by Ryan Casey
So Ian smiled at her, tried his best to put her at ease.
“I can’t pretend our circumstances are the same. I can’t pretend what we’ve been through is the same or even similar. But I know what you mean about moving forward. I know what you mean about… about finding strength in a new identity.”
Gina smiled back at him. “You’re strong. You and Sofia. What you’ve got… it’s special.”
Ian nodded. He looked back over at the flats. Looked at where he knew Sofia would be sleeping. They’d been through so much together. Fought so many battles together.
But they weren’t going to let this new world defeat them.
They weren’t going to let their past tragedies define them.
They were strong. They always had been.
That’s the way it was always going to be.
“Thank you, Gina,” Ian said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I think I’m ready to take a kip now.”
He walked away from Gina and Arya. Walked back through the middle of the Safe Zone, back to his room.
And when he got there, he wrapped his arms around Sofia’s sleeping body, kissed her neck.
“We’ll beat this,” Ian said.
She shuffled, just a little. Just enough for Ian to know she was awake. That she heard him.
“Both of us,” Ian said. “We’ll beat this. And you’ll… you’ll do just great tomorrow. You’ll be fine. I trust you.”
He felt the warmth of her body. Felt the security it gave him. The hope it gave him.
Outside, from the thickening clouds, the rain started to fall.
Chapter Six
Sofia held her breath as she stepped beyond the walls of the Safe Zone and prepared for whatever lay on the road ahead.
It was another nice spring day. It looked like it had rained overnight, though, bringing freshness to the air. It hadn’t rained in quite some time; since winter, as far as Sofia could remember. Quite the drought.
She didn’t want to think about winter. She didn’t want to remember what she’d been through.
She didn’t want to remember what she’d lost.
Who she’d lost.
She walked along the damp ground, through the grass. She was holding one of the hunting rifles that her group had supplied her with. They didn’t have a vast array of guns and rifles, but they certainly had more than most people. Her mission was simple: there were rumours of activity to the south-west. As with any activity, the plan was to go to those people, to assess them, to weigh up whether they’d be a good fit for the Safe Zone, and then decide whether to bring them back or not.
So far, they had a pretty successful record, at least as far as Sofia was aware. There’d been a few skirmishes with stubborn groups, but for the most part, the looters as they used to be weren’t even a thing anymore.
There were just survivors. People making it in their own ways. For better or for worse.
And when you offered people the opportunity of a new beginning in a place with power, with food, with shelter, they usually snapped your hand off.
Usually.
Sofia heard the footsteps of the others beside her. Billy, Serge, Stan. They took the mickey out of her for being the lone woman on their journey, questioning whether she was good enough to keep up with them. But it was all in good humour. It was laced with tongue in cheek irony. Sofia had more than proven she could fire a gun.
And she’d more than proven that when she was focused on something, she could carry a task out, no trouble.
“Apparently, the sightings were in this village,” Stan said.
Sofia looked at the village. It was a pretty typical post-apocalyptic village, in all truth. Abandoned cars. Empty buildings. The sign of a final struggle before people abandoned their homes in search of food and water.
It was always sad to see. After all, in another life, that could’ve been her. It could’ve been her family.
But then had she had it better, really?
She’d lost. Just like other people had lost.
Only she was still here to suffocate under the weight of the demon’s tight clutches.
Stan puffed out his lips. “Doesn’t look pretty occupied to me anymore.”
“Not exactly true,” Sofia said.
The blokes looked at her, clearly not understanding what she was referring to, not at first.
And then they saw it.
They saw exactly what she was looking at.
There was blood. Fresh-looking blood, right in the middle of the road.
“Well shit,” Stan said. “Sofia really does have the gift after all.”
“More than just a pair of tits, eh?” Billy said.
Sofia frowned at him. Again, she knew he was joking—satirising the idea of toxic masculinity—but he was still a bit of a nob sometimes.
Sofia crouched beside it. Patted it. “Definitely fresh,” she said.
“So we’re in a creepy little abandoned town, and we’ve found fresh blood,” Serge said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Do you smell that?” Sofia asked.
The blokes frowned, Billy in particular. “Smell? Smell what?”
Sofia took deep, steady breaths of the air. She couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t put her finger on it. Only that it smelled like…
“Death,” Serge said.
Sofia turned. Looked at Serge, standing there, uncertainty on his face. And for the first time since she’d got here, she didn’t just feel a superficial uncertainty. She felt genuinely afraid.
“I think we should move on from this place,” Sofia said.
“But the group,” Stan said. “The one we had eyes on.”
“Maybe some groups just aren’t meant to be discovered,” she said.
The blokes looked at each other.
Then they looked at her.
And together, they nodded.
“Got a point, Sofia,” Billy said.
And then he turned around and something happened.
