by Ryan Casey
“You should speak to Rodrigo about that,” Anna said, a smile on her face. “You’ve a lot to learn. You ready?”
Riley gulped as Anna placed her hand on the doorknob.
“Go on then,” he said. “Might as well get this over with.”
The door opened up, and Riley was greeted by a crowd of smiling faces.
There was a small crowd of old women at the foot of the garden watching three kids play bowls on the grass. They smiled and waved at Riley as he tried to edge his way out of the caravan and down the steps. This garden hardly seemed like a secure place. Fuck—the road was right in front of them, for one, with no gates or anything like that. What was this place? A fucking suicide cult?
“Jesus H Christ, Anna,” Pedro said, rushing over from his conversation with Rodrigo. “He’s supposed to be resting.”
“You know how he is,” Anna said, loosening her grip as Pedro got a hold of Riley’s other side. “Very persistent.”
They reached the bottom of the steps. The kids looked up at Riley and waved. The old women nodded their heads at him, giggling to one another like schoolgirls over a crush. And Rodrigo, standing at the edge of the garden with nothing but his vest on in the freezing chill of winter, had a big grin on his face. It was just about the most surreal thing Riley had ever seen, and he’d seen a shitload of surreal things these past few weeks.
“You ready to take a tour?” Rodrigo asked. “If you’re still not convinced after this tour, then you can pack your bags and we’ll drop you off wherever you think is safest. I hear the peak of Scafell Pike is a safe bet.” Rodrigo winked, then the smile dropped from his face. “But I’m serious. No obligation here. Just take a look around with me. Might help you understand a thing or two. Anna and Pedro here enjoyed the first tour so much that they’re hopping along for this one.”
Riley stood still. The kids playing bowls. The old women chatting and gossiping away. The caravan, so unguarded, so…so relaxed. There was something curious about this place, Riley couldn’t deny that.
But perhaps it was a good sort of curious. He supposed he was going to find out.
Riley looked at Rodrigo and nodded. No harm in taking a look, right? They’d saved him, after all.
“Right. Stevie, where is he? Bear with me one moment. I’ll get the old Land Rover loaded up and we’ll take a trip out of here.” He disappeared down the driveway and around the road, shouting for Stevie.
“Wait til you see this place, bruv,” Pedro said. “You’re not gonna believe the setup here.”
Anna punched him in his bony ribs. “Yeah. And even if they do turn out bloodthirsty cannibals, you’ve hardly any meat on you anyway.”
Chapter Two
The first thing Riley noticed about the caravan site as he sat in the metal trailer attached to the back of the Land Rover was just how normal it felt.
He looked around as the Land Rover drove down the caravan-laden side roads. The place looked similar to the caravan site Pedro and he had found themselves in, except it was very clear that this wasn’t quite the same place. There were thicker, taller trees for one, covering the sides of each caravan, protecting each and everyone from the outside world.
But the main reason Riley realised this place was different was the number of people—people, not creatures—sitting in the yard areas of every caravan.
Kids played in the small rectangular gardens to the side of the caravans. Mothers chatted to one another with glasses of lemonade in hand. The winter sun shone down on the place, creating a false illusion of summer warmth. Because that’s what this place was—it was a place that people came to on their summer holidays.
And aside from the fact that there were creatures in the world, the place seemed bizarrely normal.
“How many are there?” Riley asked.
Rodrigo smiled. He was sat next to Pedro in the back of the trailer, with Anna next to Riley. Rodrigo’s friend—or assistant, or something—Stevie, was driving the vehicle up front.
“People?” Rodrigo said. “Last count was around the two-hundred mark.”
Riley’s jaw dangled ajar. He stared at Rodrigo in disbelief. Pedro smiled. Anna smiled.
“Two…two hundred people. How long have you—”
“Me personally, I’ve been in and around the area since the spread started. And there were a good forty, fifty at the caravan site with me. From that point onwards, we’ve just built on the solid foundations we have, and we’ve grown. Most of the people here, they’re like you. They ended up here by accident. But they’re staying by choice.”
