by Ryan Casey
Take away all his research.
Or worse …
No. Nobody would find them. He’d only been without CCTV for a day. He only had to wait until the morning to have it activated again.
He stepped inside his surgery. Took in a deep breath of the constant disinfectant smell. He walked through the reception area and over towards his office. He liked the surgery at this time of night. So quiet, so peaceful. And although he appreciated the security of his high-rise flat to the west of the MLZ, being in a bed and feigning normality reminded him too much of home.
Too much of his life before.
He lifted his key out of his pocket. Twisted it around in the lock.
He slept here sometimes. When the memories of Alex, his ex-boyfriend, came back to him when he lay alone in bed at night, he longed for some kind of distraction. The distraction that his work always brought.
Granted, Alex used to go crazy at him for leaving in the early hours back when he was alive, back before the world went to hell. Used to tell him he didn’t know where his work ended and his private life started. That he was obsessed with his research, his studies.
He lowered the handle of his office door.
If only Alex knew what it was Michael was studying. If only he’d been able to share the details of Influenza B/H3N4. Maybe things would’ve been different.
Maybe Alex would still be alive.
Because it was those moments in bed together, holding hands, the gentle rise and fall of Alex’s chest … although they were only moments, they were the ones Michael missed.
The ones he longed for.
The memories that haunted him and brought him back to this office.
He pushed the door open and the first thing he noticed was the draft brushing through the smashed window.
And then he saw the light. The light coming from the door.
His chest tightened up.
They couldn’t. They …
A hot, searing pain at the bottom of his left leg right by his ankle.
He screamed out. Fell back, tumbled to the floor.
He cracked his head on the hard tiles and tried to look up, tried to see what was coming for him, tried to understand …
Someone had let them out. Someone had got in and let them out.
He had to get to a phone.
He had to warn Jim Hall.
He knew he’d been bitten. He accepted he’d been bitten.
He accepted death.
But he had to let Jim know about this—had to get this place cordoned off and quarantined, had to have himself exterminated. Or the whole MLZ could fall like dominos.
He pulled himself up. Twisted onto his front. Tasted blood in his mouth. His head spun, wrecked with the collision with the floor. His leg was even worse—a hot pain getting gradually sharper, more acute, but spreading around his body.
He dragged himself along the floor towards the front desk. Heard shuffling behind him. He just had to keep calm. Get to the desk. Ring Jim. Ring Jim before he turned. Before the infected got out of here. Because people hadn’t been immunised against the form of B/H3N4 he was studying.
And even if they had, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t turn.
Such was life in these days.
He scraped his fingernails into the tiles. Dragged himself closer to the front desk. Tried to block out the shuffling behind him.
Nearly there. Almost there …
He stretched as hard as he could for the phone.
Couldn’t reach.
“Fuck.”
He edged his legs forward, but the pain in his left thigh was unbearable. He took deep, calming breaths right into his stomach. Tried to keep the thoughts of Alex out of his mind.
“You should stay at home with me some time. Just one morning waking up in this bed beside me…”
He tasted salt and he knew he was crying as he grabbed the phone cord, pulled it to the floor.
He dialled in the first numbers, his fingers shaking and his vision clouding. He did all he could not to look at the infected that were no doubt coming his way. They were chained at the feet. They couldn’t get far. They wouldn’t get to him. Just had to dial the number. Just had to dial, say the words. Dial, and …
He saw the little girl with ginger hair standing right above him.
It was a girl he recognised through her striking hair. Annabelle, he thought. Bit of a brat, really. Always bossing her poor mum and dad around, them always caving to her demands with the excuse of “it’s the end of the world.”
He wanted to ask Annabelle why she was here. What she was doing in his office.
And then he saw the glassiness of her eyes in the moonlight.
The stream of blood dripping down her mouth, which had been chewed up like the rest of her face.
He went to dial the final number when Annabelle threw herself at him and sunk her teeth into his neck.
He tried to struggle free. Tried to push her away but she just latched on, teeth clamped down on his skin.
And then he heard—actually heard—something pop and started to choke as blood oozed out of his jugular, Annabelle still latching on, gnawing at his neck, the red-hot pain getting more and more painful.
He fell to the floor with the phone still between his fingers.
He just had one more number to dial.
One more button to press.
But then he felt the warmth of Alex beside him in his bed back at home.
Felt his fingers between his, as his vision got blurry, his eyes got tireder.
“Stay here with me today,” Alex said.
So Michael closed his eyes and he stayed.
The phone dropped from his fingers.
CHAPTER FIVE
Riley wasn’t even close to sleeping when he heard the sirens.
He thought he was imagining them at first, as he lay there in the darkness of his room. Thought they were just the noise of his mind playing even more tricks on him.
Or the sound of his body giving in, turning into a creature, slowly but surely …
But then he saw the lights, too. The flashing blue lights through the thin white curtains in front of his window. And then the sirens, much like air-raid ones from the Second World War, spread to ringing fire alarms on the corridor outside his apartment so he had no doubts about their reality.
