by Ryan Casey
But something else caught Riley’s eye. They looked small in the distance, standing atop the sides of the railway. But gradually, more and more of them appeared as the train whistled past them. Creatures. All of them walking in the direction of the noisy train, tumbling down onto the railway, and falling in front of the train.
“Got to go!” Riley called, as he clambered up the muddy verge. He pulled the gun out of his pocket with his shaky hand. If there were creatures following the train further down the line, then there could be some nearby. The group that they thought they’d shook off last night. It must’ve been them. It had to be.
Claudia rushed over to the fence that led into an abandoned field when she reached the top of the verge. She helped lift Elizabeth over. Ted and Anna panted as they, too, reached the top of the grassy hill. Ted turned around and looked down at Riley as he made his way up it, his feet slipping on the sloshy mud.
“There’s creatures,” Riley said as he reached the top. He pointed down the line. “The sound’s attracting them. If they hear the train crash, they’ll—”
Riley felt himself knocked to one side. Something was holding his arm. The gun slipped out of his hand and tumbled down the verge, clinking as it bounced across the concrete below, then down onto the metal of the railway line. His stomach sank. Their only real weapon, lost again.
But he couldn’t dwell on it for too long because one of the creatures was on top of him.
“Riley!”
The creature pressed him down into the unstable mud. It dug its thick, sharp nails into his shoulders. He pushed his arms up against it, but they felt as weak as jelly. The creature was female. Hair matted with mud and blood. She snapped her ground-down teeth at Riley, her tongue hanging on by a few stray pieces of flesh and tendon.
Riley pushed back as hard as he could. His heart raced. The train was getting closer. More creatures would be getting closer. The group had to do what he’d done to Stan. To Aaron. They had to leave him. They had to save themselves. They had to make the decision to survive.
He closed his eyes and kept on pushing the creature back as the blood from its tongue dribbled onto his face. Keep calm. Deep breaths. All over soon…
Suddenly, the weight above him seemed to recede. He felt a damp and cool sensation dripping against his head. Heard a loud squelching beside him.
He opened his eyes. Ted was kicking his shoe into the side of the creature. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he had been taken over by an external force as he rammed his foot further and further into the side of the creature. It dug its fingers right into the muddy verge, slipping down towards the railway line. The train was so close now. The line was rattling. Shaking from side to side.
“We need to get away from here!” Anna shouted.
Ted pulled Riley to his feet. He nodded at him, sincerity in his eyes. “Gotcha,” he said.
Riley nodded in return, and the pair of them ran over the fence, away from the small crowd of oncoming creatures, away from the train. They hopped over the fence. Riley crouched down in the tall grass. The train was too close. Even if they ran, they wouldn’t make it far enough away to escape the explosion. “There’s no time. Just… just get down!”
Claudia held Elizabeth in her arms and curled up in a ball. Chloë, wide-eyed, covered her eyes. Anna placed her fingers in her ears and tensed her jaw. Ted sat with his eyes closed, waiting for the collision.
Riley peeked through the grass at the small group of four creatures staggering in their direction from the cul-de-sac road beside them. When the train whooshed towards them, they turned around and staggered down the side of the ditch, slipping onto the track like rag dolls.
The train came into view. He could see the gun on the line. A part of him wanted to run on there and grab it, but he knew it was too late. That would be suicide. Maybe suicide was the only option.
No. Not anymore. Not in this world.
“Here we go…”
In what seemed like slow-motion, the train slipped off the line. Hovered in the air. The sound receded. The vibrations stopped. Riley held his breath.
Then, the train crashed against the opposite side of the track.
The first carriage crumbled to its side, speeding down the line like a fireball. The screeching noise was louder than ever, piercing and sickening. Pieces of hot debris flew up into the sky as the second carriage followed the first in tumbling to its side. Metal rained down around them, into the distance, small man-made meteorites. Riley covered his head with his hands. A pointless but surprisingly faith-inducing activity. He heard thuds beside him. Debris falling to the ground. He peeked to his left hand side as the deafening sound of the crunching train intensified. There were no creatures beside them. They’d presumably fallen to their death. The train had proven an adequate distraction after all.
