Dead Days: The Complete Season Two Collection (11 page)

Riley’s heart pounded. He looked at Pedro. Looked at Anna. Looked at Stevie, who looked just as curious in the driver’s seat. Secrets. Whispers. Always whispering, always hiding something. They were hiding things already. They were hiding things in plain sight. Or doing a terrible job of covering something up, rather.

“Ladies, gents, excuse me a moment,” Rodrigo said. He hopped off the side of the trailer, his cheeks blushing, and walked around the front of the vehicle to speak to Stevie.

Riley squinted as he tried to listen.

“…‌Shot…‌‌dead…‌wreckage…‌”

Stevie looked back through the window of the Land Rover at the group in the trailer, panic in his eyes.

“What the fuck do you think this is all about?” Anna asked, her voice breaking.

Riley bit his lip. He wasn’t going to wait around for answers, not anymore. He wasn’t going to paper over the cracks when he suspected something was wrong‌—‌he was through with that.

“Rodrigo,” he said. He hopped off the side of the trailer and walked up to him. “Is there a problem?”

Rodrigo turned from the window of the Land Rover and stared at Riley. He looked spaced out. In fact…‌‌shit. They were tears in his eyes. Definite tears.

“Is…‌‌is everything okay?” Riley asked, his voice a little less confrontational in tone this time.

Rodrigo looked at Stevie and the young man. All three of them nodded.

“Do you know how to use a gun?” Rodrigo asked.

Riley looked around at Pedro and Anna. Both of them peered on with wide eyes. Pedro nodded his head. “I’ve seen both of ‘em shoot. Fair aim on them. What’s the problem?”

Rodrigo nodded his head. He wiped the water from his bloodshot eyes. “Were there…‌‌other than you three. One of you mentioned a fourth and a fifth person in your boat accident.”

“Claudia and Chloë,” Riley said.

“Are they okay? Have you‌—‌shit, have you found them?” Anna asked, excitement and nerves in her voice.

Rodrigo gulped. “We‌—‌we can’t be totally sure. My men found…‌‌They found two people. Two women by some boat wreckage. But we could use your help. My men, the ones who found the women‌—‌”

“That’s them,” Riley said. “That has to be them. Where are they? Are they‌—‌”

“They’re dead,” Rodrigo said. His bottom lip quivered. “I’m very sorry, but the two people my men found are dead.”

Chapter Three

“They were out looking for supplies. Three of my men. Dominic, Peter and Aaron. Aaron’s the man you saw speaking to me by the Land Rover. The other two…‌‌they didn’t make it back.”

Rodrigo sat on a cafeteria table in the middle of the Heathwaite’s Caravan Park Leisure Centre. There was nobody behind the bar. The arcade was empty, and a television crackled with white noise. Through a glass window at the far left hand side of the cafeteria, Riley could see the swimming pool, completely static, the water free of any ripples.

Word had spread fast.

“When you say out looking for supplies, what are you referring to?” Riley asked.

Rodrigo shrugged. “Whatever we can find. Supplies aren’t unlimited here. We’d be lying if we said they were. They’re good‌—‌good enough to last the hundreds of people here many months. And we have our own supply of electricity and stuff, so that’s a positive. But I get the feeling we’re in this a lot longer than months, you know?”

Riley nodded. Enough supplies to last a few months. Not like the barracks. Not forced into cannibalism.

Not yet.

“Where exactly do you go looking for supplies?” Anna asked. She fiddled with the white bandage around her head, adjusting it to make it more bearable.

“Silverdale. Only there’s not so much left there now. Morecambe. Good clean route with very few zombies on a good day. Plenty of supplies there‌—‌batteries, propane for the backup gens, food, water. Entertainment, too. Got to entertain the people in here.”

“And it’s Morecambe where your men are pinned down? Where…‌”

“Where Claudia and Chloë are?” Anna finished Riley’s question for him.

A single nod from Rodrigo. “Stuck in some old amusement centre on the coast. Aaron’s lucky he got back here in one piece. And he made the right call coming back to alert us. Give us chance to…‌‌to get down there and bring those men back.”

“You sure that’s the right call?” Pedro asked. He seemed to be getting a little bit too familiar with Rodrigo in his speech and mannerisms. “I mean, two blokes surrounded by a bunch of goons. They worth the petrol?”

