by Ryan Casey
Chloë led the group out of the care home. She heard the cries. Heard the pain. These people, they were too weak for loss. Too old for loss.
But they had no choice.
No choice but to consider moving on.
Because this place wasn’t safe anymore.
The water was contaminated.
They’d die here.
No. Worse than that. They’d turn here.
“What now?” Dad asked.
Chloë turned. Saw Melissa standing in front of the group. Saw how pale her face was. How much she looked like one of them. One of the monsters.
Her eyes were dead.
But she was still alive.
Chloë had long ago learned that you didn’t have to be infected to turn into a monster in this world.
And then she blinked. Her throat wobbled. She looked up at Chloë. Smiled. “My gun. Please.”
Chloë looked at the gun. The gun she’d shot all the residents with. The gun she’d put Heather to rest with.
She handed it to Melissa. Everyone else watched in silence. All with the same dead eyes. All with the same pale faces.
“We… we need to think about—”
“I’m so sorry,” Melissa said.
Chloë didn’t have time to process Melissa’s words.
Melissa put the gun to her own head.
Closed her eyes.
Pulled the trigger.
Chloë’s eyes shut instinctively. She felt warm blood splatter across her face. Heard a thud, first of metal, then heavier.
A body.
She didn’t want to ever open her eyes, but she’d heard the gasp. She’d heard the panic. She’d heard the cries.
Melissa’s blood rolled down Chloë’s face.
Melissa’s gun lay beside her body.
Melissa was dead.
30
THIRTY
Chloë tried not to listen to the moans and the cries as she walked down the long, winding road towards Pwllheli.
The afternoon sun beamed down on the group. It wasn’t nice though. Way too intense. Chloë could feel her forehead burning. Feel the scars on her face stinging.
But that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was they were moving.
On the road to Pwllheli.
To the source of the transmission.
Again.
She looked over her shoulder. Looked back at the following group, or at least those that remained. Joining her, Dad, Alice, Cassandra and Dean were eleven people from the Snowdonia Care Home. The ones who’d survived the contaminated water, anyway.
At least, the ones who were still around.
Who hadn’t fallen victim to it.
Yet.
But they were weak. Old and disabled. Struggling. They needed someone to pull them through. Needed something to help them. To aid them reaching their destination.
This world wasn’t right for them.
Well. It wasn’t right for anyone. But especially not for them.
Chloë saw her dad approaching, catching up with her. She turned ahead. Felt a lump swell in her dry throat. She looked right down the stretching road. Looked at the mountains either side. At the emptiness of this place. Peaceful. Quiet.
But so, so lonely.
“You okay, angel?”
Chloë nodded. She wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. Nobody was. They’d had somewhere. Found somewhere new.
Above anything, they’d found other people. People worthy of trusting.
And now that was at risk. All over again, it was at risk.
She felt the blisters on the bottom of her hardened feet. Tried to ignore them as she walked across the warm concrete, right down the road. She knew how Dad felt about them leaving. About them pushing on to Pwllheli. But she didn’t need to hear it. Not now. Not today.
“Should be there some time today.”
“Right.”
“Travelling two days so…”
“Yeah.”
“Chloë, I know we disagreed. Back at the care home. But we’re all here now so I don’t see much point in acting like this with each other.”
Chloë glanced up at her dad. Unlike Mum, Dad always spoke to her like she was an adult. Maybe that’s what’d made her grow up quicker than the other girls her age. Maybe he was the reason she was alive.
But she saw the sweat dripping down the sides of his face. She saw the look in his eyes.
“You still think we should’ve stayed back there.”
Dad sighed. “Not necessarily back there. Just…”
“Just not Pwllheli.”
“Chloë, we’ve got people with us. We’ve got a new group. A second f… a second bloody chance. We have responsibilities. People who trust us. We can’t mess that up. Not again.”
“What’s that mean?”
Dad opened his mouth. Then closed it again. Shook his head. Glared at Chloë. “It means you need to be careful. We both do. Because not everyone gets a second chance.”
Chloë tried to think about Dad’s words as she kept on moving down the road. She tried to think what he meant. What he was saying. But all she could arrive on was this: he blamed her for the group’s losses. He blamed his own daughter for everything that’d happened.
“I just think going where Jackson’s going is asking for troub—”
“You think I wanted to leave the care home?” Chloë snapped.
Dad’s eyes widened. “I—I didn’t say—”
“You think I wasn’t happy there? You think I wasn’t happy like everyone else?”
“Chloë, please. Let’s not—”
“No,” she shouted, face on fire. “I’m sick of it. Sick of you telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.”
“I’m your father.”
“No,” she said. “No you’re not.”
Chloë saw the glassiness in her dad’s eyes. Heard whispers behind.
She took a deep breath.
“You can’t be my dad. Not in this world. Nobody can be anyone’s dad or mum. Nobody can love anyone. We can’t be weak. Or it gets us killed. We just have to be the strongest people we can be.”
