by Ryan Casey
A duty to make this place safe.
“Just walk on from this place, Riley. Leave—leave me and my family and just walk on. I’m begging you.”
Riley felt total sympathy for this man. He couldn’t lie about that. Because this wasn’t easy for him. He couldn’t just switch off from this situation and pretend he was cold, that he was emotionless. Because he wasn’t.
This wasn’t easy. This wasn’t ever going to be easy.
He lowered his gun.
He lowered it, and he walked closer to Simon. Crouched opposite him. Looked him in the eye, mask covering his mouth so he didn’t catch whatever adaptation of the virus had broken out into the air.
“You have to see that we can’t just allow the infected to go on living here,” Riley said.
“But I’m not infected.”
Those words. Those words again, sprouting paranoia and fear inside Riley.
“You have to know… you have to see that letting the infected live would be the wrong thing to do because that’d jeopardise the entire future of this place. The future for your family. For your children.”
Simon shook his head, cheeks shaking with sorrow and tears. “Don’t give me that.”
“Give you what?”
“If you were going to let my family live, you’d have told me that by now.”
Riley saw the way Simon looked at him, and he felt like he’d turned. Like he was the monster that everyone feared. Like he was the villain, all over again. And he guessed that was just the way it went, really. Everyone was the villain to somebody else. Everyone was the monster to someone.
“I just want you to give me a chance,” Simon said. “Give me a chance to prove it to you. To prove it to everyone.”
And when Riley heard those words, he felt more sympathy. And he felt more determined to let Simon live. To give him a chance like he’d just asked.
Because where would Riley be if he hadn’t been given chances?
What would he have become?
“Please,” Simon said. “I’m begging you. Please…”
And the more he begged, the more Riley came around to the idea.
The more he begged, the more Riley believed he could give this man a chance. That he could fight through his fears, once and for all.
He went to nod. To tell Simon he was going to let him have a chance—as long as he stayed locked in this house until further examination.
And then something happened.
It was quick.
Subtle.
And if Riley wasn’t paying full attention, he might’ve missed it.
But he saw it.
He saw it, and from the look on Simon’s face, he knew he’d seen it.
The blood dripping down from his right eye.
Fear on Simon’s face.
Riley staggered back.
“No, pl—”
But it was too late.
It was far too late.
Riley pulled the trigger.
Simon fell back and hit the floor.
His brains splattered out over the carpet.
Riley looked up, then. He looked up because he saw movement behind Simon. He heard cries. Shouts. And he saw Simon’s kids running over to him. He saw Simon’s wife arrive at his side, try to see to him before dragging her kids away.
“Monster!” she shouted as Riley stood there. “Monster!”
And as the crew behind Riley stepped inside and prepared to take the surviving family away for monitoring, Riley heard those words echoing in his ears, and he knew they were true.
He was a monster.
He had to be, all over again.
This was how it was now.
CHAPTER ONE
Riley walked around the streets of the island and looked at the wave of destruction that’d coursed through this entire place.
The morning sun hung low over the tall buildings. Many of them used to be filled with life. The signs of people getting up, getting ready for their days. Washing hanging out over the balconies, airing out in the sun. And there were still people in there, of course. There were still survivors.
But it wasn’t the same.
Not after yesterday.
Not after what’d happened.
How it’d unfolded.
Riley sighed as he looked around at the market street ahead of him. He remembered walking through here just a day ago when the place was busy, when it was full of life. And it’d seemed so idyllic. So perfect. So harmonious like there wasn’t a thing in the world to fear.
But that had changed.
Everything had changed.
The old market stalls had been torn down. Bullets had pierced the fruits, bursting them all over the place, leaving a sickly-sweet stench lingering in the air. There was nobody around here, which was weird because this place was usually so busy, so booming.
The changing of the ways. That’s what this was.
The sudden realisation by the citizens here that they were not safe. That life could not go on, not the way it had done.
And that life would never be the same again, no matter how much order was restored here, no matter how much “normality” was brought back.
He looked to his right. Anna was standing there. Carly was beside her. The pair of them looked troubled, just as Riley no doubt did. Because they were all making this walk together. They were all realising just how much things had changed, together.
And they were all making decisions that would not only shape the future of their lives—but the future of many lives.
And Riley wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with that.
He thought about the bodies as he walked silently through the streets. The bodies that they’d burned already. And the bodies that they would go on to burn. Because that’s what they had to do in order to make sure the infection didn’t spread. He wasn’t sure whether burning was even a good idea, especially now the infection was airborne. He just kept his mouth and nose covered with one of the troops’ masks—as too did Anna and Carly—and he did the only thing he could do.
