Dead Days Zombie Apocalypse Series (Season 5) Read online

  He didn’t have time to dwell on the side effects. Not now.

  “Stop, Doctor,” he said.

  Doctor Ottoman looked at Gav’s body, terror in his eyes. He turned. Looked at Andy with fear. A lack of understanding. The look on a kid’s face when they’re told once and for all that no, Santa isn’t real, miracles don’t exist.

  “Don’t—don’t shoot me—”

  “Then don’t move another muscle in that direction,” Andy said. He edged closer to Doctor Ottoman, who held his shaking hands in the air. Gav was still gasping even though the sedation had kicked in.

  “He’s—he needs medical—”

  “Leave him.”

  Andy walked up to the doctor. Grabbed his hands, twisted them behind his back. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Suicide, in fact. He’d be on the cameras. This would spread. Mr Fletch would find the truth, and the Devil only knew what he’d do with it.

  “You’re going to do exactly as I say, Doc,” Andy said.

  “You—you’re mad. He’ll punish you. He’ll punish you and—”

  Andy didn’t have any time to hear about what Mr Fletch would do to Steve for his discrepancies.

  So he pushed the dart gun into Doctor Ottoman’s neck and he fired.

  “Sleep soundly.”

  Doctor Ottoman struggled initially. Eyes rolled in denial, in fear.

  Then his body went limp.

  Slumped to the ground.

  Silent.

  Andy Wilmslow lay the doctor beside Gav, whose mouth was covered in blood, eyes red and blood vessels burst. He knew Gav wouldn’t wake up. And for that reason, he knew he was a wanted man. That there was no chance of talking his way out of this, not anymore.

  So he slipped a few more sedative darts into his gun.

  Loaded it.

  Stood up.

  He took a deep breath and stared down the corridor where he’d heard the gunshots, where the hatch—his escape route—waited for him.

  And he turned the other way.

  Walked towards the opposite exit.

  He was leaving, but not without Steve.

  Even if it meant putting this entire living zone to sleep, he was leaving, but not without Steve.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IVAN

  By the time they shoved the fifth tooth into his mouth, Ivan didn’t even want to scream anymore.

  He’d lost all sense of time and place. His only constant was the bright beam of light above him. And the woman in white with “BLZ” embroidered on her coat.

  The pain in his gums.

  And the constant reassurance that everything was going to be okay; that he wouldn’t feel a thing soon.

  He wished he could believe the woman, but she’d been telling him that for at least an hour.

  Or maybe it was longer.

  Or shorter.

  Whatever. It was fucking painful.

  He couldn’t move. Couldn’t even twitch his eyes. Couldn’t change his focus. All he could do was lie there on the slab and let this bitch rip all his teeth out. Feel the blood congealing at the back of his throat. Taste copper, grow more nauseous.

  But he couldn’t even be sick, either.

  Pulling his teeth out had been awful, but it kind of got more bearable as it progressed. Sure, his back left molar cracked in two, and the woman had to fish inside there with a saw to cut it away, taking a bit of his gum in the process. But it was bearable. Manageable.

  Nothing compared to the pain of these sharp teeth being pressed back into his gums.

  But even that didn’t compare to the true pain that Ivan felt. Because the true pain was seeing Abigail lying unconscious on the slab beside him some time ago. The true pain he felt was the thought of that brave girl, the thought of her brother, Nick. Two kids he’d sworn to protect. Two kids who’d helped him see the light, helped him rediscover the goodness deep inside him that his time at the barracks darkened.

  He’d failed them. Just like he failed everyone.

  He’d failed the children he’d promised never to let down.

  The children who’d saved his life.

  The woman moved over Ivan’s head again, blocked his view of the light above. And his eyes were so watery that she was just a blur, a blur that was way too painful, way too much effort to focus on.

  “It’s okay … be okay …” Her words were distant. Drifting. They tormented him to his very core.

  Because he thought of Abigail and Nick and how afraid they must be if they were going through what he was.

