by Ryan Casey
“Nathan?”
“There’s no time for both of us,” Nathan said. “You need to climb out there.”
“Hey. We’re doing this together, okay?”
“There’s no more time, Aoife. Go. Go before they get up here. I’ll give you a leg up. But you have to try. And you have to do it now. Right now.”
Aoife stared into Nathan’s big, brown eyes, and she felt herself flashing back.
Harry, who she’d been unable to save from the burning bus yesterday.
Or from the people who beat him to death.
The guilt she felt.
The guilt that would prey on her thoughts for a lifetime.
Footsteps banging up the staircase.
And up the creaking ladder towards the loft.
“Aoife,” Nathan said. “Go. Go now.”
Aoife turned around.
Looked up at the grey clouds of the sky above.
Took a deep breath of the fresh, crisp air.
Closed her eyes and let that breeze hit her face.
“Aoife!”
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she said.
She pulled herself away from the exit.
Stood there, right by Nathan’s side.
Nathan glared at her. “What the hell?”
“I’ve been here before. Not again. We get out of here together. Or… or we don’t. But we do it together.”
The footsteps pounded up the creaking ladder.
Nathan stared at her, open-mouthed, speechless.
And then he closed his mouth as the tears glistened in the light from above, and he smiled.
“Together,” he said.
That’s when the loft door swung open, and suddenly they weren’t alone anymore.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Not another move,” the voice behind Max said. “Or you’re both finished.”
His stomach sank. Couldn’t fucking believe his luck. All this way, got this far, and actually formulated some shitty half-hearted plan, and bam. Someone stopping him right in his tracks.
And as he stood there, staring ahead at the estate, he felt two rival forces pulling against him. One side dragging him towards standing his ground and fighting.
But the other side of him feeling this sense that fighting was useless. That he was already too late. That he was too weak, and he was already caught, and there wasn’t anything he was able to do.
He looked around at Moira, who sat in the van. Saw her staring back at him, crouched down in the van. As far as Max could tell, whoever was behind him hadn’t noticed her.
The longer it stayed that way, the better.
“Raise your hands,” the voice said. “Slowly. I know who you are. Know exactly who you are. Saw you back at the house up in the hills. To be honest, considering how shite you look, I’m surprised you made it this far. Surprised and pretty impressed.”
Max gritted his teeth. He looked ahead. He had to shut the van door. He had to shut it, and he had to slide the knife over towards her. Because she was the only one who could do anything with it now. She was the only one who could help.
“Hey,” the man shouted. “I won’t tell you again. On your knees. Right this frigging second.”
“Okay,” Max said. “Okay.”
He glanced over at the van door again.
So close to it.
But did he have time to close it?
Did he have time to throw the knife Moira’s way before this guy noticed anything?
He gritted his teeth. His heart pounded. He went to take a step to the left when he heard a sudden rush of footsteps his way, and the next thing he knew, he felt a crack against his shoulder, and he was on the road.
“I asked you politely,” the man said, pinning him down, pressing hard onto his shoulders. He was strong. Really fucking strong. Or maybe Max was just feeling weak right now. Stood to reason. Whatever the case, he had him well and truly cornered.
“Now,” the man said. “We’re gonna get you on your feet, and we’re gonna get you over to James’ place, where your friends are. And then we’re gonna get you ready for the next step.”
“The next step?” Max said.
The man laughed. “The less you know about that right now, the better. But it’s gonna be just what you people deserve for what you’ve taken from us.”
Max tasted bitterness in his mouth. He suddenly felt a wave of sickness and nausea and wasn’t even sure he would stay alive long enough to find out whatever “the next step” was going to be.
But whatever it was, he didn’t like the sound of it. And he hoped now more than ever that Moira wasn’t spotted. That she kept a low profile.
Because they needed all the help they could get right now.
He felt the man’s strong hands pressing down even harder. His muscles were so weak, so sore. As he crouched there, the delivery van by his side, he realised the longer this went on, the more chance Moira had of being spotted.
So as much as he didn’t want to give up, as much as he wanted to resist, he had to get away from here.
To draw attention away from Moira.
To give her a chance.
“Just take me,” Max said.
“Huh?” the man said, his breath sour and pungent.
“Take me to where you need to take me. I’m done fighting.”
He heard a chuckle from the man behind him.
“Well, if that’s what you w…”
Shouting up ahead.
People running across the road into a terraced house.
“That’s James’ place,” the man said. “That’s…”
And then Max heard a bang.
He heard the man shout out.
He looked around, and he only had a few seconds to process what’d just happened.
The man was clutching his face.
The door was open even more. Looked like Moira had slammed it into him.
He had a moment.
An opportunity.
A chance.
He grabbed his knife, and he pulled it back.
“No,” Moira said.
Max stopped.
