Dead Days: The Complete Season Two Collection (38 page)

“Why‌—‌why would I let you back?” Rodrigo spat. He lifted his gun out of his pocket. It dangled from his shaking hand.

Mike shrugged. “The way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice. Those zombies are gonna get here in…‌” He squinted up the road towards the sound of the rising groans. “Two, three minutes. And we aren’t going anywhere. Nowhere but inside this caravan site.”

Rodrigo paused for a few minutes. Then he lifted his gun. Pointed it directly at Mike.

“What’s stopping me from shootin’ you and your men right here?”

Mike shrugged again. Raised his hand. “My men are better shots than yours. The way I see it, it’s three against six. Well, three against six and a shitload of civilians. I don’t think you’d put all your people at risk like that, Roger. Unless you’ve completely changed, I just don’t think you’d do it.”

Rodrigo’s gun began to falter. It started to drop back down to his side. His eyes were bloodshot. His jaw was tensed. He looked every bit the man who was on the brink of losing everything he’d worked so hard for. Honour. Integrity. Respect. Everything the army could no longer provide him with.

“That’s right,” Mike said. The groans of the creatures were so loud, so close now. “Put it down. Put it down and let us‌—‌”

Rodrigo lifted the gun. He pressed the barrel against Claudia’s head. She mumbled behind her gag. Tears ran down her bruised cheeks.

“Mum!” Chloë shouted. Seth stopped her from jumping up out of the back of the truck. Mike tensed. Everyone tensed.

“What’s stopping me puttin’ a bullet in this bitch’s head?” Rodrigo spat. “Because‌—‌because I will. I swear I will if you don’t walk away. I’ll shoot her. Right here in front of you.”

Mike’s calm smile had turned into a narrow-eyed frown. “You really have changed haven’t you Roger? You’d really kill an innocent woman in front of her early teen daughter? You’d really kill a woman who had nothing to do with any of this? That just got caught in the middle?”

The voices of the civilian crowd picked up. The same crowd who had been calling for Claudia and Chloë’s execution now looked more shocked, more uncertain, now the reality was staring them in the face. Now they could see that Claudia and Chloë really were just mother and child.

Rodrigo held his gun to Claudia’s head. The bloodshot worms in his eyes had almost completely drowned out the whites. “I’ll‌—‌I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll kill her. I’ll‌—‌”

“Then do it,” Mike said. He shrugged. Brought back that calm smile. “See if it makes me move.”

Seth had to hold Chloë back again. She was kicking and screaming. The creatures were so close now. They would turn the corner any minute. Walk right on through the gates.

Rodrigo looked at Riley. He looked at him with those unrecognisable eyes, his bottom lip shaking. He looked at him as if he was asking him what to do, even though Riley was his prisoner too. He looked at him as if to ask why everything had gone so wrong.

“Just lower the gun and‌—‌”

A gunshot rattled through the air.

It took Riley a moment to realise just where it had come from, the noise of it so close, blasting in his left ear.

Then he saw the blood. He saw the blood from Claudia’s head, saw the fragments of brain and skull cracking and spraying out towards the floor as she tumbled away from the barrel of Rodrigo’s gun, smacking the hard concrete.

“No!”

Another gunshot rattled from the other side. Another series of gunshots. Gunshots from Mike. Gunshots from Donald. Gunshots from Seth and gunshots from the other man.

Rodrigo was first to be hit. Square in the neck, just a second after he’d pulled the trigger on Claudia.

Then the man with the dead-eyes fell.

Then Donald.

Then the creatures started to turn the corner.

Riley stared at Claudia on the ground as the bullets flew past him, over his head and around him. He stared at her, a heart-shaped necklace around her neck covered in blood. He stared like he still didn’t understand what had happened, how it had happened.

Rodrigo was beside her. He clutched his neck as blood sprayed out, more bullets pumping into his body. He looked up at Riley. He started to mutter something as the civilians screamed and people fell as creatures pounced onto them.

Riley didn’t know what it was Rodrigo said, but he took it as an apology.

