by Ryan Casey
Frank smiled. It was a smile that seemed so out of place considering the circumstances, and yet it was so typical of the Frank Hayden had got to know in the last few minutes. “Bitey fuckers. People with nasty wounds all over their bodies. News of infection and army intervention and all that. Think about it. Where’ve you seen all this shit before?”
“The Walking Dead?”
“I woulda said Dawn of the Dead, but bingo. I’ll give you that.”
Hayden felt a smile creeping up the corners of his mouth. It didn’t feel right, and he knew he didn’t smile a lot in public, but maybe it was as a result of the adrenaline and the delayed shock. “You … wait. You can’t seriously tell me you think this is … is—”
“Walkers. Biters. Infected. Dress it up however the fuck you want, sunshine. These bastards on the streets are zombies. There. I said it. Is that a cardinal sin or summat? Callin’ ’um zombies? Notice people all callin’ ’um different names on the films and on the telly and I just wondered.”
Hayden tried to understand Frank’s words as the van swung to the left and went over something bumpy. “This … no. I can’t believe that. Zombies aren’t … they aren’t real.”
“Then explain some of the shit you’ve seen so far and tell me they ain’t zombies.”
Hayden shook his head. “No. No. That’s impossible.”
But the truth was, he was thinking back to some of the shit he’d seen this morning. The bald man being torn apart in the street … and then rising from what should have been death and attacking Hayden.
The emergency services being engaged and the internet news sites on shutdown
Terry, his landlord, and his glassy eyes. The wound on his neck. The way he kept on getting up, regardless of the blood loss, regardless of the obliteration of his skull …
“They—they can’t be zombies.”
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me, Einstein.”
“I … one of them. His … his head was caved in. But zombies die if you destroy their brains.”
Frank chuckled. “And where’d you read that? Reader’s Digest Guide to Zombies 2015?”
Hayden felt his cheeks blushing some more. He tried to think of a witty, snappy reply, which he’d have no trouble managing if he was at the other side of a keyboard and given proper time to analyse.
But he wasn’t, so all he could say was: “No. No.”
Hayden reached into his pocket as the van continued to bump along the road. He pulled out his cracked phone and looked at the screen, half of it working, half of it crackling, the colours distorted. He thought about Mum and Dad and his sister, Clarice. He wondered how they were, and whether they knew. They lived in Preston, which was the closest city to Smileston. So hopefully an area that wouldn’t carry the same kind of risk factor as the suburban area that Hayden lived in.
Or the suburban area he had lived in.
“You got family?” Frank asked. His voice was softer, and Hayden could sense the sincerity to his question.
He nodded.
Frank sighed. “I’m … I’m sure they’ll be okay. Just gotta let this all blow over and … and stay as safe as we can. For now, y’know.”
Hayden leaned his head against the metal wall of the van.
For now, y’know.
He thought about the chaos he’d seen, of the emergency services phone line being down, of live-streamed frigging news being dead.
And then he thought about the psychos—the zombies—in his blood-drenched flat.
The way they’d pelted down the street after him as he’d chased the van, desperate for a bite.
How long was “for now?”
When could he go back home?
And if he couldn’t, where was home?
The van came to a sudden halt. Hayden flew to the left, and Frank banged the back of his shiny head against the wall.
“Fucker,” he muttered under his breath as he rubbed the back of his head. He banged on the metal area between the back of the van that Hayden and he were in. A few seconds later, a sheet of metal slid over, and Hayden saw through to the front.
“We there, Lewis Hamilton?” Frank asked.
A guy of Asian descent with short, dark hair and wearing a wooly grey jacket looked back through the compartment and right at Hayden. Hayden assumed this must be Usman. “You got your shit together, new boy?”
Hayden swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded, fast. “I … Yeah. Back there, I was just—”
“Good,” Usman said. He turned and pointed out of the front window. “’Cause it looks like we’ve got some house-cleaning to do.”
Hayden didn’t know what Usman was talking about until he stepped up to the compartment where the dark-haired woman called Sarah and he were sitting.
But when he looked out of the window, he understood right away.
Up ahead, there was a petrol station. Three cars were parked up at the pumps. The entrance was ajar.
And on the blood-splattered concrete outside the main door, three men were tearing the innards out of a young blonde woman.
“Guess they didn’t like the station’s selection of pasties,” Frank said.
Hayden wished he could have the same level of humour about the situation as Frank.
But any hopes of that were quashed when the three zombies looked up from the bodies and at the van.
One of them was a little girl.
Ten
“So are we gonna sneak around ’um or what?”
Hayden watched from inside the white van as the three psychos—Hayden refused to think of them as “zombies”—rose to their feet. There was a man with long grey hair wearing a leather biker jacket, a woman with chunks of her dark hair torn out, and a little girl wearing a pink hat.
Blood drooled down her chin as the three cannibalistic psychos staggered in the direction of the van.
“She’s … she’s just a kid,” Hayden mumbled.
Usman tutted and turned around. “You look at that girl and tell me she’s just a kid. With what she’s just done to that blonde woman there. We need to mow ’em down.”
