by Ryan Casey
But he was staying remarkably quiet during this entire journey.
“Yeah, well,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ground below. “Never know what we’re going to come across. So it’s better if we keep on—”
“You know, I lost a brother when I was younger.”
My stomach sank. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Peter nodded. “We were playing on the street. The way we did back in the day. All on our bikes, all circling around. No harm in that really. But anyway. One day I saw my brother—Simon—he’d gone cycling off away from the end of the street. Now when we were younger, our mum made sure we didn’t cycle out of the street. No go zone, y’know? But Simon, he was a daredevil. Used to always sneak off. And I guess I just wanted to see what was out there. I guess I just wanted to see the world for myself.”
He stopped then. Examined some of the mud, didn’t see anything.
“I followed him for ages. Along main roads, down narrow alleyways. And it was like I was seeing the world for the first time. I watched him when he met his mates and I felt like I was there with them, biking along. It was when he saw me that the problem started. He wasn’t happy. Said Mum would go mad. So he decided he’d take me back. Left his mates behind and took me back. And I wonder, sometimes. If I hadn’t followed him, would he have gone down that road? Would he have turned back? Would he still be alive?”
“What happened down the road?” I asked.
Peter looked at me, shook his head. His demeanour changed in an instant, from emotional to something akin to a newsreader, delivering the news very naturally and to the point. “An old lorry swerved out. My brother was looking at me, making sure I was okay. He didn’t see it turn. By then it was too late.”
I lowered my head. My emotions were tuned down somewhat, dulled after what had happened to me so recently. But hearing this, it was impossible not to feel a degree of sympathy.
“I told myself I’d hunt that lorry driver down,” Peter said. “I told myself I’d find him and that I’d make him pay for what he did. But I never did find him. And even if I had, I’m not sure I would’ve got the kind of peace I was looking for.”
He looked at me then, as Suzy continued to scan the ground just ahead.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You won’t find peace, Alex. You never will. But the best thing you can do is try.”
I wanted to believe Peter. I wanted to see this entire quest for what it was—a disaster. Because we were going nowhere. There was nothing we were getting out of this, not really.
Nothing but more grief. More pain.
Was that really what I wanted to be responsible for?
My thoughts were broken when I heard Suzy cough just ahead.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, pointing at the ground. “But you might want to check this out.”
I rushed over to her side. I wondered what it was. Footsteps? They could belong to anyone. But even footsteps would be a start.
Or could it be a sign?
A true sign that the people we were looking for had come this way, somehow?
When I got to Suzy’s side, what I saw made me forget the trance I’d been in when I’d listened to Peter’s words and focus right on the moment, feel that desire—that hunger—to let my revenge flood into my body.
“It could be coincidence,” Suzy said.
I shook my head as I picked the item up. “It’s not a coincidence.”
I looked ahead at the trees. And even though I didn’t know exactly what we were heading towards, I knew one thing for certain.
A cow.
A dead cow.
One of our dead cows, I was sure of it.
Which meant that Bobby’s killers weren’t far away…
Chapter Sixteen
As the sun descended and afternoon gave way to evening, Jon couldn’t be more relieved to be back home at his camp.
It was a beautiful night, made all the more beautiful by the fact they’d made it home at all. It’d been a long struggle of a journey, but eventually they’d found their way.
Thinking back to the journey itself, there were some things Jon wished he’d been able to avoid. It would’ve been good if they’d avoided their run-in with Alex and his people. After all, blood on his hands wasn’t something he was comfortable with—not when it was so unnecessary.
But there was a positive to take from that run in, too.
He’d learned that Alex and his people weren’t good people. They didn’t want to collaborate. They didn’t want to share.
And if they didn’t want to share…
Well. Jon might just find a use for them in his new world.
Jon looked around at his people. All of them were sitting back in the grounds of the caravan park they called home. It was a farm site, so there weren’t many differences to the place Alex was at, really. Plenty of caravans. A few barns. There were animals there, some of which they’d stolen on their journey, some of which were here already. And there was land.
But the thing Jon liked most about this place was the gates he had around it. They were electric gates originally, but they’d managed to operate them manually.
It gave him that extra level of security, that was for sure. The kind of security that he knew the majority didn’t have.
At least he knew he could decide who to let in and who not to let in.
But as he sat there in the light of the sun, chewing down on some freshly cooked chicken, Jon felt something bothering him.
It was ridiculous. He knew it shouldn’t be getting to him like it was.
But what happened to the boy.
The thought of it brought a shiver up the back of his neck. It wasn’t his way. It wasn’t his method, at all. He didn’t like to kill unnecessarily. After all, doing that just made him a monster like everyone else.
He liked the rest of his people to follow in his image, too. So he told them not to be violent. To be diplomatic, more than anything.
