Hassan couldn’t see the man’s face. It was nothing more than a silhouette in the dark, a silhouette made even more prominent by the moonlight. He recognised the voice though. The same voice as the guy who’d walked into that boat and imprisoned Cody and him just hours ago.

  Their leader.

  The leader of this smaller group of CoY people.

  “I told you there was gonna be questions,” the man said. “You know something. Something we’d love to know.”

  “Then why don’t you—why don’t you ask the question?”

  Talking hurt Hassan. It made his jaw ache and his body shake.

  But he had to hold his ground. He had to stay defiant.

  Dad always taught him to spit in the face of bullies and go down fighting.

  The CoY man let go of his hair. Backed away from him a step.

  And then he pressed the sharp, bloodied edge of a machete to Hassan’s neck.

  “Need to sort that attitude of yours, Paki. Always the same, you lot. Full of your fucking attitude. Same before the world went to shit, same now. Should get the fuck back to your own country and see how you cope there. I hear Pakistan’s been hit worse than anywhere.”

  The racist remarks didn’t hurt Hassan. He was used to them by now. He’d grown up in a rough area of Lancashire where there were very few ethnic minorities. And those that did happen to live in his area hardly accepted him. He was an outcast. Always had been an outcast, regardless of the colour of his skin.

  So it was water off a duck’s back.

  But sad to hear racism was still so prevalent in the minds of the crazy.

  “The place. The place you come from.”

  “Blackistan?” Hassan said, trying everything he could to maintain a dry tone and mock the idiocy of this no-brain.

  A chuckle from his captor. “No. I mean the place. The place with the walls. The place you come from. The safe place.”

  There was a silence. And the longer the silence stretched on, the more Hassan understood that’s what this was all about.

  The MLZ.

  They wanted the MLZ.

  They didn’t know the fucking state the MLZ was in.

  Hassan started to smile. But then he swallowed a lump in his throat. Tried to make it look like he didn’t know what they were talking about. He couldn’t be too open. Couldn’t be too obvious.

  “I—I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t bullshit us. We’ve seen you out scouting. Seen you with your weapons. Your women. Your children.” There was an awkward pause after children. “We’ve killed your men and you’ve killed our men.”

  “I think you’ve got us—”

  “I saw you on the wall,” the main guy doing all the talking said again. “Saw you with a rifle in hand. Saw you take down one of my friends. Dave, he was called. Good lad. Bit soft. But a good fighter. And all we wanted was to get inside. All we wanted was to… to settle down. To co-exist. You know?”

  There was no truth to the man’s words. Hassan knew what co-existing meant for these people. He’d seen the charred bodies. Found the victims of rape and degradation out in the woods. The CoY had been a lingering threat from outside for quite some time. An ever-present annoyance, just like the zombies.

  But they hadn’t been a real problem. Because inside the MLZ, his group had safety. They had walls. They had shelter.

  But there was no safe MLZ anymore.

  And that could work to his advantage.

  The machete came down on Hassan’s right hand. Rested on his remaining fingers.

  “It’s just the escorting we need,” the main guy said. His face was more visible now. A sinister smile covered his deranged face. “We just need taking there. Getting inside. Pretend you’re taking us in as one of yours or something. Then you two don’t need to worry about a thing. We’ll handle stuff from there.”

  “You’ll—you’ll kill our people.”

  The smile stayed etched on the main guy’s face. “We will. We will kill some of your people. I won’t lie to you. I’m not a lying man. But the best of your people. We won’t kill those. Don’t worry. We’ll look after them very well.”

  A sickly taste filled Hassan’s mouth. He knew this was it. He knew they’d reach the MLZ and find it torn to shreds. He knew life would be over for Cody and him then.

  But if he didn’t do what these people wanted, life would be over even sooner.

  Tell him the truth about the MLZ and die right here?

  Or tell a lie and risk dying when he got there?

  At least by delaying them, they had a chance.

  A small chance.

  “So the question,” the main guy said. “Are you gonna take us to our new home?”

  Hassan stared across the grass at Cody. Cody stared back at him. Two people stood by his side, dirty machetes in hand.

  Hassan shook his head. His hand throbbed. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “My… my people—”

  “Are you gonna take us to our new home?”

  “I can’t—”

  “I’ll ask one last time. Are you gonna take us to our new home?”

  Hassan closed his eyes. Took in a deep breath.

  Then he opened them.

  Nodded.

  Another guy—one who hadn’t spoken yet—stepped back into the light.

  “Good,” he said.

  It was then that Hassan saw him clearly for the first time.

  His cheekbones were narrow. His face was pockmarked. His black hair was thick and bushy.

  But the bushiest thing of all was the moustache above his top lip.

  “Boys,” he said.

  The two men behind Cody lifted him. Dragged him to the left. And then Hassan felt himself being lifted too. Felt himself being pushed over to wherever these people were taking Cody.

  “What’s—what’re you—”

  It was then that Hassan saw it.

  The hole in the ground.

  The shovel beside it.

  “Call it insurance,” the moustached man said.

