by Casey, Ryan
DEAD DAYS
The Complete Third Season
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Ryan Casey
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EPISODE THIRTEEN
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON THREE)
Prologue
Pedro sat in the lounge of his terraced house staring at his fourteen-inch television. It was June 11th, so World Cup 1998 was just starting. He’d got a few Fosters in and been sure to book the day off work. He’d been looking forward to this match for hell knows how long. Brazil v. Scotland, opening game. A match he’d usually ignore, but there was that magic of the World Cup about it. That magic that just drew you into the shittiest of games.
The black CRT television was fuzzing. Damned aerial again. He’d been meaning to get a new one, but only when he could afford it. Roofing work was few and far between at the moment. Seemed to have dried up, which was weird considering summer had just come along. Typical—all the work came in the freezing cold of winter, when the last place Pedro wanted to be was outside. All he’d wanted then was to be curled up on his second-hand sofa, cup of Bovril in hand. Ideal life.
He could hear laughter outside. That little boyish giggle of Sam. His son just loved this sunny weather. He reminded Pedro of himself back when he was nine—didn’t even see indoors ‘til about age sixteen. It was worse, nowadays. With all the new channels on television like Channel 5, no wonder kids were starting to flock indoors more. Hell knew what it might be like in ten years in 2008. God forbid, there might actually be six channels.
“I don’t get why they have to have all this faff for a silly game,” Corrine said. She crunched on something—a cheapie Dorito alternative that sat on the handmade wooden table. “Nobody actually thinks Scotland are gonna win, do they?”
Pedro looked at his wife, Corrine. She had her dark hair tied back in a bun, and was lying side-on the sofa with her feet up. She was as pale as anything, but then again, she always had been. Just her pigments, or whatever they were called. Get her on holiday, and she’d roast as red as a salmon. If salmons were red. Or were they pink?
“Hardly look like you want to budge yourself,” Pedro said, grinning at his wife.
She tossed a half-eaten tortilla chip at Pedro’s face.
“What’s the little rebel doing?” Corrine asked, arching her head towards the front window as Pedro refocused on the television screen. “Not climbing them walls again is he? Keep tellin’ him he’s gonna do himself some damage some day.”
Pedro took a sip of his Fosters. The beer itself had been sitting in the sun so long that it had gone warm and slightly flat. But it didn’t matter—any beer was good beer. Any beer on a day off was even better beer. And any beer on a day off when the World Cup was getting started…that was just heaven.
He focused as the camera panned over the Brazil team, excitement tingling his skin. They were the favourites. Favourites to win it. Won it four years ago, and with this young lad Ronaldo that everyone was talking about, they looked as good as favourites. Then again, England were looking decent themselves. That kid, David Beckham—looked like he was primed to kick the Three Lions into a new era.
“Are you even listening?” Corrine asked. The sounds of the national anthem blared out from the tinny speakers of the television, which always rattled with something too loud.
“He’s alright,” Pedro said, leaning further in towards the television. He could see a bit of static creeping across the screen. Fuck. Don’t bail on me now, aerial. Anytime but now. If it went, he’d have to go round to Dan’s, or God forbid, his brother’s. Footy was an experience to him. An individual experience. Yeah, he liked his mates, but he also liked to focus. To concentrate. To analyse and scrutinise.
Part of it was probably something to do with the hundred quids’ worth of bets he had on this tournament.
Pedro put his beer down and tugged at the collar of his England shirt. He was boiling underneath. It was gonna be a scorching summer. He couldn’t wait to take Sam along to the pub with him to watch the first England match. Now that really was gonna be a real father-son experience. England matches were different to the solo experiences of the other games: they were a public inquisition, or celebration.
Pedro’s heart pounded even heavier as the teams finished the national anthems and the adverts kicked in. He could feel his knee twitching. Four years, for this moment. Four years of waiting, for—
A thud.
A heavy thud from outside.
Pedro’s first reaction was that something had happened to the television or the aerial. It sometimes made a heavy punching sound when it cut out.
But the images were still on the screen. A fuzzy Sainsbury’s advert.
And then he heard the horns honking.
He looked at Corrine.
She looked back at him, her dark brown eyes wide, her skin even paler than usual.
They didn’t exchange a word, as Pedro stood up, walked around the back of the sofa towards the rattly front door.
He’d noticed something else. Another sound.
Or a lack of sound.
He reached the bronze door handle. Started to lower it. People were shouting outside. Brakes were squeaking.
No. You’re just being paranoid. It’s okay. It’s okay. He’ll be okay.
But he couldn’t hear his little giggles. He couldn’t hear a thing.
He gulped away the beer taste in his mouth, which had suddenly taken on a more disgusting form, and he yanked the door back.
When he saw him lying there in the middle of the road, a green Rover swerved onto the pavement, he felt strangely calm. Like he’d had all his emotional responses tuned down to stop him running outside and screaming.