Hayden shook his head as the psychos got closer. “I … I can’t. I can’t do this. Maybe there’s another way.”
“Scuse our scepticism, mate,” Usman said, “but we just saved you from being torn to bits by these things. So I dunno if your methods are all that compatible with mine.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Sarah said. It was the first thing she’d said since Hayden entered the van.
Usman shook his head. He banged his palms against the steering wheel. He could barely look at the little girl, the bite wound on her throat, the muscle spewing out of it. “You’ve seen what they do, Sarah. You’ve seen what they do to people. We need to deal with ’em. While they’re in front of the van. You need to let me do this.”
“I’m with Usman,” Frank added. He too wasn’t looking at the little girl, and his voice didn’t sound all that resounding, more sad. Sad at the realisation of what was happening, of what he’d have to do. “We need to get inside that petrol station. And when we’re in there, it’d be grand if we didn’t have three of those things banging at the windows.”
“Or four,” Usman said.
Hayden looked out of the window and saw exactly what Usman was referring to.
The blonde woman who had been chewed up by the trio of approaching psychos reached a shaking hand into the air. She rolled over onto her side, spilling her intestines out of her chewed-up belly. She didn’t seem to notice a thing. Didn’t seem to acknowledge any pain or anything like that.
She just stuck her nails into the concrete and dragged herself along the blood-smeared tarmac.
“Need to act fast,” Usman said.
“Maybe we could just distract them,” Sarah said.
“Distract them? Good luck with that.” Usman fiddled with the handbrake. He took in a deep breath. “I’m making this call here.”
“What—what about the police?” Hayden asked. He wanted to put up a fi
ght. He wanted to protest. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t get the words out. He was too used to other people making his decisions for him. Too used to not having to make big calls. He’d made sure his whole life revolved around it.
Frank shook his head. “Police. I’ll tell you about the police. They’re zombies like the rest of ’um out there. So don’t you go worryin’ about police. Or do, in fact, cause they might just chow down on you if you let ’em close.”
“Please, Usman,” Sarah said. The psychos were just a few feet away from the front of the van now. “There has to be another way. There has to—”
Sarah didn’t get to carry on speaking.
Usman accelerated forward into the four psychos.
Hayden flew against the grating between the front and the back of the van.
He didn’t see the van make contact with the psychos, but he heard it and felt it.
He heard bones crunching underneath the tires.
Heard muscles and innards squelching.
He squeezed his eyes together and tried his best not to think about the little girl with the pink hat on her head.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shift her away.
He stayed hunched in the corner of the back of the van with his eyes squeezed shut right until the van stopped completely. He heard Sarah kick up a fuss and protest, Usman shouting back at her. Frank didn’t say a word.
And then he heard the side of the van slide open and felt a cool breeze.
“Pussy. You coming or what?”
Hayden opened his eyes. Usman was standing at the side door of the van. He was shorter than Hayden thought, coming in at around five ten. He had a look of disgust on his face—a look that any man who’d just mowed down four people could be forgiven for having.
“I … I …” Hayden fiddled around for his phone. He had to check if it was working. Had to check if he had any signal. He needed to contact his family. He needed the security they gave him. He needed them to help him again. Not these people. These people were fucking terrifying.
All damned people were fucking terrifying.
“Look, you can stay in the back of the van if you want, as long as you realise I’m not coming out here to let you out for a piss in the night.”
“It’ll be sorted by … by tonight,” Hayden said, not really believing his words.
Usman’s face dropped. He tapped on the side of the van door. “Oh yeah. I agree. But … well are you coming or what?”
Hayden took in a few deep breaths of the sweaty van air. He lifted himself to his feet, wiped the tears from his cheeks, then stepped across the van floor.
“Shit,” Sarah said. “You’ve got a nasty limp.”
Hayden didn’t know what she was talking about at first. He was so filled with shock and in such a haze that he’d almost forgotten about the cut on the bottom of his foot. He looked down and saw patches of blood on the floor of the van. “I … I think I cut it.”
Usman sighed and held out a hand. “My uncle always kept plasters and bandages in the back of the station. None of us are medical experts, but I know how to clean a wound.”
Hayden observed Usman’s hand. He looked at Frank, who slid his foot against the blood-smeared concrete in front of the petrol station. He looked at Sarah, who was completely pale. Her eyes were full of tears. She was looking directly behind the van. Hayden figured whatever she was looking at, he didn’t want to see.
He took in a few more deep breaths of the fresh January air and he pulled his cracked phone out of his pocket. He tapped on the screen, but there were no signs of life. He could just about make out the signal bar on the top left of the screen, and it was completely blank.
He put his phone back in his pocket and he hoped to God his family were okay. Because he needed them. He was strong with them. He relied on them. He was lost without them.
He grabbed Usman’s hand and lowered himself out of the side of the van.
“Best not to look back,” Frank said. He patted Hayden on his shoulder.
Hayden swallowed a lump in his throat. He didn’t have to look back at the remains of the mowed-down bodies. He had a clear enough image of it in his head.
