Dead Days Zombie Apocalypse Series (Season 5)

by Ryan Casey

  He saw its chipped teeth snapping together, heard its loose jaw clicking. Maggots dribbled out of its open eye sockets onto Riley’s mouth, his face.

  All the time the creature pushed closer, closer …

  It was then that Riley knew there was only one thing he could do.

  Stop pushing back.

  Let the creature fall.

  Or it would bite him. It would bite him, and somehow, he didn’t think he’d be surviving another bite. Not with the cure on a countdown to zero as it was.

  He held his breath.

  The starving groans of the creature got closer.

  Counted down from three.

  Three, two—

  Then he heard the girl in the Land Rover scream again.

  Heard the banging of dead hands against the glass.

  The creaking of the Land Rover’s metal.

  Riley loosened his grip and slid to the right. The creature tumbled past him, snapped its teeth at the floor just an inch to the left of Riley’s shoulder. What was left of its teeth split apart, shattered on the concrete.

  But the creature didn’t care. Course it didn’t fucking care.

  Riley grabbed his gun. Stepped behind it and held the barrel to the back of its head.

  But no. The girl in the Land Rover. He couldn’t shoot. If he brought attention to himself then they’d all be dead. The girl was a distraction for now, sure. But being a temporary distraction was gonna keep her alive.

  So Riley lowered his gun.

  Stuffed three fingers on each hand inside the gaping eye sockets of the creature.

  Pushed them back as far as he could, cold blood and wriggling maggots slurping out of the holes and down its grey skin.

  He pushed even further back. Pushed until the creature was practically screaming, snapping its mouth like mad.

  Like it was in pain.

  And then, when he reached the tops of his fingers, he got a grip on each side of the creature’s skull from the inside.

  Hoped to God it was as flimsy, broken and weakened as it looked.

  Held his breath.

  And pulled.

  At first, Riley wasn’t sure his plan was going to work. Fuck, hardly a “plan” in truth, but you get the picture.

  He pulled and the skull stayed intact.

  More maggots wormed around his fingertips.

  The girl in the Land Rover screamed again.

  The rest of his group fought on against the mass of creatures pouring out of the woods.

  And then he felt a split.

  The rest was sudden and instantaneous. One second, he was holding onto the inside of the creature’s skull. Next thing he knew, the whole thing just crumbled apart like he’d pulled a piece of wood out of a Jenga tower.

  The creature’s head exploded.

  Its icy-cold blood splattered all over Riley, all over the road.

  Inside it, the ghastly stench of death so pure it made Riley want to puke, maggots and dead flies floated.

  The sound of glass cracking.

  A louder scream than before.

  “No.”

  Riley spun around. Saw the girl still trapped in the Land Rover, still stuck inside there.

  Only the glass of the passenger window had smashed.

  Creatures were clawing their way in, their rotting skin slicing away from their skulls as they forced their way against the glass.

  “No!” Riley shouted.

  He scrambled for his gun and the piece of sharpened metal. Ran over to the Land Rover.

  The creatures getting closer to the girl.

  The glass cracking even more.

  Riley lifted his gun and he fired right into the head of the first creature. Then he fired at the next one, and the next one, the limited ammo not even a consideration because life mattered, people mattered.

  Survival mattered at all cost. At any cost.

  He lowered the gun when there were just six creatures left; when there were enough for him to take on hand to hand.

  Cracked one in the face with the metal, split it open and sent it tumbling into the road.

  Punched the next one with his gun.

  One of them still lurching into the car.

  The girl still screaming.

  A creature grabbed his right arm, opened its mouth and readied to bite but no, no fucking way. He rammed the metal through the back of its skull, cracked it like an egg.

  Turned the gun on one that flew at him from nowhere, blasted it into oblivion.

  Just the creature in the car now.

  Just the creature in the car.

  He grabbed its black coat and pulled it back, pulled it away from the glass as the girl kept on crying, kept on screaming.

