by Ryan Casey
But now she was here… she felt even more disappointed. She felt angry. Because Mike had lied to her. He’d told her that her daughter was alive. And for a moment, she’d trusted him. For just a moment, she’d believed in him.
But then she had to suppose that she’d not told the total truth to him, either.
“What shall we do with him?” Gareth asked.
Sonia turned around. Looked at the man sitting there on his knees, gag around his mouth. Bleeding heavily from a wound in his back. He looked remarkably… calm. Composed. Like he was ready for whatever was about to follow.
She looked at him, and she thought about all the parts she could take off him. All the pieces of him she could tuck into, that she could eat.
But something was holding her back.
Something was telling her to hold back, just for now.
She looked back outside. Back at the gradually lightening sky. She wondered if maybe there could’ve been some truth in what Mike had said. Maybe Gina had been here. Maybe her daughter had been here.
But… no.
That wasn’t possible.
That was never going to happen.
Gina wouldn’t be alive. She wouldn’t have made it.
She turned around and walked over to the man when Peter appeared at the door.
“Sonia,” he said, panting. “I—I saw her. Saw her out there.”
Sonia frowned. “Saw who?”
“You know who. The one—the one you’ve had me looking for. The one you’ve had me scouting. It’s—it’s her, Sonia. It’s your daughter.”
Sonia wasn’t sure how to feel. A whole mixture of complex emotions stirred up inside her. Delight. Confusion. But also fear.
“And you’re sure?” she asked. “You’re sure what you saw? Who you saw?”
The man shrugged and nodded. “I can only say what I think I saw. A girl. Looked a hell of a lot like you. Skinnier. Younger. Might be wrong about all of this, but… yeah. Can’t ignore what I think I saw.”
Sonia’s heart pounded. Because suddenly it all felt so possible. Suddenly it all felt so real.
And if it was… then that meant she had to stop her.
She had to protect her.
She had to stop her getting away.
“Which way was she heading?” Sonia asked.
“No mistake about it,” Peter said. “Right towards the helicopters. Right towards the extraction point. Couldn’t be more than an hour or two from it.”
The tension in Sonia’s chest built up. The urgency.
Because she couldn’t have her Gina getting away.
She couldn’t have her Gina getting to that place.
Not because it was evil.
Not because it stole women like she’d told Mike and so many others.
But because it did the exact opposite.
And she couldn’t have her Gina growing.
She couldn’t have her developing.
Not without her.
She needed her mother.
She was going to find her.
She walked over to the door. Looked outside. Took a deep breath.
“An hour or two from the extraction point, you say?”
Peter nodded. “Yeah. But moving. And moving pretty quick.”
Sonia cleared her throat. “Then that’s where we go.”
She took a step outside.
“What about him?”
She looked back. Looked at the man. The one who had been in here. The woman had got away, apparently, but he’d sacrificed himself. Taken a knife to stop her fleeing. His wide eyes. The gag around his mouth. The fear on his face.
She walked up to him. Crouched opposite him. Looked right into his wide eyes. And she saw something in them. Defiance. But also, acceptance.
And that made what followed a whole lot easier.
She put a hand on his shoulder.
Then she leaned in towards his ear.
“I’m sorry it has to end this way for you.”
And then she kissed his cheek and buried her hand into his stab wound.
She heard him wince. Heard him cry out underneath his gag.
But all the time, she just kept burying her hand deeper into that wound.
All the time, she just kept opening it up, opening it wider, blood covering the floor of the cabin, drenching her hand.
And when she was inside, she dug her nails in, and she squeezed.
More pain.
More agony.
More fightback.
But she didn’t feel anything.
Anything at all.
Because this was just who she was now.
She switched herself off and jammed her hand deeper into this man’s wound.
And eventually, when she was done, when he’d stopped crying, stopped gasping… she pulled out her hand.
The man flopped to the floor.
Dead.
She sighed. Stood up. Wiped the blood and fragments of skin and flesh from her hand.
Then she looked back at the trees and the rising light peeking through them.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s time to find my daughter.”
Alison crouched in the bushes, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She could only watch as Ian shouted out. As he cried.
She could only watch as this woman stepped to the door.
She could only watch as Ian dropped dead in the background.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mike followed Calvin through the woods and wondered how the hell he’d got himself into a situation like this.
The sun was beginning to rise. The sky was turning a clearer shade of dark blue. The rain had stopped. The wind wasn’t too strong, either. It seemed clear. Restful.
Which worried Mike more than anything.
He watched Calvin as he walked in front of him. Watched him focusing on the path ahead through the woods. The way he seemed focused on what was ahead. Focused on every step, on every turn.
