by Ryan Casey
I saw the eyes of the soldier in the middle narrowing. I saw the tension growing through the rest of his group. A standoff, only nobody knew the conclusion. Nobody knew who was willing to hold out the longest.
“We don’t negotiate—”
“Then maybe you should.” This time, it was Beth who spoke. “Because we’re not standing down. And we’ve got one of your people. So think carefully about this and perhaps we can both go our own ways. How’s that sound?”
The wind brushed across the ground. The silence stretched on. And the longer it went on, the more the tension built.
The soldiers held their rifles.
The people behind me stayed totally still.
“So?” I said. But I didn’t feel as confident as before. The adrenaline was fading. I was starting to doubt this situation. I’d been stupid to stand up to them. I should’ve taken another approach. This wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
And then something extraordinary occurred.
The soldier lifted his right hand.
“Lower your weapons,” he said.
A few mumbles amongst his people. “Sir?”
“I told you to lower your weapons. There’s no need for this to end violently. The lady and gentleman are right. We can come to some sort of agreement here.”
I watched the soldiers hold their rifles a little while longer.
Then, I watched in amazement as they lowered them, one by one.
I stood there, heart pounding, and I felt a sense of relief fill my body. Because this might not be over yet. But that was step one.
I could taste freedom, so close, so sweet.
“I am sorry, though,” the lead soldier said.
I narrowed my eyes. Dread building. “For what?”
He looked up at me. “I wasn’t apologising to you.”
Then he lifted his rifle and he fired.
The soldier I had hostage stood. “No—”
Gunfire blasted into his body.
I watched him fall to the ground.
Then I watched the rest of the soldiers lift their guns, firing bullets waywardly into the people around me.
I watched the bullets fly.
I listened to the agonised screams.
I saw the face of the real monster as the military held their ground and kept on firing.
The soldier lay dead on the ground.
Five, ten people from inside the vehicle lay dead on the ground.
And if I didn’t get away fast, I was going to be next.
Chapter Twenty
I heard the gunshots firing all around me and I knew there was only one thing I could do.
I turned around and I ran away as fast as I could.
I saw the fallen bodies of people I’d been locked away with in the back of that military vehicle. I saw men clutching to spurting holes in their necks; women clinging to their bloodied legs. But the most frightening sight of all? The people who had decided to just climb back into the armoured vehicle, hands raised. Fully accepting of their fate, even though they surely knew by now that good things didn’t wait for them. Things had changed. There was no doubt about that.
I felt something whoosh past the side of my right ear and felt a sudden burning stinging sensation as I kept on running, kept on trying to get away from here—if getting away from these people was possible at all. It took me a few seconds to realise that I’d just narrowly dodged being shot. A few inches to the left and a bullet would’ve wedged into my skull. All of this would be over. I’d be just another pointless body on the ground.
I reached the back of the truck and leaned against it. My heart raced. I knew I didn’t have long to hide here. But all I could hear were shouts and screams and gunfire and I just wanted to get away… I just needed to get away.
The military. The chaos and panic with which they were trying to hold this situation together. They had to know something. They had to know more about what’d happened—this EMP or whatever it was. There had to be a reason why they were so determined to keep people confined to one place that they were willing to kill merely to avoid disorder.
Or perhaps that was it. They saw a future where the people could rise up and make laws for themselves, and they wanted to make sure that wasn’t a problem right from day one.
I looked in the distance and saw some trees. Perhaps I could try getting over there. There were already a couple of people running towards them. Yeah. I could join them. I could—
Gunfire peppered in their direction.
All of those people fell.
I felt my body turn to stone. Those people had been fleeing. They’d been actively trying to get away. And they’d been shot. Why? This couldn’t just be an attempt at clinging to power. These were just normal, innocent people. They weren’t trying to start any kind of revolt. Why were they being shot?
It felt like there was something these soldiers—or the people giving their orders—knew that the rest of the population did not.
Or perhaps the alternative was true. Perhaps the scary reality was that people really were gunning other people down in an attempt to maintain their power. It didn’t make sense, really. I mean, the army couldn’t hope in a million years to gather every single person and take them wherever they were taking them, presumably somewhere they could be easily controlled.
But perhaps it was just that illusion of authority they were trying to create. Perhaps they were just reminding people who were in charge, and more importantly, what happened if that order was defied.
It wasn’t right. Especially when I was surrounded by the dead. But I could see how they were thinking. I could feel the panic these soldiers must feel about what they were doing.
I couldn’t stick around for much longer, though.
I heard footsteps moving around either side of the vehicle.
My body tensed. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t stay here. There was hardly any time to decide to do a thing.
So I did the only thing I could.
I crouched down and I rolled under the vehicle.
