by Ryan Casey
Rodrigo was beside her. He clutched his neck as blood sprayed out, more bullets pumping into his body. He looked up at Riley. He started to mutter something as the civilians screamed and people fell as creatures pounced onto them.
Riley didn’t know what it was Rodrigo said, but he took it as an apology.
His heart raced. The gag was still around his mouth and the cuffs around his hands. He couldn’t think. He looked around. Pedro was nowhere in sight. Anna was nowhere in sight. Bodies were lying all over the ground. Bodies from the bullets, bodies from the creatures, bodies…
Then he saw Anna. She was standing right in front of him, completely covered in blood. Her shoulders were drawn close to her body, and she was shaking as she stared at the carnage around her.
Riley ran to her. Ran to her with all he had. Ran to her and waited for her to open her arms and let him in, and then they could run away together.
Riley felt something pierce through his ear. He looked around, and he saw somebody familiar. Somebody standing there.
Chloë.
She looked at Riley with wide, shocked eyes. She lowered her gun.
And then she ran away.
The reality of what had happened still hadn’t completely hit Riley.
Not until he turned around and saw Anna on the ground again, blood oozing out of the side of her head.
And then he understood. The look in Chloë’s eyes. The look of sheer shock and disbelief in the eyes of a girl who had just lost her mother.
He crouched down beside Anna. He dropped to his knees and tried to shout her name as the bullets continued to fizz around him. He cried. He burst into tears as he stared at Anna’s bullet-filled head, blood pooling onto the Heathwaite’s car park concrete, and he cried. He couldn’t even hold her. He couldn’t even say her name or speak to her one last time because of the cuffs and the gag.
He looked around. The creatures filled the gates. Paddy fired at them. Someone fired back from the other side, bullets spraying all over. Mike was nowhere in sight. Pedro was nowhere in sight. Chloë was nowhere in sight.
Rodrigo was dead.
Claudia was dead.
He looked back at Anna again. Looked at Anna’s pale, blood-splattered face, and it punched him square in the gut just to see her that way once more. And still he didn’t understand. Still, he couldn’t comprehend.
Anna was…Anna was dead.
But he knew he had no choice but to go.
He turned his back to Anna. Reached down towards her neck, which was still warm, as smooth as ever. He wrapped his fingers around the blood-dampened cold metal of the heart-shaped locket necklace, and with all his strength, he tugged it free of her neck.
He slipped the necklace into his back pocket and took one final look at Anna as she lay there on the road, completely still, completely at peace.
Then, he ran.
EPISODE TWELVE
(SIXTH EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)
Prologue
The shootout in Heathwaite’s Caravan Park could be heard for miles around.
If there was anybody around to hear it, that is.
Riley’s thoughts froze as he limped away from the scene of the shootout. The place where Claudia had fallen. Where Rodrigo had fallen.
Where Anna had fallen.
It punched him in the gut every time he considered it.
Anna had fallen.
He hopped away from the groans of the creatures. He heard screaming behind him, the gunshots descending into nothing, the fences of Heathwaite’s overrun. Up ahead, on the main road beside the Leisure Centre, terrified looking women ran with their children’s hands in theirs, sprinting back towards the caravans. Some ran towards the Leisure Centre, crowding around the glass doors, banging against the glass and desperately trying to get inside. Others drifted off to the left, making a break for the side fences in a last ditch attempt to flee.
As the chaos surrounded him, the peace of this place impossible to imagine, Riley—with a gag around his mouth and cuffs digging into his wrists—figured that this was the end of his journey. As much as he didn’t want to quit—as much as he wanted to live now, which made a change—his luck was surely out.
He jogged as quickly as he could towards the fences at the side of the caravan park—the fences they’d climbed over when they’d gone to fix the loudspeaker in the Dumping Ground. He could hear the creatures coming. Groaning, right from the pits of their throats. Their footsteps tumbling in his direction. He knew that any wrong step, which was easy considering his hands were behind his back and loads of people were scattering in every direction, would spell the end for him. He knew how close they were, and yet he couldn’t look. He couldn’t accept.
Keeping his cool, still unable to process the chaos and the panic, Riley reached the side fences. He looked up at the walls. Fuck. Way too high. Way too high for him to climb with these cuffs around his wrists. He could see people clinging to the top, pulling themselves over. Nobody was helping one another. One man lifted himself up but dropped his son to the ground.
The man was already gone before he even had a chance to realise he’d left his son behind.
People screamed as Riley stood by the fences, shouting as loud as he could from behind the metallic tasting gag, hoping to God someone would notice him and give him a hand. But the screams of the others were so loud. So uncontrolled. So attractive to the creatures, which Riley saw now, swarming the main road of Heathwaite’s Caravan Park like a viral infection on a body. Maybe that’s what it’d look like from above. A virus. An infection. Maybe that was just the passage of life and time, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.
Riley turned away from the creatures, his heart racing at a zillion beats per millisecond. He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t controlled. He was something else completely. And yet he was exactly what he needed to be. He tugged at the cuffs. Tugged as hard as he could, biting his chapped lip as the cuffs dug further and further into his wrists. He cried out at the top of his lungs; cried out at the men, women and children as they passed, all worried about saving themselves, all screaming themselves, like a deathly choir.
