Dead Days: The Complete Season Two Collection (8 page)

His feet buckled underneath him and before he knew it he was face flat on the road.

A metallic taste ran through his mouth. His head stung. He could hear the creatures behind. He could hear them approaching, coming towards him, coming towards their next meal…‌

Then, he heard an engine.

Up ahead, right in front of him, it was. He looked up. It was a huge Land Rover with a trailer on the back. Inside the trailer, there were three or four people, all of them holding guns. No. Not all of them. One of them was Pedro.

The vehicle stopped. The side door opened up. Riley looked over his shoulder as he got to his feet. The wall of creatures was a good fifty metres or so away.

“Well, shit,” a voice said, from the side of the vehicle.

A muscular man with a white beard and a camouflage-style hat stared at Riley with a frown on his forehead. He had dog tags around his neck, proudly on display, like he was basing himself on a character from a film or a TV show.

“Stevie, it looks like we got another one. You coming for a ride, son?”

EPISODE EIGHT

(SECOND EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)

Prologue

Rodrigo stared at the screen of the iPad. He had the answer. He knew he had the answer. Fuck‌—‌he’d had this very question just a few days ago.
Which company bought the Android brand in 2005?
Like fuck was he supposed to know. He was in his fifties, for one. And for two, he was playing Trivial Pursuit on an Apple device, and Apple was his only possible answer.

Google or Windows. Google or Windows.

He looked up from the screen. Sophia stared back at him, completely poker-faced. But every few seconds, a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

“Don’t know what you’re looking so fucking smug about,” Rodrigo said.

“Steady on Roger,” Sophia said, nodding at the two kids playing with an iPad of their own in front of the imitation fireplace. “Easy on the language. I thought you were getting better at holding your tongue, too.”

Rodrigo tensed his jaw. Roger. Like fuck was anybody calling him Roger and expecting to get away with it. Now he had to get this question right. Show this twenty-something year old handful who was boss.

“Windows,” Rodrigo said. He tapped “Google” on the screen. “Windows…‌‌is the wrong answer.” He smiled as the game alerted him he was correct. General Knowledge genius, that’s what he was. So very clever at all things general.

Sophia puffed out her cheeks and rose from the circular table in the corner of the caravan living room area. “Okay, Granddad,” she said. “You win this time. You playing nicely, kids?”

The two kids, Charlie‌—‌who had a cut that Rodrigo liked to think of as a bowl chop‌—‌and Suzanna, both turned around and smiled at Sophia.

“Course they are,” Rodrigo said, standing from the table and walking over to look out of the front window of the caravan, out onto the tree-laden lawn. “Course they are. Good kids aren’t they? Very good kids.”

“They have to be,” Sophia said. “With what they’ve been through. Well. What we’ve all been through.”

Rodrigo pushed the images from his head. The images of his past, distant and recent. But hell, it didn’t get him nowhere moping about shit like that. All it got him doing was sulking.

Or drinking a whisky when everybody else had gone to sleep.

“I sometimes wonder what I’d do,” Sophia said, crouching on the dusty pink carpet beside the giggling kids and watching them play their iPad game. “If I…‌‌If we hadn’t found this place. I wonder what I’d do. What we’d all have done.”

Rodrigo stared out of the window a few seconds longer then nodded. “Well, you did. So that’s‌—‌”

The glass door at the side of the caravan jolted open. It happened with such force that it swung around and smacked the paintwork outside in the process.

“Stevie, what the actual fuck?”

Stevie panted as he stood in the open doorway. Sweat ran down his freckled face. His ginger hair looked on fire.

“Jesus Christ, close the goddamn door. It’s below fucking freezing out there. And by God, if you’ve dented the paintwork‌—‌”

“Someone’s here,” Stevie said. He raised his head and pointed to his left. His arm was shaking. Fuck. He really was rattled up.

“What do you mean someone’s here?” Rodrigo asked, moving closer to Stevie.

“Come on, kids,” Sophia said, scooping up the iPad and scuttling past Stevie and out of the caravan. “We’d better‌—‌”

“Yes. Get back to your caravan until I work out what the hell this idiot is raving on about‌—‌”

“A woman. There’s a woman. On the beach. She‌—‌I‌—‌I saw it and I‌—‌the boat‌—‌I‌—‌”

Rodrigo gave Stevie’s red cheek a gentle slap then straightened him so they were looking in each other’s eyes. “Slow down. Piece by piece. What boat? What woman? Tell me what’s going on.”