  He yanked it through the sharpened glass, splitting its scalp.

  Threw it onto the road.

  Rolled it over and stabbed it right between its eyes.

  He pulled the metal shard away. Stood up, hands shaking, a silence about the country lane now.

  “It’s okay,” he muttered, blood and sweat dripping from his damp hair. “It’s okay now.”

  He looked inside the car and he saw the girl staring back at him.

  Tears staining her cheeks.

  Blood from the accident rolling down her forehead.

  Clutching her forearm.

  “He … he got me,” she said through quivering lips. “He got me.”

  Riley’s body froze. He looked down at the creature he’d pulled out of the car. Looked into its mouth.

  He saw the fresh, bloody flesh between its teeth.

  He looked back at the wound in the poor kid’s forearm.

  He understood.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Riley eased the girl out of the Land Rover while the rest of his group cleared the remaining creatures.

  Jordanna helped him. So too did Doctor Ottoman. He could see the looks on their faces when they saw the bite wound on the girl’s arm. He could see them side glance at him then back at the girl. And he knew what they were thinking. He knew what they wanted to say.

  Shouldn’t we just leave her?

  Put her out of her misery before she turns?

  “P-please. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

  The girl’s shaky words put a chill through Riley, a chill intensified by the strong wind now blowing down the country lane. He sat her up by the side of the Land Rover, the other side to the fallen creatures. Away from the reminders of death. Of destruction.

  “We aren’t gonna hurt you,” Riley said.

  “I’ve—I’ve seen what people do to—to bitten people. People like me—”

  “We aren’t gonna do anything to you,” Riley said, raising his voice, not too loud that it wasn’t sensitive but stern enough to get through to the girl.

  “Please. Please don’t. Please don’t.”

  Blood seeped from her bitten wrist.

  Her skin was turning pale.

  Riley looked up at Jordanna and Doctor Ottoman. He saw the sympathy, the pity in their eyes. Further down the road, just ahead of James, Andy, Tamara, Kelly and Ivan, who were clearing the last of the stray creatures, he saw Chloë staring on with more curiosity, more interest than she’d shown ever since they got out of the BLZ.

  “My dad, he—he said he’d never let me die. Said he’d die so—so I wouldn’t have to.”

  She sniffed up the snot dribbling from her chapped nostrils. Looked at the front of the Land Rover, where her dad’s head was split against the glass. Descended into more tears.

  Riley edged closer towards her. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder. Comfort her. Reassure her that everything was going to be okay.

  But how could he reassure her when it wasn’t going to be okay?

  She was bitten. Which ninety-nine times out of a hundred—no, way more than that—meant she was going to turn. She was going to come back.

  A fate worse than death.

  Riley licked his dried lips, regretted it right away when he tasted
the stale blood from the rotting creature he’d ripped into two. “I … I’m Riley. What’s your name?”

  The girl sobbed. Lifted her tear-drenched face and looked at Riley through gaps in her auburn fringe, which was plastered to her head with grease and sweat. “Amy,” she said.

  “Amy,” Riley said. “It’s … it’s lovely to meet you, Amy. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” she said.

  Fuck. Fourteen fucking years old and bitten. A waste of life. A complete waste of life.

  But a reality of the world they lived in now.

  “Amy I …” Fuck. What did he say to her? How did he deliver the news? The sickening blow that her life was over? The news that she already knew—that she had to know—but was just waiting for confirmation from an adult. Hoping for a miracle but faced with the inevitable. “You know what it … what it means. When you’re bitten.”

  Amy wiped her eyes and nodded. “I become one of—one of them. But anything better than dying. Please don’t let me die. Please.”

  “I don’t think you understand, sweetie,” Jordanna said, crouching in front of Amy. “You’ve got a choice. You die and come back as one of those things or you die and don’t.”

  Riley stared at Jordanna. His cheeks heated up. He couldn’t believe the pragmatism in her voice. The matter-of-fact manner in which she spoke to Amy.

