The Survival Games (Book 2): Hide & Seek

by Everheart, AJ

  The door to the church is open, and there is blood smeared up the walls as we walk through. It makes sense, I guess, people seeking refuge in their religion at a time of need. But in my head, they were like sitting ducks. Sheep penned in, waiting for the wolves to smash the pretty stained-glass windows in. That’s what made me so uneasy about Litchfield; nowhere was safe, and their arrogant attitude was going to cost us one day. The sooner we got out of there, the better. I wanted to go back to Rosehill, that place was perfect for a small group to hide away. It was easily defendable from every angle, and the huge stone walls offered great protection. The army with its freaky experiments and lack of concern for civilians made me question why we were staying there.

  A low groan draws my attention, and Fischer’s alert eyes meet mine for a moment before we both duck low behind some pews. I grab Luke and pull him down into a crouch, which he holds without making a noise. Good boy. Slowly, I look over the top of the polished wood to see a zombie standing near the font. Its once smart navy suit is almost brown with dirt, dark crimson splattered everywhere like some rubbish arty design, and it was so thick in some places that it was almost flaking off the fabric. His neck and hands look strange, and it takes me a moment to realise that there are bits of flesh missing—he’d been a victim before becoming a monster. They all were. But it was hard to remember that they never asked for this either when they were trying to tear out your throat with their grubby fingers.

  Luke makes a motion to stand, but I fist my hand in his jumper and hold onto him tight. Fischer grins at me from across the aisle, while I just roll my eyes. This boy has no fear perception, clearly, I’ll have to watch my back. With a hand signal, Fischer lets me know she’s got this one. We slowly creep around and sneak through the space between the end of the pew and the wall. When we get to the front, I warn Luke to stay put as I provide cover for Fischer, not that she needs it. She darts out, dodgy leg and all, and thrusts her knife into the zombie’s skull. It writhes for a moment before dropping to the ground with a weird squishy noise. It’s only when Luke comes closer and nudges it with his foot that I figure out the noise was rotting flesh hitting the cold floor. I grimace, I never would have imagined that this would be my life now.

  “Let’s go, there’s a room back there.” Fischer leads us behind the pulpit into what must have been the church’s office. Cream robes are still hung on one of the hooks, and there’s a soft aroma of incense lingering amongst the books and papers. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust, and it feels eerie to be here, rummaging around in the hopes of finding something useful.

  Luke grabs a bag and starts filling it with all the candles he can get his hands on, and there are a fair few stocked on the shelf. Did they get a discount for bulk buying? Candles aren’t a necessity right now as the base has its own generator, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. I look over some of the paperwork, being nosey, and the marriage register catches my eye. Mr. Ben Thomas and Miss Nina Matthews were married here on the fourteenth of February. That was the day of the outbreak. The day when it all turned to shit. I wonder if they survived briefly before opening the drawers of a dresser unit. I doubt it, but it did explain the zombie by the font—was his once stylish suit what he wore to the service? Was he here for the bride or the groom? I remember the day I got married, it was in a small chapel similar to this. I recall thinking that it was going to be the day my life changed, that I was never going to be alone again. I would always have Elise by my side. Fischer opens boxes in the corner of the room and barks a laugh when she finds the communion wine, bringing me out of my thoughts. Hindsight is a cruel thing.

  We pack everything we want picked up in bags and a crate we find, ready for collection, and leave it on the steps of the church.

  “I always thought I’d retire to a small little village like this one day,” Fischer says as she looks around. It must have been a pretty place once, surrounded by lush greenery, trees, and flowers. Now, it feels threatening, hollow almost, like anything can come stumbling out of the shadowy tree line.

  “It’s not a bad spot for expansion, you know?” I reply, looking at the road that runs through the entire village.

  She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the area. “Yeah. Get a fence up near the tree line maybe and create some sort of walkway along the road back to base.”

