by Ryan Casey
And of how unlikely it was that she was ever going to get out of it.
She listened to the heavy rain banging against the roof of the caravan and she thought about Alex. Wherever he was, she hoped he was keeping himself safe. It was hard for her to think logically, especially after what’d happened to Bobby, no doubt about that. But she knew Alex was easily led by vengeance, by base urges.
And she worried. She worried that he was going to come here again. That he was going to get himself into trouble.
It wasn’t herself she thought about. She knew what Alex’s return would mean for her and for the rest of her people. She knew their time would be up; their days would be numbered.
But in a way, Sarah feared the worst where she was concerned anyway. She didn’t see much of an opportunity for her to get out of the situation she was in. She heard whispers, saw the way Jon’s people looked at them all, like they were deciding the best thing to do with them.
They couldn’t keep them here forever.
Or maybe they could. Maybe that was part of their plan.
Maybe they were reserves for when the real food ran out, just in case…
She took as deep a breath as she could through her blocked nose. The smell of sweat was strong in here. She looked around, saw Suzy and Will sleeping. Kaileigh—the little girl—was at the other side of the caravan, Ellie by her side. Sarah had never spoken to Ellie. They hadn’t had the chance to meet in the best of circumstances, admittedly. But she was in this situation with them, so she was as much one of them as everyone else.
She hoped to get to know her someday. She hoped they’d be able to have a conversation, to look back on this situation as just a sorry moment in their lives.
But again, it was all just fantasy, really.
This was the situation they were in. And it was the situation they were staying in.
They weren’t getting out of it anytime soon.
She pulled at the ties around her wrists, out of routine more than anything. Sometimes someone came in during the night, took their dishes away. It was morning, she could tell that much from where the sun was, so she knew there would be someone here soon to feed her, to water her.
To kill her?
No. She couldn’t think like that.
But when she pulled against the ties on her wrists, she realised something.
Something remarkable.
They were loose.
She frowned as she looked down at them.
Part of her wondered if perhaps they’d just loosened with time. Or that she was losing weight so rapidly that she was on the verge of being able to slip out of them.
But no.
Someone had loosened them.
Someone had cut at them, just a little bit.
Someone… someone in here was trying to help her.
She lifted her head as she tugged against them. She wanted to shout, to get the attention of the others, but at the same time she didn’t want to risk attracting any outside attention.
So she just pulled.
It was still tough. These ties were a nightmare to snap. She knew that too well already.
She was bleeding as she pulled against them, adrenaline filling her body.
She kept on pulling, pulling…
And in the end, despite the loosening, despite how close she was, she couldn’t break free.
She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.
She couldn’t just give up.
She had to do this.
She tried again, this time digging right into the sore on her wrists.
She resisted every urge telling her to stop because it was hurting her, it was doing her damage.
Then the ties came free.
She sat there for a few seconds. Sat there, in disbelief more than anything.
Then she pulled away the sweaty gag and took a few gasps of the air.
It wasn’t fresh. But it was a relief.
So when she’d done that, when she’d got a couple of lungfuls, she reached for her ankles, pulled at those ties.
They came free easily, too.
And it suddenly dawned on her.
She was free.
She was totally free.
She saw movement outside when she stood to her feet. Heard voices, footsteps.
She went totally still. She couldn’t risk anyone finding her like this. They’d kill her, no doubt about it.
But the voices receded. The footsteps disappeared.
So she walked slowly across the room, first to Suzy.
She put a hand on Suzy’s shoulder and she woke up, violently.
Then she could see her eyes turning as she realised it was Sarah all along.
“It’s okay,” Sarah said, her voice raspy. “We’re going to get out of here.”
She helped Suzy free of her ties. Then she moved on to Will, then to Ellie and to Kaileigh. And before they knew it, the five of them were on their feet, all standing by the door of the caravan.
Ellie was peeking through the hole in the wood.
“See anything?” Sarah asked.
Ellie shook her head. “Not much. Don’t figure we can just sprint our way out of here.”
“What about the trap door?” Suzy said.
Sarah frowned. “The trap door?”
Suzy walked through to the back of the caravan. “These caravans. They always have a little sunroof at the back. Like a fire escape, if you will.”
“And what makes you so confident we can just go climbing out of here without putting ourselves in danger?” Sarah asked.
Suzy smiled as she climbed onto the bed, slowly unlocking the sunroof. “Because if I remember correctly, this caravan backs directly onto some overgrown hedges. We can be out of this place without them even realising. We just have to be extra careful.
Sarah looked around at Ellie. “You okay with this?”
Ellie shrugged. “I figure we don’t have much of a better shot.”
Suzy climbed out first, slowly. She looked around, then nodded. “Be careful. There’s a few of them on duty.”
