by Ryan Casey
“What is it?” Anna whispered.
Riley stepped forward towards Aaron. He was transfixed. Muttering under his breath. Whatever he’d seen, it had him rattled. His fists were clenched. His body was rigid.
“Aaron, what is it?” Riley asked.
But Aaron didn’t need to answer him because that’s when Riley’s vision adjusted and he saw what it was.
On the first air hockey table, there was a man. His hands and feet were tied down to the corners with barbed wire, so tight that blood had pooled from them, pooled the air hockey table, dripping down the sides and onto the floor.
On the next table, there was another man. He had dark hair. His glassy eyes were wide open, staring up at something above him—a ghost, long gone.
He too was tied down with barbed wire.
The one thing in common with the men was that they were completely naked.
And, in between their legs, something was missing.
“Dominic…Peter…they…you can’t be…you…”
“Unless they’ve radically changed their modus operandi, I don’t think creatures did this,” Pedro said, looking around the room.
Riley stared at the two dead men on the air hockey tables, tied down with barbed wire, blood and flesh drying around their wrists and ankles.
Between their legs, both of them had a bloody, fleshy stump.
A stump where their cocks once were.
“Fuck. Who would do this?” Anna said. “Who would do this?”
Underneath the bloodbath that had waterfalled from between the first man’s legs, Riley’s eyes focused on a note, pinned to the front of the first air hockey table.
He lifted it from the table, plucking it away, and held it in his shaky hand.
“Whoever wrote this,” Riley said, turning the note around and showing it to the rest of the group.
“But what does…what does it mean?” Pedro asked, frowning.
Riley looked at the note again.
We’re Coming. Blood red ink.
Then, he looked at Aaron, whose shifty, tearful eyes stared down at the floor beneath him.
“I have a feeling our friend here might have a thing or two to tell us.”
Chapter Seven
Riley peered at Aaron’s face. His eyes were trailing around the ground. He was shaking. Pedro was silent. Anna was silent. All of them were silent.
“What the fuck does this mean?” Riley asked.
He lifted the blood-soaked note and pointed it further into Aaron’s face. We’re Coming, it said. “Don’t give me any bullshit about not knowing who’s coming. This whole bringing us three out here with you thing. Bringing along Rodrigo’s little mouthpiece, Stevie. You know something about this, don’t you? You know something.”
Aaron whimpered. Tears streamed down his cheeks, the disfigured bodies of his two old friends strapped down to the bloody air hockey tables behind them. “I—I swear. I don’t have a fucking clue. Not a fucking—”
“Quit the bullshit, kid,” Pedro said. He kicked at a loose hand of a fallen creature below. His voice echoed around the clammy, musty smelling amusement centre room. “Quit the bullshit. Something’s been wrong about this whole trip of ours and you know it.”
“Guys, whether he does or doesn’t know, don’t you think the issue is elsewhere right now?” Anna said. She blinked rapidly, looked from Riley to Pedro and back again. “Like, getting out of here. Surely that’s a priority right now.”
Riley paused. Stared at Aaron, who continued to whimper for another few seconds. He took a few steps towards him, which made him cower even further. “If you knew something,” Riley said, lowering his voice. “If you or Rodrigo knew or know something about—”
“I’m a fucking nobody,” Aaron said. He looked Riley right in the eyes now. His eyes were wide. Filled with tears. “I don’t have a fucking clue about any fucking thing that’s going on around Heathwaite’s. All I do is go out on supply runs. That’s my fucking job. I don’t ask questions.”
A pause. Aaron’s bottom lip quivered. Riley could sense it. There was a “but” in this somewhere.
“But this has happened before, has it?” Pedro suggested, pacing around the fallen corpses, watching his head as the hanging bodies dripped blood from above. “I’ll bet this isn’t the first time. I’ll bet that’s why us lot are out ‘ere. We mean nothing to your big boss. That what this is?”