His heart raced. The gag was still around his mouth and the cuffs around his hands. He couldn’t think. He looked around. Pedro was nowhere in sight. Anna was nowhere in sight. Bodies were lying all over the ground. Bodies from the bullets, bodies from the creatures, bodies…‌

Then he saw Anna. She was standing right in front of him, completely covered in blood. Her shoulders were drawn close to her body, and she was shaking as she stared at the carnage around her.

Riley ran to her. Ran to her with all he had. Ran to her and waited for her to open her arms and let him in, and then they could run away together.

Riley felt something pierce through his ear. He looked around, and he saw somebody familiar. Somebody standing there.

Chloë.

She looked at Riley with wide, shocked eyes. She lowered her gun.

And then she ran away.

The reality of what had happened still hadn’t completely hit Riley.

Not until he turned around and saw Anna on the ground again, blood oozing out of the side of her head.

And then he understood. The look in Chloë’s eyes. The look of sheer shock and disbelief in the eyes of a girl who had just lost her mother.

He crouched down beside Anna. He dropped to his knees and tried to shout her name as the bullets continued to fizz around him. He cried. He burst into tears as he stared at Anna’s bullet-filled head, blood pooling onto the Heathwaite’s car park concrete, and he cried. He couldn’t even hold her. He couldn’t even say her name or speak to her one last time because of the cuffs and the gag.

He looked around. The creatures filled the gates. Paddy fired at them. Someone fired back from the other side, bullets spraying all over. Mike was nowhere in sight. Pedro was nowhere in sight. Chloë was nowhere in sight.

Rodrigo was dead.

Claudia was dead.

He looked back at Anna again. Looked at Anna’s pale, blood-splattered face, and it punched him square in the gut just to see her that way once more. And still he didn’t understand. Still, he couldn’t comprehend.

Anna was…‌‌Anna was dead.

But he knew he had no choice but to go.

He turned his back to Anna. Reached down towards her neck, which was still warm, as smooth as ever. He wrapped his fingers around the blood-dampened cold metal of the heart-shaped locket necklace, and with all his strength, he tugged it free of her neck.

He slipped the necklace into his back pocket and took one final look at Anna as she lay there on the road, completely still, completely at peace.

Then, he ran.

EPISODE TWELVE

(SIXTH EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)

Prologue

The shootout in Heathwaite’s Caravan Park could be heard for miles around.

If there was anybody around to hear it, that is.

Riley’s thoughts froze as he limped away from the scene of the shootout. The place where Claudia had fallen. Where Rodrigo had fallen.

Where Anna had fallen.

It punched him in the gut every time he considered it.

Anna had fallen.

He hopped away from the groans of the creatures. He heard screaming behind him, the gunshots descending into nothing, the fences of Heathwaite’s overrun. Up ahead, on the main road beside the Leisure Centre, terrified looking women ran with their children’s hands in theirs, sprinting back towards the caravans. Some ran towards the Leisure Centre, crowding around the glass doors, banging against the glass and desperately trying to get inside. Others drifted off to the left, making a break for the side fences in a last ditch attempt to flee.

As the chaos surrounded him, the peace of this place impossible to imagine, Riley‌—‌with a gag around his mouth and cuffs digging into his wrists‌—‌figured that this was the end of his journey. As much as he didn’t want to quit‌—‌as much as he wanted to
live
now, which made a change‌—‌his luck was surely out.

He jogged as quickly as he could towards the fences at the side of the caravan park‌—‌the fences they’d climbed over when they’d gone to fix the loudspeaker in the Dumping Ground. He could hear the creatures coming. Groaning, right from the pits of their throats. Their footsteps tumbling in his direction. He knew that any wrong step, which was easy considering his hands were behind his back and loads of people were scattering in every direction, would spell the end for him. He knew how close they were, and yet he couldn’t look. He couldn’t accept.

Keeping his cool, still unable to process the chaos and the panic, Riley reached the side fences. He looked up at the walls. Fuck. Way too high. Way too high for him to climb with these cuffs around his wrists. He could see people clinging to the top, pulling themselves over. Nobody was helping one another. One man lifted himself up but dropped his son to the ground.

The man was already gone before he even had a chance to realise he’d left his son behind.

