The World After (Book 3)

by Ryan Casey

  She looked down at it with surprise. “We have to. They have food. Food that isn’t rubbish berries!”

  Holly was right. They did have food. It looked like they had some cans. But they had other things, too—freshly caught rabbits and squirrels. No wonder our own hunting wasn’t going as well lately. These bastards were catching all our stuff.

  “They do,” I said. “They do.”

  I was caught between two rival forces pulling at one another. On the one hand, I wanted to follow that same naive sense of trust that Holly had. I wanted to believe that whoever was based at this camp was good, and that their intentions were pure.

  But on the other hand, I just knew the likelihood of that wasn’t true. After all, it was everyone for themselves in this world. There was no room for coming together. There was no space for expansion. It was all about power, even if the person leading a group didn’t like to admit it.

  I’d seen that in Phillip. A man who had seemed relatively noble when I’d first met him. He’d wanted to deal with the problem of Mike’s group, getting back his people who had been taken prisoner. But when Mike had struck, Phillip had turned into a shell of the former man. And when I’d decided to take matters into my own hands, Phillip had shown his true self as the power-crazy maniac, just like Mike, if not worse. He’d killed innocent people, all because he wanted to maintain his power over me and my people.

  I’d looked the monster in the eye and that had given me enough of a glimpse to know what he really was, and to know that I could never risk bonding with anyone again.

  “I’m not sure making friends is going to work here,” I said, being brutally honest. Then I reached into my rucksack and pulled out the bow and arrow.

  I saw the horror in Holly’s eyes and I knew right away that she didn’t approve. “But—but—”

  “You stay back here. You watch Lionel.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “We need food, Holly. We need supplies. And right here we’ve found a goldmine. Now I’m sorry I have to do bad things in order to keep us alive, but that’s just the way it is now. If you can’t accept that, you’ll die. Everyone will die. You have to see that.”

  “Why are you so hateful?”

  When she said that word—hateful—I felt like a mirror was being held up to me, like I saw myself for what I really was. Was I hateful? And if I was hateful, did that just make me as bad as the people I was so fearful of? After all, in the eyes of the group whose camp I was preparing to raid, I was the bad guy. I was the thief. The cowardly thief who wanted it all for himself.

  But I was doing it for the right reasons.

  Wasn’t I?

  I had to be.

  I tightened my grip on the bow and arrow and scanned the camp once again. It was still deathly quiet down there. I knew it might not be like that forever, so I had a choice to make. A decision to make, right this second.

  Let this go and risk losing one of the best opportunities in recent weeks.

  Or to go in there, to take whatever I could.

  If I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life—a life that would no doubt be short.

  I’d regret not protecting Holly, not keeping her safe.

  “Watch Lionel,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No.”

  I heard the voice and I froze.

  Because it wasn’t Holly’s voice.

  It was someone else’s.

  I turned around, looked over my shoulder.

  There was a man standing there.

  He was holding a hammer.

  He smiled at me with yellowing, tartar stained teeth. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They stood on the road, together, and looked into the woods.

  They’d seen the movement. The man, the girl and the dog. They’d seen them head into those woods. They’d been so close to sending one of their children to go and lure them, but they’d slipped out of the way, just in time.

  That was a concern, at first.

  But it wouldn’t be for long.

  Not when they found them.

  The eight of them travelled into the woods, together. But they were spaced apart. Being spaced apart helped them. It made them stealthier.

  And there were the four children just ahead of them; the bait to lure their unwitting victims in.

  Life had been boring before the end of the world. But the new world had brought with it a freshness. Fresh challenges. Fresh morals. Fresh outlooks and ways of being “normal.”

  They had never been normal.

  But it was only now they were fully exploring that lack of normality. The world’s change had given them a canvas to express themselves. And now they were just making the most of the change in rules.

  They moved through the trees, towards their target. Their leader, who called himself B, could see the footprints in the dirt—three sets, one of them a dog—and he knew they were getting close. They hadn't always been this weird in the old world, of course. But if you think people wouldn’t change their ways after six months without order, six months without media, six months without control, then you are very mistaken.

  People play out their deepest, darkest fantasies in a playground like this where there are no repercussions; where there is no punishment.

  They were the ones who punished.

  They stopped when they saw them.

  Only there weren’t just the three of them now.

  There were more of them. Another group.

  More children.

  Children of the future.

  B looked at C through the trees. They stared at one another for a second. Then, they nodded.

  They would close in on this group.

  They would surround them.

  And when they were ready, they would take what was theirs.

  B looked at the young girl and he thought about how beautiful it would be when she joined their ranks…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I’ll tell you how this is going to work. You’re going to tell us what the hell you’re doing here and what the hell you’ve got planned, right this second. Or we’re going to assume you were talking about stealing from us, and we’ll finish you.”