Aaron’s face went paler and paler every time his eyes drifted to his castrated old friends. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. I…I swear. I swear I don’t have a clue. Just that…it could have been me. It could’ve been fucking me on that table.”
“There’s still a chance it will be if you don’t quit your fucking whining, kid,” Pedro said.
“I hate having to repeat myself,” Anna sparked up, “but we don’t have infinite time in here. Those creatures down by the blockade, they certainly aren’t going to be standing still. And while we had plenty of distance, I’d rather not take my chances.”
Riley stared at Aaron’s whimpering, shivering body. Snot dribbled down his top lip. Clearly the guy was freaked out. Even if he did have some idea of what—or who—had done this, he was scared. Besides, what gave Riley the impression that he knew more than he was letting on to? Was that just his familiar old paranoia creeping through once again? Could he be blamed after what he’d endured recently?
“Anna’s right,” Riley said, although the way the smile dropped from Pedro’s face gave Riley the impression that he had more sinister ideas in mind for Aaron. “We go outside and we check on these bodies that you claim are…are our people. Are there any supplies we need to gather?”
Aaron blinked sleepily, in a daze. “No, I…I got the supplies back. In the truck. I…it was just Pete and Dom. Just…just the two of them, then all done. Fuck, man. Fuck.”
Riley did something that felt uncomfortable for him, but he figured it couldn’t do any harm in the circumstances. He planted a hand on Aaron’s shoulder and patted him, once, hard. “I don’t trust you. But that’s just me. Or maybe I’m right not to trust you. I haven’t known you long enough to come close to trusting you. I’ve lost…I’ve lost too much to trust just yet. But right now, you can take us to that wreckage and show us the bodies. Then we get back off this pier and we drive out of here.”
Aaron lifted his head and glanced into Riley’s eyes again, just briefly. “Then what?”
Riley knew what he was implying. Rodrigo. The kid was worried he was about to start trouble. The note—We’re Coming. If that wasn’t a threat, then what was it? “I guess make that decision when we get back to the caravan park. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for what’s happening here.”
Aaron nodded once. “I just…I don’t want the normal to go away. I…That’s all it is, man. That’s all it fucking is.”
Then, he lifted the tarp from the sides of the air hockey table and lifted it over Dominic and Peter’s blood-drenched bodies, hiding away their pained faces.
“Normal don’t exist anymore, kid,” Pedro said. “Now let’s get the hell outside and get this over with.”
The four of them made their way out of the back entrance of the amusement centre. It was a relief to get back out into the fresh air, as cold and salty as it was. The wind battered through Riley’s thin anorak as he made his way across the sand—or dirt. More like dirt than sand, that was for sure. More like shit than anything, in fact.
The wreckage of the boat was just ahead. The top end of the boat, it was. The area where they’d stood so many times the previous week, looking out to sea, chatting and joking and laughing. Torn to pieces, like the group itself. Torn to pieces and stranded in unfamiliar territory.
Also, just as inside the amusement centre, bodies were scattered around the beach like discarded ice cream wrappers.
“Saw ‘um just…just around ‘ere
somewhere,” Aaron said, looking at each of the bodies as he crept over them, stumbling on the clumpy sand.
“How did you identify the two women if there’s already this many bodies?” Anna said.
Aaron nodded at the bodies. “They weren’t here before. Not this many. Just two.”
Riley stopped. Looked at Anna. He could see the question from the frown on her forehead. How the hell did this many bodies end up here, then?
But he had something to say himself as he got closer to the wreckage. Like a lightbulb, pinging in his head and ringing around his ears.
“You never really found them, did you?” Riley said.
Aaron stopped too. Lowered his head. Turned around to look at Riley, and then at Anna and Pedro, who had confused expressions on their faces.
“What…what the fuck you talking about—”
“Don’t even bother trying to lie,” Riley said, not aggressively but just exhausted. “Your boss needed a reason for us to come out here and get your men out safely. Claudia and Chloë, they were just your reasons for getting us out here. You found the wreckage and you figured it made a good enough story…yeah. It adds up.”
