by Ryan Casey
“I can’t deal with this,” Newbie said. Hayden heard him sniff. “I just … it’s fucked up. This whole situation is fucked up.”
Hayden bit down on his lip and forced himself to walk on. “It is. There’s no denying that. But we have to keep moving. We have to survive this. We have to … to live to tell the tale, at least.”
They headed even further down the sewerage tunnel. Every now and then, they came across a ladder, but they heard something on the road above like the rumbling of tires against the concrete or the sound of flesh being torn off the bodies of a human that didn’t quite make it away.
They had to get out of here soon. The smell of the sewers was ghastly. The place would be rife with all kinds of nasty diseases. The last thing they wanted in the middle of a zombie outbreak was a bout of flu.
“Is that a light up ahead?”
Newbie’s damned voice took Hayden by surprise once again. But when Hayden saw what Newbie was referring to, he knew he was right.
A light beaming down from an opened manhole cover.
“We’d better watch out,” Hayden said. “Keep quiet. Take things one step at a—”
He felt something clutch his left ankle.
He tumbled face first onto the concrete. The contact with the ground sent a stinging pain right through his head.
He readied himself for a bite on his ankle. Readied himself for the searing pain to split through the bottom of his leg …
And then he swung around with his knife and aimed for the neck of the zombie.
“Woah woah woah!”
He stopped just before he made contact with the zombie’s neck. Because it spoke. Which meant it couldn’t be a zombie at all.
“Heaven’s sakes,” a woman said from behind the man holding Hayden. “You want to watch where you swing that thing.”
Hayden brushed himself down and stood up. “You want to watch whose legs you grab.”
“You can’t blame us,” the man said. Hayden couldn’t make out either of them in the darkness. “Guessing you’re not bit, then?”
“Guessed correctly. Now if you’ll let us—”
“Let us come with you. Please. I … My wife and I. We’re old. In our seventies. I’m Harold, by the way. This is my wife Lily here.”
“Our knees and joints aren’t what they were,” Lily said. “Take us with you. Just … just help us out of this place. We’ve seen what the army are doing. We can’t stay here. None of us can. Please.”
Hayden wanted to tell the old pair that they were welcome to join them. But was having two old people come along with them such a great idea? They’d slow them down. And it was just an extra weight of responsibility to worry about, especially now it seemed he’d been unofficially elected as bloody group leader.
“We … I’m sorry, we …”
Hayden didn’t finish.
Something else grabbed his right ankle.
And this time, it wasn’t a human.
Twenty-Five
Hayden fell back onto the sewage covered ground as the zombie grabbed hold of his ankle.
He heard the others—Newbie, Sarah, Harold and Lily—all scrambling, cursing, trying to figure out what to do as the zombie held him down in the darkness. The torch had tumbled off into the distance, and the sewer had gone pitch black.
He didn’t need to see the zombie to know exactly where it was, though.
He could feel its long fingernails digging into the sides of his right leg.
He had a clear image in his mind of the psycho wrapping its teeth around his ankle, getting ready to chomp down on his delicious, blood-rich flesh.
That wasn’t happening. Not now.
Hayden gripped the knife and swung blindly towards the bottom of his leg. He didn’t feel any contact, and he had to be careful not to slice his own leg open in the process.
He swung again. He felt something else clutch onto his right leg as the other four tried to figure out what the hell to do.
Teeth …
Hayden held his breath.
Swung again.
This time, he didn’t just make contact with air.
He heard something squelch, felt the solidity of bone underneath the knife.
He swung again. Stabbed at the point where he thought the head was, heard more squelching of pierced flesh, felt lukewarm blood splatter over him. The zombie’s grip loosened. Hayden pulled his leg away from it. He swung again at the zombie, still not quite believing his luck at having not being bitten.
When the zombie let go of his leg completely, Hayden scrambled away and backed into the rest of the group.
He heard a splash in the water to his right, got a whiff of decaying shit, and he knew then the zombie had fallen.
“You okay?” Sarah asked, her voice somewhere above to Hayden’s right. It was impossible to tell where exactly in the pitch black darkness.
“Yeah,” Hayden said, the coppery smell of zombie blood in the air, his leg sore from where it had gripped him. “I’m … I’m not bitten.”
“Did you kill it?” The man’s voice wasn’t Newbie’s, so it had to be the old guy, Harold.
“I … I think so,” Hayden said. But he wasn’t sure. And as he looked ahead, beyond the light shining down through the opened manhole cover above, he swore he saw movement in the shadows. “But I think we need to get out of here. Quick.”
He pulled himself back to his feet and gripped the bloody knife tightly in his hand.
“So you’ll let us join you?” Lily asked.
Hayden cleared his throat. He listened to his cough echo against the walls of the sewer. He wanted to say he didn’t really have a choice. Instead, all he said was, “Sure. Just … just keep your eyes open and your guards up.”
They hurried towards the opened manhole cover. It wasn’t ideal leaving the sewer just yet, but if there was one zombie down here that they’d seen already, who knows how many others there might be?