Rodrigo turned and peered into Pedro’s eyes. “Those ‘two blokes’ have wives back here. Wives, children. What am I supposed to tell their wives? I’m sorry, Mrs. DeWitts, Mrs. Peters, but we aren’t going to fuckin’ bother looking for your husbands…‌‌your‌—‌your daddy, because we don’t have the manpower? When we do. That what I’m supposed to say?”

“I’m just saying, that’s all,” Pedro said. His eyes focused on the table. The crackling of the white noise continued to buzz from the television.

Rodrigo loosened his collar. “I dunno what shit went on before you got here, and I don’t care how you did things, but we don’t leave no-one behind here at Heathwaite’s. We coulda left you behind, couldn’t we? But we didn’t. ‘Cause that’s not how we work. Don’t leave no-one behind. Understand me?”

Riley wanted to pull Rodrigo up for his double
double
negative but figured now wasn’t really the appropriate time.

“So, what?” Anna said. “You send more of your men out there to bring back two nearly-deads? You put another family‌—‌another wife, another child‌—‌under duress just because you have a hunch that these men of yours might not be dead yet?”

Rodrigo lowered his head. Cleared his throat. For a brief moment, his eyes met Riley’s and Riley knew exactly what he wanted.

“He doesn’t want to send any more of his men,” Riley said. “He asked us if we’re any good with a gun. He wants us to be his little guinea pigs. Isn’t that right?”

Rodrigo lifted his head. His cheeks were red and his jaw clenched. “Don’t take that tone with me, boy. Don’t fuckin’ think about it. I just figured you’d want to take a look down at that wreckage up the coast. Your friends, the women. I dunno. You three seem tight knit. Figured you could pay your respects to your friends while you were at it.”

Pedro rolled his eyes. “Spare us the bullshit, mate.”

“Okay, okay,” Rodrigo said, growing twitchy and agitated in his seat. “Mainly yes, I’d rather you go out than my men. You know how to handle yourselves. And like you said yourself, I don’t want to have to put any more of my people in jeap‌—‌”

“Why are they always ‘your people’?” Anna asked. The smile on her face hid whether she was playing devil’s advocate or genuinely curious. Probably a bit of both.

Rodrigo grumbled and tapped his long, dirty fingernails against the wooden table. “Such an inquisitive bunch of bastards, you three. Like, next level inquisitive. Need to watch less TV. But I dunno. Maybe I care about them. Maybe I give a shit. Is that so hard to believe?”

Riley stretched out his leg. It was still stinging, but sitting down certainly didn’t help. He needed to get back on his feet. The fresh air could do him good, anyway.

And he needed to know that Claudia and Chloë were gone. He needed to see them for himself.

And if their mission did succeed, maybe he’d be in the good books of Rodrigo after all. Could help should supplies ever run low some day in the future.

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “While…‌‌Well, respectfully, I like this place. It’s just I’ve barely been here a day. I’m not sure I’m ready to go back out‌—‌”

“I’ll do it,” Riley said.

Anna was silenced. Pedro raised his eyebrows. Rodrigo’s twitchy smile moved back into place.

“But your leg,” Anna said. “You could barely walk when‌—‌”

“My leg will be fine,” Riley said. He rose to his feet and put pressure on his right leg, which ached, but it was stitched up and in much better condition than it had been. The shrapnel was gone, too, which made for a pleasant bonus. “If none of us go, we’ll never know what happened to…‌‌to Claudia and Chloë. And…‌‌and Rodrigo’s right. These people. The people in the caravan site. You’ve seen them. They’re…‌‌Well. They’re normal. They have normal responsibilities. They’re used to doing normal things. Us, we’ve been outside those gates. We know the outside of those gates better than anywhere. And if it does go wrong, we know we can survive out there if we try. It should be us.”

Pedro whistled and picked something from his yellow teeth. “You’ve changed your tune. But whatever. I’m in too.”

Pedro was right. Riley had changed his tune. He wasn’t completely sure why, and he definitely did not one-hundred percent trust Rodrigo, but there was something about this place. A false illusion of normality curtained over the top of it, like an invisible bubble of security. These people, the women, the kids, the dogs, they didn’t deserve that illusion to come crashing down on them, not just yet. Because it would be places like this where the world rebuilt itself. A place built on such simple principles and foundations, there had to be other places like this around the country‌—‌around the world‌—‌if this outbreak really was global.

“I guess that leaves me with very little choice,” Anna said. She removed her bandage, which covered a large cut on her forehead, and rose to her feet.