His curly brown hair.
His little black Nike shorts, skinny legs poking out of the bottom.
And his body.
Sam’s body, completely still.
He didn’t really process the surrounding carnage, now. He didn’t process the people flocking around his son, not really.
All he processed was the blood. That red blood, and how much of it there was, way too much for a little boy of his age.
He turned around. Turned back to his gloomy house, the sound of the roar of the crowd rattling against his tinny television speakers.
Corrine was standing in front of him. She looked at him with wide eyes. With searching, questioning eyes.
He nodded, and she understood right away.
Their world had ended.
A chilly breeze washed against Pedro’s face, biting into his skin. The smell of rot was strong in the air, the taste of it lingering in the back of his throat.
“What is it? What do you see?”
Pedro’s heart sunk when he stared down the motorway at what was ahead. When he saw them, so numerous in their dead masses, unlike anything he’d ever seen before.
It sunk just like it had when he’d seen his son lying in a pool of blood fourteen years ago.
Chapter One: Riley
The longer Riley stared through the door to the dimly lit tunnel, the less he could believe what he was seeing.
He’d come to the bunker. Just minutes earlier, he’d got to the bunker that Rodrigo had told him about, be
fore the great shootout at Heathwaite’s. He’d come here, and things had just got weirder and weirder.
First, he’d found a man was staying here. An older man called Alan was defending this place.
Then, Alan had opened this monster of a door at the back of the bunker. Opened it up, and revealed a cavernous tunnel, apparently leading right the way through to Manchester.
Riley peered down the tunnel. It was like the Channel Tunnel, so pitch black, so surrounded by earth. Dim little lights lit the top of the tunnel for as far as he could see, stretching much further than he could imagine. The tunnel reeked of damp, like a sewer Riley had once traversed down when he was a kid. He’d gone down there with a couple of friends, Jon and Will, on some sort of adventure. Couldn’t rid himself of the smell of shit for days.
Yet somehow, this was worse.
He could hear water trickling through the tunnel. The echoes of dripping water going on for miles. How was this possible? How was there just a direct line of tunnels right the way to Manchester that nobody knew a thing about? Or did they? Was this a sewer line or something? What was it?
“You’ll get used to the smell,” Alan said, snapping Riley out of his trance. “Although being on the outside, you should be used to smells by now. Being surrounded by rotting flesh and all.”
Alan chuckled. He stepped away from the entrance to the tunnel, like a cavern hiding all sorts of secrets, all sorts of stories that Riley still couldn’t comprehend.
Alan eased his long, grey hair over his ears and scratched at his scraggy beard. Riley noticed he was holding a hand against his hip, struggling to keep himself on his feet. He was wearing a clean blue shirt with a white vest underneath, like a prison outfit. Covering his legs, some neutral grey jeans that looked like they were from the plainest section of ASDA.
“What…How is this—”
“These tunnels got dug out in the 1950s,” Alan said, easing himself back into the pristine bunker—the bunker that Riley had to keep on reminding himself he was still standing in. For it was so clean. So…so new. It had that renovated tang, like somebody had recently prepared it, cleared it out. All this, hiding underneath the ground. A place with food, water, safety and shelter. A place where Rodrigo could’ve taken Riley. A place where he could’ve taken everybody.
“After the Second World War,” Alan continued, “Britain started getting paranoid about what might or might not happen should another Germany arrive on the scene. So they built a load of these bunkers down the spine of the country. No great secret—just bloody ‘ard to get into. Trust me, kiddo, when a nuclear bomb goes off in Japan, it’s right for the government to start worrying where to send its people should all go tits up at home.”
Riley shook his head. He realised how sweaty he was, how filthy. He could feel gunk on his hands from where he’d gouged out the eyeballs of a creature; feel blood drying around his wrists from where he’d battered in the skulls of the chavs who’d confronted him. He was tired. Raw. The thoughts of yesterday’s events at Heathwaite’s still hadn’t settled in his mind. The sounds of guns firing, the sight of Claudia falling, of Rodrigo falling…
Of Anna falling.
“How did…Why isn’t everyone down here?” Riley splurted out, although it was just one of the million-and-ten questions he had. “If…If people like you—army I presume—knew about this place, then why isn’t…”
“Because this isn’t a nuclear crisis,” Alan said coolly. He leaned against a silver-topped kitchen work surface and smiled at Riley. A smile that was wobbly and uncomfortable. A smile that clearly wasn’t accustomed to human company, not just yet. “The second someone blows a nuke, we’ll be down here, believe me. But those things outside.” He shuddered a little. “They’re vigilant, but they’re not nukes. Nukes, you can’t cure. Once they’re done, they’re done. These things, well. We’ve got a lot of learning to do.”
Alan scooted back around from the kitchen work surface. He held in his hand a silver bag of crackers. Shit—everything in this place was silver. It was a wonder Alan didn’t go silver-insane.
