by Ryan Casey
“And I’m still grateful for that to this day,” Cody said. “Really.”
He extended his half-smile into something like a full smile.
Gav didn’t even crack an attempt at a smile.
They kept on their departure from the village. That conversation with Gav summed up Cody’s time in Maryam’s group so far. Difficult. He was finding it hard to bond and connect with people, mostly because people were finding it hard to bond and connect with each other. He knew it wasn’t a perfect world. He knew not everyone could just blindly trust one another.
But surely there had to be more than this. Surely, the world didn’t just end with this cynicism. This decay of trust.
Cody walked slowly away from the silent village. They’d be back at camp in around forty-five minutes. They were holed up in the ruins of some old fort just outside the woods. Decent place. Good places to watch out for the undead and the Uglies. Easy place to abandon, if they had to. Sure, they had the occasional attack from the undead, but they’d been lowering in number for the last couple of weeks now. Things actually seemed like they were getting in order.
But Cody couldn’t just let what he knew drop. What he’d learned.
He remembered following Maryam into the woods. Coming across that wreckage. The plane. The plane, Dubai Express Flight 8040 that had flown over Britain from Dubai to Iceland, then fallen down onto British soil back in June. Maryam told him she was the sole survivor of that plane, which explained her burns and wounds. But not only that—there was a world outside Britain, a normal, uninfected world, rolling along as normal.
A world Cody wanted to be in more than anything else. A world that he wanted to call out to for help. A normality.
But a world that was so, so far away.
He looked back on the village. Looked at the abandoned houses. The half-open doors. The shops with the “Open” signs still dangling down in the windows like this place hadn’t gone away at all.
Time to say goodbye to another village. To another former bastion of life. To…
He saw the boy standing in the window of the cottage and staring at him.
It made goose pimples creep up his skin. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes.
The boy was still there. In the upstairs of a cottage. Looking out with darkened eyes. Emaciated. Staring.
“Hold up,” Cody said.
Gav tutted, as did a couple of the others. “What the fuck now?”
“There’s a boy,” Cody said.
“A boy?”
“Up there. Up there in that cottage. A boy. I think we… I think we should help him out.”
Gav walked up to Cody’s side. He scratched the back of his head, which was balding in patches where alopecia had taken its grip. “Fucking creepy, that’s what it is. Nah. I don’t like it. Doesn’t seem right.”
Cody tasted bitterness. “We can’t just walk away.”
“We can,” Gav said, raising his voice. “And we fucking will. If you wanna stay here gallivanting around the village, you fucking do that. But if you get bit, at least have the decency to cut your arm off or something. Leave us with some fresh meat to cook.”
A few of the others chuckled. Cody just kept his focus on that cottage.
He looked up at the boy. Part of him heard Gav. It was risky. Especially weird seeing a boy up there all on his own. He knew the undead had gone through a stage where they’d taken on a startlingly human form after the blood moon, but that had passed. There was nothing undead looking about this boy. He needed help.
“Don’t wait for me,” Cody said.
He took a deep breath and walked towards the cottage.
“Jesus. He’s actually fucking doing this. Don’t you worry. We won’t wait for you.”
Cody kept on walking, disregarding Gav’s words. He wasn’t giving up on people anymore. He wasn’t leaving them behind. He wasn’t letting all hope in this world fade. Not after what happened to his daughter, Kelly. Not after watching her turn into one of those things, killing his wife, Sasha, back at the Manchester Living Zone.
He pushed open the cottage door. It creaked and echoed. It was dark and dusty downstairs, but the whole place seemed in order. A television set. Family photographs. Cutlery out on the dinner table.
Cody held his breath and climbed up the staircase. He listened to the stairs creak under his feet. The further he got upstairs, towards the room where he’d seen the boy, the more cautious he became, the more wary.
He became especially wary when he caught a smell of rotting fish.
He stopped at the top of the hallway upstairs. Turned and looked across the hall towards that boy.
He was standing by the window. He was still staring out of it, not looking at Cody, as if he didn’t even know Cody was there.
Cody crept closer towards the room, towards the boy. “Kid?” he said.
The kid didn’t even flinch.
Cody walked into the room where the boy was. He looked around and felt those shivers up his arms again. There were cots. Lots of cots. Cots with mobiles dangling above them, some of them still spinning.
Inside the cots, there was movement.
Movement, and blood.
Cody smelled that rotting fish tang even stronger than ever before. He felt his body shaking as he walked over to the cots, looked inside.
When he saw, he almost puked.
The cots were filled with babies. Only they weren’t just normal babies. They were bitten. Some of them were wriggling around, snarling, their intestines dangling from their stomachs. Others were squeezing their little hands so much that they were bleeding from the palms.
When he backed away, Cody saw the young boy was looking at him.
He was holding a knife.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “They need feeding. Mummy said not to let them starve and they can’t chew so they need feeding.”
Cody felt stuff under his feet. Stuff squelching. Blood and muscle.
He saw a machete at the other side of the room. Then a fly-surrounded pile of remains.
On the mouths of some of the babies, he saw blood.
