Bloody Introductions

Friday

This isn’t Casey’s.

The light burned from somewhere above, stark and imposing, searing the back of Caede’s eyeballs. She groaned, screwing her face up in torment as she tried to squirm away from the glare, twisting her body over until she could no longer see it. Her forehead rested on something sharp and gritty. It hurt. Everything hurt. The ground beneath her lurched, rising and falling, so cold she could barely breathe, as if she had been caught by a tide and swept out to sea. A pounding began somewhere deep inside the back of her head. Nausea followed. She lay still, eyes clamped shut, muttering curses at no one in particular.

Shadows danced in and out of her periphery, teasing glimpses of the night before. She didn’t recall having anything to drink, but there it was, the-day-after agony, and there she was, freezing her arse off somewhere unfamiliar with a head full of storms, and a mouth full of bile. Finally, she opened her eyes and the grey stone slabs beneath her shifted into focus. She was outside, lying on a cold, hard pavement.

This isn’t Casey’s.

The thought carried more urgency this time. She must have left the pub at the end of her shift without issue – without having to frog-march out any of the locals, or deflect Danny’s invitations to go upstairs and stay the night – so why was she outside, asleep on the pavement? How long had she been here? And where was here, anyway? She tried to stand and failed. Numb and leaden in the bitter autumn air, her legs wobbled and collapsed, sending her sliding back to the ground. Panic rose from her guts and burned the back of her throat. She gulped it down, telling herself that it was just the cold.

She flexed her frozen fingers, coaxing the warmth back into them, one by one. Pins and needles followed, shooting up her arms, tingling her skin as the blood began to flow. She did the same with her toes, then her feet, then her legs. After a few minutes, she had warmed enough to sit up and rest on her knees.

The pavement sharpened and blurred with every blink as she sat waiting for her head to stop throbbing and for the nausea to pass. A frigid breeze snaked around her, and she shivered, clutching her cardigan tightly against her skin – as if the flimsy thing could provide any warmth. She couldn’t tell if it was just condensation lining the thin wool fabric, or if it had been raining in the last few hours. Typical if it had. It was always bloody raining. And despite the clear sky now, the air sat heavily around her as if more would soon be on its way.

It had been dark when she left the pub. Hadn’t it? Where was her coat? No answers came. She put her hands to her head, finding a band of some sort clamped over it, and she pulled it down. It was a set of novelty pink bunny ears, forced on to her by Danny under the guise of uniformity, despite the fact that she despised dressing up, even for Halloween. Casey’s wasn’t even supposed to be open. The quarantine was still in place, and that included the closure of all pubs and restaurants, but the money had been too good to turn down. She threw the ears aside in disgust.

Her foot nudged something soft and wet, and the smell of rust hit her nostrils. Rust and something else – something metallic, unsettling and malevolent, hanging thick in the air like a fog. It smelled of rust and…rot. The throbbing in Caede’s head returned and peaked, exploding into searing pain. Bile bubbled in her throat once more and she fell forward, retching and heaving at the pavement. She reached for her face and found it wet. She lowered her hand and stared at the red liquid coating her fingers. The scent of metal struck again, and she looked up.

All around her were dead bodies.

They were strewn everywhere, sprawled across the pavement, contorted and lifeless as abandoned marionettes, their strings severed and left to decay in the wind.

A ringing noise filled Caede’s ears. The scenery blurred. She sat there, breath caught in her throat and eyes burning, unable to believe what was in front of her. So many people dead, and she was sitting right in the middle of them. Was it a bomb? Another terror attack? This was the outskirts. The suburbs. There was nothing important here. But it had to be a bomb. There was no other way to explain it.

Closest to her lay a man, his eyes staring vacantly up at the sky, nose bloody, lips dry and peeled back into an empty wail. Caede tumbled backwards, gasping, and landed on something cold and rigid. She turned to see her hand resting on the greying torso of a woman lying face down on the ground, brown leaves and dirt entangled in her hair. Almost on top of her was a man in a jogging suit, headphones dangling from his bluing, bloated neck. Both of them lay still, oblivious to their surroundings.

Caede yelped and tried to scramble away. But another body – a man in a suit this time – blocked her path. He looked fresher than the others; his skin was still warm and deep brown, and not yet swollen. At first glance, he could have been asleep, but his eyes were wide open, and great purple welts and crimson gashes marred his face. His smart suit was dashed and torn, the soft grey fabric splattered with brown and red stains. Black hair that had once been gelled and waved now lay matted against his head, encrusted with blood. One of his eyes had no colour in its iris. It was as if he had been attacked by a wild animal. But what kind of animal could have done that?

Outstretched in front of him were the remains of his arm, broken and twisted, bent at sharp angles like the wing of a bird, shards of fractured bone protruding through purple skin. His hand was shrivelled and curled into a blackened fist, leathery and gnarled like an old glove. The nails on this hand were long and thick, almost like the talons on a parrot, or an eagle, or any bird-like creature.
Caede gagged and tore her head away. Where the hell were the emergency services? Who would you even call for something like this? Ambulance? The police? She glanced around for her bag, spotting it on the pavement a few feet away, just past the glassy-eyed man in the suit. She grimaced and crawled towards it, hands and legs shaking as she reached over him, the chill from the pavement biting her knees as bits of grit gnawed at her already laddered tights. Eyes closed, she snatched up the bag, clutching it to her chest as she rifled around inside for her phone.

Her fingers met the familiar leather case. With a click, it opened, and she stared at the phone screen. The date showed November 2nd, 2030. There had to be something wrong with it. The thing was rubbish anyway. Cheap crap, probably damaged after being left in the cold overnight. That seemed like a reasonable explanation.

