by Casey, Ryan
He heard movement over to his right.
Something like glass cracking.
He stopped. Looked around.
Nothing but shadows inside those empty, dusty stores.
“Did you hear that?” Kelly asked.
Noah swallowed a lump in his dry throat. “Just an animal. Keep walking.”
They walked further down the street, a little quicker now. Noah tried not to look at the cars as he passed, but he couldn’t help himself. In the driver’s seat of one, a skeleton of a man or woman, still clutching the wheel.
In the back seat of another, the prune-like remains of a child. Shrivelled up. Long dead.
A sour stench to the air.
Another sound somewhere behind.
Noah looked over his shoulder.
Saw Kelly looking back, too.
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t care what bullshit you have to say. I definitely heard something then.”
Noah gritted his teeth. He wasn’t expecting to run into any infected. It’d been a long while since the last time.
But you could never truly discount that fear.
That uncertainty.
“Keep going,” he said. “We need to…”
He saw them before he heard them.
A group of four stumbling out from the shadows of a betting shop.
Then five more, hurtling out of the pub door.
“Shit,” Kelly said. “I knew this was a fucking terrible idea.”
She ran back past Noah, Edward in her arms.
Noah just stood there. Watched them approach.
Readied himself to get in the zone.
To try and hold them back in that crazy way of his—that way he still didn’t understand.
The way that scared him.
But they weren’t stopping.
They were still coming.
And then further up the street, Noah saw more of them.
Ten, at least.
Growing in number by the moment.
“Shit,” he barked.
He spun around and ran. Caught up with Kelly. All around, he heard snarls. Footsteps. Infected closing in.
“You really sure this was a good idea now, huh?” Kelly shouted. “You absolutely certain, yeah?”
“Let’s just focus on keeping our heads down and…”
He stopped.
A row of infected blocked their way, right ahead.
“We’re trapped,” Kelly said.
“Yeah. I can kind of see that.”
Noah stood there and looked at the infected all around them. They were standing there. Like they were waiting for something.
Too many of them to take out with bullets.
He had to try something else.
He looked at Kelly. Right into her eyes.
“Don’t say it,” she said.
“If it opens and I can’t make it, you run, okay? You run.”
“Noah, don’t—”
“You hear me? You get Edward and the dogs away from here if you have to, and you run. Don’t worry about me.”
She shook her head. Looked back. All of the infected standing there. Watching. Waiting.
Noah took a few deep breaths, then.
Closed his eyes.
Focused on steadying that breathing.
Focused on reaching that place within himself.
That muscle, just out of reach, but there.
Ever-present.
Once noticed, never unnoticed.
Go away.
He opened his eyes.
The infected weren’t just still standing there.
They were racing towards him.
Fuck.
He closed his eyes again. Heart racing. Dogs barking beside him.
Get back. Get back and get the fuck away from here. Now!
Opened his eyes.
Still coming.
Screeching.
Shrieking.
Closing in.
“Noah?” Kelly said.
And there was something about her voice that terrified him.
That uncertainty.
An uncertainty and a childishness.
Like she relied on him.
Like this was all on him.
He clenched his jaw again and tapped into that energy within him as he stared the crowd of infected in the eyes.
“Get back. Get the fuck away from here. Now!”
It all happened so fast.
The infected ahead stopped just metres away.
All of them standing in a line.
Staring at Noah and Kelly.
Watching.
The dogs going crazy.
Edward screaming.
He looked around at Kelly. Couldn’t help smiling, relief crashing through. “See?” he said. “I…”
And then it happened so fast.
Far too fast for him to even process.
The crowd of infected on the left surged forward.
Grabbed on to Kelly.
Tore Edward from her arms.
Kelly’s eyes widened. “Edward!”
And then the infected grabbed her.
Edward disappeared, screaming into a bloody mist.
“Kelly!” Noah shouted.
Kelly looked around at him. Glanced at him, just once. And in her eyes, he saw terror. He saw horror. He saw fear.
“What—”
And then she screamed as they dragged her away.
Screamed out Noah’s name.
Cried out for him as they pulled her by her hair into their infected mass.
“Kelly! No!”
He threw himself towards her as they dragged her into the alleyway, smeared in blood.
“Kelly!”
The dogs barking and yapping beside him as she stared back at him with bloodied tears in her frenzied eyes.
“Noah! Noah!” Her voice growing more and more distant. More and more echoey.
He tried to break through. Tried to fight.
But all he could do was stare as she let out her final cry, then disappeared into the mass of bodies.
“Please! My son! My…”
She screamed for a good ten seconds, as Noah tried to fight through them, tried to punch and kick and bite his way through them.
But then there was a crack.
And then there was silence.
He fell to the ground.
Smacked against it, hard.
“No,” he said. “No…”
A punch to the head.
Screeching in his ears.
