by Ryan Casey
But as the doors rattled on their hinges, as the infected pushed harder and harder, Anna could see things from Riley’s perspective, now. She could see things exactly how he’d seen them.
Because only blackness could be better than a life like this.
Only darkness was superior to this hell.
She felt herself falling apart, slowly but surely.
She wasn’t sure she could keep the pieces held back together for much longer.
The door downstairs slammed off its hinges. Suddenly, the echoes outside became a lot louder, a lot more pure. A lot more real.
And as that reality became more prevalent, Anna started to question whether this was what she wanted at all.
Because didn’t she want to survive?
Didn’t she want to live with the hope that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance of some kind of respite or relief out there?
That there was some kind of better place out there?
She heard the footsteps pounding up the staircase. She knew they were coming, quicker than she’d first thought. And as she curled up against the wall, lightning illuminating the room, she looked at the axe in her hand. She could make it quick. She could end her own life. It’d be difficult, with an axe. She’d probably try to back out of it while in the middle of doing it.
So maybe she had to try another way.
Maybe she had to try something else.
She rushed over to the bedroom door and closed it, not daring to look outside, but knowing what was coming simply from the smell of the rot.
Then she walked over to the window.
She looked outside. She stared down at the ground below. It was a long jump. She had no doubt that if she jumped down there, she’d probably break a few bones. But it certainly wouldn’t guarantee suicide.
But there was a way she could guarantee it…
She moved the axe over her stomach and swallowed a lump in her throat. She pushed its sharp edge right against her torso. If she jumped and kept hold of that, it would cut her right open and gut her like an animal. It wouldn’t be a pleasant death. But it would be quicker and less painful than death by the infected, or spending another second in this miserable world.
The bedroom door slammed open. The dead swarmed inside. They were seconds away from reaching her. She had to make her decision. Now.
So she took a deep breath and closed her eye and thought of Riley. She thought of the narrowboat. The time they’d spent on that boat. The happiness between them.
And as the tears fell down her face, she wanted to believe that she was doing the right thing. That he’d endorse this if he were out there, somewhere.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tightening her grip on the axe, steadying it against her stomach. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
She felt the hands against her back.
She stepped forward.
She fell.
And…
HER EYELIDS OPENED.
Anna gasped for air. Sweat poured down her body. It was dark, and she could hear rain pouring outside, pattering against the roof.
She felt her stomach for the axe. But it hadn’t cut through her. It was just a dream. And even when she had jumped, she’d shifted the axe at the last second. She’d hurt herself, but not enough to hamper her progress. Not enough to stop her from keeping on going.
She leaned back against her pillow and she took a deep breath. Because for all her nightmares, she was safe now. For all the memories of all that time she’d spent on her own, she was with people again now.
And as much as she wondered whether this was all just some figment of a strained sanity, she chose to believe it.
Because this was the life she wanted.
This was the life she was content with.
So she took a deep breath, let sleep creep up on her once again, and prepared for another bout of nightmares.
At least those nightmares weren’t her reality.
Not anymore.
Not any…
CHAPTER SIX
The following day, Riley and Anna were off on a mission of their own.
It was late morning. Another nice morning at that. The weather was getting warmer. There were still remnants of last night’s storm—the soggy ground, that earthy smell of dampness in the air—but mostly the new day had buried all trace of the downpour.
Riley walked down an empty street. He looked at the disused cars at the sides of the roads and wondered about the people who had owned those cars. Where were they now? What kind of lives were they leading—or what kinds of deaths were they leading? Had they been normal, everyday citizens before the collapse, just like the majority? And had they changed now, too?
He often thought about the lives of other people as he looked at the empty buildings either side of him. This place used to be so buzzing, so thriving. Now, it was like his group’s very own post-apocalyptic playground.
“Wonder how many of them are actually still around,” Riley said.
Anna frowned. “Huh?”
It was only then that Riley really realised that he’d spoken aloud at all. He swallowed a lump in his dry throat and shook his head. “Just thinking aloud.”
“You do a lot of that these days. It’s a sign you’re losing your sanity. You know that?”
“Yeah, well,” Riley said. “I think we’re all perfectly justified in losing our sanity a little, don’t you?”
Anna nodded. Her eye seemed to glaze over a little, like she was really considering what Riley had said. And he wanted to ask her. He wanted to ask her how things had been for her on the road, what secrets she was hiding. Because she was hiding secrets. There was absolutely no doubt about that.
But he respected her enough not to ask. He knew he was uneasy about speaking about his past, so he wouldn’t pry someone else about their past.
She started laughing, then.
Riley frowned. “You just accused me of losing my sanity. Then start laughing on demand.”
She shook her head. She was looking at a little SMART car, abandoned by the side of the road. “I was just thinking. Thinking of the time we got stuck in one of those on the Morecambe promenade. The look on your face that whole trip.”
