by Ryan Casey
But that reaction was nothing compared to the look of fear Carly felt when she saw who was standing there.
“Marie?”
Marie was dressed in her white dressing gown. Her hair was tied back. She looked like she always did when she first got up in the morning, a little pale, a little bit dark under her eyes.
But there was something drastically different about Marie today.
And that was the mass of blood smeared around her face.
And the chunk of bleeding flesh on her right arm.
“Mar…” Carly started, unable to finish, unable to focus, unable to think.
Marie looked at her with tears in her glassy eyes. “Run, Carly,” she said as she started to stumble towards her.
Carly stepped back, right into the pool of blood. “What is this?” she asked. “What’s—”
“Just run!”
Marie walked towards her.
Slowly at first.
Then faster.
Faster.
Fear in her eyes.
Terror on her face.
“Run, Carly! Get away. Before I—”
But by the time Carly had truly processed the danger of the situation, it was already too late.
Marie was upon her.
Pushing her to the ground.
Stretching open her mouth.
And trying to wrap her beautiful teeth around Carly’s soft neck.
Chapter Six
Ricky hadn’t been walking away from the helicopter take-off point for long when he heard the scream.
He’d been thinking about Melissa, about that last time he’d looked at her as the helicopter rose into the sky. The way she’d blown a kiss at him, and he’d tried to blow one back.
And then the way he’d made out the words on her lips, and how they made him feel.
I love you.
He was glad he’d managed to say that back to her. He just hoped that she’d seen it; hoped she’d heard it. Because deep down inside, knowing Melissa was going out into the old world was tough. Mostly because he couldn’t shake the feeling he was never going to see her again.
He knew she was tough. He knew that if anyone was capable of surviving out there, it was Melissa. She was more tuned in than anyone he’d ever met.
He had to have faith in her. He had to believe.
But that fear that she was going to meet an untimely fate… just the thought of it broke him.
He didn’t want to even think about it.
Yet he couldn’t help but think about it.
He knew he shouldn’t have fought the guards like he had. He was mad. Putting himself in danger by doing that, that was for sure. And sure, he knew he was going to face some repercussions, legal ones.
But he’d just been so eager to see her, so eager to either try and stop her going… or to wish her farewell, he wasn’t sure. He just didn’t want her to go without her knowing just how strongly he felt about her.
He took a few deep breaths of the mild morning air. Told himself she was going to be okay. She was going to make it.
When he heard the scream, he started to wonder whether it was even Melissa he should be worried about of the pair of them after all.
He looked around. Looked at the buildings where the scream came from. It wasn’t screeching. Wasn’t definite. Wasn’t even that loud. He was lucky he’d even heard it.
But there was no doubt it was a scream. Someone in distress. Someone in trouble. Someone that needed help.
And when he saw the house it’d come from, his stomach turned.
There was a small bungalow opposite where he was standing. He recognised the bungalow. He knew the girl who lived here. Marie, or something. Knocked about with Carly and some of the other girls. Seemed to spend a lot more time with Carly than the others, though.
But there was something bothering Ricky about Marie’s place.
The way the door was ajar.
And something else.
Something dark on the doorstep.
When it registered, Ricky took in a sharp inhalation and immediately made his way towards the house. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. That sense of danger that was triggered whenever he sensed something was amiss, something he hadn’t really felt since leaving the old world, was here.
And it was triggered hard.
He rushed over towards the door.
When he got there, he looked down, and his worst fears were realised.
It was blood on the doorstep.
He tensed his fists tightly. He looked down at that mess of blood. He knew that blood wasn’t a common occurrence around this place. They had some good hospitals even if there was an injury. And that’s what he should’ve been thinking—this was just an injury. Someone had fallen. Hurt themselves badly. Which was why he’d heard distressed sounds from inside the house.
But another part of him…
Another part of him told him that this was something different entirely.
He stepped inside the house, holding his breath.
When he got inside, he saw it right away.
A trail of blood leading right through to the kitchen.
Then he heard it again.
The scream.
His first instinct was that there was an intruder. So he instinctively pulled out one of the wooden drawers from the cabinet beside him and walked down into that kitchen.
He didn’t see anyone. Not at first.
But he could hear it. Hear the struggle.
Behind the island in the middle of the kitchen…
He held his ground. Held his damned breath, too. Made his way around the side of that island slowly but surely.
He could hear the struggle.
And he wasn’t sure he was going to like what was there.
But he had to see.
He had to know.
He stepped around the side of the kitchen island.
And when he saw it, he almost dropped the wooden drawer to the floor.
There was a girl. No. Two girls.
One of them was wrapped around the other.