  It’s exactly what Alex had suggested to Hazeldine before we left for London. The army base couldn’t keep taking in survivors, and pretty soon they’d need to think about expanding. Unless they intended to start turning people away, in which case they may have a riot on their hands; they helped manufacture the virus, after all.

  “Do you think Kelp will go for it?” I ask, although I think I know the answer.

  Fischer snorts. “Does Kelp ever go for anything Alex and Mia ever suggest?”

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  “There we are then.” She gives me a look that shows me how much she can’t stand Kelp, but she’s in the army, and their hierarchy is everything. So, Fischer just does as she’s told and plods along, like a good little soldier. But I see the way she watches carefully, I know that she’s struggling just like everyone else.

  “Hey, where’s your kid?” Fischer asks, her brows knitting together as she pulls her gun out just in case.

  My heart jumps up into my throat as I begin to frantically look around for the troublesome eight-year-old. I notice a footpath along the side of the building and wave Fischer down when I spot the boy at the back of the church grounds, near some headstones.

  She visibly relaxes as she stands guard over us, gun still drawn. That’s the thing about Luke, he made you care about him, even when you tried to keep your distance. Even Fischer was cracking under the weight of his cheeky smile and big, sad brown eyes.

  Luke turns to me as I approach. “Do you really think she’s coming back?”

  His voice is so soft that I feel like there’s a knot in my stomach. She said she would. But this was the end of the world, promises didn’t mean what they once did because they couldn’t. Zombies didn’t give a shit about your word. I couldn’t tell him that though, instead I had to put a brave face on and pray that Anna wouldn’t let us down.

  “She promised you she would find you,” I say, keeping my words steady.

  He slips his hand into mine. “And you.”

  I give it a gentle squeeze; he needs someone to comfort him, and I’m all he’s got. We’re all each other has in this moment. Just a broken man and a lonely kid at the end of the world, trying to get through another day.

  “And she promised me, yes.” And I don’t know why, but it meant something. The way she had touched my cheek, the way she sacrificed herself, it all meant something to me. I needed her to come back too. I barely knew Anna, but I can’t imagine anything would keep her away from this kid.

  Chapter Nine

  Anna

  Lily wakes first, she’s peering through the blinds as I crack my eyes open unwillingly. I was never a morning person, I used to set five alarms on my phone in order to get Luke to school on time. I think about my phone for a second. It’s probably still on my kitchen table where I left it. Once all the phone lines went down, it was utterly useless. Then the power went. It was the most expensive, redundant thing I owned in the moments before it hit me what was truly happening. Then I realized that it didn’t matter, nothing did—I just needed to get Luke somewhere safe. While everything was going crazy and people were ripping each other to shreds, I held my boy and kept him away from it all. But when we went out...after, everything was tarnished with blood. Everything was wrong.

  Crossing her arms, Lily sighs. “Anna, you’re not going to like it, but there’s a dead person at the door.”

  She says it as if she’s telling me the in-laws are visiting, and I have to resist the urge to smile. The way she’s stood without the scissors or knives she took from the kitchen yesterday tells me that it’s not urgent. It hasn’t realised we’re tucked away in here
yet.

  With a small groan, I push myself up off the floor and take a look for myself. It’s the same one from the doorway yesterday, I recognise the dirty red hoodie. He’s looking at the door, and if I didn’t know better, I would say that it was thinking. Zombies don’t think. They just attack. They are basic instincts tied up in a rotting bundle of flesh with sharp teeth. How did it get back here? I look over to the side gate, which looks like it’s still locked. Lily shrugs as she sees where my gaze is. Something clicks, making us jump, and that’s when we realise that the zombie is trying the door handle. It’s trying the door handle. The meat sack isn’t clawing at it, he’s trying to push it down and open it. Fuck.

  Lily’s as white as a sheet as she realises the same thing as me. It isn’t like the others.

  “What do we do?” she whispers, her voice barely coming through as we try not to draw its attention.

