her head. “Right. Sure.” She ran off in the direction of the greenhouse where a few of the troops were gathered.

  “Stocky, Gaz — get a move on.”

  Stocky and Gaz were pulling large plastic covers over the front gates. When the horde had arrived last Thursday, they’d all lined up against the gates, there for everybody to see. A teasing reminder of the dangers on the outside and how close the danger actually was. They couldn’t make the same mistakes again.

  “What the hell caused them to change route?”

  Pedro hopped up the steps beside the wall and shrugged. “You tell me. You know how they are. Maybe they caught sight of a little movement in here. Or smelled us out. I dunno.”

  Riley struggled to accept the logic in his own mind as he followed Pedro up the steps and towards the ladder leading to the watch point on the walls. “And how c
lose are they?”

  Pedro handed Riley a scoped rifle when he reached the top of the walls and pointed out through one of the small crevices that they rested the guns on. “See for yourself. Although I doubt you’ll need the scope.”

  Riley pulled himself around to the crevice and started to raise his gun. But he soon realised that Pedro was right — he didn’t need a scope after all.

  The horde of creatures were heading in their direction. They were visible — their bloodstained clothes, their exposed guts — from this distance. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. It was going to be a repeat of last Thursday. The illusion of safety they’d managed to form inside the barracks was about to crumble apart.

  “I just don’t get it,” Riley said. He peeked out of his scope. “I don’t get why they’re heading in this direction.”

  “Well they are. And they ain’t quitting. What d’you reckon? Is this a job we can handle from here or are we going to have to open the gates?”

  Riley bit his lip. “You know how Ivan feels about opening the gates.”

  Pedro grumbled. “If only Lance and Stu hadn’t taken that gun-mounted vehicle out there we could’ve blasted them from the entrance.”

  “Didn’t work so well last time,” Riley said. Lance and Stu, two of the remaining soldiers, had opened the gates to fire at the creatures as they piled up against the barracks. They’d fired and fired at them, sending them to the ground.

  But the bodies were stacking up. The creatures were blocking any form of exit. If they’d shot any more, the gates weren’t going to close. So they drove off. Off out of the barracks, distracting the creatures as they fired at them. Got as far as Sainsbury’s, which was just around the corner, before they presumably ran out of ammunition and were overwhelmed by creatures. But it bought enough time for the group to clear the dead creatures and close the gates again. Enough to go inside for a couple of days and lie low. Enough to rebuild their confidence. Again.