by Ryan Casey
He thought about Eddie. About how he’d looked him in the eye and run away, not for the first time either. And that guilt would always live within him. That responsibility for what he’d done. Or rather, for what he hadn’t done. For his failure to act.
But then at the same time, he knew he couldn’t let this guilt hold him back. He knew he couldn’t let it define him.
He knew he needed to move forward.
So too did Jasmine.
“We need to regroup,” Noah said.
“Regroup? What do you mean by that?”
Noah thought about the medical centre over Grimsargh way. He thought about how good a location it was.
But at the same time, that scream.
That cry.
And that bloke.
He didn’t want to go back there. Not yet, at least.
He’d remember it. But for now, they only had one option. They only had one choice.
“We take what we’ve got. Gather some more supplies along the way, if we get the chance. And then... then we head back.”
“Back?”
“To Kelly’s place.”
Jasmine shook her head. Wiped a tear from her eye. It was weird seeing her so emotional like this. Wasn’t something Noah was familiar with.
“I’m not sure I can go back there.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure I can go back there and live in that place knowing... knowing what happened to Kelly.”
Noah sighed. Nodded. He walked over to her. He wanted to put a hand on her back. To reassure her in some way.
But in the end, he just stood there beside her.
Looked at that road ahead, and then the road behind.
“It’s not going to be easy for any of us. But we don’t have a choice. We have to... we have to move forward. Both of us. Barney. Kelly’s place... I know it’s not perfect, but it’s good. Especially if we’ve got supplies. We’ve bought ourselves some more time. For now, at least. It’s our only option now. Until whatever comes next.”
Jasmine looked back at Noah.
Then she looked over her shoulder. Back at those flames. Back towards Broughton. Noah felt it, too. This whole journey ending like this. Such a lack of resolution. Such a lack of closure.
But then he tightened his grip around that band.
It was going to be hard.
But he had the only closure he was going to get.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back home.”
Jasmine hesitated for a moment.
Then she looked at him.
Nodded.
She followed him. Barney walked alongside him. Both of them walked down that road, away from the smoke, together.
The end of one journey.
The start of a new one.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eddie sat in the back of the army truck and wondered how the hell he was going to get himself out of this frigging mess.
There were no windows in the back of this truck. No lights, either. Dark. Pitch black, in fact. Every now and then, the truck jolted to one side. It would’ve sent him tumbling off his seat if he wasn’t strapped down and wedged between a bunch of other people like him, too.
He didn’t want to guess how many others were in here with him and Kelly. There had to be ten, at least. And there was nowhere near enough room for ten normal-sized people on these seats, let alone a few bigger folks like him.
The air was thick with sweat and piss. Everyone around him shouted out, muttered to one another, barely audible over the roaring of the engine. He felt suffocated. Trapped. Like he couldn’t breathe properly.
He needed to get out of here.
But it didn’t take an idiot to realise there was no getting out of here.
When the quarantine group had thrown him and Kelly in here, they’d sworn they had nothing to worry about. That they weren’t prisoners. They were just going somewhere safe. Somewhere they could figure out the next step.
But there was coldness to their words. There was no sense of reassurance to them whatsoever. Made Eddie feel worse, in fact.
’Cause these people. Seemed like they were detached from the whole situation. Like they didn’t care too much for them, not really.
And that worried Eddie. He didn’t know what kind of a place he was going. He didn’t know what kind of a place they were taking him and Kelly to.
He didn’t have much choice in any of this, either.
He thought back to that warehouse store, and he wished he could turn back the clock.
He remembered hearing those voices commanding him to stop.
Hearing those footsteps racing after him.
And he wanted to keep running.
He wanted to keep on going.
But he knew those people pursuing him were armed.
And he didn’t want to risk his life.
So he’d stopped.
He’d stopped as that group reached him and Kelly.
As they grabbed them both. Hard.
Dragged them towards that vehicle. Told them to stay calm. To keep their composure. That everything was in order. That everything was going to be okay.
But all he could do was watch as Noah, Jasmine, and Barney disappeared into the distance.
As they looked back with guilt in their eyes.
He wanted to tell them to keep going. They were doing the right thing. They had to keep running.
But then he felt himself being thrown into the back of that truck, and he hadn’t seen light since.
He shuffled around on this hard, uncomfortable seat. He needed to piss—badly. He’d needed a piss when he was back at the store, and this whole shit here hadn’t helped. He knew he could probably piss himself and get away with it in here, judging by the rest of the smells. But shit. He had way more dignity and far too much self-respect for that, as much as that might come as a surprise to some people.
Pissing himself was a step too far.
Sometimes, anyway.
That was a joke.
Honest.
