by Ryan Casey
Contents
Copyright Page
Author's Note
Title Page
Episode One
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode Two
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode Three
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode Four
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode Five
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode Six
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Keep Reading
Other Books By Ryan Casey
About The Author
Dead Days
by Ryan Casey
Published December 2013 by Higher Bank Books
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2013 Ryan Casey
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are a lot of zombie stories out there nowadays.
Thanks to the rise of AMC’s The Walking Dead, zombies are hot right now. Very hot. But what is it about The Walking Dead that makes the show so appealing? What sets it aside from multitude of zombie movies and books? The answer lies, I believe, in the characters.
Dead Days is also a character tale. With each of the six episodes that make up the first season, I asked myself what I would do were I in the situations the characters find themselves in? Would I have it in me to make the tough decisions? Although the work is far from autobiographical — the protagonist is way too heroic for me — I think that through studying the emotions and behaviour of humans, we can learn a lot about survival in this hypothetical apocalypse.
On the other hand, Dead Days is a story. It’s an adventure. While it strives for some level of gritty realism, it is entertainment. Within each eighteen to twenty-two thousand word episode, there is a story. There are twists. There are turns. There will be blood and there will be tears. Nobody is safe.
Dead Days is the six-part serial adventure I’ve always wanted to write, inspired by some of my favourite TV shows. I hope you stick around to see how this goes down.
If you’d like to be notified as soon as a new season of Dead Days is available, please sign up by clicking/visiting http://ryancaseybooks.com/fanclub. Also, if you enjoy the book, please consider leaving a review at your retailer of choice. I really appreciate it.
Enjoy the ride.
Ryan Casey.
DEAD DAYS: THE COMPLETE SEASON ONE
EPISODE ONE
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
To this day, those words formed the best piece of advice Riley Jameson had received about dealing with the creatures. The shuffling of hundreds of decaying feet against the warm tarmac of the roads. The pitiful groans, like a choir of dead angels, restless and never-ending. But the worst sound of all, worse than anything one of those creatures made — a scream. A human scream from somebody not quite as fortunate as him. At first, Riley felt a sense of pity in the bottom of his stomach when he heard those cries. A woman, perhaps holding her toddler, cradling him in her arms as the creatures surrounded her. Or a teenager, spotty and twitchy, jeans caught around the mangled remains of a car, surrounded; his inevitable fate staring him in the face with bloody greyed-out eyes.
But after a few incidents, it wasn’t a sense of pity he felt for the victims. When surviving in this new world, pity was hopeless. Pity diminished. In the place of pity, a sense of frustration.
Screams attracted attention. And once the creatures’ attention was attracted, they didn’t back down. Instead of thinking, ‘how far away is that poor woman and her toddler? I’d love to try and save her,’ the thoughts changed to, ‘I hope to God that woman is far enough away from us, and I hope to God they finish her off and shut her up as soon as possible.’
Such was life in the Dead Days.
Riley lit a cigarette with his shaking hand and stared at the wreckage of the building in front of him. His heart pounded. Flames swallowed the front of the building. Screams and cries surrounded him, blurring in the corner of his eyes.
“Riley, we have to go, mate. You have to snap out of this. I’m sorry.”
He recognised the voice, but it floated in through one ear and out of the other as he inhaled the smoke of the cigarette. A buzz enveloped him. A calmness that he hadn’t felt in days. Weeks, even.
“Have you got that fucker out of his trance yet?” Another voice, further away. More screaming. More sobbing.
A hand rested on his shoulder. “Mate, I’m being honest with you here. There’s nothing left of it. It’s no use. I’m so sorry, but we’re going to have to go.”
A windowpane crumbled to the ground. A child cried behind him. The smoke disappeared into the night sky, from his cigarette, from the building. How had it ended up this way? After everything they’d worked for — everything they’d struggled so hard for — why did it have to come to this?
“Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Another voice. “Bottom of the street. We’ve gotta go. We’ve really gotta go.”
To Riley’s right, at the bottom of the street, he could just about make out their shuffling in the glow of the flames. Their groans growing closer. Like ants, all of them headed in one direction — their direction.
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
He dropped his cigarette to the floor and turned to the rest of the group. The ones left of them, anyway. The way they stared at him. The way their eyes scanned him, wide and desperate. A longing for him to join them. A longing for his company. How things had changed.
“Are you coming?”
Riley took a deep breath. The warmth of the burning building stung his skin as if standing too close to a bonfire. And the groans. The feet. Ten. Maybe twenty.
