by Ryan Casey
Anna was first to scramble down from the trailer. She threw herself into the two-seater Smart Car, making Aaron wince with the pain in his back once again.
Pedro was next. He dropped down as the creatures turned around the back of the van and moved in their direction. He threw himself on top of Anna, crushing Aaron further in the process. Pedro’s stinky-as-fuck feet were right in Riley’s face as they shut the door and squeezed further across the seats.
“I’m…fucking…squished here.”
Riley pressed his foot against the accelerator and the Smart Car went flying in the direction of the open blockade. They passed creatures. Creatures that reached out and tried to grab them as well as they could, but missed. They were ten feet away, five feet away, a foot away…
And then they were through.
“Yes!” Riley shouted, pinned down by Anna and Pedro, who lay across the seats.
“I need some…some breathing space,” Aaron said, his head the only part of his body visible under the mass of Pedro and Anna.
“You’ve got it easy,” Riley said, driving down the open road. “You don’t have Pedro’s stinky-as-fuck feet in your face.”
“You think you’ve got it bad,” Anna mumbled from somewhere underneath the rest of them. “Try having Pedro’s arse in your face.”
Riley laughed. Aaron laughed. Pedro laughed. All of them laughed.
As the four of them drove down the open road, squished in front of a car barely big enough for two people, leaving behind a staggering mass of creatures, Riley thought this was just about the most surreal moment of his entire life.
Chapter Six
“So, how long are we going to be cramped inside this thing again?” Pedro asked.
Riley kept his foot on the gas. Pedro and Anna had readjusted so that it wasn’t quite as uncomfortable in the Smart Car, but it still wasn’t perfect. Riley could still smell Pedro’s stinky feet, for one. Aaron couldn’t stop tutting and moaning. Perhaps the one who had got away the lightest was Anna, who’d pulled herself to the top of the crowd and squeezed above everybody.
“It’s just up here on the right,” Aaron said. “Fuck, my back. I swear—lift a Smart Car. The fuck you actually thinking?”
“Yes,” Anna said, moving the hair out of her eyes. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about surviving,” Riley said. He could see the pier extending right out to sea just up ahead. At their current pace, they’d be there in a couple of minutes. Wherever “there” was. Whatever was “there.” After all, in the Dead Days, anything was possible.
“Surviving is a good idea,” Aaron said, wincing and gasping as he tried to arch his back upright. “Not looking in a fucking car for keys is madness.”
“Well, you always had the chance to look for yourself,” Riley said. “Instead of acting like it was just me out there, you always had the chance to look.”
“Sorry, mate. I was too busy being pushed and shoved around by you to take a look.”
“He can be like that,” Anna said. “You learn to live with it.”
Aaron pointed to the right. “Just slow down here. The creatures were right at the bottom of the pier by that amusement centre there. Hopefully we’ll be able to draw them out. Draw them out then check on Dominic and Peter. I know they’re alive. They have to be alive.”
“News for you, bruv,” Pedro said. “Nobody has to be alive in this world. That’s just how things are now.”
Riley slowed down the car as he reached the entrance to the pier. The sky was grey, bitter cold specks of rain spitting down on the ground. The tempered sea bashed against the shore, mist and fog clouding up the hills in the distance. So far from home, they were. Hell, wherever home was now, anyway.
And on the shore, right at the end of the pier, Riley saw the crumpled wreckage of the top end of the boat.
“So we—we go down to the end of the pier, check for Dominic and Peter. Maybe we can—we can try to use the car. But anyway, we check, we get them out of here, and then we get the fuck away ourselves.”
“We’re not leaving until we’ve checked that wreckage,” Riley said. “If Claudia and Chloë really are down there, we have to know.”
Aaron sighed. “I thought you said nobody had to be alive?”
“Watch your lip,” Pedro said, tightening his grip around Aaron’s skinny leg. “Don’t you go using my words against me.”
