The Survival Games (Book 2): Hide & Seek

by Everheart, AJ

“Let me come then, I can help.” His chest is puffed now.

  “No.” This eight-year-old was going to give me grey hairs if I wasn’t careful.

  “Please! I won’t be any trouble!”

  The face I pull silences him for a moment. I turn to leave, thinking the matter is settled, but he hooks his finger into the sleeve of my jumper and holds on tight.

  “Please don’t leave me.” His voice is low now, and I wish I could ignore the way his bottom lip is beginning to quiver.

  Placing my hand over his, I try comforting him. “Luke, I’m not leaving. I’ll be back.”

  He won’t look at me as he mutters, “That’s what they all say. Dad. Then Mum. Now you.”

  “Luke…” Fuck. When did being eight become so hard? This kid has nothing. No home. No one...just me. And here I am, sneaking out at dawn like some shitty one-night stand, trying not to get caught or make eye contact.

  In that second, I feel like my heart is cracking, something actually hurts in my chest as I pull him into a hug. His small arms come around my waist, and for a few moments, we just cling onto each other, because we’re both in the same boat. There’s only us now.

  “Fine,” I sigh, pulling away. “But you listen to every word I say. And you stay by my side.”

  “Yes!” He punches the air with a smile.

  “Go get your bag.”

  He pauses and narrows his eyes at me, distrusting my words. I don’t blame him, it’s hard to trust anyone these days.

  Holding my hands up in a mock surrender, I say, “I’ll wait here.”

  With a skip in his step, he rushes off while I lean against the bunker and mentally scold myself. What the hell am I thinking? He’s a child. A child in this fucked-up world.

  Before all of this, I used to be a teacher. Primary school. Kids just like Luke would sit in my classroom and I’d teach them about maths, books, the wonders of the world, and sports. Now I don’t even know what to say. Some days, when I think about it, I can’t wrap my head around how quickly everything fell apart. Two years ago, we were going on with our lives, glued to our technology, our posh coffee, and obsessed with avocados, and the next, mass hysteria, zombies, blood, death, and it was like the whole tower of cards came crashing down. I never realised how fragile my life was.

  Luke is back in the blink of an eye, and I know I shouldn’t be taking him with us. Any decent parent wouldn’t do this, but I’m not a parent anymore, and he needs to learn how to live in this world since he’s the future. I’m only a relic of what once was.

  When we get to the main gate, Fischer gives me a questioning look. We fought to get away from the Wharf and their twisted ways, and yet here I am, endangering a minor. The irony isn’t lost on me, but I can’t leave him behind.

  “Babysitting duties?” She laughs as it becomes clear that Luke is coming with us.

  I give her the middle finger and ignore her smile. There are four of us going out this morning, not actually including Luke. Fischer, I know, along with another soldier called Galen, but the other two I’m not sure of.

  Galen must notice the suspicion on my face because he explains, “This is Gareth and Sonia, they’re from...downstairs.”

  When he says downstairs, he means the secret underground lab beneath our feet where they experiment on zombies. While the army personnel and a few select others know what’s going on, the normal civilians at the base are clueless as to how close they actually are to the infected.

  I nod my head in their direction before turning to Luke. I hand him a small knife and watch as he tucks it into the ankle strap Fischer gives him. Not only am I putting him out in the world where walking corpses want to eat him, but I’m arming him too—what a great role model I’m turning out to be.

  “Only use it when you have to. It’s not a toy, and this isn’t a game,” I warn him with a sharp look. The boy only nods, but I see his hands pause over the cool metal. He’s afraid. And that’s normal. I’m afraid every damn day.

  The gates open slowly, and we walk out confidently. Nothing gets close to the base, the army and Mia make sure of that with their patrols, so we’re relatively safe for a little while.

  “The plan is to get to Marwton. There are still a few houses on the edge of the village, and it’s only a half a day away...so nice and easy,” Galen explains as he leads us away from our settlement. The light is still hazy as the sun starts to rise, it almost feels otherworldly and has this odd serenity to it.