She unlocked it and checked the screen once more. Only three percent battery left. It was fully charged when she left for work, how could it be so low now? Using the GPS to get home would be out of the question. She shouldn’t have needed it anyway, but with her head fuzzy as it was, navigating her arse from her elbow would have been impossible, let alone getting back to her house. It had to be a concussion. No other way to explain it. She rifled through the bag once more for her smartwatch. Danny preferred the staff didn’t wear them while on shift. They looked clunky, he’d said, and mentioned something about being on social media while working, despite it not actually having social media capabilities. And where was Danny now? The light on the screen flickered for a moment before dying completely. Shit. No matter. She couldn’t be far from home. The pub was only a few minutes’ walk from her house, and there was no reason for her to be anywhere else in the city. No, she wouldn’t need the GPS.

She returned the watch to her wrist to recharge, waiting a few seconds for it to absorb the tiny electrical current produced by her skin before it started back up. The time and date flickered briefly before disappearing back into the black square screen. 15:36, November 2nd, 2030. What? The phone wasn’t broken, after all. And that meant Kai had been left alone for two nights in a row. Two nights, all alone. She checked the phone again, flicking her thumb across the screen as she checked her recent calls list. There were over a dozen missed calls from him. Shit. What if it had been a terror attack? He could be injured, trapped in the rubble of their house, buried alive in the debris. Or worse. She checked the screen again. The calls had all been made on the night of her shift. Her face felt hot. Tears spilled down her cheeks and chin. Anything could have happened to him, and she would have had no idea.

Hands shaking, she held up the phone and said, “call Kai.”
The dial tone sounded, and the phone rang.
“Hello?” Kai answered.
Caede stifled a relieved sob and pressed the phone to her ear. “Kai! It’s me, are you okay? Are you safe?”
His reply came in a flurry of panicked squeaks. “Oh my God, Caedey! Where have you been? Have you seen what’s outside? You need to get home now! I didn’t know what to do. I haven’t tidied up, by the way.”
“Kai, Kai! Calm down,” she replied.
She lowered the phone and let out a long breath. Kai was alive. Alive and safe.
“I don’t think I’m that far away, okay?” she said. “I’ll be home soon and–”

The phone cut off; the battery giving up. Caede swore and thrust it back inside the bag. As she looked up, she spotted the street sign for St. Mary’s Road. The same St. Mary’s Road that joined the street to her own house. She’d been lying on that pavement, not two minutes from home, for God knows how long. Had she been there for two whole nights? A sharp, stabbing sensation took root just behind her right eye.

Shakily, she stood and began making her way over the bodies. First, the suited man, then a woman who lay face down with lank, brown hair, clumped and stained with patches of red. Caede swallowed the knot in her throat and looked away. Better to pretend they weren’t there for now.

She had taken only a few steps when a faint moan rose from somewhere beyond the pile. Caede whipped her head around to find the source, and a flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye. From a junction where St. Mary’s Road merged with the high street, next to some parked cars, a man moved. He was completely naked, and covered in what looked to be burns, his flesh taut and raw, and paper thin, veins visible and pulsing under the epidermis. One of his arms was clamped to his side, as if it had melted and become stuck there. With the other, he dragged himself painfully along the ground.

“Hello?” Caede called, heading towards him. “Are you okay? Oh my God, I thought I was the only one alive, I…” she trailed off.

Something wasn’t right. The man stopped moving and turned towards her, twisting slowly on the spot, shoulders leading, his head lagging behind as if his attention were elsewhere. When he finally faced her, he opened his mouth to speak. No sound came out. Instead, he fell forward, coughing, gagging, lurching violently. Out of his mouth fell a ribbon of reddened spit, then fleshy lumps of brown that collected on the ground at his feet.

The man needed help. But with no phone battery, and the nearest hospital half an hour away, Caede faltered. What could she do without a first aid kit? Get home, use Kai’s phone to call an ambulance, and let the professionals deal with him.

“Don’t worry!” she called. “I’m going to get you some help, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”
The man opened his mouth to speak again, but this time, a hissing escaped his lips. It was a cold, ghostly rasping that caught Caede’s foot midstep and danced shivers across the surface of her skin. The man was on the verge of death; she was sure of it. Urgency tugged at her, and she started towards him once more. Suddenly, the man began twitching and convulsing, as if in the throes of an epileptic fit, his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets as he shook on the spot. More red, then thick white mucus bubbled from his open mouth. The sound turned Caede’s blood to ice, and she found herself anchored to the ground, fighting the urge to scream. Then the man fell, landing heavily on the pavement, and lay still. She stared, hands clamped over her mouth, too afraid to move or speak. A few seconds passed.

Do something, she thought. Don’t just stand there. He’s going to die if you don’t–

Suddenly, the man rose. He didn’t push himself up with his arms. He just rose. The veil of pain was seemingly lifted from him too, as if he’d simply forgotten the damage to his body. Not a minute ago, he was barely standing. Now he turned his head this way and that, first up at the sky, then to the buildings, his eyes swivelling around, investigating the scenery before finally settling on Caede. The breath in her throat snagged as his gaze met hers. Instinct screamed at her to get away, to run, but her legs refused to move. The man tilted his head, regarding her like an animal inspecting its prey. Then he lunged.

Caede screamed. She must have screamed, though it felt as if no sound was coming out. And the scream seemed to shock the man, because he froze mid-step. Confusion filled his face, then upset, then pain. He raised his good arm to his head, eyes closed and face contorted, a cry escaping from his open mouth. Caede stepped back. Her shoe caught something and slipped underneath her. The world spun upwards as the back of her head met the ground, and suddenly everything was black.