by Ryan Casey
Part of Rodrigo wanted to turn around and leave. Bringing in a woman would raise too many questions within his group, especially after the way it had ended with Mike and the others. Besides, she might be bitten. And if they didn’t get the frig out of here soon, the zombies would get them, and they’d be bitten too.
On the other hand, Stevie was right. They couldn’t just leave her to die out here. It was the wrong thing to do, especially with what they could provide.
Rodrigo grunted then hit the dashboard button. Inside, there was a Smith & Wesson handgun. He grabbed it. Rubbed his fingers and thumb against it. Always felt at home, back in America, holding this thing. One of the benefits of this crazy ass new world was that he could freely wield it in Her Majesty’s Kingdom now.
A positive. A minor positive, but a positive nonetheless.
He grabbed the door handle and hopped out onto the muddy ground.
“Where are you—”
“Come with me. We need to check her. We need to know she’s clean. If she’s bit, she stays out here. If not…Well. If not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Stevie nodded, grabbed his gun, then followed Rodrigo out onto the beach.
As they got closer, Rodrigo and Stevie and this ghostly looking, blood-drenched woman, Rodrigo figured he was going to have to ask the question.
“Lady, what’s your name?” he called. “Are you bit?”
No reply. The woman just walked towards them. Staggered. Swayed from side to side, her jeans torn, her white shirt drenched with blood from a large bloody wound on her forehead.
Rodrigo raised his gun a little. Couldn’t take any chances. Not a chance at all. “I’ll repeat myself, but I don’t like doing that so much. What’s your name, and are you bit?”
“Rodrigo, shit.” Stevie pointed to their left. Around the cove, where another piece of boat wreckage was, two zombies emerged. They were far enough away not to worry too much about, but it was a stark enough reminder that they needed to get back to the Land Rover sometime soon.
Rodrigo sighed and raised his gun completely. This woman was gonna have to talk if she wanted to get out of here alive. He didn’t want to have to gun her down. It wasn’t in his fucking nature, or something like that.
“Lady, I’m going to repeat one final time because I don’t like the way you’re looking at us. What is your name, and are you—”
“Anna,” the woman squeaked. Her lips quivered some more. Life lit up in her tearful eyes. “Anna. And no. I’m not bit.”
With that, she collapsed to the ground, hitting her already-wounded head on the solid pebbles below.
Rodrigo and Stevie looked at one another, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.
Then, they ran over to the woman—Anna—and they got her the hell back to the Land Rover, leaving the lone zombies to wander around aimlessly, dampened by the salty, crashing waves.
Chapter One
Light stung his eyes. Fuck—it was so bright. Brighter than anything he’d ever seen. His head ached. His entire body felt like it was shaking, drying out after being dunked in freezing cold water. Where was he? What had happened to him?
Then he remembered. The boat crash. The shrapnel wedged in his leg. Pedro. The caravan site. The caravan with the boy and…and then the truck. The truck with the well-built greying man.
After that, he remembered nothing.
“Looks like this one’s awake.”
The voice came from somewhere in front of Riley. He opened his eyes even further, battling through the light, when he saw the silhouetted source of the voice. It was a man, or a boy, rather, no older than eighteen. He had fiery ginger hair and flushed cheeks. He was standing by a partly open door. A caravan door. Riley was…He was inside a caravan. Back inside a caravan. They’d taken him to a caravan for some reason.
“I…” Riley struggled to pull himself upright, but he realised how weak his muscles were. His legs barely budged. His arms flopped to his side. Getting off this bed was going to take too much effort and energy. Energy he didn’t have.
He was stuck here. Trapped.
“You might want to watch it there,” the ginger guy said, moving over to Riley and placing a hand on his shoulder to edge him back onto the bed. “You’ve been right in the wars. You need to rest—”
“My…my friends. My…” Riley’s speech was slurred. Fuck. Had they drugged him? He thought back to Ivan. Thought back to the trusting smile on his face, no hints of what hid behind. He couldn’t come that close again. Another group—they couldn’t trust them. They were the reason they’d stayed at sea. The creatures, sure, they were too.
