by Ryan Casey
And he was sitting there on the road, panic in his eyes, firing blindly at the undead coming towards him… until his ammo ran out.
“Please,” he shouted. “Help. Help!”
Melissa felt guilt turn in her chest. She wanted Stephen to die. She wanted him to die for the things he’d done, for the things he’d said.
But at the same time, she knew she was better than that.
She knew she could be the better person.
The leader.
She ran over to the mystery man, fired at a few of the undead, running out of ammo herself before chopping away the ties around his wrists.
Then she handed him her gun.
“Cover me. All of you cover me.”
“What’re you doing?” Harvey asked.
She took a deep breath. “As much as I want to see that fucker in agony, I can’t leave him. Not like this.”
She ran back towards Stephen, back in the direction of the undead. She tried to keep her eyes off the undead. Tried to shift them to the back of her consciousness.
Because she could make this.
She could make it to Stephen.
She could get him out of this mess.
She reached his side. She heard the mass of the undead just metres away now.
“Oh, God,” he shouted. “My ankle. Please. Help me. I’m so grateful. So grateful.”
He held up his hand.
Melissa grabbed his arm, tried to pull him to his feet. “You’re a lucky man,” she said. “That’s twice I’ve—”
Then, something happened.
Stephen yanked her down to the ground.
She felt her already-sore head whack against the solid earth.
She looked up and saw Stephen glaring down at her.
He had a smile on his face. An unmistakable look of glee like he’d been planning this all along.
“I knew you’d come back for me,” he said. “I knew you just couldn’t resist me.”
Melissa heard the undead just inches away.
“Goodbye, Melissa,” he said. “My only regret is that I won’t have five minutes to get all up in your guts before the dead get here.”
He went to turn away.
Then Melissa heard a blast.
Then another blast.
Stephen fell down to the ground.
Blood spurting out of each of his knees.
She didn’t understand what’d happened. Just that she felt a hand grab her, pull her up, just before the hands of the undead could reach out for her.
“Come on. Quick.”
It dawned on her then that this was the mystery man. That he was helping her. That he’d shot Stephen in both of his knees and left him to die.
She looked over her shoulder as she staggered away, the mystery man by her side.
“Please!” Stephen called. “Don’t let me—argh!”
She looked away when the undead reached him.
She looked away as she listened to the tearing of flesh, the high-pitched squeals Stephen was making.
She didn’t have to see it. She only had to hear it.
And as she got back to the rest of the group, she thought about Stephen coming back as one of the dead. She thought about him waking up, realising what he was, and knowing that it was him who’d done this to himself. Him.
She should’ve felt guilty. She should’ve felt a twinge of remorse.
Instead, she listened to Stephen’s screams, and a smile stretched across her face.
Chapter Nine
If there was one place Melissa didn’t expect to find herself on this mission, it was crammed in a Smart car and surrounded by the undead.
The weather outside was nice. Cooler than the typical summer’s day, but nothing to complain about.
Well. Other than the mass of undead surrounding the Smart car, pressing up against it, trying their best to break their way inside.
She felt Harvey flinch every time one of the undead pushed harder against the glass. There were four of them in this car, including the mystery survivor who still hadn’t told her his name. Only two others had survived this mission, which had to be considered a disaster at this stage.
She thought about the fallen.
She thought about Wilson.
And she thought about Stephen.
At least Stephen falling meant there was still right in this world.
She knew she should probably feel guilty for having those views. But she’d seen clearly what Stephen was, and what he’d tried to do to her.
There was no room for pity.
Besides. She had bigger fish to fry right now.
“How the hell are we supposed to get out of this?”
Melissa looked to her side. It was Patrice who had spoken. Patrice seemed nice enough. Loyal enough. But the more Melissa saw of him, the more she began to doubt that this man had the right frame of mind for a mission like this.
Because sure, he’d passed his scout training. And sure, he had stories to tell about his time in this world.
But training and anecdotes, and the real thing… they were different things entirely.
And when push came to shove, the only thing that mattered was how you handled the real world.
“I mean,” Patrice continued, “we’re trapped in here. And those—those things out there. They ain’t gonna stop.”
“Just be quiet,” Melissa said.
“Be quiet? Is that all you’ve got? Really? ’Cause if it is then I dunno. Maybe Stephen should’ve survived after all. Maybe we’d all be better off.”
Melissa resisted the urge to lay into Patrice for that one. But only because she knew laying into him would almost certainly mean death since it would draw even more attention in their direction.
“We need to wait,” she said. “As long as we wait it out, as long as we stay patient… we’re going to be okay.”
“Okay?” Patrice said, his voice getting louder. “We’re surrounded.”
“But the dead. Look at them.”
