by Ryan Casey
A huge bang clattered outside the flat.
Then a chorus of groans erupted.
The six creatures staggered out of the doorway and into the hall.
“Those fucking Poles,” Ted said. “Time to move.”
Riley, Ted and Jordanna ran out of the flat doorway and to the elevator. The elevator door was sealed shut. “I thought you said you opened this thing?” Riley shouted, smacking the ‘call’ button. The creatures were getting closer. Five flats away. Roaring. Groaning.
“I did, but I also didn’t count on having a nice little chat with a lady round the block,” Ted said. He raised the gun at the creatures. “Just take a breath, and fire. Take a breath and fire. All there is to it.”
“You can’t do that now.” Riley bashed the call button. Third floor. Fourth floor. “The sound — it’ll attract the ones outside. We can’t risk that.”
“Then we die!” Ted said. “The rules have changed. We have to adapt, mate.”
Jordanna covered her face with her hands and sobbed. The creatures were just metres away. Ted pulled the trigger.
But nothing came out. No explosion sounded.
But the elevator door pinged and slid open.
“The fucking safety,” Ted said, messing with the gun and running into the elevator.
Riley smacked the ground floor and ‘close door’ buttons when they were inside then moved to the back of the elevator. The creatures started to turn the corner. Blood dribbled down their mouths. Chunks of flesh hung from their body.
“Holy shit, now or never…”
Riley held his breath. Tensed his muscles.
The elevator door started to close. One of the creatures — the Polish father — stuck his hand through the gap in the door and blocked it. A matter of seconds and the doors would bounce open again.
But Ted stood up and thumped the arm. Brought his elbow down on it and pushed it back as it wriggled its dirty fingers at him. “Quick! Help me out here, mate.”
Riley stared on, his body frozen. Time seemed to freeze. His head spun. The blood. The bodies. All of it. No. Not now. Keep calm. Keep fucking calm. Not now.
In what seemed like a split second, Jordanna booted the arm through the elevator door as hard as she could.
She kicked again. The arm disappeared from the elevator door. Blood ran down the crack between the doors.
Ted and Jordanna fell back, panting and shaking their heads as the elevator began to descend.
Riley could only look on. Frozen. Deep breaths. Keep calm. There’s nothing to panic about. Nothing at all to panic about…
The elevator rumbled and ground to a halt. All of them were silent during the descent. Blood covered the inside of the doors, a reminder of how close they had been to losing everything. If it wasn’t for Ted’s strength; for Jordanna’s kick…
“You okay, mate?”
Riley blinked and readjusted to his surroundings. The ringing in his ears had stopped. The tingling in his fingers had subsided. It’s passed. It’s gone. Over.
Riley pulled himself away from the wall and walked to the switch by the elevator door. “I’m good. Thanks. Both of you, for, y’know.”
“Don’t mention it,” Ted said. He stared closely at Riley. “I moved the car right in front of the elevator when I got the chance. Providing we haven’t had another person decide to crash the party, I’d say we’re good to go.” He shot a judgmental glance at Jordanna before pressing the ‘open door’ button.
Riley and Jordanna caught each other’s eyes. There was no hiding their apprehension.
“Oh, come on,” Ted said, sensing the atmosphere. “Trust me to do this one thing right.”
The elevator door slid open. Sure enough, the car was parked right in front of the elevator. The rest of the parking area was quiet. Empty.
Ted opened the front and back doors and gestured for Riley to climb through to the driver’s seat. “After you.”
Riley clambered through and got into position. He felt something damp against his leg: a large bloodstain was spread across the fabric of the seat. Andy’s blood. He yanked his leg away and arched it so it wasn’t resting against the blood as Jordanna and Ted climbed into the car.
“Woah, woah,” Ted shouted. He had his hand pressed against the back door that Jordanna was about to close. “Keep it quiet. We can’t attract those things.”
“Okay, okay,” Jordanna said. She gently clicked the door into place, and Ted followed.
“Ready to drive?”
Riley took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel. The first time since the accident. Since the tingling had taken hold of his fingers and the freezing of his body had made its debut. He checked for the signs — racing heart, sweaty forehead — but realised that they were unavoidable given the circumstances, so didn’t think too much of them. “Okay.” He turned the key. “Ready.”
The car crawled to life. He took a look around the parking area. The bloodstain where he’d found Andy. It seemed so long ago — like so much had happened since. And yet, deep down, he got the sense that this was only the beginning.
Over by the stairway door, he saw the top half of Andy’s torso. Where his head once was, there was a mound of deep red flesh, bloody tire tracks moving away from it.
“Not… Not a lot else I could do,” Ted said, stuttering. “R.I.P. Andy, I guess.”
Riley nodded. Ted had dealt with Andy after all. “R.I.P. Andy indeed.”
“So you just expect to drive past these things?” Jordanna said, leaning into the front of the car. “I’ve seen what they do. How they react.”
“We have a plan, okay? A plan that was going perfectly fine until you showed up.”
“Hey — I could’ve shot you. If I’d wanted to, I could’ve just shot you and taken the car for myself. Consider yourselves lucky.”
