by Ryan Casey
He crept across the bed of leaves and twigs in the direction of the movement. Lifted his gun slightly. Didn’t want to risk anything, but if anyone—good or bad—jumped out right now, he’d struggle not to pull that trigger.
More movement.
To the right this time.
He swallowed a lump of phlegm, the taste of yesterday’s rabbit barbecue still lingering. Barbecue and creature blood.
He lifted his gun a little higher.
Pointed right ahead, right where he’d heard the movement.
Then he stopped.
He lowered the gun when he saw her. When he saw Jordanna right ahead. When he saw Chloë just beyond her.
Except …
No. Something was wrong.
Chloë looked taller than Jordanna.
Her head was lowered. Her chin was tucked into her neck. Her …
Then Riley saw it.
Saw the white band wrapped around Chloë’s neck.
The white band tied to the branch of the tree.
Saw Chloë’s paling skin as she swung from side to side, swung in the breeze.
Hanging.
CHAPTER TWO
Riley stared at Chloë’s body as it swung in the breeze.
He didn’t speak. Not at first. Neither did Jordanna, as she crouched there in the mud looking up at Chloë, looking up at the truth, the impossible truth.
Chloë was hanging.
She’d hung herself.
She’d put an end to her life.
“We … we need to cut her down,” Riley said. He started walking. Walking across the forest floor, stumbling over snapped branches of fallen trees. He wasn’t sure where his voice or his movement came from. Someplace deep within. Pure reaction.
He had to get Chloë down from that tree.
He couldn’t leave her up there.
He couldn’t—
He heard a noise to his right. The snapping of a branch. In the cool air of the early hours, the smell of rot lingered strong and intense. A sign that creatures were nearby. Or they’d been here.
Or, somewhere, somewhere in the darkness, they were already here.
“Jordanna we have to—”
And then Riley saw it.
Saw the movement behind Chloë.
The creature’s hand stretching up, scraping at the sole of her left trainer.
Stretching its arm so far that its bones were poking out of the tips of its fingers.
Riley couldn’t think properly. Rationally.
All he could do was launch himself at the creature.
Knock it to the damp forest floor.
Smack the hammer through the middle of its flimsy skull, paint the forest floor with its brains.
He yanked the hammer out of the creature’s skull, blood dripping onto the ground. He stood up. Reached for Chloë. Fuck. She was too high up. Must’ve climbed the tree. Climbed the tree and hung herself.
As he looked up at her deathly white face illuminated in the moonlight, Riley swore he could see a smile.
Like she was at peace.
“Watch my back,” Riley said, searching the tree for a place to climb.
No response from Jordanna.
“Jordanna, watch my fucking—”
“We did this,” Jordanna said. She stared ahead with wide, grieving eyes. Crouched on her knees, her tears further dampening the dirt. “We … we did this. All of us. We …”
“Maybe so,” Riley said, grabbing a branch that he hoped to God was sturdy enough to hold his weight. “But now’s not the time to worry about that. Now’s the time to get Chloë down from here. Just … just watch my back. Watch your own back. Please.”
He waited for Jordanna to look him in the eye. Look him in the eye in that way she had when they’d connected, the pair of them. The look in the eye she gave him when she understood him, when they understood one another.
But she didn’t look.
She just crouched in the grass.
Stared into nothingness.
Riley didn’t have time to wait around. He shifted his weight onto the first branch, which wobbled and threatened to snap away. Above, the sky was getting cloudier, the moonlight’s glow dimmed.
But he had to stay focused.
Focused on the task.
Get Chloë down.
Get her down and get her out of here.
He grabbed another branch and pulled himself further up the tree. Never had been great at climbing trees. More a confidence thing than anything. It was always his younger cousin, Adam, who climbed the trees as a kid. Together on the caravan site they used to visit in summer, his cousin was the one who’d always climb that extra branch, always get Riley to climb it too.
And when Riley climbed it; when he went that extra branch, Adam would insist he climbed another.
And another.
And another.
And no matter how high Riley climbed, no matter how much he caved to his devil-cousin’s demands, he’d always reach a point where he had to stop.
And when he reached that point, he’d always face Adam’s mickey-taking wrath for the rest of the day.
Funny thing, really. Adam ended up in a coma after falling off a six-foot wall straight onto his head just a few years later.
Never climbed any trees since.
“We all clear?” Riley asked, as he monkey-barred his way along to the next branch. Sat down on a sturdier branch, the branch that led to Chloë, to where she was hanging.
Jordanna looked up now. Raised her head and scanned the immediate area. “I … I don’t … It’s hard to say.”
“Just give me a fucking shout if you see anything, alright?” Riley shouted. He realised how tetchy he sounded. But the truth was the doubts were starting to seep in. The doubts about being up here. The doubts about Chloë.
She’d hung herself.
So why was he up here trying to cut her down?
Why not just leave her behind where she was high up, out of the way of the zombies?
