by Ryan Casey
The sound of footsteps below Riley and Pedro interrupted Riley’s thoughts as he peered out of the scope at the approaching creatures.
“All covered up!” Stocky shouted.
“Good,” Pedro called. “Then get back to the main wing and make sure everyone’s okay.”
No response for a few seconds. “You… you sure you don’t need a hand up there?”
“We’ve got it. Now go.”
Footsteps echoed around the courtyard, which would be empty of life by now. The front of the barracks was about to become a lot emptier of life, but full of death.
“We need to make a decision here,” Pedro said. “Fuck. We should have been ready for this. We should have been fucking ready for this.”
Riley scanned the approaching creatures. Men, women, and children. Lifeless and lacking any sort of complex communication skills, and yet resembling one automatous being and mass brain as they marched in the direction of the barracks. Their mouths were opening. Their groans were becoming audible. They were coming, there was no doubt about that.
“I mean, we can go inside and pray. But the noises they make. They’ll—they’ll send us mad. And then there’s the others they’ll attract. They’ll pile up against the gate. We’ll just be waiting for somebody else to pass and distract them. And there’s no telling when that will be.”
Riley remained focused. Observed the front of the barracks. The black mound where they’d burned the creature bodies. The grass, laced with dandelions as usual gardening duties were neglected. Something had to have drawn the creatures. Something had to.
“Or we can go out there. Distract them. But you know what that means. You know how it is. If we leave here, we don’t come back. And even then it might not work.”
Riley lowered his gun. There was nothing visible out there. Nothing he could see. He shook his head. They’d seen them somehow. They’d heard them. The group had hoped they could just monitor them and let them wander past, but that wasn’t happening.
“I think we should get the hell inside.” Pedro dropped his gun. “Get the hell inside and if it gets too bad, we drive on out of here and distract them. Can’t think of any other way. Fuck those cowards in the government who barely left us any gunned vehicles. Fuck them.”
Something caught Riley’s attention.
Amidst the groans, there was a high pitched squeal. Somebody was out there. Somebody was shouting.
“I mean, if we need to, we open the gates and we mow them down. Mow them down with our guns and—and if ammo runs low then so be it. We—”
“Wait.” Riley raised his hand at Pedro and peeked out of his scope again. The sound was definitely close by. And it was saying something. “Help! Somebody, please!”
“There’s somebody out there,” Riley said.
Pedro struggled for his gun and he too raised it and peeked out. “Where? I don’t see anyone. I don’t see a thing. We need to go, bruv. Get the hell back to—”
“Just be quiet a minute.” Riley’s heart raced. He squinted at the grounds and at the road. Looked up at the terraced houses opposite. Still nothing. But there was somebody out there. Somebody alive. Somebody drawing the creatures towards them.
“I’m going. I’m sorry, but I’m going.”
“Wait.” Riley stopped moving his gun. His stomach turned. He saw where the noise was coming from.
“What is it?”
“By the tree,” Riley said. He was completely still as he focused on the oak trees that lined the road down to the barracks. “The second tree. About a third of the way up. See them?”
“I don’t… What… Oh.”
Riley nodded. He kept his focus on the tree as the screams grew louder and louder, and the groans got closer and closer. “That’s our problem. That’s what’s drawing them, right there.”
Pedro lowered his scope. “So what do we do about them?”
Riley stared at them. A woman clinging on to the flimsy branch of the brown-leaved deciduous tree. A young boy pushing his face into her stomach, shaking his head from side to side. The creatures were getting closer to them. They were the ones they were groaning at, not the group. Not the barracks
“What do we do, bruv? What do we do?”
Riley tensed his jaw. The creatures were getting closer to the woman and her child stuck up the tree. Their cries were drawing the attention of the horde, not any sound from the barracks. The creatures hadn’t noticed the barracks. They didn’t have to notice the barracks.
Pedro crouched down so that he was out of sight of the creatures, just in case. He leaned back against the wall. “We need to go inside. Stick around with the rest of the group until this… until all this is over.”
