by Ryan Casey
“Thanks, Ted. Thanks.”
Riley walked past Ted and back into the kitchen. Grandma — no, Grandma’s body — dragged herself — itself — along the floor, unable to push her dead weight up. Her glassy, empty eyes gazed up into space, purple and bloodshot. The kitchen floor resembled an abattoir.
Riley’s arm started to lift the gun automatically. He rattled with nerves as he aimed at her. Her dark hair, coated with dried blood. The lipstick she always wore so proudly — even if she was just spending a full day pottering around the house, watering the plants — smudged across her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” Riley said. He sniffed back the tears as they poured from his eyes and dropped to the floor. “For everything. You were so good. You were… If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t…”
Grandma shrieked and pulled herself further forward. She had a snarl on her face. She snapped her teeth together, shuffling towards Riley.
“I’m sorry for everything. Thank you. For being there. Thank you for being there when—when nobody else was.”
Her hand smacked against the floor. She was just a few metres away now. A new trail of blood was emerging underneath her flowery dress.
“I love you, Grandma. God bless.”
He closed his eyes and he pulled the trigger.
EPISODE TWO
Riley lowered the gun. He couldn’t look directly at her head, or where it once was, but he saw thick, dark blood pooling out underneath it. His bottom lip shook. His throat welled up. Grandma was gone.
“We can… I can go get something from the attic. Try and find something to put her on, or—”
“No,” Riley said. He turned to face Ted and handed him back the gun. “We can’t… we can’t waste too much time. I’ll… Pass me a sheet. Or something.”
Ted looked as if he was going to protest, his wide eyes diverting to look at Grandma’s body, but then he nodded. “I’ll—I’ll get her bed sheets. Something… something nice and warm to cover her up.”
Riley nodded his head in acknowledgement. He couldn’t turn around. He couldn’t see her in that way. He just had to accept it — she was gone.
He looked at the kitchen worktop. Old-fashioned salt and pepper pots. A new Kindle eReader. Grandma always loved to stay at the forefront of technology, even if she didn’t know how to use it. A pile of Liquorice Allsorts. Claimed she didn’t have a sweet tooth. Perhaps not, but she definitely had a liquorice tooth.
Something else caught Riley’s eye at the far end of the worktop. It was an envelope. Turned on its back, the flap still not sealed. A pen rested beside it, chewed down at the end. Riley reached for it. His stomach tensed. He had a feeling he knew what might be inside.
“Got it.”
Ted was by the door. He had Grandma’s bedding underneath his armpit. Pink flowers patterned across it. The faint smell of Lenor. Fresh bedding.
Riley stuffed the envelope in his pocket and grabbed the bedding from Ted. He kept his head upright, trying his best not to look at what remained of Grandma’s head as he crouched down and stretched the bed sheets over her.
Her hand stuck out from under the bed sheets. Grey. Wrinkled. But when he squinted hard enough, he could see it was still her hand. Warm. Tender when she held his hand as a kid, but oh so rough when she washed his hair or dried him after a bath. He reached for her hand, her golden wedding ring still wrapped around her finger, and he gripped it. It was cold. Stiff. Not like her.
“I’m sorry, Grandma. You sleep tight.” Riley blew his grandma a kiss and rose to his feet. The blood from her gun-shot head was beginning to creep out onto the peach coloured sheets.
Ted rested a hand on Riley’s shoulder as they looked down at the mound on the floor. “Come on. We… I know it’s not ideal right now, but we need to talk about the next step, mate.”
Riley blinked away some stinging, warm tears and nodded. “Goodbye, Grandma.”
They walked out of the kitchen and they closed the door.
The sound of the gunshots echoed for miles. Echoed against car doors. Echoed against buildings, through streets and across hills.
They staggered to their feet. Groaned.
And they walked.
When they heard something, they didn’t back down.
CHAPTER ONE
The hallway seemed too silent for Grandma’s hallway. Usually, the sound of the radio playing upstairs echoed down, adding a sense of life to the place. A sense of vibrancy. But now, nothing. No radio. No Grandma, singing and chirping away. No cars speeding past outside. Dead silence.