  The two men in front of Cody pushed him down into the dirt.

  He landed right at the bottom of the earth.

  And then, in the darkness, they started to dig up the earth beside Cody.

  Throw it down onto him.

  Burying him alive.

  They buried him right up to his neck. Buried him with his hands tied behind his back. With his feet tied together.

  Buried him until he was nothing more than a head and a neck poking out of the dry ground.

  “Better hope the dead don’t get here tonight,” the moustached man said, turning around and sniffing the air. “But I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  Two men pushed Hassan forward. Made him fall to the ground, losing sight of Cody, who poked out of the earth so lost, so defenceless.

  “Now come on,” the moustached man said, leading the way out of the woods. “Time to take us boys home. But first, we need to get them fingers cauterised.”

  Someone grabbed his right hand.

  Pressed it down against the tree stump again.

  And in the corner of his eye, Cody saw one of the men walking towards him with a slab of metal.

  Heating the slab with a lighter.

  Edging closer to the bleeding flesh at the end of his severed fingers…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jordanna looked in the rear-view mirror at the fast approaching zombies.

  They drifted closer in the thickening darkness. Their groans grew more and more intense, more and more deafening. The smell was growing, too. Seeping in through the air conditioning vents inside James’ stolen vehicle. Well. Not so much stolen. Every vehicle was stolen nowadays. Something Jordanna was still adjusting to.

  “What do we do?” Jordanna asked.

  For a moment, Jordanna thought James was looking in the rear-view mirror just like her. But on closer inspection, she saw that wasn’t the case. He was staring forward. Staring wide-eyed into the distance.

  Staring at the bridge they’d cleared of cars just moments ago.

  Just moments before this car broke down.

  “James,” Jordanna shouted. The undead were just feet from the back of the car now. “We can’t stay here. We have to try something.”

  “We need the car.”

  “The car’s broken down. We need to get the hell out of here. Right this second. James! Are you with me?”

  James turned. Looked Jordanna right in her eyes.

  He opened his mouth as if to say something.

  And then he closed it.

  Nodded.

  He grabbed the car door. Climbed out of the car. Jordanna followed shortly after.

  She took a deep gasp of the stagnant air and ran as quickly as she could in the direction of the bridge.

  She could hear the approaching footsteps behind. Hear the crowd of zombies getting ever closer. She was tired. Hungry. Her legs ached. She knew she didn’t have much energy left in her.

  But she had to try. She had to keep on moving.

  Or she’d die here.

  She looked to her left. Expected to see James there.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was further behind. Struggling to keep up. Limping a little on his left leg.

  The zombies were closing in on him.

  “James, you… you need to hurry,” Jordanna said, panting with every step as she reached the edge of the bridge.

  James didn’t respond. He didn’t even fire any bullets back into the oncoming crowd of undead.

  He just kept on hobbling along.

  Kept on moving.

  Jordanna saw her opportunity. An opportunity to get away from James. An opportunity to escape, just like before.

  She could leave him to the zombies. Leave him to be torn apart by the undead.

  But no.

  That’s not what she wanted. That’s not what she did. James was her friend.

  She didn’t leave her friends behind.

  She ran back. Ran towards James, towards the approaching crowd of undead.

  “Come on,” she said, lifting his right arm and pulling him over her shoulder as much as she could to support his weight. “We need to get a move on. You need to shoot the ones that get close. Or I can—”

  “Just keep moving,” James said.

  Jordanna chanced a look over her shoulder. Saw the rotting faces of the undead. They made her stomach turn, just like they always did. “Just keep moving,” she echoed.

  They ran across the bridge as quickly as they could. Dodged the cars they’d pushed aside. Fuck. In hindsight, it’d have been better to leave the cars there as a kind of obstacle to slow the undead’s onset. If only they’d known the car was knackered and thought ahead.

  But they hadn’t. And this world wasn’t a world for reflection or hindsight.

  It was just about survival.

  They got to the middle of the bridge. And as they crossed that middle section, Jordanna saw the dark outline of trees approaching on the left up ahead. “We can go in there,” she said. “We can hide in there and lose them.”

  “It’s not where we’re headed.”

  “No,” Jordanna said. “No it’s not. But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

  Jordanna felt a sudden lightness invade her chest when the pair of them stepped over the threshold between the bridge and the land opposite.

  But when she saw more zombies approaching from the other end of the road, the relief was cut drastically short.

  She stopped. So too did James. They both stood there instinctively. Jordanna’s heart raced, and so too did James’, which she could feel pounding through his chest and into her body. Behind it, the hungry growls of the dead got ever closer.

  “We’re not gonna make it,” James said.

  “No,” Jordanna said. She started moving again. “We have to make it.”

  They ran towards the trees. Ran down the muddy slope. Jordanna saw the two sets of zombies in the corners of her eyes. And she knew how risky a move going into the woods was. It was dark in there. Pitch black. There could be anything in there waiting for them. Zombies. Or the Angries. Strange they’d only seen evidence of those back at the MLZ. She didn’t know why. Didn’t understand why.

