by Ryan Casey
Hayden turned away and looked out of the window.
What he saw made him freeze.
There was a group of people on the road beyond the white van. They were all stumbling along, some of them tripping over one another.
And all of them, in one way or another, were bitten.
“There’s—there’s the bad ones,” Hayden said. “Outside. The—the bad ones.”
“Knew I shoulda checked if I had the right fuckin’ key,” Usman said. He punched the door, then swore again.
“Guys,” Hayden said. His voice was weak. He’d looked outside and he’d not only seen more of the bloodthirsty psychopaths—he’d seen the remains of the four who’d tried to attack the white van on their way in here.
Split skulls.
Blood and innards all over the concrete.
And the little girl with the pink hat on, her head crushed, but her little finger still twitching away as she lay all broken and distorted on the tarmac.
“This place should be fine anyway,” Sarah said. “Better than being stuck outside—”
“Should be fine isn’t good enough,” Usman shouted. He turned around and faced Sarah. His cheeks were blushed. Sweat dripped down the sides of his well-shaven head. “We need to be safe. We need this place. We—”
“Guys, there’s zombies outside!”
Hayden wasn’t proud of his little-bitch shout. But at least it got the attention of the others.
“Shit,” Sarah said.
“Get the fuck down.”
They all dropped down behind the snack counter, which blocked the view of the windows.
They were all quiet for a few minutes. Or maybe it was just a matter of seconds. Time dragged on and felt like it was lasting forever. All Hayden could think about, in spite of the searing pain in his right foot and the echoing pulse racing through his skull, was that little girl on the petrol station concrete.
Her head was crushed, just like Terry’s had been caved in by the heavy metal of Hayden’s sound system.
But she was still moving her finger.
Just like Terry had been on his feet and showing a sense of direction.
“This is why we need to be out of the way of some frigging windows,” Usman whispered. “Like being in a goldfish bowl for the hungry fuckers to see.”
“Kind of like a—” Frank started.
“Don’t even think of making a joke,” Usman said.
Hayden watched as the dozens of psychos wandered through the street. Some of them had chunks out of their necks. Others had guts dangling out of their bellies. Some of them had cracks in their heads. But all of them had blood drooling down their chins, pieces of flesh wedged between their teeth.
He thought about what Frank said about them being zombies, but not necessarily the zombies Hollywood had invented, with their destructible heads and their hatred for jogging.
He thought about what it meant if—just if—they were zombies, but they could survive the destruction of their brains.
If they could survive a blow to the head, then what killed them?
His thoughts were interrupted when the bunch of keys tumbled from Usman’s pockets.
When one, then two, then three of the psychos turned and looked at the petrol station windows.
Twelve
“Fuck. Keep still.”
Hayden didn’t need telling to keep still by Usman. Three of the psychos outside of the petrol station had turned around and were looking right through the glass windows at them. Hayden’s heart raced. He tried to take in deep breaths, but there was a welling nausea building up inside him.
The zombies were going to see.
They were going to come to the petrol station.
They were going to trap them inside here.
“Only a few of ’um are looking,” Frank said.
“We need none of them looking,” Usman said.
“Well maybe you should’ve thought about that before you dropped your fucking keys on the floor,” Frank said.
“Oh, piss off—”
“Guys,” Sarah said, with a loud whisper. “You need to shut the hell up or we’ll have more than three of them to deal with.”
Hayden agreed with Sarah. But he didn’t have the strength to tell her that, not right now. Besides, he didn’t want to fall any further into Usman’s bad books than he likely already was.
He watched the psychos stagger outside the window. There was still only three of them looking in the direction of the petrol station. The rest of them—dozens of them—were wandering up the road. Loose pieces of flesh tumbled to the concrete as they walked, and every now and then, one of them bumped into the other and fell face flat onto the road.
Hayden held his breath. In the distance, he could still hear the ringing sirens of the emergency services, only they seemed to be getting further and further away. He felt his bladder building up, got a whiff of piss and wondered if he’d actually hit rock bottom and peed his pants.
He needed to pull himself together. He needed to be tough.
He wasn’t sure if he could.
“I think they’re walking on,” Sarah said.
Hayden nearly edged his neck to get a better angle on the psychos, but then remembered Usman’s command about keeping completely still. Instead, through the corner of his eyes—he didn’t even want to move his eyes just in case the cannibalistic psychos somehow saw him—he looked at the three that had turned in the petrol station’s direction.
A glimmer of relief welled up in Hayden’s chest.
Only two of them were looking now.
And then one.
And then …
“Now would be a damned awful time to drop another set of keys,” Frank said.
Usman sighed, but the relief of the psychos walking on made Hayden actually smile. It was a victory. Just a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Now they could focus on keeping quiet until the “zombie” crisis was resolved.
Which it would be. Because the UK government was good like that. They reacted well to crises—one of the best countries in the world for crisis response, Hayden was sure.
