by Ryan Casey
“You can’t do this,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Have you seen these people?” Ricky said. “They’re kitted out in black, all of them. They’re wearing, like, masks. Something to stop them inhaling the air. And they have guns like I’ve never seen in Britain. Serious artillery. This isn’t any normal group, Mel. It’s… it’s more than that.”
Melissa turned. Ricky could tell she knew exactly what he was saying. But there was reluctance. Of course there was.
And there was bound to be. They’d looked, between them, behind doors that they knew deep down they shouldn’t have looked through so many times already. They’d seen things that they knew would haunt them forever. They’d witnessed things that they wished they could erase.
But that was just a part of surviving in this world.
Seeing and witnessing as much as you could before eventually cracking.
Ricky was fine about cracking now. It didn’t bother him so much.
As long as he and his friends survived, that was the priority.
“I’m taking a look,” Ricky said. “I just want to see what they’re doing in there. I just… I just want to look through the window and see what’s happening. Either you’re with me or you aren’t. I’m fine either way.”
Melissa lowered her head. And for a moment, Ricky thought she was on the verge of just turning around and walking away.
Instead, she nodded. “I’m with you. But if you get me killed…”
“Don’t worry,” Ricky said. “You’ll live to see another Ricky-dance again.”
He walked, then, Melissa by his side. He crept closer to the farmhouse. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find there. He knew it wasn’t going to be anything good. After all, he could see the states that the animals were in. He didn’t hold out much hope for anyone who might be inside that farmhouse.
But he had to see.
He had to know for himself…
He walked past the dead animals. The stench was awful. And all he could think of was… all that waste. All that goddamned waste.
Now it was nothing more than food for the flies, food for the rats.
He saw movement up ahead and he stopped right in his tracks.
He thought the masked person who’d stepped out of the doorway looked at him. Just for a second, he thought they’d made eye contact.
But then the person turned away and headed back inside the farmhouse.
Ricky edged closer to the farmhouse. His heart pounded. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck. He didn’t know what he was going to see. He didn’t know what to expect.
But somehow, deep down, he knew that whatever it was he was being drawn to was right behind this window.
He crouched beneath it. He held his breath. He looked at Melissa, who was crouched beside him, and he smiled.
And then he raised his neck and he looked inside the window.
He’d planned on sitting back down right away when he’d seen what he had to see. He’d planned on turning around and getting the hell out of here as soon as he knew for sure what was going on inside that farmhouse.
But he couldn’t.
And neither could Melissa.
They were staring at darkness. There was no doubt about that.
And this was a darkness there was no turning away from…
CHAPTER FIVE
The creature hurtled itself towards Carly, who was holding Kesha.
Riley was rooted to the spot. Heart racing. Chest tightening. So caught up in trying to decide whether to alert Carly or whether to take on the creature himself that time to make either decision had run out.
He could see the panic starting to spread on Carly’s face almost as if in slow motion, and he wondered whether she’d realised. He wondered whether she knew exactly what was happening; exactly what was coming.
The creature moved its snapping teeth towards her shoulder.
Kesha stared up at Riley with those big beautiful eyes, and Riley knew for a fact that he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her.
No. Nothing was going to happen to her.
He was going to protect her.
He had to protect them both.
He threw himself forward. It was a reactionary decision, and in all truth, he wasn’t sure whether it was the right decision, but it was a decision all the same. And any decision was better than inaction right now. It had to be.
He flew at Carly, tried to push her free of the creature’s bite.
He hit her square in the stomach. And his body sank for three reasons. Firstly, that he’d hit Carly at all. Second, because Kesha was right between them.
And third?
All three of them were now moving closer to the creature.
They fell to the ground in a heap, all four of them, creature included.
“Get back!” Riley shouted.
He tried to drag Carly away from the creature as it shook on the floor beneath her. Its teeth lashed out, just inches from Carly’s back. One slip and it’d be over. One wrong move and Carly would be finished.
Sure, Kesha’s blood could be used as a cure. But Riley didn’t want to have to keep falling back on Kesha’s blood. And as much as he could use it, a blood transfusion didn’t account for injuries like pierced jugulars and blood loss.
He pulled Carly out of the way. Kesha was crying now, as the smell of dead filled Riley’s nostrils.
He pushed Carly to the other side of the room. “Stay out of the way while I do this,” he said.
Then, he perched atop the creature and he put his thumbs into its eye sockets.
He looked away as he pushed down harder on the soft, fleshy eyeballs of the creature. They’d mostly rotted away, making them easier to push.
But the more he pushed, the more the creature struggled.
And the more the creature struggled, the more Riley felt like it was a human he was killing, and not an empty, dead shell.
He pushed down harder all the same. He kept on going, kept on working his thumbs inside it, as much as he felt like the poor creature was screaming at him.
