by Ryan Casey
“Riley, I’d be a bit more polite to me. I’m being very lenient in keeping you and Kesha alive right now.”
Riley shook his head. He remembered Jordanna. Chloë. All the things they’d been through together. The people he’d known the longest.
What was he without them?
What did he have left?
Kesha.
Kesha was what he had left.
Mattius walked over to Riley. He crouched opposite him. He lifted his chin, so this time Riley couldn’t avoid looking straight into his eyes.
Mattius half-smiled. His hands were covered in the blood of the people he loved. “I didn’t enjoy doing that.”
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t enjoy it one bit. Much like I’m sure you didn’t enjoy—”
“Get the fuck over your people. We did what we had to do to stay safe.”
“And oh, so did we. So did we just now. After all, your people were a threat. We had to deal with them. The heads on the stake thing, well. That’s just a nice little added bonus now, isn’t it? Do the words ‘full circle’ spring to mind?”
Riley’s head pulsated. He shook all over. He still hadn’t accepted everything. He still hadn’t taken it all in. It was like a nightmare, only one he didn’t have the fortune of being able to wake up from. Ever.
“Just leave me and Kesha.” It was all he could say. He was totally lost. Totally desperate. “Just… just leave us. Please.”
Mattius sighed. He stood back up. “I’d love to do that.”
He pulled back his boot and kicked Riley right in his face.
Riley slammed back into the ground. Blood filled his mouth. He tried to struggle back to his feet, but more of Mattius’ people held him down, pinned him by the arms, by the legs.
“But after what you told us about Kesha—about how important she is—well…”
Dread filled Riley’s body. “Don’t do anything. Don’t you fucking—”
Another kick knocked him back to the ground.
In his blurred vision, he saw Kesha then. Saw her in the arms of a woman he didn’t recognise. Or maybe he did. Maybe he had seen her back at the multi-storey car park.
She held Kesha with love. With care.
She looked at Riley with total disgust. As if he was the monster.
Mattius walked up to her. He looked down at Kesha and smiled.
“No, I don’t think Kesha’s safe with you.”
“Please.”
“I don’t think you’re a very good influence, frankly.”
Mattius took Kesha into his arms. She cried right away.
He walked back over to Riley and put a boot on his chest. He pressed down so hard that if he pushed any further, Riley knew his ribcage would split in two.
“When I told you I’d make you suffer, this is just the beginning, mate. This is the absolute beginning of your agony.”
He pressed down harder with his boot.
“You know how it feels to have people you love taken away from you. Now you’ll know exactly what it is to be alone. Completely, utterly alone.”
Riley sensed Mattius was talking about something other than his current situation. He’d lost people, sure, but he wasn’t alone.
“Please—”
“I won’t kill you,” Mattius said. He lifted his boot away. “That’d be too easy. I’d rather you killed yourself.”
And then he turned around and walked away.
“Tie him up,” Mattius said. “Let the zombies get him. Or let him just kill himself.”
Riley felt Mattius’ people wrapping ties around his arms. He felt himself being pinned up to a column in this place he didn’t recognise as home, surrounded by these people he didn’t recognise.
He tried to fight back as Mattius took Kesha away, but he was trapped.
He tried to scream, but he was trapped.
“Now you know how it feels,” Mattius said, as all of his people followed him out of the gate, all of them looking back like they’d achieved exactly what they set out to.
“No!”
His voice echoed around the camp. The footsteps of Mattius and his group disappeared into the woods.
As Riley crouched there, tied to the column, he heard himself crying.
He was alone.
Totally alone.
Except for the dead eyes of the two people he cared about most, impaled on stakes just metres away from him, reminding him of everything he’d lost.
But more, of everything he’d had.
His family.
His lost family.
CHAPTER THREE
Cody didn’t want to have to do what he had to do.
He didn’t want to go against everything he stood for. Everything he’d fought for.
But sometimes in life, you just had to break your values to survive…
CODY LOOKED at the man from between the prison bars and waited for the perfect opportunity.
Night was falling. It was getting darker and colder by the second. His hands were stinging. He knew he wouldn’t have much time left. He’d been beaten, and his fingers had been bitten away. They looked infected, too—and not just infected with the juice that turned you into the undead. Proper infection, the kind that was about before the world fell.
There were other matters at hand now. No pun intended.
Cody raised a hand and waved at the man.
The man looked over his shoulder, over at the camps, from where a gentle hum of laughter emitted.
And then he looked back at Cody.
Cody licked his dry lips. He wasn’t sure how exactly he was going to play this. All he knew was that he needed to get out of here, and he needed to get Michael out of here. Sure, Michael might’ve lied to him. He might’ve used him to try and get him back to his family.
But that’s why he’d done it. For his family.
And Cody could sympathise with a man who was willing to do anything, to go to the furthest lengths, all for their family.
“Please,” Cody mouthed, still waving shakily at the man.