His mind flashed back to the first time he’d ever seen Chloë. Way back at the Chinese restaurant in Barton, Preston. Peeking around that door to the room he and Ted were staying in. With her mum, Claudia, and her sister, Elizabeth.
The happy family.
The dead family.
No.
He couldn’t accept Chloë was dead.
He couldn’t leave this girl behind.
Not again.
Not even if she was—
He heard something crack underneath him. Looked down, readied himself for the branch to snap away, for the long tumble to the ground where broken legs would surely leave him nothing more than creature bait.
But the branch didn’t snap.
He didn’t go falling to the ground.
He stayed put.
Held on, as the clouds grew thicker.
As raindrops sprinkled around him.
As the wind rustled through the forest and made monsters out of trees.
“Come on,” he muttered, as he edged forward towards Chloë, closer to the white band she’d hung herself with. “You can fucking do this. You can fucking do this.”
He dragged his body along. Just a metre away from Chloë now. The sounds of the woods intensifying, his heartbeat rattling.
“Keep an eye out,” Riley shouted, his voice echoing through the woods.
Jordanna stood. Held her gun. Looked ahead, over her shoulder, ahead again and in every direction just to be sure, just to be positive.
“Come on, Riley,” he muttered. Just a foot away now. So close to the band. He just had to lift Chloë. Lift her up somehow. Support her weight. Then he had to untie the band and—
“Riley watch out!”
He didn’t have a chance to process Jordanna’s words, not properly.
Because he heard the groans underneath him.
Out of nowhere.
Reaching up, snatching at Chloë’s shoes.
So many of them.
Their chorus of ga
sps illuminating the night sky.
“Fucking clear them!” Riley shouted, the tree branch wobbling as the nerves of being six metres above a crowd of fucking creatures set in.
“There’s—there’s too many,” Jordanna shouted. “Riley I’m … I’m not sure I can …”
He didn’t hear the rest of what Jordanna had to say.
Because the branch split.
His weight shifted downwards.
And in the pitch black of night, the moon suffocated by the thickening clouds, Riley fell.
CHAPTER THREE
JORDANNA
A part of Jordanna wanted to run.
She watched the events in front of her unfold in slow motion.
The creatures appearing out of the darkness, out of nowhere, then scrambling to grip onto Chloë’s feet.
The branch that Riley held onto weakening, the branch Chloë hung from weakening.
Then that branch snapping away.
The pair of them falling.
Falling into the mass of creatures below.
A part of Jordanna wanted to run.
A part of Jordanna didn’t want to witness any more pain. Any more destruction. Any more death.
A part of Jordanna didn’t want to witness the two people she cared about most in this awful world torn to shreds, screaming in agony.
But another part of Jordanna didn’t want to run.
Because Riley hadn’t run away from her. Well, once, maybe. But that was a long time ago. Much had changed since.
So as the two of them tumbled into the crowd of creatures below, Jordanna lifted her gun and ran at the creatures.
Even if she did see the two people she cared about torn apart, she’d be there with them. Fighting with them, every step of the way.
She fired at the heads of the descending creatures without hesitation. Lit up the black night sky with gunfire. Sent rotten-milk stinking brains all over the forest floor, cracking skulls echoing in the darkness.
She knew what she was doing was reckless, what she was doing might attract more creatures—or even worse, people—but there was nothing else she could do.
It was either run or fight.
And she wasn’t in a position to run.
Not when she’d seen the way the creatures gathered around Chloë’s feet.
She fired at another three and prayed she wouldn’t have to reload this thing anytime soon. Truth was, she’d noticed something. Hardly had the time to take it in, but it was making more sense in her mind now, clearing up.
The creatures had gathered around Chloë as she hung from the tree.
Chloë, not Riley.
The creatures preferred live meat—in all her experience living in this world.
Which meant Chloë was alive.
Somehow, she was still alive.
Either that or Jordanna was just hopeful.
But fuck. That’s what she had to be.
She fired another two bullets right through the gnawed heads of two creatures so close to sinking their teeth into Riley’s belly. Riley fired at them too. Fired up in the air, but he was on his back, hardly moving, clearly hurt.
I’m coming for you. I’m not fucking leaving you behind.
She fired right between the eyes of another silhouetted creature, the moonlight just about revealing its former self. A decaying woman, lips split with teeth marks, one eyeball dangling down her cheek.
Dead.
Then dead again.
Another creature drifted in from the right. A fat bloke whose guts were hanging so far out of his belly he was almost tripping up on them.
He landed on his knees beside Chloë.
Opened his mouth.
Moved in towards her belly.
Jordanna pulled the trigger and nothing happened.
In that momentary flash, that flash of realisation, Jordanna saw what would happen if she didn’t fucking act fast.
The man sinking his teeth into Chloë’s belly.
Ripping her intestines from her torso.
Feasting on her insides, then the flies and the maggots and the rats all feasting on her insides too.
She saw it in her mind’s eye.
Saw it as the man got closer.
Then she ran towards him.
Ran as fast as she could.
He was just inches away now.