Somewhere over his shoulder, a dog let out a yelp.
“No,” he cried, tensing his fists. “No!”
And then something changed again.
The infected.
They moved their bloodied hands from him.
Backed away.
Some of them dropped dead to the road.
Others disappeared between the buildings.
Noah lay there on the empty road. Heart racing. Chest tight. Tears rolling down his cheeks.
Because on the road, by Barney and Bruno’s side, he saw a body.
A small body.
Curly hair.
Plump. Healthy looking for this world.
Blood covering his face.
“No,” he muttered.
He dragged himself to his feet. Stumbled over there. He didn’t want to find it. He didn’t want to face it. He didn’t want to see.
But he knew he had to.
He walked over there slowly. Heart racing. Crows cawing overhead. Sun beaming down as the smell of blood filled the air.
When he looked down at the bloodied mess of the body, Noah fell to his knees, and he let out a cry.
There was no sign of Kelly.
No sign at all.
But on the road before him, Edward’s innocent little body lay.
Chapter Three
Five Years Later...
Noah heard footsteps outside the caravan and jolted awake.
It was dark inside the caravan.
Always was, in all truth. Dingy. Smelled of sweat and piss. He couldn’t remember the last time he woke up without a headache. Flies buzzed around this dark interior, the sunlight repressed with the suffocating red blinds. But holes of light pierced through those blinds where the moths had eaten the material away. An old car air freshener dangled down above him, its smell expiring long ago.
He heard footsteps, and he reached for his knife right away.
He wasn’t used to visitors. He got them occasionally. But he preferred it if they just left him alone. He’d picked the caravan right in the thick of the woods for a reason: the site was abandoned, it was close to freshwater, where he could fish. The forest around him was abundant with wildlife and food to forage.
And sometimes, late in the day, he could sit on the edge of the water and watch the sun set over Arnside, over in the distance. He could watch the roaring tide crash in and think about life as it was now. Life in the new world.
The new, new world.
He stood up. A little shaky on his feet. Pushed past a few bottles of home-brew booze he’d stolen from a group up in Warton, just outside the initial warning perimeter. Drinking was forbidden in the new world. Punishable by amputation. But hey. He’d already lost an arm. What were they gonna do? Take another off and render him totally useless?
By the side of his bed, Barney and Bruno both lay. Barney was an old lad now. Not so active. Noah was pretty sure he was blind and a bit deaf. But still, he just lay there, content, wagging his tail whenever he saw Noah.
Bruno, on the other hand, was a yappy sod.
Which seemed weird that he wasn’t barking at all right now.
He crept over the bottles. Pushed aside a few dirty plates and reached for the blinds.
He squinted through the dirty, smeared window. Clenched his knife tight.
When he looked outside, he saw two people dressed in blue and armed to the max walking his way.
He sighed. Lowered the blinds. No point trying to hide. They’d already seen him. He didn’t want to deal with these fuckers today. Hell, he didn’t want to deal with these fuckers any day.
But today in particular… he wasn’t in any mood for their shit.
“Come on, Bruno. Let me pass.”
He clambered over Bruno, walked over to the caravan door, took a few deep breaths, and opened it before the Society fuckers could rap against it.
The man standing at the door scanned Noah head to toe, a look of disgust on his face.
“Um, would you mind putting some clothes on?”
“Not sure I can do that,” Noah said. He didn’t recognise this bloke. Some of them were okay in all truth. Usually, a bloke called Alfie visited him, and he was pretty reasonable. But this guy looked like he’d just recently graduated to this role, which meant he’d be mega awkward. “What do you want?”
The man peeked behind Noah. His nostrils twitched. “Something died in there?”
“Not yet.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t look impressed with that one. “Look. You know why we’re here. It’s not safe for you to—”
“Live so close to No Man’s Land, because the virus is unpredictable, and you’ve got amazing state of the art tests that can monitor any signs of infection before they surface, so I should live closer to access to those… blah blah blah. I get it. Anything new to add to the script or the same old Society schpiel?”
The man looked genuinely baffled. He was dressed in this blue uniform. Wore a mask over his mouth. Rifle in hands. The Society came to power three years ago. Nobody really knew where they came from. Some claimed they came from abroad. Others said they were the relics of the old governments, rising up and seizing power from the ashes.
But it happened swiftly, and for the most part, people cooperated. All across the country, new groups established themselves. Mini-governments in charge of new safe havens called districts, all linked to one another, and all dead set on restoring some kind of order to a world that long ago lost it.
And so far, it’d worked. To an extent, anyway. Survivors were confined to their own districts. They weren’t allowed to leave. There were curfews between certain hours. Every now and then, when there was a risk of a spike of infections, there were even stricter lockdowns. Sometimes, people testing positive disappeared into the night and never came back.