Riley looked around at the rest of the group. Ted squatted down with his hands pressed up to his eyes. Anna cringed as the screeching metal continued.
But something wasn’t right.
Riley stared at Claudia. She didn’t have her hands over her head. Tears were running down her face. Blood covered her shirt. She was shouting something inaudible as the sound of the train drowned out every single word. Chloë stood by her side, pale-faced. Her cheeks were quivering.
Riley stood up and walked over towards Claudia. A large chunk of hot metal debris was on the floor between them. It had made a dint in the ground. A film of red lined it.
Riley’s stomach sank when he pieced the clues together. Saw the reason for the tears. The reason for the drowned-out shouting and the shock on Chloë’s face.
Claudia was holding Elizabeth in her arms. Elizabeth’s eyes were closed and her body was completely still.
Blood trickled down her forehead.
It wasn’t long before the screeching of the train stopped and Riley could hear again.
His ears were ringing. His head was light and faint. But he could hear the moaning now. The crying. Claudia gripped hold of her daughter’s limp body and sobbed into her chest.
“Please, Elizabeth. Please. Please be okay. Please be okay.”
The rest of the group stared at Claudia now, they too distracted by her cries. Anna covered her mouth with her hands in shock. Ted’s eyes watered. Chloë stood staring at her mother cradling her sister, her face pale. The blueness of her eyes seemed to have faded away. Knocked out of her by the shock.
Riley took a step towards Claudia as she gripped hold of her daughter. “She… Her heart. Her breathing. Anna?”
Anna still had her hands covering her face. She turned to Riley then to Claudia, moving her hands away and wiping her eyes. “I… Yeah,” she said, stepping forward then backwards again with hesitation. She took a deep breath and crouched beside Claudia, who continued to hold her daughter to her chest, blood from her head seeping across her shirt and onto the ground.
“Claudia, I… Let me take a—a look at her.” Anna reached for Elizabeth’s chest.
Claudia yanked her daughter out of Anna’s grip. She looked up, fear in her twitchy eyes. “I… My girl. My little girl. Please. Please.”
Anna tried to smile and nodded at Claudia. She squeezed Claudia’s shoulder. “Just let me take a look at her. Okay? And… and we can decide what to do then. But I need to look at her.”
Claudia mumbled a few words under her breath and loosened her grip on her daughter. Ted walked over to Chloë, who was completely stationary. He reached to place a hand on her shoulder then lifted it back and scratched his head. Riley just waited. Stood and waited as the train grumbled on behind them. Waited for the inevitable.
Anna diverted her gaze from Elizabeth as she placed her on the grass. Her hands hovered around above Elizabeth, unsure of where to touch. She inhaled a shaky breath and lifted her wrist. Stared at Riley as she checked for a pulse.
Riley could tell from the way Anna stared at him, her eyes growing gradually more bloodshot, that the news wasn’t good.
Anna lowered Eliza
beth’s wrist as Claudia sobbed beside her.
“She… Please. My angel. She’s—she’s okay. She’s okay, isn’t she? We can make her better. Can’t we?”
Anna gulped. She checked Elizabeth’s neck for a pulse, but it was clearly in vain. Riley didn’t want to look too closely at Elizabeth’s head. He didn’t have to. He could see the blood pooling out onto the grass. Spread across Claudia’s arms and shirt. Another loss. They couldn’t take another loss.
Anna held her hand against Elizabeth’s neck. Kept it there for a few moments. Then, she sighed and pulled it away. She lifted her head and looked into Chloë’s eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry. I’m so—”
“No!” Claudia cried. It was a sickening, deafening moan from the pit of her stomach, filled with hurt and grief. Anna was crying now too. She grabbed hold of Claudia and held her. Claudia tried to struggle initially, desperate to be reunited with her little girl. But Anna held her. Whispered in her ear. And eventually, Claudia gripped back and cried onto Anna’s shoulder.