He looked back at the boy. Lifted his hands. “Kid, you don’t have to—”
A blast cracked through the silence.
Cody shuffled back. Braced himself for the contact.
But the bullet didn’t hit him.
The kid had a knife, not a gun.
Which meant…
He watched the boy fall to the ground as the window behind him smashed. He watched him land, face first, the knife still between his bony little fingers.
He looked at the boy, listened to the snarls of the babies, and there was stillness.
Outside, he saw Gav. He looked up at Cody, his rifle raised. Shook his head. “Thank me later,” he called.
Gav walked away. And as he walked, Cody knew he should go, too. He knew he should get the hell out of here.
But as he crouched over the fallen boy and listened to the sounds of the hungry babies, he saw horror. Total horror.
He couldn’t accept he lived in a world so devoid of hope.
He couldn’t accept that this was the world he lived in. That this was all there was left.
He just couldn’t.
“I’ll be a minute,” he called out to Gav, although his voice was so croaky that he knew Gav wouldn’t hear it from here.
He lifted the machete from the side of the room.
Held his breath.
Walked over to the cots.
HE TRIED NOT to throw up as he walked out of the cottage and into the fresh air.
Inside the cottage, there was total silence.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cody stared out at the glistening stars and cleared his mind of the horrors of the day.
Or at least attempted to.
The night had arrived fast. It must’ve been around nine p.m., now, and Cody still hadn’t eaten since he got back. The air had a coolness to it, which was a relief because Cody felt completely stuffy after what he’d seen back
in Cilburn. After what he’d had to do to silence those poor kids in that room, hungry for nothing but flesh.
After he’d watched Gav shoot the young boy through the head.
He looked at the trees below the stars. Looked at the ruins of the fort all around him. There was total silence to the night, aside from the branches blowing in the breeze. His teeth chattered. He tried to stop them chattering, but it was no use, not really. There was no way he was getting the nerves and the fear out of his system after the things he’d witnessed, the things he’d done, today. He might be able to convince himself that his mind was clear. That there was a blue sky above the clouds, no matter what.
But his body wasn’t believing it. Not anytime soon.
He took in some deep breaths of the cool air. He used to love that smell. The smell of freshness in the countryside and the woodlands. The times Sasha, Kelly and him would go camping, cooking marshmallows over an open fire in the middle of the darkness. He wanted that. He wanted nothing more than to go back to that.
But the blue sky above the clouds. The blue sky that was always there, no matter what. Sasha had told him about that—told him that no matter how stormy it was, there was always calm above. No matter how bad things got, there was always stillness available to find out there.
He wanted to believe that. He needed to believe that.
But he wasn’t seeing much to suggest it was true.
His blue sky was falling.
“You always come up here when you’re fucking sulking?”
Cody turned around. Gav was standing in the glow of the moonlight, staring at him.
Cody rubbed the back of his head. “How long you been here?”
Gary sat by his side. “Doesn’t matter. You felt alone, right?”
Cody looked out into the vast emptiness of darkness beyond. “It’s a feeling I’m used to.”
Gav didn’t say anything at first. But from the way he was sighing, Cody could tell he was getting ready for a bit of a groan.
“You shouldn’t’ve fucking gone back to that cottage,” Gav said. “You didn’t fucking need to do any of that.”
There it was. Cody felt his stomach sink. “I couldn’t just leave that boy without knowing—”
“And because you went up there, you almost got yourself killed. Hell, you made me kill the boy to save your life.”
“It wasn’t like that. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course I fucking did,” Gav said. “You might think you have your shit under control. You might think you can talk your way out of any situation. But seriously, mate. Seriously. You need to get a grip and have a real look at the world around you. You can’t go making stupid risks like that.”
Cody rubbed his tired eyes. He stood. He wasn’t in the mood to argue.
“Everyone in this place is vital,” Gav said, standing too, joining Cody as he descended the slippery stone steps down to the ground level of the old fort. “We’re all a fucking cog in a machine. If one of us dies, we’re a whole lot weaker for it.”
“Then maybe that’s why we should think about letting some more cogs in,” Cody snapped.
It wasn’t like him to snap. But he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He was tired. Exhausted. He needed to let off a little steam. If it meant a war of words with Gav, which he really didn’t want, then so be it.
But Gav didn’t bite the bait, which pissed Cody off even more. They walked together through the grounds, past some of the old ruins that’d been converted into sleeping areas. On the walls, which were rebuilt in some areas, several guards took watch out into the darkness. There was nothing. Nothing but silence. But it was nice, in a way. Nice to just be at one with nature, with the darkness.
“I was like you once,” Gav said.
“Here we go.”
“No, for fucking real. Don’t do that. Don’t fucking dismiss me.”
Cody raised his hands as they kept on walking towards the sleeping area.
“I used to believe, and all that bullshit. I used to think people were good, deep down. That no matter what they’d done, there was a way back for them. For every damned one of them.”
“And what happened to screw your worldview up so radically?”
