by Ryan Casey
He was about to start shouting louder when the creatures began to crowd in his direction.
Every instinct in his body told him to stop shouting, to stop drawing the dead towards him, but he resisted them and kept on going. And as he kept going, he saw the mass of the undead beneath him was at crazy new levels. One slip and he’d be food for them.
But there was something else.
There was a gap between the streets now.
A gap that Anna could escape through.
He kept on going, heart racing, hoping Anna would make the most of this opportunity. And as he kept on shouting and laughing, he felt tears rolling down his cheeks. Because this was how it’d all started. His journey had come full circle. He just wished Ted was still here to laugh at the bizarre hilarity of this world with him.
He waited until he was absolutely certain that the gap in the street was clear enough for Anna to escape via. He kept going until he saw Anna. Because that would be his cue to get climbing and then to get running. ’Cause the second the creatures saw Anna, they’d be onto her. His time would be rapidly running out.
He shouted some more, the creatures battling to stretch towards him with their decaying hands. And he wondered if something was wrong. Maybe something had happened to Anna. Maybe some shit had gone down.
And then he saw her.
She looked over at him, so alone in the middle of the street. There was nothing for a moment. Nothing but silent disbelief that this plan was actually working. And Riley savoured that moment.
Then, Anna turned away, and she ran down the empty road.
The creatures were already diverting their attention to her.
That’s when Riley stopped shouting. Because it was time for the next phase of the plan. This time, this method wasn’t going to fail. He was going to get back up the ladder and he was going to go with Anna. He was going to make it, no matter what.
He started to pull himself up the ladder when he felt something.
He wasn’t sure what it was. Not initially. Only thing he could describe it as was a shift in weight.
It was only when he heard the snap that he realised exactly what was happening.
The rope ladder had snapped free.
It was falling.
He was falling.
And he couldn’t do a thing to stop himself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Anna heard the crash and she knew something was wrong.
She looked around, holding her breath. All kinds of fears swirled around her mind. But mostly, the fears were of one thing: seeing that Riley had fallen, tumbled down to the ground below.
Because sure. The creatures had mostly moved on from him and were racing towards her at a speed much quicker than she was comfortable with.
But a fall from that height… well. It would not be good news for Riley.
He wouldn’t be safe for long.
When she looked around, she felt her heart skip a beat at first. She couldn’t see him. The ladder, it had come loose.
But Riley was holding on to a windowsill a floor down.
He looked like he was struggling to keep holding on. Even from this distance, Anna could see the whites of his fingers, and his face turning red with tensing. She knew she needed to go over there and help him. But if she did that, they’d just be back to square one all over again. The diversion of the creatures wouldn’t have worked. They’d follow her back to the shop and then she and Riley would be surrounded once more.
But was there a better option?
Was there anything else she could do?
She pulled out her blade—after being unable to retrieve her rifle—and took a few steps towards the undead heading right at her. If she calmed herself enough, she could take them down, one by one. But there would be no room for error. And eventually, they would surround her completely, as the storm kicked off again, ravaging from above.
No. She had to think of something else. There had to be another way to help Riley out here.
She was going to have to think outside the box if she wanted to—
She heard something, then. Something to her left. It was only light, and it barely caught her attention.
But when it did, she became increasingly certain that she knew what the source of that noise was.
A woman.
A woman who she knew.
“Melissa,” she said.
She turned her attention from Riley, from the undead, and she looked at the building beside her.
It was a dentist’s. But honestly, it was so out of place with the rest of the village. It looked like it’d been converted from an old car garage, or something like that.
But there was definitely a noise coming from in there.
And Anna was sure that cry was Melissa’s.
Who else could it be when Melissa was missing and not long ago, she had come this way herself?
She looked at the undead. Still some distance between her and them, even if it was shortening rapidly.
Then she looked up at Riley. He was still holding on. Clinging on by the tips of his fingers.
But he was clinging on. He had time.
Whatever was happening in this dentist’s, it didn’t sound like Melissa had much time at all.
She shook her head, took a deep breath and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Riley. Really, I am.”
Then she walked over to the dentist’s and opened the glass door.
Right away, Anna was struck by the weirdness of this place. It looked like it’d been recently painted in the brightest of whites. It smelled like it had, too. The floors were clean, disinfectant getting on her chest. Papers were piled up neatly on the reception desk.
There could be no denying the truth. Someone was living here.
She walked slowly through the reception area, and over to a corridor of doors. Her stomach and chest both tightened when she looked down it. She hated the dentist’s. Always had. Some say it’s an irrational fear, but for Anna it really wasn’t. She’d had a botched root canal when she was a kid. Got a nasty abscess in her gums that the dentist had to drain repeatedly. And as anyone who has had an abscess drained will know well, there’s no numbing an abscess.
