by Ryan Casey
Dismembered legs. Arms. Hands.
And heads.
Fragments of skull and bone and flesh, all over the place.
Burning.
Charred.
And in the middle of this scene of exploded bodies, there was a large bloody pool where the explosion had splashed out and ripped through.
The source of the explosion.
A source she couldn’t understand.
But a source she couldn’t deny.
What was left of Harvey lay in several pieces, two of which were right before her.
Half of his head. Split completely in two by the blast.
And then his hand.
His hand, holding on to that necklace.
The explosion looked like it’d come from that necklace.
The necklace Yuri urged Aoife to hand Harvey.
But how?
How was that even possible?
Aoife stood up. Walked over to Harvey’s body. Waded through the smoke. Her head still spinning. The screeching in her ears getting louder and louder. The taste of blood growing more metallic, more intense.
And that crippling sense of dread getting all the more intense every single moment.
What had happened here?
What had happened?
She walked past discarded limbs. Walked past screaming children, some of them wandering along with their clothes burned, with arms dangling off. She walked past people running away in fear, right over to him.
And she stopped, right above him.
Stopped and looked down at that necklace.
Right underneath it, she saw a hole in the ground.
A hole that was filled with fragments of metal.
A hole that looked like it had housed some sort of bomb.
She stood there, sweating, barely able to breathe. The sound started to return now. She wished it hadn’t, in a way. Because she could hear more screaming. She could hear crying. And she could hear the pain that she couldn’t help feeling she had caused.
She looked down at that pendant. And then a sudden bolt of urgency struck her.
“Kayleigh,” she said.
She looked around. At the bodies first. Not wanting to see her. Not wanting to know.
But at the same time, knowing she had to.
Because Kayleigh had been standing right beside her.
She’d been standing right beside her, and now she was gone.
She looked around. Searched the bodies. Searched the dismembered hands. Saw the sparkling wedding rings glistening in the flames. Saw the dark blood all over the place. She saw the burst eyeballs and the vacant heads of people she used to know.
And she couldn’t help thinking she was responsible for this.
She’d come back here, and she was responsible.
But she couldn’t see Kayleigh.
“Kayleigh!” she shouted.
She stepped forward. Went to keep on searching for her. She had to be near somewhere. She had to know she was okay.
“Kayleigh!” she shouted, limping along. “Kayleigh, please.”
She staggered forward, head spinning, sounds screeching now. She could hear something else. More blasts. More explosions. Gunfire. Over at the south wall.
And she knew something was happening. Something big.
She knew she’d been fooled again along the way.
And she felt a fucking idiot for it.
She hated herself for it.
She had to get to Rex, and she had to make sure he was okay.
And she had to find Kayleigh and…
She went to walk when she saw Stephen standing there right before her.
He was covered in blood. He looked like he’d been crying. He was holding a gun. Pointing it at her.
“Out of respect for what you were,” he said. “You need to leave. Because nobody else will show you the same mercy.”
Aoife didn’t understand. She didn’t get what he was saying. Mercy? For what?
And then it clicked.
How this looked.
It looked like she was responsible.
Like this was an attack.
“But I…”
He lifted the rifle higher and marched closer to her. “Go,” he said. “Go now. And never come back. Never.”
She thought of Kayleigh.
She thought of Rex.
She thought of this beautiful place she called home.
And as she stood there in the burning ruins of a place she called home, she felt her shoulders slump, and she nodded.
She didn’t have a choice anymore.
She wiped her eyes.
Turned around.
And without looking back, feeling nothing but guilt and crippling shame, she walked away from Sanctuary.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Yuri stepped up to the open gates of Sanctuary and smiled.
He took a deep breath of the smoky air. He could almost taste the blood on it if he concentrated closely enough. And that made him even happier.
Because it meant this plan had worked. A plan that had required much debate. A plan that had taken ages to bring to fruition. A plan that had required the utmost patience.
But a plan that he would enjoy the fruits of very, very much.
He looked around at the screaming Sanctuary scum. He looked at the bodies, dismembered, limbs torn off, bones shattered.
And he looked at that bloodied patch, right in the middle of it all, and his smile widened even more.
That cunt.
That cunt Harvey.
The cunt who stole his life from him.
And for what?
Because he’d made a mistake behind the wheel that night. Because, sure, he’d had a few too many to drink.
He’d begged him not to report him. Begged him to let it pass as an accident. Begged him for his life because he had a family of his own. A wife. A son. He’d begged him.
But Harvey showed no mercy.
And Yuri got put inside and lost everything.
He thought back to the day the power went out. The day he knew he could get away with things he wouldn’t be able to get away with in a normal world. The day he’d stepped out of those confines where he’d only had one thing on his mind.
