by Casey, Ryan
After all, the sacrifices they had made were all for something greater than them. Greater than all of them.
He glanced at his watch again. Four minutes to go.
Then looked up at all those helicopters. At all the people inside them. Heroes. Warriors, that’s what they were. Warriors sat on the edge of something truly great. Warriors primed for something new.
And he smiled. Smiled with pride. Because they were the true heroes in all of this. And they would be remembered. They would certainly be honoured.
It was almost their time to shine.
He looked back, looked around at the mess hall where his people had all eaten so recently. There were a few people still left here. The ones watching base. The ones who were going to help contribute to the set-up of one of the bases, over near Manchester.
He felt proud of them, too. Felt truly honoured to be in their presence.
He was witnessing history. And he had a front row seat to it all.
He looked back down at his watch. Two minutes now. Time went so slowly when you were waiting for something. When you were truly on the brink of something. Nerves tingled in his stomach. A part of him wished he were going out there, too. Out into the skies. Out to watch the new world unfold before his eyes.
But it was his duty to stay here. It was his duty and responsibility to watch over the people in his presence. The people in his company.
It was his responsibility to oversee the building of the Safe Zone over at Manchester.
He’d studied the plans so many times. Seen the walls they intended to erect. Seen the flourishing communities they intended to cultivate inside. There was an argument they didn’t need to build walls. That people didn’t need pinning in.
But George knew that wasn’t the case.
It was better to keep people confined.
It was better to keep them in one place.
It was easier to control them that way.
The illusion of freedom under the guise of control.
Democracy had been tried. And it had not worked. It hadn’t ever worked.
So it was time for something new.
And the people would just line right up and accept it. They would queue right the hell up, and they would take it.
Because it was in their best interests to take it.
He thought of Noah, then. Smiled. The perfect bonus. The perfect capture. He’d been meaning to destroy him at first. After all, he was in tune with the virus. He was the virus. Which meant he was dangerous.
But... no. Much like smallpox, it helped to have a trace of it left. It helped to keep some back, to hold some back in case it was needed again in future.
And Noah was going to act as the perfect protective measure against any rival nations or groups.
Against anyone who dared stand up to the world they wanted to create.
Noah was their trump card.
He felt a buzz.
Looked down at his watch.
Saw the time.
7 p.m.
And then he heard something.
A rumble.
A sudden rumble of engines kicking in.
Of rotors whirring.
Of the helicopters coming to life.
Of Phase Three, beginning.
He took a deep breath as he stood by those windows, smiling.
And then he watched as the first of the helicopters lifted from the ground.
It was time.
There was no stopping it now.
There was...
That’s when he felt a tingling sensation, right across the back of his neck.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kelly sat against the wall at the back of the van and braced herself for the end.
It was pitch black in here, so there was no point keeping her eye open. Nothing to look at. Nothing to see. Nothing to find. The van had stopped moving a while ago now. Probably pulled up by the side of the road somewhere, left her for dead. She didn’t for a minute believe this person speaking to her via some megaphone, whoever the hell he was, and she didn’t believe him when he said he was going to protect her. How could she believe him when she’d just almost choked to death? When Bruno had almost choked to death?
And besides. This bollocks about Noah. About how they were keeping her and Bruno alive as a hook to make sure Noah served them.
She hoped to God he wasn’t an idiot about this. She hoped to God he wasn’t falling for their crap.
Because it didn’t really matter what happened to her. Not anymore. Don’t get her wrong. She loved living. Much fucking preferred being alive than the thought of being dead.
But she’d fought her battle. She’d done what she could in this fight.
And now Noah had a chance.
He’d been captured by those people. So regardless of whether he felt strong or weak or whatever, he better be fucking fighting right now.
Even if it meant bad news for her.
She opened her eye. Felt tears down her cheek. She wasn’t sure why she was crying, as she stared into the darkness, or what she was crying for. Probably crying for herself more than anything. Crying at how things had played out. How things had ended so abruptly, after so much fighting. All this fighting and she wouldn’t even know for definite whether Noah had succeeded or not.
She patted Bruno’s fur. Ruffled it, scratched his head. Listened to him sighing, his tail wagging and thumping the van wall.
“I know, lad,” she said. “I know. Not where we wanted to end up, was it? Not how we saw things ending. I know.”
She looked around the inside of this dark van, and she thought about how she might know if Noah had succeeded after all. She supposed they’d probably gas her again. Because if they gassed her, it meant Noah wasn’t complying somehow. It meant he was trying.
“So hurry up and make them fucking gas me,” she said. “Don’t be a fucking wimp. Don’t be your old self. Be the Noah we all know you can be.”
