by Ryan Casey
The process went on like this for another hundred metres. Find, eat, follow, groan. If the creatures thought, they’d likely think it was endless.
But it did come to an end.
The creature at the front of the group finished feasting on its final snack — a squirrel, intestines exposed — and looked around. There was no more blood.
But the muffled voices in the building on the left. The shouts. The movement in the window.
The creature stepped to its feet, fluff from a squirrel’s tail spread across its lips. It let out a cry, and it walked.
Behind it, a trail of a hundred or so followed, towards the red Mercedes, towards the white Fiat Punto, towards the Chinese takeaway restaurant…
CHAPTER ONE
Nine hours earlier…
Riley closed the door slowly. His heart raced. What he’d seen flickered in his mind, images engrained on his eyelids.
She smacked against the door. He stepped back, frozen. Behind the door, Jill let out a low, deep groan, right from the pit of her stomach. She’d turned. Something had turned her.
“Riley, get your ass down here. Tell my wife to shut up if she’s nattering on.”
Riley edged away from the door as it continued to bang. He could hear the water still flowing in the shower. He gripped the packet of cough sweets in his hand. It was just a flu. A bad cold. That’s all it was.
Riley turned away from the room Jill was in and headed towards the stairs. He’d worked up an appetite on his trip to the supermarket, but that had diminished in a flash. The sight of Jill. A chunk of her own flesh in her mouth. He needed to speak to Ted. Work out what to do about this.
The banging of the door had stopped, but she was still in there. Waiting.
Riley descended the stairs and walked into the kitchen area. Chicken sizzled in a frying pan, coughing up white smoke in Stan’s face. Claudia grinned, and her daughter, Elizabeth, giggled beside her. Ted had a smile on his face too. He was content.
“Oh, here he is,” Ted said. “Jill keep you talking?”
Riley’s face was cold. His eyes were wide and burning. The whole room seemed to be spinning around. Less than a day and the very thing they’d battled to keep out was in the bedroom.
“Grab this,” Stan said to Riley. He placed a wooden spoon in his hands and stepped away, wiping his greasy hair back. “I’m not the chef of our house for a reason. Jill would go crazy if she knew I was cooking her chicken. Ask her about the last time that happened. Actually, don’t.”
Claudia laughed as she stirred a red, tomatoey sauce. “You got that, Riley?”
“Looking a bit peaky. Caught my wife’s cold already?”
Riley examined the wooden spoon in his hand. The chicken was beginning to brown. The smoke was growing thicker and darker.
“Jesus, mate.” Ted rushed over to the pan and pushed it out of the way to stop the chicken burning. “You should go get a lie down or something. You don’t look your best.”
“I… We need to talk about something.”
Ted frowned. “What is it?”
Claudia and Stan were looking at Riley now. All the eyes of the room seemed to be on him. He couldn’t tell Stan, not yet. How would he explain it? He needed it to be somebody else’s decision too. He needed a second opinion.
“Upstairs. Please.”
Ted turned to the food and the others and sighed. “Right. But I’m starving, so let’s make this quick, okay?”
Stan watched Riley and Ted with narrow eyes as they left the room. Chloë, Claudia’s oldest daughter, skipped down the stairs and into the kitchen. Claudia brushed her hair out of her face and cleared her throat, still looking at Riley. “That cut. On your hand. You should get Anna to see to it.”
The words clouded in Riley’s head. “Right,” he called. “Thanks. I will. You… I’m looking forward to the food.” He forced a smile back into the kitchen and walked up the stairs with Ted.
“The fuck’s wrong, mate?” Ted said. He stumbled beside Riley up the steps.
Riley didn’t respond. He held his breath. There was nothing he could say to Ted. Ted only understood things — believed things — when he saw them. Like Andy’s body, split in two. Like the creatures feeding on live bodies.
“Did something happen on the road? Is there, like, something I should know about the others?”
They reached the top of the stairs.
“Holy… What happened there?”
Riley froze.
