by Ryan Casey
Anna and Ted looked at one another cautiously, then back at the group. “If we don’t see you on the—”
“You will. Go,” Riley said.
Anna nodded, pushed past Trevor and disappeared out of the door. Ted followed closely behind. He took one final glance into Riley’s eyes before he left the blanket of smoke, vanishing into whatever lay ahead.
“Mummy — fire! Fire!”
Riley swung around.
An orange glow covered the door.
“Shit. It’s spreading. You’ve got to go. Get out of here.”
Tears ran down Claudia’s cheeks as she held Elizabeth in her arms. “But we… we might not make it. We might— Chloë!”
Chloë broke free of her mother’s grip and rushed out of the smoke. The sound of struggling outside. Heavy things falling to the ground.
“Claudia, you’ve got to go,” Riley said. Trevor was still perched by the door. He was growing less and less visible as the smoke spread.
Claudia coughed, kissed her daughter’s head and grabbed her hand. “We’ve got to be strong now. Okay? Strong, like your sister. You can do that, right?”
Elizabeth sniffed and shook her head. “I… I can’t, Mummy. I can’t.”
Trevor smacked another creature back as it stumbled in through the front door. They didn’t even know if the rest of the group had made it out there.
But they had to go. Soon.
“Claudia, Elizabeth — we don’t…” Riley spluttered. “We don’t have much time. That fire is spreading. You have to take a chance. You have to go.”
Claudia wiped a tear from her daughter’s face and smiled at her. She whispered something in her ear then lifted her onto her shoulder and stepped up to the door.
“Take this.” Trevor held the spanner out to Claudia. “You’ll need it.”
Claudia took it from Trevor. “Thank you. Thanks. We… Come on, darling. Come on.” She took a few deep breaths then ran outside into the darkness.
Flames flickered and worked their way up the side of the doorway. The foundations of the building creaked, preparing to crumble.
Trevor pulled out his pack of cigarettes and threw one at Riley. “Just in case. I’m a man of promises. We moving?”
Riley slipped the cigarette into his pocket and lifted the gun with his unsteady hand. He aimed it out of the door. “Let’s go. Run for the opposite side of the street. Work it out from there. Okay?”
Trevor stuck a cigarette between his lips and nodded. “Go.”
Riley held his breath and rushed out of the door. The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was just how much heat the fire had provided when he had been inside. The cold gripped hold of him, sharp in his lungs.
He saw the others up ahead. Claudia and the girls, crouched in the grass. Ted and Anna, a large gap between them. There were no creatures in the way. He turned to his left. The bulk of the creatures were congregated around the side alleyway still. The group could run up the road and the creatures wouldn’t notice. They could get out of here.
Riley smiled at Ted as he got closer. Ted probably wouldn’t see for Riley had his back to the glowing flames at the restaurant, and the moonlight wasn’t strong enough. But he smiled because they’d got out of there. They’d made it. Finally, they had something worth smiling about.
And then Riley noticed something else.
A screeching alarm sounded to his left.
It was the white minivan that he’d grabbed the ladder from. The vehicle was shaking from side to side as its captive creature tried to struggle out through the window. The group started to whisper. Shook their heads and bickered with one another.
Riley turned around slowly. Trevor was just starting to make his way from the front of the restaurant, but he had frozen on the spot. He stared at the minivan. Riley’s heart raced. They could still get out of here. The creatures — they didn’t necessarily notice alarms.
Not necessarily.
But in this case, one staggered around the corner.
Please don’t groan. Please don’t notice.
A small crowd followed the leader.
All of them had noticed.
And they were heading in the group’s direction.
CHAPTER THREE
The creatures staggered towards the group as they crouched at the side of the road.
Commotion began to rise behind Riley. Voices of discontent. Anna bossing the rest of the group around as Claudia attempted to calm her children down. One child, at least. Presumably Elizabeth.
Trevor stood frozen just outside the front of the Chinese restaurant. The flames were starting to spread up the sides of the building, the smoke blocking the view of upper floor. With nobody to see to it, the place was going to fall. Its structural foundations didn’t have long left.
“Riley, mate — we need to go,” Ted shouted. “We need to go or… or they’ll catch us. They’ll get us.”
Riley stared at Trevor as the creatures disregarded him and walked in the direction of the van alarm; in the direction of the group. Bloated flesh. Mucus and blood-laced cries emerging from their throats. There were too many of them. Too many to deal with. It didn’t matter how far they ran—they’d follow.
Riley turned around to the group. Tears ran down young Elizabeth’s face as she kept tight hold of her mother. Chloë sat away from them, plucking grass from the ground and nonchalantly glancing up at the oncoming creatures. Ted and Anna bickered with one another. Naturally.
