by Ryan Casey
Then, he snapped out of it, looked at the creatures ahead—fifteen, twenty feet away—and hopped over to the driver’s seat. His breathing was short and shaky. His hands were all over the place. He pulled the door shut and turned the key.
The van let out a momentary grumble, then nothing.
“That didn’t sound good,” Anna said. “That did not sound fucking good.”
Another turn of the key. Another grumble. Another nothing.
“It’s not fucking starting!” Aaron shouted.
Riley looked at Pedro. Then Anna. Then back out of the front window at the creatures, just ten feet away now. Six, seven of them, all groaning, all with one prize in mind.
“It won’t fucking start,” Aaron whimpered as the seven creatures became eight, the eight became ten, the ten became twelve…
Stevie’s dead, blood-soaked eyelid twitched.
Riley lowered down as far as he could in the back of the van. He could hear the creatures getting closer—their groans, their gasps, their cries—but he couldn’t see them, not low down like this.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Pedro shouted. “Sitting down? Like that’s gonna help, bruv.”
“Just get down,” Riley said. He looked at Pedro sternly then at Anna. Both of them had an eye on the oncoming creatures.
“It’s no use,” Anna said. “They’ve seen us. They’re—”
Riley lunged over the trailer floor and pushed Anna and Pedro down. Then, lowering his voice, he said: “We stay low. We figure out how we’re going to handle this. We have the height advantage back here. We have the height and we have the sides of the vehicle. That counts for a lot.”
“Some help up front, please.” Aaron was completely still in the driver’s seat, watching as the creatures came within inches of the van. “Some—fuck, what am I supposed to do? What am I—”
“Just keep quiet,” Riley said. His mind raced with options as the bodies of the creatures clunked against the front of the vehicle, sending Aaron jolting back in his seat.
“Keep—keep quiet? They’ve seen me. They’ve fucking seen me. Fuck this.” He lifted a gun out of his pocket with his shaking hand and started to load it, dropping bullets in the process.
“No!” Riley crawled forward to the window space at the back of the van. “We…we have to do this quietly. This many of them, they’re manageable. Any more…we don’t want to take any risks.”
“Manageable?” Pedro said. “How do you propose we manage this?”
Riley turned around and looked in the back of the van. There were plastic bags stacked up against the back. Inside, scrap metal poked out. Long. Sharp. Some of them heavy.
“For a troop, you really aren’t so good at managing situations, are you?”
Riley scrambled past Pedro and Anna. The creatures scratched and pressed up against the front of the van, groaning and thumping and shuffling. Riley opened up one of the bags. It was stuffed with scrap metal. They could do something with this. Use it to protect themselves. Think, Riley. Think.
“I’m with Aaron,” Pedro said, lifting the gun that Rodrigo had given him out of his pocket. “I say we blast these fuckers before they damage this van completely. Better than just sitting here. Better than just—”
“Hey!” Riley shouted. He clanged a piece of the metal against the side of the trailer and stood up.
“Riley, what the fuck?” Anna said.
He stared at the front of the van. At the creatures—fifty, sixty—all gathered around the window, pinning Aaron back in his seat.
“Hey!” he shouted. He bashed the metal against the side of the trailer again.
“Have you fucking lost it, bruv? Have you gone completely mad?”
But slowly, one by one, the creatures started to shuffle around the side of the van. Their interest in Aaron, behind the glass window of the van, diminished as they stumbled and groaned in the direction of the trailer.
“Yes. He’s lost it. He’s fucking lost it.” Pedro lifted out his gun again and aimed it at the oncoming creatures. “You might have a suicide wish left over, bruv, but I don’t—ow!”
Pedro’s shout came as a result of Riley throwing a sharp, heavy piece of scrap metal at his arm. He looked at Riley in disbelief. “What was that for?”
Riley lifted out another piece of scrap metal and slid it across the trailer to Anna. “If you’re going to do this, you do it as silently as you can. You don’t go wasting bullets. You have the height advantage. You do what we can to fend them off.”
“‘You’?” Anna said. “What do you mean by ‘you’?”
Riley stepped towards the front of the trailer as the creatures plummeted against it, necks arching and half-attached arms stretching for some fresh meat.
“You’re going to keep the creatures occupied while Aaron and I deal with that blockade.”
Aaron’s jaw dropped. He was still completely static as the creatures continued to move away from the front of the van and towards the noise of the voices at the back.
“We…we’re going to…to what?”
Riley pointed ahead. “There’s a Smart Car in the blockade. Lightest cars going. The pair of us should be able to lift that out of the way and clear a path for the rest of the group to get through.”
“That’s…that’s…that’s—”
“It’s the best idea we’ve got,” Riley said. “And if you aren’t comfortable with it, then you’d better get used to not being comfortable because ninety-nine percent of your decisions in this world are uncomfortable ones.”
A creature or two bashed against the side of the trailer, sending Pedro hopping into the middle like a frightened little mouse.
“You deal with as many of them as you can. Make enough noise that you’ll attract the immediate ones but not too much that you’ll attract the whole damn city. Okay?”