Aaron winced then pushed Pedro away. “I’m sorry. It’s just…what happened to Stevie. He’s…he was my friend, you know? Like…back when it started, I was living in Silverdale. I heard about it on the news and then it was in the streets in front of my house, that’s how fast it happened. I…my mum. My dad. I still lived at home with them. Just got back from university. I could…I could hear them arguing upstairs. Arguing about some shit or another shit or I don’t even know what shit. But that was them. Arguing about…about their future. Arguing about their jobs and how they hated the fuck out of each other. Always arguing. Always. And I—I saw these zombies walking up our road towards our house. And then I saw Stevie. This ginger bastard fighting these things off from this big Land Rover of his.
Anyway, I see that there’s a couple of people in the back of the Land Rover. Survivors, you know? And I look and he looks back at me and I see it in his eyes. ‘Quick,’ he’s calling. ‘Quick.’ And I turn around. Turn around upstairs to where my parents are arguing. Shouting and shouting, always shouting, for years and years. I turn around and get ready to call for them but…but then something inside me tells me I should walk. I should just run. And before I know it I’m out of the door and running down the street to that Land Rover. Sprinting. Sprinting and panting and…and yeah. You get the picture.”
“So you left your parents behind?” Anna asked.
“More than left them behind,” Aaron said. “It was only when I got in the Land Rover—when Stevie told me to watch his back—that I realised what I’d done. Saw the door to my house wide open. Must’ve—must’ve left it like that in the panic, you know? But anyway. As we’re driving off, I see them wandering in through the front door of my old house. These—these mindless zombies, all wandering through. Wandering towards the shouting. Towards the arguing.”
“We’ve all made tough decisions,” Riley said. He thought back to Jordanna. Stan. Trevor. Little Thomas. All the people he’d left behind to save himself. All the people that had fallen because of his innate, selfish sense of self-preservation. “You can’t…you can’t blame yourself for what you’ve done. If we blamed ourselves for everything we’d done in this new world, we’d—”
“I don’t blame myself,” Aaron said. “I didn’t even feel any regret back then. I just thought of…I thought it was payback for all the—the pain they’d caused me and my sister throughout our teen years. And that’s what fucking troubles me. Was that wrong? Was I wrong to—to partly want them to suffer for the things they’d done?”
The car was silent. Riley stared out at the pier. It looked clear, bar a few bloody footprints along the damp wooden floor. In the rear view mirror, Riley could just about make out the blockade. The creatures that they’d escaped from were nothing but a blot on the horizon. Something to deal with if and when they had to.
“All I know is that what was right and what was wrong back in the old world has changed a lot,” Pedro said. He opened the side door of the Smart Car. “Now we’ll have plenty of time to sit around a campfire and sing about how unfortunate we are when the time comes. But the time isn’t now. We’d better move. What’s the plan here? Bruv?”
Riley squeezed his way out of the car. He realised how chilly it was right by the sea the second he got out and the damp breeze kissed his cheeks. In front of the pier, he could see several damaged bollards blocking the entrance of any vehicle.
“The Smart Car’s out of bounds,” Riley said, pointing a
t the bollards. “Looks like we’ll have to go on foot.”
“Or we could always lift the fucking Smart Car over the bollards,” Aaron said.
Riley swung around and glared at Aaron’s skinny, gaunt face. Anna was smirking. Even Pedro had a little bemused grin on his face.
“No. We move in. All of us. We stay close. We move as quickly and as quietly as we can down the pier. We find Dominic and Peter, do what we can for them, then we find these…the bodies.” Riley still couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that Claudia and Chloë were gone, although seeing the wreckage so close to the pier…that was too much of a coincidence. But at least being here, they’d be able to identify their bodies. At least by being here, they’d get some kind of closure.
“I say a couple of us stay back at the car,” Aaron said. “That way, if anything happens, we—”
“You mean you can drive away if we’re taking too long? Or if a bunch of creatures wander down the road?”
