by Ryan Casey
In all reality, it was the former, most likely.
As they walked down Westleigh Road—a long main road that ran right through the middle of Smileston and went through to Preston and Manchester—Hayden looked around at the abandoned cars, at the boarded up windows of the terraced houses. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Even on a Saturday afternoon, Westleigh Road was a bustling place. But right now, cars had been left in the middle of the road, like the people inside them had just got out of them and done a runner upon learning of the psychos terrorising the town. Other cars were just parked up on the kerbs, untouched. In the windows of the houses, Hayden looked for a sign of movement, a sign of life, but he didn’t see a thing.
And yet, he felt like he was being watched. Like he was in the middle of a stage and the whole world was spectating.
It was the silence that was truly staggering, too. Smileston wasn’t the biggest place in the world, so you could usually hear the traffic and the horns from a main road wherever you lived. Not right now. All Hayden could hear were birds singing, just like he had back in the petrol station. The footsteps of Sarah, Frank, Newbie and him echoing against the concrete. Not a plane. Not a police helicopter.
Nothing.
“We’re gonna have to up our pace,” Newbie said, as he powered ahead. His long black coat was zipped right up, adding an extra layer of bulk to his already muscular body. A black hat with a Blaupunkt logo was wrapped around his head. “We’ve still got around three miles before we reach the bunker, and I’m not sure how much longer I want to walk down this road.”
“Amen to that,” Frank said. He slowed down as they reached an abandoned Honda Jazz. The engine was still running, and the radio was on, but no sound was coming out. “This road gives me the creeps. Can’t we just take a car and be done with it?”
“And draw the infected towards us with the noise?” Newbie asked. He leaned into the car and turned the key to shut down the engine. “No thanks.”
The engine cut out.
But an alarm kicked in.
The four of them stood completely still for a few seconds. The noise from the car alarm was loud, intense, made even worse by the lack of background noise.
Sarah rushed towards the car. “Turn it fucking off—”
Newbie turned the key to start up the engine, then turned it again with the siren still ringing on. “I’m trying, okay?”
“Fuckin’ ’ell guys,” Frank said, shaking his head as he gripped onto the air rifle Newbie had handed him. “Now would be a real good time to shut that engine up.”
Hayden turned around and looked back in the direction they’d walked from as Newbie and Sarah battled to quieten the screeching car. In the distance, beyond the abandoned cars and by the old railway bridge that had one of the highest suicide rates in the country back in 1999, he could see movement.
Only ever so slight, but definite movement.
And the more he looked at it, the closer it seemed to be getting, the faster it seemed to be moving.
“Guys, we’ve got company,” Hayden said.
Newbie and Sarah didn’t hear him at first. They just kept on shouting amongst themselves, struggling to shut up the engine, arguing and bickering.
The movement from the other side of the bridge got clearer.
“Guys!” Hayden shouted.
Newbie and Sarah stopped their bickering and looked at Hayden like they were surprised to hear him raise his voice.
Hayden pointed back at the bridge. “Zombies. So we’d better make a decision here.”
Frank squinted into the distance. “Holy shit. He’s right.”
“Fuck,” Sarah said. She stepped away from the car. “Just keep on screwing everything up, Newbie. Just keep on—”
“Hey, it was an accident. Let’s not lose our cool here. Only one thing matters here, and that’s getting away.”
“Well I dunno about you guys, but I’m gonna try and hide somewhere that ain’t beside a fucking squealing car,” Frank said. He jogged across the road towards the row of terraced houses lining the streets.
Newbie followed. “I’m with Frank on this one.”
Hayden looked at Sarah as she stared at the crowd of oncoming zombies.
“Sarah,” he said.
She blinked and looked at Hayden with those bright blue eyes. Hayden swore he could see tears.
“We need to get off the road. We need to hide.”
Sarah looked back at the zombies. Hayden could hear them getting closer, their feet echoing against the concrete. He didn’t want to look back at them. But he didn’t want to leave Sarah behind in this fixated trance of hers either.
So he held his breath, grabbed her hand and ran over to the terraced houses where Newbie and Frank were.
He sprinted over to the gate at the side of the houses where the pair of them were. Frank was cursing as he tried to open the gate, which led through to the alleyway. He pointed the air rifle at the chained padlock.
“No,” Newbie said. He grabbed the end of the gun and pointed it down.
Frank shook his head. “Those fuckers are gettin’ closer! We need to—”
“They’ll hear us if we fire a shot. And it might not work.”
“So what do you propose?” Frank asked.
Newbie paused, then walked over to the brick wall in front of the yard of the terraced house. “We hide. And we keep very quiet.”
Frank laughed. He shook his head. “Man, you’ve gone crackers. Sarah’s right. You’re a liability—”
“They’re getting closer,” Hayden cut in, feeling the need to be decisive once again. “We … we don’t have long.”
“Oh trust you to bottle this whole shitty situation,” Frank said. He turned back to the gate and pointed his gun as the footsteps of the dead got closer.
