by Ryan Casey
Riley tightened up inside. He stepped forward. He had to see her face. He had to know it was her. He had to—
“Riley, what the fuck.” Pedro grabbed Riley’s arms and dragged him back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We need to go back. We need to—”
When Riley swung around, he saw the reason Pedro had gone silent.
On the lawns of the caravans, drifting out of the gardens and into the road, creatures.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
All of them blocking their path back to the steps.
Riley and Pedro waited in absolute silence. They were frozen to the spot. Riley’s heart raced. Anna. The creatures. They hadn’t groaned yet. As long as they hadn’t groaned, they didn’t know they were there. They didn’t…
Behind them, a loud, chesty groan emitted as one of the creatures rose from the body, blood waterfalling down its face, and staggered in Riley and Pedro’s direction.
Another groan up ahead.
And another.
And another.
“We’re stuck,” Pedro said, backing further into Riley and lifting his metal weapon in the air. “We’re fucking stuck.”
Chapter Five
“Up the ridge. Quick!”
Pedro moved to the left, where a little pathway led up through the bushes. Creatures came from in front. Creatures came from behind. Slowly, step by step, they were getting closer.
Closer to Riley.
Closer to finishing him off for good.
“Quick!” Pedro shouted. He was standing at the edge of the opening in the bushes now. Riley could hear him shouting, and he knew he should move as quick as he could, but he was frozen. Frozen to the spot, staring at that corpse behind the grey, decaying feet of the creatures.
The footsteps ended at that corpse. They started at the boat wreckage, with the locket, and they ended at that corpse.
Anna. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be…
“Riley!”
Riley snapped out of his trance. The creatures in front of him were gnashing their teeth together, lurching forward in his direction. He moved his right leg towards the bushes, with all the strength he had, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t quick enough. The pain when he moved his leg, it was more intense than ever. He wasn’t going to make it. He was trapped.
No. Come on. You can do this. Fight through the pain. That’s all this world is about now. Fighting through the pain. Battling on through.
He held his breath. He could feel the deathly coldness of the creatures so close to him now; he could smell the metallic tang of blood from their filthy mouths. He moved his leg. Winced through the pain and moved it again. Before he knew it, he was walking. Walking pretty quickly. Walking towards the bushes. Walking towards Pedro, who had his hand out. Three steps, two steps—
He felt a thump to his right. Something grabbed hold of the side of his already withered shirt. He didn’t have to look to know what it was. It was holding tightly onto him. It was clinging on and if he didn’t move fast enough, it would have him between its jaws, sink its teeth into his flesh, turn him into one of them.
He pulled with as much force again. Pulled as the creature gripped onto the loose flap of material from his shirt. The creatures were so close to him now. He could feel them closing in. Surrounding him. He pulled away again, reaching out for the ridge at the edge of the bushes.
The material of his shirt ripped.
Riley stumbled forward into the bushes.
He felt arms lifting him up.
“Come on,” Pedro said, helping him to his feet as they stood on the steep, narrow pathway in the bushes.
Riley scrambled his way up through the bushes. He looked over his shoulder. The creatures—nine or ten of them—all piled up against the edge of the bushes, all of them trying to climb over one another to reach their prey.
“You’re welcome, bruv,” Pedro said, rubbing his dirt-laden hands together. “You’re welcome.”
Riley was silent. He stared down through the branches at the corpse that the creatures had abandoned. He couldn’t see her face, but he could tell from the body that it was a woman.
“We need to move,” Pedro said. He edged the branches apart at the top of the passageway in the bushes and looked out. “Those fucking goons are going to figure out how to climb some time in the next ten minutes.”
Riley gulped. He took one last look at the abandoned corpse, which the creatures at the bottom of the bushes were no longer paying any attention to, scratching their hands in his direction. He focused on it for a few seconds. Sorry, Anna, he thought. If it is you, then I’m sorry this happened to you.
He turned around and he followed Pedro out of the bushes.
The exit at the top of the bushes led out to a road that ran parallel to the one they’d just been on. Pedro and Riley stayed close as they moved down it in the direction they’d come from on the other road. More caravans lined the road, wide open windows watching from either side. Behind them, the entrance to the woods loomed, about as inviting as an afternoon in a dentist’s chair.
“Are there any more of them do you think?” Riley asked.
Pedro was silent. He looked around. Looked at each and every caravan. They looked quiet. Empty. But so too had the caravans on the lower road. The lower road that they could still hear groans coming from…
“I don’t understand where they…where they came from,” Riley said as he limped along the road. He didn’t want to say anything to Pedro, but his leg felt worse than ever now. He could feel dampness surrounding the wound. He knew he must be bleeding out again.
“The ones behind us…they came from nowhere. I don’t under—”
“Ssh,” Pedro said. He stood still. Held a finger to his lips. Looked around.
Riley hadn’t heard a thing. Only the gentle breeze against the trees. The groans of the creatures growing more distant. Further in the distance, the sound of the waves against the shore.
“Do you hear that?” Pedro asked.
Riley frowned. “What?”
Pedro’s eyes stopped to Riley’s right. His gaze fixed on something. Something in the bare trees. He moved in the direction of whatever it was he was focused on.
