by Ryan Casey
And there was the taste of blood in the back of her throat, too.
She didn’t notice it at first. But now, it was strong. Metallic. And her head ached like mad, too.
Something had happened. Something at the insurgent camp. Something with that man, Yuri…
Only… no. That’s not how it’d gone down.
They’d got away from that place. She, Kayleigh, and those who came to their rescue, too. They’d got away. They were so close to home, and then…
She remembered.
Insurgents emerging from the woods.
Stabbing her people.
Stabbing Cole.
Turning around with her rifle, fear paralysing her.
And then feeling something smack her on the head, total darkness, and then…
Well. This.
She tried to turn around. She was gagged. Sitting upright from the feel of it, too. In some uncomfortable-as-fuck chair, forcing her spine totally erect.
Her wrists were tied behind the back of the chair. Ankles, too. Not an unfamiliar position to be in. She’d been captured and trapped a bunch of times since the power went out. It was almost becoming routine at this point.
But it never got any less scary. After all, she knew she wasn’t meant to make it out of situations like this. Nobody captured someone like this and intended them to escape.
But she had to. Her life depended on it.
She thought of Kayleigh, and her stomach sank. She didn’t know what’d happened to her. Whether she’d met the same fate as the other people she’d watched die. She wanted to shout out for her in some slim hope that she might be close by, but she knew it was useless. And she was gagged anyway, so what good would it be?
She pulled her wrists apart, hard as she could. Then tried her ankles. No luck with either of them. The darkness was getting more and more intense; more and more intimidating. She knew she needed to get out of here. For whatever reason, they’d kept her alive.
She hoped to God they hadn’t kept her alive for the same reason as so many despicable men kept women alive in times of conflict…
The thought of it made her want to vomit.
She pulled even harder at the ties around her wrists, but no luck. The more she pulled, the more she wondered if they were solid handcuffs wrapped around her. Which meant she was in an even shittier mess than she’d first imagined.
She tried yanking her ankles apart again, hope dwindling at this point.
But then she felt something.
The ankle ties. They weren’t as solid as the wrist ones. They felt looser somehow.
She yanked at them again, tried to pull them apart.
And she realised whatever was around them was loosening.
Rope.
Only loosely tied, too.
She sat there a few seconds, almost in disbelief. It seemed bizarre they’d go to the lengths of tying her up in here only to fail to tie her ankles properly.
But she couldn’t get caught up in that shit.
At the end of the day, she couldn’t overthink things. She just had to get the hell out of here.
She pulled at the ties even more. Pulled harder and harder, until eventually, they just fell away.
And then she stood up.
Dragged her handcuffed arms from behind the chair.
Tried to shake free of her blindfold, but no use.
She crouched down. Pulled at her blindfold against the edge of the chair. Heart racing. Hope rising.
She was getting out of this.
She was finding Kayleigh, and she was getting the hell away from this place.
She dragged the blindfold against the chair, trying and trying, desperate to just see so she could be less disoriented, so she knew exactly where she was.
She kept on trying, but the blindfold was tight, hard to shake free.
She heard footsteps outside.
Someone approaching.
She had to be fast.
She had to think quick.
She had to get out while she could.
She dragged the blindfold against the side of the chair again when it fell back.
Darkness.
Only not as dark as the one she’d been plugged into behind the blindfold.
She could see.
She looked around the room. Dark. Empty. Grey. Dismal. Just that one chair, right in the middle. Looked like she was in some kind of emptied-out, dusty old garage.
She went to turn around and figure out her best way out of here when she saw someone standing there in the darkness.
Someone familiar.
Serious expression on his big, bearded face.
“I don’t think so,” Yuri said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aoife saw Yuri standing opposite her, and immediately her stomach sank.
It’d been a trick. The whole fucking thing had been a trick. He’d been standing there the whole time. Watching her struggle. Watching her trying to break out.
And why?
She didn’t know why. Only that she saw the way he was looking at her. Staring at her. That serious look on his face. A serious look that never shifted.
“I’m sorry for how you ended up here. But you didn’t really expect me to just let you go after what happened, did you?”
Aoife couldn’t speak. She was still gagged. Her wrists were still tied behind her back. But she could see now, and her feet were free, so that was something at least.
She looked around the room for a way out. A chance to dart. A chance to break free.
“The door’s locked behind me,” Yuri said. “You can look all you want. Have a wander if you fancy. If it’ll make you feel better. But trust me. You might as well save your energy ’cause there’s no way out of this place.”
Aoife wanted to look anyway. Wanted to search every inch of this room. She’d got out of shittier situations before.
Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe this was the one she was finally going to find herself trapped in, once and for all.
She stood there with her gag around her mouth and stared at Yuri as he stood with his hands behind his back, peering at her in the darkness.