But other people used logic. That was much more terrifying than any damage a creature could do.
The man patted Riley on his shoulder then looked down at his leg. “Your friend is okay. Fine, actually. He told us all about what happened. The boat. Your little shrapnel incident. Lucky for you, we’ve got some good people here who’ve already got that metal right out of your leg. You should be fine, patient.” He smiled at Riley and walked over to the doorway.
“Who…who are…?”
“Well, me personally? I’m Stevie. Stevie Cannon. Yes, yes, pornstar name, etcetera etcetera. Heard it all before. I believe you’re Riley. Right?”
Riley gulped. He avoided eye contact with Stevie, then nodded.
“Riley. Nice to meet you. Now rest up.” Stevie pushed open the glass door and a breeze from outside worked its way in. Riley could just about see a few faces gathered around the door, peeking in for a look at him. They looked decidedly normal, from the glimpse he got.
But normal was a great form of disguise. Invaluable.
“My…my friends.” Riley struggled to get himself off what appeared to be a makeshift bed in the middle of an empty caravan. Curtains were closed. The room had a medicinal smell. “You…you have to let me see Pedro. I need to know he’s—”
“Sorry,” Stevie said, stopping as he walked out of the caravan. “I don’t have the authority to authorise that.”
Riley’s body tensed. The authority to authorise? Which meant that there was a hierarchical system in place. Just like the barracks. Fuck—he’d have been better taking his chances on his own. Better on his own than in numbers. Numbers caused problems. People were never designed to be in large groups, not really.
“You need to let me see him. I need to know he’s…he’s…”
“Stevie, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The voice came from beyond Stevie. Riley couldn’t see the source of the voice, but it sounded American. American, just like…yes. The man that had stepped out of that Land Rover. He’d definitely had an American twang to his voice.
The American continued: “If he wants to see his friend, you let him see his goddamn friend, okay?”
Stevie’s head lowered. He mumbled a few words then skulked away. He looked completely humbled. A shadow of his charismatic self just moments before.
“I don’t know, that man has a lot to learn.” The American stepped in through the doorway and looked right at Riley. He had a grey moustache and lengthy greying hair down his neck. He was muscular, wearing a white vest and a camouflage cap on his head. He looked like he’d just stepped out of an audition for Bruce Willis’s part in Die Hard.
And, well, he’d unsurprisingly failed.
“Riley, I believe?” He walked over to Riley and held out a hand. “Rodrigo. Pleasure to meet you.”
Riley stared at his elongated hand for a few seconds before fighting through the pins and needles to shake it.
“Sorry about my friend,” Rodrigo said, walking to the foot of the bed that Riley was propped up in. “He can be a little bit of a cocky shit when nobody else is around. But you’ll be bossing him around like everyone else in no time. Even the kids use him as a punchbag.”
Riley blinked. This man, Rodrigo, despite his…w
ell, curious appearance, seemed surprisingly amicable. He’d make a terrible John Wayne. Terrible.
“I suppose you’ll have a lot of questions. You aren’t the only one. Oh, would you look at that.” He tilted his head at Riley’s leg and grinned. “Sophia’s stitched you up so nicely. Some of the swelling’s gone down too. I’d say you’ll be clear to walk in no time.” He looked at Riley in the eyes again. Smiled.
“My…my friend,” Riley said. “Pedro. He’s—”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Pedro? Free to come in.”
The door at the side of the caravan opened up and in stepped Pedro. He looked like he’d shaven. In fact, he looked healthier than Riley had seen him in a long time. And he had a smile on his face. A smile for this Rodrigo guy, and a smile for Riley.
“How you holding up, bruv?”
