by Ryan Casey
Something like decency.
As she struggled to catch her breath, her heartbeat getting quicker, she decided there was only one thing she could try.
She looked him in the eye.
She could see right away that he was looking back at her. And she got the sense that he wanted to talk to her. That he wanted to tell her something; confide in her.
She kept her focus on him as the door continued to bang, as her people got closer and closer to breaching the boundary between them and breaking inside.
She kept her focus on him and felt a tear roll down her cheek. And when it did, something shifted. Something on the man’s face.
He looked at her tear, and his face went pale.
He pulled back. Removed his hand. Started breathing fast, hyperventilating, like he’d just woken up from a long dream that he’d been in for ages.
Melissa coughed, caught her breath. She knew the immediate issue was making sure her people didn’t gun this man down on sight, as much as she wanted to learn more about this man, to win him over to the compliance side.
“Whatever you do, don’t shoot!” Melissa shouted.
“It’s okay,” Harvey said. “Are you okay in there? Just keep yourself calm, and we’ll be–”
“I said don’t shoot!”
The door continued to thump. And Melissa found herself looking at this man again now. Only he wasn’t as she’d remembered him.
His hands were wrapped around his waist, his long fingernails picking at scabs on his elbows. His body was turned in like he was a scared child who just wanted someone to look after him, to tell him everything was going to be okay.
“We don’t hurt people like you,” Melissa said. “But… but you’re going to have to let me out of these ties. You’re just going to have to. Please.”
He sniffed. And Melissa realised then that this man was crying.
“Abandoned. Abandoned by everyone. Everyone.”
“Nobody’s abandoning you. Not anymore. Just let me go and—”
“Almost there, Melissa!”
Tension intensified. She wanted to be on her feet when her people came in. She didn’t want to be tied up because she knew how that would look.
And she didn’t totally know why she was being so sympathetic towards this man. Just probably that it was something to do with the fact that they were all human. He’d been through a lot. He’d had his reasons for capturing her. He’d had his reasons for being suspicious of outsiders.
And right now, Melissa’s people were playing into his suspicions.
“You have to let me free of these ties,” she said. “You don’t understand what might happen if you don’t.”
He looked right at Melissa then, fear on his face, nervousness in his eyes. He looked like he wanted to. Like he was considering it. Like it was a leap of faith to trust her, but a leap that he was preparing to take.
“Come on,” Melissa said. “Trust me. Trust yourself. You can do that for me, can’t you? You can do that for both of us.”
The man shook some more. Rapidly shook his head. Then he started speaking more gibberish—talking about his foot, the blood, then about the bodies in the freezer and about how everything was normal, everything was alright, everything was perfect.
“Come on,” Melissa said as the cracks began to appear in the wood. “Just let me out of here. Help me out. Help—”
The door split open.
Harvey and Stephen stepped inside, guns raised and pointed at the man.
He looked around at them, total fear in his eyes.
“No!” Melissa shouted.
The man lifted his hands.
Melissa waited for the blast.
But then it didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen.
Harvey and Stephen stood their ground. They kept their weapons aimed at the man.
But the man was…
Melissa’s stomach sank.
The man was curled up in the foetal position right ahead of her. His hands were over his head. He was crying desperately.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”
Melissa listened to this man’s wails and watched as Harvey and Stephen lowered their guns.
She watched as Harvey walked over to him, pulled him to his feet.
She watched his eyes make contact with hers.
“You’re going to be okay now,” she said. “I promise.”
But one thing was for certain.
If he crossed the line—just once—he died.
There was no room for blind pity in a world where the dead ruled.
Chapter Six
They weren’t able to gather any of the three dead bodies of their fallen comrades from inside the barracks.
Melissa looked at the fallen wreck of the barracks glowing in the midday sun. She felt cold. Possibly because there was a chill in the air, but more likely the adrenaline surge after what she’d been through in that place; what she’d encountered.
The showdown with the undead.
Stephen breaking rank.
Wilson falling.
Her escape upstairs.
And then her capture by this man.
She looked over at the truck they’d travelled down on. The man was sitting by the side of it, handcuffs wrapped around his wrists. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, not anymore. Seeing him out here in the light of day made Melissa pity him even more, though. His skin was so pale it was bordering on the translucent. And weirdly, there were big patches of loose skin that hung down from him like he’d carried some extra weight once upon a time.
And that scar.
That scar on his neck…
She didn’t know what he’d been through to get that, but she could only assume it was some kind of knife wound. It looked historical like it’d happened a long time ago. But whenever it had happened, it didn’t look in a good state right now. Definitely needed some cleaning, that was for sure.
“We get him back to base,” Melissa said. “Get his wound cleaned up. And we try to find out more about him.”
“What next for us?” Stephen asked.
