by Ryan Casey
“Please …” Usman said. He clung onto the gaping wound on his arm. Tears dripped down his pale cheeks as Sarah crouched beside him shaking her head. Frank and Newbie stood beside Hayden and stared on, wide-eyed.
“Hayden’s right,” Newbie said, still staring ahead at Usman’s body.
Sarah shook her head. “We don’t need to—”
“He’s gonna come back as one of those things. Just like Jamie did.”
Sarah wiped the tears from her cheeks. Usman was in too much pain to string a comprehensible sentence together. “We can’t make that call. We … Jamie. You had to have known. He had to have—”
“I don’t think he was bitten,” Newbie said.
Sarah shook her head. “Then why did he turn?”
Hayden and Newbie both looked at Jamie, pulling as hard as he could against the hoses around him, snapping his cracked teeth together. Nobody replied. And that’s because nobody had an answer. Nobody knew what was going on. What the rules were.
Nobody knew a thing.
“You … you can’t—you can’t kill me. Please. Don’t let—don’t let me …”
Sarah put a hand on Usman’s shoulder then backed away. She shook her head. “We … we can’t just kill him.”
“Usman,” Hayden said. He figured now was a good time to step up. To prove to the others that he could be responsible, that he could pull his weight and survive in this new world. “You … There’s nothing we can do. What happens to the people who’ve been bitten, it’s—”
“Fuck off,” Usman spat. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. He was starting to sweat and shake. He looked up at Hayden not with malice, but with fear. Like the eyes of a kid who didn’t know when his parents were going to come home. “Please. Just … Please. Don’t let me. Please.”
Frank shook his head and turned away.
“Is there any way we can … we can stop it?” Hayden asked. It was a stupid question, he knew, but it was better than the delayed shock and silence that the rest of the group were providing.
Frank shook his head again. “Saw my wife get bitten. Turned into one of those things within minutes. I don’t think—”
“I’ll do anything,” Usman whimpered. “I … I’ll do anything. Just … just please. Don’t let me.”
“We don’t even know how to kill these things,” Frank said. “Shot in the head like the movies doesn’t do it.”
“It’s not as simple as a headshot,” Newbie said, pacing back and forth. “But … but when we were out there. One of them came at me and I—I hit it across the back of its neck. Hard. And that seemed to do the trick.”
“He’s right,” Frank said. “In the van before. Mowed down that little … those zombies out there. Cracked the necks of a few of ’em. Don’t see them wanderin’ around anymore.”
“Please don’t break my neck,” Usman said. He tried to pull himself upright, but doing so seemed to engulf him in even more agonising pain. He shouted out. “I … So warm. So warm.”
His shivering body told a different story.
“We need to make a decision,” Frank said.
“It’s not our decision to make!” Sarah said.
“It is our fuckin’ decision when he turns into one of those things and starts snacking down on a bit of our meat!”
Hayden held his breath. He had to do something. He had to speak to Usman. Speak to him and get him to see. Get him to understand. He didn’t know what to say or how to approach him, but he had to do something. Someone had to do something.
“Usman,” Hayden said. He walked over to him, no matter how frozen his legs felt.
“I told—told you to fuck—”
“You’ve been bitten,” Hayden said. He crouched down opposite him and looked him in the eyes. “You’ve … You’ve been bitten. And I’m so sorry about that.”
Usman snickered and coughed up blood. “You don’t mean … mean that.”
“I do. You’re wrong. I do mean that. I don’t know what I’d do if I were … if I were in your shoes. And I hope I never am. But I’m sorry you’re in this … this position. I’m really—”
“Should never have let them in …”
Hayden glanced up at Newbie, who shook his head, the guilt on his face clear. “Maybe so. But this is the situation we’re in. You’re going to turn into one of those things. You’re … you’re going to come back. You’re going to try and kill us. As much as you’d like that … I dunno. Is that what you really want?”
