by Ryan Casey
James’ bottom lip shook. He stared at Tamara with tearful eyes. “You—you go. I’ll—”
“No you fucking won’t,” Tamara said.
“Tamara we really need to—”
She pushed Jordanna away. “No. You aren’t leaving me. You aren’t leaving us. Please, James. Please just—”
Another bang on the door.
More wood splitting away.
The putrid odour of the Orion seeping through the cracks.
“We need to go, James,” Riley said.
He stood his ground. A cloud of dust building up around him as the Orion’s silhouette loomed behind. “If—If I stay here then maybe you’ll get a better chance to get away.”
“You don’t need to do this,” Tamara said, crying now. “We can go. We can walk away. Right now. Please—”
Another bang.
More of the door splitting away.
A punch hole in the wood to the right of James’ stomach.
“I have to do this,” he said, keeping his head high. “And—and you have to run. You just have to do some things you don’t wanna do sometimes.”
He looked Tamara right in the eye.
“You’ll make a damned good post-apocalyptic mummy, though.”
Riley heard Tamara crying. Saw the others waving them out in the corner of his eye. And he knew they had to leave now. He knew they had to go. There was no saving James. James didn’t want to be saved.
And that was a choice he’d made.
A choice they had to respect.
All of them.
“Come on, Tam,” Riley said, taking her hand.
“No!” she said. She pulled against Riley’s hand, and Riley just held her tighter. Because sure, people could choose whether to die or not. But in grief, no choices were clear. Nothing was simple.
So Riley had to make the choice to hold onto Tamara’s hand.
To drag her away from the hallway, away from the kitchen, towards the back door.
He took one final look at James—just a brief one. Nodded his head. Saw tears in James’ eyes as he stared back at him, chin up, half a smile on his face, so brave, so prepared.
“It’s stopped,” Doctor Ottoman said.
Riley didn’t understand what he meant at first as he pulled Tamara into the fresh morning air. He didn’t understand anything. Just waited for James’ scream. Waited for the sound of the Orion sinking its teeth into his flesh, tearing his body apart.
Waited for the door to smash away …
Wait.
It’s stopped.
“The door,” Doctor Ottoman said, visibly shaking. “It—it’s stopped.”
And as they stood there in the breeze, Riley realised he was right.
The Orion had stopped banging the door.
Stopped smashing its body against it.
Gone.
There was a pause. A moment where no one spoke. Just the branches of trees scratching against one another, the distant murmur of creature groans that were always present, like crackling on a vinyl. Only much less comforting.
Then, Doctor Ottoman. “If it’s stopped then where has it …”
He didn’t finish speaking.
He was staring straight ahead.
Wide-eyed.
Mouth open.
Riley turned. Looked at where the doctor was looking, down by the side of the cottage. And he already had an idea of what might be there. Of what might be standing seven feet tall.
Staring at them.
To his despair, all his fears were confirmed.
The Orion wasn’t at the front door.
Not anymore.
It was by the side of the cottage.
Drooling.
Looking right at the group.
“It’s gone!” James called, as he ran through the kitchen and towards the door. “The fucker’s gone!”
The smile on his face was soon wiped away when he saw the Orion by the side of the cottage.
When he saw it launch itself at the group.
Launch itself at Riley.
CHAPTER TWO
IVAN
Iraq, 2003
You never got used to the sound of bombs exploding.
Ivan held his breath as the blast ripped through the apartment block his squadron was stationed in. He and one other in the third storey crouching down and aiming out the window. Waiting for someone to run past. To get in the crosshairs. Waiting for a moment to fire.
They were stationed just outside of Baghdad, right in the heat of the war-zone. Twenty-one-day war, the US and the UK said.
Well, it’d been more than twice that and there were no signs of this bullshit ending anytime soon.
He felt the grit of dust and sand rubbing against his teeth. Smelled smoke. In the distance, the popping of gunfire. The screams of the fallen. Of women and children caught up in the heat of battle. Caught up in a war they didn’t deserve. A war they didn’t ask for.
A war in the name of peace.
What a load of crap.
Every time a bomb exploded, Ivan’s body tensed up completely. He’d seen the destruction bombs caused. Seen them tear buildings apart. Split people open. And it didn’t matter if it was an Iraqi bomb, a British bomb or a fucking Timbuktooey bomb.
A bomb was a bomb.
And nobody wanted to get in the way of one.
“You see anything?” Harry asked. He was a good troop. Bloody good shot too. Taught Ivan a thing or two about hitting empty bottles, that was for sure. Pity he couldn’t always replicate the bottle accuracy on the battlefield, but hell, better than having Wesley or Damon by your side.
“A lotta smoke. A lotta dust.”
“The usual, then.”
“The usual,” Ivan said.
He adjusted his grip on the rifle. Closed his eyes, which burned with a mixture of sand and heat and lack of sleep.
Opened them, not fresh but fresher than they were before.
No one on the right.
No one on the left.