Anna turned the scrap metal in her hands and nodded. Pedro sighed.
“And if they come at you from behind the blockade? What then?”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, echoing Pedro’s sentiment. “What the fuck then?”
Riley pushed Aaron’s face away from the back window and pulled himself through into the driver’s area of the vehicle. Sitting in there as the creatures flooded past was like being in an IMAX 3D cinema watching some kind of documentary.
Except this was real. Very real.
“If they come from beyond the blockade, then I guess it just wasn’t supposed to be, was it?” Riley smiled at Aaron, who looked absolutely petrified, with bulging, tearful eyes and chattering teeth.
A clunk of metal sounded from out the back. It made Riley jump. He looked back and saw that Anna was tapping her scrap metal against the side of the trailer.
“You better know what you’re doing, Riley,” she said as the creatures surrounded the area beneath her.
“I never know what the hell I’m doing,” Riley said. “It’s got me this far.”
Anna rolled her eyes then brought the piece of scrap metal crashing down on the bald head of a creature below. Its skull cracked like an egg and spewed out all kinds of shades of red and green.
“Better get to it,” Pedro said, he too standing at the side of the trailer and swinging his piece of metal into the face of what would once have been an attractive blonde woman, breaking her nose and knocking out all of her teeth.
“You ready?” Riley asked as he gripped hold of the handle of the van door, the opposite side to where Stevie had fallen.
Aaron’s face continued to shake, and his eyes filled up with even more tears. “No. But I guess we don’t have a choice.”
Riley patted him on the shoulder. “Good. That’s as close as we’re gonna get.”
He opened the door, climbed out, and with Aaron in hand, jogged in the direction of the blockade.
Chapter Five
Riley kept as low as he could as he crept down
the road. Aaron’s hand, which was sweaty as hell regardless of how cold it was out here, was in Riley’s as he pulled the pair of them towards the Smart Car in the middle of the blockade. Behind them, Riley could hear the sound of metal clanking against bone, and of flesh slicing. He had to hope Anna and Pedro could keep the creatures distracted for long enough. Just long enough to move this abomination of a car blocking their way.
Riley stopped beside it and examined the front and back. He’d lifted one of these with a friend before when he was drunk. Light as fuck for a car, they were. Hurt his arms, he remembered, but a lot less that jagged teeth in his arms would hurt.
“I’ll take the back,” Riley whispered. “Lift from your knees, remember. Don’t go doing your back in out here. These things aren’t light, but for cars, they’re our best bet.”
Aaron stared, wide-eyed, in the direction of the van, in the direction of the creatures that Anna and Pedro were dealing with.
“Oi,” Riley said, clicking his fingers in front of Aaron’s face. “This is important. Lift from the—”
“From the knees. Okay. Got it.”
Riley tried to avoid looking back at the creatures just sixty feet away, but the groans and the clunking of their bodies against one another was enough for him to build up a good enough picture.
He crouched down and grabbed the lower back of the vehicle, peeking through the blockade to check they were clear on the other side. The road looked empty. The promenade beside the sea was just about visible. And in the distance, a good mile or so away, there was a long pier stretching out to sea and a piece of boat wreckage beside it.
“You ready?” Aaron muttered. “As much as I’d love to admire the fucking scenery, we’re on borrowed time here.”
Riley clenched his jaw. “Okay. On my count. Three, two, one…”
Riley lifted the back of the vehicle with all the weight he could. Fuck, these things were heavier than he remembered. He must really have been drunk when he’d lifted one. But here it was, just about hovering off the ground, his chest aching, his injured leg stinging and throbbing.
“What…now…” Aaron muttered, before letting go of the car. The sound of the metal hitting the concrete echoed right down the street. Riley let go of his side, his entire body going numb as the clang continued to echo. Slowly, he turned his head around in the direction of the van.
The creatures were still crowding around the side of the trailer. Anna smacked one in the back of its head. Pedro lured one in before taking a swing at it, clunking against the side of the trailer in the process. None of them had noticed the fallen car.
“You lucky piece of shit,” Riley said.
“Well I didn’t know what the fuck we were supposed to do next,” Aaron said. “Do I go left or do I go—”
“This way,” Riley said. “Unless you want to go wandering on the other side of the blockade all alone.”
Aaron was silent.
“Let’s try again,” Riley said. “On my count. Three, two, one…”
This time, he lifted it a lot easier. Same pain in his back. Same pain in his chest and his leg—fuck, he’d bust some stitches if he wasn’t careful. But he had a hold of the car. He’d have a hold of it for another five, ten seconds. He had to move. They both had to move. Fast.
“Okay, let’s go,” Riley said, stumbling to his right.
Aaron moved in sync. They were so close now. So close to getting the car out of the way and being able to move. There was a gap forming at the side of the blockade. A big enough gap for them all to fit through. They’d have to go on foot, but it would suffice. It had to suffice.
Then, Aaron let out a cry, and his end of the car went tumbling to the road again.
Fuck. Riley looked back over at the creatures. The bulk of them were still crowding around the trailer, but a few of them were looking in their direction this time. Looking in the direction of the noise.
