Dead Days: Season 3 (Books 13-18) (2 page)

Riley could barely get his head around what Alan was saying. “The creatures are a mass. They act as a mass, with no respect for a hierarchy. Things seem to be going okay for them just now.”

Alan’s smile pricked up again. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

Alan limped to Riley’s left towards a folded up wheelchair. He reached down, wincing, and struggled to even it out. When he’d done, he plonked himself in it. “A hand, please?”

Riley was through with Alan’s cryptics. He wasn’t totally sure whether it was because he was so tired or just because of the things he’d done‌—‌the things he had to witness‌—‌but he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand why Rodrigo would so vehemently defend Heathwaite’s when there was a tunnel system‌—‌a bunker system‌—‌so close nearby. He couldn’t understand anything Alan was saying about hierarchy, about how the power of the few trumped that of the mass.

He needed answers. He’d just about done with questions.

But he didn’t even have to ask another because Alan started speaking again.

“So say Rodrigo brought his band of merry Stepford Wives and hubbies to this bunker. Say he lets them stay here. You’re saying the power of the mass will reign supreme. That there’ll be no fighting over who eats the last packet of crackers, or over control of the guns. And then, with poor old me working away in the corner of the room, with all hell breaking loose inside, say poor old me finally finds out what started this entire catastrophe. Say I have a breakthrough on the origins of the infected. What am I supposed to do when my tunnels are blocked with the dead, filled with arms-wielding thugs? What is the one supposed to do to save the masses when they’ve already destroyed themselves?”

Riley gulped away the taste of vomit in his mouth. A taste that had lingered for days, weeks even, but was intensifying now more than ever. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, his headache strong. “So you’re saying you kept this place clear because you…‌you were working on something. Something you couldn’t risk anyone compromising. Why wouldn’t Rodrigo have someone here with you? Like, here to check up on you or something?”

Alan sniggered. He looked back over at the cabinet of guns. “As you can see, I prefer to work alone.” He waved his hand. “But no, no. Fair point. We just figured it was too dangerous. Too dangerous to be sending someone every day to check I might have made a discovery on the off-chance. And although we age, the world doesn’t, so we decided that we’d attempt to communicate every two weeks.” He smiled confidently at Riley now. “And it looks like he sent the right man.”

Riley’s head was like a balloon filled with information. Nasty information, that threatened to burst the thin plastic open at any moment. He still had so many questions, so many things he needed answering, about Alan, Rodrigo, this place. But the one question that seeped out of a tiny hole in the balloon was: “What is it you’re ‘discovering’ that’s so important?”

Alan wheeled closer to Riley. There was visible excitement in his old, blue eyes. He leaned in close like he was telling Riley a special secret that he very rarely shared. “Everything, Riley,” he said. “I’ve got it. I understand everything. So now I need your help‌—‌”

“Just quit it with the shit,” Riley said. He felt flushed, but he’d been through enough. He was tired of being dicked around.

Alan shook his head. Tapped his fingers against the arms of his wheelchair. “I told you already, but you were too busy gawping at a simple tunnel system. I know what caused the virus. I know what caused people to come back from the dead, to start feasting on the flesh of others. And I believe that with that knowledge, I know how to end this whole sorry affair.”

“How? If‌—‌if it’s that simple, why haven’t you‌—‌”

“That’s why you’re here,” Alan said. He raised his arms and looked down at his wheelchair. “That’s why Rodrigo was to send his best to check on me. I’m a persistent old bastard. I just need a little bit of a…‌a bit of a push.”

He smiled again, tapping on his wheelchair.

“So what do you say, Riley? Ready to save the world?”

Chapter Two: Pedro

They had been walking for hours, but it could have been days judging by how little conversation was going on.

Pedro led the group. He walked down this road, tree-lined on the left, in the direction of the M6 motorway. Their direct route to Manchester. Not the ideal route, but the best route they had.

He was freezing cold. So fucking cold he could see his breath, no matter how much his warm black coat was zipped up to his chin. Hated winter. Always had hated winter. Reminded him of the cold Afghan nights‌—‌the vast difference to the warmth of the days.

Except this was worse than Afghan. Much, much worse.