Riley stared into the gardens of the caravans. Smiling faces. Laughter. It was bizarre. It was like one of the weird dreams he’d had since this whole outbreak had started. A dream of normality. A dream of a group not being aware just how dangerous it was in the outside world.
“How have you kept them away? The creatures. They’re relentless. We’ve had…we’ve had several places of shelter. But they were only temporary. There was nothing…fixed.”
“At first, it was difficult,” Rodrigo said. The Land Rover turned left out of the side road and out onto what was a long, main road leading towards a manned gate. On the left, there was a large building—the main clubhouse of the caravan site. Heathwaite’s, it was called. Heathwaite’s Caravan Park.
“In the early days, we lost a few. Not as many as we could have, but a few. But now, we’ve had the chance to test these fancy gates out, and they’re safe. Besides, we have emergency exit points. We can distract the creatures if ever they do get too close. But nowadays, that’s rare.”
Riley peered at the gates as they got closer. Beside them, two men were dressed in camo uniform. Straight faces. Staring ahead. Not even acknowledging the Land Rover as it approached. Like those guards at Buckingham Palace.
“What do you mean it’s rare? I mean, you must get creatures around here. I…I saw them. There were tons of them in the caravan park I was in earlier. They must pose a threat. They don’t just—”
“I told you he’s a yappy shit,” Anna said, a smile still on her scratched face. She planted a hand on Riley’s leg. “Why don’t you zip it and see for yourself?”
The Land Rover moved through the large steel gates, which looked pretty impressive considering they must’ve only been knocked up in recent weeks. The gates slammed shut behind them, echoing around the barren country and seaside landscape. All of a sudden, out on a winding country road and away from the people of the caravan site, Riley felt very alone. Very detached from everything in there. Was the place growing on him? Fuck. It was bound to grow on him, wasn’t it? Who wouldn’t like what they saw here?
But every place like this had its secrets. There was no such thing as perfect. Only a perfect illusion.
“In the early days, we used to toss them out into the sea,” Rodrigo said, the Land Rover speeding down the winding country road towards a group of hills in the distance, the wind blowing in their faces. “Stab them in the head then toss them out to sea. But then it got out of hand. There were too many of them, and too many of our people were getting hurt out there. Besides, that lot back in Heathwaite’s aren’t warriors or soldiers. They’re just people. They don’t know the first fuckin’ thing about close combat.”
The Land Rover moved slowly as it turned down a road to the left and passed a grey, seemingly abandoned farmhouse. The road and the view of the coast in the distance looked familiar. They must’ve been going back to the caravan site. The site he’d washed up at. The site with Little Thomas.
“So we thought we’d try something new. We rethought. At first, we were trying to use both of the sites for people to live in. But the woods that the sub-site backs on to, those zombie fucks always came from the woods. No matter what we did, no matter how we blockaded it, the cunts always came and caused shit for us.”
The Land Rover hopped over a few bumps in the road, which gave Riley an even more searing he
adache than he already had, and slowed down as it approached another large gate.
Rodrigo looked around the silent, breezy road, stared at the abandoned green caravans, then hopped out of the trailer. The engine of the Land Rover kept on running. “So we changed the purpose of this place. Moved the fifty, sixty from this site into the main site. The main site has plenty for everyone anyway and more to spare.”
“Changed the purpose of this place?” Riley said. “In what sense?”
“Those goons we saw,” Pedro said. “The creatures. Remember how weird it seemed? That there were so many of them?”
All of a sudden, the purpose of this second caravan site clicked into place.
“Instead of trying to kill them, we put them in a little…well. A little fucking holiday park for them to roam around to their dead hearts’ content.”
Riley could hear the groans in the distance now, beyond the gate that the Land Rover was propped up against. He could see them, too: little specks in the distance, wandering, stumbling, staggering in their direction, but a world away.