He purged all signs of infection. No matter how many lives that cost.
He thought back to yesterday. To that awful day where they’d picked up the arms from the fallen and taken down whatever infected they could, and whichever troops were standing against them, too. Some of them had fought. Others had decided that enough damage had been done; that enough chaos had been caused. That there didn’t need to be any more hunting of the people who clearly hadn’t turned.
They’d found Carly.
They’d found out what happened to Marie.
And what happened to Ricky…
The thought of what happened to Ricky made Riley’s stomach turn, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
Ricky had stayed here. He’d stayed here and watched Melissa leave, and he was convinced he was the one in safety. They were both convinced of that.
But that wasn’t the case.
Melissa, wherever she was… she might be alive. She might still be out there.
But Ricky had fallen.
Ricky was gone.
Carly had put him out of his misery when he was surrounded by the dead, and she’d made sure of that.
Riley felt pain over what had happened to Ricky. He hadn’t lost someone for so, so long. He was close to Ricky. Probably one of his closest friends here. So having to deal with that loss… it was something he’d forgotten how to deal with. Something he’d fallen out of the habit of dealing with.
Something he hoped he wasn’t going to have to remember how to deal with anytime soon.
This had to be a fluke.
It had to be.
He couldn’t bear the thought of any more loss.
Not after all this peace.
Not after all this security.
Not after everything had been so good…
“We can still rebuild from this.”
Riley looked around. He saw that it was Anna who had spoken.
; “What?”
She looked at him. And although she looked defeated, although she looked totally broken down by events, there was a vulnerable optimism to her voice. An optimism that made Riley want to believe, as hard as believing was.
“We can still rebuild from this. We… we have to believe this isn’t the end. That it’s just a hurdle in the road. We have to believe that.”
Riley looked at Anna, and then he looked at the blood on the streets. He looked at the bullet holes in the windows. And part of him screamed, how? How could they rebuild? How could they bounce back after everything they’d witnessed, everything they’d been through?
But then he looked at Carly, and he thought something else. He thought about how they’d been through chaos in the past and they’d found a way to fight back. They’d experienced loss—the worst kind of loss—in the past… and yet still, they’d found their way through.
And all of this made Riley realise that maybe, just maybe, things could get better. That in spite of all the horror, all the terror, there was still a way out of this. There was still sun behind the clouds. There was still hope.
He smiled at Anna.
And then he saw movement behind her.
When he first saw it, he thought it was someone normal. Someone seeking out help.
But then he saw the blood on their face and streaming from their nostrils, and his stomach sank.
She snarled. Muttered a few incoherent words.
And all Riley could do was lift his rifle and fire.
He watched her fall.
He listened to the silence that echoed all around.
And he realised that no matter how much the world around them changed, it was he who had changed the most. It was he who was going to have to deal with the consequences of his actions, all over again.
“Come on,” he said, walking through the street. “Let’s get out of here.”
If he was hunting down the infected, then how did that make him any different to those that had been hunting him?
If he wasn’t being hunted anymore, what did that make him?
He thought about how it used to be.
He thought about how it was now.
He took a deep breath, and he walked.
CHAPTER TWO
Carly looked down at the two crosses in the ground, and she felt her throat wobbling with guilt.
The weather was nice. There was warmth in the air. A smell of freshness like grass after a storm. There was silence around. A silence and a calm that had followed the chaos of yesterday.
But in that silence, there was a space.
A space that Carly knew would never be filled.
Two crosses. Two crosses representing the two people that had fallen.
Marie.
Ricky.
She looked at Marie’s cross, Kesha by her side, and she felt herself welling up. Because she’d loved Marie. She was sure of it now. Sometimes she doubted it because she was young and silly, and that’s what young and silly people did. But no. She saw it now. She saw it clearly. The way she’d felt about Marie, she hadn’t felt that way about anyone ever before.
She thought about all the times they’d had together. Holding hands. The secret sneaking into each other’s places. The jokes they shared, the times they spent together. How it used to be.
She thought about the future they’d envisaged. Maybe adopting a child. Bringing them up, raising them to be good, to be right, in a world that was determined to pull all concepts of goodness and rightness apart at the seams.
And she thought about the cross in front of her. The silence. The emptiness.
How it was now.
She wiped her eyes and turned then to Ricky’s grave. And she felt an even bigger knot tightening in her stomach. She liked Ricky. He’d always been kind to her, always been good to her.
But it wasn’t just the fact that he’d fallen that got to Carly. It wasn’t even the horrifying reality that when Melissa returned—if ever she did return—she’d be coming back to discover that this place had witnessed chaos and pain, and that Ricky had fallen in that.
It was the memory of Ricky’s final moments.