He sat upright. Listened to the sirens outside. The noisy fire alarm in the corridor.
He’d been taught about those sirens on his induction.
What the sirens, the blue lights, the fire alarms all meant.
Lockdown.
He shuffled off the edge of his bed. Stumbled over to the window to take a peek outside.
The streets were empty. Not unusual for four a.m. in the morning. He lived on a quiet street just outside of the main centre of town. Alan Mixter—his wheel-chaired friend who he didn’t see much of these days—Pedro and Tamara all lived in this block with him. Just across the street above the boarded up arcade, he saw Jordanna and Chloë’s room on the second floor. There was a light on in their room. Movement behind the curtains.
And then, just as Riley was about to turn away and check he’d locked his apartment door, he saw something in the corner of his eye just up the road.
There was a group of people. Men, women, children. Black, white, all kinds of races and ages. Twenty of them at least, all staggering up the road.
Riley felt the hairs on his arms creep up.
He’d never seen that kind of stagger within the walls of the MLZ before.
He’d never seen that aimless, lifeless shuffle.
To the right, he saw someone else moving. A young couple—man and woman, both running hand-in-hand towards the apartment block opposite Riley, both with fear on their faces, screaming at the top of their voices.
Riley’s heart pounded as he watched the couple struggle with the apartment block door.
As three of the crowd to the left started walking fast, then jogging.
As the
couple tried to run away.
Tried …
And then the trio leaped on top of them and sunk their teeth into their necks.
Sickness overcame Riley. Sickness and realisation of the reality, as he stood there listening to the sirens and the alarms, watching the flashing blue lights.
The MLZ was compromised.
Creatures were inside the walls.
He pulled across his curtains and walked into the middle of the room. Didn’t switch the lights on. Didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to himself. He’d remembered Jim Hall’s words on his first induction two months ago. “Under no circumstances do you leave your room. We have safety measures to deal with any potential outbreak, as unlikely as they may be. We have people.”
But after seeing the crowd outside—seeing the young couple torn apart, knowing they’d be on their feet again soon to join that crowd, Riley knew that this virus spread fast.
The MLZ was supposed to be a safe haven.
Any significant loss and residents would begin to question just how safe they were once again.
They didn’t need that. Not one bit.
But what could he do? What could he do but wait?
As he went to sit on the edge of his bed, his phone rang. At first, he thought it was part of the lockdown system. His phone never rang. The place was so laid back that nothing was ever as urgent as it was in the times before the Dead Days. They all had landline phones fitted to a local central hub, but they rarely used them.
Riley stood up. Walked over to the coffee table where the old black landline phone sat. Wrapped his fingers around the handle as the alarms and the sirens and the chaos ensued.
Lifted it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Riley. Are you there?”
Jim Hall.
“Yeah. I think everyone’s in with all the alarms going off. What’s—”
“Something terrible’s happened.” He sounded terrified. Like he’d lost control. Not something Riley was used to hearing from him. “I … I don’t know what or how or … I just don’t—”
“Wait. Slow down. What … We need to think about this. How did the creatures get inside?”
Jim Hall took in a few shaky breaths. He sounded like he’d been crying. “Either … either they breached the walls. But—but that’s impossible. We have—we have multiple people on guard duty. If … if one fell, someone else would surely have dealt with them.”
The sound of bullets outside. Of screams and shouts.
“Or …” A pause from Jim Hall. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
“What?”
“I … I tried calling Dr Wellingborough on his landline. But—but he just keeps going through to answerphone. I wonder if … He must be at the surgery. He goes there sometimes at night. Riley, if something happened there, we’re in big trouble. His—his work. His studies and research into the cure. He keeps all of that in his office. And—and that’s what you’re going to need with you on your trip to Birmingham or it’s back to square one.”
Riley squeezed the bridge of his nose. “So you’re asking me to go down there and find it?”
“I’m asking you to go down there and take it. There’s—there’s no time to wait around here anymore. It’s not safe. Not safe keeping you inside these walls any longer. You … Jamal who runs the armoured vehicles. Get the research then get to him. I’ll tell him the situation—”
“What about support? And … and how am I supposed to know where the hell I’m going?”
A blast on Jim Hall’s end of the line. Crumbling static crackled through the top of the phone. “You—Riley, if this outbreak spirals out of control, we’ll be forced to quarantine the high-risk areas. You know what that means for Dr Wellingborough’s office.”
Riley did know what Jim Hall was referring to. Another part of his induction. If any area is subject to a high level of Apocalypsis infection, that area will be purged as soon as is safely possible. “The doctor’s surgery will be destroyed.”
“The cure research will be destroyed,” Jim Hall said. “And … and then you’ll die. We’ll all die. Back to square one.”
