Dead Days Zombie Apocalypse Series (Season 5)

by Ryan Casey

  “Apologise for fucking—”

  “But we did not kill your friends. Unless your friends got in our way.”

  “Fuck it,” Kelly said. She turned away from James and walked towards Riley, gun lifted. “That’s it.”

  “Kelly!” Stephen shouted.

  She stopped just an inch away from Riley. The gun was so close to his face that it could blow his head apart. Smash it into pieces.

  But Riley could see something in her demeanour, too.

  Something he recognised.

  “We’ve been through a lot of shit,” Riley said. “Lost a lot of people. A lot of good people. More than I can go into right now.”

  “You’d better start fucking talking.”

  “Truth is there’s worse things than the creatures out here. There’s … there’s bad people.” He opened his mouth. Wondered whether he really wanted to chance mentioning the Living Zones to these people. Wondered if they’d earned that chance or whether they were just too dangerous.

  Who was he to judge?

  Everyone deserved a chance.

  “There’s a place,” Riley said. “In … in Manchester. We call it a Living Zone. It’s been our home for months. Walls. Food. Shelter. Place was built for this disaster—”

  “Bullshit,” Kelly said. Her lips shook. “Quit it with the bullshit and just—”

  “There’s a number of these Living Zones around the country. I … I was heading down to the Birmingham one because …” He paused. Took a deep breath. “I was cured. I was bit and I was cured. But the cure’s wearing off.”

  Kelly smiled, although it had to be the most humourless smile Riley had ever seen. “You got bit and you’re still walkin’?”

  Riley reached down for his leg.

  “Don’t fucking move.”

  “I’m just—”

  “I know what you’re fucking doing here,” Kelly said. Riley could hear the fear in her voice now. Sense the uncertainty. She kept the pistol pointed at his head. Watched him rise back up, hands either side. “Back on your knees. Don’t want to hear another word from you.”

  “There’s some awful things going on in Birmingham. Things way worse than the creatures.”

  Kelly grabbed Riley’s shoulder. Pushed him down. The other three lifted their guns and pointed them right at James, Ivan, Tamara.

  “You do not want to do this. You do not want to kill us. That’s not how humanity moves forward.”

  “Don’t fucking lecture me about how humanity moves forward,” Kelly said. She pushed the barrel of the gun right against Riley’s forehead. No escape now. No running away.

  “Please,” Tamara begged. “I … I’m pregnant. Don’t do this. Please.”

  Riley was shocked to hear Tamara’s confession for a moment. Clearly Kelly was too. Something sparked up in her face. More fear. More dread.

  Then the cold, harsh look cast a shadow back over it.

  “Sammy was pregnant when your people killed her last night. Six fucking months. Eye for an eye. Pull the trigger, Gary.”

  Riley prepared for a blast. A deafening, sickening blast.

  But there was no sound.

  He looked over at Tamara. She was still on her knees. Still alive. So too was Ivan. James.

  But something was missing.

  Someone was missing.

  Then he saw the look in Ivan, James and Tamara’s eyes.

  Heard rustling ahead.

  Footsteps thudding against the ground.

  He turned and looked past Kelly, who still had the gun pressed to his skull, only she was looking over her shoulder now. Staring transfixed at the scene behind her.

  At first, Riley didn’t understand it. He couldn’t comprehend how what he was looking at could’ve happened in the blink of an eye.

  So much blood.

  The man called Gary was lying on the floor. He was twitching, spewing up blood, staring up in horror.

  His neck had been ripped apart so much that Riley could see his spine through the chewed-up, sinewy muscle.

  By his side, the man called Stephen lay. At least Riley assumed it was Stephen. Hard to tell because his head had been crushed. Cracked like an egg. Burst like a balloon. Brain and shards of skull lay in a deep red mess on the forest floor.

  The woman stood there, pale-faced, with terror in her eyes.

  She looked at her two fallen friends in horror, then looked over at Kelly, gun shaking in her hands.