Usman whimpered with pain as he moved his bitten arm ever so slightly. Goose pimples had sprouted up all over his skin. “I … My Pria. She … I want my Pria. Please.”
Hayden didn’t know who Pria was, but he felt something when Usman said those words. Usman had seemed so strong, so tough, so decisive. And yet, right here, on death’s door, he was giving up his responsibility to someone else.
He wanted someone else here to make him feel better because he wasn’t strong enough.
Just like Hayden.
“I’m really sorry,” Hayden said. And it was all he could say. “I … I wish things were different. I wish people were here for me, too. But they aren’t. But you’ve … you’ve got us. You’ve got—”
“I don’t want you,” Usman sobbed, tears mixing with the blood dribbling out of his quivering mouth and rolling down his chin. “I just … I just want my Pria.”
And then he cried like a grieving mother at her son’s funeral, and Hayden understood he’d given up.
Hayden swallowed the lump in his throat. He stepped up. Crept around the back of Usman. He had his eyes closed, so it was better to get it done with. Better to knock him out then get the euthanasia done while Usman wasn’t prepared.
Fuck. He couldn’t believe he was actually contemplating this.
Usman was a sobbing, crying man who had minutes left to live.
And Hayden was thinking about killing him.
Murdering him.
He ignored the angry little voice in his mind telling him how wrong he was, how he couldn’t go through with what he was going to do, how he didn’t have the guts and the balls to put Usman down.
Sarah held her hands to her face and shook her head. She cried, just like Usman cried.
Newbie grabbed a blue metal baseball bat from behind the counter and handed it to Hayden.
Hayden’s hands shook as he gripped hold of it. It was heavy. Heavy enough to knock Usman out. Heavy enough to crack the back of his skull if he swung it hard enough.
Swing, put Usman to sleep, then break his neck.
As fucking difficult as one, two, three.
Hayden tasted tears rolling down his own cheeks as he pulled back the baseball bat. Usman was still facing away. Sarah was whispering things to him, trying to reassure him, keeping him distracted.
The baseball bat felt like it was going to tumble from Hayden’s hands and hit the floor. He tried to steady it, tried to figure out just how hard to swing it. He’d been okay at baseball in high school, but nothing special.
Just had to hit the back of Usman’s head.
Shock him, distract him, finish him.
The seconds seemed to drag on as Hayden held the baseball bat. In front of it, he saw flashes of his mum, his dad, his two sisters. He saw them crying. Begging him not to kill them. Begging him to spare their lives.
He held his breath. Fought through the nausea climbing through his chest.
Brought the baseball bat further back.
And then Usman turned and looked at him.
There was a look in Usman’s eyes that scared Hayden. It was a wide-eyed expression of fear. Of confusion. Of misunderstanding.
And yet … at the same time, there was a deep, inherent knowledge there. A knowledge of his inevitable fate.
Usman frowned. “What … Please.”
The baseball bat dropped from Hayden’s hands. He stepped away, shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t.”
And then he saw Sarah pull out a Stanley knife and stick it into t
he side of Usman’s neck while he wasn’t facing her.
He struggled. Struggled as blood pooled out of his mouth, spurted out of his neck and all over Sarah.
She just kept on slicing at his neck. Slicing, and slicing, all the time mumbling, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She sliced and stabbed at Usman’s neck for the best part of a minute.
It took Usman two more minutes to stop gargling, to stop tensing his fists.
Another minute on top of that for him to stop blinking and for his eyes to glaze over.
When he’d stopped, Newbie wiped away the sweat on his forehead, grabbed the baseball bat and cracked the back of Usman’s neck.
All Hayden could do was stare.
Seventeen
Hayden sat against the wall at the opposite side of the petrol station to the counter and tried to get the images of what had happened here out of his mind.
But no matter how much he tried, he kept on getting a glimpse of the blood on the white tiles of the petrol station floor, or the heaped remains of Usman’s dead body, of Jamie’s dead body. Newbie had cracked his neck not long after Sarah finished off Usman.