  It doesn't seem ravenous, just curious. Did it open the front door? I never locked it behind us since there was no key and zombies didn’t deliberately open doors. Not like this, anyway. It rattles the handle a few more times before it seems to get bored and wanders away. Heading towards the fountain, it just stands, staring at it. We watch him for a little longer, but he doesn’t do anything. Just waits there as if he’s contemplating the fate of the world.

  “We need to leave,” I say, resolute. We’d both had a full night’s sleep and eaten. Our cuts and bruises had been treated, and we could treat them again on the road, but we were playing with fire if we stayed here any longer. How long until the others followed suit and ambled into the garden? How long until we were surrounded?

  “But he’s out there, and he doesn’t look like he wants to move anytime soon.”

  “I don’t care. This isn’t some meditation retreat for zombies, and we need to move on.” I pack up our bags and stuff the sleeping bag back into its case. Handing both bags and the sleeping bag to Lily, her eyes widen as she watches me grab the baseball bat.

  “I’ll meet you further up the track. If I’m not there in ten minutes, then run. Run and don’t stop.” I keep my voice low and steady as I try to portray a confidence I don’t have.

  She just nods as I start moving the chairs away from the door. Next, I roll the tool box away, the zombie tilts its head when I do that, and I know that I’m not going to have much time.

  I swing open the door and run towards the monster stood in the long grass as Lily slips away back onto the train tracks. It hears me coming but too late, it turns just as my bat makes contact with its skull. I don’t know what I was expecting, that I would be a one-hit wonder and it would be all over easily, but it’s not. The zombie groans, and its arm reaches out for me even though half of its skull is now caved in. It looks like a rotten pumpkin after Halloween that had collapsed in on itself. He tries to step towards me, gurgling noise coming from its throat as its mouth opens and closes as if it is chomping on something, and I quickly jump back out of its reach.

  Swinging the bat again with all the force I can muster, I hit him with another thwack.

  And again.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Finally, he drops to his knees, and with another swing of my bloody bat, he goes down. His sad watery eyes watch me, and I almost feel pity. Almost. He was someone’s son once. Tears are streaming down my face now as I deliver the last blow. I can’t leave him alive; if I do, he’ll come after us. Eventually, his body stops twitching, and I know he’s gone.

  I just killed a monster.

  A monster who was once human, just like me.

  When I reach Lily further down the tracks, I don’t have the words to describe what I’ve done. She sees my red eyes, the tears falling freely down my cheeks, and she pulls me into a wordless hug. I’m not a murderer, I tell myself, but I still feel dirty. There is blood spattered on my skin, and I don’t want to touch it. I can’t look at it. He was a teenager. He didn’t deserve to die like that, none of them did.

  “We need to keep moving, Anna,” Lily warns as I zone in and out, lost in morbid thoughts. Nodding mutely, I follow her as she leads us out of the city and towards the M40. We follow the train tracks for most of the day, where it's quiet and easy, but that makes it worse. I can’t stop my mind wandering to Luke and the world I brought him into. I always thought it would be an environmental thing that set about the end of the world, not a man-made virus. They kept telling us that the polar ice caps were melting, the planet was boiling up, and that overpopulation was ruining all the natural resources; instead of concentrating on that, they created something that turned us into monsters and watched while we killed each other. They just didn’t count on the fact that no one was safe from the poison they created, not even them, up in their ivory towers with all their power and money. A zombie was a zombie, no matter how much coin it had in the bank.

  I’d gotten pregnant with Luke by accident, I was on and off with his father but it was never serious. We were teenagers in a village called Clun in Shropshire, population less than one thousand. So, what did we expect to happen when you factored in cheap cider bought from the corner shop with a five-finger discount and nothing better to do? It was never love, and while being Luke’s mother had been the making of me, it showed Jason all the things he wasn’t ready for. Having Luke and raising him alone had been a risky decision, and now look at what he had to survive through. What kind of life was I giving him?

