by Ryan Casey
Paul frowned. “What?”
“We’re going to run.”
“But—”
“Three seconds.”
One of the thugs raised his knife. “Screw you for killing our mate. Seriously, screw you.”
I sensed the tension building up.
I heard the clock ticking down.
I knew we had to act.
“One.”
“Now!” I said.
I turned around and, Paul by my side, I threw myself through the door at the rear of the shop.
I heard the gunfire start again. I heard shards of the wall cracking near me. I felt debris hit me, and I feared for Paul right away. He’d been behind me. If any bullets came our way, he’d have taken one.
But when the door slammed shut and I managed to finally turn around to check on Paul, I saw he was still on his feet.
“Go!” he said, pointing forward, as bullets peppered the door behind us.
I didn’t need any more encouragement.
I ran down the corridor, into the warehouse. I looked around everywhere in the darkness—there were no windows in here—and hoped to find some kind of door out of here. But the more I looked, the more I panicked. What would happen if we found the door but it was boarded up? What if there wasn’t a door back here at all? What if the soldiers reached us? Because they weren’t going to go easy on us after we’d defied them. They weren’t going to be happy with us now we’d run away.
For all their promises of “safe haven,” I couldn’t help but feel like all they were offering was imprisonment. A way of keeping the cattle in check while the world outside went to shit.
“There,” Paul said.
I couldn’t see where he was pointing, and I could barely hear myself think with the crack of gunfire. I wondered how the thugs could possibly still be alive. I wondered what their stories were. I mean, sure, they were clearly thugs. But they had lives. They had families of their own. They were doing what they thought was the best thing to keep themselves alive.
How was I much different to them, really?
How was I any different to them at all?
I reached the back door and my heart fluttered. This was it. This was how we got out of here.
“We leave the bike,” I said. “We leave everything. Even if it means hiding for a week, we wait until the army leave and then we keep moving.”
I pushed on the door, half-expecting it not to open at all.
But it did.
It did, and light filled the back of the shop.
I squinted at the light. A part of me was still expecting a fire alarm to go off after pushing on this door, but of course that was an impossibility.
I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light then looked left and right, trying to figure out the best way on the street to go.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
But there was a strange look to Paul’s face. I couldn’t explain it. But it was the way he was looking at me. Something distinctly weird about it.
He was looking at me like he was afraid.
“What is it?” I asked.
“They’re the army,” he said. “They’re… they’re soldiers. What if we just trust them? What if we have some faith in them?”
I wanted to have the same optimism as Paul. I wanted to believe, just like he did, in spite of everything that had just happened, everything we’d both just witnessed.
I wanted to throw aside my self-centred worldview—my sole determination of reaching my family—and I wanted to trust in the people clearly running this country now.
But then I heard a blast.
I didn’t know what caused it. Not at first. But it was close by. Really close by. So close that it made my ears ring.
I looked over at Paul to see if he’d heard it too.
But then I noticed something.
Paul’s eyes were wide.
He was holding his chest with a shaking hand.
Blood was spurting between his fingers.
Then I heard the shouting.
“Drop everything! Get on your knees!”
I looked ahead and saw the soldier walking towards me, rifle raised.
Then I looked back at Paul as he stumbled down to the ground.
“No,” I muttered.
I tried to hold onto him as he coughed up blood. I tried to reassure him as his eyes widened, as he tried to speak, but every time he tried he just gurgled up more and spat it on the ground.
“No.”
I held onto his hand, which was already going cold, and I ignored the sounds of the footsteps getting closer to me. I ignored the immediate danger I might be in. I ignored the fact that I was surrounded, almost certainly, with no hope of escape.
I looked into Paul’s eyes and I held his hand, which gripped onto mine tightly.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, as blood covered his chin. “Just hold on. Just hold on.”
He kept on holding for a little while longer.
Then he made a different kind of gargling noise. His hand went limp.
There was nothing left of Paul anymore.
Paul was dead.
And his killers were the very people who were supposed to be protecting society.
Chapter Eighteen
I stared ahead into the near-darkness and tried to get what I’d witnessed out of my mind.
But I wasn’t doing a good job of it.
I didn’t know what time it was or how long I’d been travelling. I didn’t know where I was, how far I’d gone, what the weather was like outside. Occasionally, I heard a sudden pattering of rain against the steel roof of the military vehicle I’d been stuffed inside, but often it stopped just as quickly as it started. I wondered if whatever had occurred had an impact on the weather somehow. Certainly seemed more all over the place—even for Britain.
But the weather was the least of my concerns right now.
The biggest of my concerns was the fact I was stuffed in the back of some truck with a bunch of other people.
