by Ryan Casey
Table of Contents
EPISODE NINETEEN
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
EPISODE TWENTY
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPISODE TWENTY-ONE
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPISODE TWENTY-TWO
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPISODE TWENTY-THREE
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPISODE TWENTY-FOUR
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Want More Dead Days?
About the Author
About this Book
Copyright
DEAD DAYS
The Complete Fourth Season
***
Ryan Casey
***
RyanCaseyBooks.com
If you want to be notified when Ryan Casey’s next novel is released and receive exclusive goodies, please sign up to his mailing list.
http://ryancaseybooks.com/ryan-casey-readers-group
Dead Days Season Four is the fourth instalment in the long-running series.
If you’d like to read the previous entries in the series, visit here:
Season One
Season Two
Season Three
EPISODE NINETEEN
ASSAULT
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON FOUR)
Prologue
Four weeks into the end of the world and Cameron Schraeder still wasn’t used to all this death.
He looked around the camp they’d set up just outside of Manchester. Looked at the blood-coated green tents, lit up in the dark by crackling fires. The people sprawled around the grass, some of them clearly dead, like Alan, his chest torn open and his flesh spewing out. Some of them alive, wriggling around, like Candice, who had a massive bite mark in her leg.
He looked around and he saw these people who he knew, these people he’d fought with, fought so hard with to get this far, and he saw nothing but death.
Nothing but loss.
Nothing but the end.
Shouting, screaming, the sound of metal cracking against skulls surrounded Cameron. The remainders of his group fought off those who had turned already, put weapons into the skulls of the bitten dead, the undead.
And Cameron just stood there. Stood there and looked around at the scene. Stood there, felt his little finger twitching. Saw these people. His friends.
The people who’d helped save him when he’d been stuck in his house back in Blackburn with his rotting family.
The people who’d forced him to take the rope from around his neck. Given him the will to survive. To power on.
A will that died. Went out, like a flame, right after this assault.
The smell of death was strong in the early December breeze. The rotting stench of the walking corpses. The smoky mixture of gunfire, of charred flesh.
The smells of vomit, of piss, of sweat.
The odour of the new world.
Others said they’d got used to it. Adapted to it. And that it’d get easier as time went on, as life passed by.
But Cameron couldn’t believe that.
There was no “easy” anymore. Just “easier.”
“We have to go.”
A voice, panting in his left ear. Still muffled, as he tried to comprehend the scene. As he looked out over the dark hills in the distance, over at the high-rise buildings of Manchester even further ahead.
“Cameron, we have to—”
“We bury our dead. And then we move.”
He looked right at Dan. Sweat poured down Dan’s face from his wispy dark hair. His white shirt underneath his grey winter coat was covered with blood, with scratch marks. Cameron could see him shaking. Hear his teeth chattering.
And in a way, he saw his own fear in Dan. His own realisation.
This was the end.
There was no such thing as unity anymore.
Because eventually, everyone went away.
Even Dan, who’d been there from the beginning. Who’d stormed into his locked house searching for supplies and found him at the top of the staircase with tears down his cheeks and ready to jump.
Dan, who’d said those words to him that gave him the will to fight on, to power on, even though his wife and two kids were rotting away in the bedroom next to him.
Never believe it’s the end. There’s always a chance to start again.
Dan, immortal Dan. He’d go away too.
Just not yet.
Dan sniffed up. Behind him, a woman—Alison, she was called. Such a pretty young thing. Blonde, fresh out of college, just starting university before the world collapsed.
Right now she was digging her dirty fingernails into the muddy ground, dragging herself along, her guts oozing out of a series of bite marks on her left side, shifting out of her body with every agonising move.
Cameron took in a deep breath. Gulped down a lump of vomit. His mouth always tasted of vomit these days. Maybe another thing he’d have to adapt to, get used to.
He crouched down beside Alison. She looked at him with fear. With tears in her blue eyes. Snot down her face, her blubbering lips.
He wiped her hair out of her eyes and hushed her.
“Please don’t … don’t kill me. Don’t …”
A lump grew in Cameron’s throat as the chaos ensued around him, as Dan ran off to deal with another of the zombies, as more screams and shouts and cracking of skulls echoed around the camp.
He stared into Alison’s eyes. Saw her pleading with him. Pleading with him not to kill her, and yet at the same time, pleading with him not to let her turn. Because that was the hard part about all this mess. Being bitten, it was like being served with a sudden life sentence. Or a cancer diagnosis, only you had just minutes or hours to live instead of days, weeks, months, years.