“We all good?” Hayden asked, as they got closer to the manhole cover.
“All good,” Newbie responded. The close call with the zombie seemed to have woken him from his guilt-stricken trance, galvanised him into action.
“Can’t run as quick as you youngsters,” Harold said, “but we’ll do our damnedest.”
They stopped at the bottom of the manhole cover. Hayden thought about following his instincts and climbing the ladder first, but he figured it would be better to let the others go before him.
He stopped Newbie and Sarah and held out a hand for Harold and Lily. “You two first.”
Harold smirked. His wrinkly old face lit up in the trickle of light from above. “With my creaky old joints? You’re havin’ a laugh. Besides, you can be first to pop your head above the surface. Clear the way for us.” He winked. Hayden wondered if humour was just a part of dealing with the horrors of everything they’d seen and heard. If so, he should probably try it out sometime.
He turned to Newbie and Sarah. They both shrugged at one another.
“Oh, whatever,” Sarah said. “Someone’s gotta go first. If you hear me scream, please don’t run away like little girls.”
She stepped past Hayden and climbed up the ladder.
Newbie followed Sarah as they climbed to the top. Hayden turned around and looked into the darkness. It was all too silent. And yet it felt like somebody—something—was watching.
“All clear above?” Lily called.
Sarah poked her head out of the manhole cover. “Seems to be. Wouldn’t wanna curse it though.”
Hayden turned back around and gestured for Harold or Lily to go before him.
Lily rolled her eyes. “Like my husband said. You’ll be here all year if you let us go first.”
Reluctantly, Hayden grabbed the cold metal frames of the creaky ladder and climbed up towards the light. Sarah and Newbie had disappeared, so they had to be on the road. He hadn’t heard anything. No screaming. No shouting. Nothing like that. So they had to be okay.
Or at least, he
hoped they were.
He was halfway up when he heard Lily grab hold of the bottom of the ladder and start to make her ascent. Harold stood behind her, whispering supportive words of encouragement to her as she struggled to balance. He seemed totally calm. Totally at ease with the situation. Hayden figured that must just be another way of covering emotions, too.
He looked back up. Just four steps to go now. Lily continued to climb up below him. Soon, they’d be out of here. On the road to the country. Soon, they’d be out of this nightmare, and into whatever great unknown lay before them.
“Shit. Oh shit.”
Hayden turned and saw exactly what Harold was swearing about.
From the far left of the sewerage tunnel, a crowd of dead emerged. At least ten of them, all of them bitten in various places, all of them of different genders, races, ages.
And all of them were walking towards Harold.
“Harold, get on the ladder. Quick!”
But Harold didn’t budge. He just stood there with wide, bloodshot eyes, watching the emerging, rotting undead.
“Harold!” Lily shouted, as she stood in the middle of the ladder. “Get on the ruddy ladder right this second!”
Harold fumbled around at the bottom of the ladder as the zombies got within six metres. They were walking faster the closer they got to him, bordering on jogging.
He winced as he stuck his left leg onto the second step of the ladder. He bit his lip, gasped with joint pain as he pulled himself up, the tendons in his veiny, sinewy arms shaking with the force.
The zombies got within a metre.
“Harold!” Lily screamed.
Harold did manage to climb away from the gnashing teeth of the zombies. In fact, he was probably far enough away from them to avoid being bitten.
But it was the slip on the third step of the ladder that sent him tumbling below.
He cracked his back on the solid concrete of the sewer floor.
“Harold! Harold, please!”
But it was no use.
The zombies were on him in seconds. They sunk their teeth into his neck and his chest, tore the skin and the muscle away from his body.
“Harold, please,” Lily said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched her husband’s body being torn to pieces.
Hayden stood and watched Lily. He couldn’t watch the butchering that was happening to Harold. He wasn’t ready to see it. He could hear it enough. The gargling of Harold as he choked on his blood. The sound of his moist flesh being gnawed into tiny pieces.
And Lily’s sobbing. Sobbing, as she watched the man she loved quite literally fall apart before her eyes.
Hayden didn’t know what to say to Lily. “Lily … You … we can’t stay here. We have to … we have to go.”
She looked up at Hayden. Looked up with sad, tear-filled eyes. She half-smiled at him. “You go on, love. You go on.”
And then she let go of the ladder and tumbled back into the mass of zombies.
Hayden watched as they clutched at her wrinkly old belly, tore it apart like it was paper so that her guts were on show, stuck their faces into her innards and pulled her inside-out while she screamed and cried at the top of her voice.
He turned around. He felt a warm tear roll down his cheek.
He climbed up to the top of the ladder. He didn’t want to look back. He couldn’t look back.
He climbed out of the manhole, into the cool breeze, into the light.
“Stop right there,” a voice said.
It didn’t sound like Newbie. It didn’t sound like Sarah.
Hayden lifted his head.
A man in all black military outfit wearing one of those black, goggle-eyed masks was standing opposite him.
Sarah and Newbie were crouched in front of him.
He had a gun pointed right at Hayden.
Twenty-Six
“Step out of the hatch. Slowly.”
