by Casey, Ryan
But it was just about the last safe place they had. Until they made some new plans—whatever those plans would be—this place was the only location they had left.
They had to accept they were pinned down. They were surrounded. Only through accepting it could they ever start to think about how they were going to get the hell out of here.
There was something else bothering Hayden, too. Something making his stomach turn, the taste of acid building at the back of his throat. The memory. The memory of spitting half his tooth into his hand just hours ago. He rubbed his tongue against the rest of the tooth. Felt it, sharp and protruding. He wondered if this was how it really felt. What the slow, arduous process of turning into one of those monsters really felt like.
He had to hope not. Because he still had things to do. He still had people to look out for. A place to keep safe.
But he had to face up to the reality of his situation.
He was turning.
And soon he’d be gone. Soon, he’d be a monster. Just like the rest of the planet.
“You should kill me,” Hayden said.
He didn’t mean to speak it aloud. And he regretted the words almost the second after he’d spoken them.
There was silence. No response from Miriam.
Then, “What?”
He realised he couldn’t go back on himself at that point. Knew they weren’t exactly the kind of words he could just expect Miriam to forget. “If I’m turning then you should kill me. For your own safety. I’m dangerous. I could turn at any minute. And Amy and you, you’re… you’re not immunised. You’re special for that very reason. Gary’ll leave you alone if I’m not around to punish. Plus, he’s got a point. You’re not immunised. You could be important. You need to stay alive. So you should kill me.”
Again, silence followed. For a few minutes anyway, where Hayden wondered if Miriam had just dozed off, or whether she was just in denial about what he’d said.
And then he heard her stand. Heard her creep across the floor, over towards him.
She crouched down opposite him. Right in front of him. He felt the warmth of her body. Smelled the sweetness of her breath.
She put a warm hand on his face and stroked it. Moved her face closer.
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” she said.
Hayden wanted to respond but he didn’t get a chance.
Miriam pressed her lips against his. And at that moment, as their lips interlocked, as their bodies pressed closer, Hayden felt every fear and worry disintegrating. He felt like nothing mattered, not anymore. Nothing but him, Miriam, and this moment.
He felt his walls falling down. His defences breaking. Because this was what he’d wanted all along. This was what he’d wanted but he’d been too scared to fight for, too afraid of.
Miriam pulled away and the moment didn’t break. The euphoria buzzing through him didn’t disintegrate.
He didn’t feel weak again.
He didn’t feel the worries and the pains of the world.
He felt strong. Like he wasn’t alone anymore.
“You should be careful,” Hayden said, struggling to find a way to follow a kiss like that. “My tooth’s really bloody sharp.”
Miriam snorted. And Hayden laughed back at her. Together, holding hands, he felt like this must be what it was like to have someone. To be really close and in love with someone. This must be what it’s like to be back in the old world with someone who cares about you.
He felt regret seeping in. Regret that he’d wasted so many years of his life just trapped in his bedroom, losing himself in virtual worlds and questionable substances.
He felt regret for not taking opportunities. For missing out.
But above anything, he felt relief.
Relief that he’d been able to experience these emotions. Relief that he finally had someone who cared as much about him as he did about them.
Relief that this bastard of a new world had forced him out of his shitty old existence and forced him to grow.
“I’m in this with you,” Miriam said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Hayden moved in to kiss Miriam again.
He saw a figure in the corner of his eye.
He pushed Miriam away. Stood.
“Wait! Wait. It’s—it’s just me.”
Hayden was already throwing himself towards the figure, then the voice clicked.
Amy. Just Amy.
He felt his cheeks heating up. He’d pretty much thrown Miriam to the floor. Hardly the most romantic of moves. “Amy. What are you doing? You should be… you should be asleep.”
“I know,” Amy said. And then Hayden realised something. There was a dim light coming from outside this room. From the main radio room.
“What’s—”
“There’s something you’re going to want to hear,” Amy said. “Both of you.”
Hayden wasn’t sure what to think, believe or what to expect, not right at that moment.
But soon, he’d understand.
Soon, he’d understand completely.
And when he did, everything would change.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Amy was right when she told Hayden and Miriam that they’d both want to hear what she’d heard.
She was very fucking right.
The night was getting thicker around them, but all sense of time, every sense of surroundings seemed irrelevant. Now they’d heard the voice coming from the radio transmission room, literally everything in the background slipped away, lost its importance.
All that mattered was that voice.
That same voice repeating itself.
“Do you… do you think it’s legit?” Miriam asked.
Hayden strained to listen to it. His stomach tingled. His heart thumped. He wanted to believe it was real. He really wanted to believe it was real.
But… how?
How was it real?
How was this possible?
“Hayden?”
Hayden shook his head. He listened to the crackly voice coming from the transmission. The illness he’d felt crippling him for so long also felt irrelevant all of a sudden. The only thing that mattered was that voice.
Those words.