“Riley—you know we can’t run from these things,” Anna said. The groans were getting closer behind Riley’s back as the fearful eyes of the group stared past him. “You—you know they’ll just keep on coming. We need a distraction. Some sort of distraction.”
“And what do you suggest?” Riley asked.
Anna’s eyes diverted over Riley’s shoulder again. “Trevor. He… he’s over there. He could help us. He’s stuck.” She took a large gulp. “He can… He can help us.”
Riley’s stomach tightened. “No. I will not leave Trevor behind. No way.”
“That’s what I said,” Ted interrupted. “But… but it’s survival now, man. It’s not about sentimentality. It’s about survival.”
“Can we just stop talking and start deciding, please?” Claudia shouted.
Riley turned around. A dozen or so creatures were closing in, blood running down their faces. Through the gap between them, Riley could see Trevor. He was crouching down in the glow of the flames and the moonlight, weaponless after giving his spanner to Claudia. He couldn’t allow him to become another Jordanna. Another Pete’s wife. Another Aaron. He looked down at his arms. He couldn’t quite make out the dried blood that he’d gathered on his trip, but he knew it was still there. He felt it, deep inside, ingrained on his soul. He couldn’t let Trevor become another distraction.
“You know it’s what’s right,” Anna said. “Deep down, Riley. You know there’s no other way about this.”
Riley looked at his gun, then glanced down the road to the left. It looked clear. There was no telling in the dark, but he couldn’t hear anything from that direction, so he had to try.
“Mate, come on—”
“All of you, I want you to run down the road,” Riley said, pointing to his right. “Run down the road and—and shout as loud as you can.” He stepped up and started to flank to the left.
“Riley, what are you—”
“Run,” Riley shouted. “Try and circle back here so it—it draws them away from this place then head back here. Go round the backs of the houses. And if it seems impossible… well, run. Head for—for the railway line. Down the road on the left. If in doubt, we meet there.”
Claudia tried to grab Chloë’s hand but she skipped away and stood with Ted and Anna. Both of them looked on at Riley with open-mouthed concern.
“Mate,” Ted said. “If… Yeah. You know. You know.”
Riley nodded. “I do. Now go.”
Ted and Anna exchanged an understanding glance. The
n, they started running, shouting at the top of their voices, disappearing into the darkness.
Riley crouched down and moved to the left of the creatures. They seemed to be following the footsteps and cries of the group, aside from the occasional straggler that got distracted and disoriented by the van’s alarm.
He kept his gun raised and crept down the road. He could see Trevor clearly now, crouched down by the door of the flaming Chinese restaurant. He could get to Trevor. He could help him. Bring him back. He didn’t have to leave him behind.
When he got around the creatures, the majority of which wandered off in the direction of the moving voices, he waved at Trevor. Trevor pulled his hood up to his face as he tried not to cough and distract the creatures.
But his eyes were red. His head was shaking. He didn’t look good, not at all.
Riley stopped beside Trevor. The heat of the flames kissed against his face. He placed his hand on Trevor’s back. “Come on,” he said. As he did, he felt the heat and smoke flooding into his lungs. Trevor had been exposed for way too long.
Trevor waved a hand and pushed Riley back. Tears streamed down his face. He shook his head, tried to stagger forward, but dropped to his knees.
“Trevor, you have to come with me. The shouts — that’s the rest of the group bringing the creatures around in a circle. They… they’re risking everything. We can’t just leave you here.”
Trevor moved the material of his hoodie away from his mouth. Blood and snot ran from his nose. His lips quivered. “You… You have to—” He coughed loudly.
Riley turned to the road. Some of the creatures diverted their attentions. One of them — an old man who looked relatively clean and bloodless — started to move slowly in their direction in his dressing gown and slippers. But the bulk of them that hadn’t followed the group’s cries were being distracted by the van alarm, caught in a confused stasis.
“Come on,” Riley said. He pushed Trevor forward, but Trevor tumbled back down to his knees. He coughed and spluttered onto the road. A thick string of saliva trailed out of his mouth. He raised his shaking arm and pointed to the other side of the road. “Go. Get the others. Go.”
As he prepared to protest, Riley realised that something had changed. Something in the air. The creatures were beginning to groan. The group’s cries were louder and clearer. The flickering of the flames and crumbling of the Chinese restaurant’s foundations more violent. The van alarm…
His stomach sank. The van alarm had stopped.
He held his breath, raised his head.
The twenty or so creatures that had been gathered around the sound of the van’s alarm were all walking back in the direction of the Chinese restaurant. All of them were groaning.