He walked towards her slowly. “For someone who knows exactly what they’re responsible for, you’re looking awfully confused about why you’re here.”
Knows what she’s responsible for? What the hell was he talking about? Sure, those Sanctuary reinforcements had come in and murdered a bunch of his people. But if it weren’t for the attacks from the insurgents in the first place, that shit would never have happened. They could have lived in peace.
“But you know,” Yuri said, walking closer to her, “I’ve started to think. To really, really think about something you said yesterday when we captured you.”
Yesterday? Shit. Had she really been out that long?
He walked right up to her. So close to her now. She could smell the sweat and slight sourness to his breath. Only this time, as he looked her in the eye, she saw a glint of something she hadn’t seen before. Was it a tear? A trickle of emotion?
He reached up and grabbed the side of her head, and for a moment, she thought he might just slam her skull against the solid floor.
But he didn’t.
He pulled her gag away.
She coughed. Coughed so much she heaved, then vomited bloody bile, crouching there on her knees.
But she didn’t want to stay down. Didn’t want to portray any sort of weakness to this monster.
She looked up at him. Shaking. “You have some fucking nerve.”
He smiled. For the first time, he actually smiled. “I have some nerve? You’re the one with nerve. Creeping on into our camp. Having my people surrounded and slaughtered. Then having the audacity to look me in the eye like I’m the one with the problem?”
“None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t attacked our people. If you hadn’t terrorised us for God knows how long.”
Yuri stopped walking towards Aoife. He shook his head, staring at her bla
nkly. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“I know all I need to know about you.”
Yuri looked in his own world. “At first, I thought you were bluffing. I wasn’t sure. I thought about killing you, just like we always kill you. But now I see… you’re being sincere, aren’t you? You really don’t know?”
“I know you killed my friends. I know you’re a bunch of selfish, bitter people who can’t bear the fact that we have what you don’t. And I know I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done.”
“All this time and I’ve had it wrong,” Yuri said. “Totally wrong.”
“What the fuck are you blabbing on about?”
He looked back at the door. Again, like he was in a world of his own. Then he looked back at her. “I don’t know how to say this. And I know you’re not going to like what I have to say. But I have to start somewhere. Somebody has to start somewhere.”
“You can start by telling me my friend’s okay. That Kayleigh’s okay.”
“Oh, Kayleigh,” Yuri said. “Kayleigh is just fine. Don’t worry. We’re taking good care of her.”
Aoife didn’t like his tone, the way he said that. She launched up. Walked over to him. Squared right up to him. “I might be cuffed. But I’ll find a way to get to you. I don’t need my hands to make you suffer.”
He searched her eyes closely. That flat expression to his face once more. Then he took a deep breath through his nose, sighed. “Nobody’s going to be fighting anybody. Not today.”
He turned around. Walked over to the door. Turned a key and then opened it. A noisy rusty sound of metal on metal echoed around the damp room.
“I’m not the villain you think I am.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen what you are for myself.”
“You keep saying you’ve seen things. You keep insisting I’m this, and I’m that. But you haven’t, have you?”
She saw him look back at her. Saw that look in his eyes.
And then she thought of the children she’d seen.
“You talk about seeing. About how so much of your faith is in what you’ve supposedly seen. Well, how about you follow me and come see for yourself a different version of events?”
A chill crept up Aoife’s spine. “I don’t understand.”
“Follow me, and you will. Or are you just too scared to see the truth?”
She stood there. Caught between two worlds. On the one hand, she wanted to stay put. She didn’t want to move a muscle. Because she was afraid. Afraid of what she might see. Afraid her whole world might come tumbling down all around her.
“Join me. And you’ll be able to comment on what you’ve seen then.”
She took a deep breath.
Clutched her fists.
Stared at that open, dark door, right before her, right beyond Yuri.
She didn’t want to move.
She didn’t want to go.
But she knew she had no choice.
She took another deep breath, and she walked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Follow me,” Yuri said.
Aoife stood at the garage door. Yuri stood ahead of her, right in front of that dark void that led back outside. She didn’t want to go out there. She didn’t want to see whatever it was he wanted to show her.
Because she had a bad feeling.
A bad feeling that whatever it was might fuck with her worldview.
That he had something momentous, and it was about to change her mind about everything.
She thought about the children she’d seen. The innocent people. And part of her started to wonder.
What if there was more to that than she first thought?
What if there was more to it than there seemed to be?
But… no. They were insurgents. They’d put Sanctuary through hell. It didn’t matter what Yuri told her or what he showed her. Nothing changed that.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me drag you out.”
Aoife swallowed a lump in her dry throat.
She looked down at the concrete floor and took a deep breath.
She figured she didn’t have a choice.
She walked out through the door. Her wrists still bound behind her back. As she stepped outside, she realised it was dark. The only light from the flickering flames of the fires all around this camp.