  I was on my knees, hands behind my head. My bow—which had taken so much time for me to make—had been snapped in two. Holly was in the same position by my side. Lionel was sitting down too, like this was all some kind of game.

  “Well?” the man barked. He had mousy blond hair and a young face that had clearly been weathered by the elements of this new world. He looked permanently cold. But hell, didn’t everybody? “Are you going to answer me or am I going to have to beat it from you?”

  “We’ll just walk away,” I said. “Let us go and we’ll just walk away.”

  The man shook his head, a grin on his face. There were people beside him now, too. Another man and a woman, both of them shorter but similarly stocky and well-equipped for the new world, it seemed. “If we let you go, who’s to say you aren’t just gonna come back? I mean, that is a big knife. Certainly not the kind of knife you go out to make friends with.”

  “We’ll just walk away,” I said, unable to do anything other than repeat myself. It seemed to me like the only thing I could really do. But deep down, I knew what I had to do now. I knew this man’s fears were correct.

  I had to take the supplies from this camp. There was no other way this was going to end.

  The man doing all the talking perched opposite me. He moved his hammer around in his hand, like he was constantly drawing attention to it, trying to focus my attention on it. “See, I’m not buying it. I mean, I’m pretty sure Alvin here heard you say something about raiding our camp. Isn’t that right, Alvin?”

  Alvin nodded. “Sure did, Jim.”

  “And Siobhan. You heard him say something along those lines too, didn’t you?”

  Siobhan nodded. “I say we finish him off right here.”

  “Please don’t,�
� Holly said.

  I heard the desperation in her voice and I wished she hadn’t spoken. After all, I wanted to protect her, and leaving her to her own devices—to speak—wasn’t the way to go about that.

  But it was already too late, because Jim was focused on Holly now.

  He walked over to her, slowly. Lionel growled at him.

  “What did you say just then?”

  I went to move forward but right away the people behind me raised their weapons. “Leave her alone,” I said.

  Jim looked at me and then back at Holly. “Leave you alone? I’m just getting to know this girl here, that’s all.”

  He studied her closely. “So what’ve you been doing out here? And why are you so interested in our camp?”

  I wanted to answer for Holly. But I knew that there was no way out of this now. They wanted to hear from her, directly. And they weren’t going to give up until they did.

  “I… My dad and me. We’ve been walking a long time.”

  “Oh, this is your dad?” Jim asked, looking over to me.

  Holly glanced at me then nodded, reluctantly.

  “That right, champ?”

  I thought about what the right thing to do would be; the right way to play it.

  In the end, I nodded. The best thing I could do was just go along with her story.

  “Your dad. Right. That’s funny. It’s just, I swear when we got here, we overheard your daughter calling you Scott.”

  My stomach sank.

  “Seems strange for a girl to call her dad by his real name, doesn’t it?”

  My heart started pounding. I knew we were in trouble now. I didn’t know what these people were capable of, or even who they really were, just that they weren’t taking very nicely to our “introduction”.

  “So if you really are her dad, you’ll tell me something. Both of you. Right at the same time. What date was your daughter here born?”

  My stomach dropped even more. I had known Holly for the best part of six months now, but I didn’t know when she was born. Why would I? That kind of information was irrelevant. We didn’t need to know it in a world where birthdays and things like that just didn’t hold the same significance.

  I saw Holly looking at me like she was trying to transmit her birthday into my mind. But I knew—and she must’ve known, deep down—that it didn’t work like that.

  I looked back at Jim, who smiled at me. “On three. Her birthday. One, two…”

  I wanted to kill him.

  In the end, I knew there was only one thing I could do.

  “I’m not her dad,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows and smirked, knowingly. “You could teach that girl some of that honesty. So what were you doing here?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was so caught up in the truth. But I had no idea what else they’d heard and hadn’t heard, so I didn’t want to ruffle feathers any more than I already had. “We… I was going to steal from you.”

  Jim smirked. He nodded. “Thought so.”

  He stood up and walked back to join the rest of his people, Siobhan and Alvin. And as they talked amongst themselves, I knew that they were debating my fate.

  I looked at Holly and I hoped she’d bore in mind all the things I’d taught her. I hoped she remembered the difference between the good and the bad berries. I hoped she’d remember not to blindly trust anyone, because blindly trusting only brought with it major problems.

  I waited for the hammer in Jim’s hand to plough its way into my skull. For Lionel to watch me die in the exact same way his true owner, Derek, had.

  I held my breath.

  And then a hand hit my shoulder.

  “Come on,” Jim said. “You might want to leave, but we’re not keen on that happening. Not until we really know for sure that you can be trusted.”

  He pulled me to my feet, the rest of his people lifting Holly and Lionel.