He had no choice, not really. It was run or stand still. And when you stood still, you were torn to pieces.
He nodded and he walked.
‘When you hear them coming, you know it’s already too late to do anything about them.’
Perhaps the person who had given him that advice was right about that. But one thing that they were
wrong about was their declaration that they’d outlive the rest of the group.
They ran into the night, away from the approaching creatures and the burning glow of the building, into the darkness, into whatever else the Dead Days had in store for them.
CHAPTER ONE
The phones chimed through the waiting area. He squeezed his tingling hands against one another and tried to cover the patch of spilt coffee on his groin. On a clear white shirt, it would’ve been messy but manageable. A brown stain on a shirt was clearly food or drink. Shrugged off as an accident.
A colourless patch on the trouser groin was generally viewed as a different sort of accident.
He looked out through the window at the city centre. Rain plummeted down on crowds of day-time benefit snatchers, who still wore their tight legging bottoms and flesh-revealing hoodies despite the onset of autumn. At the end of the road, a large van sped down the street, swerving into a roadside puddle and covering an innocent passer-by in a wave of water. The drenched man stumbled and cursed at the driver, who sped off into the distance.
The door creaked. His heart thumped as he snapped out of his daydream. Out of the windowless office, Jennifer emerged. Shiny dark hair. Beautiful soft skin.
He slipped his hand further over his groin, just to make sure the patch was still hidden.
“How’d it go, babe?” he asked.
Jennifer, who had walked past him without even acknowledging him, frowned, and stepped back, as if she was a DVD rewinding herself. Her ass wobbled as she did. Tighter grip of the trousers. Don’t want any real accidents to happen…
“Babe?”
He shrugged. “Just, y’know. A nice friendly thing to call a respectable lady like yourself. Right?”
Jennifer furrowed her eyebrow further. “Don’t you have a special lady in your life already, Riley? How would she feel if she found out you were calling co-workers ‘babe’, hmm?”
“Now, come on,” Riley said. “No need to bring her into it.”
A smile flickered across Jennifer’s face. “Probably not the best thing to call a ‘respectable lady’ right in the middle of redeployment interviews either, hmm?”
“I’m just being friendly!” Riley laughed. “Seriously. How’d it go?”
“Riley Jameson?”
Riley and Jennifer looked over at the door to the office where the interviews were being held. The same bald man who had let everybody else in stood there. Overgrown freckles stretched over his crinkly head. Circular glasses rested on his arched, hairy nose.
“Yes?” Riley stumbled to his feet and loosened his collar. “Yes. Ready.”
The bald man smiled and nodded. He caught a glance of Riley’s groin, then disappeared back into the office.
Riley tensed his fists. Remember what the online course said — deep breaths in through the nostrils, hold for four seconds, release. Breathe, hold, release. He closed his eyes and walked towards the door.
“Good luck, ‘babe’.” Jennifer winked as he gripped the handle of the office door.
“Thanks. But I act on knowledge and commitment, not on luck.”
“Hmm.” Jennifer started to walk away. “Knowledge and commitment are good. Pissing yourself isn’t. You might want to cover that stain up if you want to keep your job. He’s quite the ruthless chap. Laters.”
She shuffled down the corridor and past the main offices as Riley’s cheeks tingled. So much for fucking deep breathing exercises.
He didn’t have chance to register the commotion on the television news bulletin as he entered the office.
The interviewer thumbed through a bunch of papers in front of him. It turned out his name was Graham Large. At the beginning of the interview, Riley made an ill-fated joke about how he was “rather small for a Large man”. Mr. Large simply stared on from behind his round glasses and asked if Riley needed a few moments to compose himself.
Nobody had spoken for some time. Riley gripped his thighs and waited. The clock ticked through silence, every second stretching out like a number of minutes. Graham tapped his knuckles against the table, flicking through Riley’s résumé with his other hand. Every now and then, he made a clicking sound with his throat, which made Riley grit his teeth and cringe.
“Well, everything looks okay.”
Riley blinked as Graham caught him off guard, and sat back in his chair. “Ye—Yes? Okay. That’s good. Isn’t it?”
Graham stuck out his bottom lip and moved his head from side to side. “Yes. It’s a very solid résumé. You’ve been responsible for a great number of well-received articles in the music world. Classical to… to R N B, or whatever it’s called.”
“R & B,” Riley interrupted.
Graham shrugged. “Like I said.” He turned the page and ran his finger down it. “It’s clear your editor here at Lancashire News thinks the world of you, too.”