He stopped. In an instant, as the groans grew louder and the smell of putrid flesh got closer, Riley just stopped. He stared up at the grey sky. In it, he saw everything that had happened. He saw everyone he’d lost. Everyone, right from the beginning.
And then he saw himself.
He still couldn’t process the people he’d lost, but he understood. It was over. This was the moment. This was his time.
He started to close his eyes, but then something hit into his right side. He went tumbling to the ground, smacking his head on the solid earth, biting his tongue and sending a rush of rusty-tasting blood into the back of his throat.
This was it now, he knew. He waited. Waited as the groans surrounded him for the sharp teeth to sink into his flesh. Waited as feet clambered over him, people tripped over him. This is it. This is the moment. This is where it ends.
He didn’t feel teeth sink into his flesh.
Instead, he heard a clunking sound, and felt his hands come free.
He opened his eyes. Rolled over onto his back and looked up. People continued to rush past, tears dripping from their eyes. The cloud of creatures was just feet away, grey-skinned, ghastly-smelling.
But the handcuffs around Riley’s wrists had been severed into two. They were still around his wrists, but the chain in the middle had snapped.
He pulled his gag away and stumbled to his feet. He looked around—looked for whoever it was that had freed him amongst the crowd of panicked, fleeing people, some of them tripping, some of them falling, some of them being bitten in the leg, ankle, back, arm, chest.
He never would find out who saved him. He never would be able to thank the stranger who set him free from his cuffs. They’d be just another face in the crowd. Just another survivor, maybe for minutes, hours, days or weeks. But whoever they were—�
��man, woman, child—they were proof that humanity still existed in this unforgiving world. A minority example, but an example nonetheless.
Riley jogged over to the fence, his healing leg still aching, and pulled himself up the side of it, the shock of the entire last few minutes making the fact that the creatures were nipping at his heels seem like some kind of distant dream and blur.
He dropped down onto the grass. Stared out at the endless fields, filled with fleeing people.
Then, just like them, he ran.
Alone.
Chapter One
Riley ran across the slushy field, away from the cries and the carnage that was swallowing Heathwaite’s Caravan Park whole. He didn’t want to look back at the place. It was better remembering it how it was, before the creatures flooded through the fences, before they disturbed every bit of peace there was.
Before Claudia and Anna fell.
Every now and then, somebody pushed into his side. Hundreds of people were scattered around the fields, all running in directions of their own, not really knowing where in particular, just anywhere but Heathwaite’s. Amazing how somewhere so ordered—so peaceful and controlled—could descend into chaos within a matter of seconds. Because these people could’ve tried to defend Heathwaite’s. Instead, when it came down to it, they followed the most logical human instinct there was: they ran.
The field, which had a fresh, grassy smell when he’d walked through here with Anna, Pedro, Aaron and Dave to fix the loudspeaker generator, reeked of sweat now. The sweat of all these fleeing people, panicking, screaming, no idea of where to go or what to do next.
Only Riley knew what he had to do next. And he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was doing it alone.
His leg started to throb as he approached the Arnside Knott, looming over the field like a big fat tumour on the country landscape. Usually, a trek or a walk over a hill or a mountain would be a challenge he’d be up for, especially before the Dead Days. But now, his recently wounded leg was causing problems again. He just about thought he was over it, too. Had to be all this running he was doing. Fuck.
But he was going to have to climb over this hill if he wanted to get to the place Rodrigo had told him about. The military bunker. The backup plan, in case all went wrong at Heathwaite’s. The last resort.
Riley looked around. Looked at the scattered crowds of people sprinting for their lives in each and every direction. If this wasn’t a last resort kind of situation, then he had no idea what was.
He turned his back on the Arnside Knott and looked at the people heading in his direction from Heathwaite’s. There were a good number of them. At least they’d got away. At least they’d survived. But where would they go next? Although Riley’s skin was hot with all that had happened, that would wear off eventually. How many of them—these women with kids in theirs arms—were primed in the art of survival?
“Wait,” Riley shouted, holding a hand up to a brown-haired woman cradling a little, terrified looking boy in her arms.
She just barged past. Barged past and cried. Didn’t even pay any attention.
“I can help you,” Riley said, his voice weak and his throat sore. He could taste blood on his dry, chapped lips. A reminder of what had happened. The gag. The gunshots. Anna and Claudia falling.
Pedro and Chloë, gone.
He looked around at the fleeing people. In the distance, he could see a slower group staggering in their direction from by the Dumping Ground. Creatures. Of course they followed. When order fell apart—which was easier than one might assume—they were right there to gobble up the debris, like vultures.
He stood there in the grass. Reached into the pocket of his green coat, which was covered in mud, and lifted out the bloody silver necklace with the heart-shaped locket. He clenched it in his hands. Tasted something other than blood. Salt. Salty tears. His bottom lip quivered at the image of Anna standing there…then falling. Then seeing Chloë with the gun in her hand. The image played through his mind, over and over again.
He looked over at the Arnside Knott. Listened to the footsteps and the shouts and screams of the people around him running wherever they could.