“When your boat crashed, you wound up in the Dumping Ground. Which is highly unlucky. But you’re just damn lucky my man Stevie in the front saw Anna here. And you’re even damn luckier that your friend Anna was a persistent little bitch when it came to finding you.”
Anna widened her eyes and shrugged. “I’ll…I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Rodrigo said. His face turned more serious as he approached the trailer again. “Do you believe in a god, Riley?”
Riley’s mouth was dry. He still couldn’t believe this place. In principle, the idea was sound. In principle, it worked. It was safe. “I…I guess I’m agnostic. But after this, I—”
“Well you should bow down and thank the fuck out of your agnostic god because he’s kept you alive here.”
“Or just thank me,” Stevie called from the front of the Land Rover. “If you’re out of people to thank, of course.”
Rodrigo hopped back into the trailer. The creatures in the distance beyond the gate—eight, nine of them—continued to stumble up the dirt track hill in their direction.
“Where do they come from?” Riley asked. “I mean, there’s loads of them. Where do they—”
“The woods,” Pedro said. He stared down at the oncoming creatures.
“And what’s beyond those woods?” Riley asked.
Rodrigo stared up at the tree-laden hill in the distance; the woods that Riley figured he’d ended up in with his shrapnel wound last night. “A village. A small town. I dunno. But if there’s any bad beyond that woods, it just ends up in this little haven with the rest of its zombie pals.”
“And if that bad is human?”
Rodrigo opened his mouth then closed it again. He stared at Riley intently. “Then we’ve got our very own deterrent. You have some serious trust issues, Riley. Serious fucking trust issues.”
“I have reasons to,” Riley said.
A pause. Complete silence in the back of the trailer and the front of the Land Rover.
Stevie cleared his throat and broke through the silence. “So, um…not wanting to crash the party back there, but I’d be much more comfortable if we took a ride out of here.”
Rodrigo and Riley kept on staring at one another. Riley could see something in Rodrigo’s eyes. He didn’t look threatening. If anything, he looked desperate. Little Thomas. What was he doing alone in the Dumping Ground? Why had he been left behind?
“We’ll talk about thoughts back in the main site. Right now, we want to—”
“Is there any chance anybody got left behind in this…this sub-site? When you cleared out.”
Rodrigo looked at Stevie, and Stevie looked back at him. Pedro narrowed his eyes at Riley. Anna stared at the floor of the trailer.
“What makes you ask that?” Rodrigo asked. The echoing groans of the creatures behind the gate were getting closer, louder.
“Just a hunch,” Riley said. “I’m curious. And you said this was a tour. What’s a tour guide if he doesn’t answer questions?”
Rodrigo smiled. A shaky, unconvincing smile.
Then: “No. Not that I know of. Anybody in the Dumping Ground that…that you might have encountered, they must’ve found their way there after we cleared out. Just like you three. Or they were, y’know. Those things.”
Pedro raised his eyebrows in Riley’s direction. Riley remembered Little Thomas’s words. About his dad saying he was having a lie-in. Eating eight boxes of Coco Pops since. He must’ve arrived after Rodrigo cleared this place out. There was no other logical explanation for it.
“Let’s head back to the main site,” Rodrigo said. “Like a good tour guide, I’ll answer any other questions when we get back there.”
The Land Rover engine started up and did a two—or eight—point turn in the road. As it drove away from the metal gate, a small crowd of creatures continued to groan; continued to stumble in their direction, trapped in a little world of their own, and the tall trees of the woods loomed over the place like a dark, stormy cloud.
“So what do you think, bruv?”
Riley stared out at the country road as the Land Rover moved away from the Dumping Ground and back towards the normality of the main Heathwaite’s Caravan Park. Pedro was leaning forward towards Riley as Rodrigo looked out of the trailer with his back to them.
“It’s promising,” Riley said. “I still wonder how the main site would cope if the creatures started banging against the gates.”