“Please don’t … don’t let me turn … don’t kill me. Please.”
Except with a cancer diagnosis, there was still hope. Still hope that the body might turn on the cancer. Fight back. Send it flying into remission.
“Please don’t … don’t …”
With the infection, the bites, there was nothing.
Cameron wiped the tears from his stinging eyes, which had become so used to crying, and he pulled the knife out of his pocket.
“Ssh,” he said.
He heard Alison cry out, felt her grip his left hand,
but he’d already turned away and swung the knife into her temple.
She didn’t die instantly.
He felt her hand tighten upon contact.
Listened to her splutter, let out one final cry.
And then she went still.
He sniffed up the putrid air and stepped away from Alison. Looked around at Dan, as he whacked a teenage girl zombie into the ground. At Peters, as he was pinned down, kicking out and did all he could to get the pile of undead off him.
He looked around at the killing grounds, looked at the hills and the city in the distance, and he hoped he’d never get used to all this death.
Because by getting used to all this death, he’d be saying goodbye to the one thing that separated him from the zombies.
His own humanity.
“What do we do?” Andrew shouted, as he downed the last of the zombies.
Cameron looked at the bodies around him. The bodies of those he’d loved. Those he’d fought for. Those who’d fought for him.
Never believe it’s the end. There’s always a chance to start again.
“We bury them,” he said.
And they did.
And just a part of him felt human for doing that. Just a part of him felt like a responsible human being.
He had to hold on to that part.
No matter what.
Twenty-five days later …
Cameron held down the little girl they called Chloë on the road outside the “Living Zone” and for a split second, whether it was her long, mousy hair or that stubborn look of resilience in the place of fear, he saw his daughter.
But then he let that thought go.
Let it drift away.
Because he wanted to survive, and these people were getting in the way of that. He wanted the people he cared about to survive. He didn’t want more of his friends to die at the hands of these thugs.
That’s why he’d killed the boy. To send a message.
All for the right cause.
All for survival.
And survival was inside that Living Zone. Survival was in there for his people. A chance to start afresh.
Never believe it’s the end. There’s always a chance to start again.
He held on to that thought as he brought the sharp blade down onto Chloë’s face.
As he sliced her forehead.
As he tore her cheeks open.
CHAPTER ONE
“Pedro, you … you shouldn’t be here. You should be gearing up.”
Pedro stared through the glass. He blinked a few times, blinked his heavy, tired eyes, thought maybe he was hallucinating or imagining what was in front of him.
But every time he opened his eyes again, he saw Riley.
Riley, behind that glass with vacant eyes.
Riley with bandages around his legs.
Riley staring back at him like an animal in a zoo.
Jim Hall walked over to Pedro while the labbie pressed a button that brought a shutter down over Riley’s window.
Pedro stepped up to it. “No. Wait. You can’t—”
“Riley Jameson needs some rest,” Jim Hall said. He grabbed Pedro’s arm. Although there wasn’t much force behind it, and Pedro was frigging well sure he could handle this scrawny Jim Hall motherfucker with little effort, he stopped.
Stopped and stared into Riley’s eyes as the shutters lowered.
Watched him disappear like he wasn’t even there in the first place.
He turned around. Heart pounded. Sweat dripped down his forehead. He was tireder than he’d been for a frigging age. But that didn’t seem to matter no more. Not now he’d seen Riley.
Seen that look in Riley’s eyes.
“You … you said you cured him. What do you mean you cured him?”
Jim Hall lowered his head. Rubbed his big-ass hands together. Peeked a glance over at the white-coat labbie, who just shrugged.
“Are you gonna tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on here or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”
Jim Hall cracked a smile at that. “You won’t beat a thing out of me. Not when you hear what we have to say.”
The labbie sighed. “Jim, you can’t—”
“I run this Living Zone,” Jim said, raising his voice. “I’ll do what I damned well please. Now go in there and see to Riley. Take him some water. Some food. Do your job.”
The labbie opened his mouth. Looked like he was going to protest for a few seconds.
And then he sighed and stomped away.
Pedro watched him leave the open, dark building they were in. The route he’d entered, it stank of piss and shit. No doubt a guise to stop people coming in here.
A guise to hide the truth.
He tried to add up all his thoughts in his muddled mind. Bitch of a day. First, the struggle getting here. The people they’d lost. Barry. Elaine.
A lump formed in his throat.
Josh.
And then learning about the Living Zone. What it was—an infrastructure built years ago, a safeguard in case the weapon of damned mass destruction that was Apocalypsis got into the wrong damned hands.