One of them was Carly.
One of them was Marie.
And at first, as Ricky stood there, he thought he’d walked in on something he shouldn’t be seeing. Like he needed to walk away before they saw him. Fast.
But the blood.
And the way in which Marie was pressing Carly’s head down into the floor.
This wasn’t anything intimate.
This was a full-blown fight.
“Hey,” Ricky said. “What the hell’s happening he…”
He stopped.
Stopped dead in his tracks.
Because when Marie turned around and looked into his eyes, he could see something different about her. Something that had changed, shifted.
There was a deadness to her eyes.
There was blood on her mouth.
A chunk of flesh missing from the inside of her right arm.
But then she opened her mouth as she continued to press Carly down.
“Kill me,” she said, her voice shaking. “Just… please. Kill me. Before I hurt anyone. Before I—”
Just as suddenly as she’d started speaking, Marie swung around at Carly. She opened her drooling mouth, pressed her teeth towards Carly’s neck.
And as much as Ricky didn’t want to believe this was real, he couldn’t deny it.
As much as he didn’t want to face the truth and accept what was happening here, there was nothing else he could do.
Kill me. Before I hurt anyone.
He heard Marie’s voice ringing in his ears.
He looked at the heavy wooden drawer.
He knew there was only one thing he could do.
“I’m sorry,” he said as Marie’s teeth got closer to Carly’s neck.
He lifted the drawer into the air.
“I’m so sorry.”
Then he closed his eyes, and he slammed the wooden drawer down against Marie’s head.
Again and again and again.
When he opened his eyes, Marie was lying by Carly’s side. Carly was covered in the blood and the brains and skull fragments of her friend. Wide-eyed. Traumatised.
He looked at Carly, and she looked back up at him, total shock, total fear on her face.
Something had happened.
Marie was gone.
But something had happened.
And that something was going to change everything.
All over again.
Chapter Seven
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Riley…”
That was how it began. As Riley stood opposite Peter, staring into his forlorn face, that was how the news was broken.
The news about what was happening here.
The news about what was going to change.
The news that everything they’d been working towards was in jeopardy.
Riley stood opposite Peter, who was on the other side of his desk to him. He’d just put the phone down not long ago after a follow-up call. After which he’d told Riley the truth.
Well. Not the entire truth.
Just the fact that things were going to change.
“There’s been a security breach,” Peter said.
Riley felt more and more nauseous with every passing moment. “What kind of security breach?”
“The kind that means we’re going to have to lock this place down for a while. That we’re going to have to lock everywhere down for a while. Every damned district. ”
Riley’s head spun as the reality of his situation dawned on him, getting more and more real. “I don’t understand. A security breach. You need to tell me the truth.”
“We test on the undead, Riley,” Peter said. “We would be foolish not to. But something has happened. Something… something has gone wrong…”
After that, even though Peter continued talking, Riley didn’t hear what he was saying. He could hear an alarm blaring in the distance; a chilling siren that sent shivers through his body, a reminder of the first time in his life that things started falling apart all because of the dead.
But the most chilling thing was what Peter had just said to Riley. What he’d just told him. The news he’d just broken to him, once and for all.
We test on the undead.
“Of course you test on them,” Riley said, deflated. “I mean, you couldn’t just be content with the life you’ve created here. You couldn’t just be satisfied with the existence we had, could you?”
“That isn’t our sole purpose here, Riley.”
“What do you mean it isn’t our sole purpose.”
Peter looked down at his desk. Riley almost felt pity for him if he didn’t think he was somehow culpable for this situation in the first place. Then he looked back up, right into Riley’s eyes. “The island. The districts. There’s a reason the government set them up, beyond merely housing the survivors of the infection. They set them up because… because they needed safe places to test treatments. To try and figure out how to reverse it. And how to prevent anything like these outbreaks from happening again. If we can’t learn from the lessons of the past, then how will we ever move forward?”
“But it doesn’t add up,” Riley said. “I mean, why not just do the testing in labs? Why not do it on some island somewhere far away from…”
It hit him, then.
The reality hit him square in the face.
“Oh,” Riley said. “This is the island. This… this is the lab.”
“They thought it would be better to test it around a few live subjects. But the plan was never for anything to break out. Besides, we have protocols. Protocols to help deal with the infection if ever it is released. But from what I’m hearing… from what I’m hearing, the infection has evolved at a more rapid rate than ever before. And there are some distressing developments.”
Riley didn’t want to hear about the distressing developments. He wasn’t in the mood for that shit, not right now. “Anna. She’s pregnant, by the way.”
“Congratulations,” Peter said. There wasn’t a fragment of sincerity in his voice. The mask had well and truly fallen.