Riley shook his head. Guilt welled up inside him. Memories of the people he’d left behind, time and time again, all because he wanted to save his own neck. And the way that Ted had battled that creature from on top of him back on the railway verge. He’d looked out for him. Covered him. Riley wasn’t sure if he could say the same for anybody. “We have to try something. They’re… It’s a woman and kid. We can’t just leave her.”
Pedro scoffed. “Are you mad? We can’t just go out there. Right now, the creatures sure don’t look like they know about us. Dumb shits. But the second we open these gates and run on out there, they’ll know. God knows how long it’ll take them to give up and back off.”
“I just… We can’t leave them behind.” Riley’s heart pounded. He wanted to fire the gun at the oncoming horde. Take down every single one of them. But he knew it was unfeasible. Ammunition had to be protected and conserved, even in a place like this. It might have been an abundant commodity, but they didn’t know how long they were going to be stuck in a world like this. No army. No police. No rule. Nothing but the dead.
“We can’t leave them behind? Or you can’t leave them behind?”
The words hit Riley right in the chest with an intense force. “I…” He stuttered. He couldn’t quite process the words. Pedro was right — it was his own guilt that he was feeling. His own guilt over his inadequacies.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still try something.
“We have to consult with Ivan. The least we can do is work out if there’s anything we can do to help.”
Pedro tutted. “Such as?”
Riley shook his head. “I dunno. Drive something out there. Lure the creatures away and help them out of that tree.”
Pedro stared at Riley. A look of sympathy built up in his eyes. “I respect your morals, bruv. I really do. But they’ll follow. The zombies always follow.”
Riley sighed. The woman and the young boy gripped hold of the flimsy looking tree branch, tears rolling down their cheeks. He couldn’t tell what the woman was saying, but she was whispering things in her son’s ears. Reassuring him. The horde of creatures would reach them in a matter of minutes. This is what it looked like to stare death right in the face.
Riley turned away from the wall and stepped down the ladders.
“Where you going?”
“Ivan,” Riley said. He started to jog. “We can work something out here. We can try and help them. Somehow.”
Pedro opened his mouth and looked like he was about to shout but closed it, likely realising that doing so would only attract the creatures. Instead, he sealed his lips and shrugged as Riley sprinted towards the main wing of the barracks and towards the others.
Ivan was right by the door when Riley got there.
He stared at Riley with a frown. His damp fringe flopped down onto his forehead. “Something wrong? What’s it looking like?”
Riley caught his breath and shook his head. Others from behind Ivan looked at him with curiosity on their faces. Claudia. Chloë. Ted. Anna. The rest of the soldiers.
“Is something—”
“We need to go out there. You need to go out there,” Riley said. He pointed his arm in the direction of the wall.
Ivan followed the path of Riley’s arm and shook his head, slowly. �
�You aren’t implying what I think you’re implying, are you?”
Riley gripped hold of Ivan’s arms. The soldiers behind him flinched and moved towards Riley. A bolt of courage and anger and frustration crashed through Riley as he stared Ivan in the face. “There’s two of them out there. A mother and a child. Stuck up a tree. And unless we get there fast, they’re going to die. The creatures, they aren’t coming for us. They’re… they’re going for these two. But we can’t let them die. I can’t let them die.”
Ivan widened his eyes and examined Riley’s hands as they rested on his upper arms. He brushed them away as if he were stuck in a trance then nodded his head once at Riley. “Show me them.”
A gentle sense of surprise knocked Riley back, kicking away his frustration. “You… You want—”
“Show them to me. Quick.” He grabbed his silenced pistol out of his pocket and pointed at the door.
The two soldiers that had approached Riley shuffled their feet. “Want any help?”
“No,” Ivan said. He jogged over to the door. “Keep it calm in here. We’ll be back soon. Riley, lead the way.”
Riley nodded his head hesitantly then jogged out of the door, the tension from his legs seeping out as he ran back across the courtyard, Ivan’s footsteps behind him.
