by Ryan Casey
Mr Fletch could feel his stomach starting to tingle. He’d never seen anything like this before. “Just take a look down there and tell me what you see.”
He backed away, but the image of the Apocalypsis strand being attacked—consuming itself—stayed firmly fixed in his mind.
Hailey peered down the periscope. Mr Fletch tried his best to stop shaking. He didn’t know anything for definite yet. What he’d seen, it could just be an accident. An act of sheer chance.
“Streptococcus mutans …” Hailey mumbled. Her cheeks were blushing. She grabbed the side of the work surface to get her balance. “It’s … it’s attacking the B/H3N4. It’s eating it up.”
She rose from the periscope. Looked at Mr Fletch with her wide eyes.
“I … I think this is it. I think we could have something here,” Hailey said.
Hailey was right. They did have something. She spent many more days and weeks studying the bacteria—the bacteria that she was referring to as a virophage. But still, there was no evidence of the virophage affecting the B/H3N4 infected. It was too small. Too weak. Too ineffective.
That’s where the humans came in.
That’s where the Orions came in.
That’s where Mr Fletch said goodbye to the preservation of the few and hello to the saving of the many.
That’s where the nightmare started.
CHAPTER TEN
The light above him was bright, searing.
He opened his eyes, but doing so was hard. His eyelids were so heavy. Where was he? Who was he? He’d never woken up from a sleep like this before, he didn’t think. He felt like his entire body and mind had been reset. Like he’d been snatched out of his past life and cast into another body, another world.
Riley. Riley Jameson.
Yes. That was his name. Riley Jameson. He was twenty-nine years old. He lived with … with his friend, Ted. They lived in a flat together in the middle of Preston City Centre. They—
The memories shot back like a bullet to the head.
The creatures.
The Living Zone.
The horrible, tar-covered monster sticking its teeth into his neck, then backing away.
And then men in blue uniforms firing at his neck, knocking him to sleep.
On their uniforms, the letters “BLZ.”
Birmingham Living Zone.
He forced his eyes open some more, forced himself to squint at the burning bright light above him. His neck hurt even more than it had when it’d been bitten, the pain spreading round to the front now. His head ached, too, and he could taste the dull metal of blood in the back of his throat.
When he opened his eyes, he realised he wasn’t lying down at all. He was pinned up. Pinned up to some kind of metal slab, hanging like Christ from the cross. The room he was in was white-tiled, grey-silver walls like the hatch off Lost. In front of him, a huge mirror, where he saw himself hanging, his chest and feet bare, just a pair of green pyjama bottoms on underneath.
Beside him to his left, he saw Tamara.
And then James.
And then Jordanna.
He looked around at them.
“Tamara?”
They were all fast asleep, unconscious. All hanging from the same kind of metal slabs as Riley.
The room went on for quite a distance. Three more metal slabs, which were empty. Right at the bottom of the long room, a metal door.
He felt like he was being watched.
A camera with a little red light pointed right at him, staring down at him.
Riley shook at the tight metal cuffs around his arms. His shoulders felt heavy from the gravity of hanging from his wrists. “Let us out of here. We’re—we’re from the MLZ. We’re … we have the cure.”
And then Riley remembered the rucksack.
Shit. The rucksack. The rucksack with the cure documents inside. Had he dropped them? Dropped them when he’d stepped into the back of that white minivan to clear out the family of creatures?
Had the BLZ men left it on the road for some unknowing soul to find it and use the papers for lighting a fire?
Riley pulled as hard as he could at the cuffs around his wrists and his ankles, but it was no use. They were tight, metal. No way was he getting out of here without someone’s help.
He just wasn’t too sure where that help was coming from.
He looked up at the camera. “Hey! I’m awake in here. Did you hear me? I came from Manchester. Your friends at Manchester. Jim Hall. I have the cure. I was cured. I was bitten, I turned, and now I—”
A door to Riley’s right that he hadn’t even noticed whooshed open.
A man walked through.