  He thought of Abigail and Nick and it pained him to think how alone they must feel right now.

  A sharpness, right at the front of his upper gum. Burning as his tooth socket split open, warmth as blood dribbled out of it and dropped on his stationary tongue.

  Sickness as the woman rammed the tooth further and further up into his gum.

  As she stuffed it up there, gradually.

  Turning him into something else.

  Into a monster.

  “It’ll be okay …”

  He wanted to grab the sides of her head and crush her skull. That was the truth. For all the confusion she’d caused these children—that her people had caused these children. Didn’t give a fuck about himself. Just about the kids.

  He wanted to destroy her.

  But he couldn’t move.

  Not a muscle.

  Not as the drip kept on feeding his body this waking sedative.

  This unending nightmare.

  “Almost done now,” she said. “And you’re looking a lot better already.”

  Ivan caught a glance of himself in a mirror the woman held over his face.

  He saw blood covering his mouth.

  Saw long, sharp daggers where his teeth were.

  Saw tears in his glassy, dead eyes.

  The woman moved the mirror away. Smiled. “We’ve got your gnashers in. Now we’ve just gotta start the transformation process.”

  She snapped the drip away from Ivan’s forearm. Yanked the needle out of his vein.

  “I should probably warn you. The next time you open your eyes, things will seem very … different. But that’s okay. That’s just a part of the process.”

  She shoved another syringe into his arm, started tweaking some computer just outside of Ivan’s sightline.

  “You’re gonna evolve, sir. And for that reason you should feel mighty privileged.”

  Ivan tried to shake free.

  Tried to tense every muscle in his body.

  But then he felt the cool fluid seeping into his arm, up towards his shoulder, through his chest and across his body and he knew it was too late.

  He knew it was over.

  He knew he’d failed Nick and Abigail.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RILEY

  Riley didn’t wake up.

  Instead, he suddenly became aware of his surroundings. Like they hit him right in the stomach and knocked the wind out of his body.

  He was in a room he didn’t recognise. A darker, dimmer room. There was a sound of water dripping somewhere nearby, echoing against the metal walls. The air tasted of damp.

  And Riley wasn’t lying down.

  He was hanging from his wrists.

  He turned to the left and to the right, tried to figure out where he was, what was happening to him. There was a smell of raw meat in the air. He’d done work experience at a butcher’s back when he was a kid and he remembered the overwhelming stench distinctly. So rich that he could taste it, right at the back of his throat.

  “You’re awake? Good.”

  Mr Fletch’s voice took Riley by surprise. He hadn’t seen him at first. But now he saw him clearly. Walking towards him.

  Smile on his face.

  Rusty drill in hand.

  Riley shook at the cuffs around his wrists. They were so tightly screwed that his arms were chapped and raw.

  Mr Fletch pulled the trigger of the drill.

  Stepped closer.

  “You said some
thing earlier,” he said, as he walked right up to Riley, the drill just inches away. “Can you remember what it was you said?”

  “You’re a fucking psycho.”

  “Not that. Although that is rather cute considering the circumstances you find yourself in.”

  He fired up the drill again.

  Inched it closer to Riley’s left kneecap.

  Riley gritted his teeth.

  “But no. I don’t mean that. I mean something else. Something you said to me. About yourself, actually. Do you know what it is I’m talking about?”

  Riley tried to cast his mind back, but he couldn’t. Not only ’cause his head was aching from the knock to the back of his skull, but also because he’d said a lot of things to Mr Fletch in the heat of the moment.

  He’d done a lot of things, too.

  Slit the throat of that guard.

  Ran for his life.

  And still he’d ended up here.

  Mr Fletch circled Riley. Disappeared behind him, out of sight, so Riley couldn’t see how close the drill was to his Achilles, to his thigh, to his back. He could just feel the warm breathing of Mr Fletch on the backs of his bare legs. Hear the drill whirring, stopping, whirring again.