  She thought about Riley and she hoped he was okay.

  Thought about Hassan, the way he’d snapped the night of the blood moon, and hoped he was still with them.

  They reached the edge of the woods. Jordanna looked over her shoulder. The two sets of zombies had converged and formed into one long group.

  One long fucker of a group heading down that slippery slope and into the woods after them.

  “No guarantee we’re gonna lose them in here,” Jordanna said. “No guarantee of anything. But we have to try, James. We have to try.”

  She went to move but James was completely still, completely rigid.

  “James?”

  He looked at her with narrowed eyes. That look of realisation creeping through his consciousness once again, just about visible in the moonlit darkness.

  “Come on,” Jordanna said. “We need to survive this. Both of us.”

  James didn’t move. Not at first. To the point that Jordanna didn’t think he’d move at all.

  But then he took her hand and ran with her, together.

  They disappeared into the woods. All light subsided. The moonlight was bright, but it didn’t break through the trees. Running in this place was nightmarish. Jordanna bumped into so many trees, tripped on so many snapped roots.

  She thought she heard voices.

  Thought she saw eyes watching her.

  Thought she smelled death in the trees.

  “We keep moving through the trees until we know we’re absolutely clear,” Jordanna whispered. “It’s not ideal but it’s all we’ve got. James?”

  He’d stopped again. And although Jordanna couldn’t see him, she knew he was panting. Shaking.

  “James?” She walked closer to him. Put a hand on his back. “What’s…”

  Light filled the woods.

  It blinded Jordanna. She didn’t understand it. Not initially. Not at first.

  But then she realised where it was coming from.

  James’ hands.

  A heavy-duty torch shining up into the sky.

  Filling the woods with light.

  “That might come in handy,” Jordanna said. She couldn’t contain the smile on her face. Even in the darkest, most desperate of situations, she couldn’t hold back the relief she felt at respite from the pitch black night.

  But then James shone the flashlight he’d found on the forest floor.

  There was a man lying there. His chest had been ripped apart. His eyes were rolled back into his skull.

  His guts were lying out of his torso, masses of bite marks covering their surface.

  Jordanna remembered the last time she’d seen someone in such a state. It was a memory she didn’t like to recall too often. Ivan. Ivan, and then all the people she’d watched die back at the MLZ when Mr Fletch’s army attacked.

  The wounds an Orion caused.

  Only there were no more Orions.

  There were no more…

  Shuffling.

  Shuffling in the trees behind James.

  Jordanna’s skin went cold. She looked past James. The flashlight made it harder to see in the darkness beyond him, the stage light effect.

  But there was something in those trees.

  Something moving.

  Jordanna’s heart pounded. She held her breath. Looked James in the eye and saw his gaze was wide too.

  So he’d heard it.

  He’d heard the movement.

  He moved slowly. Turned around. The torchlight revealed more of the forest floor. And as he turned it, Jordanna saw blood. Saw entrails leading into that long grass, into those trees.

  Then she saw more bodies.

  More bodies lying dismembered.

  Strewn across the dirt.

  She stared at the mass of death behind James. Stared at the fallen bodies lying atop one another.

  Her gut told her to get the hell away from here. To run.

  But more than anything, she didn’t want James to lift the torch.

  She didn’t want to see what was moving in the trees.

  What was rustling in the grass.

  Because it was impossible. It couldn’t be…

  But James did lift his torch. He lifted it quickly, swiftly, as if to get it over and done with.

  There was nothing in the trees.

  Stillness.

  Silence.

  Jordanna stared at the spot where she’d heard the sound. Her head was dizzy. Her breathing sped up.

  There was nothing in the glow of the torchlight.

  Which meant whatever was in those trees had moved.

  Whatever was in those trees was…

  Her thoughts froze when she felt the breathing against the side of her neck.

  When she saw the tar-like skin in the corner of her eyes, blacker than the night itself.

  When she saw the Orion.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cody never realised just how solid pure earth was until he found himself buried in it.

  The darkness was thick and constant. He had no sense of what time it was, only that it was night, and it was going to be a long night at that. His cheeks were cold and shivery, but the dry earth compressing him from the lower neck down was almost warming, in a sense.

  His mouth was dry. All he could hear was the chattering of his teeth.

  All he could see was darkness.

  Darkness and movement.

  He thought the movement could just be a trick of his mind at first. An illusion that always accompanies fear. And then he wondered if maybe it was just the wind. Just the breeze making the trees move and sway.

  But now, after being stuck in the earth for God knows how long, Cody wasn’t sure at all.

  He felt something tickle his neck. He twitched. Felt something creeping on him with little arms. A bug no doubt. An ant, or a spider. He felt his skin crawl when he pictured a little spider wandering up his neck. Always had a fear of spiders, right from being a kid. Old house his uncle Francis used to live in did it for him. He went to stay there one weekend when Dad was away on work—like he often was before his death. Uncle Francis decided it’d be a good idea to let the seven-year-old kid take the cellar as their room. Something spooky and cool for a boy to go home and tell his school friends.