He was tall. Really tall, actually. He was wearing glasses and had a flaky balding scalp. There were frown lines on his serious forehead and around his mouth. He was wearing a white coat, like a labcoat, a blue shirt underneath, and black trousers and shoes.
“Please,” Riley said, as the man stepped into the room. “We’re here because—”
“Because you came from the Manchester Living Zone,” the man said. “I understand that. I’ve had eyes on that vehicle of yours for a while now.”
Riley gulped. His throat was so dry. “So you’ll … you’ll know why I’m here.”
“I know what you say,” the man said, stepping right in front of Riley and looking into his eyes. His breath smelled minty. Too minty. Artificial, almost. “A cure. For Influenza B/H3N4. Quite a bold claim.”
“The information,” Riley said. “The—the research that Dr. Wellingborough did. It’s all in the black rucksack I had with me. And—and I’m dying. The Apocalypsis is taking a hold again. But Jim Hall, he told me to come here. That you’d be able to help me. That you’d be able to use your facilities to—to tweak the cure. And then use the SAD to get the cure out for everyone.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “The ‘SAD’?”
Riley nodded. “The … the Systematic Airborne Distributor. Jim Hall told me about it.”
The man forced a flat smile. He took off his glasses, wiped them on his white coat and stepped away from Riley. “I’m sorry, sir, but it sounds to me like Jim’s sold you up the river.”
The words were a stab in an already aching gut to Riley. “But he … They fixed me. They said I was close. They said I—”
“There is no SAD. There is no long-term cure to Apocalypsis,” the man said. “Not of the medicinal variety, anyway. Believe me, we’ve studied and we’ve researched.”
He turned around and faced Riley.
“I’m sorry, sir. But you’re not as special as you think you are.”
Riley just couldn’t wrap his head around this man’s words. Why would Jim Hall lie to him? Why would he send him to Birmingham if he knew there was no SAD, and no long-term Apocalypsis cure?
“I came back from the dead,” Riley said. “The formula described in the notes, it fixed me. It can fix other people too, with just a few tweaks. That’s what they told me. And I’m still here. So it has to be true.”
The man stepped right up to Riley again. Stared into his eyes. “I have the rucksack. I know exactly which formula it is you speak of. And I’m impressed. I’m impressed that you have this ‘cure’ inside you. But you have to think of things logistically, ‘Mr Jameson’. Say you do have a ‘cure’ inside you. Okay. So we tweak it. We figure out a way to use it on those who have already been bitten, and everyone who hasn’t already been bitten. But what then?
The infected are already decomposing. If there’s any potential for a return from the dead, they’ll just die upon that return of blood loss or gangrene. A horrible, painful death. And the people who have just been bitten. Sure, a cure could work for those people. But there’s still logistical issues. There’s still the issue of how we distribute the cure. And there’s still the problem of a potential relapse. Another expensive disaster that we just can’t afford.”
Riley tried to wrap his head around this man’s words. “So what are you saying?”
&n
bsp; The man broke into a more natural smile, now. “I believe you’ve already met one of my Orions.”
Riley shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Yes you do,” the man said. He pointed to Riley’s neck, and Riley saw the bite marks the man was pointing to in the reflection of the mirror. “You saw it. You felt it put its teeth inside you. And you saw it back off and obliterate the infected, like any good antidote should do.”
Riley thought back to the tar-skin and the sharp teeth of the monster that had bitten him and butchered all those creatures. An Orion.
“See, the Orions are a much more effective means of cleansing Apocalypsis from the face of the earth. They hunt the undead. They will hunt the undead until they find every last one, and then they will come back to us—like we’ve genetically trained them—and they too will be eliminated.”
He stepped over to the mirror. Pushed a button at the side of it. The mirror gave way to perfectly clear glass.
“You see, it’s possible for us to modify the human body rather easily now. And it’s for such a good cause. It’s for the restoration of the planet. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of such a noble act?”
The mirror faded completely away.