And then, one by one, a few of them started to move in Riley and Aaron’s direction.
“What the fuck have you done now?” Riley said.
“My—my back,” Aaron said. Riley saw that he was on his side clutching the bottom of his back. “It just—it just gave in. It just—”
Riley yanked him to his feet. “I fucking told you to lift from your legs. Now look. Now look.”
He did look, and judging by the sudden, stunned postponement of pained gasps, he saw just what Riley saw.
More creatures were walking in their direction. Some of them still surrounded the side of the trailer, as Anna and Pedro bashed their pieces of scrap metal against it, but many were growing disinterested. Many were seeking new prey.
Easier prey.
“What do we do?” Aaron asked. “What…what now?”
Riley watched as the creatures approached. It was all he could do. Watch and wait. They’d have to get on top of the car. Fight them off with what bullets they did have.
But bullets wouldn’t last forever. And a Smart Car wasn’t so hard for a creature to mount.
“I say we run,” Aaron said, pointing at the gap in the blockade. “Make a break for the pier. We—we can come back for the others if—”
“No. These are my friends. Just because they’ve no personal value to you doesn’t mean they’re dispensable.”
“We can’t just fucking stand here,” Aaron said. “We have to do something. There has to be something we can—we can try.”
Riley looked around at the blockade of cars. Looked ahead of the blockade, through the gap. No. He couldn’t lose Anna and Pedro. They’d held up their end of the deal—put themselves on a plate so that Riley could try to get them out of this situation. He couldn’t let them die. He was through with letting people die. There had to be another way.
“We lift again,” Riley said, turning back to the car.
“Didn’t you just hear me?” Aaron said, easing against the front of the car. “My back, it’s fucked. I can barely even move.”
“Well you’ll just have to,” Riley said, reaching around and getting ready to grab Aaron.
But he didn’t, because he saw something inside the Smart Car.
“Keys,” Riley said.
Aaron whimpered. The groans were getting closer. Anna and Pedro continued to rattle their scrap metal against the trailer, but it was a lost cause. The creatures were on to Riley and Aaron. They weren’t letting up.
“We have to run. We have to—”
“Keys!”
Riley pushed Aaron out of the way and tried the handle of the Smart Car but the door was locked. Fuck. The keys were in the ignition. If this thing had any petrol, they could drive this thing. Where they’d drive it…Well, they’d work that out next. But right now, they needed those keys.
Riley lifted his gun out of his pocket and aimed it at the window.
“I thought you said no—”
The gunshot rattled through the air. The glass of the car window cracked and crumbled. The groans were echoed out momentarily, but when they returned, they were louder and stronger than ever before.
Riley reached in through the smashed window and yanked the keys from the ignition. Then, he tried to slot them in the door with his shaking hand.
The keys slipped to the ground.
“Fuck,” Riley said. He scrambled to his knees and reached under the car for the runaway keys. In the reflection of the blue Smart Car paintwork, he could see movement behind him. The creatures were so close. Too close.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Aaron said. “Just do something. Please.”
Riley stretched his arm out right underneath the car and got a hold of the keys.
He pulled himself back to his feet and this time, just about managed to get the keys inside the manual lock. Fuck these first edition Smart Cars and their lack of an automatic lock system.
The door clicked open. Riley opened it up, more glass crumbling onto the seat as he did. He threw him
self into the driver’s seat, Aaron climbing through into the passenger’s seat.
He slammed the door shut. Put the key in the ignition. Please work. Please fucking work.
“Quick!” Aaron shouted. The creatures clutched at the broken window. Sunk their teeth into the metal framework of the car.
Riley turned the key.
Waited. Waited.
The engine started.
About five creatures were pressed up against the side of the Smart Car. Riley put his foot on the gas and sped forward, sending the creatures onto their arses as he moved back in the direction of the van.
“Wait. Where the fuck are you going?”
Riley accelerated to the right of the van. The creatures were all moving at the Smart Car from the left, reaching out, some of them bumping into the windscreen that was so close to their faces.
“Where the fuck? We have to get out of here. We have to—”
“I told you, you moaning son of a bitch. I don’t leave my friends behind. If you don’t shut that fucking whining mouth of yours, I won’t hesitate to use you as bait.”
Aaron, as expected, fast shut up.
The Smart Car moved around the left hand side of the van. Anna and Pedro looked on with wide-eyed, open-mouthed expressions, their pieces of scrap metal dangling by their side.
“I’ll come round the right!” Riley shouted as the creatures followed the Smart Car around the left hand side of the van like Lemmings. “Be ready to jump!”
Anna and Pedro nodded. It was just about all they could do.
Riley swerved the Smart Car around the back of the van. The route through the blockade to the right of the van was clear, bar a few straggling creatures. He waited a few seconds. Revved the engine as loud as he could. Waited for the creatures to stumble around the left of the van. They had to see him. They had to know where he was.
“When are we—”
On sight of the first few creatures emerging from the left of the van, Riley sent the Smart Car lurching forward. He stopped it beside the van, reached over and opened the passenger door.
“Quick! Get in!”