She looked around the camp. Squinted. She could see people. More people than before. This place looked different to the one she’d reached last night. They must’ve moved her somewhere else. It was more urban somehow, even though there were still trees around. Some kind of log cabin site, by the looks of things.
The people stared at her as she walked past, Yuri right behind her, hand on her back. She could see them whispering to one another. Shaking their heads. Looking at Aoife like she was the enemy. Like she should be looking at them for the things they’d done.
“Keep moving,” Yuri said. “We don’t have all night.”
Aoife turned from the people and walked. Walked past more of those cabins. And now, she was really getting an insight into the scale of this place. The number of people here. They didn’t exactly look well-armed. But there were a lot of them, and she could see how this number of people could be a force to be reckoned with.
She turned around and saw where Yuri was leading her, and her stomach sank.
The woods.
Out into the woods.
Her heart picked up.
He was going to take her out into the woods and do God knows with her.
She felt her jaw tensing, her teeth grinding against one another. She didn’t know why she was so sure something bad would happen in those woods. If Yuri wanted to kill her, he’d do it right here, in front of his people.
But something just screamed at Aoife that the woods didn’t mean anything good. It never did.
“Go on,” Yuri said. Narrowing his eyes and staring right at her.
“Kayleigh,” Aoife said. “I want to… I want to know she’s okay.”
“You have my word.”
“And I’m supposed to just accept that? Believe that?”
“You don’t really have a choice.”
Aoife wanted to argue, but she figured he was right. She didn’t have a choice. Wherever Kayleigh was, she had no power right now. She had no options right now.
Just walking towards those woods. Towards where Yuri wanted her to go.
She looked back at this community. At the camp the insurgents were living in.
Took a deep breath.
And then she turned around and walked towards the woods.
She hoped the sight of that insurgent camp wasn’t the last thing she saw.
She kept on going for a while. Stumbling over a few times, Yuri propping her up, helping her to her feet. He didn’t say much. And when she tried speaking to him, he didn’t respond.
“How much further?” she asked.
Nothing.
She walked further into the woods. Deeper in. Over a stream, cold water freezing against her bare ankles. Above, the moonlight beamed down.
“If you’re going to kill me, just tell me. Just… just tell me so I can at least fucking prepare myself.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Yuri said. “Not yet anyway.”
“Wow. Reassuring.”
“Not my job to reassure you. Anyway. It’s right here. Right up ahead. Then you’ll finally see for yourself.”
She swallowed a lump in her throat. Squinted ahead. “I don’t see anything.”
Yuri walked in front of her now. Walked right up to two small trees growing from the ground. Looked down at them. And looked transfixed by them. So transfixed that Aoife wondered if she might actually be able to run away.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Yuri looked over at her. And in the brightness of the beaming sun, she saw something unexpected.
There were tears in his eyes.
“What…”
It suddenly dawned on her, then.
These weren’t just any old trees.
They were crosses.
Two little hand-made crosses in the ground before her.
“What… what is this place?” she asked.
Yuri sniffed. Wiped his eyes. Cleared his throat. “This… this is where I buried my boys. My Ross. My Ben. This is where I buried them after he killed them.”
Aoife frowned. “I… I don’t understand—”
“I had an affair with his wife, Caroline. We… we fell in love. Harvey didn’t accept it. Went full psycho. Caroline and I had the boys. He had a restraining order against his name. We didn’t hear anything for years. The power went out. We lost Caroline. My dear wife. And then… and then when I was walking up to Sanctuary, trying to find a home for my boys and my people, I saw him. Saw him standing there. And I knew my hopes were dead.”
Aoife shook her head. She still didn’t get it. Still didn’t understand. “Who was standing there? Whose wife did you have an affair with?”
“Harvey,” he said. “Harvey killed my boys. He killed my boys, and he told me to stay well away from Sanctuary. He did this. Don’t you see? This is who he is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“I… I don’t believe you,” Aoife said.
Yuri shrugged. “Believe what you want to believe. These are my sons’ graves. I’m not going to dig them up just to prove myself to you. But you should know what kind of a leader you’re serving. You should know that Harvey isn’t the man you want him to be. And the very foundation of your home is built on a violent lie.”
Aoife stood outside the garage she’d been locked up in. It was just her and Yuri here, in a nice spot just outside a small village where it looked like the insurgents were camped out right now. Right amidst a thick bunch of trees, there were two little crosses. Two little mounds of earth.
And etched onto those wooden crosses, two names.
Ross.
Ben.
Rain sprinkled down from above now. She couldn’t stop staring at those graves. She tried to tell herself this couldn’t be real. That the tale Yuri told had to be a lie.
Because Harvey. Harvey wasn’t a monster. A child-killing monster.