After Sarah did what Hayden couldn’t bring himself to do.
Outside the petrol station, there was nothing but silence. Well, nearby anyway—further in the distance, Hayden could hear sirens. He swore he could hear birdsong, too, and he found it amazing that birds could just carry on with their normal lives unaware of the chaos underneath them.
Every now and then, Hayden got a whiff of the crisps that Usman had been eating not long before his death, and the thought of eating them just made his stomach turn. They just reminded him of Usman’s terrified face when he turned and saw Hayden holding the baseball bat and preparing to swing.
Of Usman’s gargles as Sarah stabbed and sliced his neck with a Stanley knife.
Of blood blubbering out of his mouth as he choked to death on the floor.
And then, of the cracking of his neck as Newbie put him down.
“How you keeping?”
The voice took Hayden by surprise. He looked up and saw Newbie standing there. Newbie was wiping his hands together. There was blood on them. Hayden didn’t even want to think who’s blood it was.
Hayden sniffed up a sharp breath and nodded. “Yeah. I’m—”
“What you couldn’t do back there. With the bat. I … I get that. Really.”
He crouched down beside Hayden. Hayden wasn’t sure what to say, how to react. He wasn’t sure whether Newbie was just telling him what he wanted to hear.
“It’s hard. Adapting to a world like this. I … I did a stint in the army many, many years ago. Quite a successful stint. And the one thing I couldn’t wrap my head around at first was just how different the rules were on the field of battle. Like … it’s one thing to train up, to prepare yourself for conflict, to learn to use a gun and to reload and aim and all that. But to actually point a gun at someone—another live human. To … to actually take their life.” He sighed. Shook his head. “You never get used to that.”
Hayden didn’t feel particularly reassured by Newbie’s words. He was, after all, talking about the world outside like it was a battleground now. Hayden never liked the outside world at the best of times. It was the whole reason he rarely ventured out into it in the first place. Now, he just had an ultra-legitimate reason to stay indoors and hide away.
Except he couldn’t. He understood that now. Because it wasn’t even safe inside. The only place he’d ever been safe, and that was gone too.
“Did you know?” Hayden asked.
“About?”
“About … about Jamie.”
Newbie shook his head. “How could I have known? I wouldn’t have brought him in here if I’d known. I just … I checked him for bites after I … you know. Didn’t find any. So he either got the infection some other way or he already had it in him. Something like that.”
“You’re sure it’s an infection, then?”
Newbie turned and looked at him. “Hayden, look around. Open your eyes. People don’t just go crazy like this for no reason. And the way it spreads through the bites. Whatever it is, it’s contagious. It’s just about figuring out how else we can catch it that’s the hard part.”
Hayden closed his eyes. They were heavy, aching. “My biggest nightmare used to be missing out on one of my benefits payments. Now I know how wrong I was.”
Newbie patted Hayden on his shoulder. “Hey. At least if this world’s done one thing for you, it’s got you off your behind. No offence.”
“None taken,” Hayden said. But Newbie was right, and he knew it.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Newbie asked.
Hayden opened his eyes. He looked across the petrol station and saw Sarah sitting back against the shelves. Frank was twiddling his thumbs a little further down that aisle, but he seemed as okay as he could be. But Sarah’s hands covered her face. Specks of blood were splattered against the back of her hands. She hadn’t spoken since she’d killed Usman.
“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “She … she seems tough. But what she did. What she …” Hayden had to stop speaking because simply the thought of Sarah slicing Usman’s jugular open made him feel sick to the core.
“We have to move on. From this place. The military bunker I told you about. Just five miles south from here. We need to get there. See how well the military are picking up the pieces of this mess. I’ll … I’ll talk to Sarah.”
Newbie stood up. He reached around to his back and winced.
“Just cramp. Don’t worry.”