Then I held my breath and I prayed.
I didn’t want to look out from under the vehicle. I didn’t want to see how close my pursuers were.
But I couldn’t help but stare when I heard the footsteps and saw the black boots stepping out right at the back of the vehicle where I’d been just seconds ago.
I held my breath. Felt my heart racing. It was so hard that I thought it might be shaking the earth and that they’d be able to feel it reverberating right where they were standing.
“You sure you saw more of ’em go this way?” a voice said.
No one responded. But I knew the man studying the surroundings was the same guy I’d looked in the eyes and defied just minutes earlier.
“I thought I did,” he said. “Must be mistaken.”
“Gavin, I…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. Speak up.”
“What we just did. I—I don’t know if I can—”
“You can. You have to. It’s what we have to do if we want them to respect us.”
“But when the power comes back. We’re going to go down for decades for this. I mean… I know we don’t want people to run riot. I get that. But this… this is just…”
Gavin walked up to his friend. I sensed he was putting a hand on his shoulder. “The power isn’t coming back for a long, long time, Stuey. You just keep on focusing on what you have to. Otherwise you’ll regret it when this lot turn around and take our weapons from us. Because they will. They will. Okay?”
They walked away, the pair of them. And for a moment, I felt relief fill my body. I felt myself exhaling as the tension loosened its grip. They were going to leave. I was going to survive this.
Then I saw something.
It took me a second for the penny to drop. But when it dropped, so too did my stomach.
A woman stepped out a few feet away, right in full view of the soldiers.
She loo
ked over at them, grey tracksuit smeared with blood.
She had a knife in her hand.
It was Beth.
I saw her bringing that knife back.
I saw her staggering towards the soldiers, rage in her eyes, eager to find some form of justice even if it got her killed.
Tension built up inside me. “Just walk away,” I muttered. “Don’t do this, Beth. Don’t do this. Please.”
But she kept on going.
And for a moment, I thought she might make it.
I thought she might actually reach the troops.
But then I heard Gavin. “Hold up,” he said. “What do we have here?”
“Murderers,” Beth cried, pulling the knife back further. “Murder—”
A blast.
My eyes squeezed shut reflexively.
Silence followed.
I didn’t want to open my eyes as I lay face flat on the road.
I didn’t want to see what the outcome of that blast had been.
But eventually, I opened my eyes.
I opened them because I had to.
And when I did, I saw exactly what I’d expected to see.
Beth was on the road.
Her fingers were still clinging to her knife.
She was bleeding out badly.
And she was still.
Chapter Twenty-One
I waited until the army trucks had rolled away and I was totally sure that I was all alone before walking over to Beth.
The sun was piercing through the clouds, burning down on the back of my neck. It had to be late afternoon now, a fact that still frightened me to this very second. All this chaos and not even a day had passed. All this bloodshed, and the people of this country had only been disconnected for such a short period of time.
It frightened me. Because it made me wonder just how much further everything was going to go. Just how much more things were going to slide.
I knew society wasn’t going to pull together like it did in the movies when disaster strikes. But even I’d underestimated just how little it took for order to fall apart—on all sides.
I looked around at the bloody mass of bodies. Flies buzzed across faces I vaguely recognised from when I’d been locked up in the back of the truck. People cried out every now and then, struggling with their wounds. Some people I walked past had light in their eyes when I first saw them… only that light faded as soon as I passed by.
It was still so strange adjusting to all this death. It felt like I was walking through a movie scene, only one that I wasn’t supposed to be witnessing. My body shook. My chest tightened. All of it just seemed so pointless—such a waste.
And yet here I was being forced to walk through it.
And I had to. I just had to. I knew if I let this world get the better of me, I wouldn’t survive very long at all.
I was certain about the turn of events with the military now. Somehow, their vehicles had been safeguarded against a power outage—probably in some kind of large Faraday cage. The people in charge at the barracks saw what was happening—whether they were informed or not—and didn’t want to risk order flipping any further. So they’d gone out with the intention of gathering supplies, and people.
But the people who resisted. The question of what to do with them.
That question would be one that was answered in very different ways.
I’d seen one of the ways it had been answered and it made me shiver.
When I was a few steps away from Beth, I saw something. A twitch. She couldn’t be alive. I’d watched her get shot… but no. Actually, no. I’d heard her get shot. I’d seen her running, heard a blast, but then next time I’d looked she was on the ground.
She’d been so strong. She’d been the one to convince me to get out of the back of that vehicle; the one who reminded me of my strength and what I was working towards all along.
I couldn’t just give up on her. Not if there was a chance she was still alive.
But when I reached her side, I realised “not giving up on her” was going to be hard after all.
