by Casey, Ryan
“She … you say she spoke. You—you didn’t give me a chance. To say goodbye. You didn’t give me a chance to—”
“Because you’re my little sister and it’s my duty to look out for you,” Hayden said. “And you wouldn’t have liked what I did. What I had to do. You wouldn’t have liked seeing Dad in the state he was in. You … you would’ve had to deal with the sound of their fucking necks cracking, the feel of the life drifting out of both of them …” His voice gave way completely for a few seconds, and he had to regain his breath. “I couldn’t let you live with witnessing that. I just couldn’t.”
Clarice looked like she was about to say something else through her tear-soaked lips, but she just closed her mouth and turned away to look out of the smeared window.
Hayden stared at her. Looked at her greasy dark hair, her skinny frame. Always a skinny kid. Probably something to do with her hatred for any of the foods Mum and Dad used to serve for them. At one stage, measures got so desperate that she was literally eating a bowl of Coco Pops without milk three meals a day. It was Hayden who finally convinced her to eat more and more, step by step. Told her eating her greens would make her even prettier.
She took to it, held on to Hayden’s word, like she always did. And remarkably enough, eating those greens did keep on making his lovely little sister prettier.
She’d had every reason to trust him.
Except now.
Hayden didn’t say anything else to Clarice. He didn’t want to push her buttons too hard. She needed time. Time to understand. Time to get her head around what he’d told her. And he wasn’t proud of what he’d told her. He wanted to keep it from her. Keep her wrapped in cotton wool for as long as the pair of them survived.
But he felt better. Just getting the confession off his chest made him feel free.
He just hoped to God that feeling free was a good enough return for the short-term shattering of his sister’s emotions.
Hayden leaned forward and looked through the front windscreen. “How we doing?”
Newbie side-glanced at him. He cleared his throat. “Doing just fine. Should be at Warrington in forty minutes or so at this rate. Providing we don’t run into any obstructions. Or worse—infected.”
Hayden nodded. He stared at the tall evergreen trees either side of them. There was no sign of any zombie apocalypse going on at all out here in the countryside, but for the occasional piece of loose rubble on the road, or a fallen tree that Newbie had to swerve the car around, unsorted in this new world lacking any kind of emergency services. “We’ve done alright to now. You … your kid. D’you know whereabouts in Warrington they lived?”
“Eighteen Astley Road. Just on the outskirts. Google Street Viewed it enough times. Hell, I even turned up a few times. Thought about walking in there, wrapping my arms around my Amy. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t strike up the nerve. Probably for the best considering the restraining order. But not anymore.”
Hayden patted Newbie lightly on his shoulder and leaned back into the car. He didn’t want to argue with Newbie about the risks of going somewhere just outside the centre of a town. But it wasn’t just because of the risk of military and undead. It was because sometimes, it was better to keep the past in the past. A part of Hayden wished he’d never gone back home—as cruel as that was to his dying mum, his zombie dad, and his terrified sister.
But it was just a small part of him. A small part that niggled away like a stubborn spot, resistant to the squeeze.
“You … you did the right thing,” Clarice said.
Hayden turned around. He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
Clarice was staring ahead at the front of the car, but it didn’t really look like she was focusing on anything in particular.
“I … What do you—”
“With Dad and … and Mum. You did a brave thing. And you came for me. Got me out of that house. I … Thank you.”
She turned to Hayden. This time, she smiled at him with warmth, smiled at him like she always used to smile at him when they were both kids. When he’d bought her a lolly from the school tuck shop, when he’d helped her with her maths homework.
He smiled back at her and then he heard the thud.
“Shit,” Newbie said.
Hayden spun around. Newbie was struggling with the steering wheel, lifting his foot up and down on the accelerator. “What is it?”
But Newbie didn’t have to answer.
The engine thudded again, again, again.
The Range Rover slowed to a halt, right in the middle of the torrential rain.
And in the silence, beyond the sound of the rain pattering against the metal car roof, Hayden heard the echoing gasps of the undead …
Seventeen
“Can you fix it?” Clarice asked.
Newbie leaned into the bonnet of the Range Rover. Rain lashed down from the grey storm clouds above. The smell of damp soil was strong in the air—a smell that took Hayden back to his childhood holidays in the New Forest. Always rained, always. But he kind of liked it. Liked that smell. It was fresh.
Which made a pleasant change to the usual rotting stench of the undead.
Newbie sighed. He wiped the rain from his face. “It’s the apocalypse. What d’you reckon my chances of fixing it are?”
Hayden stared into the evergreen trees at the opposite side of the long road. They cordoned them in on either side. There was no escaping them. Just a long road between them and trees that stretched into the sky like watchful gods, watchful demons.
And beyond the first of the trees, Hayden could hear the echoing groans of an oncoming army of dead.
“We’re gonna have to move on foot,” Newbie said.
“There’s still a chance we can get back,” Hayden said. “Head back the way we came. Go towards the cottage and—”
“Not a chance,” Newbie said, shaking his head. “We’re closer to Warrington than we are the cottage. Journey ain’t so far from here. We can push on. But we’d better get a move on.”