Stevie closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. Outside the garden, Rodrigo could hear talking. Chattering. The others were awake. The others were curious.

“Are you gonna tell me or‌—‌”

“I’d rather show you.”

The pair of them were in the Land Rover a few moments later. They turned out of the caravan site, out past the oval-shaped leisure centre, through the large steel gates that were constantly manned by two people switching on a rota three times per day.

“This better be damn well worth travelling out to the Dumping Ground to see,” Rodrigo said. He stared out at the coast as Stevie put his foot down, the wind blowing Rodrigo’s lengthy grey hair through the open window.

“Oh it is,” he said. “I…‌‌I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to just…‌‌whether to bring her in or what. Because of‌—‌because of my dad. She looked…‌‌she looked hurt and first I just thought she was a zombie. But she‌—‌”

“No. You did the right thing consulting me.” He thumped Stevie on his arm. He’d proven a decent punchbag this last three weeks since he’d joined the community at Heathwaite’s Caravan Park. Fuck. Three weeks really did seem like forever. After years and years of time flying the older he got, finally, he’d found a way to slow it right the hell down again.

Just a pity it meant the world going to shit.

Stevie indicated and turned onto another country lane. In the distance, the Arnside Knott loomed over, the front side of it sparse compared to the tree covered top.

“I don’t get why you still do that,” Rodrigo said.

“What?”

“Indicate. Why the hell would you indicate in the middle of the zombie apocalypse?”

Stevie’s eyes twinkled. His mouth was wide open. He couldn’t find an answer. A speechless Stevie. Made a nice change.

“I was just down here doing the check,” Stevie said as they passed an abandoned farmhouse and slowed down as they officially entered the Dumping Ground. The place seemed quiet. No zombies to their left, up the road that led to the woods. None up ahead, on the way down to the beach. “I was down here and I saw the wreckage and then‌—‌and then I saw her.”

“Okay, okay,” Rodrigo said. “Enough blabbering on about her. Let’s just go check her out. But if she’s just another one of those zombies, then‌—‌”

“She isn’t,” Stevie said. He drove through the gateway that led onto the dirt track, down past the old rock steps, down towards the gate of the pebbled beach. “See for yourself.”

Rodrigo did see for himself. He saw very clearly.

Up ahead, beside the sea, the waves bashing against it, he saw a load of scrap metal. Except it wasn’t just scrap metal. He could see a table. Cutlery. On the side, a rubbed off marking of a name that had once been etched so proudly. It was a boat. Wreckage of a boat.

And in front of the boat, staggering across the pebbles, dripping blood, there was a woman.

Rodrigo thought she must just have been a zombie at first simply because of the sheer amount of blood matted in her dark hair. The way she stumbled from side to side, right in their direction, right towards the gate.

But as he looked closer, he saw she was doing something that no zombie he’d ever fucking seen had done.

She was crying. Shivering.

“What do you think?” Stevie asked. “I mean…‌‌we can’t just leave her here. Looks like some boat shit went down. But we can’t just leave her in the Dumping Ground.”

Part of Rodrigo wanted to turn around and leave. Bringing in a woman would raise too many questions within his group, especially after the way it had ended with Mike and the others. Besides, she might be bitten. And if they didn’t get the frig out of here soon, the zombies would get them, and they’d be bitten too.

On the other hand, Stevie was right. They couldn’t just leave her to die out here. It was the wrong thing to do, especially with what they could provide.

Rodrigo grunted then hit the dashboard button. Inside, there was a Smith & Wesson handgun. He grabbed it. Rubbed his fingers and thumb against it. Always felt at home, back in America, holding this thing. One of the benefits of this crazy ass new world was that he could freely wield it in Her Majesty’s Kingdom now.

A positive. A minor positive, but a positive nonetheless.

He grabbed the door handle and hopped out onto the muddy ground.

“Where are you‌—‌”

“Come with me. We need to check her. We need to know she’s clean. If she’s bit, she stays out here. If not…‌‌Well. If not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Stevie nodded, grabbed his gun, then followed Rodrigo out onto the beach.