“Rodrigo explained that,” Anna said. “They send a group out via another exit and lure them back towards the Dumping Ground. It’s simple. Simple, but very fucking effective.”
Riley sighed. He wanted to believe Rodrigo. He wanted to share the optimism of his friends. But after what had happened—after all the times he’d settled down only to have everything snatched away—he couldn’t.
After all the things he’d had to do.
Riley leaned closer to Pedro. Tried to catch his eye. “What about…about the boy? The boy at the caravan. Thomas.”
Pedro’s eyes bolted over to Anna. Riley had hoped he’d kept his voice quiet enough, but to no avail.
“Who’s Thomas?” she asked.
“A boy we came across,” Pedro said. “Bitten, but alive. We…Yeah. We had to.”
“And he was in that caravan site,” Riley said, pointing back down the windy sea-side road. “Couldn’t work out how long exactly he’d been there, but I dunno. He had toys and stuff. Something gives me the impression he was in that caravan for some time before Rodrigo’s group swept the place. Which makes me wonder why he was still in there. Just a bad hunch I have.”
Anna sighed. She frowned and shook her head. Then, being sure to keep her voice as quiet as possible, she whispered, “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but…well, that place is where they take those who have…who have turned. Maybe…You say the boy was bitten. Then maybe that’s why he…yeah.”
“You three okay?” Rodrigo asked.
Riley was about to lay everything on the table to Rodrigo. He was about to tell him all about Thomas, and what he’d had to do to him. To his creature self. But maybe Anna was right. Maybe they had taken Thomas there to a nice, comfortable caravan and his dad had accompanied him. If he was bitten, then he couldn’t compromise the security of the main caravan site.
Or maybe he had just found his way there. Or even Rodrigo could’ve made an honest mistake when he was sweeping the place for people. There were, what—four-hundred, five-hundred caravans? Missing a person or two would be reasonable enough to expect.
“Look, Riley,” Rodrigo said as the Land Rover approached the familiar steel gates of Heathwaite’s Caravan park. “It’s not my job to tell you what and what not to think. I’m just giving you the facts about this place, like I always have with everyone. So you can stay, saf
e in the knowledge that you know what this place is and what we stand for. Or, as I said, we can take you some place else of your choosing and you can move on. But this is as good as it gets right now. I’m just being honest here.”
Riley stared deep in Rodrigo’s eyes. Again, nothing threatening in there. Again, a twinge of desperation. He wanted him to stay. He’d gone to the lengths of taking him on a tour of the surroundings just to convince him it was secure. The paranoid voice in Riley’s mind told him there must be a reason for that. An ulterior motive. A secret.
But what if he was just a man trying to help save some people?
“How did you end up living here? In Britain.”
Rodrigo grinned and grunted. “Now that’s a story for another time. Whole damn tour in itself. I should stop hogging you anyway. Plenty other people you can get to know.”
The steel gates opened up after Stevie walked up to them and muttered a few words to the gate guards.
“For now, you should take a look around the main Leisure Centre. Swimming pool, bar, arcade. Everything you could ever want and more. Even I…” Rodrigo’s speech trailed off. In the middle of the road, a skinny young man wearing camo gear jogged up to the trailer and whispered something in Rodrigo’s ear. Rodrigo’s eyes widened, glanced at Riley and the others before he turned to whisper something back in the man’s ear.
Riley’s heart pounded. He looked at Pedro. Looked at Anna. Looked at Stevie, who looked just as curious in the driver’s seat. Secrets. Whispers. Always whispering, always hiding something. They were hiding things already. They were hiding things in plain sight. Or doing a terrible job of covering something up, rather.
“Ladies, gents, excuse me a moment,” Rodrigo said. He hopped off the side of the trailer, his cheeks blushing, and walked around the front of the vehicle to speak to Stevie.
Riley squinted as he tried to listen.
“…Shot…dead…wreckage…”