“Go,” Trevor said. He sat upright on his knees and nodded his head. His bottom lip quivered.
Riley saw the other group members appear behind the crowd of creatures. Anna and Ted looked on with fear. They’d finished their cycle. They had to go.
“Go!” Trevor shouted. He picked a cigarette out of his pocket and dangled it between his lips, lighting it on a flame that had spread to the door. “Just go.”
Riley shook his head and swallowed the lump in his throat as the groans got closer to him. He had to run. He had to go. “It’s… it’s been… it’s been totally fucking bizarre knowing you, Trevor.”
Trevor pulled himself to his feet and took a puff of his cigarette. He smiled. Tears streamed down his face. “You’re a good man. Be tough for them, yeah?”
Riley nodded, and started to jog around the side of the creatures, who turned to follow him. He held his breath. Tears dripped to the ground.
And Trevor shouted out at the top of his voice.
The creatures diverted their attentions from Riley as he sprinted past them and back in the direction of the group. He wasn’t leaving Trevor behind. This wasn’t his decision. This was Trevor’s decision. This time, it wasn’t on his conscience.
Riley dropped to his knees as he reached the group again, who crouched down behind a low garden wall at the other side of the road.
“You… you okay?” Ted asked.
Riley stared back at the flaming building. Trevor was still at the door, but moving further and further into the flames. Every few seconds, he took a puff on his cigarette. The creatures followed him, every one of them.
“We’ve distracted them but they’ll be back,” Anna said. “There’s too many of them. We… we have to go, Riley. I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
The last of the smaller group of creatures stepped inside the flaming Chinese restaurant.
Trevor was out of sight, but he continued to scream.
“We’ve got to go, mate.” Ted said. “We’ve got to go.”
Riley lit the cigarette that Trevor had given him with his shaking hand and stared at the wreckage of the building in front of him. That’s all he could do. Stare. Everything they’d built—all the trust, all the doubt. All the supplies they’d worked so hard for, gone. Jill, Stan, and now Trevor—gone.
“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?” In his head, it sounded like Stan. The sort of thing Stan would say. But Stan was gone. They were all going, one by one.
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. Anna. “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 ground 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 Stan was right about that. But one thing that he was wrong about was his declaration that he’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 FOUR
The following morning…
Day Three
The sound of the birds tweeting brought Riley back to his senses.
He breathed in deeply through his nostrils. A gentle breeze crept up on him. It smelled of cut grass. Cutting grass. An action once so intrinsic to society; so taken for granted, now nothing more than a ghost. Something that people would no longer attend to, not anymore. That was the old normal.
He squeezed his eyes together and realised how cold he was. His arms were wrapped around his
body, his head resting against the cold, hard concrete floor. If he closed his eyes hard enough, he could be anywhere. Out camping in the woods in the middle of winter. A warm shower waiting for him when he got back home.
But that was gone now, too. The closest thing they’d had to home in the last couple of days was the Chinese restaurant, and that was gone. Burned to the ground. Dead.
Riley opened his eyes. The low sun stung through his eyelids as it peeked in through the glass door of the railway shelter. They’d spent the night there after running from the creatures. Lost them when they’d reached the train tracks, walked until their feet were sore with their weapons raised, flinching at every single sound that surrounded them. Every rustle in the leaves, every movement up ahead. As fatigue intensified, so too did the fear.
And then they found the shelter.
Riley pulled himself upwards. Claudia and her two girls were cuddled up together at the opposite side of the room. Claudia’s eyelids were twitching, like Riley’s did when he was pretending to sleep. It couldn’t be easy for her. She didn’t just have herself to worry about — she had her daughters, too. Elizabeth wasn’t adapting too well to this new world. Chloë was doing better, but it still couldn’t be easy. Good job he’d never met anybody worth settling down and having kids with.
He stretched and looked to his right-hand side. Anna had her back to him. She was completely still and silent. She must have sneaked back inside in the middle of the night. They’d agreed on a rota. Anna first, Ted second. Riley tried to contribute, but they told him he’d contributed enough over the last couple of days, so had earned the rest. Claudia and her girls went without saying.
Riley tried not to make too much of a sound as he stretched to his feet. Unfortunately, he’d always suffered from the rare, bizarre phenomenon that was clicky knees. Didn’t matter how fit or healthy he was feeling, his knees always made a sharp clicking sound when he crouched and stood. Not so noticeable in everyday life, but always seemed a lot louder when he really didn’t want them to. Lucky they hadn’t caught him out so far.
He checked to see he hadn’t woken anyone in the room and grabbed the metal handle of the door, lowering it and shielding the bell from making a clinking noise, and he walked outside.