Aaron’s forehead wrinkled up. He stared Riley right in his eyes. “You take the fucking piss out of how much of a damn I give about my friends. And after what happened to Stevie, Rodrigo, he’s…it doesn’t matter.”
He lowered his head. Stared at the damp ground.
“What about Rodrigo—”
“He’s right,” Pedro said, smacking Riley on his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is we get in there as quickly and swiftly as we can and do what we have to do. Like you said, bruv.” He walked up ahead.
Close behind, head down, Aaron followed.
“Looks like you’ve been out-leadered,” Anna said. She had a cheeky smile on her face, even though the scab on her head had come loose and blood was trickling down her forehead again, slowly this time.
“Yeah, well,” Riley said. “Pedro’s probably more suited to it than me anyway. Makes the right calls, it seems.”
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Maybe we’ll have to put it up to a vote.”
Anna walked past Riley and followed Pedro and Aaron onto the creaky floorboards of the pier.
“Oh, Anna,” Riley said. He rustled in his pocket. He’d forgotten it. So much had happened in the last day that he’d completely forgotten to give her her locket and necklace back.
“I believe this is yours,” Riley said. He pulled out the necklace with the silver heart locket and held it out in front of her.
Anna took a step back. Her eyes widened. Immediately, they started to go bloodshot. She stood there as if somebody had hit the pause button on her life.
“I…I found it. At the—the wreckage. The wreckage that I followed to find you—”
“Thanks.” Anna snatched the necklace from Riley and thumbed over it, a miniature bloodstain on the heart. She stared at it for a few seconds. Stared at it, then looked back at Riley, her hair blowing in the wind. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
Then, she stuffed the necklace in the pocket of her blue jeans and walked in the direction of the pier.
The four of them moved down the rickety old wooden floorboards of the Morecambe Bay pier. The late afternoon sun was drowned out by thick clouds. Seagulls that usually drifted overhead, squawking and swooping down for any scrap of food they could find were nowhere in sight. The rides—the dodgems, the carousel—were empty and unused, rusting in the rain. The hot dog stalls, usually so strong and deliciously greasy in their smell, were all boarded up.
The place was dead.
Riley took the lead and walked down the pier towards the amusement centre at the end. Every few footsteps, he heard something creaking at the side of him—a groan. Except no, it wasn’t a groan. It was just the floorboards. Or the wind blowing the various fast food signs from side to side. Or a partly open door of a ride booth creaking in the breeze. Everything but creatures.
How long was that going to last?
Riley caught a glimpse of Anna, Pedro and Aaron. All of them were focused on the distracting little noises, too, all of them frowning, squinting, waiting. Waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for what they knew would eventually arrive.
“Better get a move on,” Anna whispered. “The creatures at the blockade. Don’t want them to catch up with us.”
Riley nodded. Those creatures at the blockade were a long way away on foot. They wouldn’t be an issue for a good while as long as they were swift about this. If they were lucky enough, perhaps the creatures at the blockade had been distracted by some other panicked humans on their way down to the pier.
Lucky enough. Wow. How things had changed.
The amusement centre at the end of Morecambe Bay Pier was like any old end-of-pier amusement centre: dated and on its last legs. It looked like it had been painted a light shade of blue once, but now that was drowned out by a sea of bird shit. Above the building, a sign with the letters, “TERTAINMENT” was written in red, the “E” and the “N” etched off by bored kids no doubt. Which meant that the amusement centre wasn’t really doing its job.
“They were around the front door,” Aaron said. “The creatures. They were right up to the front door. We need to be ready to fire.”
Riley lifted his gun. So too did Pedro and Anna. He moved slowly towards the brown double doors of the amusement centre. Inside, it looked dark, the side windows boarded up. One of the circular glass windows of the brown door was cracked. From it, Riley could hear no groans. No shouts. No nothing.
“Dominic and Peter were down on the lower floor. Hiding under a fucking air hockey table the last I saw ‘em. If they stayed put, they should be okay. They should be, but…yeah. You know how it is.”