“What if the military aren’t there?” Hayden asked.
Newbie shook his head. “They’ll be there. They have to be there.”
He said it with enough assertiveness to be believed, but Hayden wasn’t convinced. He hadn’t seen police on the streets except for the ones who’d turned into the zombie psychos. He hadn’t seen any army helicopters—or even any sign of army for that matter.
But Newbie was right. They had to be there.
Because if they weren’t, how were they going to move forward without any guidelines?
And what even was moving forward if they didn’t have a compass to direct them.
“I’ll speak to Sarah,” Hayden said. He stood up. Winced as a sharp pain shot through his right foot, which he’d cut on glass earlier, but made a point of not acting like a little bitch about it.
“You sure?” Newbie asked.
Hayden breathed in deeply. He wasn’t sure what exactly to say to Sarah. Only that he felt like he owed it to her after leaving her to kill Usman. He felt like if he had to step up at any time, now was the time.
He nodded. “I have to do this.”
Newbie stepped aside. “Good luck,” he said. “If there’s one being more dangerous than a zombie in this world, it’s a pissed off woman.”
Sarah didn’t budge when Hayden crouched beside her.
He just sat there at first, staring at the stacks of canned beans and cheap spaghetti. He gripped his hands together. He didn’t know what to say to Sarah exactly. Only that he had to apologise. Apologise to her for leaving Usman to her to deal with. Apologise for bottling his responsibilities, like he’d done already so many times in his life.
He decided to cut straight to the point. “I’m sorry. About … about what you had to do. I’m sorry.”
Sarah pulled her hands away from her face. Patches of blood were splattered on her cheeks. She wasn’t crying anymore, but the way the black mascara had smudged with the blood told the story. “You aren’t,” she said. “And—and you won’t be until you understand. Until you’ve had to do that yourself, you won’t understand.”
Hayden thought about telling Sarah about his landlord, the way he’d beaten his head in, but he knew that was different. Because his landlord had changed. He wasn’t the person he was before.
Sarah had slit the throat of a live man, and now she was being forced to live with it.
&nb
sp; All because Hayden didn’t have the balls to live with it himself.
He looked away. Stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was even more cracked, the screen in an absolute state. He still had no signal, and the right side of the screen was completely blanked out. He wanted to speak to his mum. He wanted to speak to his dad and his sister. He wanted to know they were okay. They lived too far away to go and check on. In the opposite direction to the military bunker, too.
They’d be okay. They’d be fine.
They had to be.
“We need to move on,” Hayden said. “To … to the military bunker. The one that Newbie and Jamie—”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Sarah said. She sniffed, then stood up. She seemed revitalised, refilled with energy, but Hayden could see right through it. “I’ll be fucking delighted to see the back of this place, that much I’ll tell you.”
Hayden, Frank, Sarah and Newbie packed up some backpacks with cans of beans, tuna and bottles of water, as well as a few scraps of fresh fruit and some mini torches—just in case—and then they walked over to the petrol station doors.
They pulled aside the shelves that blocked the way out. Pushed open the doors. Stepped out into the cold.
Hayden looked back in the petrol station at Jamie and Usman. He could only see the bottom of their feet, as well as the blood pooling at the side of them, but at the same time he could see Usman complaining away, and yet so hopeful about the impending end to this horrible day.
“Hayden? You comin’?”
Hayden turned around. Saw Frank, Sarah and Newbie looking back at him, the sun shining behind them.
He took a deep breath, swallowed, and then he walked out into the cold January freshness of a dying town.
Eighteen
They hadn’t even walked two miles and already Hayden was wishing he’d stayed at the petrol station.
It was cold outside. Freezing cold. Much, much colder than it had seemed before Smileston collapsed under the weight of the zombies. Hayden was shivering, but he wasn’t sure whether that was simply because he was so damned terrified about what might be around the next corner, or just the cold, or a combination of the two.