How he’d gone to fire the trigger at that barrel.
How he’d hoped to end everything before he’d had a chance to suffer in agony.
And how the gun hadn’t fired.
She remembered the infected reaching him. Remembered them wrapping their teeth around his various body parts, pulling and pulling with not a glimmer of mercy to spare.
She thought about the horror in his eyes, the realisation on his face.
And she thought about what she’d done for him.
The only thing she could do for him.
But he’d died in pain.
Nobody should have to suffer like that.
But that was how it was now.
There was something even more painful, though. Something she knew. A secret. A secret Carly knew that she knew not even Ricky knew yet.
The day she’d seen Melissa walking out of the doctor’s, pregnancy test in hand, smile on her face.
The unmistakable news that she was pregnant with her and Ricky’s child.
The risk she was taking going out into the old world, not just for herself but for some other life inside her.
And now she was going to come back to find out there wasn’t going to be a father around to look after that child after all.
She cried. She cried as she perched by the crosses. Because it was wrong that this had happened. It was so wrong.
And she had to believe that all this wrongness would end. She had to believe there wasn’t much more pain that this world could throw at her, and at everyone.
Because there had to be more than this.
This cycle of pain then relief then pain then relief then pain… it had to end somewhere. It had to end someday.
It just had to.
She felt Kesha beside her then, giving her a hug.
“Don’t sad, Carly.”
And when she muttered those innocent little words, Carly couldn’t help but grin. She couldn’t help but smile. She couldn’t help but feel hope.
She hugged Kesha back. Then she lifted her up, and she stood up. And as she looked at the two makeshift graves, she found herself apologising.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
She went to turn around.
And then she saw it.
She saw it, and everything changed.
CHAPTER THREE
Riley sat on the edge of his bed, and for the first time in a long time, home really didn’t feel like home anymore.
The evening sun cast a red hue across the district. There was silence in the air. A silence that sounded so much like the old world used to, or rather, the world after the creatures rose. Because sure, there were occasional screams. Sure, there was the occasional peppering of gunfire, things like that. But the pervading sound was one of silence. Total silence, waiting to be broken.
That was what it was like right now. And the way it reminded Riley of how things used to be… it frightened him.
Because it wasn’t just the way things used to be.
It was how it was now.
“At least this place didn’t get ransacked. At least we still have that, hmm?”
Riley turned over. Anna was by his side. There was a half-smile to her face, but Riley knew for a fact that it was put on, forced. She was just as devastated by the events of the last two days as he was. The rise of the infected. The conflict that followed. And then the fall.
Because sure, there were still survivors left. And sure, not all of them were infected.
But this place had been tainted by the memories of what had happened. It had been tarnished with blood; blood which was on Riley’s hands, on everyone else’s hands.
Once again, humanity had a remarkable chance to bounce back. To further itself. To push forward.
And once again, humani
ty had spurned that opportunity, tossed it all away.
He looked around the bedroom. Looked at the bedside cabinets. Looked at the wardrobes. Looked at the clothes neatly hung up, the shoes stacked by the door. And as he looked around, he realised the fallacy of the world they’d been living in for the last year. The fakeness of the faux security they’d treasured. Because there was no normality, no matter how much they tried to force it. And there was no security, not of any real kind.
There was just the way things were.
The world was a dangerous place. It always would be a dangerous place, especially now.
That was just something he was going to have to adapt to; to accept.
“I mean, we still have a roof over our heads. We still have a place to sleep.”
But Riley tasted bitterness in his mouth when Anna said those words. He tasted bitterness because he wasn’t sure her longing for security here was rooted in any reality. Because this place was falling. No, it had fallen. He didn’t know where Peter was. He didn’t know whether he was even still alive. But that didn’t matter anymore. Not really.
The sooner they got away from here and to somewhere else, the better.
“You don’t think we should stay here, do you?”
Riley looked over at Anna, his stomach sinking. She had a knack for reading what was on his mind in times like these. An annoying knack, that was for sure. He sighed, held her hands. “I just… This place. It isn’t the sanctuary we thought it was.”
“And where is? Someplace across the sea?”
“I just think we have a better chance of surviving—us and our child—if we try something other than—”
“This isn’t about our child, Riley.”
Riley frowned. He was surprised to hear those words come out of Anna’s mouth. “What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t pretend to me that this is anything to do with our child. It’s to do with your idea of how the world should be. It’s to do with your fear of what the world is turning into, all over again. It’s about your reluctance to step up and accept the reality of what’s happening. Of what’s always going to be happening.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” Riley said.
“Then you’re a fool.”
Her words were sharp. Cutting. But the worst thing about them?