“We go in there and we take a look. Make it swift. We don’t want to fire any unnecessary bullets here.”
Aaron nodded in acknowledgement.
Riley stopped right beside the wooden doors. He lifted his gun towards the smashed glass and peeked around it. He still couldn’t hear anybody in there. Anything.
“You said this place was full of creatures?” Pedro asked.
Aaron nodded. Blinked rapidly. “That’s…that’s how it was. Barely got out myself. Don’t know what’s happened since we’ve been gone, though. Been a good couple of hours.”
Riley nodded, took in a deep breath, then grabbed the silver metal handle of the door. “We’d better get this done with.”
He held his breath, gripped even tighter on the handle, and yanked the door open.
As he did, the weight of two creatures crumbled to the ground at his feet.
Aaron pointed his gun with his shaking hand.
“Wait,” Riley said.
He lowered down beside the creatures. One had a huge bite mark on its shoulder. Its matted hair was filled with blood and sand. Fragments of its skull were visible, poking through the softened, putrid flesh.
“Don’t get too close, bruv,” Pedro said. “Don’t want to have to put a cap in you myself.”
Riley turned one of the creatures over. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He pointed at the round, bloody hole on its temple. “These things are already dead.”
A momentary silence. Riley looked back up at the door where the rotting, deathly stench emitted from. Blood covered the dark tiles of the amusement centre floor. Still nothing but silence. Complete silence.
“If…if they’re dead, then does that mean—” Anna started.
“It means they must’ve made it,” Aaron said, joy perking up in his face. “They must’ve made it.” He lunged forward over the shot creatures and towards the darkness of the building.
“Wait,” Riley said. “You don’t know it means they’re alive. We have to be sensible here.”
Aaron stopped by the door. He turned around and looked at the rest of the group. “Well, come on then. Let’s take a look.”
Riley, Pedro and Anna walked through into the darkness of the boarded-up amusement centre. Aaron led the way. The place looked like it might once upon a time have be
en quite grand. Posh, art deco staircases leading down to a ballroom floor that was now filled with arcade cabinets. Screens were smashed. Money machines were filled with pennies. A claw game had been smashed open and looted, but not for the free iPhone that was nigh on impossible to win. Instead, the claw had been torn free of the machine. A handy survival weapon. After all, what value did an iPhone have in a world where survival was the main reward?
Aaron moved slowly down the steps which echoed through the building. Underneath their feet, Riley realised the source of the stench. Bodies. Some of them creatures, with the same familiar bullet wounds in their heads. Some of them humans, clearly. Men. Women. Children. Discarded bottles of pills. Hanging from the ceiling like decorations, bodies from nooses. This place was death. Pure and simple death.
“Keep your guard up,” Riley said as he followed Aaron down the steps.
“I don’t fucking like this, bruv,” Pedro said. “Not one bit.”
“There weren’t this many bodies before,” Aaron said, climbing over a static, charred body on the staircase. “I mean, there were bodies. But these creatures, there weren’t this many before. Or there were, just…well. They were alive. Or undead. Or whatever.”
“I don’t like this either,” Anna whispered. Water—or blood—dripped from the ceiling somewhere in the room. Probably blood. Blood from the hanging bodies above. “Two men killing an entire flock of this many creatures? I don’t buy it.”
When they reached the bottom of the steps, Aaron rushed over to a pair of air hockey tables, tripping over the mass of rotting bodies. A couple of them on the floor had nooses round their necks, their heads caved in and sticking to a bloody spot on the floor. Poor bastards. Attempted to hang themselves—attempted to die on their own terms—and couldn’t even manage that.
“This is it. Peter? Dominic? You still there?” He crouched down and lifted the tarp that was covering the bottom of the air hockey tables. “Peter? D—”
His speech trailed off. He dropped the tarpaulin. Staggered back a few steps. Riley couldn’t see what Aaron was looking at, but he’d seen something. Something on the air hockey tables, hiding in the darkness.