He turned his back on Hayden and Clarice and started walking down the middle of the road, leaving the Range Rover abandoned and stacked with the tins of food they’d risked so much to get their hands on.
Hayden looked at Clarice, waited for some kind of answer, some kind of decision.
She stared at the trees behind Hayden. She could hear them too, he knew that. The mass of dead. The dead that would be upon them at any given moment—not when they least expected it, because they had to be constantly prepared in a world like this. But they’d be here soon. They’d be here, and Hayden, Clarice and Newbie would be running again.
Always running.
“I think … we can’t separate,” Clarice said. “Not after how far we’ve come.”
Hayden looked at Newbie as he charged down the central lines of the road. The rain dripped from his torn black coat. Hayden could feel the rain on his lips and he licked it, the freshest water he’d tasted in days. “He’s blinded by this idea of his kid being in Warrington. I … I just don’t see how we can go marching into another town.”
“And weren’t you blinded when you thought I was alive? When you heard Mum’s voice on the phone, weren’t you following the road purely on faith?”
“Yeah, but—”
“He walked into my house just after you, brother. As good as by your side. And he’s still here right now. We … we lost Sarah. We left her behind when we could’ve done more for her. We can’t leave Newbie to find his own path too.”
Hayden wanted to tell his sister that he just wanted to keep her safe. That he personally would follow Newbie, but with his sister it was just too much of a risk. He couldn’t put her life in danger. He couldn’t be there when another family member died.
Or, he couldn’t die on his one remaining close relative.
He couldn’t do that.
He was about to say something when he saw the branches of the evergreen trees rustle just over Clarice’s shoulder.
> He looked at the spot where he’d seen the movement. A definite shaking of the leaves. And there was still that low, echoing hum of the gasps, the groans.
Clarice turned around slowly. “What is—”
“Ssh,” Hayden said. “We … we need to get away from here. We need to …”
And then the smell hit him.
Damp.
Rotting.
Death.
He grabbed his sister’s hand and went to grip on the mallet … only he realised it wasn’t there. There was the gun. The gun he’d shot the guy called Dave at the cottage with. It was in his pocket, but firing at the zombies would be too loud.
He had to get back to the car and get a weapon.
He had to …
He saw the first of the zombies stagger out from behind the trees. It was short, skinny. Male. Bones stuck out of the pale flesh on its bitten ribcage. Its eyes looked like they were in two different shades, but then Hayden realised that’s because one of them had a bite mark on it that had sent eye fluid trickling down the poor thing’s face.
He stepped to the right when he saw more rustling in the trees.
To the right.
Further to the right.
And to the left.
Clarice tightened her grip on Hayden’s hand. “We need to go.”
And Hayden knew she was right. Zombies flooded out of the trees opposite them. Lots of them—ten, twenty, more. All of them staggering in his direction, in his sister’s direction, in …
He looked up the road.
Newbie was still marching down it.
Marching down, facing forward, the trees rustling beside him too.
Hayden wanted to shout and then he heard the rustling to the right.
Heard the gasps, the footsteps getting faster, smelled another bout of rotting flesh.
He turned to his right and he saw the zombies coming out of the trees on the right now, too.
A mass of zombies coming from the left, the right, from all around.
“What … what do we do?” Clarice asked. And she said it in a fearful way that terrified Hayden. Gripped his hand like she used to when they were kids and begged him for an answer.
And he always had an answer. He always had some words or some solution to pick Clarice up, to give her strength, give her confidence.
But as the zombies piled out of the trees on both sides of the road, Hayden didn’t have an answer.
And that’s what terrified him more than anything.
Eighteen
Hayden sprinted down the open road away from the emerging mass of zombies.
He held his sister’s hand tightly. Felt cold sweat trickling from her palm onto his. Up ahead, he saw Newbie turn around and look at the zombies as they staggered out of the trees, staggered from both directions, getting closer and closer.
He could hear their footsteps. Hear their gasps and their growls. It was a noise that he’d never get used to. A sound that would always ring in his ears, set his mind on fire. And right now, there was nothing any of them could do but run. The car was surrounded and broken down. All the food they’d gathered from the cottage and the handheld weapons they’d acquired—except for the axe Newbie was holding and the gun in Hayden’s pocket—were gone.
Right now, all they had were their feet.
All they could do was run.
Hayden felt his sister slowing down as she ran beside him. He felt pains aching, creeping through his body as the mass of rotting undead pursued them, just like they’d keep on pursuing them until the very end. He wondered how many people had died this way. Died running, filled with fear and adrenaline, tripping over a lace or cocking over and made themselves zombie food.
Gasps and growling and footsteps getting closer, closer …
“We need to go into the woods,” Hayden shouted, abandoning his silence policy now it was glaringly obvious the zombies knew exactly where he was anyway.
Newbie kept on running. He shook his head but didn’t look back. “Not … not far down this road. Need to keep going. Nearly there.”