Until Ted cleared his throat, that was. “Like I say, mate, I don’t mean to press you or anything, but what… well. Everything we had planned revolved around your grandma. We didn’t think beyond that. So what now?”
“What now?” He had a point. Beyond Grandma, they hadn’t really considered what action to take next. She was the end goal. The finish line.
But there was no finish line in this world. Not until the government or the police sorted it out. And right now, they didn’t seem to be making much progress.
“I mean, we could camp out here for a few days, but I don’t know. We can’t be sure how far away those things are.”
“I’m not sure we have much of a choice,” Riley said. He walked past the family photographs. Grandma and his dad. Grandma and him. Grandma and Grandpa.
“Thing is — and this is no disrespect to your Grandma’s shopping — but she always kept the place a bit, well… bare of food.”
“As you’d expect from an old lady living on her own and getting meals delivered, yes.”
”Yes. That’s what I mean.” He dropped his rucksack to the ground and searched through it, pulling out bags of crisps and chocolate bars. “I have stuff here, but it won’t last us too long. And we’re way out at this place. Where even is the nearest supermarket?”
Riley thought about the nearest places to his Grandma’s house. An ASDA, at least five miles away. Too far for them to be commuting to and from every day. “I don’t know what to suggest.”
”Then you’d better start thinking.” Ted’s voice was stern. “I’m trying my best here. Trying my best to keep us both alive. And I understand what you just had to do wasn’t easy. I get that. But we have to stay on our toes. There’s no time for sulking around.”
A fire burned inside Riley’s body and he lurched towards Ted. He grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and held him down as well as he could on the floor. “Listen. You have no idea what I just had to go through. You do not fucking ‘get’ anything. I just had to… I just had to shoot my own grandma. My own grandma. The only fucking person in the world who truly gave a shit about me. Don’t you dare tell me you get that. Your parents are sunning it up in the Canary Islands.”
Ted pushed Riley back, scratching at his neck and his face with his flabby fingers. “Oh yeah? You’re wrong. Your Grandma might’ve given a shit. I know that. But what about me? I’ve put my neck on the line to be here with you. At least you know what’s going on with the person you care about. My parents — how do I know they’re okay? How do we know this thing isn’t global?”
“You came here for yourself,” Riley said, pinning Ted down between his legs. “You came with me because you couldn’t bear being left on your own back there. You came…”
Riley stopped speaking. He felt a gust of wind brush against his back. Had Grandma left a window open? Or had he forgotten to close the front door?
“You ungrateful fuck.” Ted thrashed around at Riley. “You ungrateful, fucking fu—”
Riley covered Ted’s mouth. Ted thrashed some more. But as Riley moved away, Ted saw what Riley saw.
The front door was partly open.
And outside it, behind the frosted glass, a figure stood.
Riley and Ted looked at one another. Both of them were silent. Both of them frozen out of their argument.
With another push, the door swung open.
It was another of Gran
dma’s neighbours. Paul Postwaite. Always visited at Easter with a chocolate egg.
He didn’t have a chocolate egg today.
And he’d brought some friends along, too.
“Get up,” Riley shouted. He jumped to his feet and tried to pull Ted with him. “We have to go out the back.”
The creatures were spilling in through the door. First, just Gran’s neighbour, Paul. Then another old lady, guts sliding out of her torso. And behind her, an old man with broken glasses. A piece of glass was wedged into his eye, eyeball fluids dripping down his face. The old person’s tea party with an interesting, exciting twist.
Ted raised the gun as they backed into the dining room where Alan’s body lay.
“Put that down,” Riley said. “We can’t attract any more of them. And we’ve only got five bullets left. And you wasted your first bullet. That’s two good shots on a lucky day.”
Ted sighed and lowered his gun. They stumbled into the dining room and slammed the door shut.
“Where the fuck did that lot come from?” Ted asked.