Patrice turned around. And Melissa knew that he’d seen what she’d seen. He had to have done.
The dead weren’t looking into the car.
They were pushing against it, sure. Pressing their dead weight against the glass.
But they weren’t looking through the glass.
They weren’t looking at Melissa or at any of them. Not anymore.
“What d’you think’s got their attention?” Harvey asked.
Melissa swallowed a lump in her throat, watched them amble by slowly. She didn’t know what had caught their attention. She couldn’t know that. Only she had to admit it was weird. The dead, especially in as hungry a state as they would be right now, didn’t usually pass by people like this.
“It reminds me of the beginning,” Harvey said.
Melissa frowned. “Plenty of things remind me of the beginning.”
“No,” he said. “I mean specifically. The beginning. When the dead were dumber. Before… before the virus or whatever it is evolved. Before they picked up new skills. Reminds me of how they were right at the start.”
Melissa heard what Harvey was saying then, and it struck a chord in her somewhat. Because he was right. At the start of the outbreak, the dead hadn’t been as evolved as they had become. Something to do with a parasite growing inside the dead, using their body as a host, adapting to the changes in a sort of rapid-state evolution.
But was it possible the parasites were regressing?
Was it possible the dead were losing their lives, as it were?
And if so… what did that mean for everyone else?
She was continuing to think about it, to contemplate it, when she noticed Patrice lifting out his rifle and pointing it at his own head.
“Patrice. Whoa. Stop that.”
Patrice was crying. He was shaking his head. “They’re going to—going to get in here.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” Melissa said. “Haven’t you seen? They’re walking forward. They’re movi
ng onwards. They haven’t seen us.”
But Melissa couldn’t shake off the pain on Patrice’s face. She couldn’t break through the clear remorse in his eyes. The way he looked at her. Like he’d already been captured. Like they’d already got in here.
Like…
Melissa’s skin turned cold.
She looked into Patrice’s eyes and saw the way he was looking back into hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She saw the bloody mark on his arm.
“Patrice, no!”
But it was already too late.
Patrice pulled the trigger.
His brains splattered all over the Smart car.
The sound echoed around; an explosion in Melissa’s ears.
She couldn’t hear a thing. Not anymore.
But it didn’t matter.
Because when she opened her eyes, she saw that the window behind Patrice’s exploded head had cracked open.
It’d cracked the window.
The dead were looking inside.
And they were burrowing their way in.
Chapter Ten
Melissa watched the undead drag themselves in through the tiny Smart car window, and she knew her time was running out.
She couldn’t hear a thing, the blast from the explosion still ringing in her ears. She wasn’t sure she’d ever hear again, in all truth.
She could smell, though. And that smell of rot, that smell of undead, it was getting ever more pungent, ever more intense.
And there was no way for her to go.
She felt someone grab her left arm. When she looked, she saw it was the mystery man. He was pointing towards the roof of the Smart car.
When Melissa looked up, she knew what he was saying.
There was a sunroof there. It was small, and there were undead crawling atop it, but not as many as were surrounding the vehicle.
They could try and get out through there.
Face it. What other choice did they have?
And then, despite the ringing in her ears, despite the searing pain splitting through her skull, Melissa heard something.
A scream.
She wasn’t sure where it came from. Couldn’t quite make it out.
Not until she looked over at the opposite side of the car.
Her stomach turned.
Harvey was being bitten. One of the undead had its teeth firmly wedged in his neck. Blood spewed out everywhere, all over the car. The agony in his eyes, the pain in his face… Melissa just wanted to put him out of his misery as more and more hands reached in, as more and more teeth scratched his skin, pierced his flesh.
But she couldn’t.
Because putting him out of his misery would mean firing her gun.
And if she fired her gun, she’d break the glass even more.
Another tug on her arm. Just her and the mystery survivor alive now. And he was trying to signal that it was time to go. It was time they made a break. Because they couldn’t stick around. Not anymore. Not in this.
She followed the man up towards the sunroof of the car, head still spinning from a combination of the explosion that had crippled her ears and of the high pitched squealing that was coming from Harvey…
And then she felt something.
Something grabbed her leg.
It tightened its grip. One of the undead.
Moved its mouth closer and closer to her.
She kicked at it. Tried to boot it free.
But it wasn’t backing away.
It wasn’t letting go.
She turned her gun, tried to angle it, knowing damn well that another shot might just deafen her entirely.
Then she saw something.
A shard of glass.
A shard of glass plummeted down from above, landed in the undead’s head.
She looked at the hand on the end of the glass.
It was the mystery man. The survivor. Again.
She looked him in the eye, and he looked back at her, and she nodded. Because she knew one thing for sure. She owed him her life. He’d saved her—twice, now.