Hayden’s heart pounded as he crouched in the entrance of the manhole cover. Opposite him, the troop dressed all in black stood, his gun pointed at Hayden, and then at Sarah and Newbie, who were in front of him.
“I said—”
“Okay!” Hayden said. “Okay.”
He climbed out of the manhole cover. He tried to figure out what to do. There had to be a way out. Some sort of way out of this situation. In the background, he could still hear Harold and Lily being ripped apart by the zombies, and it was clouding his thoughts, his judgement.
“Now get down on your knees,” the troop said.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Believe me, I do.”
Hayden crouched down on the concrete. He thought back to the sounds he’d heard when he was down in the sewer. The sound of a screaming mother, a wailing child.
And then, silence.
He sensed the sincerity in the troop’s voice. He really did have to do this. They were his orders. Hayden was right, all along. This was a massacre. A massacre to try and prevent this outbreak spreading out of Smileston’s borders.
“I’m doing you a favour, believe it or not,” the troop said. He kept on moving his gun between Hayden, Sarah and Newbie, being sure he gave them all a similar level of attention. “By getting on your knees, I—I can make this as quick and as clean as possible.”
“Please. We haven’t even been bitten.”
“I have orders,” the troop said. He pointed his gun at Hayden. Hayden could see that he was shaking. “I … I have orders. Orders that I have to carry out. I’m … Just shut up now. Please.”
Hayden knew what the troop was going to say. I’m sorry. But something had stopped him. Professional duty had stopped him. He didn’t want Hayden and the others to seem human because making them human was engaging in murder.
But this whole cruel to be kind approach, it was a guise. A cover up. A desperate effort to avoid feeling guilty.
“I have a family,” Newbie said. “A—a family who—”
The troop thumped the barrel of the rifle into the back of Newbie’s head. “I told you to be quiet.”
“We won’t be quiet,” Hayden said. The courage to say those words came from somewhere deep within. The same place that had been driving him for the last hour or so now, ever since he’d climbed up that drainpipe and battled for his own survival. “We won’t be quiet because we’re people. People, just like you. People caught up in all this shit. But we haven’t been bitten. We haven’t got the infection. You have to believe that.”
The troop pointed the gun at Hayden again. His grip was even shakier than before. “It’s not my job to believe or not to believe. It’s my job to contain.”
“Think about all the lives you’re throwing away. And for what? The off-chance that this … this outbreak might not spread? Shouldn’t you be using your weapons and your technology on the infected and not on the very people you’re trying to protect?”
“Everyone in the infected zone is a threat,” the troop said. “Everyone in the infected zone is—”
“And what about you? What happens to you when you walk out of here? Do you think your superiors are just going to allow you to walk away? To wander back into normal civilisation after—after ‘exposure’ to the infection, whatever that is?”
“I’m different. My colleagues, we’re all different.”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what they told you,” Hayden said. “And I’m sure it’s exactly what they’ll tell you when they hold the guns to your heads and blast you into oblivion, just like you are doing with us.”
The troop stepped away from Newbie and Sarah when Hayden said this. He pointed the gun right at him. “You’ve done enough talking. I told you to be quiet, and you disobeyed. I told you I’d make this easy on the three of you, and you’re just making it worse for all of you.”
“Then kill us, if it’s so easy,” Hayden said. He regretted the words almost instantly, but fuck—he was close enough to death, he might as well act on his adrenaline. “Pull that trigger and kill us. Just know
that I’ve got a family. Just know that we all woke up this morning exactly the same. Just know that none of us have any control over what’s happening. And if you do survive, just remember your part in this massacre when future generations talk about it—if they’re even around to talk. Just remember that you were personally culpable and don’t you ever forget it.”
Hayden readied himself for a bullet between the eyes after these words. He knew he’d gone too far. He knew he had to have pushed the troop to the limit.
But he noticed the troop’s gun was shaking even more. In fact, so too was his head.
“Please. Just let us go. Give us a chance. Don’t be a part of this. Just … just let one of your comrades be the one to make the decision you don’t want to make. Let someone else be to blame if—if we get out of Smileston and spread whatever the hell it is this town’s been cursed with. Just don’t be the one to murder us. Please. You don’t have to be that person.”
The troop was quiet for a few more seconds. He turned and looked at Newbie and Sarah, who stared up at him. Their jaws were shaking. They both mumbled pleading words under their breath.
“Don’t be the one to murder us. Not today. Please.”
The troop lowered his gun.
And then he lifted it again and pointed it right at Hayden.
“On your feet.”
Hayden stood. He raised his hands. “Please. Don’t—”
“I never saw you here. You’re going to walk on, and you’re going to avoid this road if you want to survive. That’s all I can give you. Good luck.”
And then he sprinted past Hayden and ran off into the distance, his gun pointed at a looming crowd of oncoming zombies.
Hayden, Newbie and Sarah watched as the troop fired at the zombies. He didn’t once look back to see if the three of them had moved. It was just as he’d said—he hadn’t seen them. He’d let them go. He’d let them live.