Rodrigo answered for Riley. “Well, his leg’s looking a lot better. Still a little slurry on the old speech, but he’ll be good again soon enough. He’ll be back on his feet, chatting to all—”
“How did you…How did you find us? Where the fuck is this place? What am—”
“Woah, woah,” Pedro said. He placed a hand on Riley’s shoulder. Riley’s heart pounded. He saw flashes of Ivan’s freezer room. Flashes of the smiles and the normality and the happiness back at the barracks.
He saw flashes of Ivan’s knife against Ted’s neck, and the blood pouring out of his jugular.
“It’s okay,” Rodrigo said, backing away from Riley. “Natural to have questions. I get that. We’ve all got questions. But just as long as you know you’re safe. Right here and right now, you’re safe.”
“Nobody’s safe,” Riley said. “Nobody.”
Rodrigo held eye contact with Riley then smiled. “Good answer, Riley. Good answer. I’ll…I’ll give you two lads a moment.”
He stepped over to the doorway and went outside. His silhouette was still right there in the doorway when he closed the door.
“Pedro, we can’t trust these…these people,” Riley said. He pulled himself up from the bed and grabbed Pedro’s chest. Strength flowed through his body again. He needed to get out. They both needed to get out.
Pedro pushed Riley away. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, bruv. You haven’t got the first clue what this place is like until you’ve seen it—”
“I’ve seen enough,” Riley said, raising his voice. “I’ve seen a leader. A leader who…who others serve. A situation I’ve seen before. A situation I…A mistake I made already. Large groups, they don’t work. You know this better than anybody. Eventually, somebody gets hungry. And then when food supplies run low, they get hungrier and hungrier until eventually they…they just have to eat. When supplies run low, you know how it is. And us, we’re…we’re new here. We’ll be first on the list. Just like—”
“Not everybody’s an Ivan,” Pedro shouted. “And we couldn’t have stayed on that boat forever, as much as you fucking wanted that, bruv. Besides, you haven’t seen this place. You haven’t seen the setup here. We’re just down the road from—from where we washed up—”
“Where we washed up? What, the place crawling with fucking creatures?”
Pedro smiled and shook his head. His breath was minty, actually. At least this place had toothpaste. One positive. “You don’t understand, see. You won’t understand until you get off your arse and see this place for yourself. But there’s something else you’ll want to see first. Something else to…to convince you this place isn’t all that bad.”
Pedro moved away from Riley and walked back towards the glass door.
Riley jumped to his feet. His leg ached and his muscles throbbed as he put his weight on them, holding on to the side of the bed for balance. “Where are you going? Fuck, Pedro. See this from my perspective. See this the way I see it. I see a group. I see supplies running low. I see—”
His speech stopped dead in its tracks as Pedro opened the door.
He did see something. Or somebody, rather.
Somebody familiar.
Somebody very familiar.
“Hello, you,” she said.
Her dark hair. Her brown eyes.
It was Anna.
“Anna…What…How…?”
He didn’t finish speaking because she had her arms wrapped around his neck and her soft hair was dangling in his face.
He held himself rigid for a few seconds. What did he do in this sort of situation? Did he hug her back? Tell her some cheesy movie shit like, “everything’s okay, I’m here now”? Fuck that.
He wrapped his weak arm around her and hugged her back.
“I thought I’d lost you. Lost the group,” she said. She moved away slightly. Riley could see she had several cuts on her face, and a bandage wrapped around her head. She smiled at Riley with her heavy, tearful eyes and gripped his hands.
“I’ll, erm…I’ll give you two a moment,” Pedro said.
He lowered his head and walked back outside, out towards the singing birds, out into the winter breeze.
Perfect silence descended on the caravan living room. Riley and Anna just stared at one another awkwardly for God knows how long. Or was it awkward? How was he supposed to know?
“I…How did you end up here?” Riley asked. His words were shaky, like an excited kid’s on Christmas morning.
Anna cleared her throat and pointed outside the curtained window. “The boat. It—it crashed on a beach. My section crashed on a beach. I was bleeding and I…I looked; I swear I looked for you and for Pedro, but you were gone. And I walked some more and eventually these…these people brought me in. Rodrigo and Stevie.”