What they said.
“I mean it sounds pretty… pretty logical,” Miriam said.
“That’s how you’d sound if you were trying to do whatever these people are trying to do.”
“Why do you always have to see the worst in people?”
“Because we live in a fucking world that brings out the worst in people.”
Miriam tilted her head. Then she moved closer to the transmission, too. Like she was trying to wrap her head around it. Weigh it up.
Amy, Miriam and Hayden all sat there, totally still, trying to figure out what this meant.
“Attention. Any remaining survivors. There is still hope. Repeat, there is still hope.”
The transmission crackled into static. A few words were covered.
“See he could’ve said anything there,” Hayden said.
“Ssh,” Miriam said.
Hayden did. He carried on listening.
“We cannot pretend to understand what you’ve been through. We cannot even begin to ask you for our forgiveness for coming for you after so long. But we are. We’re a United Nations task force made up of the remaining armies of the last standing nations. We’ve operated in Belgium, France, Switzerland, and now we’re moving through mainland Britain in the hope of finding one thing: uninfected human beings.”
“It just doesn’t sound right,” Hayden said.
“We will be visiting the following extraction points. Please listen carefully because there will only be one opportunity to reach these extraction points. You have to understand that this is a very volatile, high-risk mission. Once we reach each extraction point, we stay there for no longer than thirty minutes. Then we move on. You have one opportunity. Just one. Please, for the sake of yourselves, for the sake of our future, please take it.�
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The voice went on to list the locations of the extraction points. And it was this part that always surprised Hayden. This part that always startled him more than any other.
Towards the end of the list: “Dunstable Downs Golf Club. 2 a.m.”
Hayden heard those words in his head over and over. He replayed them in his mind.
Dunstable Downs was only five miles away. They could get there in less than two hours if they threw everything they had at it.
It was midnight now. They had two hours.
Plenty of time to get to that extraction point, even allowing for crises.
But also plenty of time for shit to go wrong.
“We understand your trust may be an issue. We understand you’ve probably heard a dozen transmissions, and you’ve lost out because of it…”
Hayden thought back to Clarice. To Riversford. He could vouch for that right away.
“…And we appreciate your journey to one of our extraction points may well be costly. But our goals are simply to save those who are listening. Those who can be saved. After that, we cannot promise refuge. We cannot promise safety. This is your final opportunity to survive. To prosper. To move forward in a new world. It won’t be easy. We’d love to call it a paradise, but it will take time. But one day, your children will thank you. Your grandchildren, and your grandchildren’s grandchildren, all of them will thank you. For the sake of civilisation, take this final opportunity. Do not waste it. Please.”
The voice cut off, the transmission ended, and then it started again.
“We definitely sure this is live today?” Miriam asked.
Amy nodded. “I was just sitting around in here. Then it went off. Had to turn it down so it didn’t wake anyone or… or bring the zombies to us.”
Miriam nodded. She looked at Hayden, a mixture of concern and hope in her eyes. Hayden knew why that was. She was worried about his state. Worried about his condition. Worried whether he could make it. “We have to do this. Right?”
Hayden shook his head. “I… I’ve been fucked over by transmissions before.”
“But not like this,” Miriam said.
Hayden opened his mouth to respond. No sound came out.
“Hayden, we’re surrounded. We’re surrounded in the last place we know’s safe in this country. You heard what the guy on the transmission said. We might die fighting to get to them. And he’s probably right. He’s probably fucking right.”
She grabbed Amy’s hand.
“But right now, it’s all we have. And it’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means getting away from this place. To somewhere… somewhere off this rock. Somewhere safe.”
Hayden wanted to argue. He could hear the old Hayden droning on inside his mind, telling him he was being stupid, he was making the wrong call—a dangerous fucking call.
But then he remembered Annabelle’s words.
The worst monsters of all are the ones inside your head.
He heard them as if spoken aloud, and he turned around. Walked to the transmission room door. Leaned over to the window and peeked under the blind, out into the darkness of New Britain.
“Hayden? What do you say?”
He lowered the blind. Looked back at Miriam. Then at Amy. He was shaky. He felt rough as fuck. But he’d sworn to protect these people, to look out for those he cared about; those he loved. So he wasn’t even going to give up on that, not if that’s what they wanted.
He nodded. “We’ve got two hours to get out of here and travel five miles. I think it’s time we got a plan in order, don’t you?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hayden tried not to think about what he was actually doing as he stuffed his hands inside the bludgeoned torso of an infected and covered his hands with cold blood.
The sky was dark. The night felt endless. And it would be unless they got to the Dunstable Downs Golf Club for 2 a.m.
“When I said we needed a plan, this wasn’t exactly what I was thinking,” Miriam said.
Hayden looked at her. She was covered from head to toe in the rotting flesh and cold blood of a fallen infected. If he didn’t know it was her, he’d be convinced she was infected. Just another infected roaming around, harmless as long as they were a decent enough distance away.