She owed him big time.
She clambered her way out of the top of the Smart car before it was overwhelmed. She steadied herself when she got atop it. Looked around.
When she saw her surroundings, her stomach sank.
They were in a sea of the dead. Not the thickest sea of dead she’d ever been in. Not so thick that it wasn’t penetrable with some heavy artillery. But too thick for them to handle. That was for certain.
She looked at the undead. Then she looked at the survivor. She expected him to blame her. To hold her responsible for dragging him out here, out of that crypt he’d had himself locked away in for what was evidently far too long.
But he didn’t.
He looked at Melissa like he was thankful. Like he was grateful that she’d made him realise there was still love out there. There was still goodness out there. There was still kindness out there.
And then he reached out his sore-covered hand as the undead started to clamber to the top of the Smart car.
Melissa took it. And as she did, as his warmth transferred to her, she thought of Ricky. She thought of what he’d be doing, back home. How he’d be getting along. She thought of all the times they’d had together, and all the times they were supposed to still have together.
And as the undead started to reach the top of the Smart car, she thought of Ricky, smiled, and waited for the end to come.
The horrible irony was that for the first time in her life, Melissa knew for certain that she didn’t want to die.
She wanted to carry on living.
She took a deep, shaky breath and tightened her grip on the man’s hand. “At least tell me your name,” she muttered.
He told her. And she heard it. She heard it right through the echoey pain in her ears.
And she was about to thank him. She was about to thank him for everything he’d done for her, every sacrifice he’d made.
And then she heard something else.
Gunshots.
Chapter Eleven
Melissa listened to the gunshots and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
She looked down.
Looked at the undead in front of her. The undead surrounding the Smart car.
And she saw something remarkable.
Something was cutting through them like a hot knife through butter.
Heavy artillery.
The kind of heavy artillery they’d been waiting for—that they’d needed—all along.
She watched the undead clambering towards the car begin to fall, one by one, and somewhere deep down she started to believe.
Believe this wasn’t the end.
Believe she could get out of this, somehow.
She looked at the man beside her, and he looked back at her.
The pair of them lifted their guns with what little ammo they had left between them, mostly from Harvey and Patrice’s guns.
They fired at the undead coming towards them; shot at the undead closest to the car. Because whoever was firing at the rest of the dead were doing a good job of clearing them out.
Every single bullet was splitting open the head of one undead after the other.
Every single bullet was splitting them apart, piece by piece.
She fired at more of the undead beneath her when something happened.
The gun stopped firing.
She looked at it. Went to reload.
Shit.
Out of ammo.
Totally out.
And then she saw something.
A hand reached up through the sunroof of the Smart car, dragged the man beside her back down towards the car.
She watched him fall in slow motion. Watched him lose his balance. And she felt regret. Total regret that she wasn’t going to be able to help this man. Total loss that she wasn’t going to be able to bail him out of this situation after all he’d done for her.
But then she fou
nd herself standing her ground.
She found herself rejecting that defeat.
“No,” she said.
She reached into the Smart car, and she grabbed him.
She felt the opposing pull of the undead, and she knew that it was stronger. She knew that it would keep on holding on.
But so too would she.
So too would she.
She saw the undead opening its mouth. Saw it clambering towards the man’s leg.
And then she saw the man lift his gun up towards her.
She yanked it away.
Put the gun beside him.
“Just do it,” he said.
The undead moved in closer towards his leg.
Melissa held her breath.
Then she pulled the trigger.
A bloody splat flew up out of the sunroof of the car. The remains of one of the parasites. Only it looked shrivelled. More watery. Like it was weaker. Struggling.
She pulled the man back out of the car and onto the roof.
“Are you bitten?” she asked.
He looked around, dazed.
“Hey. Are you bitten?”
He shook his head. Blood covered his face. “No,” he said. “No. But we… we need to get away from here. We need to go.”
Melissa looked around at the car. There were gaps in the undead.
And up the road, right ahead, there was a large armoured vehicle.
It looked military. And the people inside it… they were dressed in a similar kind of gear as Melissa.
“They’re our people,” she said, staggering to the edge of the Smart car roof.
Elation filled her body. These were fellow scouts. Probably from another district, or even from another part of the country or the world altogether. But they were fellow scouts. And they were here.
She grabbed the man’s hand, seeing a gap in the undead, a chance to get through them, to get away.
“You ready?” she asked.
The man smiled back at her. “I’m ready.”
Then together, they jumped down onto the blood and gut-soaked road and ran towards the vehicle.
When they reached it, Melissa saw someone sitting atop a heavy gun, firing off any straggling undead, keeping them away.
She saw a woman sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle.
She looked at Melissa, half-smile on her face.