Held the knife as he stood there, the guy clutching his bleeding face.
Moira staring at him. Wide-eyed.
“No more killing, Max. We’ve seen enough killing. This isn’t us. There’s another way. A better way.”
The man lowered his hands from his bleeding face. He was short. Middle-aged. Looked normal, by all accounts. Just a normal bloke who’d been immeasurably changed by a rapidly transforming world, even in the space of just a couple of days.
And Max looked at him, and he felt his burning rage. He knew what he had to do. He knew killing him would be the easiest option. The cleanest option.
And yet…
The fact he was thinking that way scared him.
He looked into the man’s bloodshot eyes and held his knife. Tight.
Then he took a deep breath.
“In the van,” Max said.
“What?”
“I said, get in the van. Now!”
The man shook his head as blood trickled between his fingers. “You’re gonna regret this. When James gets back, he ain’t gonna be happy with you.”
“James isn’t coming back,” Max said. “Now get the hell in the van right this second, or I won’t go as easy on you.”
The man turned around. Shook his head. Looked inside the van, Moira standing beside the door now.
“In the van. Right now.”
“You don’t need to do that, Simon.”
A voice.
A voice from in front of the van.
A voice that sent shivers up Max’s spine.
He turned around, and he saw him.
And he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
Cody’s dad, James.
Standing right there.
Dried blood covering his face.
A nasty gash in his head, where he’d fallen.
But standing her
e.
Alive.
And behind him emerged more residents of the estate.
Residents including Sam’s dad.
And…
Shit.
“What was that about James not coming back?” he asked.
But Max didn’t hear James. Not properly.
All he could focus on was Aoife.
Nathan.
Knives to their throats.
“I think it’s about time we settled this shit once and for all,” James said. “Don’t you?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Aoife saw Max and Moira right up ahead, and her stomach sank.
Especially when she saw James standing between her and them.
She’d been dragged out of the house along with Nathan. Literally pulled down the stairs for trying to escape. Her face was sore. Shit, her entire body was sore. She felt battered and bruised, completely exhausted, completely ground down, and worn out.
She didn’t know how much fight she had left in her.
She didn’t know if there was anything left to even fight for anymore.
All she knew was this situation she was in right now wasn’t good.
It wasn’t good at all.
She felt the cold, sharp knife against her throat. She wanted to turn around, wanted to check Nathan was okay. But every single move saw that knife nick at her neck even more. It was sharp. It stung like mad. And truth be told, she wasn’t even sure if the people here cared if she ended up cutting her throat or puncturing her jugular at all. It was probably just all on her, in their eyes, and whatever accidental shit happened, well, happened.
She looked over at James as he stood there, blood congealing on his head. He looked like he’d been in some shit. Been through some shitty situation or other and narrowly got out of it alive. Had to assume he’d come to blows with Max and that somehow, he’d wormed his way out of it.
But it didn’t matter how she spun it anymore. It didn’t matter how she looked at things or how she tried to think her way around things. It didn’t matter what she tried to come up with, what she tried to figure out.
She was here.
They were all here.
And they were going to face the consequences of their actions, once and for all.
James stood there. He didn’t say much. The bulk of the rest of the estate was out here now, too. Some of them were angry. Some of them were shouting things. Some of them were throwing things. She felt the wrath from the gaze of every single one of these people.
And she got it. She saw it from their perspective. She and her people were the outsiders, and they’d come here and killed residents of a tight-knit community. Two children, no less.
And because of that, despite the intricacies of the situation, facts were facts.
Violence was violence.
And justice would be served.
“Well,” James said, walking from side to side. He looked a little shaky. A little wobbly on his feet. “It’s nice to have everyone together for a change. And on our turf, too. Because the last time we tried to have a proper, fair conversation about what went down up the hills, it didn’t exactly go to plan, did it?”
Max sat there. Wordless. Fuck, he looked rough. Looked so damned pale. Aoife wasn’t even sure he was going to survive this whole ordeal. He needed medical attention. ASAP.
He’d needed medical attention ASAP for a long time.
“Nothing to say?” James said, walking from side to side. “Really? After the things you’ve done? After the people you’ve killed?”
“We’ve been through this already,” Max said.
“What was that?”
“I said we’ve been through this already. Bad things have happened. Real bad things. But they’ve happened on both sides. Fact of the matter is… if your kids hadn’t come up our way, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. Not saying it makes it right. Not saying I don’t regret some of the shit that’s gone down. But your son murdered one of our people, too. And he would’ve killed more if he hadn’t been stopped. So get off your perch right now and look yourself in the mirror. Because right now, we’ve got bigger problems than our own conflicts. We’ve got survival to think about.”
Silence followed. Total silence for a few long seconds.