And if not, another global power would come in and aid them. America. Maybe even China would take pity and help cure whatever it was that had broken out.
He thought about other cities in the UK. The nearby city of Manchester. Liverpool. Preston, Sheffield, Birmingham and London. It couldn’t be everywhere. This … infection. It couldn’t have completely swallowed the country up. Maybe it was just local to Smileston. Maybe it would be resolved within a day.
He wanted to believe that, but then he remembered the placeholder on the national BBC website, the engaged line to the emergency services.
Could it be nationwide?
Could it be global?
When the zombies—Hayden figured thinking of them as “zombies” added a novelty to them as opposed to the reality of “psychos”—moved on, the four of them pushed up shelves to block the view inside the glass windows. Although none of Usman’s keys for the staff area worked, they all figured that the petrol station was a decent enough place to hold up until they got some kind of news from the police or the army of what to do next. They blocked up the windows, covered the doors. The dusty interior of the petrol station was filled with premature darkness. Hayden found some Doc Martens, a navy blue winter coat, just enough gear to stop him shivering.
Frank winced as he crouched in the middle of the floor. He gripped his back. “Jesus Christ. Your uncle got any painkillers in here for me?”
Usman crunched down on some Walkers crisps. He didn’t offer Hayden any, and Hayden didn’t exactly mind—he couldn’t eat a thing if someone forced him. “Nah. Hounded them all for himself. You’ll have to hold out until help gets here.”
Frank didn’t respond to Usman. Hayden knew what he wanted to say though, just from the look on his face. He didn’t believe help was coming.
And yet, he remained bizarrely upbeat about the entire situation.
&n
bsp; “What’s your story, anyway?”
Hayden only realised Sarah was speaking to him when he turned to her and saw her sparkling blue eyes staring into his.
He felt his cheeks heating up and looked down at the floor. He scratched the back of his neck. “Not a lot to tell, really.”
“Everyone has a story,” Sarah said. She stretched out and rested her head in her hands, leaning back on the floor. “We might be in here a while. Might as well get to know each other.”
“What’s the point?” Frank asked.
“I agree with Frank,” Usman said. “No point getting to know each other. We won’t be here long.”
“Sweet,” Frank said, “but that’s not what I mean. I just don’t see much point in gettin’ to know each other. ’Cause if this is the world now, then all that matters is who we are right now, not who we were. Who gives a shit if someone had fuckin’ daddy issues once upon a time? All that matters is our actions right now. That’s what’ll define us.”
“Inspiring,” Sarah said. “You got something to hide?”
Frank lowered his head. He looked remarkably less jovial than usual. “No.” He looked back up and, with a toothy smile, he said, “But I wouldn’t tell you if I did, sunshine.”
Sarah puffed her lips out and tutted. “Well if nobody else is gonna be social, I might as well tell you a bit about myself.”
“You’re the hot next door neighbour I always see in the shower,” Frank said. “ ’S’all that matters.”
Sarah ignored Frank. “I’m Sarah. I’m twenty-nine. I work at the local paper in Smileston.”
Usman tutted. “Great. She’s gonna sell us out the first opportunity she gets.”
Sarah sighed. “Y’know, maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. I—”
“I woke up with a raging hangover and—and then I smashed my landlord’s head in.”
Hayden wasn’t sure where the words came from. Everyone looked at him with a frown. To think of it, he’d actually sounded like he was making some kind of shitty, ill-judged joke when he’d spat out the words. They were hardly profound.
But they were something.
He took in a sharp breath of the musty petrol station air and scratched at the torn kneecaps of his jeans. “I … I don’t work. I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t… I don’t have anything, really. All I have is my family. And they’re across Smileston just inside of Preston. I don’t know how they are. I haven’t spoke to them. I haven’t been able to speak to them. But I … I wish they were here right now. I wish they were here because they’d know what to do.”
Silence followed Hayden’s words. He wasn’t sure if it was an embarrassed silence, a thoughtful silence, or whatever. He was never good at gauging reactions to things. Never had been.
It was Frank who broke the silence.
“Well, shit,” he said, big grin on his face. “You’re an even bigger pussy than I thought.”
* * *
They stood across the road from the petrol station and stared at the dark-haired woman and the skinny, curly haired man pushing the food stalls up to the glass.
“This place look good to you?” Jamie asked.
Newbie nodded. “We can get in there. If we play it right.”
He gripped tight hold of the air rifle in his hand, and the pair of them crept across the road towards the entrance.
They were getting inside this petrol station.
Even if it meant using the air rifle.
Thirteen
Hayden felt a little better after a couple of bottles of beer.
He sat in the middle of the petrol station floor, his foot bandaged up and a lot less tender. Every now and then, as he listened to the chatter of Frank, Usman and Sarah, he actually forgot for a moment or two that he was in the middle of some kind of crisis scenario. That the streets were filled with blood-soaked, limbless people with a taste for humans.
He believed this was just normality.