She put a hand against her belly. Thought about her last night with Noah. She knew it was probably insane, but she kept on thinking of that second chance at life. That second opportunity of raising a child and wondering whether this might be it. There was no fucking evidence to prove it, of course. No way of knowing for definite.
But she just had a feeling. A weird feeling. The same weird feeling she’d had when she’d slept with Eddie all those years ago.
She smiled when she thought of Eddie. Felt another tear roll down her cheek. “You idiot,” she muttered. “Why did you have to go and be such a fucking idiot?”
She shook her head. Eddie had done wrong. But she’d long ago learned to forgive him. He’d saved her life. Saved Edward’s life.
He’d more than redeemed himself in her books.
She went to close her eye again when she heard a rustle and crackle.
It was just a small crackle. A small burst of static. And for a moment, she thought she was going mad. Thought she was going insane.
But when she listened closely, she heard it again.
Someone was shouting on the other end of that radio.
“Stop him! Fucking—”
And then the radio went dead.
Kelly sat there. Heart racing. Bruno tilting his head by her side.
And then a smile stretched across her tear-laden face.
“He’s doing it,” she said, wrapping her arms around Bruno. “Your dad? He’s doing it.”
She sat there. Held on to Bruno. Smiling. Crying.
And then, out of nowhere, the hissing sound emitted from the walls of the van, and that poison cloud crept into her lungs.
But this time, she didn’t struggle.
This time, she sat there.
This time, she smiled.
Come on, Noah. Come on…
Anton went to take a left towards Manchester when he felt pressure behind his eyes.
He shook his head. Just blocked sinuses. Nothing more.
But that pressure.
It felt like
someone was inside there.
Like they were tightening their grip.
Like they were…
That’s when he tasted blood.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Noah closed his eyes, clenched his fist, and sunk into that void.
At first, there was only darkness. Like the darkness behind your closed eyes when you’re in that state between asleep and awake. A rustling sound in his ears like he was underwater. Outside, he could hear movement. Voices. Engines. He knew it was time. He knew Phase Three would be underway. That it would be beginning.
But he wasn’t going to let that happen.
He was going to stop it.
If it was the last thing he ever did.
He saw the figures in his mind’s eye. Splashes of light illuminating his mind. He saw them all in their helicopters, sitting there, preparing to depart. He saw the figures in the mess hall. Saw the ones who were left behind.
He saw them all, and he felt that barrier. That barrier between him and them. That barrier stopping him getting to them. Stopping him reaching them in the way he reached so many others.
But there was still a crack in their shields. A break in their composure.
An opportunity that he sensed he could exploit at any given moment.
If only he could try harder.
If only he could work faster.
If only he could—
A bolt of pain, right through his skull.
That resistance. The same resistance he’d felt with the Greys on the road. Something holding him back. Suffocating him. Stopping him taking another step.
And that bolt of pain. It felt like death. It felt like a vice grip, tightening ever tighter. It felt like if he pushed any harder, his head would explode, and then there would be no hope left. No chance of stopping Phase Three. No chance of saving the damned world.
But fuck. What was the alternative?
Giving up?
He wasn’t giving up.
He wasn’t a motherfucking quitter.
He clenched his jaw and pushed himself against that pain. Felt another bolt of energy. Another cracking punch, right to the base of his skull. He tasted blood. Felt his heart racing. Remembered Iqrah. How she’d harnessed the virus and ended up destroying herself.
But how necessary her sacrifice was, in her opinion.
How she’d done exactly what she’d had to do.
He thought of the bravery she’d shown, and he thought of the task ahead of him, and he felt himself pushing even harder.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll stop it. I’ve got this.”
He found himself drifting closer to that void, then. But there was a problem. The helicopters. He could feel them rising away. Feel them drifting away. Feel the people in there getting further and further from him.
And it felt in a weird way like there was something inside him that could reach out.
Something inside him that could explode.
Something that could spread far, far further than he’d ever imagined, ever envisaged.
Something…
A crack.
A pain. Right against the front of his skull.
Only this time, it wasn’t inside him.
This time, it was outside.
He opened his eyes.
George stood there. Pistol in one hand.
In the other, that tablet computer. The one with Kelly and Bruno on the screen.
“Not another fucking move,” he said.
Noah looked back at him. Immediately, instinctively, he felt that resistance. He felt that desire to protect Kelly and Bruno kicking in. That instinct to prioritise them over everyone, even though he knew the stakes for the entire world involved here.
George narrowed his eyes. Kept that pistol pointed at Noah. “I told you already. It won’t work. And for even trying? Oh, boy. They are going to suffer for you even trying, my friend. You’ve made a mistake. A big, big mistake.”
Noah looked up into George’s eyes. And for a moment, just for a split second, he detected something in him. Fear. Pure, undiluted fear.