“Cracker?” Alan asked.
Riley shook his head, still struggling to get his head around things. “Rodrigo. He…he knew about this place. And he—you must have known Rodrigo to…to not kill me.” Of course, Alan had put a gun to Riley’s head when he’d first wandered to the doors of the bunker. Threatened to blow his brains out until Riley had shouted out Rodrigo’s name at some point.
That had changed things.
“The people at Heathwaite’s,” Riley said, feeling himself start to shake. “There were…there were good people at Heathwaite’s. People who—who—”
“People who were dispensable,” Alan said. He still had that wry smile on his face as he crunched down on another cracker. “People who weren’t important.”
Flashes of the blood pouring from Anna’s crushed skull penetrated Riley’s mind. Made him flare up inside.
“I don’t know how the hell you can say something like that.”
“I can say something like that because I know more than you,” Alan said, raising his voice. He chewed down on another cracker. They were looking dryer by the cracker. “This is the problem with people. We assume that collectively, we’re the answer to the world’s problems. That somehow, by some miracle, common good and power of the masses will be enough to conquer the world’s great problems. But we aren’t. We rely on the power of a few, and that’s exactly how it should be. A reliance on a powerful few. Because look at the world now, Riley. Look at the people in the streets. The mothers tearing the flesh out of their newborn babies’ necks. Look at the fathers holding their screaming sons down and sinking their teeth into them. Look at them, and tell me that the power of the masses is how it should be.”
Riley could barely get his head around what Alan was saying. “The creatures are a mass. They act as a mass, with no respect for a hierarchy. Things seem to be going okay for them just now.”
Alan’s smile pricked up again. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Alan limped to Riley’s left towards a folded up wheelchair. He reached down, wincing, and struggled to even it out. When he’d done, he plonked himself in it. “A hand, please?”
Riley was through with Alan’s cryptics. He wasn’t totally sure whether it was because he was so tired or just because of the things he’d done—the things he had to witness—but he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand why Rodrigo would so vehemently defend Heathwaite’s when there was a tunnel system—a bunker system—so close nearby. He couldn’t understand anything Alan was saying about hierarchy, about how the power of the few trumped that of the mass.
He needed answers. He’d just about done with questions.
But he didn’t even have to ask another because Alan started speaking again.
“So say Rodrigo brought his band of merry Stepford Wives and hubbies to this bunker. Say he lets them stay here. You’re saying the power of the mass will reign supreme. That there’ll be no fighting over who eats the last packet of crackers, or over control of the guns. And then, with poor old me working away in the corner of the room, with all hell breaking loose inside, say poor old me finally finds out what started this entire catastrophe. Say I have a breakthrough on the origins of the infected. What am I supposed to do when my tunnels are blocked with the dead, filled with arms-wielding thugs? What is the one supposed to do to save the masses when they’ve already destroyed themselves?”
Riley gulped away the taste of vomit in his mouth. A taste that had lingered for days, weeks even, but was intensifying now more than ever. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, his headache strong. “So you’re saying you kept this place clear because you…you were working on something. Something you couldn’t risk anyone compromising. Why wouldn’t Rodrigo have someone here with you? Like, here to check up on you or something?”
Alan snigge
red. He looked back over at the cabinet of guns. “As you can see, I prefer to work alone.” He waved his hand. “But no, no. Fair point. We just figured it was too dangerous. Too dangerous to be sending someone every day to check I might have made a discovery on the off-chance. And although we age, the world doesn’t, so we decided that we’d attempt to communicate every two weeks.” He smiled confidently at Riley now. “And it looks like he sent the right man.”
Riley’s head was like a balloon filled with information. Nasty information, that threatened to burst the thin plastic open at any moment. He still had so many questions, so many things he needed answering, about Alan, Rodrigo, this place. But the one question that seeped out of a tiny hole in the balloon was: “What is it you’re ‘discovering’ that’s so important?”
Alan wheeled closer to Riley. There was visible excitement in his old, blue eyes. He leaned in close like he was telling Riley a special secret that he very rarely shared. “Everything, Riley,” he said. “I’ve got it. I understand everything. So now I need your help—”
“Just quit it with the shit,” Riley said. He felt flushed, but he’d been through enough. He was tired of being dicked around.
Alan shook his head. Tapped his fingers against the arms of his wheelchair. “I told you already, but you were too busy gawping at a simple tunnel system. I know what caused the virus. I know what caused people to come back from the dead, to start feasting on the flesh of others. And I believe that with that knowledge, I know how to end this whole sorry affair.”
“How? If—if it’s that simple, why haven’t you—”
“That’s why you’re here,” Alan said. He raised his arms and looked down at his wheelchair. “That’s why Rodrigo was to send his best to check on me. I’m a persistent old bastard. I just need a little bit of a…a bit of a push.”
He smiled again, tapping on his wheelchair.
“So what do you say, Riley? Ready to save the world?”