Chloë’s words bounced off the narrowing hills. Dad didn’t respond. And Chloë felt bad. Bad for saying he wasn’t her dad. She didn’t mean it like that. She just meant… Oh, she didn’t know. Her head hurt. Her thoughts were jumbled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I… I didn’t mean to…”
She looked up at her dad and noticed he’d stopped.
He was staring at something in the distance.
Chloë turned. Squinted ahead.
Took her a few moments before she saw it.
There was a girl.
A little girl in the middle of the road.
She had long brown hair. Her white skirt was ripped.
She was peppered in blood.
“Is she infected?”
Chloë reached for her knife, which she’d retrieved from the Care Home store room two days ago before they left, along with a bunch of other guns. Melissa’s group must’ve taken it from the monsters. She didn’t know. Only that she was reunited with it. It made her feel safer.
It made her feel her.
“Chloë, I don’t think you should…”
She glared at her dad.
She saw him look back at her. Saw the words freeze on his lips.
And then he nodded.
Chloë raised a hand to stop the rest of the group progressing.
She walked towards the girl. Slowly.
Knife in hand.
Each step stretched on, taking forever. The sun disappeared behind the clouds, making the air cooler. Chloë’s heart pounded. She licked her dry lips. Kept her eyes on the girl.
When she got within a few steps, the girl lifted her head.
Instinctively, Chloë raised her knife.
But as she looked into the girl’s blue eyes, she saw something.
Life.
Chloë’s muscles weakened. She lowered the
knife. Raised her thumb at the group, who approached.
“Your name?” Chloë asked.
The girl just crouched there in the road. Stared at her. Specks of blood covered her face. Her dress. Everywhere.
“Your name?” Chloë asked.
“They—they killed my mum. My dad. My… my brother.”
Chloë walked closer to the girl. She should’ve felt bad. Bad to hear the monsters had killed the family of a girl younger than her. But instead, she just felt numb inside. Because she’d heard stories like this so many times before.
She stood over the girl. Thought about what to say. About what she should say. She glanced around. Checked nobody was watching from the hills. Something didn’t feel right. Something felt off.
But the girl just kept on sobbing.
Chloë held her breath and crouched opposite the girl. She put a hand on the handle of the knife again, just to be sure. “Sorry. For what the monsters did. But you… you can’t stay out here.”
The girl rubbed her eyes. “My mummy. I’ll never see my mummy again.”
Mummy.
Chloë thought about her mum. About the moment she’d lost her. Her world split apart that day. She knew life would never be the same, not ever again. Even when the monsters first rose, at least she still had her mummy, her sister. She never thought she’d lose them. Ever.
“I lost my mum too,” Chloë said. “But I’m still here. So if… if you want to come with us. You…” She struggled. Battled to find the right words. To let herself say the right words. “I guess you can.”
The girl looked up into Chloë’s eyes. Snot and blood covered her cheeks. “Where… go where?”
“Pwllheli,” Chloë said, still not sure if she was pronouncing it right. “Do you know it?”
The girl nodded. Pointed down the road. “Just—just past the next hills. You’ll see it. But—but you don’t want to go that way. They’re going into every house. Killing people.”
Chloë offered the girl her one hand. Helped her to her feet. “We can handle the monsters.”
“Not monsters,” the girl said. “The Black Army. The people with guns. The ones who killed my… my…”
She started crying again.
Chloë felt her skin tingle.
The Black Army.
Why could it never be easy?
Chloë turned back to her group. “This… this is… What’s your name?”
“Ella.”
“Ella.” She tightened her fist. “She’s going to come with us.”
Chloë saw the twinkle in Alice’s eyes.
The smile on Dad’s face.
She turned around. Put a hand on Ella’s back. She’d never been able to do that before. Not before the care home. But the care home taught her something. The weak didn’t just need a strong leader. They needed someone to care for them.
So that’s what Chloë had to do.
“We’re here for you now,” she said.
Ella looked at Chloë with those glistening eyes.
“Thank you.”
Chloë smiled back.
Looked ahead.
The group pushed on through the final hills, Pwllheli growing ever closer.
31
THIRTY-ONE
Jackson stared at Chloë through the scope of his M40.
The M40 sniper rifle itself was a handy piece of kit. Found it in some fat bastard’s hands a couple of villages back. Heaven knows where he’d got his hands on it. Anyway, after killing said fat bastard, Jackson took it. Ammo was limited, but he figured he didn’t need much. Not with a gun this good. Not with aim this good.
He focused on Chloë’s head. Tickled the trigger.
He saw the girl beside her. The girl with the brown hair. And although he didn’t recognise her immediately, he soon realised it was the girl from a few days ago. One of the ones they’d let live. Killed her parents and her brother, told her to spread word of the Black Army.
Of course, he didn’t exactly have the highest of numbers. Seventeen at current count.
But if enough people feared him, if word travelled fast, they could survive on reputation alone.