Melissa felt herself recoiling at the mere sound of Stephen’s voice. She looked at him, and she felt total disgust. She knew she had to keep her cool. She knew she had to maintain order. But she’d seen the kind of weasel Stephen really was. Not only when he’d broken rank to save his own neck. But earlier, too, when he’d approached Melissa in the corridor of the barracks.
She looked at him like she knew exactly what he was. And she saw the visible disgust returned towards her as he knew she had him sussed.
“What’s next is we continue with our mission,” Melissa said. “We continue with the mission that Wilson gave us. We move on to the next location. We scan it. Clear it if we have to. And we rescue whoever we can.”
Stephen shook his head. “That’s bullshit.”
Melissa frowned. “What?”
“I said that’s bullshit. The idea that we just… that we just carry on, here.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Look. I don’t like accepting defeat. But we have to face the facts here. This whole mission, it’s been an out and out disaster, through and through.”
“It hasn’t been an out and out disaster,” Melissa said. She pointed at the mystery man who’d held her hostage. “We’ve rescued a survivor.”
“We’ve rescued a fucking nutjob who tried to kill you.”
Melissa felt the hackles rising on the back of her neck. “And where were you when that went down, hmm? Busy running off, trying to save your own neck?”
“Come off it, Melissa. You knew just as well as I did that the pattern formation we were standing in back there wasn’t going to hold.”
“Oh, really?” Melissa said.
“Really.”
There was a pause between them. A pause, where the rest of the group looked between them, waited for the next move. It was lik
e they were weighing up the best outcome here, waiting for this joust to unfold before committing to a winner.
“Look,” Stephen said, looking around at everyone. “I’m not going to pretend what I did back in the barracks was honourable.”
“Bloody good job,” Melissa muttered.
Stephen ignored her. “I’m not going to pretend it was honourable. And we lost people. Good people. God bless them. But we’re still here. And if one of us hadn’t made a move like the one I made… well, we all know damn well we’d probably be dead right now.”
He turned and looked at Melissa.
“Now I respect Melissa’s honourable motives, really, I do. And I appreciate she’s found herself a little pet here to make herself feel good about her first big mission. Something she can parade around when we get back home.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“But she’s delusional if she thinks we can just keep on going as normal after what we’ve been through, after the people we’ve lost. So it’s time to fall back. It’s time to retreat. Before it kills the rest of us.”
Melissa saw heads starting to nod. She saw the remaining people beginning to rally behind Stephen, to support what he was saying. And it felt to her like everything was falling apart. Because she’d come here with a mission. A mission led by Wilson. A man who’d fallen because of a coward.
She wasn’t going to let that same coward derail his legacy.
“Besides,” Stephen said. “I think her fella might want to know she’s found herself a scrawny new plaything, don’t you?”
She flipped, then. She knew she shouldn’t have. She knew it’d get her in a deep pile of shit. And she knew it was going to destroy her authority completely. But that comment, it was the final straw.
She lifted her rifle.
Pointed it at Stephen.
Watched his eyes widen, and his hands rise.
“Get on your fucking knees,” she said, unable to control herself any longer. “Before I blow your dirty coward brains out.”
Chapter Seven
Melissa pointed her gun at Stephen, and she wasn’t sure she could hold her cool much longer.
Stephen was still standing, which infuriated her because she’d told him to get on his knees. His hands were raised, so that was something. But it wasn’t total progress. It wasn’t complete progress.
Complete progress would be the utter humiliation of Stephen, who seemed to be trying to take some kind of leadership role for himself—which was even more perverse considering how his cowardice had got Wilson killed, and how he was trying to rally the group to abandon their mission right now.
“Melissa,” he said, attempting to sound authoritative but with an unshiftable quiver in his voice. “Lower the gun. Think about what you’re doing—”
“Don’t fucking tell me what to think about,” Melissa said. “You know damn well what you are. All of you know damn well what he is.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Melissa.”
She looked up then when she heard the voice coming from Harvey. And she realised something had happened. Something had changed.
She might be pointing her gun at Stephen.
But the rest of the group were pointing their guns at her.
She felt betrayed, right then. Like she’d been stabbed. Because she liked Wilson. She respected him. He’d connected with her, and she couldn’t ever forget that.
And he was dead.
He was dead, all because of Stephen.
“I’ll get on my knees if that’s what you want,” Stephen said. “If it gives you a kick, makes you feel better, whatever. I’ll do it. But you need to look around, Melissa. You need to face the facts. You’re surrounded. You’re outvoted. So put that rifle down and stop acting like a petulant little child.”
Melissa tightened her grip around the trigger. “Are you trying to make me shoot you?”
“Whoa,” Stephen said, dropping down to his knees now. “Whoa. Okay. On my knees. That’s where you want me, isn’t it? On my knees. So that’s where I am now, okay? That’s where I am. Do you feel better now? Do you feel fulfilled?”
