Dead Days: The Complete Season Two Collection (12 page)

“What if it’s not them?” Anna asked. Her head was still lowered.

“Not who?”

“Claudia and Chloë. You heard Aaron yourself‌—‌they found two women by some wreckage. But look at this place.” She pointed out at the body-lined streets, the stench of death strong in the air. “There’s women everywhere. Just because they found two female bodies doesn’t mean it’s Claudia and Chloë.”

“They said they found two women near some boat wreckage,” Riley said. “It adds up. It makes sense. I’m just being realistic‌—‌”

“You’re being something,” Anna said under her breath. For the first time since they’d reunited, Riley recognised that familiar spark of frustration and anger in her eyes.

Riley gulped. “I’m just trying not to get my hopes up. After…‌‌after everything that’s happened in the past. After all the‌—‌all the times we’ve got our hopes up. You know how it always ends.”

Pedro cleared his throat and turned away, clearly uncomfortable with opening up in front of Anna.

“Maybe this time doesn’t have to end the same,” Anna said. “Maybe…‌‌maybe this time, there’s a more positive ending.”

“There’s no ending, Anna,” Riley said. “It’s a cycle. We find somewhere safe, get cosy, get overrun, lose somebody. Find somewhere else safe, get cosy‌—‌”

“Then so be it,” Anna said. “If that’s life now, then so be it. If you aren’t comfortable with that, well…‌” Her eyes wandered out at the bare trees again at the side of the road. The lines and lines of hanging bodies. The ones who had opted out. The ones who weren’t made for this world.

Was he made for this world? Fuck‌—‌he wasn’t even made for the last one.

“Ah shit.”

The voice came from up front. Riley, Pedro and Anna leaned through to see what the trouble was.

“You bring me all the way out fucking here only to take me right into a fucking blockade,” Stevie said.

“It wasn’t like this before, I swear. I swear it‌—‌”

“Oh, it wasn’t? So those cars moved themselves did they? The zombies got behind the fucking wheel and decided to have a little cruise? Or did you, y’know, go another route?”

Aaron stalled. “I…‌‌I thought I came this way. I swear I‌—‌”

“You swear a fucking lot. Doesn’t mean shit.” Stevie sighed as the van slowed down. Up ahead, a line of cars blocked the road completely. They were perfectly placed, like they’d been put there by somebody, not abandoned like that. A protective wall. Not a very good one, admittedly.

Stevie brought the van to a halt and groaned. “Okay. How much further to the pier? Could we make it on foot d’you think?”

“Well, on‌—‌on foot we’re talking fifteen, twenty minutes. But the zombies, they were all over the pier. They were‌—‌”

“The road. Was the road clear when you left?”

Aaron paused. Rubbed his temples. “Yes. Yes, it was. But there’s no guarantee it’s…‌‌we can’t be sure it’s…‌”

“We can’t be sure about anything,” Stevie said, opening the side door to the van. “That’s just the shitting truth about‌—‌argggh!”

What happened next was in complete slow motion.

A creature, which had no legs, sunk its teeth into Stevie’s leg as he dangled out of the door.

Stevie tumbled down and out of the van, cracking his head on the solid road.

Everyone watched in silence as Stevie’s screams turned to whimpers, the half-creature sticking its jagged teeth into Stevie’s leg, and his stomach, and his chest.

“Shut that fucking door already!” Pedro shouted. Aaron looked down at Stevie with wide eyes, his mouth dangling open.

Riley punched Aaron on his shoulder through the open window space. In the distance, from the blockade of cars up ahead, creatures started to appear. A woman with half of her jaw missing. A man with his brains on display, fresh and ready for destroying.

“Aaron, get us the fuck moving!” Riley shouted as Aaron continued to stare, transfixed, at Stevie’s unconscious body, blood oozing from every part of him.

Then, he snapped out of it, looked at the creatures ahead‌—‌fifteen, twenty feet away‌—‌and hopped over to the driver’s seat. His breathing was short and shaky. His hands were all over the place. He pulled the door shut and turned the key.

The van let out a momentary grumble, then nothing.

“That didn’t sound good,” Anna said. “That did not sound fucking good.”

Another turn of the key. Another grumble. Another nothing.

“It’s not fucking starting!” Aaron shouted.

Riley looked at Pedro. Then Anna. Then back out of the front window at the creatures, just ten feet away now. Six, seven of them, all groaning, all with one prize in mind.