Noah, as much as he hated to admit it, was a member of District 42. He lived right on its outskirts, as far from the rest of the fuckers as he possibly could. Days went by when he didn’t see people. But they always made sure they sent someone to check on him; to make sure he wasn’t breaching any rules or regulations.
Because beyond each District, there was a place called No Man’s Land.
A place where the virus was said to thrive. Where the infected loomed large.
A place that, once you stepped into it, you weren’t ever supposed to return from.
A crime that was punishable with exile or death.
“There’s a nice little caravan come up just a couple of miles from here,” the man said. “Bigger than this one, actually. And you’ll have a few neighbours, too. Isn’t that what you want?”
Noah glared at the man. “Do I look like the kind of guy who wants neighbours?”
The man sighed. “Look, Noah. It is Noah, right? Course it is. They said you were a bit of an awkward one. But look. I didn’t want to break it to you so bluntly. But we’re worried about a spike of cases on the perimeter close to here. Something we’re gonna struggle containing.”
“And?”
“And… for that reason, we’re considering bringing the borders closer to our centre. Which means you’ll be cut out of District 42. And you know what that means.”
Noah shrugged. “Fine by me.”
“But that’s not how it works. That’s not the law. You know what the punishment is for stepping outside the perimeter and into No Man’s Land without good reason.”
Noah knew the punishment far too well. Death. Simple as that. You got caught outside; you were deemed too much of a risk to return. The virus was manageable within the perimeter because it didn’t change. If you went outside or even got too close to the perimeter, you risked picking up another strain, an unpredictable strain.
There was an actual perimeter, and an initial warning perimeter you weren’t supposed to cross. Noah had been sneaking beyond the initial warning perimeter for a long time. People did. Shit happened. He’d almost been caught once or twice. But they didn’t have enough evidence on him to shoot him down.
He hoped things stayed that way for a long time.
“So you’re telling me I’m going to have to move out of my home?”
“I’d say ‘asking’ instead of ‘telling’.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then we’ll have to move to ‘telling’, yeah.”
Noah sighed. Shook his head. He looked around at the other caravans nearby, weeds sprouting up all around them. He looked beyond the trees, over at the water, and thought of his past. Those he’d stood with. Those he’d lost.
“How long do I have?” he asked.
“We’ll give you three days.”
“Three days? I need longer than that.”
“To pack your shit or something? Don’t worry, Noah. Just focus on making sure you and your pups here are ready to go three days from now. Understand?”
He wanted to shake his head. To disagree.
In the end, he could only sigh and nod.
The man nodded back at him. Started walking away.
“Oh, and Noah?” he said, stopping, looking back.
“What?”
He looked right into Noah’s eyes. Clenched that rifle. “Don’t even think about making a break for it. We’re watching you. We’ve got eyes everywhere.”
Noah narrowed his eyes. Cunt.
“Anyway. Better be off. Have a lovely day and see you very soon.”
He turned around. Walked away, with that other silent guard by his side.
> And all Noah could do was stand here.
All he could do was watch.
He felt Bruno nudge his leg, and he sighed.
“Looks like we might be finding a new home soon, little man,” he said.
He looked over at the water.
Saw the sun reflecting off it.
Thought of her and felt a tightness in his chest.
Then he shook his head and closed the door.
Disappeared back into the darkness.
Back into the only life he could live.
Chapter Four
Noah lay back in his caravan and stared up at the roof.
It was late. The moonlight shone in through the cracks in the blinds. He could hear Barney snoring away beside him on the floor, struggling for breath. Poor old mutt. Sometimes Noah thought it might be better if he just went peacefully in his sleep. He was getting on. Full of lumps and bumps. But hell, he was happy enough. That was the important thing.
But he’d miss him, for sure. And if he did lose him… he’d feel a sense of failure, even if it was out of his control. Old wounds would open. Old scars would rear their ugly head.
He closed his heavy eyes. Gritted his teeth together.
He didn’t like to think about the past.
But not thinking about the past always had the reverse effect.
He opened his eyes again because it was when he closed his eyes that he saw them. Eddie. Jasmine. Hazy memories of those two, sure. And others, too. Zelda. Jane. People he’d cared about. People he’d loved. People he’d lost.
But the visions he saw in the thick of night more strongly than any others?
Kelly and Edward.
One moment, standing there amid the infected.
The next, Kelly being dragged away, screaming out her son’s name.
Edward crying at the top of his little voice.
Going silent.
Noah falling under the midst of the infected.
And then the road clearing and seeing Edward’s little body lying there on the ground, bloodied and bruised.
His teeth rattled against one another. A shiver right through his body, as he writhed on the bed, tried to distance himself from the memory.
Walking over to Edward’s body.
Lifting him.
Carrying him into the woods, towards the sea, right at the foot of the caravan, the dogs trailing alongside him like they knew full well something was wrong, too.