Riley found himself smiling too. Because it was a good memory. It was a moment they’d shared between them—a moment of bonding when they’d gone to Morecambe, right back when they were still just learning the secrets of Heathwaite’s, and when the infection had still just been nothing more than a novelty that felt like it was going to end. A dream he was going to wake up from.
But then his smile turned. Because it wasn’t all fun and games. They’d lost people that day. And that just about summed up every happy memory they’d made in this new world, between them or together.
“All our good memories are tinged with sadness,” Anna said aloud, like she was reading Riley’s mind. “I don’t think we’ll ever recover from that. Not really.”
Riley found himself lowering his head and looking at the road beneath him at that point. He couldn’t argue with Anna. He knew she had a point. “We can only do our best to create new ones,” he said. “And make sure they don’t get tinged with sadness too. Come on.”
They’d gone out into Lancaster for the same reason they’d been out yesterday. There was an old department store which looked like it was still filled with clothes. Of course, clothes seemed like a bit of a first world problem. But you soon realise the importance of a fresh change of clothes when you’ve been living in this world for long enough. The smell clinging to your body. That dampness always sticking to you, no matter what.
And raiding dead bodies for clothes? Yeah. That soon got old. As did searching other houses for clothes too, because other houses always brought with them the risk of bumping into somebody, whether living or dead.
Sure, fresh clothes were a luxury. But sometimes luxuries were worth fighting for.
Especially when the vast majority of the surviving population would be too busy worrying about
saving their skin than shopping for fancy new parkas.
“You really aren’t keen on Melissa and Ricky’s little trek, are you?” Anna asked.
Riley cleared his throat. He didn’t really want to reveal just how against Melissa and Ricky’s trek he was. “I just think we should be grateful for what we have rather than getting lost in fantasies of what could be.”
“But it could be great.”
“It could be great. But it could also be awful.”
“Riley, if we hadn’t allowed ourselves to believe that there was something better out there, neither of us would’ve bumped into each other again. You know that. Deep down, I know you do. And I…”
She stopped. And Riley felt like this was it. The perfect opportunity to ask the question of what had happened to her when she was out there, on her own. What had changed her.
“Your time on the road,” Riley said. “I… I imagine you went through a lot of shit. Right?”
Anna looked at Riley then. And it was unlike she’d ever looked at him before. It disconcerted him. It made him wonder whether he really wanted to hear what she’d been through. A part of him didn’t want to hear it.
“I’ll tell you,” she said.
Then she paused. She didn’t say a thing. And Riley wondered where she was; whether he’d lost her all over again.
“Someday,” she said. Then she stopped. “But hey. Looks like we’re here. New clothes all round, right?”
Riley heard Anna’s voice and he turned to face the department store.
His stomach dropped, right away.
The department store was all glass at the front. And inside it, Riley could see for certain that it wasn’t empty.
There were creatures inside.
“Too bad,” he said, stepping back. “We’ll have to pass on fresh clothes for now.”
Anna frowned. She took out her machete. “You can, mate. But if I have to wear this manky bra for one more day in my life, I’m gonna go crazy.”
She walked towards the department store, and Riley knew he had no choice but to follow. It was mad. It was risky. But they were all mad people living in a mad world now, so he had no choice.
“Yeah,” he said, picking the underpants out of his arse as he walked towards the creature-infested store. “I could do with a new pair of boxers. Not gonna lie.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Riley started to get second thoughts about the plan to intercept the department store for the sake of a few pairs of frigging boxer shorts as soon as he stepped inside.
Walking inside this department store was like being transported into another world, another dimension. Outside, it was pretty light, the late morning sun shining down strongly and casting a warming glow over the city of Lancaster.
But in here… in here it was different. It was dark, for one, even though there were large glass windows running down the side of the place. It made Riley realise just how much of an impact artificial lighting actually had on buildings like this. Stores were creepy when they weren’t lit up. This only rammed that truth home even further.
His footsteps were echoey against the dusty floor. The only other sounds he could hear in this place were the cooing of pigeons.
Oh. And the staggering of the undead.
Hearing the undead made the hairs on Riley’s arms stand on end. They weren’t groaning yet, which meant they weren’t onto him and Anna. Which was a good thing, of course.
It helped that they hadn’t seen any of those weird forms of the undead in a long time, either. The ones that had the yellow parasitic growths bursting out of their heads. He didn’t know what’d happened to them; whether the evolution of the virus had taken another swift turn. He was just bloody grateful he hadn’t seen one for a while, ’cause they gave him the creeps more than anything.
But there was just something remarkably eerie about hearing the normal creatures go about their lives… or their unlives. Riley wondered whether they thought about anything. Whether they contemplated things. Or whether they really were just the empty shells he’d assumed they were all along.