And as Aoife crouched there, she wanted to shake her head. She wanted to scream at Max to stop talking. Because she’d seen the look in James’ eyes, and she’d seen the look in the eyes of so many of these people, and she knew they weren’t the kind of people who were going to take nicely to being lectured.
But Max wasn’t stopping.
“So you do what you have to do. Whatever you have to do to help you sleep at night. To help you feel stronger and feel better about yourselves. But my people. My friends. And my dog. You leave them alone. Whatever problem you’ve got, you take it up with me. The rest of them… you don’t lay a finger on them. ’Cause they don’t deserve it.”
A few more shouts. A few more hisses.
And then, out of the silence, a laugh from James.
“They don’t deserve it? Really? You see, I appreciate how noble you are. How honourable you are. But the way I see it, we’ve got two perpetrators. Two real guilty parties.”
He turned around. Looked right at Aoife and at Nathan.
“The girl killed one of our people. One of our friends.”
“My wife!” a man shouted, being held back by three other people. He looked pale and distraught. “My fucking wife.”
Another wave of guilt crashed over Aoife. The human toll of this conflict. And it terrified her, the whole thing. Because this was one day of lawlessness. One day without order. One day, so close to the beginning of the blackout, and already a taster of just how out of control things were going to spiral and how much worse things were going to get.
“And you,” James said, staring right at Nathan, so close to them both now. “You killed my son. You shot him, and you had a chance to save him. But you didn’t. You failed him. And for that… there’s only one option.”
He walked over to Nathan.
Grabbed him.
Yanked him back and away from the man with the knife.
Dragged him into the road with power and force.
But Nathan didn’t fight back.
He didn’t beg.
He just kept his mouth shut.
He just looked over at Aoife.
Like he knew deep down, he deserved whatever was coming his way.
James booted him in the back.
Hard.
Moira let out a cry.
Struggled.
“My boy. Not my boy. Please!”
And as Aoife crouched there with the blade to her throat, she wasn’t sure what she could do or say.
She could only watch.
Tears building in her eyes.
James buried another boot into Nathan’s back. A crack of Nathan’s spine like a football being kicked really hard, echoing all around the estate.
A few people wincing.
Turning away.
Some shaking their heads.
But most people watching.
Anger in their eyes.
Not liking what they were seeing but letting it happen.
Because he was a kid killer.
And in their eyes, he deserved this.
“Please,” Moira wailed. “My boy. My boy…”
James pulled his boot back. “Nothing to say, huh? Nothing at all?”
Nathan just kept his mouth closed.
Tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Nothing at all?”
James pulled back his foot.
Went to kick Nathan’s head.
And then he stopped.
He stopped, and he held it there.
Time stood still. Just for a moment.
Everything stood still, waiting for that killer blow.
But then James put a foot on the floor.
He cleared his throat.
Brushed his hair back.
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“No,” he said. “This is too easy. Far too easy. Because I can see the guilt in your eyes. I can see the guilt in your eyes, and I want you to beg. Because that’s what you deserve. I want you to feel the pain of losing everything, just like I’ve felt it. Just like so many of us have felt it.”
Nathan turned around. Face bloodied and bruised.
And for the first time, a look of panic in his eyes.
“Bring her over,” James said.
Nathan frowned. “What?”
“Bring his mum over, right this second,” James said.
Aoife’s stomach sank.
Her fear intensified.
The horror of this situation felt like it turned up a notch, all in that instant.
The man behind Moira started dragging her over.
Max tried to break free of the grip of the guy holding him back, but with no use.
And all Aoife could do was sit there and watch as Moira got closer.
As Nathan shook his head.
Fear in his eyes now.
Not acceptance, but fear.
James looked down at Nathan, and for the first time in a long time, he smiled.
“Now we’re going to see you really suffer,” he said. “For what you did to us.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Max saw Nathan and Moira lying there in the middle of the street, James standing over them both, and he couldn’t deny the sense of fear he felt inside.
He could hear shouting. He could hear feet shuffling. He could see a mass of people—twenty, thirty, possibly more—all gathered around and watching. And there was this weird feeling to the whole scene. This weird sense that society had taken a huge step back into old times. Like this was a coliseum, and they were all spectators.
All hungry for blood.
And looking over at James, Nathan, and Moira, there was a real sense of inevitability. A sense that there was no changing what was about to happen. As much as he wanted to resist it, as much as he wanted to fight it, as much as he wanted to help, there was a deep sense inside that he was watching something that he couldn’t stop, that he couldn’t change.
Like he was on some shitty rollercoaster and staring down at the drop, unable to get off the ride, unable to resist. Forced to witness and experience it all.
James stood there. Moira and Nathan kneeling on the road before her. A little further back, Aoife, looking on, wide-eyed. And Max felt this protectiveness over her, too. He wanted to get her out of this. He wanted to do something—anything—to get them both out of this.