  Mr Fletch appeared around the front of Riley to his right. “You told me I wouldn’t kill you, Because I needed you. Because you’re special. Do you remember that now?”

  Riley remembered clearly. It’d been part of his escape plan. “Still stand by it.”

  “And yet now you’re tied up and I’m down here with this drill, you don’t look all that confident. Funny, isn’t it?”

  Riley wanted to speak. But all he could do was swallow a lump in his throat.

  His heart was beating so fast it was making the chains around his arms rattle.

  The longer time drew on, he actually believed Mr Fletch might just kill him.

  “See, it would be useful to keep you alive. I can think of all sorts of ways you could come in handy. All kinds of ways you could help. After all, you have the cure inside you, don’t you?” He said it like a parent playing along with a child’s imaginary friend.

  Riley took deep breaths. Stared back at Mr Fletch. He was out of words. And he wasn’t going to beg.

  “It would be useful to keep you around, but it isn’t paramount. We’d find another way.”

  He started up the drill. Didn’t take his finger off the trigger.

  “We will find another way.”

  Riley kept his gaze on Mr Fletch as he walked towards him, the drill still spinning. He edged back, tried to wriggle free more out of instinct than anything, more out of fear.

  But he was stuck.

  He was trapped up here.

  And he wasn’t getting out.

  “When the fuck did you give up on this world?” Riley spat. He didn’t think about his words. Just shouted them. First, most honest words to slip off his tongue in his adrenaline-entrapped, fear-induced state.

  Mr Fletch stopped right opposite Riley. Held the drill up to his left. Just two inches away. Edging closer. “I didn’t give up on this world. I never have given up on this world.”

  One inch from his knee.

  “I’m just basking in the joys of ridding the future of vermin of the past like you.”

  Half an inch away.

  A sharp stabbing pain on the skin above his kneecap.

  Riley tensed up and closed his eyes and shouted out and …

  The drill stopped.

  Something was different about the room. The air. It was cooler. Less damp. Fresh.

  There was a breeze.

  He opened his tearful eyes and he saw Mr Fletch wobbling to the ground.

  There was a dart in the top of his shoulder.

  And beyond Mr Fletch, over at a wide opening, there were three people.

  One he didn’t recognise holding the gun that shot Mr Fletch. A well-built black guy with short hair wearing black BLZ gear.

  And two he did recognise.

  Two that made his muscles loosen completely.

  Made tears stream down his cheeks.

  Jordanna and Chloë looked up at Riley as he hung from the cuffs, and they stepped inside the room.

  “Come on,” the black guy said. “We’ve gotta move quick.”

  Riley could only look at Jordanna and Chloë as the man approached. “Where … What are … What—”

  “Name’s Andy. Andy Wilmslow. And thanks to your friends here, I’m getting you the hell out of this place.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “There we go. That should do it. Jump down on three. One, two …”

  But Riley didn’t need to count to three.

  The cuffs around his wrists loosened and he tumbled down onto the dusty concrete floor.

  The fall hurt. Made his legs and his body ache like mad. But more than anything, he was relieved. Relieved to be free. Relieved that he’d come so close to dying—so close to being tortured by that sick fucker Mr Fletch—and he’d made it free.

  Or rather, Jordanna, Chloë and this guy called Andy Wilmslow had set him free.

  He brushed his fingers against his tender head. “Thanks,” he said.

  “No need,” Andy said, moving away from Riley and back towards the door he’d come in through. “Gotta move quick. It won’t be long until Fletch’s bitches realise there’s something off here. Before they initiate a lockdown.”

  “A lockdown?”

  “If you want to live—if you want your friends to live—you’re gonna have to follow me. Understand?”

  Riley stood up. He was dizzy. His throat was dry, gagging for water. His hands were crispy with the blood of the guard; the guard whose throat he’d cut.

  “How do we know we can trust you?” Riley asked.

