Infection Z (Book 5)

by Casey, Ryan

  Hayden looked at her again. Part of him thought she was just guessing his next words. Finishing off his end of the conversation for him. But it sounded deeper than that. Like there was truth to what she was saying.

  “How about you?”

  Miriam looked at him. And he saw pure rawness in that look. Like she’d opened up, and nothing would close her for anything. “I… Actually, things were going good for me. Well. For a few months anyway.”

  “Meet the guy of your dreams?”

  “No. I left him.”

  “Oh. I’m—”

  “He sucked the joy out of my life. He took everything I had away from me. He used me for sex. He beat me. He made me scared to leave my own damned house and venture out into the world outside.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Because I grew the courage to step up to him. To walk away. It wasn’t easy. Going getting my haircut, going shopping in Ann Summers. Meeting the girls for coffee. They weren’t easy things to do again. But I did it. I forced myself to do it even if it made me physically sick. Because I knew if I didn’t, I’d be trapped in that life forever. I’d get to forty and wonder what the hell I’d done with my best years. It’s not like I lived a wild few months after Jake. But it felt like for the first time, I was living. And then the fucking dead came along and ruined it all again.”

  Hayden heard Miriam laugh a little. And he couldn’t help but laugh, either. “Yeah. That really must’ve been a bummer.”

  “Something like that.”

  She looked at Hayden. Put a hand on his knee. It made him feel strange inside. Like his muscles were melting. “What I’m trying to say is… sometimes we need to do things we don’t want to do. Things that seem impossible. And if we can do them—if we can force ourselves into doing those impossible things—then we can do anything we want. We can be anything we want. Zombie apocalypse limitations apply here, of course.”

  Hayden smiled as he stared into Miriam’s eyes. And right there, as they sat beside one another, Miriam’s hand on his leg, he felt himself falling deeper into this woman. He felt the man that he’d grown into since the infected started to rise resurfacing. He felt himself growing again. Growing stronger. Growing more powerful.

  Because Miriam was right. She was right because he was alive right now. He was alive because he’d pushed himself. He’d forced himself to change. He’d grown.

  And he was going to have to keep on growing if he wanted to survive.

  He lifted his hand. Went to hold Miriam’s in his.

  Nothing could break this moment.

  Nothing, but the crash against the armoury door.

  The largest crash he’d heard while they’d been holed up in here.

  And then, he heard the door splitting off its hinges, and footsteps pounding inside.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The perfect moment between Hayden and Miriam seemed a distant memory when Hayden heard the footsteps racing down the entrance corridor of the armoury.

  He sat there, totally rigid. Miriam was still, too. As were Shelley and Amy, both with wide-eyed stares of terror.

  The infected were inside.

  They’d broken the armoury door—the door to the best guarded safe place in New Britain—and they were coming for them.

  Hayden didn’t even think. He jumped to his feet. Rushed over towards the door between the main room and the corridor.

  “You can’t just go out there,” Miriam said.

  Hayden grabbed the handle of the door. He could smell the rot from outside the building right through the door. “I have to.”

  “You’ll get yourself—”

  “I have to,” Hayden said.

  Even if Miriam argued any more, Hayden wasn’t listening. He lowered the handle. Pulled the door open.

  And then he lifted his rifle and stepped out into the corridor.

  He nearly fell back when he saw the crowd of infected coming towards him. There were some things you could prepare for in this world. The occasional stray infected. Batty people with questionable intentions. Even blood, guts and gore.

  But a crowd of infected, twenty, thirty, forty strong, all of them sprinting, all of them getting closer?

  Nothing could prepare you for that.

  Hayden open fired. He didn’t think about the noise the gun was making. Didn’t think about the fact that he could be drawing more of these infected towards the armoury. That didn’t matter. He just had to stand his ground. He just had to hold this place. He just had to keep Miriam, Shelley and Amy safe.

  He watched the dead fall in front of him. Watched their muddy blood stain the white walls with every splutter of the rifle. They were falling. Falling right in front of him. He was dealing with them. Months of firearms training was going to save lives. It was going to save what was left of New Britain.

  It had to.

  Soon after, he heard more gunshots, and he saw Miriam by his side. She had a pistol, so she was just firing at their necks, taking down as many as she could.

  The crowd of infected was thinning.

  A path ahead was widening.

  Hayden put his focus on the infected ahead and fired some more.

  And then the gun stopped firing.

  He looked down. Fuck. Out of ammo. Needed to—

  He felt something slam into his chest. Knock him down, right onto his backside.

  He felt the cold grip of its fingers, the jaggedness of its sharp fingernails, and he knew what it was right away.

  He rolled around. Swung the gun at it to try and get it off him. It was a female. Her eyes had completely disappeared, replaced by bloody holes. Her skin was covered in cracks, which little maggots gnawed through.

  And she was getting closer and closer to tearing a chunk of out Hayden’s neck.

  Closer and closer to…

  A blast. Right above Hayden. It made his ears ring with how loud it was. Made his head spin.

  It took him a few seconds to realise what’d happened.