“It won’t fucking start,” Aaron whimpered as the seven creatures became eight, the eight became ten, the ten became twelve…‌

Stevie’s dead, blood-soaked eyelid twitched.

Riley lowered down as far as he could in the back of the van. He could hear the creatures getting closer‌—‌their groans, their gasps, their cries‌—‌but he couldn’t see them, not low down like this.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Pedro shouted. “Sitting down? Like that’s gonna help, bruv.”

“Just get down,” Riley said. He looked at Pedro sternly then at Anna. Both of them had an eye on the oncoming creatures.

“It’s no use,” Anna said. “They’ve seen us. They’re‌—‌”

Riley lunged over the trailer floor and pushed Anna and Pedro down. Then, lowering his voice, he said: “We stay low. We figure out how we’re going to handle this. We have the height advantage back here. We have the height and we have the sides of the vehicle. That counts for a lot.”

“Some help up front, please.” Aaron was completely still in the driver’s seat, watching as the creatures came within inches of the van. “Some‌—‌fuck, what am I supposed to do? What am I‌—‌”

“Just keep quiet,” Riley said. His mind raced with options as the bodies of the creatures clunked against the front of the vehicle, sending Aaron jolting back in his seat.

“Keep‌—‌keep quiet? They’ve seen me. They’ve fucking seen me. Fuck this.” He lifted a gun out of his pocket with his shaking hand and started to load it, dropping bullets in the process.

“No!” Riley crawled forward to the window space at the back of the van. “We…‌‌we have to do this quietly. This many of them, they’re manageable. Any more…‌‌we don’t want to take any risks.”

“Manageable?” Pedro said. “How do you propose we manage this?”

Riley turned around and looked in the back of the van. There were plastic bags stacked up against the back. Inside, scrap metal poked out. Long. Sharp. Some of them heavy.

“For a troop, you really aren’t so good at managing situations, are you?”

Riley scrambled past Pedro and Anna. The creatures scratched and pressed up against the front of the van, groaning and thumping and shuffling. Riley opened up one of the bags. It was stuffed with scrap metal. They could do something with this. Use it to protect themselves.
Think, Riley. Think.

“I’m with Aaron,” Pedro said, lifting the gun that Rodrigo had given him out of his pocket. “I say we blast these fuckers before they damage this van completely. Better than just sitting here. Better than just‌—‌”

“Hey!” Riley shouted. He clanged a piece of the metal against the side of the trailer and stood up.

“Riley, what the fuck?” Anna said.

He stared at the front of the van. At the creatures‌—‌fifty, sixty‌—‌all gathered around the window, pinning Aaron back in his seat.

“Hey!” he shouted. He bashed the metal against the side of the trailer again.

“Have you fucking lost it, bruv? Have you gone completely mad?”

But slowly, one by one, the creatures started to shuffle around the side of the van. Their interest in Aaron, behind the glass window of the van, diminished as they stumbled and groaned in the direction of the trailer.

“Yes. He’s lost it. He’s fucking lost it.” Pedro lifted out his gun again and aimed it at the oncoming creatures. “You might have a suicide wish left over, bruv, but I don’t‌—‌ow!”

Pedro’s shout came as a result of Riley throwing a sharp, heavy piece of scrap metal at his arm. He looked at Riley in disbelief. “What was that for?”

Riley lifted out another piece of scrap metal and slid it across the trailer to Anna. “If you’re going to do this, you do it as silently as you can. You don’t go wasting bullets. You have the height advantage. You do what we can to fend them off.”

“‘You’?” Anna said. “What do you mean by ‘you’?”

Riley stepped towards the front of the trailer as the creatures plummeted against it, necks arching and half-attached arms stretching for some fresh meat.

“You’re going to keep the creatures occupied while Aaron and I deal with that blockade.”

Aaron’s jaw dropped. He was still completely static as the creatures continued to move away from the front of the van and towards the noise of the voices at the back.

“We…‌‌we’re going to…‌‌to what?”

Riley pointed ahead. “There’s a Smart Car in the blockade. Lightest cars going. The pair of us should be able to lift that out of the way and clear a path for the rest of the group to get through.”

“That’s…‌‌that’s…‌‌that’s‌—‌”

“It’s the best idea we’ve got,” Riley said. “And if you aren’t comfortable with it, then you’d better get used to not being comfortable because ninety-nine percent of your decisions in this world are uncomfortable ones.”