At least in Afghan, all he had to deal with was the stench of sweat and suntanned skin. Here, in the end times, he had the smell of decay to deal with too. The smell of decay, constantly blocking his nose. He could smell a thousand lilies and still, getting in the way would be that fucking awful smell, a constant reminder of how close death really was.

He could hear footsteps on the concrete of the road behind him. He knew Chris was closest. Chris, who’d come out of nowhere to save him when he’d fled Heathwaite’s. Taken him under his wing, greeted him, respected him like he’d known him for a bunch of years.

Stupid. Trusting anyone was stupid in these times.

Especially when you had a bitten boy in your company.

A boy who’d been bitten two weeks ago and still hadn’t turned.

As the road narrowed, more and more empty cars built up, signalling the proximity of the motorway. Pedro caught a tang of the rabbit he’d eaten at breakfast. It was there, lingering in his mouth. Something he’d enjoyed at the time. Something he’d enjoyed very much.

But that was before he saw the bite on young Josh’s arm. Before all Barry’s fucking weirdness. Before he became part of something‌—‌a trek to this supposed Manchester “Living Zone”‌—‌that he wasn’t even sure he liked the sound of anyway. When you’d done multiple calls of duty, you came to realise the living were a pretty shitty bunch.

“What do you think?”

The voice came from behind Pedro. Chris. Pedro had been avoiding speaking to him‌—‌avoiding speaking to anyone‌—‌after finding the bite marks on Josh’s arm. The kid needed leaving behind. Needed a merciful death. He could just be slow at turning into one of those flesh-eating goons. No-one had done any science research into these zombies, so who was to say they didn’t have different turning rates?

Maybe a kid could last a while after the initial trauma.

He gulped. Gulped and shivered, the cold air biting at his cheeks.

Sam had lasted a while.

Panting, behind him. Closing in, to his left.

He looked around and saw Chris jogging in his direction. He was holding a large metal spanner, wearing a red Nike hat, black Thinsulate gloves. The only part of his skin exposed was his face, his cheeks rosy. It had been fucking freezing since the first snow had fallen. And sure‌—‌it had only fallen a little, but a little was enough for now. Pedro dreaded to think how he’d cope if any more snow fell.

He didn’t like snow at the best of times.

“So the motorway plan sounds good to you?” Chris said, catching his breath as he caught up to Pedro’s frantic pace.

Pedro shrugged. Smiled. “Doesn’t look like I’ve got an option, bud.”

He looked over his shoulder. Looked at bald Barry, standing separate from blonde-haired Tamara, who held the hand of her skinny, dark-haired son, Josh. Josh peered at Pedro. Peered at him with his little eyes that looked at him like he’d done something wrong. Pedro felt a knotting in his gut. He was a good kid. A good kid who’d been forced into a fucking horrible situation.

But he was a bitten kid. And that made him something different.

“Barry’s right about the motorway,” Chris said, clouds of breath frosting up ahead of him. “It was a dangerous place at first. One of the most dangerous. But it’s weeks since the spread started. The zombies get hungry, just like us. They move on.”

Pedro bit his lip. Powered forward, his body freezing, as the cars got thicker and thicker. “Like I said, don’t really have much of a choice.”

“What scares you so much about Josh?”

The question took Pedro by surprise. He glanced at Chris, who was half-smiling. It was direct. To the point. Shit, he had to respect the man for being up front, not like some of the bullshitters he’d had the pleasure of dealing with since the start of the fall.

“What scares me is that he’s bit,” Pedro said. “Ain’t no comin’ back from that, y’know.”

“And what if there is?” Chris said, latching right on to Pedro’s statement. “Because I was there. I was there holding Tamara back as the zombies took her son. I was there when they stuck their teeth into his flesh. And I was there as he came running away from them, running towards us, holes in his arm and flowing with blood. I told Tamara when we left. Told her what it all meant, and she‌—‌she struggled, as you’d expect a mother to struggle. But anyway, we cleaned him up. Cleaned up his wound. Barry stayed awake the first night with Josh, in case…‌You know. I stayed awake the next night. Tamara stayed awake all the time.

“And then something just‌—‌just happened. His skin started going less pale. Colour came back to his cheeks, things like that. And then all of a sudden he was eating again. He wasn’t spewing up, sweating all the time. And we‌—‌we still weren’t sure, but well. It’s two weeks since he was bitten, and to me, he looks alright. What about you?”