He felt the truck bang over another bump in the road. On this journey, in the darkness, unable to really talk with anyone, he found his thoughts drifting to his parents. To the day he’d found out they were gone. He’d clung to them all his life; he realised that now. But it wasn’t for any reason other than he’d had a pretty shit childhood. He’d been bullied right through school. He didn’t know why. He guessed he was just always different, in a way. When the other kids were interested in sports, he preferred studying dinosaurs and space. He actually quite liked his lessons, something the other kids teased him for.
And then there was his weight.
Weight was something he’d always struggled with. He knew it wasn’t good for him. Knew it wasn’t healthy. But it was tough. On the one hand, he had voices screaming at him about body positivity or whatever. But in the other breath, those same people were glancing at him, avoiding sitting next to him on public transport, whatever.
He couldn’t go anywhere in public without courting glances for the way he looked. And he knew that played a part in why he didn’t go many places at all. Better to just stay at home. Better to just lose himself in made up worlds. Better to bury his head in the sand, avoid reality.
Because reality was shit, and it always had been.
“You haven’t pissed yourself, have you?”
That voice, cutting through the noise of the engine. Kelly. He had to admit he was relieved to hear her, as much as her jibes were always at his expense. “What?”
“Just felt something warm pooling towards me. From you.”
“It’s not me.”
“Definitely came from you.”
“Alright. It might’ve been me. Just a trickle, though.”
“Jeez. I can’t actually believe what my life’s become. From winning the lottery to cramped in a van against my will with Noah’s slacker mate’s piss all over me. What the fuck is happening?”
Eddie laughed at that.
“It is kind of funny.”
“Yeah. Well let’s see how funny it is when we—”
A bang.
A sudden jolt backwards.
Screams.
Shouts.
“Kel—”
And then another bang.
The screeching of metal.
Bodies flying everywhere, smacking against him.
Heads cracking against the sides of the vehicle.
Eddie’s head hit the side of the vehicle, and his vision went blurry.
He didn’t know what was happening. Dazed for a while. People screamed. There was a smell of burning. A growing warmth.
He looked over to his right. A light.
Someone standing at the back of the vehicle. Opening the doors.
Covered in blood.
“Get out,” they muttered. “Get... get out!”
And then they ran inside the vehicle, blood all over their quarantine vehicle, and the pandemonium ensued, as the burning grew, the flames grew hotter, and as Eddie’s vision grew more and more blurry, and...
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jasmine saw the street up ahead and felt a knot in her stomach.
It was afternoon. Bright. Sunny. Warm. Another gorgeous day, but to be honest, Jasmine was ready for a few less than gorgeous days. Roll on the fucking autumn. She was sick of feeling boiling. Grubby. Sick of feeling thirsty all the goddamned time.
But right now, the weather was the least of her problems.
She stopped. Noah beside her. Barney between them both.
Up ahead, she saw the town of Longridge. She hadn’t been planning on heading this way, but they’d run into a few dodgy looking groups the other route, so they’d ended up with no choice. Looked like the least bad option.
But now they were here Jasmine wasn’t sure. Longridge was one of those typical old market towns. Small, but loads of houses crammed in. One pub that the whole town gathered in on Friday nights. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone.
She was expecting it to be empty. For this place to be mostly abandoned.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
Terraced houses and local shops lined the long high street. Most of these buildings were shuttered and boarded up. But Jasmine saw movement in the windows. She saw the curtains twitching. She saw people glaring out at her and Noah with suspicion. With concern.
It looked like this tight-knit community were staying together, as much as they could do, anyway.
“I’m not sure this is such a great idea,” Jasmine said.
Noah nodded. “Not so sure myself. But what’s the alternative?”
“We could go around it.”
“You saw it as well as I did. There’s no getting around it without going through some even slightly populated area.”
“Then we need to be ready,” Jasmine said.
She looked at Noah. His face was swollen, battered, and bruised. But he seemed to be doing okay, miraculously.
She turned the knife around in her hand. Saw him holding on to his knife, somewhat reluctantly. Then nodding.
“We’ll have to be,” he said. “We make our way through this town. We find whatever we can take, safely. And then we get back to Kelly’s. We start surviving. For real this time.”
Jasmine nodded. She was relieved to hear Noah speaking so assertively. And also taking a risk. It wasn’t easy for him; she knew too well. Wasn’t easy for her, either. That fear of losing him. And his fear of losing her. That unspoken tension between them, a tension that felt like it would remain unspoken forever.
“We do what we have to do,” she said.
Then they walked down this street. Together.
Jasmine tried to keep her eyes on the road. It seemed like such a long stretch, seeing it from this perspective. Like one of those dreams where the road’s stretching out in front of you the further down it you get. Where the end of the road is growing further and further out of reach.