Finding Harvey.
Finding him and making sure he punished him truly for what he’d done.
And it had taken longer than planned. Finding him was hard enough. But building a group that was strong enough in number and capable enough of challenging him… yes, that was tough too.
But he’d got there, in the end.
With a little help from his friends, he’d got there.
And he’d stumbled on some rather unexpected prizes along the way.
He thought about Aoife and Kayleigh. He felt no sympathy where they were concerned. As much as they were both more empathetic towards Yuri and his people’s supposed “plight,” they were dumb. Because they’d fallen for his plan.
They’d gone in there and attacked Sanctuary at its heart.
They’d torn open the doors without realising.
Aoife had gulped all Yuri’s sympathetic bullshit just enough for her to believe he might be telling the truth.
The shit about the dead brat kids.
The shit about Caroline dying on the road.
Even when he’d tried to hang her.
All of it was for one reason.
To create a believable enough representation of a complex figure of a man.
And Aoife had swallowed it like cum.
And now that place was Yuri’s and his people’s, once and for all.
He walked through the gates. Looked around at the people running through the streets, desperately trying to get away.
And he smiled.
He thought about the people he’d brought here. The people he’d amassed. Loyal followers. Followers he’d promised a home to and was now delivering on.
“Your time is up,” he said. “It’s someone else’s turn, now.”
&n
bsp; And then he nodded at his people.
They open fired on the place. Open fired on those still standing. They ran at the Sanctuary guards with knives raised. Some of them fell. Some of them were gunned down.
But for the most part, Sanctuary was not ready for this.
They were reeling from another explosion.
And see, Yuri had more people than he’d been letting on. And he was more armed than he’d been letting on.
He was a more significant figure than he’d been letting on to anyone.
And he’d also had people in here helping out. People who weren’t satisfied being at the bottom of the pile of Harvey’s hierarchy.
People who wanted more.
His reach went far beyond Sanctuary.
And this was about far, far more than just a grudge. Nice as achieving that vengeance was.
This was about electricity.
About taking this community for himself.
About becoming the most powerful man in the country.
He watched his people shoot and stab and gut everyone without discrimination. Without compromise. And he felt a twinge of sadness. Sadness at seeing the poor innocent kids on the ground, the life drifting from their eyes.
But he took a deep breath and composed himself.
They had plenty more kids who would make this place their home.
He walked to the middle of the bloodied ground, right to the scene of the explosion, right past a leg that looked like it had been ripped away at the knee, and he looked down at the bloody mess that remained of Harvey. Half his skull right there, one eye staring out, shock still clear to see.
His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to kill him personally.
But he knew for a fact Aoife had delivered the message he wanted her to deliver.
He reached down. Grabbed the remains of the necklace from his hand.
He took a deep breath, and he smiled.
The greatest part of his plan.
Planting the bomb right in the middle of that square.
Watching Aoife hand him the very necklace he’d ripped from Caroline’s neck before he strangled her with it.
A murder that Yuri was never caught for.
A murder that didn’t even look like a murder because he’d been very, very careful to cover his tracks.
And the dying realisation Harvey must have experienced that Yuri was responsible for it.
He smirked, and he shook his head.
He was home now.
He lifted his foot and buried it into the remains of Harvey’s skull, cracking it on impact.
Home sweet home.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
When Aoife left Sanctuary, she didn’t stop walking.
It was dark. The night felt like it was dragging on forever. She had no idea how long she’d been walking, only that it felt like days. Weeks. Months.
She just didn’t want to think about what had happened at Sanctuary.
Didn’t want to think about what had happened to Harvey.
Or to Kayleigh.
Or to Rex.
Or to anyone.
She just walked, the rain lashing down from above, the wind battering her, and tried to focus on one footstep after another.
Tried not to ruminate. Tried not to get lost in thought.
Tried to keep the demons at bay.
The explosion.
The blood.
The gunshots.
Yuri’s people swarming in…
And how she’d been double-crossed.
How she’d allowed herself to believe Yuri might be telling the truth all that time.
How she’d bought into his sympathetic tales.
How she’d actually doubted Harvey. A good man. A man who had the best interests of the community at heart. A man who’d lost his children in a car accident, Yuri being the one responsible.
She’d bought into a lie, and now here she was. Alone. Outcast.
Sanctuary blaming her for what had happened.
And rightly so.
She shook her head and traipsed forward. She was on a main road in the middle of… well, she had no idea where she was anymore. The usual sights around her. Abandoned cars, rusty now, many of them stripped of their parts. Cracked pavements. Overgrown gardens and fancy-looking houses with smashed windows. Cafes all boarded up, and petrol stations all burned out from the day of the collapse.
