Dead Days Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 9) Read online

  But it felt nice, simply to have the warm sun on his skin today. It felt nice to be walking alongside Anna. It always did.

  There’d been a point where he felt like he’d lost everything six months ago. When Mattius took Jordanna and Chloë away from him. The memories still haunted him. Kept him awake at night.

  But now. He couldn’t let himself think about that. He couldn’t dwell on it. Not anymore.

  Still, the point stood. He’d given up on life. And just as he’d given up, someone from his past returned and reminded him just why he was fighting so hard after all.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Anna asked.

  Riley looked at her. She was just as she’d always been. Tall and slim. Dark hair. Freckles on her face. Cheeky smile.

  The only thing different about her was the fact she was missing her left eye.

  Sure. That was kind of a big deal. But everyone changes.

  “Nothing,” Riley said.

  “Nothing? So you’re just walking along, being totally silent and thinking about nothing.”

  “What can I say? I’ve decided to take up mindfulness.”

  “You know mindfulness is a cult, right?”

  “What? I thought you loved mindfulness.”

  “It’s a cult. It’s designed to make people more susceptible to brainwashing and to the power of suggestion, that kind of thing. Plus I mean, what’s the point? It makes us just as dumb as the undead.”

  Riley raised his eyebrows in mock awe. Anna really was a bundle of inconsistencies. “Oh, shit. That’s it. You’ve cracked it. The infection isn’t an infection at all. It’s just a bunch of crazy mindfulness cultists. Seriously, that’s some Nobel Prize level shit. Good work.”

  Anna laughed. She punched Riley’s arm, mockingly, and he punched her back.

  Most of all, he felt himself smiling. He felt himself happy.

  That happiness scared him. Of course it scared him. After all, every time he’d allowed himself to get happy, something had come along and ripped it all in two all over again. Sometimes literally.

  But he couldn’t resist the perfection of this moment. Anna and him, together, walking down a street, the sun shining down on both of them.

  Her initial return had taken quite some time for Riley to really comprehend. She told him she’d survived the attack at Heathwaite’s. She’d told him about how that place rebuilt, and then how it collapsed.

  And then she’d told him she’d been on the road for a long, long time.

  Anna never really went into her experiences on the road. She told him and the others—Ricky, Melissa and Carly—that they knew exactly what her experiences would’ve been like because after all, Riley and his group had been living in the same world.

  But there was still something about Anna’s lack of desire to indulge in what she’d been through that got to Riley. Something that made him wonder what was really under the surface. What secrets she was hiding.

  He was too afraid to ask, because he knew that if she asked him the same question, he wasn’t sure he could be straight about his experiences either.

  “So,” Anna said. “We’ve failed to capture any animals. We’ve failed to salvage any supplies. I’d say this supply run’s basically been a failure, on that basis.”

  “Or you could just reframe it,” Riley said. “A nice spring walk.”

  “When did you get so soft?”

  “Huh?”

  “When we first met. I mean, you were soft. But you definitely weren’t this soft. You’d have thought living in a world full of monsters would toughen you up a bit, not the other way around.”

  “Hey,” Riley said. “I’ve just learned to wear my heart on my sleeve more.”

  “Is the most beta male statement I’ve ever heard.”

  Riley lifted his fists jokingly. “Oh I’ll show you beta male.”

  Anna laughed again. And when she stopped, Riley could tell from the shift of her expressions that a serious question was coming. “What is it you’re thinking about? Really?”

  Riley lowered his fists. He leaned back against the wall of the old newsagents at the corner of the street they were on. The city was totally silent. He knew there was always the risk of bumping into the dead, or the living for that matter. But Lancaster seemed strangely quiet in the face of everything that’d happened. Maybe they really were some of the last people left after all. “I just worry sometimes.”

  “That’s life. One worry after the next. Hardly a new development.”

  “I worry about…”

  He stopped, then. He remembered what Anna said about opening up. About how it weakened him.

  Then he felt Anna’s hand on his arm.

  She looked into his eyes and just staring back at her made his stomach quiver with excitement. He felt guilty, of course. He’d loved Jordanna. There was no doubt about that. If she knew he was falling for someone else—someone he’d fallen for before he’d even fallen for Jordanna—he knew she’d give him a proper crack across the face.

  But the thing that bothered him more?

  Losing that person he was falling for, all over again.

  “I just don’t want this to end,” Riley said.

  He saw the shift of Anna’s face. And as they sat together by the side of this silent road—cars abandoned, blood stained tarmac, smashed shop windows and desperate messages scrawled across the walls of the buildings—Riley knew she understood.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

  She leaned in towards him slowly, and Riley felt his heart rate picking up. This was it. This was the moment it happened. This was the moment they came together, and everything changed.

  Then he heard something slam behind him and felt something grab his shoulder.

  He lunged forward, dragging Anna with him. They both fell back onto the road.

  “Shit!” Riley said, heart racing now. “Holy… holy shit.”