Ellie followed. And she disappeared too.
Then Will was next.
And Kaileigh after him.
And before she knew it, it was just Sarah left.
She looked at that opening and she felt rain falling in through the sunroof. She knew this was going to be dangerous. She knew it was madness.
But Ellie was right.
It was the best opportunity they had.
She started to climb out of the caravan when she heard the front door open.
She stopped. Froze, completely.
And as she stood there, unable to lift herself up, knowing what the person would be seeing, she knew her time was up.
She turned around, slowly.
A man was standing there. He was skinny. Had big bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept much.
He was looking right at Sarah with guilt in his eyes.
He looked at her for a few seconds. His jaw was shaking. His eyes were quivery. He had a knife in his hand.
And just as Sarah expected him to call out for his friends… something happened.
The man turned around.
He walked back to the front door.
And he whispered: “I’m so sorry.”
He stepped outside. And Sarah wondered why he’d apologised. She thought that maybe he was going to rat them out and felt guilty about it. Or perhaps he was apologising to his people audibly for letting her go.
But no.
She sensed something else.
Something… deeper.
“Sarah,” Suzy whispered. “Quick!”
She swallowed a lump in her throat, turned back to the skylight.
She pulled herself out, looking all around, making sure it was all clear.
She saw that man again. Just walking away, slowly, as if everything was normal.
He started to turn in her direction.
Then he stopped, and kept on walking.
She took a deep breath as she wondered what that man’s story was. As she wondered why he’d done what he’d done, and the trouble he was going to get into when Jon found out they’d escaped on his watch.
She wanted to know more about him.
But she couldn’t.
Because there was only time for one thing, now.
She climbed on top of the caravan.
She held her breath.
She jumped into the shelter of the hedges.
Ellie looked at her, smile on her face.
“Ready?” she said.
Sarah looked back over her shoulder, then swallowed a lump in her throat.
“Ready.”
Together, they disappeared into the trees.
Together, they ran.
They were free.
But something was bothering Sarah.
Something was playing on her mind.
A question.
A question that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she tried to fight it.
She ran through the trees and felt freedom getting closer.
But all the time, that question circled.
Had she just met the man who’d murdered her son?
Chapter Forty-One
A day later and I knew it was time to move.
I didn’t want to move on. Not really. After all, leaving these woods behind meant leaving a core part of who I was behind. Walking away from here meant walking away from my wife. From Suzy. From Will. It meant walking away from Kaileigh, who I’d sworn to look out for when Beth laid dying on the side of the road. And it meant walking away from Ellie, too, who had given me a chance when I’d been in my greatest time of need.
It all seemed so wrong. Like I was turning my back on everything that mattered to me.
But I was doing it for their own safety.
I had to believe that.
I had to keep on telling myself that.
I looked at the sky. The rain had stopped. The sun was shining. And in different circumstances, I might’ve been able to accept that this was actually a nice day. A day of beauty that we didn’t really take much time to acknowledge before the world had changed for good, let alone now that it had.
I wanted to make the most of this moment. I wanted to be present with this reality. Because there really was so much beauty in the world, right in front of our eyes.
But even so… I still couldn’t get the truth of what I was doing out of my mind.
I still couldn’t accept I was turning away from the people I loved dearest.
I looked down at the ground. My right foot was still sore from where I’d hurt it falling from that ladder in the sewers. But mostly when I looked at it, I thought of Peter. The sacrifice he’d made. I hadn’t even been able to bury him. I hadn’t been able to give him a proper farewell.
I hoped, wherever he was in whatever came next, that he found it in his heart to forgive me for not trying harder to save his life.
But I could hear him.
I could hear what he would be saying.
If you’d tried to save this old fool, you’d have got yourself and everyone else killed. Of course you did the bloody right thing.
And in a way, that gave me some small comfort.
I took a deep breath of the crisp spring air. Maybe there would be a chance to go back for my family. I couldn’t give up on them. But Jon had made his stance clear. They would pay if I went back there.
And I wasn’t giving up on them for good. I just needed time. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to figure out what I was going to do next.
It needed to be a good plan.
It needed to be something that worked.
It needed to be something that wasn’t going to get everyone killed.
Something that wasn’t driven by my vengeance, half-baked in the process, but actually driven by my mind.
But that was for then, and this was now. And right now, there was only one road ahead of me.
I had to get some supplies.
I had to start hunting. I had to start gathering my own water.
I had to start living my own life.
I didn’t know where I was going. I couldn’t be sure where I was going to end up.
But I was going to do the right thing for the first time in my goddamned life.
I was going to stop running waywardly into shitty situations.
I was going to take a step back, to stop being selfish, and I was going to do the selfless thing.