Melissa tightened her jaw. Her head spun. The easiest option right now felt like pulling the trigger and being done with it. And maybe she’d go down in the blasts too. Maybe the rest of the group would fire her down. And maybe that’d be the best way out of this situation after all.
That goading nagging inside her mind.
That urge to throw herself in front of the wheels of danger.
“You broke the pattern,” Melissa said. “You broke the pattern, and Wilson died because of it. And you haven’t shown a speck of respect. You haven’t shown a glimmer of remorse.”
Stephen sighed dramatically. “Is that what this is all about? Really? This is all because I made a decision that kept the lot of us alive?”
“You’re so full of it,” Melissa said.
“Maybe so. And hey. Maybe I did break pattern. Maybe I did get your boyfriend killed. But sometimes we’ve got to make the bold decisions in order to further our survival. Don’t tell me you’ve never made decisions like that before. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
Melissa held her rifle. She looked into Stephen’s eyes. Then looked at the other people by his side, their guns raised. Some of them didn’t look too at ease about the position they were in. Others looked well and truly on Stephen’s side.
But there was no way she was lowering this rifle.
One of them was going to fall.
She knew that for certain now.
“Come on, Melissa,” Stephen said. “We can all move on from this. We can all be friends again. And hey. When we get back home, at least we’ll have a few stories to tell.”
She snapped.
She snapped again.
Only this time, it was bad.
She stepped right forward and pressed the gun into Stephen’s head.
She heard the shouts from the people behind him. Heard the shuffling of the rifles. The nervousness about them.
But best of all, she saw the fear on Stephen’s face.
The realisation that this was it.
The realisation that he was about to fall.
“Beg,” Melissa said.
Stephen shook his head. His eyes were beginning to go bloodshot.
“Beg. Because that’s all that’s going to work for you now. I don’t care what happens to me. I never have. All I care about is that you pay for what you did. So beg. Start begging, right this second.”
A solitary tear rolled down Stephen’s face. And for a second, Melissa thought she felt something like pity. Total pity.
Then he said something that wiped that pity away in one fell swoop.
“I won’t beg a whore. I’ll never beg a whore.”
She tightened her grip around the trigger.
Got ready to fire.
Then she heard the shout.
“The dead!”
She looked around. It was perhaps the only voice that could capture her attention right now in a situation like this.
It was the mystery man.
He was looking ahead. Looking right ahead of himself. Eyes wide. Fear on his face. Clearly breathing so fast that he was hyperventilating.
Melissa slowly looked around to where he was looking.
And she saw it.
Up ahead.
Up the road.
First, the sound of them gasping, snarling.
Then, the smell, so putrid, so wretched.
Stephen staggered back to his feet. The whole group stood there, united once again with one common goal.
“We have to get away. We have to get out of here. Now.”
And this time, as much as she wanted to deny it, Melissa knew Stephen was right.
Because a mass of dead was piling down the street.
And they were racing in their direction.
Chapter Eight
Melissa saw the undead heading in their direction, and she knew now the
re was only one way they could go.
“Into the truck,” she shouted. “We have to leave here. Right now.”
Stephen glared at her as they scrambled their way towards the truck. “Knew you’d come around eventually.”
“Don’t push your luck,” she said. “Right now, I’m the only thing keeping you alive.”
Harvey climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned the key, tried to start up the engine. “Shit,” he said.
“What is it?” Melissa asked.
He persevered with the engine some more. “The engine. It’s… it’s not starting. It’s not fucking starting.”
Melissa felt her stomach sink with dread. “What do you mean it isn’t working?”
Harvey tried again and again. “The whole thing. Something’s… something’s happened. I can’t get this thing started.”
Melissa looked over her shoulder. The undead were just metres away now. They seemed to have made rapid progress in such a short space of time. And if they didn’t act to get away from here fast, they were going to be upon them.
“Then there’s only one thing we can do,” Melissa said, stepping out of the truck and facing the horde of the undead racing towards them.
“Too right,” Stephen said, already starting to take off. “We run.”
Melissa didn’t want to abandon her mission. She didn’t want to go against what Wilson would want them to do.
But she knew staying here was madness. Something that even Wilson would want them to retreat from.
So as much as it pained her, she found herself turning around and running off, following Stephen closely.
She caught him up. Right beside him now. He was running fast, but she was running faster, as the mass of the undead began to close in.
He looked at her like this was some kind of sick game.
Then something happened.
He tripped.
He fell over and slammed face first into the road.
And by the time Melissa had a chance to even process anything, he was lying there on the road, clutching his ankle.
She kept on running. So too did the mystery man and the rest of the people. Stephen was on his own now. The undead were getting closer to him.