  There was a creature inside that newsagents. Its hand was stuck through the glass. Its rotting skin had fallen away from its body completely.

  “Fuck,” Anna said. Then she laughed a little, and Riley laughed too. And as they lay there in the road laughing, a creature just feet away from them, Riley knew the moment between them was gone, and that they’d have to find another opportunity—if another opportunity came at all.

  And yet he didn’t mind.

  As they lay there laughing at the hilarious absurdity of this world, he didn’t mind at all.

  “Look out,” Anna said, pointing over Riley’s shoulder. “Looks like paperboy’s got company.”

  Riley looked back.

  There was a group of creatures walking in their direction.

  Riley tutted and rolled his eyes. He got to his feet, helped Anna up—but she mockingly pulled him back down before finally getting to her feet.

  They held on to each other’s hands for a while. They watched the dead walk towards them, and the cracking of the glass of the newsagents.

  They watched the undead try to break through this perfect moment—but they couldn’t. There was no way they could. There was no way anything could.

  Then, together, they ran.

  It was time to go back home.

  It was time to go back to reality.

  It was time to keep on living.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He watched the man and the woman running down the street, hand in hand, as the group of undead grew gradually larger.

  When he caught a glimpse of the man’s face, he smiled.

  He knew what he had to do.

  He knew where he had to go.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Riley couldn’t escape the joy he felt every time the group sat down for a meal.

  It was late at night. They’d covered up the windows of the cottage they called home with pieces of wood, just in case the light from the candles brought any unwanted attention their way. Of course, the cottage was remote. Riley felt safe here. You could go days without seeing a creature, let
alone another human being.

  But it paid to be vigilant in a world like this.

  Besides. He didn’t want anything to break this fantasy life he was living right now.

  The wind made the foundations of the house creak, and Riley felt so grateful to be inside. But a chill came over him when he heard that breeze. It reminded him of the winter they’d been through together. It’d been a challenging one to say the least. Not just because of the cold, and not just because of the dwindling supplies year on year. But also because of the change in circumstances. The deaths of Chloë and Jordanna. The return of Anna.

  Part devastation. Part joy.

  All of it added together and combined in a pretty complex emotional melting pot, that was for sure.

  Riley tucked into his juicy, succulent rabbit and he looked around the table. There was Anna, who looked like she was enjoying her barbecued rabbit just as much as he was. He still had to blink sometimes to double check he wasn’t seeing things, even though they’d spent the last six months together.

  By Anna’s side, there was Melissa. She was short, with dark hair that’d been hacked at in no real style just above her ears. She had dark chestnut eyes. She was in her early twenties. They’d met back at Amy’s camp. Melissa was a complex woman. She’d admitted to letting Kane free back at the camp. But then she’d redeemed herself, saving Riley’s life when Kane looked all set to take it from him once and for all. He’d managed to take two fingers. His little finger and ring finger on his left hand. But thanks to Melissa, his losses hadn’t been any more severe.

  But even though they’d been in each other’s company for some time now, Riley still felt like he’d only scratched the surface where Melissa was concerned.

  Beside Melissa, there was Ricky. Ricky had been on Mattius’ side in the conflict between their groups. But shit had gone down between them. Ricky had turned his back on Mattius, and eventually joined Riley’s group. He was a man of few words, but when he did speak, he was straight to the point. He didn’t mess around. It was important to have someone like that in their group. The voice of reason in the hardest of situations.

  But it was the pair beside Ricky that made Riley’s heart melt the most.

  Carly.

  And on her lap, Kesha.

  He smiled when he looked over at them. Kesha was growing up fast. She was making chattering noises, grinning away, looking around the room with those big, observant blue eyes. She was holding on to Carly’s long, dark hair, sticking it in her mouth and sucking at it like it was a lollipop.

  She’d defeated all odds just to be here now. She was a living reminder of all that was good in the world; and the potential for the world to rebuild and fix itself.

  And as she looked into Riley’s eyes, smile on her face, Riley couldn’t help seeing Chloë in her. The things Chloë had been through to keep her safe. The sacrifices she had made.

  He wished Chloë was here to see what a beautiful girl she was growing into.

  And Carly… Carly was a good kid. She was complex, but her heart was in the right place. And she loved Kesha to bits. Even when Riley had been reluctant to let Kesha out of his sights in the early days, he’d grown to trust Carly before anyone else.

  She’d been through a lot. She’d watched all of her people fall. But she was doing a stellar job of re-adapting to a new world. It couldn’t be easy for a teenager to do a thing like that.

  But right now?

  Riley just wanted things to stay as they were. He didn’t want anything to change. Not ever again.

  They’d been through enough change. It was time for some stability.

  “So Melissa and I stumbled upon a farm a few miles east,” Ricky said, breaking the silence that gorging on food always created. Their meals were often few and far between. They were good hunters and foragers now, and they even had a little area outside for chickens and the like, but they were still thrifty with their supplies—mostly because they knew just how easy it was for circumstances to turn on their head.