She pulled her pistol back and cracked its butt into his head. Knocked him away from Chloë, onto his side, clearly surprised by Jordanna’s presence—if creatures could be anything of the sort.
He turned around and Jordanna felt the cool dampness of his intestines rubbing against her shirt, the squelchiness of his guts underneath her.
He lurched towards her, blackened teeth snapping in his decomposing mouth.
Jordanna didn’t even think. She just grabbed his greasy, snakelike intestine and stuffed it into the man’s mouth.
Watched him bite down on it.
Heard the jelly-like contents split apart.
Smelled the stench from inside as the green and black gunk dribbled out of it, all over the man’s lips.
Jordanna tasted vomit. She held her breath and cracked the butt of the gun into the man’s forehead, again and again and again until it was bleeding, until his skull was showing underneath the tender skin, still biting onto his own intestines, chewing on its contents.
Jordanna didn’t want to say what it smelled like, but if she did, nobody would ever eat fish pie again in their life.
She kept on beating the man’s skull until it cracked, then when she’d done that she pushed the gun into the crack, pushed it hard so it split away the bone, so fragments of skull wedged inside the poor fucker’s brain.
And when the gun was pressed right in, the creature started to shake. Shake, like he was having some kind of seizure.
And just for a split second, Jordanna thought she saw a look of humanity in the creature’s eyes. A look of desperation. Of fear.
Then, nothing.
Lights out.
Gone.
She pulled the gun away from the man’s skull when she felt a hand on her left arm.
She yelped. Swung the gun around to crack the head of whoever else had a hold of her.
“Wait. Wait.”
Jordanna’s heart raced. She stared at the person holding her arm.
Riley.
He was sitting up. Big-ass cut on his forehead, bruise under his eye. He was holding onto his left shoulder, wincing with every little movement.
“You … you okay—”
“I’m okay. Just—just sore,” Riley said.
And then he turned around. Looked at Chloë as she lay there lifeless in the darkness. Piles of creature bodies around her. Blood smeared on her ghostly skin.
“You didn’t have to—” Riley started.
“Fuck off,” Jordanna said. “Course I did. It’s what we do.”
She moved around Riley. Crawled over to Chloë. She didn’t want to check her pulse or her breathing. She didn’t want the inevitable confirmed. She just wanted to believe, just wanted to hope, just a little longer.
She stared down at Chloë. Her eyes were closed. Her neck was bruised. The band around her neck was covered in blood.
“I … I don’t know if I can—”
“I’ve got it,” Riley said, resting a hand on Jordanna’s left thigh. “I’ve got it.”
He crawled over to Chloë.
Looked down at her with tears in his eyes.
The sort of look a doctor has when they’re about to deliver bad news.
He put a hand on her neck. Then lowered his head to her chest, another hand to her mouth and her nose.
They waited in the silence. Waited in the darkness. Waited in the wind.
“She’s breathing,” Riley said.
The news hit Jordanna square in the chest like a blade to her diaphragm.
“She’s … she can’t be—”
“She’s breathing and her heart’s still beating,” Riley said, moving th
e band from around her neck. “But she’s not in a good way. We need to get her back. Back to Doctor Ottoman. Back to …”
Jordanna hadn’t even had time to absorb the news when she heard footsteps approaching, saw the silhouettes surrounding them.
CHAPTER FOUR
CHLOË
Chloë was moving.
Still floating. But not floating like she had been. Not floating above everyone—her mum, her dad, her sister, Tiff. No, she was floating along now. Floating just above the ground and staring up at the trees, up at the light in the middle of the dark.
Up at the light that made her feel warm.
Made her feel comfortable.
Made her feel home.
She could hear talking. People saying things to her. Words she couldn’t understand. But she knew there were a lot of people around her. Not her family, not Tiff.
But other people.
Jordanna. Riley. Tamara. Ivan.
The people she’d been with for the last few months.
The people who pretended they understood her. Who pretended they were her friends.
Who abandoned her.
She didn’t know how to feel about the people around her. Didn’t know how to react when she heard Jordanna tell her, “It’s all gonna be okay, sweetheart,” or when Riley held her tightly and ran with her, ran through the trees, the cold air brushing against her face, coldness replacing the warmth, the buzzing starting in her mind once more.
She preferred the warmth.
The light.
The quiet.
And now here they were taking that away from her all over again.
Here they were making her do something she didn’t want to do.
But she was too weak to argue.
Too weak to fight back.
Too weak to—
“You’re not weak, angel.”
The voice made some of the warmth return to Chloë’s skin. The familiar voice. The voice she hadn’t heard for so long, not this clearly, not in this much detail.
But the voice that made her feel safe.
Made her feel loved.
Her mum’s voice.
She saw her mum above her in the dark. Saw her staring down at her as she drifted along. She was smiling. Stroking Chloë’s hair. Kissing her forehead and it was all so detailed, all so real.
The heart-shaped locket dangled down from her neck.
The locket that made Chloë feel so safe.
So secure.