  “And don’t look too relieved,” Jim said, as he held on to the machete I’d been planning on killing his people with. “That’s just a fancy way of saying you’re our prisoner now.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  After being captured so many times since the end of the world began, you’d think I’d be pretty used to it by now.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been tied up here in this tent, hands behind my back. Holly was at the opposite side of the tent, Lionel by her side. She had been gagged, as had I. Lionel had a band around his jaws which was stopping him from barking. He rubbed at it occasionally, tried to release himself from the band, clearly getting het up with the whole situation.

  But in the end, just like me and just like Holly, there was nothing he could do.

  He was just as caught up in this whole mess as we were.

  I could feel the breeze brushing against the sides of the tent, working its way through and casting a coldness over me. I wanted to go over to Holly and give her my coat. She was wrapped up, but she looked cold. It was like us being captured had suddenly reset our body temperatures somehow; like Holly had gone into a form of shock that she was struggling to resurface from.

  I wanted to help her out of it.

  I wasn’t going to give up.

  I looked over my shoulder. My hands were cuffed behind my back, and my feet were cuffed together too. I’d been in worse situations, sure. I wasn’t technically unable to get up and hop away.

  But there was someone standing right outside the tent. And I knew they wouldn’t hesitate about putting a blade into me if that’s what it came to.

  I looked back at Holly again and part of me felt guilty. But this time, the guilt was because I knew I should’ve trusted my own intuitions about this group. They weren’t to be trusted. Nobody was to be trusted. The longer I tried to kid myself that they could—that anyone could—the more mess I’d end up getting myself into.

  No. I had to leave this place. Holly and Lionel had to leave this place.

  And when we did leave this place, we weren’t going to make the same mistakes again.

  I wasn’t going to allow us to fall victim to another group with whatever sick, messed up plans they might have for us.

  I’d seen one too many times already what people were capable of. I wasn’t going to let myself fall into any more traps.

  And I was going to start taking more responsibility for the decisions made between Holly and me. After all, Holly was just a kid. She was naive. She had grand ideas about connection between people, about a happier world, but of course she did. That was just natural.

  Especially after the things she’d been through, the things she’d witnessed, the people she’d lost…

  I looked across the tent over to the entrance, where I could see the silhouette of a man called Walter standing. He was a big guy. Definitely the biggest guy I’d seen since the collapse. I wondered how he’d got into that condition in the first place, let alone how the hell he’d managed to maintain it despite a change of circumstances as radical as an EMP had caused.

  Somehow, I didn’t think I’d be getting the chance to ask him about his impressive physique anytime soon.

  I looked back at Holly. I mumbled, trying to get her attention, but she still looked caught up in shock.

  So I shuffled either side, tried to make her look over at me.

  Eventually, she did. Reluctantly, but she looked all the same.

  And when she did, I held that eye contact with her.

  I wanted her to hear what I was saying just by looking at her. I wanted her to hear me telling her that things were going to be okay. That I was going to get her out of this mess. Because it was just her, me and Lionel now, and that’s how it was always going to be. We were going to fight for each other. We were going to stick together.

  I was going to protect her, no matter what it took.

  Then I took a deep breath and started to stumble to my feet.

  It was hard, especially when my hands were cuffed behind my back. But after a few attempts, I found myself crouching forward, steadily l
ifting myself up.

  I didn’t know what to do when I was stood. My head spun, colours filled my eyes. I knew that I had to try and go over to Holly, to try and let her free.

  Outside, I could hear voices. Footsteps.

  I shuffled over to where Holly was. I saw that her ties weren’t as tight as mine. I turned around and I started pulling at them, but in the end that was no good. So instead, I started to bite down on them with my teeth, trying to grind them away.

  Again, no luck.

  I looked around the tent. The urgency of my situation built up. There had to be something sharp in here. Something sharp enough to cut through the ties. They had to have left something around. Something I could use to escape. Something we could both use to get out…

  Then I saw it.

  It wasn’t ideal. It might not even work.

  But there was a broken tree stump, sharpened to a point, right at the other side of the tent.

  I didn’t know why it was like that. I figured they’d been crafting weapons from the wood, or maybe it was just broken off from where they’d cut the wood away with their axes.

  All I knew was that I had an opportunity.

  I hopped over to that tree stump. I pushed my hands down right against it and I started rubbing against the plastic.

  Nothing happened.

  I gritted my teeth and kept on going. I could hear voices outside, getting closer now. I knew Walter was going to look inside at any minute. He checked on us every now and then. And if he looked in now, he wouldn’t be merciful. That much was for sure.

  I kept on rubbing the ties against the wood. It was all I could do. I had to keep going. I had to…

  Then, I noticed something.

  Despite my wrists bleeding, despite splinters working into my skin, the ties were loosening.

  They were actually loosening.

  I kept on going then, faster now. My heart pounded. Sweat dripped down my forehead. I could do this. I was getting us out of here. Once my hands were free, that was progress. I could find another way to get my feet free, and to get Holly free, and Lionel. I just had to keep on…

  The ties snapped.

  I looked at my hands, still amazed I’d actually managed to free myself.