  “What—”

  She didn’t finish.

  The centre of her chest burst open.

  The sound of her ribcage splitting in two filled the air.

  Blood and flesh splattered everywhere.

  Standing there, covered in her blood, covered in the very foundations of this poor woman’s existence, Riley’s worst nightmares were realised.

  Dread filled his body.

  Fear swarmed inside.

  A seven-foot Orion was opposite them.

  Staring at them.

  Then, leaping at them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Riley didn’t have time to think as the Orion flew at him.

  He fell to his right. Slammed into the cold grass, mud splashing up all over him. He heard screams, shouts. Gunshots. A scramble. He knew he had to spin over. He knew he had to get his gun back—get anyone’s gun—and try putting this thing down before it disposed of them.

  He spun over. Saw the Orion pinned down on top of Ivan. Thick drool slithering out of his bloodied mouth. Eyes wide, bloodshot, hungry.

  Tamara and James trying to pull it free.

  Kelly standing there, mouth gaping, gun lowered, stunned.

  “Fucking shoot it!” Riley shouted.

  But Kelly didn’t budge. The look on her face was one of utter bewilderment. Like it must’ve been seeing the creatures for the first time.

  Only this wasn’t just a creature.

  This was something else entirely.

  Something much more terrifying.

  “Fuck,” Riley said. He ran across the grass towards the bodies of Kelly’s friends. Saw a gun lying beside the split-apart body of the poor woman who’d died just a moment ago.

  A screech from behind.

  He turned around. Ivan had his thumbs in the Orion’s eyes. Pushing back so hard his veins were bulging, his arms shaking.

  He couldn’t hold off that beast for much longer. No one could.

  Riley reached down for the gun, splattered with blood and flesh, and he stood up ready to turn and point at the Orion.

  Then he heard something in the bushes around him.

  Saw a shuffling movement.

  Then … a groan.

  No. More than one groan.

  “Not now. Please not fucking now.”

  His prayers were disregarded.

  Out of nowhere stepped six creatures. All in various stages of decomposition. All staggering towards Riley, towards the group.

  Another screech from the Orion. Mouth just inches from Ivan now.

  Deal with the Orion and then the creatures.

  They’re still a few metres away.

  Take some time.

  He spun around and aimed at the Orion, pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  He looked down at the pistol. Safety off. Loaded. Why wasn’t it fucking firing? Why wasn’t it—

  Then a shout.

  A shout he was dreading.

  He saw blood spill out of Ivan’s shoulder as the Orion sunk its claws in.

  Saw Ivan grit his dagger teeth.

  Saw the horror on James and Tamara’s faces.

  The realisation and the acceptance that it was over. That they had to get out of here because Ivan was gone.

  No.

  Riley looked and saw the oncoming creatures getting closer. Ten seconds and they’d be onto him, onto everyone in his group.

  He held his breath and lunged for Kelly.

  Grabbed her gun.

  He expected her to tighten her fingers, but she didn’t. She ju
st let it go. Let Riley take it.

  Another scream, only this time from the Orion.

  He couldn’t work out what he was looking at initially. Ivan had lifted his head to the Orion’s neck. Black blood was trickling down his chin, onto the grass.

  He’d …

  Fuck.

  Ivan was biting the Orion.

  The groans of the creatures got louder, the growls of the Orion faster, more intense.

  Riley stepped up to it.

  Steadied his aim.

  Pushed the barrel right to the side of its head.

  It swung around and looked him in the eyes right as he pulled the trigger.

  Riley watched the Orion’s body go flimsy. Watched its immense weight collapse on top of Ivan, covering him with more of that tar-like blood.

  He didn’t have time to watch anymore because he felt a creature grab his wrist.

  He turned. Fired the first of the creatures right between its maggot-infested eye sockets.

  Two more approached from the right. An old man in a suit, tie wrapped so tightly around his neck that it’d split through his rotting skin. A woman with bleach blonde hair in a blue summer dress, a gaping hole in her stomach.