To look at Baghdad and switch off completely from the events occurring, you’d see a beautiful city. Stunning white brick architecture contrasting the lush green trees. Magnificent blue domes raising into the sky. The river running right through the middle of it, just begging people to jump on in for a swim.
But the more you switched off, the more you imagined the lush smells of the grass, the cold splash of the water, the harsher the snap back to reality was when you heard another shout, or a spray of gunfire, or the crackling roar of helicopter propellors in the sky.
Sounds to remind you of where you really were.
Of what you were doing here.
Of who you were.
“Someone there,” Harry said.
Ivan blinked. Scanned the street through his scope. More dust. More sand. More rubble. “I don’t see anyone.”
“On the right. It’s … it’s a kid. Fuck, it’s a kid.”
Ivan didn’t see the kid at first. Not until he turned his scope to the right, and even then he struggled spotting him.
But when his gun settled on the kid, his hands went numb.
His stomach dropped.
“Fuck,” Harry repeated.
There was a boy right in the middle of the road. A mound of rubble surrounded him. Trapped his legs. Arms. Pinned him down. He was young, seven or eight perhaps. And he was skinny. Very skinny.
But the worst part was that he was alive.
His eyes were wide open.
Crying.
Screaming for help as blood dribbled down his sliced forehead.
Ivan shuffled a little. He knew the drill. He knew what he was in central Baghdad for. He’d seen the way the enemy used kids and women as weapons. Draw a soldier out to help them, pull a pin when they got close, exploding themselves and the soldiers in the process.
Warfare.
The ugly truth of warfare.
“He’s—he’s in pain,” Harry said, his voice quivery as he lay at the window to Iva
n’s right.
“We need to help him,” Ivan said.
“You know we can’t fucking help him.”
“He’s just a—”
“Just a kid? Like the kid who killed Connor? Stabbed him when he got too close? Just a kid like that?”
Ivan’s mouth was dry as chalk. His teeth rattled together even though he was boiling as fuck in all his army gear. He kept his sights on the boy. The boy who screamed, cried, mumbled words in a foreign language. No doubt words like “Mummy” and “Help!”
Just a kid.
Just a kid caught up in a war he hadn’t asked for.
Just a kid caught in the crosshairs.
“We should—we should put him out of his misery,” Harry said.
Ivan lowered his gun. He looked at Harry. “You’re—you’re saying we kill a kid?”
“I’m not saying we do fucking anything,” Harry said. “Just—just we need to do something. And I can’t keep on listenin’ to that kid. I just—I just can’t keep on—”
“You have no say in whether he lives or dies,” Ivan said, tensing up inside. “None of us do.”
“But sometimes we have to make the tough calls to stay alive,” Harry said. “Say we—say we leave this kid. Say he isn’t a bomber. Say he goes and shoots me in the back when I’m walking away. What the fuck do we do then, huh? What the fuck do we do then?”
Ivan swallowed a lump in his throat.
Looked out the cracked window at the child, no scope needed.
Desperate.
Begging for help.
Trapped in hell.
“I just need to move the rubble and let him—
“No,” Harry said. “You won’t do a fucking thing like it.”
“Try fucking stopping me,” Ivan said.
He yanked his gun up. Walked over the smashed glass inside the apartment block and over towards the door, which clung on by a solitary hinge.
He heard Harry saying things to him. Barking orders at him. Telling him he was breaching protocol, that he was going to pay for this.
But Ivan didn’t hear him. Not really.
Because all that mattered was that he was walking.
Walking towards the door.
Through the door.
Down the rickety wooden steps and into the sun.
His radio buzzed as he stood outside the door of the apartment block. “Ivan, get the fuck back here before—”
Ivan snapped the radio away.
Tossed it to the ground.
Because some things went beyond war.
Some things went beyond procedure.
Things like common decency.
Like life.
Being on the war-torn street brought a whole new perspective to Baghdad. Narrow alleyways and side-streets. Dead dogs, starving cats. Blood, lots of blood, all smeared on the once-white walls either side of Ivan.
Clouds of dust getting on his chest, drying out his mouth and his throat.
But all that mattered was the boy.
All that mattered was the boy in the rubble.
Ivan walked across the brittle stones which crumbled beneath his feet. The boy was a hundred metres or so off, yet the closer Ivan got to him, he just seemed to stretch further into the distance, his screams fading out, his hope drifting away.
But Ivan kept on walking.
Kept on walking, the searing sun blaring down on his head, sweat rolling down his face.
Kept on walking, the pack on his back turning his shoulders to mush.
Kept on walking towards the kid.
The kid he had to save.
The kid who hadn’t asked for any of this.
When he got fifty metres away, Ivan heard voices somewhere behind him. Footsteps. Gunfire. Not on this street, but not far away.
So close.
And here he was, exposed.
Here he was, aiding the enemy.
But no. This boy wasn’t the enemy. Even if he was rigged with explosives, he wasn’t the enemy.
He was just a boy.
Just a terrified boy, just like Ivan had been.
