by Ryan Casey
“I don’t see we have much to gain by staying here anymore.”
“What about your daughter?”
Mike looked deep into Ian’s eyes. He didn’t want to give up on Holly. He didn’t want to entertain the idea that he was leaving her behind.
But he knew she was tough. He knew she was strong.
And at the same time, he had faith in her. Faith that if she saw the helicopters, she would approach them too.
If she saw the helicopters, she would be heading the same way.
He just had to hope.
But at the same time… he had to know that she’d be okay here.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. It was painful to accept.
But he had to accept it, nonetheless.
“I have faith in Holly,” Mike said.
Ian opened his mouth then as if he was going to protest. But then he just shook his head, sighed. “We can’t just walk away from this place,” he said. “We can’t just leave. Not without—”
“But we can,” Mike said. “We can.”
Alison walked over to Mike, Kelsie by her side. “As far as I see it, it’s not an easy decision to make. But it’s the only option we have.”
Then Gina and Arya followed.
And then it was just Ian.
“Don’t let us drift apart,” Mike said. “Not after everything. There has to be a way forward. There has to be an end to this. To all of this.”
Ian looked back at the camp. He looked at the skips. Looked at the junkyard. Then he looked at Sofia’s grave.
He put a hand on it. Whispered something to it.
And then he stood up.
“We keep going,” he said.
Mike nodded. He stood upright. Part of him had wanted Ian to protest. Part of him had wanted Ian to put up a fight. Just something to stop him leaving this place, potentially leaving Holly behind.
They turned around, and they walked off towards the sunlit horizon, together.
It was after an hour that they saw them.
First, the horizon. The beautiful view. The helicopters on the coast. One thing for certain about this place.
It was some kind of extraction zone.
It was some kind of ticket out of here.
But there was something else.
Something in their way.
And in the end, it was inevitable.
Truly inevitable.
Calvin was here.
His remaining people were here.
And Holly was here, too.
Blade to her neck.
“Hello, Mike,” Calvin said, as his people surrounded his. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“Well, Mike? Isn’t this cosy. What a lovely reunion. A family reunion.”
Mike looked at the scene ahead of him. He could see Calvin holding a blade to his daughter’s throat. And he could see a whole lot else, too. The helicopters in the distance. The coast. The place of salvation.
But Calvin’s people were in his way.
“Looks like you got here just in time for the choice. Your greatest choice.”
Mike swallowed a lump in his throat. Because he had a deep, dark feeling he knew what this choice was. He knew where this conversation was going.
“Don’t do this, Calvin,” Mike said. “We worked together. We come from the same background. We—”
“Nonsense,” Calvin said. “You come from privilege. You come from a good background. I came from nothing, Mike. I worked hard. Worked hard to build what I had. And you’ve ruined it. You’ve—you’ve ruined it.”
Mike shook his head. “I always knew you were a nutter. But this. This is…”
“It’s insane by your standards, okay. But the standards of the new world are different. The new world requires new ideas. You just couldn’t let us settle, could you? You had to drive us out of our home. Drive us away.”
Mike frowned. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie,” Calvin said, saliva surging from his lips. “Don’t even try to lie. You know what you did back there. And you’ll pay for it. One way or another, you’ll pay.”
Mike wanted to argue some more. He wanted to fight back. Because he hadn’t done anything to Calvin’s place. He hadn’t destroyed it. That wasn’t him.
But he didn’t have time to fight back.
Because Calvin lifted the blade to Holly’s neck again.
“I have a blade here, in case you haven’t noticed. And this blade will pierce your daughter’s neck.”
“Calvin, please—”
“You can choose to save her. Or you can choose to save these people here. Your people. These others, these innocent women, as you might call them. Because I’ve no use for them anymore. Not without a home. Not without any way of feeding them. Might as well turn them into meat.”
Mike shook his head in disbelief. His people beside him looked similarly dismayed.
“If you choose Holly, all of these people here die. They fall to their deaths off the cliffs below. All of them die, all because you decide to save one of them. Just one of them. Mothers. Pregnant mothers. Wives. All of them.”
“Don’t,” Mike said.
“Or… you can choose to save them. You can be their salvation. And they’re yours. If you think you can do better than me then please. Be my guest. But if you do that… she’s mine. Holly’s mine. She becomes the mother of the new world. The beginning of our new project.”