  Riley pointed at the man and pulled the trigger.

  Turned to the woman—

  She fell before he had the chance to fire.

  Kelly pulled the knife out of the woman’s cracked skull. Stepped away, moved onto the next of the surrounding creatures. And no matter how much Riley tried to help, tried to intervene, she just kept on taking them down, all of them, one by one.

  Riley looked back at Ivan. Black bile trickled down his chin. Sweat covered his cheeks. Beside him, James held Tamara—or Tamara held James. It was hard to tell with those two.

  The final creature hit the floor.

  Silence sunk its claws into the woods again.

  Kelly stood in the middle of the chaos, the middle of the bloodshed, facing the opposite direction. Cold blood dripped from her knife to the forest floor.

  “Good job,” Riley said, approaching her. Couldn’t think of what else to say. Didn’t want to boast about being right. Didn’t want to be all “I told you so.”

  But she turned around and looked at him like he’d wished death on her anyway.

  Her eyes were puffy and bleary. Her jaw was quivering. “I just lost the last of my friends,” she said. “Don’t … don’t ever fucking call this a good job. Not ever.”

  She turned back to the ground.

  Turned to the decimated corpses of her friends.

  She cried.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jordanna and Andy were already back at the camp beside the car when Riley and the others returned.

  Jordanna had that look of pride in her eyes at first. Something delicious-smelling crackled away on the fire. Rabbit, squirrel. Fuck: anything would do.

  But the light in her eyes faded away when she saw the look on Riley’s face. When she saw the black Orion blood that Ivan was covered in, the tooth mark wound on his shoulder.

  When she saw Kelly.

  “Who is she?” Jordanna asked. She stood up. So too did Andy. Chloë was still inside the car, still yet to surface.

  “It’s okay,” Riley said. “She’s with us—”

  “I’m not with anyone,” Kelly said.

  Probably not the best answer to give considering the circumstances.

  “Come on, big man,” James said, as he and Tamara eased Ivan over to Doctor Ottoman. “Let’s get you seen to.”

  Riley looked at the fear and the uncertainty of his group. Andy and Jordanna stood up, frowning, curious. He saw the way they looked at Kelly—the same way Kelly had looked at his group and him not long ago.

  There was no trust in this world anymore. Especially for someone who’d just pointed a gun to your head and threatened to blow your brains out.

  But would Riley have done any different if he thought someone he encountered was a threat?

  Was that willingness to kill—that readiness to put someone down at the slightest suspicion they might turn their back on you—not just a sign of strength after all?

  “Get her by the fire,” Riley said.

  “So that’s how it is,” Kelly said, as Andy and Jordanna walked up to her, grabbed her arms. “I’m your prisoner now.”

  “You’re not our prisoner. We don’t take prisoners.”

  “Great. Another fucking way you’re morally superior to me.”

  As Doctor Ottoman checked on Ivan, Riley sat down opposite Kelly. Ivan had been bitten, but it didn’t seem like the Orions were contagious. But still, the fear was there. It was always there. If it wasn’t, they’d be dead right now.

  Fear was important.

  The cooking meat smelled delicious. He could taste it in the cool spring air. But he wasn’t eating. Not now.

  “Get some food,” Riley said.

  “I don’t want any fucking—”

  He pulled the skewer—made from a piece of wood—from the fire. Yanked a bit of flesh off the animal, seemingly a rabbit. “Rabbit’s a good meat. One of the best.”

  “Not as good as the rats,” Kelly said. And then she looked at Riley like she’d admitted some cardinal sin. Like she regretted opening up right away. “Sorry, I just—”

  “It’s okay,” Riley said, his fingers greasy with the meat. “You’re right. Rat’s good. Not perfect, but good. Here, take this. Go on.”

  Kelly stared at the meat. “How do I know you haven’t spiked it?”