As they got closer, Rodrigo and Stevie and this ghostly looking, blood-drenched woman, Rodrigo figured he was going to have to ask the question.

“Lady, what’s your name?” he called. “Are you bit?”

No reply. The woman just walked towards them. Staggered. Swayed from side to side, her jeans torn, her white shirt drenched with blood from a large bloody wound on her forehead.

Rodrigo raised his gun a little. Couldn’t take any chances. Not a chance at all. “I’ll repeat myself, but I don’t like doing that so much. What’s your name, and are you bit?”

“Rodrigo, shit.” Stevie pointed to their left. Around the cove, where another piece of boat wreckage was, two zombies emerged. They were far enough away not to worry too much about, but it was a stark enough reminder that they needed to get back to the Land Rover sometime soon.

Rodrigo sighed and raised his gun completely. This woman was gonna have to talk if she wanted to get out of here alive. He didn’t want to have to gun her down. It wasn’t in his fucking nature, or something like that.

“Lady, I’m going to repeat one final time because I don’t like the way you’re looking at us. What is your name, and are you‌—‌”

“Anna,” the woman squeaked. Her lips quivered some more. Life lit up in her tearful eyes. “Anna. And no. I’m not bit.”

With that, she collapsed to the ground, hitting her already-wounded head on the solid pebbles below.

Rodrigo and Stevie looked at one another, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.

Then, they ran over to the woman‌—‌Anna‌—‌and they got her the hell back to the Land Rover, leaving the lone zombies to wander around aimlessly, dampened by the salty, crashing waves.

Chapter One

Light stung his eyes. Fuck‌—‌it was so bright. Brighter than anything he’d ever seen. His head ached. His entire body felt like it was shaking, drying out after being dunked in freezing cold water. Where was he? What had happened to him?

Then he remembered. The boat crash. The shrapnel wedged in his leg. Pedro. The caravan site. The caravan with the boy and…‌‌and then the truck. The truck with the well-built greying man.

After that, he remembered nothing.

“Looks like this one’s awake.”

The voice came from somewhere in front of Riley. He opened his eyes even further, battling through the light, when he saw the silhouetted source of the voice. It was a man, or a boy, rather, no older than eighteen. He had fiery ginger hair and flushed cheeks. He was standing by a partly open door. A caravan door. Riley was…‌‌He was inside a caravan. Back inside a caravan. They’d taken him to a caravan for some reason.

“I…‌” Riley struggled to pull himself upright, but he realised how weak his muscles were. His legs barely budged. His arms flopped to his side. Getting off this bed was going to take too much effort and energy. Energy he didn’t have.

He was stuck here. Trapped.

“You might want to watch it there,” the ginger guy said, moving over to Riley and placing a hand on his shoulder to edge him back onto the bed. “You’ve been right in the wars. You need to rest‌—‌”

“My…‌‌my friends. My…‌” Riley’s speech was slurred. Fuck. Had they drugged him? He thought back to Ivan. Thought back to the trusting smile on his face, no hints of what hid behind. He couldn’t come that close again. Another group‌—‌they couldn’t trust them. They were the reason they’d stayed at sea. The creatures, sure, they were too.

But other people used logic. That was much more terrifying than any damage a creature could do.

The man patted Riley on his shoulder then looked down at his leg. “Your friend is okay. Fine, actually. He told us all about what happened. The boat. Your little shrapnel incident. Lucky for you, we’ve got some good people here who’ve already got that metal right out of your leg. You should be fine, patient.” He smiled at Riley and walked over to the doorway.

“Who…‌‌who are…‌?”

“Well, me personally? I’m Stevie. Stevie Cannon. Yes, yes, pornstar name, etcetera etcetera. Heard it all before. I believe you’re Riley. Right?”

Riley gulped. He avoided eye contact with Stevie, then nodded.

“Riley. Nice to meet you. Now rest up.” Stevie pushed open the glass door and a breeze from outside worked its way in. Riley could just about see a few faces gathered around the door, peeking in for a look at him. They looked decidedly normal, from the glimpse he got.

But normal was a great form of disguise. Invaluable.

“My…‌‌my friends.” Riley struggled to get himself off what appeared to be a makeshift bed in the middle of an empty caravan. Curtains were closed. The room had a medicinal smell. “You…‌‌you have to let me see Pedro. I need to know he’s‌—‌”