“I want to get to her.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Peter said. And just as he did, spiralling red lights kicked in. “Not right now. Not while we’re locked down.”
Peter walked away from his desk. He looked out the window.
“Everything will be okay,” he said. “Everyone inside the secure compounds like this will be okay.”
He turned around, looked at Riley.
“But we’re going to have to deal with those on the outside. For the good of everyone. For the good of the future.”
Riley frowned. “What do you mean?”
Peter sighed. He reached for his whisky bottle, poured himself an extra large glass, then topped up Riley’s. “I don’t care whether you like whisky or not. You’re going to want to drink up.”
Riley walked over to Peter. He squared up to him, right in his face. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Peter looked into Riley’s eyes for a few seconds. Then he looked right down at the floor.
“I hope Anna is with Kesha. Because everyone on the outside is too late already. There’s nothing we can do for them. Nothing we can do for anyone. They are already gone.”
Chapter Eight
Anna turned around, Kesha in her arms, and saw her.
The woman was standing still. Totally still. Her hair was dangling down by the sides of her head. It looked greasy like she’d been through some kind of struggle, the grimness of it glowing in the red light.
Anna kept totally still as she stood by that door. The hairs on her arms stood on end. Her chest tightened, her heart pounded.
Because she could see clearly now that this wasn’t just any woman. It wasn’t just a nightmare; a product of her over-stimulated consciousness.
It was none of those.
This woman was, in fact, Beth.
The lab technician. The woman who’d been taking Kesha’s bloods just moments ago.
She was stood there totally unrecognisable like something out of a horror movie.
And Anna didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to think.
Just that she had to get Kesha out of danger.
But Beth. She could see her eyes. She could see lucidity in her eyes. Like she understood whatever was happening. Like she had a sense of what was going on.
And as much as Anna wanted to get away from here—from the flashing red lights, from the piercing alarms—she wanted to know what was happening with Beth.
“What’s… what is it?” she said.
Beth’s head twitched, then. Her neck cricked, right to the side, then back again. Her chest jutted forward like her spine was cracking out of place. And when it did, Anna saw tears rolling down Beth’s face.
There was one thing Anna could see. One thing she knew now for certain.
Something had happened to Beth.
Something that had made her not entirely… herself.
She reached for the handle of the door again, out of instinct more than anything.
But that handle didn’t lower. It didn’t budge.
She saw Beth starting to walk towards her. Slapping her bare feet against the hard floor.
She looked down the corridor. There was another door out of here. She’d tried it already, hadn’t had any luck.
But trying again was better than just standing here. Just waiting; waiting for whatever fate lay ahead.
Right?
She looked back at Beth.
Saw her walking closer towards her.
And this time, Anna noticed something else.
Beth was bleeding heavily from both nostrils.
Bleeding from under her eyes.
Her ears.
She watched as Beth got closer, looking less and less human with every step, and she knew there was only one thing she could do.
She turned arou
nd, and she ran.
She sprinted as fast as she could towards that other door. Because there had to be a way out of here. There had to be some way out of this situation that didn’t end with her dying.
Right?
She reached the door. Pressed her hands against it. Tried with all her might to move it, to budge it, even if just a little bit.
But she found no luck.
The door wasn’t moving.
And now the footsteps were getting closer.
She took a tentative look over her shoulder. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew damn well she should just focus on finding another way out of here—if there was a way out of here at all.
But she did look over her shoulder.
And when she looked, she regretted it right away.
Beth was dragging herself along the floor with her fingers. Her legs were propped up, cracked out of her hips, making it look like she was racing along like a spider. She looked at Anna with pure terror in her bloodshot eyes. With pure pain in her eyes.
And then she opened her mouth, drooling blood, and she said something.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t let me hurt her. I want to hurt her, but don’t let me. Don’t let—”
Then her neck cracked right back, and she went silent.
Her eyes went dead.
But her focus on Anna and Kesha remained.
She raced towards them, moving along the ground like a four-legged animal.
Anna looked to her right. More doors, all to labs. But if she could just get in one of those, she could hide. She could ride this out. She could do this.
She started racing towards the door when she heard something that made her knees weaken.
A scream.
A gurgled, bloody, piercing scream, right from the pit of Beth’s lungs.
But there was no time to stick around now. There was no time to wait. Not anymore.
She just raced her way towards those doors, one by one, and tried to get inside them.
When she couldn’t get into the first one, she dismissed it. Figured it was natural that one would be locked.
But then she tried another.
And then another.
And the more she tried, the clearer it became to Anna that this wasn’t going to be straightforward after all.