There was a pool of blood outside the room that Jill was in. A pool of blood that wasn’t there before.
“Mate,” Ted said. He punched Riley’s arm. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t… She was…” Riley walked slowly towards the door. Maybe she’d pressed up against the door. The wound in her shoulder — that was severe enough to cause a high level of bleeding.
The sound of running water started from the shower again. Riley and Ted approached the room. Ted squelched the shoe of his good foot into the patch of blood. It was still damp. Like a spilled drink of juice on a living room carpet. The banging had stopped.
“Mind telling me what—”
Riley held his hand up to Ted’s chest and reached for the handle of the door. “Ssh.”
He turned the handle, on his side, and moved back as it swung open, just in case Jill was waiting for them, propped up against the door, ready to pounce.
But she didn’t fall out of the room when the door opened. Nor did she groan.
She was on the floor. There was a large crack right in the middle of her head. Fragments of skull stabbed into her exposed brain. She was still. Completely dead.
Ted heaved and moved back with his hands over his face.
Riley squinted. The shower stopped and started again. He couldn’t quite process what was happening. Somebody had killed her. Somebody had finished her off.
The door opposite Jill’s room opened. “Everything okay out…” Anna stopped talking the second she saw Jill’s dead body. Covered her mouth with her hands.
The door at the other end of the corridor swung open. The bathroom door. Trevor stepped out, wiping his hands with a towel. He stared at Riley, Ted, and Anna—wide-eyed. He didn’t say a word.
“Somebody… We need to—to tell Stan.” Anna started to push the door back, hiding Jill’s dead corpse. Ted leaned with one hand against the wall and heaved up saliva and phlegm.
“Tell Stan what?”
All of them turned around. Stan was at the end of the corridor. He had a bowl of chicken and tomato sauce in his hands.
He could likely tell from the way they were all looking at him that something was wrong. Desperately wrong.
“Don’t look at me like that. What… What’s going on? Is it Jill? Is she… Is she okay?” He walked up the corridor. Riley stepped to one side as Anna approached Stan.
“I think you should probably head downstairs, Stan,” Anna said. “We should talk.”
Stan frowned. He stopped in his tracks and looked past Anna. “Is nobody going to tell me what’s happened here?”
Riley was silent. Ted was silent. Trevor was silent.
Stan shrugged and started to turn away. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find out for myself.” He barged past Anna and jogged down the corridor.
Riley tried to reach for the door but he didn’t have time to close it properly. Stan had already seen the blood outside the room. And seconds later, he’d seen where the blood was coming from.
The bowl of chicken and sauce dropped from his hand and spilled out over the floor. He dropped to his knees.
“What… Jill? This can’t… Jill?”
He started sobbing. Stood back up and reached for her head, but pulled away as he likely realised there was hardly anything to hold. He grabbed her hand. Rubbed his shaking fingers up and down her bare arm. “Jill,” he sobbed. “I don’t… I can’t.”
Riley turned to the others and took a few steps away from Stan.
Ted stared at him.
Trevor stared at him. Anna stared at him.
A speck of blood dripped from the cut in Riley’s hand.
All of them watched it fall to the floor.
The five of them were silent.
Silent, except for Stan. He rested his head on his dead wife’s chest and sobbed loudly. Anna bit her lip. Reached out to place a hand on Stan’s shoulder, then thought better of it. Riley could feel the glances. The eyes looking at him as he squeezed the cut on his hand.
Somebody had finished her off.
“How—” Ted started. He pulled away from the wall, doing his best to avoid eye contact with the body. “How did this happen? Riley?”
Riley frowned as Anna and Trevor both looked at him. “Why look at me?”
“I’m just saying, mate,” Ted said. “You were the one who came downstairs all pale. You brought me up here to see her.”
“But not like this.” Riley shook his head. “This… this isn’t what I was showing you.”
“Then what were you showing him?” Anna interrupted.