He thought about the blankness in the eyes and wondered… what if?
He heard a whistle right ahead of him. Anna. She was pointing towards an escalator, which wasn’t working of course. Up there, the men’s section. Down here, the women’s section.
Riley put his hands on his hips. He didn’t want to say anything because he didn’t want to make a sound. But he wanted to make it clear to Anna that he was pissed by this arrangement. They’d come all this way for some fresh clothes—clothes that Anna was way more bothered about than he was—and his stuff happened to be on the second floor? What kind of a joke was that?
But hey. He was here now.
And the tempting lure of a fresh pair of underpants was drawing him closer by the second.
Shit. Might even go hard and get a couple of pairs of fucking socks.
He went to walk to the escalator. Anna leaned into his ear. “We meet back here when we’re done. Anything goes wrong, just shout.”
“Shout what?” Riley asked.
Anna shrugged. “‘I’ve got my knickers in a twist?’”
“But then I won’t know if we’re being literal, or…”
Anna frowned.
Riley shook his head. “Never mind. Back here. But make it quick. I don’t want to die trying on a pair of novelty cannabis socks.”
Anna made her way to the women’s sections. Riley turned and stared up the escalator. He knew there were creatures up there. He’d seen them when they’d arrived here. He tightened his grip around his knife. He was confident enough to deal with a few strays. It just felt like they were tempting fate right now. And if there was one thing he’d learned from this world, it was that fate should not be goddamned tempted.
He started to climb the escalator slowly. He kept his attention above him at all times. He didn’t want to mess around—he wanted to know where any undead were the second they came into view. That way, he could deal with them first hand. Extinguish the problem before it even became a problem, as it were.
The further up the escalator he got, the more aware he became of a stickiness beneath his feet. When he looked down, he saw something red, a rusty shade, with bits of white inside it. He didn’t want to harbour a guess at what it was. There was blood there. Blood, and something else.
One of the parasites that grew inside people’s skulls?
The infection itself?
He didn’t know.
All he knew was—
He saw it.
Movement.
There was movement right at the top of the escalator.
He froze totally solid. He couldn’t hear anything anymore, just the rapid pounding of his heart.
He’d seen something move. There was no doubt about that. It’d worked its way between the clothes stands. It was hiding from him. Waiting for him.
Part of Riley wanted to turn around and head back down the escalator. Just get the hell out of this place. He was mad being here at all. He shouldn’t screw with fate any more than he already had by provoking whatever was up there.
But another part of him…
Another part of him wanted to face whatever demons were ahead, head on.
Because that was just a part of reclaiming this world.
Taking it back for himself. For everyone.
So that’s what he was going to do.
That’s exactly what he was going to do.
He climbed further up the escalators. His senses were on high alert now. He could feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck. Down on the ground floor, he could faintly hear Anna. He hoped the undead wouldn’t hear her too.
When he reached the top of the escalators, he saw the holy grail right ahead of him.
Calvin Klein. Three pack. The most lush, comfortable-looking pair of cotton undies he’d ever cast his eyes upon.
And sure. He could go raiding other people’s laundry for fresh underwear. He could find some
pretty decent briefs, no doubt about that.
But nothing matched a fresh pair of Calvin Klein.
So he made a bee-line towards them.
When he got to them, he stopped. He looked around. The creatures from the window were nowhere to be seen. The movement he’d seen before… it must’ve just been a figment of his imagination.
So he looked back at this pack of boxers and then by contrast he felt the sweaty pair clinging to his body.
“Nothing wrong with trying a pair on now, right?” he muttered. “Nothing wrong with slipping into a pair, is there?”
He looked around again, still self-conscious at what he was considering even if this department store was long ago emptied. Some habits die hard.
Then, he shook his head and started to undo his jeans. “Screw it. Screw it.”
He pulled down his jeans, then his boxers.
He went to hoop the new pair on, feeling their freshness work their way up his left leg.
Then he heard it.
A groan.
Right behind him.
The boxers were dangling on his leg. He had a choice. He had to act. Fast.
He let go of the boxers.
There was a creature opposite him, flying towards him.
He rammed the blade into its neck. It pushed back against it, working its way down it, trying to get to Riley.
And then Riley heard something else.
More groans.
Only these groans were behind him.
“Shit,” he said, looking down at the jeans and boxers on the floor. “Jesus. Talk about timing.”
He pulled the blade out of the creature’s neck and then slammed it against the side of its head.
Then, while he still had a chance, he dragged the Calvin Kleins up and staggered back.
The creatures were coming. They’d emerged from hiding, like they’d been waiting for him all along.
And there wasn’t going to be any time to get his jeans back.
“Bloody zombie perverts.”
He ran away from them; threw himself down the escalator. Because he might be half-naked, but one thing was for sure. One thing could not be denied, as he ran for his life.