  “Come on. If we wanted to kill you we could’ve done it by now.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. Some people don’t just want to kill in this world. Killing ain’t enough. Like what … what happened to my friends. What you—”

  “Like I said, we didn’t touch your friends,” Riley said. “Now please. Take this meat before I scoff it myself.”

  Kelly hesitated. Then, she grabbed the meat. Nibbled a bit of it. Only then did Riley realise just how pale she was. Just how dirty. Unwashed.

  “How long you been out here?” Riley asked.

  Kelly shrugged. “How long’s this shit been going on?”

  “You’ve been out here since the start?” Jordanna intervened, standing above the pair of them.

  Kelly swung around, clearly wary of Jordanna, wary of all of them. She scanned Jordanna from head to toe and back again. Then she nodded. “Different places along the way. Different people. But … but there was always someone there. Who’d—who’d been with me since the start.” She turned away. “Fuck. That thing. It just …”

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” Riley said. “But I swear to God we didn’t have a thing to do with their death—”

  “Then why the fuck’s his teeth like—like the teeth of that thing back there?” She pointed a thumb in Ivan’s direction.

  “It’s … it’s a long story. But I told you there were worse things than creatures to worry about out here.”

  “S’pose I shoulda listened,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “Yeah you should.”

  Kelly ate a little more of the rabbit. Clearly growing steadily at ease in their company. Adapting to their presence. Which was what they wanted. Because it was in everyone’s best interests to stay together now. To band together. To fight on. Especially in the wake of evil like Mr Fletch. Especially with his horrors now out in the wild. Because that’s what this meant—an Orion in the wild meant the BLZ had sent one out. One of the human-attackers, the better second-model. They’d sent it out to hunt down Riley and his group.

  Somehow, Riley didn’t expect it was the only Orion out in the wild either.

  Which was a terrifying thought for everyone concerned.

  And everyone concerned, in this case, was everyone alive.

  “You might’ve lost your friends but you aren’t alone,” Riley said.

  “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I … I used to be like you.”

  “Oh
fuck. Here we go—”

  “Just hear me out,” Riley said. He stared at the smoke rising from the fire. Stared at the charred skin of the rabbit stuck on that skewer. “We used to be afraid of other people. And rightly so. The people out here are often way worse than the creatures.”

  “You’re hardly advertising yourselves,” Kelly said.

  “But we used to kill people because of the threat they might cause. We used to—to murder people if we thought maybe they’d come back to bite us in future. Because we were scared. We were scared that we were the last good people on earth and everyone else was just … just trying to take that goodness away.”

  “Talk about modest.”

  Riley ignored her again. “We went from giving people a chance to growing far too scared to give anyone a chance to … to this. To seeing things the way they really are.”

  Kelly plucked out a stringy piece of rabbit flesh from between her teeth. “So how are things, Riley? How are they?”

  Riley looked at Jordanna. Looked at Andy. Then he looked through the car at Chloë, at Doctor Ottoman, at Ivan, James, Tamara.

  He turned back to Kelly.

  “We don’t get to decide who lives or dies on a whim. We don’t get to leave people behind. Nobody. Not anymore.”

  “Sounds suicide if you ask me.”

  “And maybe so,” Riley said. “Maybe it is suicide. But if we die because we’re trying to do the right thing—trying to stay human—then we’d just better hope to God there’s others out there who’ve… who’ve been through the same shit and the same changes as us.”

  “Or what?”

  Riley opened his mouth. Closed it. Licked his fingers and swallowed the delicious taste of burnt rabbit. “Or everything human about humanity dies.”

  Kelly was silent for a few seconds after Riley spoke. He could see her contemplating what he’d said. See her mulling it over.

  “I know you’ve done bad things,” Riley said. “And so have I. So have we. I killed some people this morning.”

  “Starting to think you were Jesus or something.”

  “They tried to kill me. Tried to kill the people I care about. The people who are good. Morally good.”

  Kelly smiled. Widest smile yet.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just—”