But what’d happened at Alex’s. That bothered him. Because he knew from the look in Alex’s eyes that Alex wasn’t a man who was going to let things go.
Sure. Alex’s people had killed one of their old friends. And for that reason, the vengeance felt good, somewhat.
But the boy wasn’t Jon’s real target.
The boy had just got messily caught up in things. A moment of sheer panic, and bam. Finished.
Jon hadn’t intended to kill anyone like that. Just rough their place up. Rustle a few feathers. Remind them that it was co-operation that was going to thrive in this world, and not anything else.
But after the death of the boy… Alex was going to come after his people.
He had no doubt about that.
And in a sense, something sent a quiver up Jon’s spine when he thought of that. Not because he was afraid of Alex in any way, but because he sensed an opportunity.
If Alex came after him, maybe that opened up another chance to return to his homestead.
To take more from that place.
And maybe. Just maybe…
He stood up, wiped the corners of his mouth. “Who’s on guard tonight?”
Martin and Vincent looked at one another. Shrugged.
“Well the pair of you better sort it out between you.”
“And what’re you doing?”
Jon looked at them through narrowed eyes. “Something to attend to.”
He turned away and walked before the judgemental eyes of the group could follow him. After all, he didn’t like it when they judged him. He was a good man. Okay, he knew some of his methods were a little… unsavoury, let’s say. But he was thinking about the wider world. He was thinking about the bigger picture.
He walked past the reception area. He walked down the side of it, towards the cabin at the very back. And when he reached it, he stood outside for a few seconds. He listened for a sound. For the smallest whimper. Because that whimper would give him satisfaction. So much satisfaction.
Especially what they’d
put him through.
But he didn’t hear anything.
He should just walk away. Hell, he should just let them go. They’d paid the price, learned their lesson.
But the memory of what they’d done to him—what they’d taken from him—kept on spiralling around Jon’s mind and reminding him of why he was doing this after all.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. He thought about turning around, walking away.
And then he unlocked the padlock and opened the shed door.
The smell hit him first. Shit. And not fresh shit, either. Old shit. Shit that had been there for a long time, crusting together.
The sound of flies hit him, too, as a bunch of them flew out of the shed and into the open.
And then he saw him.
When he looked at the man, all chained and tied up, completely naked, he felt pitiful. He was skeletal. Maggots were chewing at his infected flesh. His eyes were swollen and tearful.
He looked like a man who wanted to be put out of his misery.
But Jon had no intentions of doing that. Not until he’d suffered enough.
So he crouched opposite him and pulled the man’s gag away, opening his mouth widely, and shoving the chicken inside.
When it didn’t look like the man was going to chew, he lifted his hand and pressed a sharp blade around his middle finger.
The one on his left hand. He’d already taken the one on his right.
“Chew,” Jon said, heart pounding, lost in the moment now.
The man looked at him with pain. He looked at him with reluctance. He looked at him like he was so, so sorry.
Jon held the blade closer.
“Chew it. And swallow it.”
He didn’t think he was going to chew.
He didn’t think he was going to swallow.
But in the end, in the face of short-term agony, the man chewed.
The man swallowed.
Jon moved the blade from his finger when he’d finished eating.
“Good,” he said.
He put the blade away. Then he wrapped the gag around this man’s mouth again. “I’ll be back with water later.”
He stepped outside. Put the padlock on the door. And as the man muffled beneath his gag, Jon couldn’t deny something very real he felt inside himself.
The man—Eddie—had chosen long-term suffering over short-term pain.
And he couldn’t be more relieved.
He slammed the door shut, locked it, and walked away from the shed, past the reception, back towards his friends.
His wife wouldn’t be proud of him.
But she was dead now.
Everyone he cared about was dead now.
And if anyone stood against him, they’d find out the hard way what he did to his enemies.
And they’d regret it.
Chapter Seventeen
We continued to follow the footsteps in the mud, but it wasn’t getting any easier.
The day was growing darker and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. The trees seemed to be getting thicker and more frequent, overgrown shrubbery blocking our path. The silence was just as discomforting as it had been all day, but at least now there was the sound of heavy wind and falling rain to cover it up somewhat.
It wasn’t exactly the ideal thing to cover the silence up. But it was better than nothing.
It was when the “nothing” struck that things really took a turn for the worse.
Suzy and Peter weren’t saying much. I could tell that Peter was still hesitant about this whole thing. He’d perked up a little when we’d found the footsteps and the dead cow, but since they were getting few and far between, he’d returned to his not saying much.
I couldn’t blame him, really. I was leading him down a path the ending of which I couldn’t pinpoint. He was mad to follow me in the first place.
I had to be grateful for that madness. I could do with all the help I could get right now.