Riley paused. Took a deep breath in. “She… Jill. I came to give her the cough sweets and she… she was one of them.”
Anna frowned. “One of ‘what’?”
Stan continued to sob onto Jill’s chest.
Riley cleared his throat. “One of those—those things. The creatures. She’d turned.”
Anna, Trevor, and Ted looked at one another. Stan started to lift his head.
“I don’t know how it happened but she was one of those things and I… I came downstairs to ask for help. I needed a… a second opinion.”
“You say you knew and you didn’t tell me?” Stan turned around to face Riley. His bottom lip quivered. His eyes were bloodshot.
Riley glanced away. “I would have done. I intended to. But—”
“You say she… my Jill. You say she was one of those things and that’s why you… you killed her?”
“No,” Riley said. “I didn’t kill her.” He turned to Anna and to Trevor for support. They were the only ones out of the kitchen at the time. Both of them lowered their heads and didn’t speak. “I found her, but I didn’t… I wanted you to decide… what to do with her.”
Stan squared up to Riley. His breathing was fast and shallow. “You… You know what I say?”
Riley gulped. “I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry she—”
“I say… bullshit.”
Riley felt something hard smack against his cheek. He tumbled back against the wall, banging his already sore head in the process.
“You murdered her!” Stan lodged his boot into Riley’s side. Trevor threw himself at Stan and tried to pull him back, but he was like an escaped zoo animal, unstoppable. “She—my Jill—she was never bitten. You murdered her. You fucking murdered her.”
“Get back,” Anna shouted. She too tried to pull Stan away. Ted joined her. Claudia rushed up the stairs to see what the commotion was. The look of curiosity soon turned to a look of shock and horror when she saw Jill’s body, her skull cracked like a broken egg.
Riley winced as Stan was pulled away. His ribs and right arm stung. He rolled onto his back and stared up at Stan, who frothed at the mouth.
“Come on, Stan,” Claudia said. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he lashed back at her.
“He did it… He killed her. He killed her. Twisted fuck.”
Claudia held her cheek where Stan’s flailing arm had knocked and stared at Riley. He was in too much pain to protest.
“Come on,” Claudia repeated. She took her chances and reached out for Stan again. At first, he looked like he was going to push her away, but he fell into her arms. “My Jill. My Jill. She’s gone.”
Claudia and Stan walked down the stairs, Trevor escorting them. Every few steps, Stan turned around with a furious expression, but Claudia whispered in his ear and he carried on walking, caught between grief and fury.
Anna, Ted, and Riley were the only ones left upstairs with Jill’s body.
“I guess we should… we should get Jill… her body. I guess we should get rid of it.” Ted stared into space.
“Not until we’ve cleaned your friend up,” Anna said. She held out a hand for Riley. “Better check you aren’t too broken.”
Riley gasped as he grabbed Anna’s hand and rose to his feet. His legs wobbled with a combination of the beating and the shock. Ted’s eyes wandered, avoiding contact.
“We’ll go into your… your bedroom,” Anna said. She tilted her head at the door behind Riley where Ted and he had slept last night.
Riley nodded. “I’m okay. But… but Stan. He needs to understand. He needs to understand. She’d turned.”
“That can wait,” Anna said. She looked Riley directly in his eyes. It had to be her or Trevor. But if it was, then why was she so understanding? “But he needs time.”
Riley sighed and turned to the room.
“Mate?”
Ted rubbed his arms. Shuffled away from Jill’s bedroom door. He looked uncertain. Twitchy.
“Yes?”
“It wasn’t you. Was it?”
A weight fell to the pit of Riley’s stomach. His own best friend, staring at him with more uncertainty than he’d ever before seen. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t lie to you.” He turned away and Anna and he stepped into the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWO
Anna dabbed the sponge against Riley’s eye socket. He held his breath and bit his lip, every little nudge of the material against his exposed flesh sending a stinging bolt of pain down his face. Anna didn’t ease off. She didn’t speak. Both of them were silent.