  “Hmpf,” Fischer snorts. I agree, nothing is ever nice and easy here.

  Galen ignores her and carries on, “If it’s all plain sailing, we’ll head north for a day or so until we reach Hattonfield. It’s a town, so more risks but also more supplies, and we are dangerously in need of medicine and food.”

  “Won’t it all be picked clean?” Luke asks, his small face serious.

  “Mostly, yes. It’s a risk we need to take,” Gareth chimes in, and I know that this was Kelp’s plan. No wonder I wasn’t a fan.

  “We’re also doing some recon, we need building supplies for the base. We plan to expand the garden, and a few more barrels to collect water wouldn’t hurt either,” Fischer points out. Her leg, like Alex’s, isn’t healed, and she walks with a limp, but still, she pushes on.

  “What did you have to do to get on this raid?” I ask as I fall into line with her slower steps.

  “What do you think I did? Kiss some ass? Suck some dick?” She laughs. “It’s not exactly like they have people lining up for this task, Donovan.”

  She’s right, the odds of dying are significantly increased when you’re not behind the gates of the army base. Add a limp to that and you’re begging to be bait. What is she playing at?

  Chapter Seven

  Anna

  As predicted, the train lines are empty, which would be great if we weren't exhausted already. I have no idea what we’re going to do when it gets dark, but if we don’t find somewhere to stop, we may have to sleep in shifts. We keep limping along, but one of the gashes on my ribs and one on my leg are looking disgustingly yellow. The stint in the sewers probably didn’t help things, and now, infection has set in. I have literally zero medical knowledge, but what I do know is that it fucking burns every time I move, and if I don’t clean it soon and get some sort of treatment then this small infection could have huge repercussions.

  “Anna, look!” Lily whispers, pointing over to the tree line in the distance.

  I stop for a moment, ignoring the sharp shooting pain up my leg. “What is it?”

  “It’s a shed, silly.” She sounds like such a mum when she says that.

  I grab the sundial out. It’s almost six, but we still have at least two more hours of light left. We should push on. “But it isn’t time to stop.”

  She shoots me a look and stands with both hands on her hips. “Look at us, if we don’t stop soon, we’re going to drop. So, let’s just find somewhere to rest for a few hours.”

  I look at her, her injuries seem to be faring better than mine, but some of her grazes look red and inflamed. The scab on her lip looks infected too. I guess she’s got a point.

  We get to the shed, and it isn’t what I was thinking. It’s more of a garage, made out of concrete with a window and even a water tap. I twist it hopefully, and imagine my surprise when clean water sputters out. Sam must have decided that getting the vaccine out was better than watching all of humanity turn into mindless monsters.

  The PVC door doesn’t lock, but we can barricade it with the huge toolbox on wheels and some patio chairs. At least that way we’ll be able to get some sleep tonight. Something catches my eye, and I smile. It’s a baseball bat, finally something a little more useful than the pair of scissors I’ve been wielding like a knife.

  “I’m going to have a look in the house,” Lily declares once we’ve set our stuff down and had a nose around.

  “Why?”

  “Because at the very least we need some antiseptic, and hopefully, there’ll be some food.”
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br />   We look through the window down to the house at the other end of the garden. Once upon a time, this would have been my type of dream house; red brick, big windows, huge French patio doors, and a long-enclosed garden. Now it’s all overgrown, and who knows what’s hiding in the grass. The doors are flung open, one hangs off the hinges, and there are trails of blood on the patio. It’s too big, too open, and there are too many places for demons to hide.

  “Lily…”

  She straightens herself up. “Stop, we have to try and think strategically, Anna. I know you’re scared. I am too. So fucking afraid. But we need to have a look.”

  I know she’s right. As much as I just want to hide away until morning, it would make a huge difference if we could find some food. “Fine, I’ll go first with the bat.”

  She takes my hand and squeezes it as she takes the scissors from me.