Riley stepped up to Ted. The pair of them stared down at Claudia and Anna as they held one another. Chloë stood over her dead sister’s body. She was frozen, like a victim of Medusa, focused on the body. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t flinching. She just stood and stared.
“Chloë… are you… I’m sorry.” Riley placed a hand on Chloë’s shoulder.
Chloë knocked it away. Spun around to face Riley and Ted. Her eyes were still wide and focused, as if she was in a trance.
Ted cleared his throat. “I… We’re sorry. I just… We just want you to know we’re here, like. Here for you.”
Chloë switched her gaze from Riley to Ted and back again. She stared right at them, the muscles underneath her eyes twitching as if she were trying to read a foreign language.
“Ted… Ted’s right,” Riley said. Claudia sobbed and blubbered some inaudible words in the background. “Anything you need. Anything you need and we—”
“She was weak,” Chloë interrupted.
Riley’s skin crawled. The hairs on his arms and his chest stood up. A lump took hold of his throat. “What… What do you…?”
“She was weak,” Chloë repeated. Life was returning to her eyes now. She bobbed her head, justifying what she was saying to herself. “She—she was never going to make it. This was quick for her. It… She’s gone and it’s quick for her and… and it’s better for everybody.”
Riley and Ted exchanged a wary glance. He wasn’t sure what to say in these situations. Elizabeth had struggled to adjust to the harsh nature of the new world, but that didn’t justify Chloë’s stance. It wasn’t a normal reaction to a death of a sibling.
“You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t say those things,” Riley said. “You don’t have to pretend to be tough. It’s… it’s hard for all of us. Hard for your mother. You can cry if you want to.”
“I don’t want to cry.” Chloë stared Riley directly in the eyes. “Crying… crying got Elizabeth killed. It…”
“You what?” Claudia said. She had a frown etched across her forehead. Old mascara dribbled down her cheeks. “You… What did you say?”
“Claudia,” Anna said. “Don’t—”
“No.” Claudia pushed Anna to one side. “You let me talk to my daughter. Okay?”
Anna bit her lip and shrugged. She stepped to one side.
Claudia walked around Elizabeth’s body and stared down at Chloë. “Well… Do you… Do you want to repeat what you just said?”
Chloë stared at her mother’s feet. She looked like she had slipped back into a trance again.
“Claudia,” Ted said. He approached Claudia with his arm raised. “She’s upset. We… we all react in different ways when we’re upset.”
Claudia shoved Ted away and grabbed her daughter’s wrist. Chloë struggled and pulled herself free as her sister’s blood pressed from Claudia’s hand onto her skin.
“Your… your sister has… She’s gone. She’s gone. And what did you have to say about it? Go on. If you can tell them, you can tell me.”
Chloë held her wrist and looked up at her mother. Their stare connected. Searched one another’s face for a reaction of some sort. “I… Elizabeth was weak. She—she didn’t understand them. The zombies. She didn’t understand them and… and she wasn’t ready for this world.”
Claudia paused. Blinked rapidly as she processed her daughter’s words. Then, she huffed. Turned around and looked at Riley and Ted with a faux smile on her face. “Well that’s okay then, huh? She was slowing us down. She was weak. So she… What happened to her was a good thing?”
“I didn’t say that,” Chloë said. “I’m just trying to say—”
Claudia cracked a hand across Chloë’s face and pushed her to the ground. She tugged at her hair and shouted into her ear. Her eyes were manic. Saliva dribbled from her mouth. “You little bitch! You little, fucking bitch! Don’t ever speak about your sister like that. Don’t ever speak about her in that way again.”
Anna rushed over to Claudia and tried to pull her back, but Claudia had tight hold of Chloë’s hair. Chloë wasn’t fighting back. She wasn’t making a sound and she wasn’t kicking up a fuss. She was just taking it, tearless, wordless. It sent a cold shiver down Riley’s spine.
“I have a right mind to leave you here,” Claudia shouted. “Leave you here to fend for yourself. See how you cope then because you’re oh-so-strong.”
“Stop this, Claudia.” Riley joined Anna in trying to pull Claudia away from Chloë. Elizabeth’s body lay completely still behind them. “This is about Elizabeth. Think about your two little girls and what you really want for them. Think about Elizabeth and what’s best for her.”