Which was exactly what they were going for.
Hayden walked over to Amy. Helped scoop some scattered brains over her face. She spat some of it from her lips. Couldn’t blame the kid. The smell was horrible, and the taste was just as bad. Shit, he swore this looked easier on a TV show he once watched than it actually was in reality.
Just had to hope it was quite as successful.
“It’ll be over soon,” Hayden said. “All of this. You won’t have anything to worry about anymore very soon.”
Amy nodded. She didn’t really look convinced. Again, Hayden couldn’t exactly blame her.
“Now go on,” Miriam said. “How do I look?”
Hayden stepped closer to her. The smell of rot intensified. “Dead.”
“That’s exactly the kind of compliment I was looking for. You don’t look too good yourself.”
“Perfect.”
“If only it was this easy to pretty up in the first place. The world would be a much smarter place.”
Hayden turned from Miriam and Amy. He faced the road ahead. It wasn’t a main road, but he’d seen a few people wandering past every now and then. He knew they had to be careful. While they were safer under the cover of darkness and the cover of infected—Gary’s people didn’t seem to be wasting their bullets on the slower ones, which would make for a nice surprise when they stepped up to kill them only to meet a knife in their neck—there was still a risk that all this might go wrong.
“Hey,” Miriam said.
Hayden felt her hand, crusty with blood, brush the back of his.
“We’re going to do this,” she said. “We’re going to make it. We’re going to be okay.”
Hayden nodded. He wasn’t sure he totally believed Miriam. He wished he shared her optimism.
But the stakes were just too high to get complacent.
“We move towards the main gate,” Hayden said. “Slowly. We will bump into people. People who try to kill us. That’s what the knives are for.”
Hayden saw Amy lift the long knife, almost as long and wide as her little forearm. She looked at it, like it was out of place, like she wasn’t comfortable holding it.
“As horrible as it sounds… if in doubt, use it. Doesn’t matter whether you think you know the person you’re stabbing. Doesn’t matter if they were your friend, or your friend’s friend, or someone you even considered family. If in doubt, you stab them. You understand?”
Hayden tried to keep his words open as if he was addressing both Miriam and Amy. But really, his focus was on Amy. She was young. He was worried about her ability to go through with the plan.
She was tough, sure. But she was still just a child. A child lost in a dangerous world.
“Amy?” Hayden asked.
She looked up from the knife. Looked right into his eyes, her face illuminating in the moonlight. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
Hayden nodded. “Good. Then let’s get out of here.”
They walked down the road. Kept close together. Hayden made sure his movements were slow and distorted so they didn’t have the fluidity of a human. But he moved his eyes in every direction and at every opportunity. He couldn’t risk being seen for too long. The second someone saw them, raised their guns, he had to be onto them. One of them had to be stabbing a knife in their neck just seconds later. They’d brought Miriam’s pistol along, which Hayden carried as his rifle was out of ammo, so he’d left it behind. But guns would be too loud. Besides, they had knives, sharp objects. That would do for the job ahead.
It was grim. It was harsh.
But it was the reality they were living in.
They walked further down the road. In the distance, Hayden saw the main gate getting closer. It was too quiet, though.
Everything was too quiet, too in order. This was supposed to be an impossible task. A challenge like no other.
It was all going too easily.
It was all…
His thoughts stopped and his stomach sank when he saw someone walk out of an alleyway and turn in their direction just up ahead.
First instinct was to freeze. Was to stand completely still. Then the next instinct was to turn around or drift down another of the alleyways, but that’d just look too suspicious.
His heart started to race. As he sweated, the smell of the undead flesh coating him got more pungent.
He had to do something.
He had to act.
The person ahead lifted their gun.
“Hey!” Hayden called.
The person up ahead kept their gun raised. Just for a few moments. Hayden could see it wavering, like they were growing less certain, less sure of themselves.
“Who—who is that?” the voice said. A torch flickered on, shone in Hayden’s direction.
Hayden kept on moving forward. He lifted his hands. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. The specifics were something they should’ve planned.
Just as long as he got the timing right.
Just as long as she made it in time.
He kept his hands raised. And the closer he got to this person, the more certain he grew that they weren’t going to shoot him. They’d lost their nerve. They were too curious to know who he actually was.
“Just—just keep your hands up. Keep still.”
Hayden stood still. He kept his eyes on the alleyway by the side of this man. He bit his lip. This had to work. It was set up just like they’d planned an event like this. The exact reason they’d chosen this road in the first place.
“Get down,” the man shouted.
“What? Come on, man.”
“I said get down!”
Hayden tutted. He descended to the road. Got onto his knees.
She had to hurry.
She had to get on with it.
The man stepped closer to Hayden. He knew the second Gary’s people realised it was him, everything was over. He’d be dead. Or worse—he’d be taken alive for Gary.