And as Aoife walked, she felt detached from it all, somehow. Like it didn’t matter anymore. Like none of it mattered anymore.
Because what was the point of anything anymore?
She’d lost everything. And it was all on her. Every single bit of it was all on her.
Max. Rex. Kayleigh. Harvey.
The very community she called home. The one place she’d felt safe. And the first place she’d felt safe for a long, long time. Even longer than pre-dated the blackout.
All of it, gone.
She kept on walking. She had pain in the bottom of her feet from nasty blisters, which made her limp. She felt sick, her throat filled with the taste of clotted blood. She was exhausted. Freezing cold and wet through.
But she told herself to just keep on walking. Just lifted one foot and planted it after the other.
And again.
And again.
No idea where she was going.
No direction in sight.
She was just walking until she couldn’t walk anymore. Walking until she collapsed or reached water, and then she was just going to keep on going and going and going…
She didn’t care anymore. She had nothing else to live for. She had no fight left in her body.
Everything was over.
Everything was gone.
And anyone who would make any kind of attachment or connection with her would be better off without her.
She walked down this main street, the rain growing heavier and more intense. She kept on going until the storm stopped, and then she collapsed by some overturned bins, which reeked of rot. She tried to stand up, but her feet were too sore now. She pulled off her shoes and looked at them. Nasty bloody blisters all over her feet.
She tried to stand again and keep going, but it was no use. Tried popping the blisters, but the pain was just so sharp, and even when the fluid came seeping out, she still couldn’t walk on them. If anything, it made the pain worse.
She sat there by the side of the road as the rain and the wind picked up again, as she shivered and cried and crouched there in the darkness feeling totally pathetic.
And she knew this was it. She knew that hypothermia would come for her. Or a group of bandits would come for her. Or infection or starvation or dehydration or dogs or whatever would come for her. She knew it. She just knew it.
So she wasn’t fighting it anymore.
She knew what the outcome was already, and she wasn’t going to fight.
She lay back. Lay back on the tall, muddy grass and stared up at the stars. She told herself she was camping. Camping in the garden like she did when she was little. Hiding in the tent while Dad stalked around the outside of it, his shadow illuminating the inside of the tent like he was a monster, Aoife unable to stop herself laughing.
Only in the memory, as she lay there crying, it wasn’t Dad she saw this time. It was Max.
The only man she’d ever felt this safe with.
“I wish you were here,” she said. “I wish… I wish you were still here.”
She heard his laughter. Felt the warmth of his hand against her face. Felt his touch and softened inside, completely.
“I’ll always be here,” he said. “Always.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, washed away by the torrential rain.
A smile crept up her face.
And in the bitter cold, a warmth filled her body.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
She wasn’t suffering anymore.
She saw Max standing there in the light, and she took a step towards him and grabbed his hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
When Aoife opened her eyes, it was completely bright up above.
The sun beamed down, scorching hot. Her lips felt chapped, and her head ached like mad. She felt sore all over. Aching back. Aching legs. And her feet… oh God, her feet.
For a moment, as she lay there, totally confused, she had no idea where she was. She had no idea what had happened to lead her here. And she had no idea why she was in so much pain.
And something deep inside told her she didn’t want to know. That she was better off just closing her eyes again and acting as if nothing had happened. Resisting reality. Resisting a dark truth that felt like it was catching up with her, that was threatening to rear its head once more.
She closed her eyes and basked in the glow of the sun, drifting off into a calm, peaceful state again, when suddenly everything hit her.
Sanctuary.
Yuri.
Harvey.
The attack.
Kayleigh…
She opened her eyes. Glared up at that blinding sun again, which was so bright it made her eyes sting like mad. The memories. She tried to hold them back. Tried to resist them. She didn’t want to think about them. Didn’t want to let them back in.
But then she couldn’t resist them anymore.
The memories of the attack.
The attack that had caused so much death and so much destruction.
The attack that had seen her booted from her home and out on the streets, walking aimlessly.
The attack that had ended life as she knew it.
She lay there and felt the crippling anxiety tighten its grip around her throat and chest when suddenly she became aware of footsteps somewhere close by.
She turned around. Looked over her aching shoulder. She was in a garden in the middle of an estate. A decent-looking semi-detached house right opposite her.
She squinted over towards it, her vision hazy and blurry. She swore she’d heard someone from that direction. Someone close.
Unless she was just imagining things. She was hardly the best judge of reality right now. Everything felt pretty fucking bizarre, that was for sure.
She looked over at that house. Waited for more movement. Waited for another sound.
But there was nothing.
She went to roll back over when suddenly she saw a woman standing right over her, dog by her side.