Claudia’s hand began to shake where it held Chloë’s hair. She wasn’t speaking anymore.
“Think about Elizabeth. Come on. Let’s decide what we’re going to do with her.”
Claudia loosened her grip on her daughter’s hair. A tear dropped from her face onto Chloë’s chest. “I…” She started to speak, then pushed Chloë away and jumped up to her feet. She looked like the grieving mother again, not the manic psychopath, as she approached Elizabeth’s body.
“We need to decide what to do,” Ted said. “With… with her bo—”
“Okay,” Anna snapped, glaring at Ted. “Just… just give Claudia a moment. Please.”
Riley ran his fingers through his hair and reached a hand out for Chloë, who lay in the mud. She examined it, then grabbed it, pulling herself to her feet and brushing her dress down.
“It’ll be okay,” Riley said.
Chloë let go of Riley’s hand and picked up where she’d left off before the confrontation with her mother, staring at her sister’s body as Claudia crouched over it.
Riley took a deep breath in. The air was thick with smoke, which tickled the back of his throat. Pieces of debris were scattered around the grassy area. Small chunks. Large chunks. They were lucky that only one of them had been hit, in truth.
But no. There was nothing lucky about this scenario.
He walked to the edge of the verge. The train carriages were piled up diagonally. A fire spread from the front of the train through the first carriage and down to the rest. Only one of the six carriages was still standing. Nobody to clean it up. Nobody to care.
Just as he was about to turn back to the group, he saw something move underneath the third carriage. The third carriage was nearest to them. It was on its side. The windows were smashed and the front end of the carriage looked like it had twisted with the impact into the back of the second carriage.
But something was moving by the window.
Reaching a hand out and tugging itself free of the debris.
“Guys,” Riley said. “We’ve got compa…”
He stopped. He noticed another movement. More movement further down the carriage. Another hand, laced with glass and sharp metal, pulling itself out from the wreckage. And then a head. Relatively undamaged. Climbing out onto the wreckage and tumbling down o
nto the railway. It had one arm.
It looked up the side of the verge. Clambered up the railway line ridge.
And it let out a throaty groan.
Ted appeared at Riley’s side. “What did you… Oh. Holy shit. Will we ever get a fucking break?”
“We have to move,” Riley said, as more and more creatures pulled themselves from the wreckage and staggered towards them, groaning.
“Riley!”
Riley turned around. Anna was pointing into the distance across the field.
Riley’s stomach sank. His chest tightened.
A horde of creatures were heading in their direction.
“We’re… We’re surrounded,” Ted said, as the creatures closed in on them from both directions. “We’re stuck.”
CHAPTER SIX
Riley backed off from the edge of the verge. Ted backed into him, facing the oncoming horde of creatures in the other direction. At least ten of them. Raw flesh dangling from the bones on their arms. Blood dribbling from their yellowing teeth. Men. Women. Children. Or what were men, women, and children. All directions. No escape.
“We… Oh God.” Claudia whimpered. “We’re stuck. This is it. This… this is it.”
“Just calm down,” Anna said. She backed up against Ted and Riley too. Her eyes were wide. Her heartbeat was visible through her white shirt. It was clear that she was anything but calm, as the groans got closer and closer. “The gun — Riley? Can’t you—?”
Riley pointed down the side of the verge towards the railway line. “Dropped it, remember? Fucking dropped it.”
Ted shook his head. His body was shaking and twitching. His eyes were focused on Elizabeth’s body, alone on the floor in the grass. There was something in his eyes. An idea of some sort. Something he didn’t seem completely comfortable with as the ghastly singing of the creatures approached. “We… We’ve got to try something. We have to—”
“And what do you suggest?” Anna said. She looked either side and scanned the area. No way of escaping via the way they’d come, as more and more creatures spilled out of the windows of the wrecked train. Chloë stood alone, rubbing her hands up her arms. She still wasn’t crying. Wasn’t shaking. No emotion in her glassy, distant eyes.