Riley reached for one of Grandma’s old wooden chairs and propped it against the door handle. The wood was rickety and flimsy. It wouldn’t hold the creatures out for long.
“We need to get out of here,” Riley said. He clambered over Alan’s dead body and reached for the patio door, completely covered in glass. “We need to get to the car and drive the hell away from this place.”
“And go where?”
“I don’t care where,” Riley snapped. “Just anywhere but here.”
Ted nodded. As he did, the door began to rattle on its hinges. They both looked back at it, panic in their eyes. “Oh shit. This thing isn’t gonna hold for long, mate.”
Riley yanked at the patio door. The large glass windows looked out onto the garden. Specks of blood coated them. Small fragments of Alan’s exploded brain. The patio door wasn’t budging.
Another barge against the door. Ted backed up to it. “Gotta move, man.”
“Okay, okay. I’m trying.” Riley rushed to the cabinet beside the television and opened the top drawer. Nothing but jewellery. Loose change. Unattached buttons.
The door barged again. They were groaning in the hallway now. More of them could have joined since the last bunch they’d seen climb through the front door. There could be tonnes of them that had heard the gunshot. They had to be quick.
Riley searched the next drawer. Loose scraps of paper. Snapped pencils. Reading glasses. Fuck. Where did Grandma keep her keys?
The realisation hit him hard and sudden. “Fuck.”
“What is it?” Ted asked, pressing back on the door.
Riley shook his head. Sickness started to climb to his throat. Trapped. “The keys. Grandma — she got a keyring. To carry them around with her all the time.”
Ted’s face dropped. “Why the fuck didn’t you—”
The wood of the door above Ted’s head cracked open. A hand tore its way through, clambering around for a grip on Ted, scratching at his hair. The groans grew louder when their dead eyes saw Riley standing still in the middle of the room, staring back at them.
Ted fell to his knees. The broken wood of the door was crumbling away as more and more hands shoved themselves inside, like traffic trying to squeeze its way out of a tight junction.
They were trapped. Stuck. They weren’t going to get out.
Ted slid the gun across the floor as the wood continued to crumble. He was on all fours now. Dust from the white paintwork fell down and covered his wispy hair. He couldn’t look at Riley. “Quick. Shoot the glass!”
Riley scooped the gun up and removed the safety. The warmth of the metal. Grandma, staring back at him, straining her vocal chords.
The tingling in his hands. The racing of his heart.
“Quick!” Ted shouted. One of the creatures shoved its head through the door, snapping its teeth just inches away from Ted’s ear.
Riley took a deep breath and aimed the shaky gun at the patio glass. Deep breaths. Keep calm.
He pulled the trigger and the glass shattered.
“Now!” Riley swung around to face Ted.
But the creature. It was so close. Almost touching his neck. He couldn’t move. He was stuck.
Riley aimed the gun again and steadied his hand before firing at the creature above Ted. The bullet pierced its neck, knocking it back into the crowd of ten or so gathering behind it.
“Now!”
Ted let out a small squeal before running towards the broken patio glass. The moment he moved, the door gave way and the creatures started to crawl into the room. He looked at the gun. Only four bullets remaining. They had to save them. Use them when necessary.
“To the car. Watch the glass.”
Riley climbed over the fragments of the broken patio glass first. Several sharp shards pointed out from the bottom of the patio door, like teeth, ready to sink into the flesh of an unfortunate wrong-stepper. He ran out onto the damp grass of the garden, being sure to check the area. The garage looked clear. The garden looked clear. The driveway looked clear. They could get to the front of the house. Get to the car.
“Argghh!”
Riley swung around. Ted was on his hands and knees. Blood was spouting out of his foot. The creatures were getting closer.
“Shit.” Riley sprinted back to the door and wrapped Ted’s arm around his neck before tensing and pulling him to his feet.
“It’s… It’s stuck, man. It’s stuck. Mate. Please.” Ted was whimpering. A small, sharp shard of glass was sticking into the bottom of his shoe. The glass looked like a piece of red-stained window in a church.