Pedro’s eyes widened as Riley and Ivan approached the wall. Pedro looked from Riley to Ivan and moved his mouth, struggling for words. “Boss… Ivan, you—”
“This group,” Ivan interrupted. He stopped as he peeked over the wall. The groans were loud now. So close. A soundtrack to the greying winter sky. “Up the tree?”
“That tree,” Riley said. He pointed at the middle tree. The woman and her young boy were still there, holding on to one another. The creatures were almost at the grass at the front of the barracks. They’d reach the tree soon. Send it tumbling towards the floor with their sheer might and strength in quantity.
Ivan sighed. He rubbed his hand through his greasy hair and pushed his fringe back onto his head.
“We can help them,” Riley said. “We can go out there and we can help them. Distract the creatures somehow. They don’t have to die. Think about us. What you risked to save us. We can help them too.”
Ivan turned to Pedro. Pedro had a pained look in his bloodshot eyes. His bottom lip was quivering.
“We can help them,” Riley repeated. “Ivan, we can—”
“We can help them,” Ivan said. He looked at Riley and half-smiled. It was full of pity. “We can help them.”
Then, he raised his silenced pistol and he fired in the direction of the tree.
A sense of dread engulfed Riley. Butterflies swarmed around his stomach. He threw himself at Ivan, who fired another shot, but Pedro pulled him back and held him to the ground. He covered Riley’s mouth.
“Shut up,” Pedro said. “Come on, bruv. Keep quiet. That’s right.”
Riley’s shouting continued inside his head as Ivan fired another shot in the direction of the tree.
He lowered his gun. Stared out into the grey-skied distance for a few seconds.
He turned to Riley. “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m really sorry. But that’s the only way we could help them.”
He patted Pedro on his back and hopped down the ladder as a sprinkle of rain fell down on Riley’s cheeks.
CHAPTER THREE
“You understand I had to do it. Right?”
Riley and Ivan sat on their own in the corner of the canteen. The sky outside had turned a complete shade of grey as rain spat down on the barracks courtyard. The lighting inside was dim, as the survivors gathered around the tables. Some of them looked with cautious expressions over at Riley and Ivan. Claudia whispered to Ted. Ted kept his focus on them. Riley knew Ted had his back if he needed it. He was good like that.
Ivan sighed and scratched his forehead. “Talk to me, Riley. Don’t go silent on me now.”
“The family. The boy and his mother. You killed them. What else is there to say?”
Ivan narrowed his eyes. The words seemed to knock some colour out of his cheeks. “You know I did what I had to do. I helped them out.”
Riley shuffled his chair to one side. “Oh, please. Spare me the bullshit.”
“No,” Ivan said. His voice was raised. “I shot them. Clean shots to the head. Saved them a world of pain. If those things had got to them, you know what they’d have done. Torn them to pieces. You wanted that?”
“I wanted to help them. Bring them in here. Give them a chance. What you did. It was murder.”
Ivan smiled. A little laugh came out from the back of his throat. “Murder? Riley, don’t tell me you haven’t had to make a difficult decision in this world. I know for a fact you have. You told me. So don’t take the moral high ground. It was them or us. I chose us.”
“And how do you know we couldn’t have saved them? How do you know that there was no chance?”
“Because there’s no way we were sending more of our men out there. Not after last time. We lost last time. Lucky enough we managed to distract the walking corpses enough to keep them away. We don’t get lucky twice. Nobody does.” Ivan stepped up from his chair and faced the rest of the canteen. The strong winter wind rattled against the windows. “You people have all had to make tough decisions. The soldiers — my soldiers — we’ve had to do things we’re uncomfortable with. Right?”
Two of the soldiers sat in the nearest seats to Ivan, Ken, and Bill, who kept themselves to themselves, shrugged and returned to their game of chess. Ken, who had a beard that looked unshaven in months rather than weeks, lifted a white king and jumped over the top of his opponent’s piece.
Ivan nodded. “And you people. Claudia. Anna. Ted. Little Chloë. All of you. You’ve done things you’d rather not have done. Right?”
