Dead Days: Season 8 Part 25

He looked up, his jaw quivering, and he faced up to what he had to do.

He wasn't going to die here. He couldn't die here. So he only had one choice.

He had to get away from here and leave his mother's body behind for the zombies to... do whatever they had to.

He had to run.

He had to- He saw movement, then. The nearest zombie to him.

Its skull split in two.

Then the one beside it fell as well.

There was someone here.

There was someone helping him.

"Catch!" she shouted.

It took him a few seconds to register, but he realised the woman had thrown something to him. A knife. Small, but big enough to take out a few of the dead.

He stabbed a zombie in its temple, its wayward eyes flickering all over the place.

Then he got another, right over the head. And before he knew it, they were down. All of the zombies were down.

He stood there, a circle of zombies around his mum's grave, and he looked over at the woman.

She was wearing brown shoes, blue jeans, and a hooded waterproof jacket in blue. Ricky couldn't see her face.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She pulled back her hood, and he saw that she was missing an eye.

"It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is we get away from here and get to safety, fast. There's something coming. Something big. And it's heading in our direction."

Chapter Nine.

"Come on, Riley. I know it hurts. I know this isn't easy. But we have to move. Right now."

Riley eased off the edge of the table that he'd been strapped against until Melissa's arrival. When he moved, he realised his back was stiff, and his neck was aching like mad. There were sores on his skin, too. Sores that'd rubbed into him after however long he'd been tied up down here.

But nothing was worse than the stumps where the two fingers had been severed from his left hand.

Kane's last laugh.

"We have to get to Amy," Melissa said. "And the others. Your fingers. You think you'll be okay?"

"Kesha-"

"We'll get to Kesha. But Amy's locked down here, too. She's a few doors down. They probably heard my gunshot, though, so we don't have much time. Did you hear what I just asked about your fingers?"

Riley nodded. He still felt sick and dizzy from the pain, but he had to pull it together. He had to rescue Amy, Siobhan, and Carly. They'd come this far with him. They'd helped him. He couldn't just leave them behind to die.

He staggered towards the door and puked up right beside Kane. He felt better for it, in truth. Sure, it reeked, and sure, the taste was so bad it made him want to throw up again, but it was good to get it out of his body.

He felt like he was getting rid of all the badness that had been in his system, purging himself of the encounter, the showdown with Kane.

He looked at Kane's body, then. Every now and then, his finger twitched, and it made Riley's stomach turn with fear.

But then he remembered he couldn't show fear. If he felt fearful, then that meant Kane had won.

He leaned beside him and put a hand on his b.l.o.o.d.y face.

"I told you I'd have the last laugh," he said, staring into those piercing eyes. "I told you I'd win."

He closed Kane's eyes and he stood up.

Then, with Melissa by his side, the pair of them left the room, and left Kane on the floor, as alone in death as he had been in life.

They stopped when they reached the door. Riley could hear footsteps walking in their direction. Melissa still had a pistol, but he wasn't sure how much ammo she had left. He was holding a knife now, though, that she'd given him.

They waited as the footsteps pa.s.sed. They slowed down, right by their door.

"Swear it came from down here," a man's gruff voice said.

"Nah. It was further down. We're not to go in there anyway. That's where Kane's dealing with Riley."

"Kane?"

"That nutter. The one Mattius likes."

"Oh. s.h.i.+t. Yeah, he gives me the creeps."

Melissa turned the handle of the door slowly. Riley figured she didn't want to risk these people reaching the rooms where Amy, Siobhan, and Carly were being kept.

She stepped around the door slowly but surely. She lifted her gun, pointed it at the back of one of the two men.

Riley touched her arm, lowered it, and then nodded.

He crept towards the men. Kept his movement as swift and as fluid as he possibly could.

He picked up his pace as he got closer.

He stopped, then. He stopped because he thought the man had seen him. He thought he'd heard him. And at that point, there was nothing he could do but stay as silent and still as possible.

The man carried on walking.

Riley exhaled.

Then he lunged at the man on the left and stabbed him right in the back of his neck.

He heard him gargling as he fell to the floor. To his right, his friend turned around and frowned. "What-"

Two bullets fired right through his head.

He fell, too.

"We need to be quick," Melissa said, arriving at Riley's side. She joined Riley in searching the bodies for keys. "They'll definitely be onto us now."

"How did you even get out in the first place?"

Melissa's eyes narrowed, and they seemed to glaze over, like she was being transported someplace else. "Trust me. It's a long story." She lifted some keys out of the pocket of the man on the right. "This should do it."

They ran over to the first door on their right. Riley could hear footsteps and shouts outside. He knew they needed to be quick.

"Here," he said, grabbing the keys. "You watch. Hold off any that come our way. I'll try with this."

"You sure-"

"Just do it," he said.

He put the first key in. That didn't work, so he tried the next one. Then the next. All the time, he could hear the footsteps getting clearer, the movement getting closer.

He tried the next one, and when that didn't work, he started to lose hope.

Then the next one turned, and the door opened.

He rushed inside.

Amy and Carly were there. They were sitting up against the wall, cuffs around their wrists.

But Siobhan was dead.

"s.h.i.+t," Riley said. "s.h.i.+t."

He rushed over to Amy first and uncuffed her, and then he let Carly free. He didn't want to ask what had happened to Siobhan. He could tell from the stab wound in the side of her head, the blood trickling down onto her jacket, that she was gone.

"We need to move," Riley said.

"But Siobhan," Amy started.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But there's no time. We have to get out of here. And we have to get Kesha. While Mattius' people are distracted."

Amy looked at him and Riley realised something then, right at that moment.

He was sincere.

He wanted to get Kesha and he wanted to leave this place.

His l.u.s.t for revenge was gone.

He just wanted to survive, and he just wanted Kesha to survive.

"Come on," he said.

Together, Amy, Carly, Melissa, and Riley made their way out of that room, up the stairs and out of the door at the back of this cell area.

When they got outside, Riley saw the hotel in the distance right opposite him.

He saw the fifth floor, where he'd seen Mattius standing with Kesha that day a week ago.

He felt a little flicker of an urge for revenge deep inside.

Then that flicker faded, and he refocused on the task at hand.

Get Kesha.

Get her out of here.

Simple as that.

If only he knew what was looming on the horizon, over to the west...

Chapter Ten.

When Mattius walked down the steps towards the bas.e.m.e.nt area where he'd been holding his prisoners, he got a bad feeling right away.

The first thing that struck him was the blood. It caught his eyes and made his stomach turn. Because the sight of blood meant one thing was for certain: something had gone down. Something bad.

And he couldn't help wondering if that something had happened to his own people.

When he got further down the steps, his legs getting weak, like jelly, he saw the bodies.