“What is it?” Riley asked.
But as he turned, he saw it. It was a little brick building. On its front, there were two green-painted metal doors, a chain wrapped around the handles. A rusty, flimsy looking chain.
And from the inside of the building, ever so slightly, Riley could hear a hum.
“Is that a generator?”
“Bingo,” Pedro said. He moved a little faster towards it and inspected the chains around the handles. “There must be a few of these things around this place. And you know what a generator means.”
“Power,” Riley said. “So you’re suggesting we shack up in one of these caravans?”
“Do you have a better suggestion, bruv?” Again, his eyes flicked towards Riley’s leg. “Might be the best option, y’know.”
So this was it. It was Riley and Pedro. Riley was finally going to get his caravan he’d always wanted. Just a pity about the rest of the circumstances.
“The sound this thing’s making though, it’s not right,” Pedro said. He tugged at the rusty chains. “I think it needs rebooting. But I need to get inside there to do that.” He sighed and dropped the rusty chains. “Mind keeping an eye on the road for me? I’ll be able to get in here. I just might not be able to be as…Well. As discrete as I’d like to be.”
Riley nodded. “Sure.”
Pedro grunted and returned to looking at the chains. He tugged at them. The metal rattled against the door. Riley looked around. In the distance, down the road, he couldn’t see anything. Just more caravans. More trees. More silence. He rubbed his hands up and down his sides as Pedro tugged and winced with the chain. His teeth chattered. Was he really that cold? Or was it the…
He looked down at
his leg.
On the road, from the bottom of his trousers, he could see a bloody pool beginning to form.
He stepped on top of it to cover it. Fuck. He was bleeding again.
“All okay over there?” Pedro called.
Riley looked at him, still a bit stunned from the amount of blood he’d seen pooling from his leg, and he nodded.
“Should be in here with a few more yanks. Just…need…to…yes!”
The chain crumbled beneath Pedro and the metal door of the generator building eased open. Pedro turned around to Riley and pumped his fist, a smile across his face.
What he didn’t see was the creature stumbling through the generator room door.
“Pedro!” Riley shouted.
But it was too late. The creature was on top of Pedro. Pedro was on his back scrambling with the overweight creature. Riley’s heart pounded. He looked down beside him. Blood was flowing freely from his leg now. He looked up again. Pedro struggling. He needed Pedro. Pedro had saved his life once. He owed him one.
He staggered as fast as he could towards the generator building, disregarding the intense pain in his leg. The creature’s teeth were so close to Pedro’s neck now. Pedro shouted out. Swore. Cursed the creature as he kicked and clawed and scratched.
Riley raised the piece of debris from the boat in the air and brought it crashing down into the creature’s skull. He brought it up again, then smacked it down, splitting its head, bashing its brains in, splattering purple chunks of flesh all over Pedro.
When he stopped, Pedro stared up at him with a wide open mouth for a few seconds. His face was covered in blood from the creature, whose overweight, flabby body was still on top of Pedro.
“Thanks for that,” Pedro said. He wiped his eyes and his face and patted the chubby sides of the creature. “Come on, fatty bum bum. I know I’m irresistible, but I’ve got work to do.”
Riley helped pull the creature off Pedro and ditched it at the side of the generator building.
“Okay,” Pedro said, wiping himself down. “No wonder that thing needed a reboot with that fat fucker inside. I’ll get to it.”
“Watch out for any more of them, you know?”
Pedro nodded at the road. “You do your job, I’ll do mine.”
Riley walked back over to the road. His leg was on fire. He was starting to feel a little dizzy, too. Maybe that was just from having to bash the creature’s brains in. It was a feeling he’d grown used to a week ago, before the boat. But now, it was new to him again. He didn’t see them as creatures. He saw them as humans that were. Humans that were less fortunate than him.
He saw their brains. He saw their flesh. He saw that he could just as easily be one of them.
Riley stood on the road and looked back both ways. Both were vacant, still. Strange. The creatures that they’d bumped into on the lower road must’ve been lone stragglers. It made sense, though. This was a caravan site at winter. There wouldn’t be too many people around. Shit—this might just be the perfect place to live, especially if Pedro could get the generator working. Animals to catch in the woods. Shelter. Water. Warmth. Perfect. Just a shame there was only Pedro and he here to enjoy it.
And he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be here with his leg in the condition it was in.
Riley heard several harsh jolts from the generator room and looked around.
“Just starting her up again,” Pedro shouted.
“That’s…”
Riley stopped. He stopped because of what he’d seen at the bottom of the hill beneath the generator room. They weren’t looking at Riley, or even groaning, but they were there.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty. More.
Riley was frozen to the spot. Pedro bashed against the generator. As he did, one of the creatures turned around as if distracted by a fly or something. Fuck. He had to warn Pedro. He had to stop him starting up that generator. If they heard it kicking in, they’d come for them. They’d…
A large engine sound cut through the silence.
“Woo-hoo!” Pedro called, then wandered out of the door, still coated in blood. “Looks like we’ll be getting access to the DVD players after all.”
One of the creatures groaned.
And then another.