I felt my eyes beginning to well up again, my throat beginning to swell when I began to walk.
That was when I heard them.
The footsteps.
I turned around. Looked over my shoulder.
Someone was coming.
Immediately, a spark of defensiveness filled my body.
I reached for my knife.
Whoever it was could be trying to hurt me. Trying to kill me.
But as the rustling got nearer, I thought of another alternative.
What if they weren’t trying to hurt me?
What if they were just people? Normal people?
What if I could come to some kind of arrangement with them?
Join them?
I held my breath as the footsteps got closer and closer.
And then I saw them.
I wasn’t sure who I looked at initially. I wasn’t sure who my eyes met first.
But when I saw them, my muscles loosened, the knife dropped from my hand, and it hit the ground.
Will.
Kaileigh.
Ellie.
Suzy.
And Sarah.
“Sarah,” I said.
I ran towards her. Ran towards her as tears ran down my cheeks. I ran towards her, as she stood there, grubby and in desperate need of a wash, but still so lovely, still so beautiful.
I ran towards her and she ran towards me and for a moment I wondered if this was some kind of illusion, some kind of hallucination, so I wanted to get to her quickly before that beautiful moment disappeared for good.
But it wasn’t a hallucination.
I felt her arms wrap around my back.
I felt the warmth of her body.
And then I tasted the saltiness of her kiss.
I held her and she held me and for the first time in a long time, I felt happy. Truly happy.
For the first time, I felt like I could see a future ahead.
The clouds thickened.
The rain began to fall.
Chapter Forty-Two
It wasn’t long after my reunion with Sarah, Suzy, Ellie, Will and Kaileigh that the subject turned to the matter of Jon and his people.
It was later that afternoon. The rain was falling heavily. I could hear thunder rumbling above, lightning desperately trying to break free of its shackles. The air was thick with the smell of an impending storm. Everything felt so calm, so still. And yet I knew it wasn’t. Deep down, just like inside of me, it wasn’t.
Because as much as I was happy to be back with my wife and my people—as much as I was relieved and delighted that I wasn’t going to have to give up on them after all—I couldn’t stop thinking about what Sarah had said to me when we’d first been reunited, shortly after I’d told everyone about Stuart’s fate.
“I think I know who killed our son,” she said.
I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. We were spending a moment alone together, as agreed by the rest of the group. We were far away from them, deep in the woods. Part of me felt safer for being so. The other part… not so much. I didn’t like that we were separating ourselves from the rest of our people once again. Sparked that fear that we were going to lose them again, although maybe once and for all this time.
But still, just hearing Sarah say those words… it awoke something inside me. That old desire for revenge. A hunger that needed to be satiated.
I took a deep breath, tried to steady myself. “Jon killed—”
“I’m not sure he did, Alex. I’m not sure it was him
.”
The more Sarah said, the less I wanted to hear. Because accepting or even entertaining the possibility that Jon wasn’t the man who’d killed our son was problematic. Mostly because it felt like I’d already made my mind up that it was him who had done it, and therefore it was him who I was going to have to kill.
But if it wasn’t him?
If it was someone else all along?
“There was a man,” she said. “In the caravan we were being kept in. He… I woke up. The ties around my wrists had been loosened. Someone had done that for me.
“Then when I went to escape, this man, he came into the caravan. He looked right at me. And for a moment I saw such… such sadness in his eyes. Such guilt. And that’s when he turned around and said sorry.
“I wasn’t sure what to make of him at first. I didn’t know how to interpret what he’d said, really. But now I see it. Now, I understand. I think he was apologising not to his people but for something he’d done. I think he might’ve killed Bobby, Alex.”
I let the words sink in as I sat back against the soaking wet grass. I put my arm around Sarah, held onto her. If someone other than Jon had killed my son, then that changed every little judgement I’d made, every little thing I’d believed to be true. But then when I thought about it, really… why had I been so certain that it was Jon who had killed Bobby after all? I knew someone of his people had killed him. I just didn’t know who exactly. I’d seen Jon as a figurehead, as someone who I could blame for what had happened. But that didn’t necessarily mean it was him directly who had done the killing.
“This changes things,” I said, tightening my fists.
Sarah put a hand on mine. I felt my fists softening again.
“Alex I… I’m hurting too. Really, I am. But this man. The way he apologised. The way he looked at me. That—that look in his eyes. I know it’s our Bobby. But… but I don’t see how we’re going to get anywhere by chasing shadows. And I don’t think we’ll ever find peace if we don’t learn to forgive.”
I couldn’t actually believe what I was hearing. It annoyed me, just to hear that in spite of everything that had happened—in spite of everything that we had lost, Sarah and I—she was still able to find forgiveness in her heart so soon after the event.