Just a—
He saw the bearded man dressed in white run out from his left.
Saw him in the corner of the eye, running towards the boy and shouting things, tears rolling down his cheeks and—
And then his neck snapped back.
Blood and brains burst out of his head.
Covered the sandy street.
“We’ve got fucking company!” Harry shouted from the window.
Ivan knew Harry was right. He knew enemy troops were heading their way. He could hear them. Feel them getting closer.
But the boy.
The boy was wriggling around.
Staring at the man Harry had shot with more tears rolling down his face.
Muttering, “Papa, Papa …”
A crushing blow of defeat ripped through Ivan’s core as he looked at the boy grieving for his father. And he felt a responsibility. A further responsibility to help this boy. To free him from an uncertain future. To drag the rubble away and send him on his way to hide; hide until this entire war was over, until—
Another bullet whooshed over Ivan’s head.
Slammed into the boy’s skull.
Silenced him.
“It’s over, Ivan,” Harry shouted. “You need to get the fuck up here. Right this second. It’s over.”
Ivan heard Harry. But he didn’t hear him. He didn’t take in what he’d said.
Because all he could look at, think of, was this boy.
This boy with blood dribbling out of a hole in his skull.
This boy trapped under the rubble lying beside the decapitated corpse of his dead father.
This boy destined to be buried by the feet of fighting soldiers.
And the other men and women, boys and girls that would fall after him.
He swore right then he’d always do the right thing.
The right thing for others.
The right thing for his country.
The right thing for himself.
He continued to swear he was doing the right thing when he stacked the corpses of his murdered cadet colleagues in the freezer room of the Fulwood Barracks.
When he sunk his teeth into the cooked flesh of a former friend and remarked how much he tasted like beef.
When he put the knife to Ted’s neck and slit his jugular.
He swore he was doing the right thing.
He just wasn’t sure he believed it anymore.
CHAPTER THREE
Ivan watched the Orion throw itself at Riley and the group and a part of him just wanted to stay put.
His emotions had been numbed. Nullified by recent events. Losing Nick and Abigail. The ordeal at the Birmingham Living Zone. The things the people there had done to him—torn his teeth away, stuffed new ones inside him. The beginning of the conversion process.
But as he stood here in the clouds, as the Orion launched itself at Riley in what felt like slow-motion, as the constant pain of simply existing crippled through his system, he knew he couldn’t afford to stay put.
Not anymore.
It wasn’t the right thing to stay put.
And sure, sometimes it didn’t always make sense to do the right thing. Sometimes, the idea of right and wrong could get blurred, especially in a lawless world like the one he lived in now.
But he knew he had to step in.
He had to help this group.
Not because he owed it to them or owed it to himself, but just because he had to.
There were some things in life you just had to do whether you liked it or not.
He lifted the heavy rock by his side and sprinted towards the Orion.
Sprinted at it no matter how much it hurt him.
No matter how much it crippled him with agony.
He sprinted.
Riley stepped in front of the rest of the group. Lifted his gun. Pointed it at the Orion as it got closer, closer.
Iva
n held his breath.
Felt the strength coursing through his body; the strength that being injected back at the BLZ had given him.
The painful but undeniable strength.
And as the Orion closed in on the group, Ivan lifted the rock.
Threw it as hard as he could at the Orion’s back.
Felt his muscles split with the force.
He watched the rock fly through the air. Watched it as it too moved in slow motion.
As the Orion opened its mouth.
Pounced.
Readied to bite.
Readied to …
The rock collided with its head.
Snapped its neck to one side.
Sent it tumbling onto its chest, screaming and scrambling around on the grass, neck loose and flimsy.
“Quick!” Jordanna shouted. “While it’s fucking down.”
And Ivan knew what Jordanna meant. Run. Run while it was down. Run while they had a chance, a small chance of getting away, getting into the woods.
But Ivan knew that running into the woods would do jack shit of good.
He knew they had to finish the Orion.
Finish it off or it would stalk them forever.
Finish it off or watch more people die, one by painful one.
So Ivan ran towards the Orion as it wriggled and writhed around in the grass.
He ran at it and felt stabbing pains in his kneecaps, tasted blood in his mouth.
He ran at it and he didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, not consciously, only that he had to kill it.
He had to finish it.
He had to put the Orion down—
He felt something smack into his right cheek.
Flew back and hit the ground.
His eyes clouded over and his hearing blurred, just like it used to when bombs went off in Iraq. He blinked. Tried to get rid of the blurriness.
When he did, the Orion was standing over him.
“Ivan, quick!” someone shouted. Tamara. Maybe Jordanna. Possibly even Chloë. Hard to tell.
Hard to tell when this tall, ghastly beast was closing in on him.
Hard to tell when its thick, putrid saliva was falling down onto his face.
Covering his skin in a burning jelly-like glue.
He held his breath and he knew right then that this was the moment it ended. There was nothing he could do. He could fight, sure. And he would fight. He’d fight to the death if he had to. And he did have to, that was the thing.