Aaron looked like he was trying to come up with an explanation—a lie—but instead, he closed his mouth and sighed. “We saw the wreckage, though. Scanned it. Completely empty. But when we heard about—”
“You piece of fucking shit,” Pedro said, stomping in Aaron’s direction.
“No,” Riley said, raising his arm to stop Pedro. “He…he did what he had to do. Rodrigo did what he had to do. He needed his men bringing back safely. Aaron informed him of the boat wreckage. Rodrigo told a little white lie to get us out here and to keep more loyal men back at Heathwaite’s.”
Anna gasped. Shook her head. Shrugged and tutted as she added it all together in her head.
“But what about…Stevie. You said something about him being close with Rodrigo. Why would he send him out if they were close?”
Aaron’s head lowered again. He clearly wasn’t in the mood for answers.
“Maybe Rodrigo underestimated just how tough we are, and overestimated just how tough his good friend Stevie was.”
The four of them were silent as the waves crashed against the shore, reminding Riley of holidays long past. Holidays as a kid. Trips to the Blackpool seaside, feeding the birds, riding the donkeys. Riley could see from here that the wreckage was clear. There were no bodies around it. No signs of life. Claudia and Chloë were already gone. Whether they were alive or whether they were dead, Riley just prayed they weren’t in pain one way or another.
“Just tell me one thing. Before we leave.”
Aaron wiped his baggy eyes with his sleeves. “I don’t know jack about—”
“What happened to Peter and Dominic. To your men. Has it happened before?”
Aaron didn’t say anything. He kept his shaky mouth shut. But the look he gave Riley—the long, fast-blinking, “I can’t say a thing” look. It was enough for Riley to figure it was a “yes.”
“You should speak to Rodrigo,” Aaron said. “Knows a shitload more than I do.”
Riley turned around and started to walk back across the filthy, creature laden beach.
“Oh we will talk to Rodrigo,” he said. He smiled at Anna, and then at Pedro. “There’s plenty for us to talk about. Now come on. I’ve had enough of Morecambe Bay for one lifetime.”
The four of them walked back over the beach, back through the amusement centre, and back down the pier towards the little Smart Car. They huddled inside it. Riley took one look at the pier—one look at the wreckage right in the distance on the beach—and sighed.
“Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe,” he said, more to himself than anyone.
Then, he stepped on the gas and drove.
“So what now? Do we fuckin’ follow ‘um or what?”
Matt stared at the little shitmobile as it chugged its way down the promenade and towards the blockade. Hopefully, the message in the amusement centre had been enough to frighten the tits off them. And if it hadn’t, they had plenty more planned for them. Plenty more ways to scare the balls off them.
Plenty of ways to put the men, the women, the children through infinite pain.
Matt turned around. Seth was drooling from his dirty, dark skin. Fucking nigger. Fucking joke that Mike made him work alongside a fucking slave at this. But hell—he was good at what he did. He was scheming. Had a twisted little mind and a willingness to do the shit that was too hard for Mike to do himself.
But of course he did. He was a black-skin, after all.
“You know the rules. We don’t follow them,” Matt said, slipping his binoculars into his pocket as he stared from the seat of the seemingly abandoned car a few hundred metres from the entrance of the shithole that was Morecambe Bay pier. “Time to follow them will come. But we’ve got other business to attend to. Don’t we ladies?”
He turned around. Grinned at the woman and the girl in the back seat of the car. Gagged. Blood oozing from the woman’s head. Tears dripping through the blindfold from the dirty little cutie’s eyes. Boss would be pleased. Two women—two peaches. One peach, anyway. But the other one would look alright if they made her up enough.
And she’d look even better if she turned out to be from Rodrigo’s camp.
“Okie dokes,” Matt said. “Time to take you home. Boss is gonna be very happy to see two fine pieces like you.”
The woman whimpered from behind her gag. Tried to reach out for the girl’s hand, but couldn’t as her wrists were tied up. Tried to search for the source of Matt’s voice, blinded by the cloth around her head.