And another.
Pedro didn’t have to ask Riley what was wrong. When he saw Riley’s face, which must’ve been quite a sight, his smile dropped, and he turned around.
An army of creatures stumbling up the hill in their direction.
All of them groaning.
“This fucking day,” Pedro said.
Pedro rushed over to Riley. “Looks like we’re on the run again, bruv.”
Riley turned around and followed Pedro’s lead. Pedro looked from side to side at the caravans as the creatures behind them got closer.
“One of these has to be open,” Pedro said. “One of these has to be unlocked.”
He ran into the garden of the first one on the left and struggled with the door handle. “Fuck,” he said. “Next one.”
He ran out of the garden and Riley and he headed further down the road. Behind them, Riley could hear the footsteps. The groans. A deathly chorus of dead souls, all heading in their direction, and all very, very hungry.
“Fuck!” Pedro said, and kicked the door of the second attempted caravan. When he turned around, Riley noticed an uncharacteristic panic on his face. If all these caravans turned out to be locked, then they were screwed. He was screwed. They were in uncharted territory, and that uncharted territory was beating the fuck out of them.
“Next one,” Pedro said. He ran around into the garden area of the next caravan and reached for the door handle. Riley continued down the road, not expecting much from Pedro’s attempt, trying to keep his mind off the pain in his leg more than anything.
“Holy…In here, Riley. In here!”
Riley turned around. The door to the static caravan was open. To Riley’s left, he saw the creatures. More than he’d first thought. There had to be around a hundred of those things, of all different ages, genders, shapes and sizes. Where had they come from? What the hell were they all doing at a caravan site in winter before they died?
Riley stumbled across the road and into the garden area of the caravan. Pedro waited by the door, holding it so Riley could enter first. “Fuck you if there’s anything in there,” Riley said.
“Just hurry the fuck up!”
Riley held his breath. Bit into his lips as he battled through the pain in his leg and staggered onto the concrete sitting area in the caravan garden. One step at a time. Come on, Riley. One step at a time…
“Your…your leg. It’s—”
“Bleeding,” Riley said as Pedro grabbed his arm to help him up the first of two big steps at the caravan entrance. “I know.”
As Pedro pushed him up the first of the steps, the groans and footsteps of the creatures getting nearer, Riley let out a little girlish squeal. It felt like somebody had stabbed him in the leg with a hot knife and sliced, all the way down, top to bottom.
“One more step,” Pedro said. “One more step.”
Riley closed his eyes. Held his breath.
Come on, Riley. Come on.
He lifted his leg. Bit his lip through the pain. Lifted his other leg. Bit his lip even further.
And then he was in.
He tumbled to the dusty, pink carpeted floor of the caravan. Pedro pushed him out of the way then slammed the door shut, fumbling and turning the lock with shaking hands. Then, he ran over to the windows and closed the pink curtains, bathing the room in a pinkish shade. He waited on the sofa by the windows at the front end of the caravan. Waited, and peered out of a crack in the curtains, completely still. Outside, Riley could hear groans. He could hear the sound of fingernails scraping against the metal box they were inside. He could hear thuds and thumps, the sound of pressure against the walls of the caravan.
“How’s it looking?” Riley whispered, re
turning to his feet and wandering over to the window.
Pedro moved away from curtains, being careful not to twitch them. “Well, if we’re being positive, we’re safer in here than we are out there. For now.”
Riley peeked through the crack in the curtains. Creatures were surrounding the caravan. Some of them continued to wander up the road, but the majority pushed up against the caravan, their shadows blocking the path of the sunlight into the musty, damp smelling caravan lounge.
“So,” Riley said, closing the curtains. Not that it was much use, those things being aware they were in here. “What now?”
Pedro tilted his head at Riley’s leg. “I take a look at dressing that thing properly. Hopefully we’ll find something in one of the cabinets, even if it is just alcohol.”
“Daddy?”
The voice made Riley’s skin crawl. It was too high-pitched for Pedro. And it was too human for a creature. Riley frowned. Looked to his left. He must’ve imagined it. He must’ve been imagining things, all along.
But the look on Pedro’s face. The wide eyes. The open mouth.
Somebody was behind him.
In the corridor, past the kitchen area where Pedro stood, there was a little boy. Dark hair. Looked about ten. Wearing blue Spiderman pyjamas and holding an Angry Birds teddy under his arm. He looked thin. Too thin. Pale. His nostrils were chapped, and his mouth was covered in warts.
But it wasn’t the warts that held Riley’s attention.
It was the bleeding, gaping wound on the boy’s shoulder.
The bite mark.
Chapter Six
Riley stared at the boy. Pedro stared at the boy. Both of them—all three of them, including the kid—were speechless.
The kid with the bite on his shoulder.
“What…” Riley started. The fact that the caravan was surrounded by fifty-odd creatures drifted to the back of his mind when he considered his and Pedro’s immediate predicament. “What are…Are you…”
“I thought you were Daddy,” the boy said.
Riley’s stomach sank. Pedro stepped back a few steps. Riley hadn’t been imagining things. The boy was alive. He was alive and he was in the same caravan they were in and he was…