A creature or two bashed against the side of the trailer, sending Pedro hopping into the middle like a frightened little mouse.

“You deal with as many of them as you can. Make enough noise that you’ll attract the immediate ones but not too much that you’ll attract the whole damn city. Okay?”

Anna turned the scrap metal in her hands and nodded. Pedro sighed.

“And if they come at you from behind the blockade? What then?”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, echoing Pedro’s sentiment. “What the fuck then?”

Riley pushed Aaron’s face away from the back window and pulled himself through into the driver’s area of the vehicle. Sitting in there as the creatures flooded past was like being in an IMAX 3D cinema watching some kind of documentary.

Except this was real. Very real.

“If they come from beyond the blockade, then I guess it just wasn’t supposed to be, was it?” Riley smiled at Aaron, who looked absolutely petrified, with bulging, tearful eyes and chattering teeth.

A clunk of metal sounded from out the back. It made Riley jump. He looked back and saw that Anna was tapping her scrap metal against the side of the trailer.

“You better know what you’re doing, Riley,” she said as the creatures surrounded the area beneath her.

“I never know what the hell I’m doing,” Riley said. “It’s got me this far.”

Anna rolled her eyes then brought the piece of scrap metal crashing down on the bald head of a creature below. Its skull cracked like an egg and spewed out all kinds of shades of red and green.

“Better get to it,” Pedro said, he too standing at the side of the trailer and swinging his piece of metal into the face of what would once have been an attractive blonde woman, breaking her nose and knocking out all of her teeth.

“You ready?” Riley asked as he gripped hold of the handle of the van door, the opposite side to where Stevie had fallen.

Aaron’s face continued to shake, and his eyes filled up with even more tears. “No. But I guess we don’t have a choice.”

Riley patted him on the shoulder. “Good. That’s as close as we’re gonna get.”

He opened the door, climbed out, and with Aaron in hand, jogged in the direction of the blockade.

Chapter Five

Riley kept as low as he could as he crept down the road. Aaron’s hand, which was sweaty as hell regardless of how cold it was out here, was in Riley’s as he pulled the pair of them towards the Smart Car in the middle of the blockade. Behind them, Riley could hear the sound of metal clanking against bone, and of flesh slicing. He had to hope Anna and Pedro could keep the creatures distracted for long enough. Just long enough to move this abomination of a car blocking their way.

Riley stopped beside it and examined the front and back. He’d lifted one of these with a friend before when he was drunk. Light as fuck for a car, they were. Hurt his arms, he remembered, but a lot less that jagged teeth in his arms would hurt.

“I’ll take the back,” Riley whispered. “Lift from your knees, remember. Don’t go doing your back in out here. These things aren’t light, but for cars, they’re our best bet.”

Aaron stared, wide-eyed, in the direction of the van, in the direction of the creatures that Anna and Pedro were dealing with.

“Oi,” Riley said, clicking his fingers in front of Aaron’s face. “This is important. Lift from the‌—‌”

“From the knees. Okay. Got it.”

Riley tried to avoid looking back at the creatures just sixty feet away, but the groans and the clunking of their bodies against one another was enough for him to build up a good enough picture.

He crouched down and grabbed the lower back of the vehicle, peeking through the blockade to check they were clear on the other side. The road looked empty. The promenade beside the sea was just about visible. And in the distance, a good mile or so away, there was a long pier stretching out to sea and a piece of boat wreckage beside it.

“You ready?” Aaron muttered. “As much as I’d love to admire the fucking scenery, we’re on borrowed time here.”

Riley clenched his jaw. “Okay. On my count. Three, two, one…‌”

Riley lifted the back of the vehicle with all the weight he could. Fuck, these things were heavier than he remembered. He must really have been drunk when he’d lifted one. But here it was, just about hovering off the ground, his chest aching, his injured leg stinging and throbbing.

“What…‌‌now…‌” Aaron muttered, before letting go of the car. The sound of the metal hitting the concrete echoed right down the street. Riley let go of his side, his entire body going numb as the clang continued to echo. Slowly, he turned his head around in the direction of the van.

The creatures were still crowding around the side of the trailer. Anna smacked one in the back of its head. Pedro lured one in before taking a swing at it, clunking against the side of the trailer in the process. None of them had noticed the fallen car.