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Riley said.

  “We need to be real,” Jordanna said, spinning around and looking right at Riley. “We need to face up to the truth.”

  “Can we have a word? A quick word?”

  Jordanna looked at Amy and half-smiled. Amy stared back at her with horror. With fear.

  Riley and Jordanna stepped aside.

  “You can’t just do that,” Riley said.

  “Do what?”

  “Tell a girl she’s about to die.”

  “But it’s—”

  “She’s fourteen years old, Jordanna. She’s lost her dad and she’s terrified.”

  “It’s something we just have to face up to.”

  “How the fuck would you like it?”

  “Like what?”

  “If you were bitten?”

  Jordanna shrugged as they walked a little further from the car. “Starting to think maybe it ain’t such a bad idea.”

  “Fuck that. Fuck that completely. After all we did to get out of the BLZ. After everything we’ve gone through. We don’t get to just give up. Not now.”

  Jordanna stopped walking. Looked up at Riley. “You don’t see it, do you?”

  “See what?”

  “What you’re turning into. You used to make the difficult decisions. You used to do things that kept us alive. Us as a group. You didn’t go firing tonnes of bullets and trying to save people like some kind of fucking action hero. You didn’t do that ’cause you knew that’s what gets people killed. And if you aren’t careful, you’re gonna get us all killed.”

  Riley shook his head and tutted. “Maybe I’ve seen what we’ve been through and started to value life a little more.”

  “Or maybe you’ve accepted the fact you’re gonna die in the next two weeks so’ve lost the will to live.”

  Riley opened his mouth to respond but no words came out. The only sounds were the wind in the trees, the footsteps of the rest of the group catching up, Doctor Ottoman whispering to Amy and Amy whispering back to him.

  Jordanna grabbed Riley’s hands. “I get that you’re scared, Riley. I get that you’re afraid. And I’m afraid too. But you aren’t dead yet. You’re still standing. I just … I just don’t want you to die.”

  It was at that moment that Riley saw something different to the usual hard pragmatism in Jordanna’s face. He saw her eyes watering. Saw her scanning his face. Felt her squeeze his hands.

  He saw someone who didn’t want to lose him.

  “We give the girl her wishes,” Riley said.

  “And if she—”

  A blast from the Land Rover.

  It jolted Riley from his conversation with Jordanna, from his trance.

  He looked over at the Land Rover.

  Saw Doctor Ottoman with tears rolling down his face.

  A gun in his hand.

  In his other arm, Amy rested.

  Blood leaked from a hole in her left temple.

  “You’re at peace now,” Doctor Ottoman said, his voice quivery. “You’re at peace now.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Riley sat and stared at the roof of the tent as nightfall grew stronger and stronger.

  The group had been on the road for a good ten hours. They were exhausted, in desperate need of rest and a good meal. Running on fumes, running on pure adrenaline. Found an old camp that some people had clearly left long ago, judging by the blood on the side of the tents. It would do. It would suffice, for the night at least.

  After burying Amy and her father—something Riley insisted on—they kept on travelling down the country road. The long and winding road went on for miles. Lonely silent mile after lonely silent mile. And as Riley recalled the trip down here—the trip by vehicle to Birmingham—he knew there was much road ahead.

  He just wasn’t sure they were going to make it.

  Wasn’t sure he was going to make it.

  The sound of chatter from his group, the smell of logs burning and the warmth of the fire, they should’ve been good things. They were alive, after all. They’d made it this far.

  But Riley couldn’t help but think of all the people they’d lost. He couldn’t help but get Pedro, Ted, Anna out of his mind … so many others, all stacking up in his mind.

  As he heard laughter outside, his insides turned.

  He couldn’t face getting close to anyone else.

  Because he couldn’t lose anyone else.

  “You okay?”

  The voice took him by surprise. Riley swung around. Saw Jordanna crouching at the entrance of the tent. Her dark hair hung down by her shoulders, greasy and filled with blood and dirt. Dark circles were wrapped around her eyes like they’d been drawn on with a marker pen.