The four of them looked at one another then tilted their heads to the ground.
“Right,” Ivan said. The silence gave him the answer he needed. “So when I say I was acting in the best interests of the group, I mean it.”
“But was there no way you could, like, have helped?”
The room looked around at Ted. He didn’t return the stare.
“Ted, I promise you,” Ivan said, crouching down opposite Ted. “If I could have saved them, I absolutely would have. But I weighed things up. Riley saw that. And so did Pedro. I saw the horde of creatures headed towards the tree. I saw how flimsy looking that tree was. And I saw nothing but death for them. So I figured I’d give them the more humane option. Would you not have done the same?”
Ted’s vision wandered up and met Ivan’s face. He looked over Ivan’s shoulder then wiped his cheeks and let out his answer. “Yes. I guess.”
Ivan patted Ted on the shoulder and returned to his feet. “Yes. You would have. Claudia? Would you have done the same?”
Claudia turned to her daughter, who sat silently staring at the table. She gulped and cleared her throat. “I… If there was no other way, then I think you probably did the right thing.”
Ivan lifted his shoulders and turned back to Riley. “You see? I did what was… No. Not what was right. But what I had to do. It’s not about what’s right or wrong anymore. It’s about what keeps us alive.”
Riley swallowed the lump in his throat. Ivan was right. Or he was right about doing what he had to do, anyway. Sending a group out there was stupid. It would only go and get them into more trouble. But the way he’d done things, he’d given the group a chance of survival. It wasn’t right, no. But Riley saw shades of himself in Ivan’s decision. His unwavering commitment to lifting that pistol and pulling the trigger.
And that’s what scared him most about Ivan. Up to now, he’d been calm. Controlled. Almost too idealistic. But he saw a mirror image of himself. A reflection of what he was when he’d left Jordanna behind. When he’d left Stan and Aaron to die. He saw himself, and it absolutely terrified him.
“I don’t think you made the right call.”
The voice startled Riley. He lifted his head. The rest of the ro
om turned around.
“What did you say, Anna?” Ivan asked.
Anna lifted herself from her seat and walked around the canteen table. She squared up to Ivan. Scanned his face. Anna was the last person Riley expected to stand up for him when it came to morals. She’d always been the one that seemed almost too eager to make the difficult decisions. “I think you could have tried to do more. You did more for us. Came all the way out to an old stretch of railway. Makes me wonder what you wanted from us.”
Ivan’s eyelids twitched. It took a few moments for him to reply. “Things have changed in the last two weeks, Anna. You know that as well as I do. Maybe two weeks ago, we would have tried to save them. Maybe even last Thursday we would have done it. But things have changed. We’ve lost more people and lost more supplies. We couldn’t take that risk.”
“Then why did you send a group out to gather food earlier today?”
The question seemed to come from nowhere out of Riley’s mouth. It was as if somebody else was asking it through him. The information Ivan had told him earlier about sending a group out to gather food still intrigued and baffled Riley.
Ivan turned around. Frowns were etched on the faces of his soldiers. Stocky, Gaz, and Pedro exchanged a confused glance.
“What’s this about?” Anna asked.
“Yeah,” Ted said. “What is this about?”
Ivan faced Riley. Peered at him with an unwavering intensity. It looked as if he was trying to transmit his disapproval of Riley’s words via telepathy. From the twitching and reddening of his face, Riley didn’t think he was doing such a bad job.
“The barracks were running low on food this morning,” Riley said. He stepped from his chair and faced Ivan. “We weren’t kept informed about this. And Ivan didn’t seem to have much difficulty making the ‘difficult’ decision then. The decision that ‘puts us all at risk.’ Which makes me wonder what else you’re keeping from us.”
Ivan looked completely baffled. His face was as still as a stone, or a victim of Medusa’s gaze. Riley had him right where he wanted him. Adrenaline pumped through his body from head to toe. He was winning this argument. He had to, for all of their morals’ sakes.