People screamed as Riley stood by the fences, shouting as loud as he could from behind the metallic tasting gag, hoping to God someone would notice him and give him a hand. But the screams of the others were so loud. So uncontrolled. So attractive to the creatures, which Riley saw now, swarming the main road of Heathwaite’s Caravan Park like a viral infection on a body. Maybe that’s what it’d look like from above. A virus. An infection. Maybe that was just the passage of life and time, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.

Riley turned away from the creatures, his heart racing at a zillion beats per millisecond. He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t controlled. He was something else completely. And yet he was exactly what he needed to be. He tugged at the cuffs. Tugged as hard as he could, biting his chapped lip as the cuffs dug further and further into his wrists. He cried out at the top of his lungs; cried out at the men, women and children as they passed, all worried about saving themselves, all screaming themselves, like a deathly choir.

He stopped. In an instant, as the groans grew louder and the smell of putrid flesh got closer, Riley just stopped. He stared up at the grey sky. In it, he saw everything that had happened. He saw everyone he’d lost. Everyone, right from the beginning.

And then he saw himself.

He still couldn’t process the people he’d lost, but he understood. It was over. This was the moment. This was his time.

He started to close his eyes, but then something hit into his right side. He went tumbling to the ground, smacking his head on the solid earth, biting his tongue and sending a rush of rusty-tasting blood into the back of his throat.

This was it now, he knew. He waited. Waited as the groans surrounded him for the sharp teeth to sink into his flesh. Waited as feet clambered over him, people tripped over him. This is it. This is the moment. This is where it ends.

He didn’t feel teeth sink into his flesh.

Instead, he heard a clunking sound, and felt his hands come free.

He opened his eyes. Rolled over onto his back and looked up. People continued to rush past, tears dripping from their eyes. The cloud of creatures was just feet away, grey-skinned, ghastly-smelling.

But the handcuffs around Riley’s wrists had been severed into two. They were still around his wrists, but the chain in the middle had snapped.

He pulled his gag away and stumbled to his feet. He looked around‌—‌looked for whoever it was that had freed him amongst the crowd of panicked, fleeing people, some of them tripping, some of them falling, some of them being bitten in the leg, ankle, back, arm, chest.

He never would find out who saved him. He never would be able to thank the stranger who set him free from his cuffs. They’d be just another face in the crowd. Just another survivor, maybe for minutes, hours, days or weeks. But whoever they were‌—‌man, woman, child‌—‌they were proof that humanity still existed in this unforgiving world. A minority example, but an example nonetheless.

Riley jogged over to the fence, his healing leg still aching, and pulled himself up the side of it, the shock of the entire last few minutes making the fact that the creatures were nipping at his heels seem like some kind of distant dream and blur.

He dropped down onto the grass. Stared out at the endless fields, filled with fleeing people.

Then, just like them, he ran.

Alone.

Chapter One

Riley ran across the slushy field, away from the cries and the carnage that was swallowing Heathwaite’s Caravan Park whole. He didn’t want to look back at the place. It was better remembering it how it was, before the creatures flooded through the fences, before they disturbed every bit of peace there was.

Before Claudia and Anna fell.

Every now and then, somebody pushed into his side. Hundreds of people were scattered around the fields, all running in directions of their own, not really knowing where in particular, just anywhere but Heathwaite’s. Amazing how somewhere so ordered‌—‌so peaceful and controlled‌—‌could descend into chaos within a matter of seconds. Because these people could’ve tried to defend Heathwaite’s. Instead, when it came down to it, they followed the most logical human instinct there was: they ran.

The field, which had a fresh, grassy smell when he’d walked through here with Anna, Pedro, Aaron and Dave to fix the loudspeaker generator, reeked of sweat now. The sweat of all these fleeing people, panicking, screaming, no idea of where to go or what to do next.

Only Riley knew what he had to do next. And he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was doing it alone.

His leg started to throb as he approached the Arnside Knott, looming over the field like a big fat tumour on the country landscape. Usually, a trek or a walk over a hill or a mountain would be a challenge he’d be up for, especially before the Dead Days. But now, his recently wounded leg was causing problems again. He just about thought he was over it, too. Had to be all this running he was doing. Fuck.