“Frank, if you shoot that gun and it fails, we all die,” Hayden said. His heart pounded. He could smell the dead getting closer. The sourness of dead flesh. He tried not to breathe in, tried to ignore the stench, but it was nauseating beyond belief.
Frank pointed the gun with his shaking hand. “And—and if we do nothin’, we die.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
Frank pointed the air rifle at the chain lock for another few seconds as the echoing sounds of the zombie footsteps got even louder.
“Frank, plea—”
“Oh fuck you and your shitty ideas,” he said. He lowered the gun and rushed over to the wall, crouching behind it. “Just know if this goes to shit, I’ll be holdin’ you personally responsible,” he said to Hayden.
Hayden squeezed his cold hands into a fist as the first of the zombies emerged from their left. “If this goes to shit, we’ll be dead, so you won’t get the chance to.”
“Oh I’ll find a way,” Frank whispered, as another zombie came into view. “I’ll find a way.”
Nineteen
Hayden held his breath and kept very still.
He crouched behind the brick wall in front of the terraced houses. He didn’t look over at Westleigh Road. He didn’t want to see what was on the other side.
He didn’t have to.
He could hear the screeching siren of the car alarm.
And beyond that, he could hear the footsteps.
He could feel his heart pumping in his chest. Or maybe that was Sarah’s or Frank’s. They were bunched up so close together that it could’ve been any of them.
Hayden stayed crouched on his aching knees. He didn’t want to move a muscle. He didn’t want to risk the zombies hearing him.
One wrong move, and it was all over.
Beyond the sweaty smell that the four of them were giving off, Hayden could smell death. It wasn’t full blown decomposition or rot yet—the zombies hadn’t been dead long enough for maggots to start chomping on their flesh. He’d seen a documentary on what happens to the body after death one drunken, stoned night back when life was simple (amazingly, that was as soon ago as yesterday). In heat, it could take the body as qu
ick as twenty-four hours for the awful stench to spread. But the smell of urine and feces being released from a corpse was often instantaneous.
Hayden could smell it right now. Shit. Piss. So strong, and blowing their way in the cold winter breeze.
Just had to hold his breath.
Keep still …
He wanted to say something to one of the others. He wanted them to confirm that the zombies were walking on, passing by them. But he knew that nobody could look because looking meant attracting the attention of the zombies.
So he kept his head down. Kept still.
Kept on listening to the footsteps, the gasps, as they passed by slowly, gradually.
He wasn’t sure how long they were crouched down behind that wall keeping completely still. The seconds dragged on like hours. Hayden could still hear the squelching footsteps of the zombies just a brick wall away from them.
The smell of piss and shit was getting stronger, worse.
Hayden looked at Frank. He had his head against the wall and was muttering inaudible words under his breath. Sarah was crouched down, a stunned look on her face. Newbie was holding onto the air rifle again, squinting as he listened to the zombies.
And then the car alarm stopped.
It wasn’t exactly a silence that fell on Westleigh Road. But it was definitely an improvement on how it had been. Because the alarm was what had drawn the zombies to the group’s location in the first place, and now that had stopped, they had no reason to stick around.
They’d find some other poor souls to feast on.
Was it so bad to pray that was the case?
When Hayden felt his phone vibrating against his thigh, he had his answer, direct from karma.
Sarah glared at him. “Shut it up!” she whispered.
But Hayden wasn’t listening.
His phone was ringing. Which meant the networks were online again.
Somebody was trying to call him.
He pulled his vibrating phone out of his pocket as Sarah, Frank and Newbie all whispered at him to shut it up, and the rest of his senses froze when he saw the name on the screen.
Mum.
“Shut that fuckin’ thing up,” Frank muttered.
But it was too late.
Hayden hit the answer button. Pulled the phone to his ear. “Mum?”
Not a sound on the other end of the line.
His heart raced. His body tightened up. Fear took a hold of him. He realised how much he needed his family right now. How much he needed their help, their guidance. “Mum, are you there?”
And then the line started crackling and buzzing.
The call went dead.
Hayden took the phone from his ear. He looked at the broken screen. The call had ended. He had no signal again. He tried to touch the screen and make something happen—to zero luck.
“Shit. They’re coming our way.”
Sarah’s words didn’t make sense to Hayden right away.
But when he heard the footsteps echoing towards the brick wall, heard the gasps and the moans intensifying, he understood.
“Gonna ’ave to fuckin’ run!” Frank said.
Newbie, Sarah and he jumped up and ran across the yard. Newbie stopped in front of the chained gate, aimed his air rifle at it and fired.
Nothing happened.
The padlock didn’t even scratch.
“Fuck,” Frank said. “What now?”
Newbie looked back over the wall at the oncoming zombies. Hayden wasn’t looking directly at them—he was still in a trance after the phone call—but he could tell from the wide-eyed fear in Newbie’s eyes that they were getting close. “Like you said. Gonna have to run.”
Newbie, Frank and Sarah all ran out of the terraced house yard.
Not one of them turned back to check on Hayden.