Sarah and Frank helped Hayden hobble along the cold, damp concrete in his bare feet. Usman jogged over to the door of the petrol station and fumbled with some keys. In the distance, Hayden could hear screams and even further in the distance, sirens.
“Hope you like Ginsters Pasties,” Usman said, as he turned the key in the glass petrol station door. “Uncle’s got enough of ’em stocked up to last us an apocalypse.”
Eleven
“I thought you said this place was safe,” Sarah said.
Usman led the group inside his uncle’s petrol station. It was deathly quiet in there, and Hayden was fast learning that “deathly” anything wasn’t a good thing. Lights flickered overhead, which were switched on despite it being bright outside. There was something weird about an empty petrol station. It was like seeing a shopping centre devoid of people, or seeing the nearby city of Manchester without any traffic clogging up the roads first thing in the morning. It was abnormal.
“It is safe,” Usman said, as he stepped slowly down the crisps and chocolate aisle. He arched his neck over the stands, then kept on looking back out of the windows to see nobody was watching.
“Which is why a poor woman was being chomped on outside when we rolled up here,” Frank said. “Right.”
“You have no idea what happened to that woman,” Usman said. He kept on walking towards the counter. There was a black door behind it, which Hayden assumed was the staff quarters. “She probably just came here trying to get inside and got caught up. Shame for her, sure. But we’re in here. That’s the main thing.”
Shit. Hayden hoped his life wouldn’t be in Usman’s caring hands anytime soon.
“What about your uncle?” Hayden asked. His voice sounded high and flimsy, which was definitely a way he didn’t want to come across. But fuck—like coming across any way mattered anymore.
Except … in a way, it kind of did. If the world outside was how it was going to be for a short while, one thing he had learned was that it didn’t help to be weak.
“Uncle Masood’s a lucky bugger,” Usman said, as they approached the counter. “On holiday with his wife and kids in Pakistan. Family wedding, something like that.”
“Not fancy attending?” Sarah asked.
“Do I look like I fancy attending any organised marriage bullshit?”
Hayden had to admit, Usman really didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d attend a wedding anytime soon.
“Nah,” he said, checking over the counter. “Not for me. But they’re over there for three weeks. Left one of his trusty sons running it. Turns out trusty son ain’t so trusty after all. So luckily he left a spare set of keys with me.”
“Decent place for a party,” Frank quipped.
Nobody laughed. Nobody even smiled.
They stepped up to the door of the staff quarters. Hayden looked around the petrol station. Looked at the magazines and the newspapers. The newspapers still had yesterday’s date on them. The news was nothing to do with the chaos outside. It made Hayden realise just how much the world relied on instant news to get a heads up on things. He always figured that if the world ever went to shit, at least he’d be able to prepare for it because the news would let him know in time.
And yet, here he was.
The world had gone to shit.
He was living in a nightmare that still didn’t seem real with a bunch of people he’d never met in his life.
The keys rattled in Usman’s hands. He cursed under his breath, went through the keys one after the other.
“Trouble?” Sarah asked.
Usman turned and glared at Sarah, and then he sighed. “These keys. None of ’em are working. We need to get back in there. There’s a cellar. No windows, secret fucking exit just in case things go to shit.”
“Sounds like hell,”
Frank said.
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Usman battled with the keys some more. Hayden watched him, and then he looked at Frank, who leaned against the counter like he was completely chilled about the whole situation. And then he turned to Sarah, who bit her nails, paced up and down.
Hayden wanted to speak to her. Break the ice. He had her to thank for saving his life back on Wilmslow Road, after all. But he’d never felt too comfortable chatting to the opposite sex. Not in real life, anyway. Online, he was a hoot. Speaking to a digital sex bot, well … he could get them turned on in an instant.
But real life flirtation evaded Hayden. He’d gone into his shell in his last few years of school, after the death of his older sister. Kept his head down, got his work done, gone through sixth form, then graduated uni. And sure, uni was a brief blip of social butterfly prominence. He’d been forced to live with eleven other guys, after all. Eventually, that faded away too, though. The novelty wore off. He found himself spending more time at home, more time back with his parents and his younger sister.
They were the three people he could rely on to make him feel better about himself, even if Dad was grumpy as fuck with him, and Clarice was out doing her own thing.
“Jesus Fuck,” Usman said. He tossed the keys to the floor and leaned against the door.
“Shouldn’t that be—”
“Do not make a joke about my God, okay? Dammit. These keys. They should work. That bastard, Masood. Tight bastard probably didn’t want me going in the staff area for a reason.”
“Few too many parties in there?” Frank asked.
Usman glared at him, Frank raised his hands, and Usman went back to leaning against the door.
Hayden swallowed a lump in his throat. He didn’t want to get involved with any conflict. He definitely didn’t want to piss Usman off. He seemed like a loose cannon. He’d just mowed down four people—“zombies,” admittedly. But he’d shown no hesitation about murdering them. He’d shown no remorse.
Even if there was some kind of “zombie outbreak,” which Hayden still found impossible to believe in spite of everything he’d seen, the mind should still have a moral compass that doesn’t just crumble to pieces when order changes.