Hayden glanced over his shoulder and regretted it instantly. The pack of zombies was so dense that it was filling up the road. He could just about make out the abandoned Range Rover through their mass, but it was barely noticeable.
So many of them.
Flesh spewing out of their red-raw limbs.
Maggots biting into their decaying skulls.
All chasing, all approaching.
“Shit,” Hayden said, as he kept on running, kept on holding his sister’s hand. “We … Sis, we need to go into the woods. Need to try and lose them.”
“But they came from the woods,” Clarice said.
Hayden looked at the trees on his left. He could see movement, rustling. A sign that more zombies were preparing to join their companions. Readying themselves to hunt.
Then he looked to the right and he saw the branches and the leaves were still.
“I think we can go right,” Hayden said, cold sweat dripping down his face. “We can go into the woods and lose them if—”
“But what about Newbie?”
Hayden looked ahead at Newbie. Looked at him striding away. And a part of Hayden saw himself in Newbie. He saw himself making his stupid, life-threatening decisions when he’d gone back to the bombarded Preston to try and save his family.
He saw himself, and yet he saw exactly what those decisions had done for him.
Those decisions had saved his sister.
“He’s made his choice. There’s nothing we can say to change his mind now.”
Hayden gripped Clarice’s hand tighter.
“But … we can’t just …”
“I’m sorry, Sis,” Hayden said. And he was. He really was. Newbie was a good man. He was a man who’d been there for him all this time, except for their occasional spats that could be forgiven in the circumstances.
But he was a man with a mission of his own. A man with a journey, a quest, to pursue.
A quest that he had to see out alone, because following him was just too much danger for Hayden to risk putting himself in right now.
Way too much risk putting Clarice in.
“Not too late to take a right,” Hayden shouted. “You … you know where we’ll be. You know where we’ll be if you need us.”
Newbie didn’t turn around. He didn’t nod. He just kept on moving, kept on speeding up the road.
Hayden’s stomach sank, but he couldn’t let himself be sentimental anymore.
He tightened his grip on his sister’s hand and pulled her to the trees at the right of the road.
As he moved towards the evergreen leaves, he prepared to be swarmed in the clutches of zombies he hadn’t seen hiding away, waiting to pursue their prey.
He held his breath as he sprinted at the trees.
Took one final look at Newbie.
Then the leaves and the branches scratched against Hayden’s face and the woods surrounded him.
The pair of them ran through the trees in no real direction and with no real end point in mind. Just getting away from the zombies was a good enough goal in itself. Hayden’s shoes snapped against loose twigs, splashed through thick mud, and he lost his balance a few times and almost dragged Clarice down with him.
But they were alive. They were alive, and the sounds of the zombies’ gasps were getting gradually less pronounced behind them.
Hayden slowed down his running when he was pretty certain the rotting stench was far enough out of his senses. He let go of his sister’s hand and rested his palms on his knees. His heart pounded, and a crippling stitch gnawed at his stomach and chest.
He could hear his sister panting, puffing beside him. And although she sounded like she was exhausted, like everything was a struggle, it was just a relief to hear her breathing.
Hayden never let go of how lucky he was. Never.
“So I guess we’ll have to find a diverted route to Warrington?” Clarice said.
Hayden looke
d up at the sky. He was pretty certain they hadn’t veered too far off the track, but he couldn’t know for definite. “I … I think if we head west from here we’ll be parallel with the road again,” he said. “We just … we just have to stay quiet. Move slower. Keep our guard up.”
“So Warrington’s definitely still the destination?”
Hayden thought about it. He tried to picture another possible destination now that the bunker had been overrun, and he realised just how out of options they were. Wanderers. Nothing but wanderers, with a distant hope of a safe place in Warrington in the back of their mind.
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” he said. He walked past Clarice and led the way through the thick trees.
“Whatever happened to ladies first?” she asked.
“Looking out for my sister happened to ladies first.”
And then he stopped.
He stopped because he heard twigs to his left.
Twigs snapping.
Footsteps.
“I don’t remember you being so witty—”
“Ssh,” Hayden said. He held out a hand. Searched the thick leaves of the trees beside him, but couldn’t see any signs of movement. “You … you hear that?”
Clarice frowned. “Hear what?”
Hayden thought maybe he’d been imagining things. Maybe it was just his mind screwing with him.
And then he heard the twigs snapping again.
And this time, he heard the gasps somewhere beyond the twigs.
He became suddenly aware of just how vulnerable he was. Without a weapon—or at least, a weapon that didn’t frigging blast like a gun. Without a weapon and all alone in the woods.
He took his sister’s hand. “We need to get out of here. We need to—”
And then he saw the leaves rustle in front of him.
Saw the branches shake.
He tensed his fists.
Prepared to take on whatever was coming his way.
Newbie tumbled out from the branches, panting, sweating, shaking.
Hayden stared at him in disbelief. His stomach was still going, and his tensed fists had turned to jelly. “Newbie, what—”
“You two might wanna try keeping your voices down,” Newbie said. He looked up and pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I think I’ve driven our friends off the road. But the bad thing is they’re heading our way.”