She was lying on her back. Her dark hair was spread out on the ground beneath her, the eloquence of it lost. Her brown eyes were staring above.
But they were bloodshot.
And speaking of blood…
There was a gunshot wound right in the middle of Beth’s chest. She was breathing fast, struggling with every inhale, every exhale. That bloodstain just kept on spreading, completely drenching her white T-shirt and turning it red.
I crouched down beside her, feeling a weight of guilt inside. “Beth.”
She lifted her hand at me, the one with the knife in it. She must think I was the enemy. Still fighting, right to the very end.
I took her weak, shaky hand and I held it and looked into her eyes. I had flashbacks of Paul, another new friend I’d lost unnecessarily such a short time ago. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve—I’ve got you. I’m here.”
And as I said these words to this dying woman who I’d barely known, I felt the pain of the situation intensifying once again. She had been a good woman. A fighter. A normal woman just living her life. And she was dying for what? For some jumped up troops to prove they were still in charge. It was unfair. So unfair.
She coughed and made a few mumbled sounds. It sounded like she was trying to speak.
“It’s okay,” I said, as she wriggled her hand, tried to break free of my grip. I kept on holding her hand though as she looked right into my eyes. “I’ve got you. I’m here. It’s okay.”
But Beth kept on struggling. And that struggle to pull away from my hand broke my heart in a way. I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to make up for the wrongs of the past, right in this one moment.
But Beth wasn’t making it easy for me.
In fact, she didn’t seem to even want my comfort.
I pulled my hand away from hers, respecting her wishes. It was, after all, the least I could do for her.
But then when I took my hand away, I realised something.
The knife dropped from her grip.
But so too did something else.
A couple of pieces of paper.
I reached down for it and lifted them up.
A business card for a mobile salon.
And as I studied this business card, I realised something.
Beth wasn’t trying to push me away.
She wasn’t trying to push me away at all.
She was trying to direct me somewhere.
I read the address over and over. Peak’s Cottage. Kendal. I memorised it, just in case I lost the card, then I pulled it aside and checked for the second thing Beth had dropped.
When I saw it, my stomach did a little somersault.
It was a kid. A toddler grinning as she stood there, ice cream in hand, Beth beside her. Little gap-toothed smile, ice cream melting everywhere in the sun. Kaileigh.
I looked past the photo, down at Beth, and I knew what she was telling me to do.
“I’ll find your daughter,” I said. “I’ll go to your home and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure she’s okay. I promise.”
And at that moment, something shifted in Beth.
Her rapid breathing slowed.
Her eyes went less bloodshot.
She leaned her head back against the ground.
I reached for her hand again, and this time she let me hold it. I stroked the hair out of her face, and I sat there in the glare of the sun, both of us together, both of us silent.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” I said, tightening my grip on her hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more.”
She tightened her hand back. And I knew in that final moment what she was trying to say to me.
You can do more.
You can find my daughter.
And my cats.
Especially my cats.
And as I crouched there on the ground above her, I found myself smiling despite the tears rolling down my cheeks.
I had to believe I could.
Because I owed it to Beth.
I’d made a promise.
“I’ll find your daughter,” I said. “I’ll find your cats. I promise. I’ll find them all.”
I kept on telling Beth that I was going to find her family, repeating the words to her, calming her, soothing her.
It was on the eleventh time of repeating the words that I heard a final, strained sigh leave Beth’s croaky throat.
And I knew right then that Beth was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I wasn’t sure how much further I’d been walking when I realised the sun was beginning to set.
The clouds were building. The aurora that had been so visible earlier today was completely gone, now. But its disappearance hadn’t coincided with the return of power. Not by any stretch.
And now here I was, totally lost, totally without supplies, and with daylight running out fast.
I had an idea which direction I was heading in. The problem was, I had no idea where I was. I didn’t know whether I’d travelled north or south in the time I’d spent in the back of that army vehicle. I was disoriented and I was lost, right in the middle of nowhere. It’d help if I’d come across some sign or other indicating where I was or where I was near, but those I’d noticed weren’t familiar to me, just small villages that nobody had really ever heard of.
I found it ironic that after trying so desperately to get away from busy places because of how much more dangerous they would be, there was nothing I wanted more than a sign of life right now to help get me back on track.
There was something else bothering me, too. And that was the knowledge that I was going to have to find some shelter for the night. The thought of stopping for a break when my wife and son were out there was a bitter pill to swallow. But at the same time, I knew the dangers of exhaustion. I knew it would be madness to keep on going through the night for a number of reasons. I needed to find somewhere to shelter, preferably an old barn or something considering where I was. But then… no. A barn would be dangerous because I might run into a defensive farmer not keen on sharing.