He gripped tight hold of that locket.
He was going to have to do this alone.
The path up the side of the Arnside Knott wasn’t really that steep, but to Riley and his aching leg, it felt like he was climbing Everest.
He gasped as he put one foot in front of the other and made his way up the hill. The ground was slushy from where rain had fallen, frozen, then defrosted, making the climb even more frustrating. He could hear the snapping of branches in the vast expanse of trees, some of them leafless but others holding onto their leaves over winter. Branches snapped, potentially under the feet of fellow Heathwaite’s escapees, more likely under the feet of something very different. Something much more unsettling.
But he kept moving. His mouth was dry. It felt like ages since he’d had something to drink. Fresh water, canned food—all that they’d taken for granted at Heathwaite’s, and even before Heathwaite’s, on the boat, at the barracks, in the Chinese restaurant. Now, this was real life. He was going to have to find his own food. For once in his life, he was actually going to have to help himself.
He clutched on to Anna’s necklace as he stepped further up the muddy path, shivering in the cold, his breath frosting. He still couldn’t believe what had happened at Heathwaite’s. No matter how much he thought about it, he still couldn’t quite get a grip on the reality of what had happened. The way Claudia fell. Then Rodrigo. Then…then Anna. Just like that, with the click of fingers, everything was gone.
He felt something cold run down his cheek as the wind blew into his face. He knew exactly what it was—a tear. But it seemed separate from him. Like his body, or his mind, or something else was beginning to understand his predicament before he could actually admit it to himself. Because he might have escaped Heathwaite’s before it was too late, but what had he escaped to? What if the bunker was already occupied? What if he couldn’t even find it? He’d freeze out here, that’s what. Freeze and die in the night. An ice lolly for the creatures to snack upon. That’s all he was destined to be.
He heard something up ahead. A series of snapping sounds, like wood breaking underfoot. He looked ahead. Stared up the muddy pathway, endless as it wound its way through trees and long grass. The path seemed to stretch further than it had before. Stretch into the distance then around and into the woods. He could hear the snapping again. On his left now. Then behind him. Then up ahead again. He reached into his pocket for his gun, but there was a telling space there. Fuck. His gun. His gun was gone. He had nothing. Nothing but the snapped cuffs around his wrists. He looked around. A large stick. A sharp looking piece of tree bark. The environment as a weapon. That’s how he had to view it now. That’s how he had to survive.
And then he stopped. Stopped and stared up at the path ahead, completely still, completely rigid.
A wooly sheep was right in front of him blocking his way.
He wasn’t sure what to think at first. He hadn’t seen a sheep for quite some time. He wondered where they’d all got to when the Dead Days started—whether they just got the idea that something was wrong and fled, or whether the farmers used them as bait to preserve themselves a little longer.
Not this sheep. This sheep just stood there, brown dirt and a red mark on its back, staring at Riley. This sheep that, all odds considered, should be dead, was alive. The Dead Days had saved it from near certain slaughter.
Riley thought about catching it. He thought about running up to it and bashing its head in, eating its insides and wrapping himself in its fur for warmth. He’d seen Bear Grylls do a similar thing with a camel on TV once upon a time.
Instead, he smiled, nodded at the sheep, and continued walking.
The sheep let out a “baa” then trotted off into the woods, not a care in the world. A survivor, just lik
e him. An underdog, just like him.
Riley reached for a long, thick stick of just the right height and shape and stuffed it into the dense ground. Just the right height for him to put his weight on to. Just the right strength to support his aching leg.
And then, as the sheep drifted off into the darkness of the woods towards whatever future—whatever life—was ahead of it, Riley continued his walk up that path, towards the bunker. Or towards whatever was next.
At least he was alive right now. At least he was a survivor, right now.
Chapter Two
He ran and ran and ran. He didn’t once look back. Not once.
Pedro could hear the gunshots behind him as he ran down the street, away from Heathwaite’s, away from the Dumping Ground. His hands were still tied behind his back with those bastard cuffs. His mouth was wrapped up and covered with a gag. But shit—he was alive. He was alive. Right now, that was the only damn thing that counted.
His heart raced as he followed the road. He went past trees, small houses that were boarded up, a newsagent’s that was surrounded by creatures, zombies, goons—whatever you wanted to call them. But all the while, he kept on running. Kept on running, even though his head was dizzy and his mind was racing. Kept on running, no matter what.
He didn’t know where he was going. Didn’t know where to go. Only that he was running the only way he could. He’d sprinted through the last little gap between the creatures and the fence right before they’d swarmed the place completely. He’d seen Anna fall. Right after Claudia fell, and Rodrigo fell. He’d seen the shock on Riley’s face when Anna fell. Fuck. That was the only time he had turned back. After that, it was all about running as far away from the goons—and from the people—as possible.
He slowed down as he approached a pub. The Silver Dale, it was called. The windows were boarded up with pretty solid looking metal. There was a notice above the door that said “Closed Until Further Notice.” Clearly this place had accidentally solidified itself way before the earth started flooding with zombies. It could be a good place to rest—for now. A good place to try and get this spit-soaked, sickly tasting bandage off his mouth, anyway.