I squinted around at the rest of the people travelling with me. There were thirty of us in here at least. And yeah, it smelled that way too. Kids were crying. Some people were talking, but it was all very half-hearted, all very lacking in optimism. I didn’t know where we were going, where we were being taken, only that I didn’t figure it could be a very positive place, not with the way we’d been stuffed in here like cattle. And regardless of how much the military had promised “safety.”
I hadn’t said a word to anyone, though. Mostly because I felt like if I opened my lips, I’d vomit, and I didn’t want to add to the already sickly stench in this place.
Paul.
I’d watched him clutch his chest after that bullet hit him.
I’d seen the confusion and the lack of understanding in his eyes as he’d fallen to the ground and gargled for help.
I’d held his hand as the light of his life had faded.
And the most painful thing of all?
Just moments ago, he’d suggested that I should have a little faith in the military. That we weren’t the bad guys, so perhaps we should just try trusting them after all.
Those same people had shot him dead.
And for what?
For what?
I thought about his mother. Wherever she was, I hoped she was okay. I pictured her still lying there on the floor, desperately trying to get to her feet. How long would it take before she died of dehydration or starvation? I couldn’t think of many worse ways to go. A slow, drawn out death of sheer frustration, knowing deep down that if you were just a little more physically active, maybe things would be different.
I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t let myself believe that’s what had happened to Paul’s mum. I couldn’t allow it.
Paul seemed like a good, unselfish guy. He’d died at the hands of the very people who were supposed to be protecting innocent people. How many more people were like him? How many people would fall in this w
orld? Was this really what we had reverted to already? And how would we ever go back to normal?
“Shit day, huh?”
I heard the voice but I didn’t really think much of it at first. Figured the woman was talking to someone else.
“You can ignore me. Ignoring is fine. I just prefer conversation, that’s all. Don’t see the point in being miserable. We’re all screwed at the end of the day. Might as well make the most of it.”
I turned around and saw a dark-haired woman beside me looking right at me.
“Hey,” she said. “He’s alive.”
I looked away from her. “Just about.”
“I feel like that most days. Today’s not much different, to be honest. Just a little shittier. Only a little.”
The vehicle bumped over something in the road and I banged my back against the metal. I heard a few other people wince, too.
“You know, I never believed it when people said it.”
I frowned. “Believed what?”
“The whole thing about society crumbling fast in a disaster scenario. I mean, we’ve had tasters of it over the years. We had the London riots. Hurricane Katrina. The Boxing Day tsunami. Things like that. And based on what happened there, even though everything pointed towards civil disorder kicking off literally as soon as the event occurred, I never actually believed it could be this bad on a wide scale. I always thought we’d find a way to pull through. Maybe I was wrong after all.”
I thought of the way the police had got violent on the streets a few miles back. I thought about the trigger-happy actions of the military. Paul’s death. “Maybe it isn’t the people trying to turn the order upside down who are the real problem at all.”
“Perhaps not,” the woman said. She extended a hand. “I’m Beth.”
I took it. “Alex.”
“Nice to meet you, Alex. Wish the circumstances were a teeny bit better. But anyway. Here we go on the long road to nowhere. Probably heading far away from my family at this rate. Life sucks.”
I felt a twinge of sympathy for Beth then. “You have family?”
“Don’t we all? Sorry. I shouldn’t be so snide. But yeah. My girlfriend, Jess. Our daughter, Kaileigh. And our two cats, Lucious and Victor.”
“Lucious and Victor.”
“Don’t mock their names, whatever you do. They’re my babies. Just… well. Don’t tell my actual baby that.”
I smiled. “I know how it can be.”
“Family of your own?”
“Like you say. Don’t we all?”
Beth nodded. “Then I wonder, Alex. We’ve both got family of our own. In fact, everyone in here must have family of their own. So you know what I’m wondering?”
I had an idea. But I didn’t want to be the one to put it out there. “Go on.”
“What the hell are we doing holed up in here when there’s people out there we care about?”
I heard what Beth was saying. Really, I did.
And although I couldn’t yet see how we were going to get out of this situation, I couldn’t help but feel buoyed by it.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked.
She smiled then. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m thinking. We’re going to wait for our opportunity. We’re going to band together. And we’re all going to get out of this truck. And this is how we’re going to do it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sometime later, the truck ground to a halt, and I knew it was time to act on our plan.
I looked around at the rest of the group inside our vehicle. They all looked back at me. We were all on the same page now. We’d all worked together, all in the same mind about what we had to do. There had been some resistance. Of course there had. What we were proposing could be dangerous, especially when we knew what the military was capable of—what we’d seen with our own eyes.
But we all had to be pulling in the same direction for this to work.
“We have to do this together,” I said, realising I’d taken something of a leadership role; a role I never felt totally comfortable with if it was outside of work.