  Andy shook his head. Smiled. “’Cause I don’t see any other damned person cutting you free of your cuffs round here, do you? Now come on. We need to move to the next hangar before this place goes to shit. Gimme a hand tying him up, all of you.”

  Andy paced back over to Mr Fletch’s stiff body. Jordanna and Chloë moved slowly towards him.

  Riley looked at Jordanna. Smiled and nodded. She looked back at him and nodded in return. They didn’t need to speak. Some situations, language just transcended. Their experiences—their shared experiences—were words enough.

  The biggest relief was that Jordanna was here. Jordanna hadn’t been fed to the Orion. She was alive.

  And Chloë of all people was just behind her.

  Riley tried looking Chloë in the eye as he lifted Fletch’s skinny body up to the cuffs, but he couldn’t. It was difficult. Because the last time he’d seen Chloë, he’d banished her. Cut her adrift from the group headed to the BLZ. He could see from the way she was looking at the ground and doing everything to avoid Riley’s eye contact that she was uncomfortable around him too. Like she was a guilty kid who couldn’t quite muster up the courage to apologise …

  No. Not like a guilty kid. She was a guilty kid. In spite of all the things she’d seen, all the things she’d done, she was still a child.

  And that turned the guilt on Riley.

  Andy winced as he clipped the cuffs around Mr Fletch’s wrists. “Leave him up here. Won’t be long before someone finds him.”

  “Shouldn’t we just kill him?” Riley asked.

  “No. No we fucking shouldn’t. How long you people been out there?”

  “Long enough to know,” Jordanna said.

  “Know what?” Andy asked.

  She looked Riley in his eyes and Riley saw all the pain she’d been through, all the pain they’d all been through. “To just … know.”

  Andy shook his head. “Well you two can speculate all you like. We need to find Steve and we need to—”

  “Our friends,” Riley said. “The—the rest of our friends. Tamara. James. Tiffany and …”

  He saw the look on Chloë’s face. The sadness. The guilt.

  “They … they aren’t all … they can’t all be—”

/>   “It’s fifty-fifty with Fletch. But there’s a real chance they aren’t alive. And there’s a real chance that if you go searchin’ for ’em, you’ll never get out of this place. None of us will.”

  “Where can I find them?”

  “What?”

  Riley walked past Andy. “My friends. Where would he keep them?”

  Andy shook his head. “I can see you’re gonna be difficult.”

  Riley walked back to Andy. Squared up to him. They were similar height at six foot one, Andy much bulkier. But Riley didn’t feel any fear. He didn’t feel any apprehension about squaring up to Andy in this way.

  “Those people. My friends. Some of them I haven’t known so long, others I have. I’ve lived with them. I’ve seen the goodness in them. They’ve stood by me. Stood with me. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned since the turn, it’s that I don’t leave anyone behind. I can’t leave anyone behind.”

  He caught a glance of Jordanna. The first person he’d left behind back in Preston when Ted was alive.

  The guilt that ate at him ever since.

  “There’s being kind and there’s being—”

  “You can go find this ‘Steve’ and you can walk out of here on your own. But I promise you one thing. I’m not leaving my people behind. They sacrificed so much to make it this far with me, I’m not ever going to forget that. So I’ll die saving them if I have to. Now be straight with me. No bullshit. Where are they?”

  Chloë looked right at Riley now. Not with fear, but with a twinkle in her eyes. A glimmer of hope.

  Andy looked like he was going to try talking Riley out of saving his friends again. Gave up and shook his head. “They’re up in the main building. The Labyrinth.”

  Jordanna frowned. “That’s where we just—”

  “Came from. Yeah. But they’re well guarded. Fucking miracle three of you made it this far, believe me.”

  “It’s not enough. Not until we all make it.”

  “Maybe so,” Andy said. “Maybe so. But it might just kill the lot of you.”

  Riley stared Andy in the eyes. It was silent in this spacious, hangar-like room. Silent, but for the dripping of water, the rattling of the wind against the door.

  “I’m in,” Jordanna said.