Ted tapped the gun in his pocket. “Well, you aren’t so lucky anymore, are you?”
Riley held his breath as they approached the turning at the gates. Tensed his fingers. They’d been upstairs for too long. The creatures, they’d have heard the commotion. They’d be outside the gate again. Waiting.
Riley slowed the car down. “You know what to do, Ted. Hop out of the car, open the gates, then get the hell back here.”
Ted shook his head. “I think she should do it. She’s the one who got us in this mess. Plus she’s… well, more physically built than me.”
Jordanna let out a sarcastic laugh. “Should’ve thought about that before you ate all that junk food, you fat fuck.”
Ted swung around again to lambast Jordanna.
“Okay. One of you does it. I don’t care who as long as we get this done before we lose our chance. That’s if we even have a chance still. So, who’s it going to be?”
Ted and Jordanna lowered their heads then looked at one another, like embarrassed children who had just fallen out.
“I’ll do it,” Jordanna said. “I know… I know what I did in the flats was hasty. But I want to get out of here as much as you two. So I can get help for my boyfriend.”
Riley waited for a few moments before speaking. “Okay. I’ll go round the corner, you run to the gate, and you enter the code. 4-7-5-1. But first, you have to get out and check. Give us the all-clear. Right?”
Jordanna pulled her hair back and nodded. “Right.”
“Don’t you think you should worry about your appearance some other time?” Ted said, as he watched Jordanna tuck her hair into her collared white shirt.
“I’m tucking it away, so that one of those things can’t grab me.” She shot her hand to the side of Ted’s head and tugged at a short clump of his hairs. Then, she opened the car door and crept to the wall, peeking around it.
“Do you think we’ve taken too long?” Ted asked, defeat in his voice.
Riley shrugged. “I guess that’s what we’re about to find out.”
Jordanna perched at the side of the wall and arched her neck around. She kept it there for a second. Another second. W
hat was keeping her so long? What had she seen?
“She’s stunned. Fuck. She’s stunned and she’s… oh.”
Ted was interrupted by Jordanna. She turned around and gave them the thumbs up, then walked around the corner.
Riley rolled the car forward so that it moved around the corner as silently as possible. When they did emerge, he saw Jordanna at the gate keying in numbers. There were no creatures around. None in the foreground, none in the distance. Nothing except the body the others had been feasting on when Riley had interrupted them.
Jordanna hit in a few numbers then waited. The gate didn’t move. She typed the numbers in again and waited. But still, no movement.
“The fuck is taking her so long?” Ted said.
Riley watched Jordanna as she continued to input the numbers. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, has the code changed or something? You should know — you keep on top of these things.”
Riley thought back to his conversations with the landlord. Something about a burst pipe on the second floor. Scheduled maintenance for the elevator. But nothing about a change of code. “One of us is going to have to go out there. Go check on her.”
“No chance, mate,” Ted said. “No chance. I’ve done enough errand running for today.”
Riley sighed. “That’s survival, Ted. That’s life until they get things sorted out. One big fucking chore. One…” He stopped. Something in the distance had changed. He’d always been blessed with what he called a semi-photographic memory, and even though it didn’t work for intricacies like exams, it was good for ‘spot the difference’ exercises. And something was different about the scene ahead. Very different.
He squinted. Looked closely at Jordanna. Stared beyond the gate and over at the shops on the other side of the road.
Then, he saw the body of the half-eaten man on the ground, and he knew what it was.
“Shit,” Riley said.
The gate started to open slowly. Jordanna turned round and stuck her thumb up, a relieved smile on her face.
“Hell yes,” Ted said. “Now get the hell back here.”
But the half-eaten body. Its neck was arched. Its mouth was open. They couldn’t hear it through the car window, but Riley could hear in in his mind, crying out so loudly.
The creature lifted itself further upright, its mouth still moving.
Groaning.
“She needs to hurry. She really, really needs to hurry.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. We can take that one half-eaten fucker with the car, or just swerve around it. It’s no big deal.”
As Jordanna got closer to the car, there was a movement to the right of the gateway.
Then another movement. A leg. An arm. A body.
Several bodies.
Ted’s face dropped as Jordanna opened the door and threw herself into the car, panting. “Sorry, I… The keypad was sticking. Looked like rust or blood or something. What…” She saw what Riley and Ted saw and went quiet immediately.
The mangled creatures were beginning to walk around the corner. Three of them. Four of them. The groans were getting louder. Nearer.
“That one creature might not be a problem,” Riley said. “But all those… they might be.”
CHAPTER SIX
“We’re gonna have to go through them.”
Riley pressed his foot against the gas. Held the clutch down. Ted was shouting words in the background — incomprehensible words. Jordanna was leaning through the gap between the front seats, pointing ahead.
Six creatures. Seven creatures. All of them shrieking. All of them stumbling in their direction.
Riley pulled his seatbelt across and started to raise the clutch. “Hold tight.” The tingling in his fingers was there — completely absorbing him — but he didn’t feel the same level of nerves engulfing him. You can do this. You can keep this under control.
He lifted the clutch. The car jolted forward.