He looked at the crowd of people following Chloë. Some familiar faces. And some new ones, too. Old people. Weird looking people. Rag tag bunch of fuckers. Where’d Chloë gone and found them? A mental asylum?
More interesting to Jackson was the fact these people were even with Chloë in the first place.
So she let people into her group now?
She expanded now?
Well, too late. He’d seen too many people die under her leadership to care about her change of heart.
He’d be sure to punish her for her past mistakes, one way or another.
“You gonna fire?”
Jackson turned away from the gun. Looked to his left.
Arnold was lying in the grass at the side of the hill. The rest of Jackson’s group were also crouched down, watching Chloë’s group pass. Jackson saw the looks on their greying faces. Faces that’d looked so optimistic just days ago.
Before those words.
Life is but a dream.
He looked back at Chloë’s group. Looked at them walking between the hills. He didn’t have long to fire at Chloë. To put her out of the equation.
But a part of him wanted to keep her alive. To drag everyone away from her. To make her feel loss now that it seemed she finally gave a shit about others.
He wanted her to feel hopelessness.
Then, he’d attack.
He lifted the scope. Pointed it at Pete Baines. Saw the smile on his face. Tightened his grip around the trigger.
Life is but a dream.
He loosened his trigger finger once more. Watched the group approach the hills.
“So you just let ‘em fucking walk,” Wilson said.
“We’ll attack. Soon enough.”
“Thought you said ‘shoot on sight’?”
Jackson watched the group begin to disappear behind the hills.
He kept the rifle pointed at them at all times.
“We will,” he said. “Once they’ve found out the truth.”
He watched the final member of Chloë’s group vanish.
Then, he stood up and he walked.
32
THIRTY-TWO
Chloë stepped up to the Croeso/Welcome PWLLHELI sign.
The first thing she thought was: this place isn’t what I expected.
The town was quiet. On her left, she saw small grey and white bungalows, the grass overgrown and wild, gnomes overturned and spread across the garden. On her right, a red and white petrol station. Cars were parked up in it. A silver Ford. A blue Volkswagen. Pumps still dangling into open petrol caps.
Not a sign of life.
Nothing but the seagulls swooping down.
Cawing.
The wind strong, the sky blue.
“Don’t see any safe haven,” Dean muttered.
“We keep going,” Chloë said.
Dean might’ve argued. But Chloë knew he didn’t really have a choice. They were here. They’d put everything on the line to make it here.
No matter what happened, they’d followed the transmission to Pwllheli. Like it or not, this was their new home for now.
The long empty road stretched on for miles. More funny little houses on her left. Bins toppled over onto their sides, the smell of fallen rubbish, rotting banana peel filling the air.
They kept on going. Saw more houses on their right. Empty windows. Overgrown grass. But no sign of any kind of safe zone. No sign of any transmission source.
No sign of anything.
They stepped into a more built up area. Chloë saw boats parked beside cars in the drives of the big grey semi-detached houses. And as the road narrowed and they reached the town centre, she saw a health clinic filled with cars. The windows were intact. Filled with dust.
This place was dead.
“What now?” Alice asked.
It wasn’t the q
uestion Chloë wanted to hear. Not right now. She looked at the cream brick of the police station. The black and red brick of the strange church. The blue buildings. The green buildings.
The empty town.
“Suppose it looks safe enough,” Dean said. “In that there’s jack all here.”
“Speaking of jack all,” Alice said, as they continued their walk through the abandoned town, towards a roundabout. “No sign of Jackson either.”
Chloë gulped when Alice said his name. She didn’t want to think about Jackson. His group had a head start. They’d surely had chance to reach this place by now.
She just had to hope he hadn’t made it.
Just had to pray it was just her group.
She saw a little fairground in the distance. An empty carousel. A Ghost Train, the N on its side. She’d grown used to seeing empty places. She’d adjusted to the death of towns, the collapse of cities.
But most places were occupied by something now.
And if the something wasn’t monsters, it was people.
“Wait. You see water?”
Chloë followed Dean’s gaze. He rushed ahead. Chloë soon joined him.
They arrived at a long road that stretched over a body of water. Cars were all parked up in spaces to the left. The road stretched on further than Chloë could see.
“We walk down it and risk getting trapped in the middle of a big body of water,” Dean said. “Or we find another route.”
Chloë stared down the road. Clouds intercepted the blue sky above. “It’s quiet. We push on.”
Dean tutted. “Thought you might say that.”
They kept on moving down the road—Embankment Road. Chloë watched the cars as she passed. Looked inside them for a sign of life. For a sign of any monsters. They passed a little grey building by the side of the stream of water, white cabins behind it that looked like some kind of holiday park. Merrily was etched across it in white chalk. All the windows were boarded up. More abandoned cars in the car park.
It was like this place was normal. Like it hadn’t woken up to the state of the rest of the world. Just sleeping.
“Still don’t see no safe haven,” Dean muttered.
Chloë didn’t respond.
She just kept her hand on the knife.
Kept her focus ahead.