  Riley felt a knot in his stomach when Ricky spoke. He knew what the implication was. He knew what they were about to say. “Anyone there?”

  “Cows. Sheep. Chickens. Geese.”

  “So there’s probably somebody there.”

  Ricky tilted his head. “If there is, then maybe we should think about… y’know. Moving them on.”

  The rabbit went sour in Riley’s mouth. He shook his head. “Out of the question.”

  “But—”

  “We don’t engage in conflicts. You know how it is.”

  “I’m not talking about engaging in a conflict,” Ricky said, raising his voice. “I’m talking about doing something that will bring about a better quality of life. For all of us.”

  “And if it doesn’t bring about a better quality of life?”

  “What?”

  “If it fails. If someone dies when we’re trying to take this farm. Or if this group that runs it is larger than we think and something bad happens. What then?”

  Ricky shook his head. Riley could tell that he was pissed. Everyone else was staying silent, which annoyed him a little. Talk about keeping themselves on the fence.

  “So we stay here forever,” Ricky said, twirling some rabbit on his fork. “Until the end of time.”

  “We stay here, where we’re safe, until we’re forced to leave this place.”

  “Rather than actively trying to improve our situation?”

  Riley shrugged. “As far as I see it, we’ve got it good. We should be grateful.”

  “We could at least check it out properly,” Melissa said.

  When Melissa spoke, Riley knew that this debate wasn’t going to go away as promptly as he would’ve liked. He knew he had an argument on his hands. “And what do we gain from that?”

  “We find out how many are there,” Melissa said. “We find out whether the place is safe. Whether it’d be habitable. We find out if it’d be an improvement. Then we come back and tell you what we’ve found.”

  “And if you don’t come back?”

  Riley saw the look on Melissa’s face then. A half-smile, sympathetic in a way.

  “We will come back,” she said. “We will.”

  “Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea.”

  When Riley saw that Anna had spoken, he knew he was stuffed. Three against one. Pity he couldn’t get Carly and Kesha to stick up for him.

  He stepped up from the table, took his plate into the kitchen. “I just worry about—”

  “We know you worry,” Melissa said. “And we all worry too. But… but it doesn’t have to be a trap, Riley. It doesn’t have to be a threat. It’s an opportunity. And besides. Ricky and I can handle ourselves.”

  Riley looked back. He could tell from the looks in their eyes that their minds were set, now. There was no changing them.

  “So what do you say?” Ricky asked. “Let us go find us a new home. And if it’s good, well I might just let you have the first cow we find for breakfast.”

  Riley stood there and stared at the smiles of the people—his new family—around the table.

  He didn’t want to say yes. He didn’t want to let them go.

  But he knew he didn’t have a choice.

  He turned around, away from them. “Go,” he said.

  “You won’t regret this,” Melissa said. “Seriously.”

  Riley wanted to believe her. He really did.

  But already the regret was taking a hold of him, threatening to tear their happy existence apart…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Anna saw the crowd of the undead surrounding the house she was hiding inside and she knew that her time was coming to an end.

  It was night. Late at night. The nights were always the hardest. On the one hand, any potential people on the outside couldn’t see her all that well. And that was an advantage. She’d seen what this world had the power to turn people into. She’d seen the way different people had reacted to the changes in the world, the re-aligning of order. S
ome people had made power grabs. Others had laid down, allowed the order to form over them again just like it used to.

  But on the other hand, Anna couldn’t see what was coming, either. Which could be problematic in its own way.

  She knew what was coming right now, though. She knew exactly what was coming.

  And she was fast losing any hope of getting out of this place at all.

  She clenched her eye tightly shut and listened to the footsteps edging ever closer. She could hear the groans. She knew what the groans meant, what they signalled. The groans meant that the dead had seen her. They knew she was here, hiding inside this house. And the worst, most terrifying thing about them was that they wouldn’t stop. They knew she was here, they knew where she was, and they wouldn’t give up until they’d filled every last space inside this house with their rotten presence.

  And as much as Anna knew they weren’t going to give up, as much as she knew there was no sense in staying here because it meant a certain fate, and that fate wasn’t a good one… still she held her ground.

  Because she was tired.

  She was tired of pretending she was strong.

  She was tired of pretending she was brave enough to take on this world.

  She was tired of putting on a front, and she was tired of being alone.

  So she listened to the footsteps of the infected creeping up the drive.

  She listened to the weight of their bodies pushing harder and harder against the doors, front and back.

  She listened, and she waited.

  Because she was ready.

  She was ready.

  She felt a tear roll down her cheek, warm and salty on her lips. She thought about Riley, as the rain lashed down outside. She thought about his past and the things he’d told her about. Even though half a year had passed since they had been separated, she thought about the horror of his life before.

  The way he’d nearly killed himself.

  The way he’d attempted to take his own life.

  And it puzzled Anna, at the time. It’d always puzzled Anna. How could a person do that? How could a person, regardless of how bad things were, wilfully decide to end everything, choosing eternal blackness—no, not even blackness—over any form of life?