It really is a case of slicing it open and letting the blood and puss seep out.
Over and over again.
She shuddered at the memory of that fateful slice, then kept on going.
The further she got down this corridor, the more the sense of foreboding built inside. She knew she had to be quick. If she wasn’t careful, the undead were going to be in here too, and the last thing she wanted today was to die in a dentist’s. But hey, irrational fear of the dentist justified if she died in here, that was for sure.
She listened out for that scream. But there were no sounds. None at all.
She started to wonder if maybe her mind was playing tricks on her when she saw movement through the crevice of the door on her left.
She stopped. Held her breath.
And when she saw what was happening inside, her body went completely numb.
There was a man in a blue T-shirt standing over a dentist’s chair. He was holding a thin, sharp scalpel.
On the dentist’s chair, Melissa.
Anna didn’t even think twice. She slammed the door open and rushed over to the man, eager to stop him before he could do whatever he was planning to do.
And judging by the living heads of the undead sitting on the shelf behind him, snapping their teeth, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
“Hey!” Anna shouted.
The man stopped, looking alarmed. Blood was already dripping from the scalpel. There was a mark on the front of Melissa’s head, where it looked like he’d torn some skin away. He pulled down his face mask and smiled. “Wow. Another customer. Oh we are in demand today.”
Anna rushed towards him and pulled back her blade.
But before she could slam it into the man’s head, he punched her in the stomach. Hard.
She tri
ed to resist bending forward and wincing as the pain split through her body.
But she couldn’t.
And before she knew it, the man booted her back into his shelf of the dead.
Some of the severed heads fell down beside her. Their teeth were so close to her, snapping at the hairs on her skin.
The man looked on with wide-eyed horror. “My beauties. My family. Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done!”
He came towards her, and Anna knew right then what she had to do.
She grabbed the head of one of the undead beside her.
She pulled it back.
“Catch,” she said.
Then she threw it as hard as she could at the man.
She heard the skull crack against his. He fell back, startled.
So she picked up another. Only this one she didn’t throw at his head.
She stood up and rammed it right against his neck.
She crouched over him as he screamed, blood spurting out of his neck, splashing up against Anna’s face. Every time he tried to break free, she pushed harder and harder, letting the head take a deeper bite.
She even kept on going when the man had stopped screaming, and when she was absolutely certain he was dead. Because she didn’t have time to fuck around with people like this anymore. She was through with them.
When she was sure she was done, she booted the head of the undead across the room. She walked over to Melissa, let her free from her ties and her gag, which had already come loose.
“You okay?” Anna asked.
Melissa gasped, wiping the blood from her head. “He was going to butcher me,” she said. “He was going to make me one of them.”
Anna helped her off the trolley and then looked down at the man’s body as he lay still on the floor. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” she said. “None of us do.”
They walked over to the door. And when Anna got there, she realised the undead weren’t passing by. They were elsewhere. Good news, bad news, she didn’t yet know.
“Wait,” Anna said, as Melissa walked beyond her.
Melissa frowned. “What for?”
Anna looked back at the room. She looked at the dentist, his instruments, and the heads still snapping their teeth on his shelf. “There’s something I need to do,” she said.
KEVIN HARTLEY OPENED HIS EYES.
He tried to move, but he couldn’t. He was in his surgery. Yes. That’s where he was. In his surgery, ready to see a new patient. He’d seen one today and she’d been particularly nice. Pretty.
But where was she?
Where…
He realised then that his teeth were snapping involuntarily. And that no matter how much he tried to move his neck and his eyes, he couldn’t.
He was trapped.
Somehow, he was trapped.
There was a deep hunger inside him that he couldn’t explain. Not a desire to have his stomach filled. Just an urge to taste something. To sink his teeth into something. To…
He saw, her then.
She was standing at the other side of the room. There were two of them, actually. The girl he’d been operating on. And the other one. The one he’d fought with. The one who’d…
Shit.
It all came flooding back to him.
The fight.
The woman throwing his beautiful subjects at him.
Their teeth splitting through his neck.
“Now you know,” the woman he’d operated on said. “Now you know exactly how it feels.”
She looked at the floor. And Kevin couldn’t understand. He couldn’t get what he was looking at.
But there was no doubt about it.
It looked like… his beauties were feasting on a decapitated body.
No.
Not just any decapitated body.
His decapitated body.
A sickening thought struck him then, as he realised where he was. He was at the back of his office, which meant he was on the shelf.
But that couldn’t be possible.
It couldn’t be possible.