“Oh, fuck. Fucking, fucking fuck.” Ted held his head between his knees. Jordanna moved back into her seat.
Riley stayed focused. Aimed for the small gap between the oncoming creatures.
You can do this. Do it for Grandma. Do it for Grandpa. He’d have been so proud.
Nine creatures. Ten creatures.
So close. Metres away. Feet away.
He held his breath.
The right wing mirror snapped off as it cracked into the side of one of the creatures. Riley resisted the urge to lift his foot from the gas as the car jolted sidewards, the left headlight smacking into another creature.
Ted shouted out, burying his head deeper between his legs, as the car plummeted further forward, crashing into more and more of the creatures. But the gate was so close. The road was so close. They could do this. They could make this.
Riley swerved to the left, avoiding two of the creatures that were directly in front of the car, and jerked back to the right. The dead fell into Riley’s side window, clawing at the door with worn down nails as he shot past them and through the gate. He kept on holding his breath. So close. So close.
The car sped out from the gate and smacked into two more creatures, which tumbled to the ground, their heads popping underneath the tire. Riley looked to his right and saw the crowd of creatures he’d attracted to the rope ladder clambering towards the car, walking like wooden puppets.
But there were no creatures in front of them. Other than the abandoned cars ditched in the middle of the street, they were all clear.
Ted lifted his head. He still had one eye closed as he peeked through the window. “You… You did it. You fucking did it.” He smacked Riley on the back and started to laugh as Riley manoeuvred past the ditched cars out of the high street and onto a main road.
Riley smiled. Tension drifted out of his body. “We did it.” He glanced at Jordanna in the mirror. She wasn’t smiling, but the tears had disappeared from her eyes. She nodded back at Riley, then stared out of the window at the passing houses.
Riley drove slowly for ten minutes or so. Adrenaline ran through his body.
“What now?” Ted asked, finally breaking the euphoria induced silence. “Take the A6 down to your Grandma’s?”
Cars were lined up at the side of the streets, some of them abandoned in the middle of the road. Doors were ajar as hazard lights flashed. A murder of crows cawed as they flocked on the roof of a nearby house. It was quiet. Far too quiet for a populated area.
“I’m not sure this is the best way to go,” Riley said. “There’s a lot of houses around here. A lot of ditched cars.”
“I hardly think houses and cars are the biggest problem,” Ted said.
“No, but the more populated the area, the more of those… those things there are likely to be. We need to take the back road through the countryside. It might be bad around there, but I’d rather take a chance than risk getting ambushed with nowhere to drive.”
Ted shrugged. “Fair point.” He rubbed his finger across the crack on the passenger window. “We got lucky once. I’m not sure how many more times that’s going to happen.”
“When are we getting help?”
The voice startled Riley. Jordanna had been relatively silent since they’d left the city. She sat in the back seat, arms crossed, staring out at the abandoned streets and boarded up windows. People were preparing. Fortifying.
“I… Jordanna, we’re going to go to my grandma’s and get her. Then we’ll be able to find a little more about helping your boyfriend.”
Jordanna opened her mouth then resisted. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Just remember you promised. I trusted you.”
Riley and Ted exchanged a glance. Ted grit his teeth and shook his head. They were going to have to be honest with her eventually. There was no way they were going back into the city, not while the situation was as it was.
But they could use her help. They could use numbers. They needed to stick together.
Riley eased the car towards the edge of the
mass of abandoned vehicles which stretched right the way down the A6 main road. The left turn emerged up ahead. If they turned there, they would be able to get to Grandma’s in a matter of five or ten minutes. Manoeuvring through abandoned cars would take them the best part of an hour. More if something got in their way. They couldn’t risk that. Grandma might not have much time left. They needed to hurry.
“I just don’t get how this can happen.” Ted stared out at the abandoned cars. The ditched vehicles. The wind blew up a flurry of autumn leaves. “How does everybody just ditch their cars in a matter of hours?”
Riley moved around a van. Blood spread across the back doors. “I think the bigger question is ‘why?’”
Ted shook his head. “I don’t like it. Not at all.”
Reaching the turning onto the country bypass, Riley started to turn the car when he saw something up ahead. Ted must have seen it too, because he sighed and lifted his hands behind his head.
“So, did we account for abandoned tankers blocking the road when we planned this country route?”
Riley switched off the engine of the car. Ted rubbed his temples with his fingers and stared ahead at the abandoned tanker. It was positioned across the entrance to the country road. There was no way around it in the Punto. They would have to go on foot until they found another car. Or try their luck on the main road.
“I’m sick to the teeth of this, mate. Sick to the fucking teeth.”
“Well what do you suggest?”
Ted smacked his fist against the car dashboard. “We should’ve stayed put in the flat. Taken refuge in there. We could’ve sneaked out for supplies every now and then. But it had everything. A gate. Height. Fuck.”
“Hey. Don’t you dare drop this on me. I told you to stay in the flat with your fucking video games if you wanted to, didn’t I? I gave you that option—”
“—And what would you have done without me? How would you have got out? Done a runner down the street? What would you have done without my distractions? It’s fucking ridiculous.”