Pedro gulped down the lump in his throat. He looked back at Josh, who was wading through the thin layer of snow on the road. Wading with confidence, not with injury. If not for the bandage on his arm, for the blue coat covering that bandage, he was a normal kid. Not a goon.

“I just don’t get my hopes up,” Pedro said. “Seen enough bullshit the last few weeks to know better.”

“You strike me as a man who’s seen enough bullshit in a lifetime to know better,” Chris said. A slight smile tugged at his cheeks.

Pedro knew Chris was probably right, but he wasn’t giving him the dignity of a reply.

“So the motorway,” Chris said. “We head down it for fifty miles, shelter on the way when we can, divert if we have to. Leads us straight into the heart of Manchester. Straight to the Living Zone.”

“How d’you even know where this Living Zone is supposed to be, anyway?”

Chris kicked at some of the snow with his large black boots. “If you were setting up a hotspot to save mankind against a mass of illiterate creatures, what’s the one thing you’d use to catch attention?”

Pedro shrugged. “Machine gun.”

Chris sniggered. “Words, Pedro. I saw it on the websites and the blogs I managed to take a peek at in that house two weeks ago. Big red banner, right on the entrance of the city, directing us right to it. We’ll see it.”

“And if we don’t?”

Chris didn’t even flinch. “I believe we will.”

Pedro was about to take the argument further, simply ‘cause he was feeling tired and ratty, when he heard a scream from behind.

Right away, him and Chris swung around.

What he saw made the rattiness intensify inside him.

There were five creatures surrounding Barry, Tamara and Josh. Barry was occupying himself with two of them with a large, sharp piece of scrap metal, and Tamara too was dealing with two, snipping and stabbing away at the goons with the hedge cutters.

But there was one of them closing in on Josh.

One of them making him tumble to the road, into the thin layer of snow, reaching its filthy, bloody hands towards him.

Pedro didn’t even think.

He ran. Ran along the slippy road in the direction of the creature as it got closer and closer to Josh.

He sprinted with all he had. Sprinted, fuelled on adrenaline, towards Josh, towards the creature closing in on him.

He saw the blood. Saw the blood in his mind’s eye, but not in reality. The blood in his mind’s eye was Sam’s. His son’s.

No. He wasn’t seeing that blood again.

He threw himself at the creature before it could sink its teeth into Josh, knocking it onto its back. The creature‌—‌once a man with short, dark hair, now with a chunk of his head missing and filled with green maggots‌—‌gasped and snapped at Pedro with its chipped, worn-down teeth.

Pedro pressed his hand into the creature’s head. Pressed with all he had, pushing, and then smacking, and then beating to the concrete, the sound of the flesh giving way to the harder sound of skull, until eventually…‌

A crack.

And then another crack and another and another, and then Pedro twisted the creature onto its back and smacked his fist into its brains, mashing them up as well as he could.

The creature shook, twitched, hurled darkened blood out of its dead mouth as Pedro tore its skull’s contents up with his bare hands, flesh and brains wedged between his fingernails.

And then he looked up. Looked up at the shock on Tamara’s face, the fear on Josh’s face, the sheer disgusted disbelief on Barry’s face.

Chris smiled. Shook his head. “Looks like you’re with us then, friend?”

Chapter Three: Chloë

Chloë had been walking for so long that her feet were sore all over.

She shivered as she held the map that she’d taken from the bad men under her arm, and she walked down the road. The snow was stopping and starting. Dad used to say it was typical British and “couldn’t make its mind up,” though she didn’t know what he meant. But it looked pretty. Pretty at the sides of the road. Just she had to be careful not to slip because she’d slipped before and it’d hurt her butt a bit.

She looked around her every step she took down this road. It wasn’t a road like Lulworth Road that she used to live at with her mum, with Elizabeth, with Dad. No, there were no houses on this road. No houses, just trees. And the wind blew against the trees and made things crack and rustle, which she always thought were the monsters but they weren’t. Not yet. But she’d have to be careful. She’d seen what the horrible monsters did to people, how cruel they were. She had to watch herself.