The road. Sofia wasn’t sure how it happened, but the tarmac just seemed to give way under his right foot.
His leg slipped into the ground.
His body fell.
And then he let out a deafening cry.
“Shit,” Serge said, running to his side. He grabbed him, tried to pull him up. “Stan. Sofia. Help me with him, dammit.”
Sofia ran over to Billy. Grabbed his arms. But as she tried to pull, she realised there was something holding tight to his leg. Something pulling him down.
“I don’t like this,” Serge said.
He looked at Sofia.
“I don’t like—”
Those were the last three words he said.
Because out of nowhere, blood spurted out of his neck.
He clutched his neck. Fell back.
And as Sofia watched him fall, as she tried to understand, she saw someone in the distance.
Someone holding a bow.
Someone who had fired an arrow.
Someone…
She stood up. Lifted her rifle, Billy still struggling away, Stan by his side splattered with Serge’s blood.
“Watch him,” Sofia said.
“But Sofia—”
“Watch him,” Sofia said. “I’ve got something I need to do.”
She heard Stan protesting, but it was for nothing. She ran off down the alleyway, off in the direction the person with the bow and arrow had disappeared. She didn’t know what was happening with Billy, but she could only conclude that they had been ambushed.
This was an ambush, plain and simple.
And she was going to stop it in its tracks.
She ran. Ran further. Kept on going down the alleyway, running out of breath, eager to find the perpetrator.
But the further she ran, the more she started to doubt herself.
The further she got, the more the uncertainty grew.
She couldn’t see them anywhere.
She’d lost track of them.
There was no
knowing.
Had to keep going.
Then she saw it.
The figure.
Standing.
Bow in hand.
She stood still.
Held her breath.
Lifted her rifle and pointed it.
“Don’t—”
But then she heard something.
Over her shoulder.
Movement.
She went to turn when she felt something grab her neck.
Went to fire.
But then the material covered her face, and she fell to the ground, vision blurring, senses failing.
The last thing she thought about as she fell to the ground bothered her.
Because it was something familiar.
The smell.
The smell that Serge had said was “death.”
He wasn’t far wrong.
It was the smell of meat.
Cooked meat.
Cooked meat on the breath of her capturer.
And it was the most familiar kind of meat of all…
Chapter Seven
Three days passed, and Sofia still hadn’t returned.
It was cloudy, and it was stuffy. It looked like rain was on its way at all times, but the clouds just didn’t seem to be breaking. Now and then, Mike heard thunder somewhere in the distance, and he thought the heavens were finally opening.
But the rain never came.
Just those looming, thickening clouds.
Just that darkness, getting ready to burst.
Ian was walking backwards and forwards in front of the gates. He was growing more agitated, more irritable. He kept on rubbing the back of his head, cursing people, lashing out at people.
And he couldn’t be blamed. Not really. Mike knew he’d be the same if someone he cared about went missing out there.
But he had to maintain order, somehow.
He had to keep things under control.
“Just because she’s been gone a while doesn’t mean she’s gone for good,” he said.
Ian turned to him. Frowned. “What?”
Mike started to regret the words he’d just said. After all, how were they going to help Ian, really? “I didn’t mean it like that. I just—”
“My wife’s out there. She’s out there and it—it feels like nobody’s doing a thing about it.”
“That’s not true,” Mike said. “There’s been people out there. There’s been groups out there. Peacekeepers. People searching for them—”
“And failing,” Ian said.
Mike watched as Ian steadily lost more and more control. He looked at Gina, looked at Alison, looked at Holly as Kelsie stood on one side and Arya on the other.
“Maybe I can go out there,” Holly said.
Mike frowned. “Holly—”
“Ian’s right,” Holly said, speaking words that Mike couldn’t believe he was actually hearing. “If Sofia’s out there, then we shouldn’t just be sitting back. We—we should be out there. We should be trying to find her. Someone should.”
Ian looked at Holly, suspicious at first. Like he was questioning her motives. The pair of them still clearly hadn’t worked through whatever issues they had. Which was to be understood, of course.
But this. This, now. Hearing what Holly was offering…
“Holly, you don’t have to—”
“Your dad’s right,” Ian said. “You don’t have to do anything. I appreciate your concern. Really. I… I know we’ve had our problems, but I appreciate what you’re offering. But we need more than just you. We need a bigger group out there. A group to figure out what the hell’s going on.”
“I think we need to think very carefully before doing anything like that,” Alison said.
Ian frowned. “Enlighten me.”
“Well… we take people out of here and we could be walking into something dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Ian said. “Is that what you’re really worried about? Danger? Because it’s great to know if something happened to me out there, I’d be treated in the same way.”
“Let’s not get into the emotional ambiguities here.”
“Emotional ambiguities?” Ian said, temper rising, squaring up to Mike. “My damned wife isn’t an emotional ambiguity. What if I said your daughter was the same damned thing?”