The tightened muscles in Riley’s arms and ankles gave way.
“I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself,” the man said, “I’m Mr Fletch. And this is the latest, perfected Orion model.”
Riley looked at the grey skin of the monster behind the glass, much more sturdy than the monster that had bitten his neck.
Looked at its huge, distinctive, predatory teeth.
But it was the monster’s eyes he looked at the most.
Those striking blue eyes, so human.
The doors at the side of the room slid open again. A woman with a bandage around her neck and an Asian guy with jet-black hair walked through wearing white coats and carrying syringes and sharp medicinal equipment on steel trays.
“What … what is this?” Riley asked, tensing up, trying to wriggle his way out of the cuffs and the chains as the man and the woman got closer, as the “Orion” looked at him through the glass, as Mr Fletch stood there, hands behind his back, peering over at Riley with a serious smile on his face.
The woman grabbed Riley’s forearm.
Pulled back the top of the syringe.
“You’ve done a great, noble deed by visiting us, Mr Jameson,” Mr Fletch said. “You’ve sacrificed yourself up to a worthy cause. Stephen, you see to the woman.”
The Chinese man moved across the room and stopped beside Jordanna.
He swung her around and pushed her towards the metal door at the other side of the room.
“Wait,” Riley shouted, scrapping and shaking as the woman continued to pull back the needle and hold his forearm. “You can’t—what are you doing with her? Please. Please.”
Mr Fletch took off his glasses again.
Blew against them.
Rubbed them against his white labcoat as the Orion grunted and scratched at the window-glass.
“Good job, Mr Jameson. You’ve drawn the long straw. You get to become our next Orion.”
The woman stuck the sharp needle into Riley’s arm and pushed it down into his skin.
“Please,” Riley said, feeling his muscles weakening instantly. “Just … Please. Please don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her.”
Mr Fletch put his glasses back on. Smiled. “Oh, your friend won’t feel a thing. We’ve made sure she’s completely unconscious. But every Orion needs a fresh first meal to give it a taste for violence. She’s sacrificing herself to a great cause.”
When Riley understood what Mr Fletch meant, he tried to scream out Jordanna’s name at the top of his lungs.
But his arms went weak.
His legs went weak.
His vision went blurry.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Jameson,” Mr Fletch said, his voice drifting away into the distance as Riley’s muscles got weaker and weaker. “Welcome to the new world.”
Want More Dead Days?
The full fifth season of Dead Days is now available. To read the fifth season and continue Riley’s journey, click here to get started: http://smarturl.it/DeadDaysS5Kindle
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About the Author
Ryan Casey is the author of over a dozen novels and a highly successful serial. He primarily writes post apocalyptic fiction, and also has a series of mystery novels. Across all genres, Casey's work is renowned for its dark, page-turning suspense, unforgettably complex characters, and knockout twists.
Casey lives in the United Kingdom. He has a BA degree in English with Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham, and has been writing stories for as long as he can remember. In his spare time, he enjoys American serial television, is a slave to Pitchfork’s Best New Music section, and wastes far too much of his life playing Football Manager games.
For more information go to ryancaseybooks.com
About this Book
In October 2013, a chaotic infection spread across Britain, turning the majority of the population into bloodthirsty zombies.
The weak fell. Many of the strong fell, too. The only survivors were those willing to sink to the most brutal depths of humanity in order to further their own existence.
Dead Days is the story of a group of those survivors.
Season Four of the thrilling, suspenseful post apocalyptic series continues from Season Three's jaw-dropping cliffhanger. Our survivors are reunited. The Manchester Living Zone seems a perfect place of respite. Humanity is rebuilding itself one small brick at a time.
But a new, dangerous threat is coming.
A threat that forces our heroes on their most terrifying journey yet.
A journey that changes the lives of our survivors forever.
At least, those who make it to the end...
Copyright
Dead Days Season Four
by Ryan Casey
Published January 2015 by Higher Bank Books
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Ryan Casey