“Mr. Devitts is a wonderful man,” Riley said. “Without him, I’m not sure I’d have got this opportunity. Not that I’m saying I’m not good enough to work on the paper. I am good enough. More than good enough. It’s just…” He coughed and stopped talking.
Graham stared at Riley. “Okay. Well, like I say, everything looks good your end. You’re a top music ‘journo’, you write good pieces, and you’ve got a talent with the old keyboard.” He twiddled his fingertips against his desk, imitating typing.
A weight floated from Riley’s shoulders. Six months of redeployment interviews. After the spending cuts required the culling of dead weight, it became much harder to hold down a job in journalism, especially media based. He knew a few people from the nationals who had lost their jobs. The landscape was becoming trickier to crack. The rise of blogs — everybody being a journalist — was a more serious challenge to traditional music journalism than anybody liked to admit.
“And you’re the only ‘muso’ here.” Graham nodded at Riley, searching for approval.
“Absolutely. I not only offer a unique take on a wide range of music, I offer the only take on music in the North West England area.”
“Precisely.” Graham closed the papers and rested his hands against the table. He leaned back into his chair and glanced at the door.
Riley shuffled in his chair. The silence returned to the room. The ticking of the clock. Did he say something? Or did he just leave? He’d saved his job, right?
“So…” Riley started.
“So the problem is I just don’t think there’s much room for a music journalist at the Lancashire News anymore.”
Riley’s mouth opened. He felt the weight come crumbling back down on his shoulders again as Graham stared on at him, poker-faced as ever. “Right. Because…”
“Because… Well, the blogs. The internet and all that. Demand. I don’t think there’s room anymore.”
“Right.” Heat worked its way up through Riley’s chest. “And that’s despite, y’know, being a top music journalist.”
Graham nodded. “Right.”
“And yeah. Despite you acknowledging I’m respected here.”
Graham continued to nod.
Riley puffed out a breath of air and slumped back in his chair. Six years of working in this place. Six years of doing what he loved, and earning a living wage for it. Six years, all disappearing in a puff of smoke. All because of some arrogant toss who didn’t even know the meaning of R&B.
“Is there anything I can say to… y’know? Change your mind?”
Graham shook his head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Jameson. We’ll be in touch.”
Riley stepped to his feet. Shook Graham’s limp hand and walked out of the office and down the corridor. The chatter went on. Phones continued to ring. Car horns erupted outside the window. The office buzzed around Riley as he walked towards the exit door. Six years of doing what he loved, gone.
Somebody called his name behind him. Probably Jennifer. Probably ready to gloat. He pulled open the stairway door and climbed down the steps.
Had he been totally focused, he would’ve notice
d the small group of journalists gathered around the office television, hands covering their mouths, as the commotion excelled.
He held the phone to his ear as he walked down the high street. Mothers gripped their children’s hands and rushed in and out of shops. Cars queued in the middle of the high street, honking at one another. The sirens of a police car sounded somewhere in the distance. “Preston’s daily robbery,” as Ted would put it. He’d have to let him know about the outcome of his interview, and what it meant for the flat. Paying rent was enough of a strain on its own, but supporting a jobless layabout who spent all day sat on his arse watching American TV marathons was almost impossible.
And now he was one of those jobless layabouts, just like Ted. Ted would have to take a bit of responsibility and stop sponging off others. Riley would have to move out. Move back in with her, if she’d have him.
“Don’t you have a special lady in your life already?”
Cheeky bitch.
“Hello?”
“Er, hey, Grandma. Are you…?”
“Oh, Riley! You okay, kid? How’d it go?”
Riley tensed his jaw. He couldn’t worry her, not after Grandpa’s death. Not so soon afterwards, anyway. “Yeah. Yeah, it was okay.”
“Okay? Well it was either good or it wasn’t. Did you keep your job or what?”
“I…” A woman barged past Riley, running in the opposite direction. She almost knocked his phone out of his hand. “Watch where you’re going!”
“You what, kid?”
“Not you, Grandma. Just somebody in the street. It…” Up ahead, more people ran towards him. Was there some sort of fun run on today or something? “Is something going on in town?”
“Always something going on in town these days. Anyway, the job — did you get it?”
Riley stared at the street ahead. Some of the running people rushed inside shops, slamming the doors shut as more runners smacked against the windows. “Yeah. I did. Grandma, have you checked the news?”
“Oh, of course you did! Oh, I’m so proud, Riley. Knew you’d get the job. Me and Bernice always love reading all your music stuff. Oh, you know who would be proud of you? Grandpa. He’d be so proud.”