Mike knew he shouldn’t react. He knew he shouldn’t bite. After all, he knew emotions were raw right now.
But he couldn’t help feeling his fists tighten, feeling that urge to react take a hold of him.
“What are you suggesting about my daughter?” Mike said.
Holly shook her head. “Dad—”
Ian interrupted. “I’m just saying. If we’re talking about emotional ambiguities, then here’s one.”
“Ian,” Gina said.
“Your daughter murdered my son. She hurt my wife so she could squirm her way out of the mess she got herself in. And if rumours are to be believed, it wasn’t the first time she’d acted in the way she had.”
Mike’s heart thumped. The urge to silence Ian. The urge to shut him up.
“So what are you suggesting?” Mike said.
“I’m just saying. You call my wife an emotional ambiguity. What about your daughter? Isn’t she lucky she’s still here? Isn’t she lucky I didn’t kill—”
Before he could say a thing, Mike pulled back his fist and took a swing.
He punched Ian to the ground. Heard the drama behind him, heard the commotion.
But he just kept on punching.
Kept on going.
“Don’t you ever even think about laying a finger on my daughter,” he said, as he was dragged away by the others. “Don’t even think about it.”
Ian got up. He wiped the blood from his face. Looked at Mike differently now, just as Mike knew he was looking at him differently.
It felt like the pair needed that moment. They’d needed that explosion. It’d got their feelings out in the air, and perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. The tension, it’d been brewing for some time. It’d been building for ages. It was finally out in the open, the unspoken truth.
“I appreciate your wife’s out there,” Mike said. “Really. I do. But what I don’t want is for any of us to be rash. I don’t want any of us to do anything that might compromise us in any way. That might hurt us in any way. And that includes you, Ian.”
Ian opened his mouth like he was going to respond; like he wanted to say something back to Mike.
And then he closed it. Didn’t say another word.
It was then that Mike heard it.
“There’s someone here.”
He wasn’t sure where it came from. Not at first.
Then he realised.
It clicked.
It came from the top of the fence.
He looked up. All of them looked up.
And when they did, they saw the guard, Pete, standing there and pointing off into the distance.
Mike looked at Ian.
And then Ian clambered his way up the ladder, up towards the top of the fence.
Mike went after him. Because he was fearful. Fearful of what he’d see. Fearful of what he’d find.
Because sure. Someone was here.
But what if it wasn’t Sofia?
Or what if…
“Oh God,” Ian said. “Oh… oh God.”
Mike didn’t know what Ian was referring to. Not until he got to the top of the fence. Not until he looked down through the binoculars at the ground below.
And not until he saw it.
It wasn’t Sofia.
But it was Billy.
His legs had been cut away. Cauterised, by the looks of things.
He was clearly dead.
But the worst thing?
The worst thing at all?
It looked like Billy had dragged himself here.
He’d died dragging himself along the ground.
Someone had done this to him.
Someone had their people.
T
here was somebody out there.
Chapter Eight
Emma looked at the walls in the distance, and she knew her home was waiting for her.
Only it wasn’t her home. Not anymore.
They weren’t her people.
Not anymore.
She looked as the people ran out towards the man’s body. She looked as they reached his side. Wondering what had happened. Curious. Fearing what they were going to find out. Fearing what was coming for them.
And she felt bad for them, in a way. Not massively. Because she’d DETACHED from them. She saw the BIG PICTURE now.
And the BIG PICTURE was going to bring her life.
It was going to bring her a future.
It was going to bring her HAPPINESS.
But she couldn’t deny the slight sadness about what was going to follow. She knew Holly. She knew she was a good person. And the others, they seemed good people too.
But that was unimportant.
That was irrelevant.
It seemed like her memory of them was cloudy, now. Hidden in the darkness.
What mattered more?
What mattered more was following through with the GRAND PLAN.
Doing what He wanted her to do.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. Part of her wanted to go over there, over to that wall. Part of her wanted to tell them everything that had happened, everything she’d done, everything she’d been through, and everything she’d still have to do.
Maybe that could work.
Maybe she didn’t have to do what she feared she had to do.
Maybe she could still change.
She took a deep breath. Went to take a step.
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She felt its weight. Felt it pushing down. Hard.
And when she turned around, she dreaded who was going to be looking back at her; dreaded who she was going to see.
But she turned anyway.
Because she couldn’t not turn.
She had to look.
And when she looked, she saw him.
She saw his tall figure, like a giant. Saw his bright eyes. And she remembered how she used to look at him with such dread. Such fear.
But that smile.
That smile changed something inside her now.
That smile reassured her.
It made her feel at ease.
That bright white-toothed smile that reminded her of the first time she’d met him, only she didn’t feel bad about it anymore.