A smile stretched across Noah’s face. He let out a laugh.
George frowned. “Something funny?”
“Just something you just said.”
“Well I’m glad you find me amusing,” George said. And then he looked at the tablet. Hovered his thumb over the button, the one that emitted that poison gas that left Kelly and Bruno choking.
Noah looked at the screen. Looked at Kelly, sitting there in the dark. At Bruno sitting there in the dark.
And then he looked back at George, and he smiled. “You’re the one who’s made a big mistake,” Noah said.
George frowned. “What…”
Noah closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sunk right into that void.
And this time, he let all of himself fall into it.
He heard shouting opposite.
He felt things. Being punched. Being kicked.
He heard it, and he felt it, but he wasn’t really connected with it. He was someplace else now. Somewhere different entirely.
Somewhere more powerful.
He saw George, illuminated in his mind’s eye.
He saw the helicopters departing.
And then he saw more, too.
The people in the mess hall.
And then the light of survivors, all around, further away.
He saw all these people, felt all these people, and he heard a voice in his head, whispering into his ear.
“Resist nothing,” it said. “Resist nothing.”
He wanted to back away. Wanted to run from it.
But then he just opened his eyes and stared it all right in the face.
He felt the energy surge inside him.
He felt the light fill his body.
And then he thought of Jasmine, of Eddie, and of Kelly, Baby Edward in her arms. Barney and Bruno by their sides.
And then, as a tear rolled down his cheek, he smiled.
“I’m ready now,” he said. “I’m ready.”
And then he let out a cry and fell right into this void of light.
Chapter Forty
At first, there was the suffocation.
And then there was the darkness. The sense of sinking. Like quicksand was dragging her down, swallowing her whole, threatening to pull her away from this existence and into whatever lay beyond.
And then there was the light.
Kelly opened her eye. Above, she saw brightness. Her first thought was some kind of explosion. Some kind of nuclear explosion. Something she couldn’t explain. Didn’t really understand why she’d come to that sort of conclusion; it was just a feeling she had. A gut feeling. A sense.
But when she squinted further; when she rolled around, mumbling, light-headed, unfocused, she realised something.
It wasn’t any kind of explosion.
It was sunlight.
She opened her eye further, as much as it stung like a bitch to do so. She was outside. Lying on the snow. A few specks of snow peppered down, but it was a far cry from the blizzard of the last few days now. It felt calmer, somehow. Far more peaceful.
And yet there was something to the air. A sense that something wasn’t quite right. A sense that…
Noah.
She lifted her head. Sat upright, as much as it hurt her back to do so.
She was in the middle of a road somewhere. No idea where she was. Only reason she knew it was a road was the old cars, covered in snow, just mounds in the landscape.
And then there was the black van beside her.
She looked at it. At its back doors, ajar. A blot on the landscape. And although she didn’t understand how she’d got out of there, she knew deep down that it was there she’d been.
Someone had helped her.
Someone had taken her out, right when she thought everything was lost.
Someone had…
She heard shuffling behind her and froze.
She turned around. Slo
wly. Unsure of whether she even wanted to see what was approaching, who was approaching.
When she looked, she saw Bruno.
He sat there. Panting. Wagging his tail.
Before him, a man lay.
Kelly stood up. “Bruno? What you got there?”
She walked over to him, gingerly. Every footstep hurt. She felt like she’d been asleep for years and only just woken up from a coma or something. There was a sense of questions unanswered. Questions that felt like they’d never be answered. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t understand.
She walked over to this body of the man, and then she stopped.
He stared up into space. Absent. His eyes were wide. Blood trickled down his nostrils onto his grey jacket.
As she stared into his wide eyes, at his pale face, she knew this guy had to be something to do with the van. He had to be something to do with her escape from the van—an escape she still couldn’t wrap her head around, still didn’t understand.
But there was also that memory. That sense, as she’d sat there in the darkness, that Noah was fighting.
That knowledge that for them to be pumping whatever compound or poison they were into the air she was breathing, Noah had to be fighting for her.
She walked away from the man. Over to the van. Peeked inside the back of it. Didn’t want to get too close, just in case.
She looked into the darkness. Heart racing. Everything so silent. So quiet.
She walked around the front of the van, then. Peeked inside the driver’s windows.
There was nobody in there.
The door was ajar.
She frowned. The man lying there in the snow. Was he the driver? It made sense.
But again. Why was he on the snow?
Why had he helped her?
She went to step away from the van when she saw something.
A little monitor on the front of the van. A dashcam. A relic of the old world.
An idea came to mind. She climbed inside the van, across the seat, which was still warm. Fumbled with the dashcam with her shaking hands. Rewound back, back past the moment she lay there in the snow, back past the moment the man lay there, too.
And then she saw it.