Matt waited for the shitmobile Smart Car to disappear out of sight, then he stepped on the gas and drove.
Seth drooled.
Boss would be happy with this haul.
Very happy.
EPISODE NINE
(THIRD EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)
Prologue
“If we don’t get the hell away from here in the next couple of days, we’re gonna die. That’s how it is, Mike.”
Mike looked out to sea. Something he liked doing since the end times started. Something he’d always enjoyed, in fact. Staring out as the waves washed across the shore, so tranquil, so uninterrupted. A force of nature, impossible to fight back against. Just like the zombies. Like a tide of blood washing over every shore. So constant. So ever-present.
“Mike, we—”
“Do you have any better suggestions, Smith?” Mike said. He turned around and looked at Smith’s fidgety, shaking face as he stood in the doorway, barely high enough for Smith’s egghead to fit through.
“We—we move up the beach,” Smith said. He crept over the broken glass that covered the floor of the dingy, stinky little hotel room and poked out of the smashed window. “There’ll be plenty of other buildings and hotels for us to try out. There has to be better than this. There just…”
“There is better than this,” Mike said. He leaned against the window frame, the annoying breeze flopping his thinning hair back, staring at the blockade down the road. The trail of engine fuels disappearing into the distance.
And across the sea, five or six miles away, the best prize of all, right there within that crowd of trees.
“We can’t just go back,” Smith said. “After what happened last time. Rodrigo, he’ll—”
“No. We can’t just go back.” Mike smiled at Smith and patted him on the shoulder. “How’s Shania?”
Smith’s head lowered. Bottom lip was going again. Always the fucking bottom lip. Then again, couldn’t blame the man. Lost his wife, his kid—everything. But so had everybody, right? Everybody had lost in this. It was how you reacted to that loss that saved you or killed you.
“She’s okay. Just tired, you know? Keith’s worried, of course. Mike, I…I don’t want you to think I’m questioning you in any way. But these
people who are travelling with us, they’re going to start wondering what the end goal is here.”
Mike’s eyelid twitched. Judging by the way Smith reacted, he’d noticed it.
“Now don’t get me wrong—I know there’s an end goal. I know you’re a strong man with his head and his heart in the right place. But these people—Keith, Karen—all of them came along on the promise that you were taking them to somewhere…well. Better.”
Mike sighed. Smith might’ve been annoying in his delivery, but he was right. People would start to tire. Ask questions. Questions that would multiply and multiply and multiply with every loss they suffered.
“I just…I just want to know that you have a plan,” Smith said. He attempted a smile, but that just flopped out of place right away.
Mike stepped around the broken glass on the floor in the middle of the gloomy room and stepped close to Smith again. “Smith, you need to trust me when I tell you I’m working on something.” He patted him on the shoulder again then walked through the doorway and into the even darker hall.
“Working on something with those brutes?” Smith said. His voice was loud. Sharp. The wide eyes and surprised look on his face gave Mike the impression that even Smith himself hadn’t expected to blurt those words out.
“Matt and Seth might not be the most restrained of people, but they’re loyal. Their loyalty is in the right place.”
Smith’s eyes narrowed. Mike could see it in his face. Smith wanted to ask him “for how long?” He wanted to challenge Mike. He was desperate to stand up for what he believed in, whatever the hell that was.
Then, he sighed. “You’re right. I don’t like some of their methods. But they get the necessary jobs done.”
Mike nodded, then headed across the hallway towards the staircase. “Get some rest, Smith. There’s a decent bed in 39 or 41 if yours isn’t up to scratch. I’ll see you later.”
Mike entered the stairway and jogged down the steps. Sweat dripped down his head even though it was minus-fucking-whatever in this cold, dark building. All this conversation. All this “being a leader” shite. He hadn’t asked for it. Did any leader ever ask for it, really? Even the Royal Family didn’t ask for it. They just got born into it.