Nausea welled up inside Riley’s stomach and chest. How quickly a day could turn on its head. He’d been living in a blur for two months. Living without real appreciation of just how safe, how secure, he’d become. “I … I can’t do this alone. I can’t go to Birmingham alone. I’ll … I’ll fuck it—”
“Then find your own soldiers to accompany you,” Jim Hall said. “Lord knows ours are gonna be stretched to the limit as it is with this outbreak.”
Find your own soldiers. He thought of his friends. Pedro. Tamara. Chloë. He thought of how much they’d adapted to this new normal. How reluctant they’d be to just walk away from it.
How guilty he’d feel for tearing their happiness away from them.
“I’m sorry, Riley,” Jim Hall said. He sounded like he was sobbing again. “This … Maybe we got too complacent. Maybe we … I don’t know but we’ll investigate. But you know what you need to do. We … we’re all counting on you. And by ‘we,’ you know damned well I’m not just talking about the MLZ.”
Riley was about to respond when the phone cut out to static.
He held it close to his ear for a few seconds. Listened to the static as it mixed with the alarms, the sirens.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. Put the phone back on its cradle. Walked over to his bed, crouched beside it, and pulled a lengthy machete he kept there for safe keeping from underneath. If only he were allowed to keep his gun in his room.
He dressed in his black protective gear. Wouldn’t stop the sharpest of teeth slipping through, but it would help keep most of his body guarded.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Looked at the black protective gear that covered all but his face.
Looked at the machete in his hand and saw himself as the man he was before he’d reached the MLZ again.
Saw the things he’d done flash back in front of him.
And then he went over to the drawer underneath the mirror.
Pulled the silver heart shaped locket that belonged to Anna out of the top one.
Held it tightly in his hand, then slipped it into his pocket.
He was getting Dr Wellingborough’s research.
And then he was getting out of here and to Birmingham.
He walked over to the door of his apartment and he took one final look around his room. At the comfy king-sized bed. At the breeze rippling the curtains through the slightly open window.
And then he took a deep breath, opened his apartment door and stepped outside.
There was no such thing as stasis as long as the dead walked.
Riley stepped out onto the corridor and felt a chill spread over him right away.
It was light out here. Always was. Safety measures, which made sense considering there were thirty or so flats on this floor.
He wanted to leave them all alone. Walk past every single one of them and go on his mission to the doctor’s surgery, and then to Birmingham, alone. He didn’t want to burden his friends.
But he found himself walking down towards Flat 319.
Lifting his hand and banging on the wooden door.
Holding his breath, waiting for a response.
He didn’t get one.
“It’s … it’s me,” he said, realising that nobody would willingly answer their door in a time of lockdown. “It’s Riley. It’s safe to come to your door. Just … Please. I need to talk.”
He heard nothing but silence behind the wooden door.
And then he heard footsteps. Whispers.
“Riley? What you doing out, bruv? Should be in—”
“Pedro I need to talk to you. It’s … it’s about the cure. And … and all of this, actually.” As he spoke, he wasn’t sure how to tell Pedro the truth of his condition. Of what he had to do, the steps he had to take. It was like a boulder on his shoulders, and the only way of shifting it was letting i
t out as a splurge of words. “I … Something’s happened. At the doctor’s place. I … I’m dying, Pedro. I’m dying and I need to get down to that surgery or everything’s—”
The chain lock clinked against the door. A few seconds later, the door creaked open.
Riley got a whiff of Pedro’s sweat mixed with sweet perfume as Pedro stood there, topless, peeking through the crack in the door. He didn’t open the door fully, and Riley knew exactly why. Some reason, he liked keeping Tamara and him secret. And Tamara seemed completely fine with that too, rebutting Riley every time he questioned her about her “closeness” to Pedro.
They had something. Something special, no doubt about that.
But that something special made Riley hurt even more inside at the sheer audacity of asking Pedro to help him.
“What’s up, bruv? What you talkin’ about?”
Riley stood there in the corridor. His lips were moving, but no sounds were coming out. He sighed. Took a deep breath. Started again. “The cure inside me. It’s regressing. But the doctor, he was convinced that with a few more tweaks, with better infrastructure, they could put me on the right track again. Put the cure on the right track.”
He told Pedro about the Birmingham Living Zone. About the SAD system that had the capability of distributing a working cure to every single person in the country.
He told Pedro about what he had to do. About getting to the BLZ. Taking Dr Wellingborough’s research and studies along with him for further investigation.
About saving everyone.
And Pedro just stood there. Stood there and watched.
He scratched the back of his neck when Riley finished. Winced, as the fire alarms in the corridor seemed to get louder. “Bruv, I dunno how … what we’ve got here. It’s good—”
“It’s falling to pieces,” Riley said, pointing down the corridor. “We’ve got creatures on the streets. It’s a lockdown. People stuck in their rooms for God knows how long. Hope will slide. Fear will become the new normal again. I have to get there, Pedro. And …” He looked at the floor outside Pedro’s room. “I’m asking for your help. As a friend. Please. Come with me to the doctor’s office. Come with me to Birmingham.”
When Riley looked back up at Pedro, he could tell from the look on his face what his answer was already.