  Riley wasn’t sure how to feel face to face with Jordanna. It’d been that way since they’d kissed back at the BLZ. Like a bond had formed between them. A bond he couldn’t allow to develop, not anymore.

  “Just tired,” Riley said.

  “We’re all out there talking and having some fun and you’re in here on your lonesome.”

  “Rather have a break.”

  Jordanna smacked Riley hard on his right shoulder. “It’s the end of the world. You should cheer up. Kelly seems okay.”

  Riley squeezed his shoulder where Jordanna had hit him and sat up. Saw movement outside the tent—movement of his group around the campfire. Heard James telling some story or other, Andy laughing. “Right.”

  “And Tamara’s pregnant,” Jordanna said, sitting down beside Riley and planting a hand on his thigh—a hand that made him flinch, made his heart thump, but which he eventually let settle there.

  “Yeah.”

  “Should be interesting,” Jordanna said.

  Riley didn’t respond. He just swallowed the coppery saliva and stared out of the tent opening as Jordanna’s hand tightened on his thigh.

  “You can talk to me, y’know?” Jordanna said.

  Riley looked the other way. His heart picked up some more. Just stare into the darkness. Stare into the darkness and forget everything about the infection. Forget everything about death.

  “It’d be nice if someone opened up to me. Chloë won’t say a word.”

  “Didn’t have you down as a mother hen,” Riley said.

  Jordanna raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, well, the end of the world can do that to a person.”

  She smiled.

  Riley smiled back.

  Just about.

  They were silent for a while. The smell of the burning wood got stronger, more intense.

  “I’m sorry,” Jordanna said.

  “Sorry for what?”

&n
bsp; She shook her head. “For Amy. I … I shouldn’t have—have spoken to her like I did. I just …”

  “It’s okay,” Riley said. But the mention of that poor little girl brought a bulging lump to his throat. “She’s—she’s at peace now. Doctor Ottoman made sure of that.”

  “I just lose sight sometimes. Like, being out here in this world for so long. It just … it just blurs what’s right and what’s wrong. Y’know?”

  Riley nodded. “Starting to see that myself now.”

  Jordanna leaned onto Riley’s shoulder. Again, it was a little awkward, a little forced. Her hair was greasy and stunk of sweat—but then again, whose didn’t these days?

  But it felt good. Her resting her head there, hand on his thigh, it felt good.

  “Do you ever think things’ll be like they were again?” Jordanna asked.

  Riley rested his head on hers. His heart was pumping so fast, he swore Jordanna must be able to feel it. “I don’t think so.”

  She pinched his leg. “Not the cheeriest answer.”

  “But it’s the right one,” Riley said. He stared up into the darkness, imagined the stars above outside the tent. “I … I don’t think we’ll ever go back to how things were. Like the troops who came back from Iraq, Vietnam. After the things they did, the things they saw. Even if the world went back to the way it was, I don’t think we could.”

  “You think this thing’s global then?”

  Riley shrugged, forgetting Jordanna was on his shoulder. “Sorry, I … Well I don’t see how it can’t be. We’ve been living this way for—for half a year.”

  “Maybe we’re quarantined.”

  “I don’t think so,” Riley said.

  “Why not? Just think about it. This—this infection spreads around Britain. No way of dealing with it humanely other than leaving it to clean itself out. For all we know there could be mile-high walls around Britain. Keeping us in here. Stopping the infection getting out.”

  Riley pondered the image. “You have a pretty active imagination, I’ll give you that.”

  “Oh I had to when I …”

  She stopped speaking.

  Riley turned to her. Saw her staring into the distance, staring into nothing.

  “You can talk to me too, y’know?” Riley said.

  A light returned to Jordanna’s eyes. She smiled. “I know. I just … all the things that went down. Before the end days. Feel pretty embarrassed sitting here talking to someone I like about it …”