Which it clearly had.
Quite a mindfuck.
“I know you’ll want answers,” Jim said.
“I want to know why my friend’s in there. I want to know what’s happening to him. What … you said you couldn’t cure it.”
Jim started walking. His heavy footsteps echoed around the empty, wide-open space of this derelict building. Dust kicked up underneath his feet.
“We found this man on a scouting mission up near Lancaster,” Jim Hall said.
“Scouting for what?”
“People. Government. People stationed in various military bunkers connected to a tunnel system that runs down the spine of the north of England.”
It was all gobbledygook to Pedro, especially added on top of all the crap he’d heard so far today. “What … But the government. They’re gone. There’s no government left.”
Jim Hall held his smile as they stepped back through the door Pedro had entered just moments earlier. Back into the damp, pissy smell, into the darkness. “The government we knew might’ve gone, yes. But we’re the new government now. The new world order, whatever. Anyway, the people on the scout, we didn’t think we’d found any government friends at first. Not until they found your friend. Bitten multiple times. Barely conscious.”
A sickening feeling spread through Pedro’s stomach. “So Riley. He … Why didn’t you just kill him? What made you … what made you try and … and cure him?”
They walked further down the dark corridor, back towards the light coming from the street outside, towards the jovial chatter and cheer of Christmas Day spirit. Pedro had never been a fan, truth be told. So damned artificial. Fake smiles, fake happiness, all that bullshit.
Never for him.
Not since he’d lost his Sam, anyway.
“My scouts were about to exterminate him when they found one of the government men. Alan Mixter, his name. Found him bitten too. Bitten, in a wheelchair, but alive. Alive and kicking.”
“Shit,” Pedro said. “Not a good day to be in office.”
Jim Hall stopped by the door leading out from this ghastly-smelling shit tip. He peeked out of the door to see if anyone was looking. This section of the street looked clear, so he opened the door up and the pair stepped back out into the light. Pedro found himself checking his left and right, looking over his shoulder, reaching for his gun, although it had been confiscated. Still wasn’t used to safety. Didn’t seem right. Wouldn’t ever seem right again.
“Alan was showing exceptional resilience to the strain of Apocalypsis he’d been infected with. He thought he was immune, but he wasn’t the important one after all.”
“You said sometimes that happens to people. The resilience. What makes Alan so different?”
They walked down the empty street, past the open doors of abandoned but well-maintained shops like it was some sort of model village. Jim Hall’s
smile was at breaking point. “Alan wasn’t the different one. Riley, on the other hand, was. We combined an experimental formula we’d been working on with Riley’s blood—and something remarkable happened. The Apocalypsis started fighting itself. Ingesting itself. The cure reacted with something inside Riley. Something we’ve never seen before.”
As they walked further down the street—the street that was so damned normal—Pedro spotted a few kids kicking a football about, using their wooly hats as goal posts. From the window of a red-bricked house just behind them, a blonde mother and a dark-haired father with reindeer antlers on his head looked out, smiled.
Looked … happy. Normal.
“So Riley’s … he’s the cure?”
Jim Hall nodded fast. “We put an experimental mixture of several kinds in his body. It was a big risk, granted, but he was infected anyway and he absolutely wasn’t going to make it. And at first, we thought it’d failed. He lost consciousness. Went cold. Heart stopped for a whole minute.”
He looked right at Pedro. Tears were building up in his grey-metal eyes.
“And then he came back from the dead. But not as one of those infected. As one of us. That’s never happened before. And we’ve tried the formula on others. Taken some of Riley’s blood and taken a look at it, but we haven’t been able to replicate anything quite as … miraculous. Riley’s unique.”
They walked further down the street. Approached the metal steps to the building on the right, which backed up against the towering metal wall that surrounded the Northern Quarter of Manchester. The steps to the room where Tamara, Chloë, and that Jordanna chick were all waiting, devising a plan to rescue Dom from goggly-eyed fucker, Cameron.
“Today, he woke up,” Jim Hall said, letting Pedro lead the way up the steps.
Pedro walked slowly up the steps. Listened to his feet clang against the metal. Didn’t care how loud he plonked them down. Knew that nobody could get him behind these Living Zone walls. This place was a good place. A phenomenal place.
“Does that mean you can cure all the goons? Fix this whole damned world?”
Jim shook his head. “I wish that were the case. But natural decomposition has set in with most of the infected. Not to mention blood loss, things like that. We can save people. Save those who are on the verge of turning, just turning, even. Maybe those that have just turned. But we can’t stop what’s natural.