“Two people killed my boy, that’s what,” Gav said. It wasn’t something Gav had ever told Cody in the two months since they’d known each other, but he could hear the pain in Gav’s voice. “They—they were supposed to be my friends. Friends I was surviving with. But they… We got hungry and we got scared. They drew straws on who had to do it. Last damned thing I saw was my boy’s eyes staring at me as they held down his mouth and cut open his damned belly. Then they ate him. Did what they had to do. They weren’t the monsters, Cody. They were the people. And that’s when things changed.”
Cody stopped by the entrance to the stone sleeping area. “What did you do to them?”
“I cut one of them up. Forced the other to eat ’em. And when they’d done, I made ’em puke the other guy up and eat ’em all over again. Kept on going and going until I got bored. Found Maryam not long after. Or she found me.”
“Nice story,” Cody said. “I was starting to wonder how many more bullshit lies you were gonna come up with to win me round to your way of thinking.”
Gav shrugged. “Might be bullshit. Might not be. You’ll never know. But does it matter? Does it really fucking matter?”
Cody smiled. “I think it does. Night, Gav.”
He went to walk inside the fort when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He spun round, instinctively more than anything. “Meant to say. Maryam wants a word with you. A little chat. About the future.”
Cody’s stomach sank. He was sure Gav would’ve mentioned the events earlier to her, but after their conversation, he’d grown less sure. “You told her?”
“Hey,” Gav said. “I’m just trying to keep my people safe.”
Cody gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to lash out at Gav. Because he knew what a chat “about the future” meant in Maryam’s camp.
A chat about the future was a chat about the end of the road.
Banishment.
He walked into Maryam’s fort and saw her sitting there, staring, waiting for him by the embers of a fire as if she knew he was coming all along.
Half of her face was beautiful, with soft features and perky red lips, as well as intoxicating green eyes.
The other half was burned completely, like the skin was hanging on to the remains of a skeleton.
“Hello, Cody,” she said. She held out a hand, which was also burned. Gestured to the rock opposite her. “Sit down. I think it’s about time we spoke about the future. About your future.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Cody sat on the rock opposite Maryam and waited for the news of his banishment.
Even though it wasn’t all that late—nine-fifteenish—Cody was exhausted. Usually, he felt wide awake right into the night, unable to put his mind to rest with the many thoughts spinning around. Thoughts of the outside world. Of how amazing it would be to get back into society. Thoughts of hope, of promise, of starting humanity all over again.
Sometimes, the thoughts were bad. He was sure they would be tonight, and for the next few nights, after what he’d been forced to do in the village earlier. That smell of rotting flesh. The look of fear and madness in the skinny boy’s wide, darkened eyes, tainted by the horrors of this world.
He’d be staying awake a long time tonight if he wasn’t so exhausted.
But he wouldn’t be sleeping at all if he faced what he expected: banishment from Maryam’s group.
Maryam’s room was the only solo one in the whole fortress, which made sense considering she was the leader. She slept on an elevated stone under a sleeping bag she’d found from some campsite a few miles north. There was a pair of rocks down here in the middle of the fort, which made up something of a sitting area. In between the rocks, crackling embers, which gave off a much-needed warmth. Warmth that would be eve
n more needed when winter finally came around, not long off at all.
“I heard about what happened back in Cilburn village.”
Maryam’s words broke the silence and made Cody’s stomach sink. There was no point hiding the truth. Not anymore. “I thought you might’ve.”
“You almost killed yourself. I wouldn’t be so annoyed if it was the first time. But it isn’t. It’s happening often. Far too often.”
“Then banish me, I guess. You’ll be a man down either way.”
Maryam narrowed her eyes. Well, one of her eyes. The burned side of her face, skeletal, didn’t move a muscle. “No. I’ll be a man down, sure. But if you keep putting yourself in dangerous situations, I’ll be more than one person down. Our people. They help you. They try to save you and they hurt themselves.”
Cody waved off Maryam’s words. “I had it under control.”
“That’s not what Gav told me.”
“And you believe Gav? Wouldn’t take it as gospel. He’s had it in for me since day one.”
Maryam tilted her head and looked at the embers below. “True. But I still think you’re foolish. And Gav was right to tell me what happened.”
“I’m sure he was,” Cody said.
“It seems to me like you have a problem. With the way we do things. Like you have… how do I say… something on your chest?” Her accent wavered from time to time, but right now it was in full flow.
Cody thought about holding off his true thoughts. But what the hell did he have to lose? Maryam was going to kick him out of this place anyway. Might as well be honest while he had the chance.
“I’m fed up. Fed up of… of how cold we are with people. How unforgiving. How we just can’t bring ourselves to give other people a chance. It’s like wherever we go, whoever we see, we always go in with the mindset that they have to be bad. That they must be bad because we’re the only goodness left in this world. But I don’t believe that. I really don’t believe that. I don’t want to believe that’s true. Never.”
Maryam didn’t say anything. Not at first. As she stared at Cody, he got the sense that she was looking at him like he was ridiculous.
Then, she broke her silence. “The things that happened to you in the past. Your old group, with the man called Riley. The one that abandoned you.”