But it wasn’t screaming for long.
Not when the eyeballs burst.
Cold goo covered his thumbs as he sunk them right inside the monster’s skull, piercing through the fleshy bits of its brain.
The creature writhed for a few seconds. It kicked out its feet.
And then a strange thing happened.
The strangest thing of all.
The creature spoke.
“Please.”
And then it went still.
Riley pulled himself away, hands covered with blood and gunk. He panted as he stared at the still, rotten body of the undead.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Carly frowned. Kesha was in her arms. She looked okay, thank God. “Hear what?”
Riley’s heart raced, pulsating in his skull. “The… the creature. It said something. Did you hear it?”
He looked up at Carly and she glared at him like he was mad. And he started to wonder if maybe he was mad. Maybe the visions and the hallucinations were returning. Because creatures didn’t speak. They couldn’t speak. They were dead. Rotting away. There was nothing remotely alive about them.
Was there?
Riley shook his head. He had to put those speculative thoughts to one side. He crawled over to Carly and Kesha’s sides.
“You okay?”
Carly nodded. She had bits of blood on her, but they were obviously from the creature and not her or Kesha. “I… I…”
“You’re not bitten, are you?”
Carly shook her head. “No. I mean I don’t think so.”
“Carly. Are you bitten?”
She snapped out of her trance when Riley raised his voice. She looked at him, then she swallowed a lump in her throat and shook her head. “No. No I’m not.”
Riley allowed himself to luxuriate in the relief for a moment. But then the urgency of the situation dwelled on him
. “That creature. It shouldn’t have been allowed to get in here. The doors. They’re always closed. You know that as well as I do.”
“So how did it happen?” Carly asked.
Riley walked over to the bedroom door. He had a bad feeling about all this. There was something… off. Like something wasn’t right in this home of theirs. A presence, indescribable, but there.
“Anna? Cody?”
When he called out their names, the echoing followed by silence, he knew that something was off.
“Where are they?” Carly asked.
Riley didn’t answer her. He just made his way across the upstairs hallway, then down the stairs. “Anna! Cody!”
He searched the lounge. He searched the makeshift bathroom. He searched the kitchen and he searched the garden.
It was when he saw the front door, partly ajar, that the hairs on his arms stood on end.
He went over to it. Looked outside.
There was nobody on the other side.
No one to be seen.
“Where have they gone?” Carly asked, appearing at Riley’s side.
He wanted to answer Carly. He wanted to tell her the truth.
But the fact of the matter was, he couldn’t.
There was nothing he could say.
Anna and Cody were gone.
CHAPTER SIX
Melissa stared through the window of the farmhouse and she tried to understand what she was witnessing.
It was rapidly going dark, so visibility wasn’t great. There was a growing chill building in the air. Or maybe that was just a biological response to what Melissa was witnessing. Maybe that was her body’s reaction to the events unfolding right in front of her.
And as much as she knew it put her and Ricky in danger by merely staying here, the more she knew that they were risking being exposed, she couldn’t look away. Neither could Ricky.
How could anyone look away from this?
There were three people inside that farmhouse, all of them dressed in black. They were masked, and they had fancy looking guns over their shoulders. High tech stuff, for sure.
The room they were in was wide and spacious. There was a gorgeous traditional fireplace, which looked like it’d not long ago been lit. There were ornaments on the mantlepiece, photographs of a family by the beach, or on top of the Eiffel Tower. By the side of the fireplace, a stash of old magazines, ready to meet the flames.
The room was covered in blood.
There were three people on the ground. Two of them were lying totally still, shots in their heads and their bodies. They looked fearful, like they’d known what was coming; like they’d known death was catching up with them.
But one of these people wasn’t dead.
He was very much alive.
He was being pinned in place by two of the armed people. Another of them was holding a syringe. They were moving it towards his temple.
Melissa saw the fear in this man’s eyes as he tried to shake free of these unspeaking, silent people. He saw him glance in her direction, and just for a second she worried he was going to blow their cover completely.
Then the man holding the syringe rammed it into the defenceless man’s temple and pressed the clear fluid into his head.
Melissa wanted to look away. She felt queasy about needles at the best of times. But this… this forced injecting of whatever was in that needle. It made her feel sick, right to her core.
But she kept watching because she knew she was witnessing something important here. It seemed like it meant something. Even if she didn’t quite understand what that “something” was just yet.
She watched the man’s skin go a grey, palish shade. She watched his eyes start to turn into the back of his skull.
Then, he started shaking.
He shook hard, seizing badly. Bubbly drool oozed out of his mouth. His seizures were so violent that his head was banging up and down against the floor, but he was being held down by these two people at all times.
And then he stopped.