As I walked, I could feel the tension filling my body, like a tap was turned on above my head and it was flowing, flowing, flowing. And that tension was one thing—that urge for vengeance. That craving, growing more and more intense.
I didn’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t satisfy it. I only knew that I needed to—fast.
Otherwise I couldn’t imagine what might happen.
After another while of walking, Peter stopped completely. We were soaked in rain. The storm was getting more intense. And as much as I wanted to resist it, there was no denying the truth: the pathway had disappeared completely. We were walking towards nowhere all over again. As much as I wanted to believe I could still see a fine trace of a pathway, I knew it wasn’t true.
We were running out of things to go on.
And that wasn’t helping the growing discontent inside my body…
I powered on forward, past Peter, past Suzy. “We keep on going,” I said. “We can’t stop. Not now.”
“It’s getting dark, Alex,” Peter said. “Sarah. And Will. They’re back at the farm. We need to get back to them.”
I held my tongue and kept on moving, resisting the urge to lash out, to say something stupid, something I regretted. “Then you go back. Make sure they are okay. I need to stay out here. I need to find them.”
“Alex.”
It wasn’t Peter’s voice this time. It was Suzy’s.
I looked at her and I saw from her face that she was on side with Peter now.
“Don’t lecture me,” I said, knowing damn well what they were both going to try and do, and also knowing damn well that it wasn’t going to come to anything.
“It took a lot for me to come out here and leave Will back at the farm,” Suzy said. “Believe me. That’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. But I did it because I believed you needed help in this. But you need to look around. You need to look at the weather. Look at your surroundings. This isn’t getting any of us anywhere. We’re literally walking to nowhere.”
I lowered my head. I wanted to argue. I wanted to fight back. But it was worthless.
“You haven’t even taken the time to grieve,” Suzy said.
“I’ll decide when it’s time to—”
“Alex,” Suzy said.
She put a hand on my arm then. And there was something about the sensation of her hand on my skin that drew me out of the nightmare I was trapped inside. There was nothing to the touch. But it just felt good to have someone there for me. Someone who wasn’t in the hellish inner circle of myself and Sarah right now.
“I care about you. I care about all of you. And right now we’re going to walk away from here, all of us, and we’re going to get through this together. I’m not denying you your revenge. I’m not condoning it and I’m not condemning it. But I am saying that you have to put it on hold for today. Otherwise you’re going to get yourself killed. And who will Sarah have left then?”
I looked at Suzy and I felt the truth behind her words. She was right. She was so right.
I was so caught up in the grips of revenge that I couldn’t see the truth when it was right in front of me.
“Let’s go home,” she said, smiling. She tightened her grip on my arm.
And I felt my defences falling, then. I felt my body melting. All that pain I’d been trying to resist, bottle up, and explore through the wrath of my vengeance, all of it had come to the surface, and all of it was spilling out.
I had to listen to Suzy.
I had to follow her.
I had to go back.
We all had to go back.
I took a deep breath. Looked at Suzy, who was smiling sympathetically.
Then I looked at Peter. He looked more content than I’d seen him for a long time.
“Let’s go,” he said.
And I started to nod.
I really did.
Maybe if I’d walked a few minutes earlier, I would’ve gone.
Maybe if I hadn’t spent so much time resisting, so much time lingering, then what
happened next would’ve turned out completely differently.
And if it had… who knows what might’ve happened?
Who knows what might not have happened?
There was no knowing with these things. Just as with Peter’s story about his brother, there were no certainties in life and death.
The only thing certain was that death was coming.
And it was coming for everyone.
I was about to walk when I heard the sound to my left.
The footsteps.
Someone was here.
Chapter Eighteen
When I heard the footsteps, I knew right away there was only one thing I could do.
Hide.
I rushed in the opposite direction from the footsteps, trying to find somewhere I could hide. I knew that Suzy and Peter would probably prefer to just get out of here, prefer to run. And maybe I should’ve taken that option, too.
But the movement.
It was the movement of people, no doubt.
And if it was the movement of people, that meant one thing.
These people could be Jon and his group.
They could be the group responsible for the death of my son.
And for that reason, I couldn’t just run away. I couldn’t merely disappear.
I had to confront them, head on.
And if it ended in drastic consequences for me?
Hell, if it ended in drastic consequences for all of us?
Was it going to stop me? Was it going to prevent me from doing whatever had to be done to tame the demon in my mind and get Bobby the much-needed justice he deserved?
It might be a selfish answer. It might be the morally incorrect way of looking at things. But there was only one answer.
It wasn’t going to stop me.
Nothing was going to stop me.
I crouched in the opening of a tree, where its roots had all come away from the earth. It was slushy, muddy and tight, but still I managed to wedge myself in there.
My heart raced. I kept my body as still as I could. But the more I heard those footsteps approaching, the more that demon on my shoulder started to rear its head, to shout at me.