But the creatures. They didn’t have enough time to get him free. Three of them were in the room. More of them were crawling through the gap in the door.
“Fuck. Fuck it.” Riley aimed at the creature nearest and fired at its head. The bullet missed, hitting its shoulder but the creature fell back into the one behind, knocking it to the floor.
Then, he crouched down while they had a bit of time and grabbed the sides of Ted’s Doc Martens. “This is going to hurt.”
“Quick. Just do it. Do it. Ple—aaaaarghh!”
Riley yanked Ted’s foot free of the shard of glass. A piece of it snapped away, still wedged in the bottom of Ted’s shoe. Blood poured out of the hole the glass had made in the bottom of the footwear.
“You take those deep breaths I told you about,” Riley said, hopping along with Ted. The creatures were far enough behind them. One of them reached through the patio door and stood foot first onto the glass. It tore right through its foot and out of its thigh, and it fell down onto another piece of glass, still struggling to move forward, still trying.
Riley and Ted moved down the driveway, which was clear. The bloodstained Punto was in front of the house. They just had to hope there were no creatures around the corner, waiting to pounce.
Ted breathed in and out loudly. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He moaned with the pain, but battled on, stumbling along the driveway. A trail of blood dripped out underneath his feet, like Riley and he were Hansel and Gretel, only they were the ones leaving tasty treats for the creatures to gorge on. A candy house of blood.
“If—If you have to leave me, do it,” Ted said, as they approached the front of the house. Just a few metres to go. Just a few more metres…
“Don’t be stupid. We’re… Oh shit.”
As they turned the corner and approached the Punto, two of the creatures that were headed for the front of the house turned around. They started to groan at Riley and Ted, and staggered towards them. A woman — or what was a woman — with greasy long hair. A withered old man, skeletal, and completely bald presumably from chemotherapy. Given a new lease of life by death. Ironic.
“I’m gonna have to use it.” Riley lifted the gun. Two bullets remaining. Two creatures remaining. “I’m… I’m just going to have to try.”
“But we—we might need it. Like you said. We might—”
Ri
ley fired at the woman first. She dropped to the floor as the bullet scraped through the top of her scalp. Not a bad shot. Then, he aimed at the bald man, who could barely stand with his shaky, bony bed-bound legs.
“Sorry, old fella.” He fired. The bullet plummeted into the man’s chest and he too fell back, skull cracking as he hit the ground. He continued to groan on the floor. But he was down.
Riley looked at the gun. Completely empty. Used within their first hour or so of finding it. Like an armour cheat on a videogame, timed out. Fuck. He must’ve been hanging around with Ted for far too long to be thinking like that.
Riley opened the car door and eased Ted into the passenger seat before climbing into the driver’s. He took a look at his grandma’s house. The open door. Silhouettes of creatures turning back to leave the house. Shadows approaching the driveway from the garden.
And the kitchen window. She’d be in there. The only room that didn’t seem to be attracting any attention. At peace.
Ted held his shoe, wincing. “What now? What—what now?”
Riley placed the gun on the dashboard. Reached into his pocket to check the envelope was still in there. Guilt welled up inside him. He opened the envelope.
Riley,
Congratulations on your new (or old!) job. So proud of you. Grandpa would be too.
All my love,
Grand-
The ink trailed off after the ‘d’. Riley swallowed the lump in his throat.
He’d lied about keeping his job, but at least she’d died proud.
Ted moaned, squeezing the bottom of his shoe.
Riley started up the engine and crawled down the country road. “We get to a… a pharmacy. And we get your foot sorted out.”
“Then what? We’ve no ammo. We’ve—we’ve—arghhh.” Ted cried out as he tried to unlace his shoe.
Riley looked back in the mirror. His grandma’s house behind them. Creatures staggered out into the road. More of them were beginning to appear from the old people’s residency around the corner. They’d heard the gunshots. That’s why they’d come for them.