The man scratched the back of his head. For a moment, Cody was convinced he wasn’t going to succeed here. He was sure there was no way this man would fall into what he had planned.
But then the man made his way towards the cells.
Right up to Cody’s prison bars.
He was tall and skinny, with thick dark hair. He was probably in his mid-twenties. He didn’t look at Cody at all when he spoke.
“Need to shit. Please.”
The man turned away. “Do it in there.”
“Please!” Cody called.
He reached between the bars for the man’s arm. He knew it was a gamble, but gambles were exactly what he needed to take right now.
The man lurched away from Cody’s gammy hand. He narrowed his eyes and peered back at him.
“I’m thirsty. I’m starving. I’m dying. And I need a shit. Please. The least you can do is just let me take my final fucking shit on a toilet.”
The man narrowed his eyes. He scanned Cody’s face, trying desperately to figure out where to progress, what to do.
“And how do I know I can trust you to behave?”
Cody smiled. He fell back against the container floor. He laughed and couldn’t stop laughing.
“What the hell are you laughing at?”
Cody still couldn’t stop himself. “Trust,” he said. He laughed some more. “I’m in this place ’cause I trusted Michael over there with his lie. I’m in this place because I got my people to trust me. Because I really, stupidly believed there was something better out here. That there really was an extraction point.”
He looked the guy in his eyes.
“The reason you can trust me is ’cause I’m a pathetic sap with infection running through my body. If that’s not enough for you, I don’t know what is.”
Again, the man looked from left to right with uncertainty. Darkness was rapidly approaching.
“If I let you out, you do it right here. Right where
I can see you.”
“Come on. At least give me a toilet—”
“Right here,” he said. He pointed at the patch of grass in front of the container.
Cody sighed. It wasn’t ideal. But it would have to do. “As long as you clean up after me.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
The man opened up the bars to the container cell. Cody hobbled out, weakness in his thighs and heaviness in his head from the beatings these people had given him. He scanned the camp. He saw Michael was just a few metres away in a container of his own. Closer than he’d thought.
He thought about leaving Michael here to rot after what he’d done, after the death he’d caused.
“Right. Get it done with. And don’t make it fucking sloppy. Please.”
Cody crouched down and pulled down his trousers. He started tensing as he figured out how many steps it’d take him to get to Michael’s cell. And then he turned and saw the keys dangling from the man’s pocket.
That was the crazy thing about these people. For all their bravado, for all their killings, they really were still normal people.
Normal, flawed people.
“Are you actually shitting at all? I don’t see anything.”
Cody swallowed a lump in his throat.
Then he closed his eyes and fell face flat on the ground.
There was silence. Total silence. A few mumbles and curses under the man’s breath. Cody knew he wouldn’t shout for help. He’d be in deep shit if any of his superiors found him with Cody outside the container. They didn’t seem like the most forgiving people.
“Cody,” the man said. He put an arm on Cody’s back. “Cody, wake up. What’s… Shit. Shitting shit.”
Cody felt the man’s shaky breaths on the back of his neck.
Then, he felt the man tuck his arm under his sides.
He opened his eyes.
The man didn’t have any time to react when Cody swung around.
Cody knocked him down, covered his mouth with his hand.
And then he used the only weapon he had left.
His teeth.
He closed his eyes and sunk his teeth into the man’s neck.
He felt the man’s Adam’s apple bobbing as metallic blood filled his mouth. His teeth sunk deeper through his skin, into his flesh. And as he chewed down harder, the man kicking and punching and screaming out under Cody’s hand in total fear, Cody felt guilty. He was guilty of betraying this man’s trust and guilty of becoming the very embodiment of everything he stood against in this world.
He was now someone who used trust as a weapon against others.
But as he chewed down harder, he heard Gav’s voice.
“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.”
He hadn’t believed Gav at the time. He hadn’t wanted to.
But as the man stopped struggling when Cody bit his neck harder, he realised for the first time that maybe Gav was right.
He pulled away from the man’s neck. Wiped his lips.
He was about to take the keys and make a break for Steve’s container when he heard voices.
Footsteps.
Coming his way.
CHAPTER FOUR
Three years ago…
“ALISON, please. I don’t understand how this is happening. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
Riley looked across the dining table at Alison. They were in her place, of course. They usually were. Her home was much nicer than his. She actually owned it, too, something that Riley couldn’t help being a little envious of. It was summer. The sun shone in through the Venetian blinds. The smells of warmth that always came with summer in a city were strong in the air.
But Alison’s news made Riley cold. Completely cold.
“I’m sorry, Riley. I just… I just don’t think I can do this anymore.”
When Alison apologised, it took Riley by surprise. She didn’t apologise often. She was one of those people who always thought they were in the right about everything.
However, just seeing the look in her tearful blue eyes right now, her blonde hair pushed back behind her ears. Hearing the apologetic tone to her apologetic words.
She was serious about this.
She’d done wrong.
And she was leaving him.
The realisation started to build up inside Riley. “But the baby. We—”
“There’s a chance the baby’s not even yours.”