Riley nodded. The blood trail covering the pebbles back on the beach. They must’ve been Anna’s after all. And the footsteps that started again after they’d left the beach must’ve been someone else’s.
The body. The woman’s body Riley had seen lying in the middle of that road, being feasted on by creatures. It wasn’t Anna. Anna was here. Anna was alive.
“Pedro told me. About how you found your way here.”
Riley waited for Anna to elaborate. He could never be totally certain how much Pedro had told her. Whether he’d told her about little Thomas, and what had happened in that caravan.
Somehow, Riley suspected that would be a secret that lived with Pedro and him for a long time.
“You did good,” Anna said, tapping his leg. “Lucky you didn’t bleed out. Or get infected. Or something.”
Riley pointed at Anna’s bandaged head. “I could say the same about you.”
“Oh, this?” Anna said. “This is nothing. Just a bump. Sophia, she’s good with this whole medical thing. Works absolute wonders here. And y’know. It might be a few weeks I’ve been away from the doctor’s surgery but I still know a thing or two about head wounds.”
“I’m sure you do,” Riley said. “You gave me a good enough one back when we first met.”
Anna smiled. Chuckled. Moved her hair out of her eyes and behind her ears. A reminiscent, reflective laugh.
“Look at us,” Riley said. “Reminiscing about the start of the Dead Days. With all the shit and all the pain that we’ve gone through, still we focus on a minor little moment of happiness to look back on.”
Anna shrugged. “It’s what we’ve always done, isn’t it? Humans, I mean.”
Riley lifted his hand. “Before you get too deep—which I know you love…these people.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Pedro…Pedro says they’re okay.”
“And I’m guessing you say they aren’t?”
Riley clenched his jaw. “I made a decision about staying with a group once already, Anna. I made that call, and look where it got us.”
Anna sighed and rested a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You can’t torture yourself for that, Riley. In the situation…the position we wer
e in, you made the right call at the time to go with Ivan’s group. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. You weren’t to know Ivan was a bona fide lunatic. Nobody was.”
Riley nodded. Anna was right. He knew she was right, and he wanted to believe her. But he couldn’t. Not after what had happened to Ted. Not after what had happened as a result of his decision.
“Shit happened before we ended up with Ivan’s group, Riley. Stan’s death. Trevor’s death. Elizabeth’s death. Shit happened before, and shit happened after. Besides, not all groups are bad. When you and Ted came across us, we didn’t try to eat you, did we?”
Riley could hear voices outside. Cheerful voices. Painfully normal voices. He wanted to believe that this place was something of an end point for them. Somewhere where they could just settle down and ride the apocalypse out until it ended. Or just ride it out until they grew old and moved on.
Anna snarled and bared her white teeth. “At least, I haven’t tried to eat you yet,” she said.
Riley smiled and eased off the side of the bed. Anna held his arm to support him as he took his first real steps since waking up.
“Back when I chose to go into the barracks. Back when I made that call. You were reluctant. You must’ve had a feeling. Or something. Do you not get that with this place?”
Anna kept hold of Riley as he took some gentle steps around the room. “I had a feeling alright. A feeling that I…that I kind of wanted to go my own way because I didn’t want to risk losing anybody else. That was my ‘Spidey Sense,’ or whatever you want to call it. Nothing else.”
“Pedro seems to like this place.”
Anna laughed. “That’s because Rodrigo is a former US soldier. Fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. As you can imagine, the pair have common ground.”
Riley didn’t respond as Anna walked him to the frosted glass doorway. He could see movement outside. Children running around in the garden. Silhouettes of men and women standing around and watching, waiting.
“This caravan site. If it’s the one me and Pedro got stuck in, then it’s not safe. There’s creatures crawling all over the place. There’s creatures and—and there’s people trapped there. It’s not—”