The two women smiled at him. And he wanted to shout out. He wanted to beg for help. He wanted to scream.
“Goodbye, ‘Kevin,’” the one who’d fought him said. “Don’t get too bored in here. And don’t get too hungry either. I’d hate for you to burn out.”
He tried with every muscle in his body—or head—to break out of this state and scream.
But then the woman shut the door and she was gone.
He was trapped.
And he could do nothing but watch the heads eat his own body and long to be down there with them feasting on himself too…
CHAPTER NINE
Riley held on by the tips of his fingers, but he knew deep down that he wasn’t going to be able to cling on forever.
The rain and wind lashed down against him, which hardly made things any bloody easier. He didn’t dare look down to see how close to the creatures he’d got, how near to the ground he’d fallen. He just counted his blessings that somehow, when he had fallen, he’d been able to grip onto the window ledge.
There was no room for laughing at the hilarity of the absurdity of the circumstances of this world anymore. None at all.
There was only room for feeling shit-scared that, one more wrong move and Riley was going to be finished off once and for all.
And all because of a stupid little plan that saw him dangling down a rope ladder and hoping for the best.
He took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself as he clutched on to the edge of that window. His fingers felt so rough, they had to be bleeding. He could feel his heart beating so fast that it was actually wobbling him on the spot. In his mouth, the taste of sweat and of building nausea. He knew the odds were against him. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get out of this mess. He might not get out of it at all.
But he was going to have to bloody well try.
He chanced a look down at the ground below, as much as he didn’t want to face up to what might be beneath him.
There were no creatures. That was something, at least. The creatures were all drifting over towards Anna now. Which… well. Wasn’t ideal. But at least it bought him some time. As long as Anna hadn’t done something stupid like try and come back for him, she would be okay. He’d find his own way, one way or another.
He took a few steady breaths then looked up at the shop. The window he’d fallen from was far too high up to even think about getting to. The only one he might stand a chance of reaching was the one he was clinging onto.
He tried to tense as hard as he could to drag himself up.
But that just made his fingertips hurt even more.
He looked down again then, and he wondered if maybe he could make it. Every drop seemed further when you were actually at the height. And there was always the chance it could go very wrong.
But what other choice did he have?
He had time on his side… but only for now.
And he had to get to that extraction point and find out what had happened to Carly and Kesha one way or another.
Nothing was going to stop him.
Nothing was going to get in his way.
So he closed his eyes and held his breath.
“Here goes nothing,” he said.
Then, he let go.
It was at that moment he let go that he saw movement beneath him.
He tried to reach out for the window ledge, to grab onto it once again. But it was too late. Of course it was too late.
He fell down to the ground below and prepared himself to be faced with an immediate onslaught.
His back cracked against the concrete.
His head rattled, his teeth pressing down against his tongue.
He felt pain all through his body.
But he was okay.
He was okay.
He dragged himself to his feet and prepared to take on the creature standing over him.
But…
&nb
sp; “Riley?”
It wasn’t a creature at all.
It was Ricky, and one of the other men in black.
“Shit,” Riley said, wiping himself down. “I thought you were dead.”
“Thought the same about you. What’re you doing jumping from window ledges, anyway?”
“It’s… a long story.”
“Did you see where Melissa went?”
Riley wanted to answer but he couldn’t because he truly didn’t know. “I thought you were with her.”
Ricky shook his head. And Riley could see from the look on his face that it was something that pained him. He cared deeply about Melissa. He might not have actively said as much, but it was obvious to see.
“And Anna?” Ricky asked.
Riley swallowed a lump in his throat. “She got away. I’m pretty sure about that. Just have to hope she didn’t do something stupid like try and come back for me.”
He looked at the man in black, then, and at his rifle.
“Oh,” Ricky said. “This is Adam. He’s with us now.”
Riley frowned. “You sure about that?”
Adam shrugged. “I… I lost all my people. And I couldn’t help thinking about what you said. About Gareth. About why he sent us out here. And I think deep down, I’ve kind of known it all along. I just haven’t seen it.”
Riley nodded. “So what’re you going to do about it?”
Adam pulled his mask away and revealed himself to be an Asian guy with jet black hair and narrow cheekbones. “I’m going to do everything I can to get us to that extraction point. And I’m going to do everything I can to get us out of here.”
Riley nodded. And although there was a sense of tension that they’d been separated from Anna and Melissa, he still felt optimistic. Things were working out. Things were going to come together.
This had to work.
And then he saw that Ricky was staring, wide-eyed, into the distance.
He wasn’t looking at the crowd of creatures, who were turning their heads now and glancing back in Riley and co’s directions.
He was looking down the next street. The empty street.
Because standing in that street were two people.