And Mike wasn’t sure how to feel about this. He wasn’t sure how to feel about any of this.
Only that weirdly, he found himself trusting him.
As contrary as it was to every instinct he had, he found himself trusting him.
Arya was walking alongside him. Even she seemed curious about all of this. It was as if she remembered. Remembered the injustices done against her in the past. Remembered that this was the guy who’d killed Holly.
And sometimes it hit Mike, too. Sometimes he wondered how Calvin was still alive. Sometimes he wondered how he’d allowed him to survive so long.
But then he thought about Kelsie. He thought about Gina, about Alison, about Ian. He thought about them, about where they might be, about what kind of place they could be heading towards the jaws of right now.
And as much as he didn’t want Calvin here, as much as he didn’t want him around… Calvin was the only person who knew where this place was.
Well. Other than Gina.
“So you’re telling me you had absolutely no idea that this place you’ve been leading us towards wasn’t what it seemed?”
Calvin looked back. Smiled, just a little. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to say a word.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Okay. Okay. No. I told you. I overheard a group saying which direction they were heading. I followed them. Saw this place.”
“So why didn’t you just go to that place? Why didn’t you just save yourself?”
Calvin looked like he was thinking about this. Like he was really thinking it through.
And then he looked right at Mike. “I’ve nothing to live for anymore. My family are gone. My… my people. They are gone. I’ve got nothing. Nothing but memories. Nothing but the demons. Nothing but the ghosts of the things I’ve done.”
A silence, as they walked. A pause.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is… I figured all I had to live for was a chance to… to make up to you. A chance to make things… better. Just a little
. And maybe it could’ve killed me. Maybe it still will. But I hope… I hope it won’t.”
Mike couldn’t really believe what he was hearing. On the one hand, he detected honesty to his words.
But on the other hand…
“You think you can make things right?” Mike said, his voice cracking. “You—you think after what you did there’s a way you can fix things? A way you can just magically make things better?”
“I’m not saying I can fix what I did.”
“Good. Because I wouldn’t want you believing that for a moment.”
“I’m not saying I can fix what I did,” Calvin continued, disregarding Mike’s words. “I’m just… I’m just trying to say in my own way that if I could take back what I did, I would. And if… if you make it out of this world, well, I just hope you’ll remember it. I hope you’ll remember that in the end, I did something good. Because I’m sorry Mike. I’m sorry.”
Mike’s emotions were in turmoil. He didn’t know what to say, what to think. Because on the one hand, that anger. That lust for revenge. All of it running strong.
And then on the other…
Something else.
Something… deeper.
“Let’s just get to this place you’re leading me to,” Mike said. And just as he realised he was sounding a little shook… he found his defences rising again. “But don’t… don’t go getting ahead of yourself. You can’t talk me out of what you’ve done. And you can’t talk me out of what I want to do to you—”
“My daughter would’ve got on well with yours, you know?”
Mike didn’t know what to say to this. Because on the one hand, again, he wanted to silence Calvin. He wanted to stop him. Because he was manipulative. And if he gave him an inch, he’d lose a metre, or however the saying went.
But then Calvin had mentioned his daughter. Something he hadn’t mentioned before.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Mike said.
“You wouldn’t. Nobody at work when you were there would. She… she died. Rare heart condition. The worst part was, she knew something was wrong. Marfan Syndrome, they called it. She had a few of the physical features. Tall. Slender. Concave chest. A few things like that. But we always just dismissed her. Always just told her she was imagining things. We should’ve listened. ’Cause one of the big symptoms of Marfan is what it can do to the aortic valve.”
Mike didn’t want to feel any sympathy. He didn’t want to feel a shred of sorrow for this man.
But he couldn’t help feeling that fatherly sense of sympathy. Of empathy.
Because he knew what it was to lose someone.
“It… affected things, let’s say. My marriage. But more than anything, my outlook. It made me more detached. It made me more…”
“Vengeful,” Mike said.
Calvin looked at Mike. And for a moment there, as the sun continued to rise, he thought he felt something that made him feel more uncomfortable than anything. He thought he felt something that got to him more than anything else.
He thought he felt a connection.
He was about to keep on walking, to keep on going, when he saw Calvin glance away.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” he said. “Truly. Especially… especially after we’ve come so close. Especially after we’ve made so much progress. But I just can’t trust you. You understand that. Right?”
Mike frowned. “What—”
But it was already too late.
Calvin pulled out a knife.
He dragged it back.
And then he buried it into Mike’s stomach.
Chapter Forty
Alison wasn’t sure how long she’d been running through the woods, totally alone, when she finally fell to her knees.