But there needed to be some kind of leader. And seeing as nobody else was volunteering… I figured it fell with me to take some kind of responsibility.
“It’s not going to be easy. Might be the riskiest thing we’ve ever done. There’s… there’s going to be a good chance it goes nasty. And I know that’s awful. But the alternative… we don’t know what the alternative is. We don’t know where we’re being taken to. All I know is that staying here and allowing this to just happen is giving up our freedom and handing our lives over to someone else. And I’m not even sure the military is as in control as it says it is. Who’s to say they are really following government orders? Who’s to say they aren’t just taking the supplies from the stores to maintain their sense of power?”
I saw a bald man opposite shake his head. “It’s madness. I’m telling you. It’s gonna get us killed.”
“Maybe so,” Beth intervened. “But I’d rather die a free woman than live a prisoner.”
“I think you’re exaggerating,” the man said. “I mean… they’re the military. They’re heroes.”
“I saw them gun people down,” I said, raising my voice. “One of them was a friend. I’m not exaggerating about that.”
Silence followed. And as that silence dragged on, I realised time was running out. We’d been stationary for a while. It was time to make the most of this opportunity.
“And just think about it. Are you here by choice? Really?”
More silence. More thinking.
“They are heroes. And they always will be. But… but people do strange things when they sense order collapsing. And right now, we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. We’ve got to act on the evidence in front of us. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do right now. Okay?”
I tensed a fist and looked around at the people inside the vehicle. Nobody seemed to be protesting anymore. I took that as a “yes.”
“Here goes nothing,” I said.
Then I banged against the vehicle door hard.
“Hey. Anyone out there?”
Silence.
“Hey. Someone’s passed out in here. I think they’re having a heart attack.”
Still silence.
I looked around at a few more people and nodded.
We banged against the vehicle door some more. We all shouted; all cried out for help.
And as the silence continued, I thought about giving up. This was pointless. This barely even qualified as a plan.
But no.
We had to keep on trying.
We had to keep persevering.
We weren’t going to get out of here by meekly giving up.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Beside me, Beth kicked and banged and shouted.
All of us united.
All of us together.
All of us believing that by being together, we were stronger than any individual.
Even I believed.
And then I heard the voice.
“Hey. Shut up back there.”
I froze. All of us went silent.
“There’s—there’s someone seriously ill back here. I think she needs some air.”
“Well she can wait it out a little longer.”
“I’m not sure she can. Please.”
Silence. A sigh. “I can’t let you out of there. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Beth shouted. “We aren’t the enemy. Why are you treating us like animals?”
“I’m just following orders.”
“Whose orders?” I asked.
Silence followed. And that’s what made me even more curious about the intentions of the military. Who was pulling the strings? What agenda did they have? Were they really directly responding to the government? Or were they just a rogue unit who knew more than the average person and were, therefore taking advantage of the situation?
“Please,” I said. “Just… We’re just as lost
as all of you. We’re just as confused about all this as everyone. We just need some air. Please.”
More silence. A few mumbles and curses.
And then something remarkable happened.
The door of the vehicle began to creak.
Light peeked through.
“Okay,” the soldier said. “But just the one of you. The ill one. Send her forward so we can…”
At that moment, I looked at the soldier and I saw his inherent humanity in making that decision.
I looked at the rest of our people.
And then, as difficult as it was, I gave the nod.
I think the soldier realised. I think he registered right at the last second.
But by then it was already too late.
I flew at him before he could grab his gun, aided by some people at my side. I grabbed his rifle, pointed it at his stomach.
“On your knees,” I barked.
The soldier shook his head. “You don’t understand what you’re—”
“On your knees!”
The soldier got onto his knees reluctantly. He lifted his hands above his head. I held the gun to him. The people from inside the vehicle were outside now, all surrounding me, all standing by my side.
The rest of the soldiers were opposite, rifles raised at us.
The soldier who’d let us out of the truck was on his knees.
“Drop that weapon and let him go immediately.”
I felt adrenaline taking hold of my body. I was too far gone in the buzz of the situation to turn back now. “Whatever you’re doing, why you’re doing it, we deserve an explanation.”
“And maybe you’d have got one if you hadn’t stormed your way out of there. But you aren’t going to get one with a gun to our colleague’s head. Believe me. So put the weapon down and get back inside. Now.”
Tension filled my body. I could feel myself being pulled in two directions. One was telling me to do what the soldier said, because this wasn’t going to end well.
But the other was telling me to hold my ground. Because we had the upper ground right now. We couldn’t sleepwalk into imprisoning ourselves again.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” I said, sounding as tough as I could. “You’re going to lower your guns. You’re going to let us walk. You can find some other people to take to wherever you’re taking us. You can even keep those supplies you’ve stolen. But you let us go. All of us who want to. Okay?”