  We creep through the wild meadow that the once carefully landscaped garden has become. How do we know it was once looked after? The weed killer and the grass seeds in the shed were a giveaway, as was the small water fountain with stepping stones we discovered as we made our way closer to the house. Someone loved this house once, and now it was in ruins. I ignore the bloody streaks across the walls as we enter one of the largest kitchen’s I’ve ever been in. It’s all open plan, with soft grey walls, white cupboards, and worktops that are some sort of sparkly granite. It’s beautiful. If you ignore the damp and destruction caused by the outside elements. I resist the urge to try and pull the doors shut to stop any more damage, to preserve what’s left of someone’s home, because what’s the point? They’re probably dead, and trying to pull that broken French door would be more trouble than it’s worth.

  We scramble through the cupboards, taking a few tins and a box of crackers. We don’t want to take too much, because we’ll have to carry it. I also don’t want to spend more time in this deserted house than I have to. There’s something wrong that there’s this much food left behind, why hasn’t it been picked clean by scavengers?

  Lily motions for me to follow her upstairs, and slowly, I walk behind her, bat raised and ready. We don’t say a word, just in case we draw attention to ourselves. As we go past one bedroom, a stale stench hangs heavy in the air, and when I see the foot wearing pink socks poking out from down the side of the bed, I freeze. It doesn’t seem to be moving, but that doesn’t mean anything. It could just be dormant. I grab Lily’s sleeve as she notices it too. Carefully, she walks around to get a better look. I stay back in case she needs me to swing this bat into a zombie’s skull.

  Lily turns away for a moment, then makes the motion of a gun to her head with her fingers. No zombie. Just a suicide. I shouldn’t feel relieved at that, but I do. Lily tenses as she checks the weapon and finds the magazine empty, her gaze fixed on something out of the window, and with her hand, she motions for me to come closer. I ignore the dead body on the floor, I can’t bring myself to look at the woman as I peer through the blinds.

  The front garden is even bigger than the back, and it’s got a metal fence all the way around with what looks like an electronic gate. There was some serious money here. However, there was also a serious zombie infestation. There were at least twenty of the fuckers trapped in the woman’s front garden, the gate closed, keeping them stuck. Most of them just stood there, occasionally swaying like daffodils in the breeze, but others wandered, weaving in and out of the other decaying creatures.

  My heart jumps up into my throat as I hiss, “The front door…”

  Lily’s panicked eyes meet mine as we move as quietly, but also as fast as we can, back downstairs. The front door isn’t near the staircase so we didn’t check it when we came upstairs—rookie mistake.

  I get there first, and exactly as I thought, the front door is halfway open. No one raided this place because it would be stupid to even try. You’d have to get through that hungry herd first. I inch forward, trying not to make a noise, not even a single creak of a floorboard, otherwise I know that those rotten heads would snap my way quicker than I could say FUCK. I stretch my hand out slowly, reaching for the door handle. I freeze as a zombie walks in front of the door but doesn’t seem to notice me. It has dark hair and is wearing a red hoodie and jeans. If I couldn’t see the mottled skin, I would almost swear it was just a dirty teenager hanging around. I wait for a moment as it sniffs the air, its back turned to me.

  Lily’s hand rests on my back, urging me forward. It’s now or never. I bite down on my tongue as I gently push the door closed, holding my breath as I’m almost there. I see the fucking thing turn just as the lock clicks quietly into place. Thank Christ this door is an expensive one, unlike my own squeaky one back home. I take another breath as Lily and I press our backs against the door. Not that it would be any good if all of them decided to stampede against the door. Besides, the back door is still open, and the side gate doesn’t look all that sturdy. We needed to move. We were sitting ducks.

  Lily dashes upstairs, and after a moment or two, she returns with a sleeping bag and a wicker basket full of various potions and lotions.

  She jerks her thumb back towards the shed, and I couldn’t agree with her more. As we move back through the hallway, I grab two of the decorative pillar candles and a box of matches from the kitchen drawer with a tin opener and a spoon.

  Once we’re back in the safety of the shed, I finally breathe normally.

  “What. The. Fuck,” Lily says as she pulls the blinds and checks our barricade.

  “What do you think happened here?” I say softly as I light the candles on the floor to keep as much of the light out of the window as possible.