She kept her focus off the overflowing bins. Off the boarded up shops. Off the smashed windows of the supermarket, and the people standing in there like they were guarding the last of the rations. She didn’t look at them too long. She just held on to her rucksack. And her knife. Tried to keep that vibe about her that she wasn’t interested in what they had. That she was just passing through.
That she was no threat.
But also that if someone did threaten her, she wouldn’t be afraid to act.
“You see that?” Noah said.
Jasmine didn’t know what Noah was on about. Not at first.
Not until she looked around and saw something that made her stomach sink.
There was a mound in the distance. Flies buzzing around it. It was hard to make out at first.
Then it clicked.
The faces.
The bones.
Bodies.
Burned bodies.
Sickness clawed at Jasmine’s stomach. There were so many of these bodies. More than she could count.
Burning the dead. It made sense. It added up.
But just seeing it like this, and then smelling that undeniable sourness to the air...
And then seeing those little bodies.
The bodies of the children.
It made her want to heave.
She took a few deep breaths. Battled the suffocating, crushing pain in her chest.
“Come on,” Noah said. “There’s nothing good for us here. Or for anyone.”
They picked up their pace. More curtains twitching. More eyes on them. More of a sense that people were watching. That they were curious. Pale faces. Emaciated, skeletal bodies. A town abandoned, trying to survive.
The end of the street was in sight. The midst of the most populated stretch in this town was in touching distance.
They just had to get to it.
Then they could focus on getting home.
They could focus on moving forward.
They could—
“You two aren’t from around here, are you?”
A voice.
A voice right behind them both, making the hairs on Jasmine’s neck stand on end.
She looked around.
Saw a man standing there.
Tall. Skinny.
Missing a few teeth.
Smiling.
Baseball bat in hand.
“Why don’t you tell us where you’re from? And what you’re here for?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Eddie? Eddie! Wake the hell up!”
Kelly grabbed Eddie’s shoulders and shook him hard. The smell of burning filled this army vehicle as flames crept around it. Inside, in the darkness, people cried out. Screamed. Some of them wounded from the collision. Others trying to fight back against the psychotic guy, covered in blood, going crazy at them.
But Kelly’s only focus was on Eddie.
The big guy needed to wake the hell up.
And the pair of them needed to get the hell out of here while they still had a chance.
“Eddie,” Kelly said. “You need to...”
She looked up. Saw something, then.
The bloke. The one in the quarantine mask. White coat covered in blood.
He stood in front of her.
Stared at her from beyond that bloodied mask.
Bloodshot eyes focused on her alone.
“Shit,” she muttered.
She staggered back out of the vehicle. Stumbled along the road. She looked around for something she could use. A weapon. Something she could fight this guy off with.
A part of her wanted to take off. A part of her wanted to accept defeat, where Eddie was concerned. She couldn’t drag his fat ass out of that vehicle. Besides, why was she acting so attached to him, anyway? He wasn’t a friend. Not really. He was a slacker. A lazy slacker.
She’d be better without him.
Better cutting him loose.
But then she felt that guilt. A sense there was more she
could do for Eddie. That she couldn’t just abandon him. Leave him to burn.
She had to stand up.
She had to fight.
She had to...
She tumbled back. Smacked her head against the road. Her teeth dug into her lip. She tasted blood.
She spun around. Tried to get back to her feet.
But then she felt those heavy hands plant themselves on her shoulders. Felt them press down. Squeeze. Clamp. Tighten.
The man looked down at her. Greying skin. Bloodshot eyes that lacked focus. Hazy. Dilated pupils.
Looking at her like he both recognised her and didn’t recognise her at the same time.
He moved his cold, hard hands over her face. Pressed down on her skull. Squeezed either side. First, it felt like a tension headache. Then it felt like the blood was draining up to the top of her skull. And by the end of it, it felt like her head might actually burst.
She kicked out. Wriggled either side. Struggled to free herself of his grip.
“Bastard. Fucking bastard.”
She felt her anger growing.
But then in its place, something else.
Fear.
The times she’d got close to people.
The times she’d allowed other people to work their way into her life.
Parents.
Boyfriends.
So many people.
Every time she let those emotional walls drop, she just found herself hurt.
Again and again and again.
She felt a tear roll down her cheek as her pulse raced in her skull.
“Fucking—”
A crack.
The man’s body writhed and shook.
His grip loosened in an instant.
Froth drooled down from his face mask.
Kelly threw herself out of the way as he fell towards her.
Rolled to the right as the man fell face flat onto the ground.
She crawled back. Heart racing. Still not quite sure what’d gone down here. What’d happened here.
And then she saw him standing there.
“Eddie?”
Eddie stood over the man.
He had a large chunk of metal debris, seemingly from the broken remains of the vehicle, in hand.
Dripping blood.