  I know I could never have dreamed such a shitty scenario, but our children deserve better than the mess we’ve left for them. That’s why I helped Mia. She was only a kid herself, for fuck’s sake. Yet, here she was like some badass warrior queen, trying to save her people. A modern day Boudica, if you will, I only hope her story has a better ending.

  Then there’s Donovan. He barely spoke ten words the entire time I was around him, but I had watched him carefully; he was a thinker, not someone who carelessly ran his mouth. He protected Mia and Alex every step of the way and never wavered on that, it’s why I entrusted Luke to him. When you’re around men like Leo and Sam, you learn to spot the ones who are rotten to the core, who are only out for themselves, and he was nothing like that. There was a solemn sadness about him, he was a broken man, and yet I was still drawn to him. I wanted to get to know what he was thinking behind those dark eyes, what secrets he kept from the rest of the world, and I have never felt like that about anyone, let alone a stranger who never even noticed me lurking in the shadows.

  Chapter Ten

  Donovan

  The pub is our next port of call, and I can’t remember the last time I had a pint. I was never much of a drinker, but it was something I’d do with my father when we visited him on his farm in the midlands. My mother had passed when I was a child, and he never was any good at making a roast, so he’d take us out for dinner at a local pub, where they’d do a carvery every Sunday, and we’d have a quiet drink before heading back home. It became a bit of a monthly ritual before the apocalypse. When I was at university in London, doing my PGCE, we used to practice shooting and go fishing every time I came home. That was until his arthritis made it awkward for him to hold his gun and the bait became too fiddly. Now, I have no idea where he is, if he even survived. If this was five years before the outbreak, I'd bet on my old man surviving. He’d out-fight all of us, live like a caveman, and still be standing when the whole thing blew over, but now...now he was an old man, with a hip replacement and fingers that stiffened up more than the tin man without his oil.

  Fischer tries the antique wooden door with cast iron hinges, but it’s shut firmly. I shoot her a look, one that gets under her skin as I’m essentially winding her up about needing a man to rescue her, all with a wink and a smile. I love riling her up on these raids, it’s one of my few sources of enjoyment these days. Using my shoulder, I throw my weight behind the door and try to force it open without being too loud.

  “Fuck,” I growl as it barely inches open, and I realise I have to ram myself against i
t again. It fucking hurts, but I do it. If it’s locked up this tightly, it’s a good sign that there may still be something salvageable inside.

  Finally, it’s open, but not wide enough for Fischer or I to fit through. Just as I prepare myself to kick the bastard thing open, Luke slips between the gap and into the darkness.

  “Luke!” I hiss, trying not to draw any more attention and put him in danger.

  The kid is a dick, there’s no other way to describe it. Utter penis. If he got trapped in there or attacked, then there was nothing I could do. Anna was going to kill me. Actually murder me and gouge my eyeballs out, that kind of shit.

  I hear something scraping along the floor, a muffled bang, and a soft voice groan “Shit.”

  My heart is hammering, and it’s like there’s a hand around my throat as everything closes in around me. I throw myself at the door, not thinking, not caring about the noise. Luke is all I care about in this moment.

  Imagine my surprise when the oak door gives in and I crash to the floor, a cloud of dust flying everywhere. Coughing, I stand as Luke and Fischer grin at me.

  Brushing the dirt off my trousers, I point a finger at Luke. “If I catch you using language like that again, you’ll be in trouble. Got it?”

  His grin falters, and he nods. Fischer just raises a brow at me and slyly smiles. Maybe I’m taking my role as his protector too far, but I’ll be damned if I give him back to his mother in less than perfect condition, and that goes for his vocabulary too.

  As my hate rate calms down, I look around and realise that I never would have opened the door on my own; the previous occupants had stacked furniture against the door and barricaded themselves in, hoping to make it through the outbreak. Fischer signals me that she’s going to look behind the bar and in the cellar, while Luke and I check out the kitchen.