That hit Riley harder than anything Alison had said so far. “We’ve been together years. I feel like I don’t recognise you anymore.”
Alison looked away. Truth be told, her pregnancy, which was four months strong now, had been a stressful ordeal. He was panicked at first. He had to settle for a low pay job as a music journalist at a dying newspaper just inside town. He struggled making rent in his shitty little two-bedroom flat, which he shared with his jobsworthy best mate, Ted. He found it hard treating Alison at Christmas and birthdays. They’d still never been on holiday on his money, always her dad’s cash. Raising a kid wasn’t going to be easy.
But he’d made a point of looking for new jobs. Or at least looking into looking into new jobs. Or maybe it was looking into looking into looking into new jobs. He couldn’t be sure which.
“You won’t have to pay a penny. I understand it’s hard.”
Riley shook his head. The hairs on his neck stood on end. “No. No, don’t do that to me. I’ve been working at earning more.”
“And how’s that going for you?”
“So that’s all life’s about is it? That’s all love’s about to you? Money.”
Alison shook her head. “You know this isn’t just about money, Riley.”
“Well, what is it about then? This new fella of yours. The one you’ve been fucking behind my back for, what is it, a year now?”
“Riley—”
“No, don’t ‘Riley’ me. Just don’t. I’ve been working my arse off to make sure I can get a new job. I’ve been working my dick off to make sure I can get some kind of pay rise for our baby. And I’ve been working my tits off to keep this relationship together.”
Alison looked at him with this cold, steely gaze. “Then it isn’t enough.”
Those words shot through Riley even more than the others. Not because he thought they were ungrateful or anything. But because they were true.
He hadn’t been working hard enough to make everything stay together, and he knew it.
“You’re detached,” Alison said. “You spend more time with Ted than you do me.”
“That’s not true—”
“The last time I was round, all you could talk about was the amount of ‘zombie kills’ you managed on Left 4 Dead.”
“You have to admit, one-hundred is a pretty impressive score.”
“But it’s not real life, Riley. It’s not real life.”
She walked over towards Riley. Put a hand on his arm. He felt his body go cold.
“I’m twenty-six. I’m pregnant. I want something… something real. And that’s why I’m going away.”
Riley narrowed his eyes. “Going… going away?”
“To Australia.”
If Riley hadn’t already wobbled to his knees, he was on the verge of doing right now. “Australia?”
“My mum’s place,” Alison said. “Just for… just for a while. To get my head together.”
“But you can’t do this. Not with my kid. With our kid.”
“Riley, you never wanted a kid in the first place.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. And it’s obvious you’re still uncertain now. It’s like you’re hiding from reality whenever we bring the question up. Like you’re desperate to look like you’re excited, but really you’re terrified.”
Riley looked at the floor. He couldn’t argue with Alison. He knew what she said was true.
“Life’s not a game. This isn’t a test run. This is the real thing. So this is it. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to
Australia. And I’m going to raise my child there.”
Riley lifted his head. His eyes were watery, filled with tears. “You’re a bitch.”
“Thanks. Great way to salvage a relationship.”
“No. Wait. I didn’t mean that.”
“Instead of offering to give it all up and come with me, that’s what you say?”
“Wait,” Riley said. He was confused now. “I thought you said you were going alone.”
Alison wiped the tears from her eyes. “I want you to fight for me, Riley. I want you to fight to make this work. To make us work. So go on. Just say it. Just say it, and I’ll know where we stand.”
Riley wanted to comfort Alison. He wanted to live the dream with her. He wanted to give up his life in Britain and move to Australia with her, live a perfect life with her and his kid.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t afford to come with you.”
“My dad will pay—”
“No,” Riley said. And for words that were so hard to spit out, he found himself saying them with a scary level of composure. “I… I won’t give up my life here just because you’re getting—getting cold feet about living here. I won’t give up all I’ve got here because you slept with someone behind my back and decide you want a clean break. I won’t give up all I’ve got on someone who might do it again.”
Alison didn’t speak. She just stood there, tears in her eyes, looking totally floored.
Then, she raised her shoulders and forced a smile. “Then I guess that’s how you really feel about us. About your kid.”
Alison packed her things. It was painful to watch. And all the time, Riley wanted to intervene. To tell her he’d come with her. That he’d give everything up.
But he couldn’t.
He just couldn’t.
“The baby,” Riley said. “I’ll fight. I have a right to see my child and I’ll fight.”
Alison walked over to Riley. She put her hands on his neck. Kissed him on his lips, then backed away.
“You won’t, Riley. You never have. You’ve never fought for a thing in your life.”
She turned her back and walked to the door. Opened it for Riley to leave.
He wanted to fight.
But she was right.
He walked away.
When he looked back at the door, into Alison’s—the girl he thought he loved—eyes, he cherished that moment. “I’ll prove you wrong,” he said. “I’ll see you and I’ll see my child again and I’ll prove you wrong.”