Mike shook his head. He couldn’t even begin to debate this. His daughter. His Holly. He’d watch a thousand people die to know she’d live.
But… but these women. These people, innocent. Staring back at him. Terror in their eyes.
Gina.
Ian.
Alison.
Arya.
Kelsie.
They were his friends.
They were his family too now.
He couldn’t let them die.
He couldn’t watch them die.
“Come on, Mike. You’re a man of good judgement, aren’t you? At least that’s what you’ve always told me. That’s what you’ve always insisted.”
“There has to be another way,” Mike said.
Calvin smiled and sighed. “You see, that’s the thing. You might think there is. You might think there’s a way to outthink me here. You might think there’s a way to out scheme me. You might’ve read stories where somehow, everyone comes out of situations like this unscathed. But believe me, Mike. Believe me. You’re losing someone here. It’s Holly. Or it’s every one of these people. Who matters to you more? Who matters to you, Mike?”
Mike wanted to fight back. He wanted to argue. But he felt defeated. Totally helpless. All this time trying to protect his people—all his people—and now he was being asked to choose between them.
All this time, and he was being asked to make a choice against everything he stood for, everything he believed in.
Holly.
Or all these people. Kelsie, Alison, Gina, Ian, Arya.
His daughter.
Or the girl he’d promised to protect. The woman he’d fallen in love with. The friend of his daughter who’d saved his life. The man whose wife had died on his watch. The dog that had been with him since day one.
He had to make a call.
He had to make a choice.
There was no backing out of it.
So he stepped forward.
He stepped forward, and he walked down the hill. He stepped forward and walked up to Calvin. Up to Holly. He looked her in the eye. Then he looked up at Calvin, into his eyes.
“Take me,” Mike said.
Calvin smirked. “What?”
“Me,” Mike said. “If you want to punish anyone, make it me. Just not these people. Not my daughter.”
Calvin shook his head and sighed. “You’re just not getting it, are you?”
He looked over at one of his people.
“Show him how much business we mean.”
/> The man standing with Alison dragged her over to the side of the cliff edge.
“No!” Mike shouted.
“Oh,” Calvin said. “Is that the sound of you making a choice? Is that the sound of you making a decision?”
Mike’s heart raced. His tear-soaked eyes stared blankly at Holly, who looked back at him, devastation upon her face.
Because there was a look there. A look there that said she knew how this was going, too. That said she understood how this was going to end.
“Holly. I can’t do this. I can’t… I can’t let them die.”
Holly looked at him, tearful. She looked at him like she understood.
“I’ll come for you. I promise you that. We’ll—we’ll all come for you. We’ll get you back. You won’t have to suffer. I’ll never give up on you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
He wanted to go over to his daughter. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was.
But when he looked at her, he saw her smiling.
“You do what you have to do,” she said. “You do the right thing. For everyone. Like you always taught me.”
She smiled. And through the tears, he found himself smiling, too. Because his daughter believed in him. Just like he believed in her.
They were going to work through this.
They were going to survive.
They were going to make it.
He looked up at Calvin, and he saw the way he was looking back.
Concerned.
“I’ve made my choice,” Mike said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Take her. Let the people live. But I’m coming for her. I’m coming for you. And when I get you… when I get you, I swear to God, you’ll pay. You’ll rue the day you ever crossed me.”
That look. That look of fear on Calvin’s face, just for a second.
Mike got the sense he had the upper ground. Like no matter how bad this situation was, no matter how hard this was for Mike, he had something over these people. And he was going to make the most of it,
Then a smile from Calvin. A smile of control. A smile like he had the upper ground all over again.
“I guess—I guess the rules have changed, then.”
And then he did something that made Mike’s entire world stop.
He did something that made Mike’s world stand still.
Calvin pulled back the blade and stabbed Holly in the neck.
Mike went still. Time froze. Everything around him went blank. Sound disappeared. Everything disappeared.
All he could do was throw himself towards Holly.
“No!”
He grabbed Holly as she lay on the ground. He grabbed her as blood pooled out of her neck. She stared up at him, confusion on her face. Shock in her eyes.
“Dad?” she said.