And then he remembered the feeling of his landlord’s skull as he cracked his Bose sound system into it and his insides churned up, the cheap, gassy beer threatening to resurface.
He looked at the cracked screen of his mobile phone. There was no network coverage now. Nobody had any. Usman insisted there was free WiFi in this petrol station, but there was no sign of that, either.
Another unwelcome reminder of just how serious their situation was.
“At least this place is alright,” Frank said. He burped up some of the beer, and Hayden got a whiff of it, knocking him even more sick.
“It’d be even better if my uncle left me the right fucking keys. Got a PS4 back there and everything.”
Frank tutted and shook his head. “Why play video games when we’ve got the real damned thing outside this place?”
“How are you so positive?” Hayden asked.
He realised the words had spurted out from nowhere. Well, actually, that was a lie—he knew exactly where they’d come from, and that place was the very reason he didn’t drink in public: alcohol.
Frank frowned at him. “You got a problem with me being myself?”
Hayden looked at Sarah and Usman. They both had their heads down. Fucking great of them not to back him up. “I … Sorry. You just seem—”
“I watched my wife get bitten by one of those hungry bastards before I bumped into Usman and Sarah,” Frank said. His voice was stern. There wasn’t a hint of humour in his words. “I watched her go out into the front yard to pick up the mail. And then I watched the damned things tear her apart.”
His voice went weaker, shakier. His eyes were glistening with tears.
“I watched her come back as one of them. I … I watched her come at me with those teeth, just slamming and slamming those teeth together. I tried to hold her. Tried to tell her … tried to tell her everything was gonna be okay. Tried to understand.”
He took in a sharp breath. Half-smiled. “And then I did the only thing I could do to put her out of her misery. So don’t talk to me about being positive, mate. Just … just don’t.”
A complete silence dropped over the petrol station. Silence, except for the heavy breathing of Frank, the crunching of Usman on another bag of crisps. The awkward clearing of Sarah’s throat.
“Sorry,” Hayden said. He battled with the alcohol to try and say something remotely effective. “I … I just—”
“Like I said. The past don’t matter anymore. All that matters is what we do now. What we do goin’ forward. So watch yourself.”
Another silence fell over the petrol station after Frank’s warning. Fuck. Hayden couldn’t believe he’d gone and opened his boozy mouth. There was a reason his therapist told him not to drink alcohol. Apparently he was “substituting for his lack of social confidence” through booze. In other words, it made him feel better, so he abused it alone and felt all social when in fact all he was ever doing was messing around on his PS4 or chatting to some girls he didn’t really know—and would never get the chance to meet because of his own damned shyness—online.
He wanted to say something else to Frank. He wanted to make an apology. He wanted to tell him about his older sister, Annabelle, and how he’d lost her too, but not to the zombies. How she’d killed herself. And how Dad had been distant since. How Mum never seemed to be … present, anymore. How he’d helped his younger sister, Clarice, grow into the beautiful, confident girl she was.
But then he heard the banging against the window.
The four of them all swung around. They couldn’t see the window from where they were crouched down, but there was definitely something outside.
“Let us in. There doesn’t have to be any trouble.”
Or … someone.
Usman lay down even lower. “Keep your fucking heads down. Pretend we ain’t in—”
“We can hear you,” the man said again. He banged even louder at the window. “Two ways we can go about this. One, you let us in. There’s just two of us. Let us inside there.”
“Fuck
off,” Usman shouted.
“Or two,” the man said, still banging away on the window. “We can stay out here banging on this window. I can fire a few shots with my air rifle. Infected will wander right over here and snack on both of us. And I don’t think they’re in a mood for discount chocolate, somehow.”
Hayden wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. A part of him felt bad for the people outside. A part of him felt bad for anyone caught up in the streets of Smileston in the state they were in.
But another part of him wasn’t sure about letting the people inside. Because people could be dangerous. And if they just let everyone in, then maybe Hayden would find himself forced out for some reason or another.
If the world was survival of the fittest for the time being, then Hayden was certainly losing out.
More banging at the glass. “Don’t let it be this way.”
“The fuck we supposed to do?” Frank muttered.
Usman shook his head. “We stand our ground. Lay low.”
“And risk the zombies coming right over here and biting us all?”
“He’s bluffing. They’re both bluffing. They won’t put their own lives on the line. And we’re safe in here. We’re—”
“We can’t just leave them outside to die,” Sarah said. “We … You took us in. You didn’t have to, but you did.”
“And I’m starting to regret that fucking decision already,” Usman said. He shook his head. “No. It’s not happening. They won’t have a gun. They’re—”
A shot rang out.
“Don’t leave us to die out here. You don’t have to make that call. Let us in. Please.”
Usman kept on shaking his head.
Sarah stood up. “I’m not having this. I can’t leave them to—”
Usman grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.
“Woah!” Frank said. He stood between them, pulled Usman away from Sarah. “We’ve got a call to make here, and we’d better make it damned fast. Pussy—what’s your call?”