The sky was pretty much light now. The weather was better—stiller—but the ground was still wet from the torrential rain. She’d been walking for ages without seeing a soul. She was kind of expecting to have seen somebody now. A trace of somebody. Gina. Mike. Arya.
But she was out of luck.
She felt totally alone.
But something struck Alison as she continued to wade through the woods. Something hit her—hard. The loneliness. The feeling of being totally on her own here. She didn’t feel as bad about it. She didn’t feel darkness surrounding it anymore. She felt… well. More at ease with it. As much as it was difficult to live with the thought that everyone was gone. As much as it was hard to accept that she had gone from being surrounded by people she cared about to being alone again.
As much as she couldn’t get what had happened to Ian out of her mind.
She kept on walking, but her legs shook a little when she thought of Ian. She remembered the way he’d thrown himself at those people. Remembered the way he’d told Alison to get away while she could.
She remembered the way she’d seen the knife plummet into his back, and then not being able to do anything other than run.
She remembered sitting outside and watching from a distance. Watching that woman. Watching her do… well, whatever she was doing to him.
And then she remembered watching him die.
And she hadn’t been able to do a thing.
Once again, she hadn’t been able to do a thing.
And she wondered if maybe she’d made the wrong choice. She wondered if maybe she should’ve gone back there. Tried to help Ian. Tried to get him out of that situation. Gone down with him if she had to.
But at the same time… the fact that she’d got away was important.
Because she could focus on finding the rest of her people.
But as she walked, she couldn’t get the final thing out of her mind.
The woman. The long ginger hair. She’d thought for a moment she was Gina, nearly turned around, nearly went back for her.
But then she realised it wasn’t her. Just… somebody like her.
Very much like her.
She thought about Gina. About what she knew about her—her past in particular. About her family. Gina had just told her that her parents were away. That she felt… like she’d grown away from them.
Alison didn’t know what to make of it, really. Didn’t know how to interpret it. She knew kids had issues with their parents. But the way Gina spoke about hers, it was different. Like she really didn’t want to reunite with them.
She could understand, though. That feeling that her parents were repressing her, somehow.
It seemed deep. It seemed stark. But at the same time, she knew that things weren’t always as simple as they appeared on the surface.
She waded further through the woods when she saw it.
First, the helicopters. Then the walls around that place.
Then the unmistakable presence of people.
There were lots of people. More people than she’d seen in any one place for a long time.
And then the military. Military people moving around like ants.
There was no denying what this place was.
There was no uncertainty about it anymore.
This was their key out of here.
Their key away from here.
This was their key to a new world.
She went to take a step, but that’s when the next thing took hold of her. The next realisation.
There was somebody standing in her way.
Right in her way.
A man.
And he was holding a knife.
He wasn’t facing her. He was facing the other way. But one thing was for certain. He looked more like the people who had attacked her and Ian in the cabin than the people down there at that extraction point.
Which made Alison want to react in a different way. Which made her want to act before he had the chance to.
So she lifted her screwdriver out of her pocket and crept through the mud towards him.
The closer she got, the more she grew tense. The more she felt like she was going to slip over, face flat to the ground.
But she had to keep her calm. She had to ke
ep her breathing steady. She had to keep her composure.
She edged closer, closer, screwdriver in hand, spinning it around over and over.
And then something happened.
Two things.
First, the man ahead.
He looked around. Looked right back at her, in an instant, just like that.
But then Alison noticed something else.
He wasn’t looking at her anymore. Not right at her.
He was looking past her.
At someone behind—
Before she had the chance to spin around, to react, she felt a heavy thud against her head.
She fell to the ground. Fell, face flat. Her ears rung. Her head stung. Her reactions felt hazy, blurry.
She tried to turn around, tried to spin over so that she could react.
But then she felt a boot against the side of her head. Hard.
She was on her back now. Staring up above. Staring at the sky. Stars in her eyes.
And she could see someone.
Someone standing over her.
Someone vaguely familiar.
The woman from the cabin.
And as Alison lay there, she realised she did look like Gina. A lot like Gina. To the point that she was almost certain she was a relation.
A mother.
She leaned down to Alison. Put her hands around her neck. Started to tighten her grip, to squeeze, her hands getting tighter to the point that Alison was struggling. Struggling to breathe. Struggling to do anything.
She opened her mouth. Tried to speak. Tried to say the word. The one word that might help her. The one word that might get her to stop.
“Gina,” Alison said. “Gi… Gina.”
She saw something then in this woman’s face. A frown. Like she didn’t understand.
And then she heard something else.
A voice.
A voice right beside her.
“Mum?”
The woman looked around.
Loosened her grip on Alison’s neck.
Alison gasped for air, gathered her strength, gathered her composure.
And then she looked around, too.
When she did, she saw her.