  Miriam had fired her gun. She’d put down the infected pinning him down.

  She’d saved him.

  Hayden pushed the infected away. He got back to his feet. Struggled with the rifle. He had some ammo in the bag. But the infected were getting closer. Miriam’s pistol alone couldn’t hold them off, not much longer.

  “We need to make a break, Hayden!” Miriam shouted.

  Hayden ignored her. He focused on that bag. Focused on reloading the rifle.

  “Hayden, we need to make a break for it while we still can.”

  He slotted the ammo into the rifle.

  Reloaded it.

  And then he turned it right into the face of an oncoming infected, blasted its decaying flesh right from its skull.

  He stood his ground. Cleared out more of the undead. Watched as they fell, filling the corridor of the armouries. The smell of smoke and decay filled the air. The taste of blood was enough to cling to every breath.

  But they were clearing this place.

  They were defending this place.

  “Time to go, Hayden,” Miriam said. And Hayden couldn’t help agreeing with her. As hard a thing as it was to do, there was a gap. A chance to leave this place. To go back into the dangerous world outside. He didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to put Miriam, Amy and Shelley at risk out there.

  But he remembered what Miriam said. About forcing yourself to do things you weren’t comfortable with. How you had to do the impossible if you wanted to achieve what you wanted in life.

  He saw that now. He saw it and he really wanted to believe it.

  But it wasn’t easy.

  He walked in the direction of the open door. Walked past the dead. Walked, Miriam behind him, Shelley behind her, Amy holding on to Shelley’s hand.

  “What’s the quickest way to the wall?” Miriam asked.

  Hayden didn’t want to think about reaching the main gate. But he knew he had to. It was their only option right now.

  “Hayden, yo
u know what we have to do now. What’s the—”

  “We take the alleyways. Maybe even the roofs. We keep off the main streets. We’ll be there in… in no time.”

  Again, speaking those words wasn’t easy. And Hayden knew Miriam would get that it wasn’t easy for him either.

  “We’re doing the right thing,” Miriam said, her eyes watering. Leaving this place. We’re doing the right thing. But we need to get out. We need to go. Before—”

  Miriam’s voice was drowned out by a scream.

  A scream that made Hayden’s stomach turn.

  Because it was a scream that came from behind Miriam.

  When Miriam turned around, Hayden saw the exact source of the cry.

  Shelley was the one screaming. Her arm was stretched out, reaching for one of the fallen infected.

  Except…

  No. She wasn’t reaching for one of the infected.

  Her arm was being bitten by one of the infected.

  Amy cried by her side. And Hayden knew he had to quiet her. He had to quieten both of them.

  “Fuck,” Miriam said, the exasperation clear in her voice. “Fuck.”

  Outside, Hayden heard footsteps approaching.

  Infected getting closer again.

  “We need to get her out of here—Shelley, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  Hayden pointed his rifle at the infected. Fired another couple of bullets through its neck, finishing it off for good—at least hopefully.

  Shelley fell to the floor. She didn’t stop crying out.

  Miriam crouched down beside her. Put a hand on her shoulder. But that just seemed to make her scream louder.

  “Shelley, it’s not over. We can—we can fix this. You just have to keep quiet. Please. You just have to keep…”

  Miriam’s voice was drowned out again.

  Only this time, it wasn’t by a scream.

  It was by the blast of gunfire.

  Hayden watched Shelley fall to the floor. He watched her body go limp. The final tears fell from her dead eyes.

  Miriam looked up at Hayden. Looked at him, rifle pointed over in Shelley’s direction.

  She looked like she wanted to say something. Like she wanted to have a go at him.

  But Hayden knew, just as he knew himself, that deep down, Miriam knew he’d made the right call.

  “Come on,” he said, hearing the loudening shrieks of the infected getting closer. “We need to get out of this place.”

  Miriam took a few seconds to take Hayden’s words in. And then she nodded.

  She stood. Took Amy’s hands in hers. And together with Hayden, they ran towards the door, away from the armoury.

  Hayden couldn’t get Shelley’s screams out of his mind.

  A reminder of the human he’d become.

  The human he had to become to keep his people safe.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hayden, Miriam and Amy walked side by side down the fallen streets.

  The sun was to the west, which meant it was afternoon. Hayden found it amazing to believe it was still the same day as the one where Colin returned from beyond the wall when that horrible attack began. He found it hard to believe they’d been locked up in that armoury for just hours, not longer. It seemed like a lifetime of change had occurred in such a short amount of time. People lost. Truths realised.

  And after all this time, Hayden remembered this was what it was like in the days before his arrival and resurrection at New Britain. Endless days. Constantly alert. Not zoning out for one split second.

  That’s one thing the zombie films always got wrong. They focused too much on the passing days, weeks, months. When in fact there’s enough shit going down in a day, every day, to make up a fucking epic novel.

  The sun battled with the clouds above. The air wasn’t warm, but it was thick like it always was when a storm was impending. Hayden used to enjoy storms, back in his old life. Gave him an extra excuse to stay locked up in his room, in his house. Something relaxing about storms. Just listening to nature at war with itself while you were safely locked in your home. And sure, there might’ve been the occasional overspill of the battle. There might be a brief power outage or a bit of dodgy television reception. But you handled it. Everyone handled it. All part of that primal instinct. That unwavering desire imprinted inside all of us to just revert back to the way we were.