Hayden heard them shouting. He heard the gasps of the zombies get noisier as they spotted their prey. He stayed sat against the brick wall and gripped his phone. He had to get away. He knew he had to get away. He knew he didn’t have long left. He couldn’t survive behind this brick wall forever.
He lifted his head. Poked it over the top of the brick wall to get a look on Westleigh Road.
There were a dozen or so zombies in various conditions.
They were chasing after the other three group members as they sprinted down the pavement of Westleigh Road, battling to find a way out.
Well, some of them were.
Four of the zombies were looking right at Hayden with their glazed, bloodshot eyes.
Hayden’s muscles tightened. He had to run. He had to catch up with the group.
But he couldn’t catch up with the group because there was a wall of ten or so zombies between him and them now.
He had to go another way. Go his own way.
But he wasn’t tough enough to survive on his own.
He wasn’t strong enough without somebody else to make the decisions for him.
He lowered himself behind the wall again. He squeezed his phone and stared at the cracked screen.
“Please,” he mumbled, as the footsteps and the moans got closer.
He saw himself four years ago.
Saw himself with the bottle of sleeping pills in one hand, the absinthe in the other.
He felt even more desperate than he had back then. Except now, he wanted to live. Now, he wanted life more than anything, regardless of how awful the world had become.
“Please,” he said. And a huge part of him hoped his parents would call him just like they had that day four years ago. Spoken to him, made him feel wanted, set him up with his flat and convinced him life was worth living.
He’d put the phone down and he’d put the pills and the booze down.
And then he’d pulled his socks up and got on with life, as miserable a life it may have looked to an outsider.
He gripped his phone even tighter. Listened to the footsteps, the groans, just inches away at the other side of the wall. “Please,” he said, tears dripping down his face.
But nobody was calling him.
Nobody was coming for him.
Nobody but the hungry dead, as the first of the zombies cast a shadow over the wall and down onto Hayden.
Twenty
Hayden watched the first of the zombies step around the side of the brick wall.
It was a young guy, probably in his early twenties. He was black, and he was well-built. As he approached Hayden, a blue JD Sports gym bag hanging from his left shoulder, Hayden figured he must’ve been quite into his fitness before the world had changed.
Not anymore.
He had a huge bite on the left side of his neck.
Blood oozed out of it, muscle and flaps of skin and tendon dangled freely.
He gasped and clambered towards Hayden.
That niggling voice inside Hayden’s head told him he didn’t have the guts or the courage to battle his way out of his current situation. He was trapped. He was stuck. Frank, Newbie and Sarah were gone. They’d left him behind—and probably rightly so.
The call with his mum had cut off before it’d even properly started.
He was left with nobody but himself.
But then an urge came over him. An urge to live. To fight. Because he didn’t want to die. Once upon a time, in his early twenties, he’d wanted to die. But not anymore.
He wanted to prove his worth.
Even if it was just to himself, he wanted to know that he was capable of making the tough decisions in life.
He wanted to know that he was capable of fighting for his own survival, instead of relying on somebody else to save him.
He clambered away from the zombie as another one—an Asian-looking woman with long black hair and wearing a black dress—staggered in through the yard opening. He stuck his phone in his pocket, stumbled to his feet and backed up against the wall.
It was then that Hayden truly realised just how surrounded he was.
There were more zombies than there had been before. Six of
them now. All of them were looking at Hayden with that deathly stare, all of them were bitten and bloody in some form or another. One young man was bleeding from an opening on his chest. The torn muscles of his ribcage were on show. Another man looked way too old to be plummeting towards Hayden at the speed he was going, and with his biceps as ravaged as they were. And yet it was completely believable. That was the scariest thing about this whole situation. None of it seemed abnormal or unreal in any way.
That alone was terrifying.
Hayden clambered over the brick wall as the black guy snapped his teeth at his legs. He didn’t have time to fuck around. He had to get away. And maybe getting away was finding the others. Maybe getting away was fleeing alone.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t have a choice but to run.
He landed at the other side of the brick wall and staggered right then left. The zombies were just three metres to his right. He could feel the slight warmth of their bodies, which had still not yet fully cooled. He cursed under his breath and ran to the left, back in the direction he’d come from. In the corners of his eyes, he swore he could see more movement outside the terraced houses, more movement emerging from behind the cars, but he couldn’t let himself think about that.
The road ahead was clear. That was all that mattered.
All that mattered was getting away in one piece.
He sprinted as fast as he could. He got a crippling stitch within seconds of running right down his left side. He clenched his teeth into his lips and battled through the pain. The groans and the shitty stench of the zombies swarmed around and invaded his senses. He didn’t have time to think about where exactly to go—he just powered on, fought through the stitch, struggled through the pain in his glass-sliced foot that burned more with each and every step.
And then he saw three zombies emerge from behind a car just up ahead.
He almost stopped, but then he heard the footsteps pounding closer behind him. He looked to the left. Another terraced house, another gate that led down the side and through to the back yard, this one hopefully not padlocked.