  Lily pulls the sleeping bag out of its little sack and opens it out. “Do you think she trapped them in here on purpose?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit, the world had gone crazy, and I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Sitting next to me, Lily grabs her wicker basket and pulls out some face wipes, antiseptic liquid, and some sort of cream. She tosses the wipes to me, and I quickly wipe down my skin; it’s probably the cleanest I’ve felt in a while. With some cotton pads, she cleans the cuts on my face, arms, legs, and my ribs. The cotton and antiseptic stings like acid as it touches my flesh.

  I hate Sam.

  I hate Leo.

  I hate what my life has become.

  The cream comes next, and although it soothes the burn a little, it’s not enough to distract me from how much everything hurts. I don’t have the words to describe it anymore.

  Returning the favour, I help Lily with her own wounds; they aren’t as bad as mine, and I must have made a face because she obviously feels the need to explain.

  “Karl was the one who beat me.” Her voice is low, and there’s a strange tenderness there. She doesn’t say anything else as she wraps us both in the sleeping bag, and we settle in on the floor next to the candles. Her body wraps around mine, but she tries not to touch me. I know it’s because she’s seen the damage Sam and his men did, and she’s afraid of hurting me even more. Once upon a time, I would have been uncomfortable being this close to someone, but now I’m just glad it’s her. The warmth is welcome.

  As her breathing gets heavier against the back of my neck, I think about her words. Lily was Karl’s favourite, he was one of Leo’s men who normally guarded the food stocks. He liked to slip her extra food in exchange for some affection, and Lily was only too happy to oblige. She has two children, and she’d die for them. Sucking dick was nothing.

  The way she speaks softly about him makes me think that maybe he’d grown on her too, how twisted is that? He beat her. Raped her. Bribed her. Yet she still thinks he did her some great favour for going easy on his punishment. My inner feminist can’t wrap her head around that, but my pragmatist fully understands. Survival is all that matters, everything else is fluid. What good are morals and ideals when your undead neighbour is trying to take a chunk out of your neck?

  Chapter Eight


  Donovan

  Half a day feels like much longer when you’re looking out for a child. Every step Luke takes feels like a tightening in my chest, and the urge to go back grows with each passing minute. Leo truly must have been a cold-hearted fucker to ignore this feeling that’s eating at me. Luke, like most eight-year-olds, is oblivious, just casually strolling beside me, keeping an eye out for anything that moves.

  Finally, a sign that reads ‘Welcome to Marwton’ comes into sight. ‘Marw’ in Welsh means ‘dead’ or ‘death,’ and that’s exactly what this town was. There were a few buildings, a church, and a pond. The forest encroaches on most sides, and it’s easy to see why no one wanted to live here: it was in the middle of nowhere. As we follow the main road into the centre, I can see dead bodies scattered around, they’re decayed but also full of bullet holes. This must be where Alex and Mia were rescued from before. Hazeldine may have been a slippery son of a bitch, but he obviously tried his best to keep the zombie numbers low in the areas near the base. That didn’t mean we could relax though.

  Galen signals to Fischer, and I to head to the church and the pub while Sonia, Gareth, and Galen make their way to a row of small houses and an off-licence. An off-license. You hardly used to see those anymore before the apocalypse, they’d been eaten up by mini-supermarkets, but now we’d never been happier to find one. On these raids, we were only the venturing party, Galen liked us to collect up the supplies and store them somewhere safe. Then he’d switch his radio on and let others at camp know the pickup point, and they’d roll out with the Jeep if needed. It saved us humping and dumping unnecessarily, and it meant we could move quicker to the next place on the map. It was a new plan implemented just before we left for London. The army was cocky, they hadn’t bothered going out and hunting for supplies before because they thought they were untouchable behind their big metal gates. They didn’t count on survivors flocking to them, the extra mouths putting a strain on resources, that was what they weren’t prepared for. Of course, the government would plan a deadly virus outbreak to save money, but not consider all the factors and prepare accordingly. That pretty much summed everything up.