  In the new days, storms were fucking terrifying.

  Some things didn’t change. But others really did change.

  They walked down the centre of Billbrook Street. It was one of the main streets running through the main gate area of New Britain. Hayden had said earlier that they wouldn’t walk down a main street, but it’d reached a point where they’d been forced to divert their path. The gates were getting closer, so all paths met there eventually.

  Their walk in this direction had been relatively uneventful. It’d gone quiet. Well, quiet, except for the screams and the wails. As they walked down the street, Hayden saw charred bodies on either pavement. He saw smashed glass from the windows of houses he used to like the look of. He saw blood smeared across the walls, guts dangling down into the gutters. The whole thing was like a dream; like he was in some kind of nightmare where this place felt vaguely familiar, but was infinitely more terrifying than he could ever remember.

  The fallen faces of people he knew.

  Men.

  Women.

  Children.

  All of them gone.

  “Should be there soon,” Miriam said.

  Hayden thought she was speaking to him at first. But when he looked to his side, he saw she was actually speaking to Amy. Miriam had a pistol in one hand and Amy’s hand in the other. Hayden just held on to his rifle, the ammo and spare weapons rucksack over his shoulder. It was heavy. Sent shooting pains right down the middle of his back. But it was a small compromise for something that’d keep him alive.

  At least he hoped it’d keep him alive.

  He felt knotting in his stomach as he walked past the Red Lion pub he used to visit. The pub he was inside fighting with Gary just earlier that day, in fact.

  More than anything, Hayden just wanted to go back inside that pub and back to the way things were. Despite what he’d spoken about with Miriam, despite everything horrible that’d happened today as a consequence of his indecisiveness, he still wanted to bury his head in the sand and make everything—all his worries—disappear.

  He knew that wasn’t an option. Not anymore.

  He’d done enough of that over the last few months.

  He listened to Miriam reassuring Amy, listened to them talking to one another. And every time Hayden heard Amy’s voice, he thought of the final time he’d seen Martha. The final time she’d looked him in the eye and said those chilling words to him.

  “You’re going to get everyone killed.”

  And then Daniel’s final words.

  “You need to keep these people safe, no matter what.”

  But then, more than anything, Miriam’s words.

  “Sometimes we need to do things we don’t want to do. Things that seem impossible. And if we can do them—if we can force ourselves into doing those impossible things—then we can do anything we want. We can be anything we want.”

  He saw what he’d been doing. He saw that the times he’d fucked up, it was because he was limiting himself.

  But the thought of leaving this place—finding somewhere else—it still terrified him to the core.

  The gate loomed large ahead. Hayden stopped. So too did Miriam and Amy.

  “You ready?” Miriam asked.

  Hayden swallowed a lump in his throat. Nodded. “I guess I have to be.”

  They walked towards the wall.

  Walked, together.

  But Hayden still felt alone.

  More alone than he’d ever felt.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hayden stared through the gates and felt his stomach
sink.

  He looked at the spot where he’d stood just a matter of hours ago. The place where he’d been trying to close the manual gate to keep the infected away. He knew it was going to break. He knew that nothing would be able to withhold the force of an army of infected.

  But still, he’d run away from this spot. He’d left Gary alone here, no doubt to die here.

  He’d run away and the infected had torn New Britain apart. They were forcing him away from his home.

  Now he saw the state of the gate, he knew that was the reality right here.

  Miriam pulled what remained of the destroyed gate. Most of it lay on the ground, pulverised, destroyed. “I know you want to stay here. But just look. Look for yourself. This place isn’t safe anymore.”

  Hayden nodded. He felt his arms tingling, his chest going tight. “We could always find a way to—”

  “They can climb the walls, too,” Miriam said. Hayden heard the resignation in her voice. “Don’t forget that.”

  Hayden nodded. He knew she was right. As much as he wanted to secure the perimeter, to protect New Britain, the time for sticking around here blindly was over. It was time to jump out of that window back at his old flat again. It was time for him to throw himself out into a world that he didn’t understand; a world that nobody understood. A world that terrified him.

  A world without rules.

  He looked down through the tunnel. He could see slower infected drifting towards New Britain. Not many of them. Enough to deal with.

  And then he saw the light at the other side of the tunnel.

  “Wait a second,” he said, as Miriam and Amy started to walk.

  Miriam sighed. Shook her head. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “The outside gate,” Hayden said. He pointed. “It’s open. And…” His mind spun. “It must’ve—must’ve been open when Colin got back. Nobody closed it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, I remember now.” He thought back to when he’d seen Colin. To when he’d stood with Gary in front of the tunnel entrance. Had the gate been open all along? Had they let Colin inside and been so distracted by the threat of the oncoming infected that nobody had been able to close it in time? “If the outside gate’s working, then there’s still a chance we can secure the perimeter. That we can save this place.”