“Holly,” he said. “Oh, God. No. No. I can’t—I can’t—”
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said, spluttering blood. “You… you saved them. You saved… you saved them all.”
And she smiled.
She smiled in her bleeding daze because she truly believed her own words.
That’s because she couldn’t make sense of what was going on around her.
First, they pushed one of the women off the cliff.
Then another.
Then another.
And before Mike knew it, they were pushing more of these innocent people over it, too.
“No!” he shouted.
He didn’t look. He couldn’t look.
All he could look at was Holly, as her face got paler.
All he could look at was Holly, as she coughed, spluttered.
But smiling.
All this time, smiling.
Smiling with pride.
Like she’d finally, finally made it.
“My girl,” he said, in tears. “Please no. Please don’t go. We—we can work through this. We can fix this. We can—we can make this better.”
She held a hand up to him. A shaking, bloodied hand.
In it, she was holding her ring.
The ring Caitlin had given her.
The last gift her mum gave her.
“Kelsie,” she said. “You… you give this to Kelsie. And you bring her… you bring her up like you brought me up. You… you love her like you loved me. You teach—teach her to be good. Teach her to be good. Just… just like you taught me. And if—if you do that, she’ll be good… And she’ll be so happy to… to have you… as her… as her d…”
She stopped.
Her eyes went blank.
But still that smile was on her face.
Mike cried. He punched the ground. He tried to give her resus. He tried to bring her back.
But it was no use.
She was gone.
Holly was gone.
He looked up. Time felt weird. Nothing felt real.
When he looked up, he saw that Calvin was already walking off in the distance. Some of his remaining people by his side.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at Mike with regret. “Truly. But you’ve sacrificed enough now. You understand, now.”
“I’ll kill you. I’ll—”
“You won’t do a thing like that,” Calvin said. “Because this is where we walk away. This is where our paths diverge. Goodbye, Mike.”
“I’ll kill you!”
But Mike couldn’t move.
Mike couldn’t go anywhere.
Because Mike couldn’t leave his daughter’s side.
He could only watch as Calvin and his people walked off into the distance.
He could only watch as they made their way towards the helicopters, which were departing. Another symbol of hope, gone.
He could only watch, as his people joined his side, as they tried to comfort him, as they tried to reassure him.
He could only watch as the man who’d destroyed his life got away.
And he couldn’t do a thing.
Chapter Forty-Seven
A day passed.
A dark day. An impossible day.
But a day passed, and Mike stood over his daughter’s grave.
Burying her was the hardest thing to do. The most impossible thing to do. Ian offered to do it for him, but he hadn’t been able to let him.
He’d had to do it himself.
It was a father’s duty.
It was his duty.
It was cloudy. Rain fell heavily, making the earth slushy. Arya was by his side the whole time through the burial, and had been by his side a long time, after too.
It was like she understood. Like she knew.
He looked at the grave of his daughter and he felt like jumping into the earth, too. He felt like burying himself in a hole and letting the ground swallow him whole.
But he couldn’t do that.
He couldn’t do that, because he’d made a promise.
He heard footsteps behind.
When he turned around, he saw Kelsie approaching.
She looked at him with that sadness on her face. That little curious sadness that broke his heart all over again.
She didn’t say anything. She just stood by his side. Held his hand.
The little ring from Holly’s finger cold against his palm.
It was a while before she finally said anything.
“What are we going to do about it all, Uncle Mike?”
Mike took a deep breath of the cold, damp air. He looked down at Kelsie. Then he looked over his shoulder, back at Alison, at Ian, at Gina and at Arya. He looked at the two new people who’d joined his group—Hailie and Beth—the sole survivors of Calvin’s massacre.
He looked at them, and then he looked over into the distance, over towards the coast, over past Holly’s grave.
“We’re going to find them,” Mike said. “We’re going to hunt Calvin and his people down and we’re going to find them. No matter what.”
“And then?” Kelsie said.
“And then we’re going to kill every last one of them,” Mike said.
/> He squeezed Kelsie’s hand.
Kelsie squeezed his hand back.
It was time to get to work.
It was time to get his revenge.
It was time for war.
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any reference to real locations is only for atmospheric effect, and in no way truly represents those locations.
Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Casey
Cover design by Damonza
All rights reserved.
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Published by Higher Bank Books