When he went still, the two people holding him down stepped aside. They raised their guns, pointed them at him. The man who’d injected the syringe pulled out a weird little portable machine that Melissa didn’t recognise. He put pads on the sides of the man’s head. And on a little screen, he monitored something. Brainwaves? Mental activity? Something like that?
Melissa watched for a while, fast growing uncomfortable. Ricky watched too. These people inside were so focused on what they were doing, they hadn’t even glanced around at them yet.
She knew that risk was always there.
But she also knew that whatever it was these people were doing in that room, it was more important than a minor distraction outside.
Melissa kept watching the total stillness inside the room, not daring to look away. The smell of the dead animals behind her in the fields got more intense. The taste of death filled her mouth.
And all the time, she kept on looking forward, watching the man lying still on the floor, watching the two people either side of him, guns pointed at his head, and watching the man standing over him, wires connecting to his head, little screen in his hands.
Nothing seemed to be happening. Not for a while.
But then something did happen.
Something very significant.
The man on the floor opened his eyes.
There was something about the way he opened his eyes. Like he was just coming around from a deep sleep. There was still an essence of the man he had been there. There was still something undeniably human about him.
But then he lunged up in the direction of the man holding the little monitor.
Before he could make it, the two people either side of him put two bullets through his head.
One of the bullets ricocheted and hit the glass right between Melissa and Ricky.
Melissa paused for a second, unable to understand what they’d just witnessed, unable to properly put the pieces in place of what had just played out right in front of them.
But from her memory of that little monitor, Melissa thought she knew.
She had a deep, gut-wrenching idea about the truth that could change everything once and for all.
She wanted to ask Ricky what he thought. She wanted to know whether he thought she was on the right lines. Whether he had the same suspicions and fears as her.
But there was no time to ask Ricky a thing.
Not when they looked back through the window.
Not when they saw the three masked, armed people staring right at them, rifles in hand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Riley looked out into the growing darkness and he knew he couldn’t just wait around.
Cody and Anna were out there. Cody and Anna, two people he’d thought were dead for so long. Two people who had returned, like ghosts from the past.
And now they were gone again.
He couldn’t accept that. He couldn’t just let that happen.
He had to find them. One way or another, he had to know they were safe.
He looked around and saw Carly standing by his side at the doorway, Kesha in her arms.
He didn’t want to leave her here alone with Kesha. But at the same time, he didn’t want to take her out of this house either, especially not when it was getting dark. They could get lost. Or something could happen, and the last thing Riley wanted was something to happen that could’ve been prevented.
No. The best, safest option was to leave Carly here to look after Kesha. Nobody ever came by this house. The creature they’d killed in the bedroom, well that’d been the first one Riley had seen that close to the house in weeks.
It had to be a one off. A moment of complacency.
He had to hope he was right.
He walked over to Carly and crouched opposite her, looking Kesha in her sparkling eyes.
“I won’t be long,” he said.
Carly frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Anna and Cody are out there, Carly. I c
an’t just leave them. Not if something’s happened to them. Especially since Melissa and Ricky haven’t come back, too.”
“So you’re leaving us? You’re leaving us alone?”
Riley felt his stomach sink. “I’m never going to leave you. Don’t even think that for one minute.”
“But you are leaving us. That’s exactly what you’re doing. Isn’t it?”
Riley didn’t want to open up and tell Carly the truth. He didn’t want to be honest with her. Because after all, she was right. He was leaving her and he was leaving Kesha. He didn’t know how long he was going to be away.
It was the hardest decision he’d have to make. But he couldn’t just leave Anna and Cody out there. Not now.
“I’ll scan the area. I’ll make sure you’re safe. And you should lock every single door from the inside. Double-lock every single door. Make it goddamned impossible for anyone or anything to get inside. And if… if you’re in trouble, you just scream, Carly. You just scream.”
Riley put his hand on Carly’s shoulder. He felt a welling up in his throat when he saw Kesha stretching out her hands, trying to grab his face.
He leaned towards her, let her grab at him. “I’ll be back for you, angel. Carly here’s gonna look after you. You trust her. Right?”
Kesha let out a little amused chuckle, and Riley thanked the gods he’d been blessed with such a well-behaved little girl in what was such a treacherous world.
He stepped back then, moved towards the door, keeping his eye on Carly at all times.
“You lock the door behind me. And you look after her. Okay?”
Carly smiled. “I always do. Right?”
Riley nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I guess you do.”
He was going to say “goodbye”. But he didn’t want everything to sound so serious and there to be such an air of finality about it.
But he couldn’t deny it. There was an air of finality about it. He’d had people disappear from his lives without a trace for so long. A feeling of finality was just what happened when you’d experienced something like that.
So instead, he took one final glance at Kesha.
Then he stepped out of the door, closing it behind him, and out into the growing darkness.
IT WAS pitch black when Riley heard his first trace of movement.