Rodrigo looked at them all in turn, slowly, examining them with concern. Then, he too rose to his feet, and held out a hand to Pedro, then to Anna, then to Riley.

“Sorry to drop this shit on you right away. But there’s plenty in it for you, I swear. If you come rollin’ back through these gates with those two men of ours, you’ll prove yourself to the doubters in this place.”

“Doubters?”

Rodrigo raised a hand and shook his head. “Sceptic bastards who think we should start shuttin’ the gates. But that ain’t anything for you to worry about. Especially not if you go out there and give this a shot.”

Riley looked at Anna. He looked at Pedro. Both of them nodded their heads. Both of them sighed, too, but it was a sigh of inevitability more than anything. Back on the road again. Just one last trip, then they could come back here and…‌‌shit. They could be safe. They actually could be safe.

Fuck. He really had been won over by Rodrigo’s little tour after all, hadn’t he?

“I’ll get Stevie and Aaron to load the truck up. They’re good guys. Ignore Stevie’s lip, though. He can be a bit of an arrogant prick, but he’s a good kid at heart. Any questions?”

Riley stared back at Rodrigo. He scanned his head for questions. He had plenty of them, but none of them seemed appropriate. None of them except one.

“Your real name isn’t Rodrigo, right?”

Rodrigo’s smile dropped. The corners of his mouth twitched. Just for a few seconds, but just enough for Riley to register it, and just enough for Rodrigo to register that Riley had registered it.

Then, in the space of a second, the smile returned to his face. “Another long story for another time. I’ll get Stevie and Aaron to load up the truck. Meet me out the back down through the doors on the right in ten minutes.”

Rodrigo waved, then turned around and walked down by the side of the bar and through the double doors at the end of the room.

“He is a secretive piece of work, I’ll give you that,” Anna said.

Riley stared at Rodrigo’s shadow as it grew smaller and smaller before disappearing out of sight.

“The world ended. If everybody knew each other’s secrets, humanity would finish itself off completely.”

Chapter Four

Riley leaned back against the seat in the rear of the van. Once again, they were in a trailer at the back, only this time the sides of the trailer were taller, more protective. And there was an open window between the trailer and the driver’s area of the van, where Stevie drove, and Aaron, the young man who’d given Rodrigo such panicked news, directed.

“And there was me thinking we were going to get some bloody rest,” Pedro said. He had his arm leaned on the side of the trailer and was staring out at the road. Countryside became village. Village led to a main road. As they got further on their journey, the more bodies they saw. Creatures. Dead bodies lying on the road. All of them scattered, not in strong enough a group to pose any real danger. But all of them a reminder of the real world outside the gates of Heathwaite’s Caravan Park. The real world that was right on their doorstep.

“I’ve resigned myself to never resting again,” Anna said. She scratched at the cut on her head, which had visibly scabbed over now she’d removed the bandage. “But the place. The caravan site. It’s alright, right? I mean…‌‌you know how sceptical I can be about these things. For me to think it’s alright, well. That must count for something mustn’t it?”

Riley didn’t respond. He stared out over the side of the trailer. He looked at the leafless trees as the van drove past them. Leafless trees that bodies hung from, choosing death ahead of turning into creatures. A man. A woman. And a child. All of them with ropes around their greying necks, all of them swinging from side to side in the chilly winter breeze.

“I just fucking ‘ope we’re wrapped up when the snow comes,” Pedro said. “We’re lucky we found shelter when we did.”

“Partly lucky,” Riley said, turning back to face Pedro and Anna. “Claudia and Chloë. With them, we’d be very lucky. Without them, well. Only partly lucky.”

Anna’s head lowered. Riley felt instantly guilty for mentioning Claudia and Chloë, like Anna and Pedro were supposed to constantly dwell on them. Like they weren’t allowed a moment or two of happiness‌—‌of relief‌—‌after surviving.

“Riley’s right,” Pedro said. “Let’s celebrate and count our chickens when we’ve got this done with.” He banged his fist on the back of the driving area. “How long to go?”

Stevie rolled his eyes and muttered something to Aaron. “Not long. You got somewhere to be or something?”

Pedro’s cheeks blushed. He looked like he wanted to shout something right back at Stevie, but he must’ve remembered Rodrigo’s words about not rising to Stevie’s bullshit. Because that’s what Stevie was‌—‌an ominous little bullshitter. What Rodrigo saw in him, Riley couldn’t for the life of him figure out. But fuck‌—‌he was running Heathwaite’s. He must’ve known something the rest of them didn’t.