Outside the room, Riley could hear noises. Male voices — Ted and Trevor. Something heavy being dragged along the floor. Jill’s body.
“Just hold still, please,” Anna said. She squeezed some cream out of a small tube and prodded it against his eye socket. She’d already stuck a plaster on his palm and taken his watch from his bruised wrist, so didn’t have much cleaning up left to do.
“I didn’t do it. In case you were wondering.”
Anna didn’t react. She dabbed another speck of soothing cream onto her index finger and tilted Riley’s head back. “Shouldn’t need any stitches. Gonna hurt for a couple of days, but it’s manageable.”
Riley tried to make eye contact with Anna. “Did you hear me? I didn’t kill Jill. What I told you and Stan — I found her like that. That’s the truth.”
Anna took a moment to consider, then shrugged.
“Is that all you think of this? A shrug?”
“Quite frankly, I don’t think it matters what I think,” Anna said. Her tone was sharper and more abrupt. “I think right now, it’s Stan you should be proclaiming your innocence to.”
Riley tutted. “He’s had it in for me since the moment I stepped in this place. This is perfect for him. Something to pin on me.”
Anna’s eyes finally met Riley’s. They narrowed. “Stan’s just found his wife with her head caved in. This is not perfect for him. Not in the slightest. And excuse him if he’s a bit tetchy, but I think he’s entitled to that.”
Riley tensed his jaw. Anna was right. Stan had every reason to feel the way he did. He’d just lost his wife. The circumstances were unexplainable. “She’d turned. She… The chunk of flesh missing from her arm. She was… I saw her eating herself. I don’t get how it—”
“There’s a lot we don’t understand. And that’s how it has to be. We have to focus on surviving. Living together. Understanding comes second.”
Riley shook his head. “She’d turned. And that’s the real focus here. Not who… who finished her off. But something turned her. And if she wasn’t bitten, then it makes me wonder how else this thing spreads.”
“Maybe that’s your priority,” Anna said. She squeezed the bloody tissue firmly against Riley’s bruised cheek. “But, try telling Stan that. We need to find out who did this. Why they did this. And nobody’s talking. Which makes me think—”
“—That somebody has something to hide.�
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Anna and Riley’s gaze met for another brief moment.
“Where were you when all this happened, anyway?”
Anna stepped away. “I was in here having a lie-down. I didn’t hear anything. First thing I heard was Ted cursing when you guys… when you found her.”
“Are you sure?” Riley asked.
Anna frowned. “What are you? An investigative journalist or something?”
“Close enough. Music journalist.”
“Not really close then, is it?”
Riley shrugged. “They share some traits.”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “Don’t flatter yourself. Look — you’ve only been here a day and already you’ve caused an upset. You did good at the supermarket, I’ll give you that. And, strangely enough, I believe you. I don’t think you’re the kind of guy who’d go around hitting old women over the head for no reason.”
“Thank you,” Riley said. “Means a lot.”
“And I know you say she’d turned, but we aren’t in… in much of a position to understand that right now. We need to take things step by step. Who else wasn’t accounted for other than you?”
Riley puffed his lips out. “Well, erm, you. And there was Trevor. He… he must’ve been the one in the shower.” The sound of the water starting and stopping. “We’ll need to talk to him.”
“Nobody else? Ted? Claudia?”
“They were in the kitchen. No way could they’ve done it.”
Anna paused. “And Claudia’s girls?”
Riley felt himself knocked back by the question. “No. They couldn’t. They…”
He thought back. Remembered the people in the kitchen. Elizabeth and Ted teasing one another. Chloë running down the stairs and joining them.
“Chloë. But she can’t have. She—”
“Everybody needs to be accounted for. Just in case they… they saw anything. Right?”
Riley’s stomach sank. “Right.”
Anna picked up her medicinal gear and threw the green rucksack over her shoulder. “We stick together through this. We need to find out why this happened. I… I believe you that Jill had turned. But we need to find out who finished her off. For closure. You understand?”
