by Ryan Casey
Mark frowned. “And you plan to do that, how? Alone?”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “As far as I see it, taking more people over there is a disadvantage. Mike’s the head of the snake. If we can get inside, cut that off, and free your people in the process… well, that’ll help matters greatly.”
Mark stood there for a few seconds. He was totally silent, like he was trying to process what I was saying.
I kept the knife tightly gripped in my hand.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said.
I shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“No, definitely so. When Phillip finds out you’ve ransacked his equipment, he won’t be happy. He’s… he’s not the man you think he is.”
“Then why not just let me leave and be done with it?”
Mark sighed. I saw him turn his head, look out of the caravan.
Then I watched as he lifted the knife.
I held my breath. Lifted my own knife.
And then Mark stabbed himself in his arm.
I stumbled back a few steps. I watched the blood pour from him as he gasped, trying not to cry out.
“Take what you need,” he winced.
“What—”
“Just take what you need and get out of here. In ten minutes, I’ll let out a cry and they’ll find me here. I’ll say I tried to stop you. You need to make sure you’re long gone by that point. Understand?”
I was frozen solid. My heart raced. I still couldn’t believe this was happening, that Mark was doing this for me. “Thank you. Thank—”
“Nine minutes now,” he said.
I nodded. I fumbled around for the rucksack I’d put together containing first aid supplies, dusty canned food that had been stocked up as provisions in case of serious emergency, and a few extra weapons—all hand weapons. Then I ran past Mark, over to the door.
“I won’t forget this,” I said.
Mark shook his head, going pale with the pain. “Just get your arse out of here and whatever you do, keep that little girl safe.”
I nodded.
Then, I stepped out into the dark, into the sleeping camp, and I saw the silhouettes of Remy, Haz, Holly and Lionel waiting for me in the distance.
“Eight minutes,” Mark said.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Goodbye.”
Then, I walked down the steps, into the darkness, and into whatever fate lay waiting ahead.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It wasn’t often Phillip got a chance to have a good, solid night’s sleep.
But tonight was different. He’d fallen to sleep pretty much as soon as his head touched the pillow. He’d drifted into dreams of his past. The wife he’d had, Charlotte. The way their relationship was deteriorating and going sour before the end times had arrived.
How he’d left her behind, and how that guilt had gnawed at him ever since…
He saw her in his dreams. He saw her long, chocolate hair dangling over her shoulders. She was sitting in the restored leather chair in the lounge, which Phillip had got from an antiques dealer up in Stockport. Charlotte insisted she hated it when she first saw it. She wanted it out, wanted it gone. And she never wavered in that opinion.
But the last time Phillip had seen her, before he’d walked away from her and left her behind, he’d seen her sitting in that leather chair, digging her fingernails into its arms for comfort. Like it was the last thing connecting her to him.
He woke up when he heard the banging on his door. The awakening was sudden, instant. He turned over, his head heavy, his throat dry from the lack of water in the night.
He thought for a moment he might be imagining things; that it might just all be in his mind.
Then he heard the banging on his door again.
“Damn it,” he said. “What couldn’t wait? What couldn’t possibly wait?”
He stumbled over to the door, heavy-footed, and opened it up.
Mark was standing there.
The first thing that struck Phillip as he looked at Mark standing there in the moonlight was the bandage around his arm. It looked like the bandage was leaking somewhat, like blood was coming out of it.
Then he saw the cuts and bruises on his face, and he knew something had happened.
“What is it?”
Mark cleared his throat. He looked down to Phillip’s feet, then back up at him. “I tried to stop them.”
“Stop who? What’s happened?”
Mark was silent for a few seconds. Then, “It’s Scott. Scott and the others. They broke into the supply caravan and then—”
“They what?”
Mark ground his teeth together. “He must’ve got in somehow. He… he was in there. I went over to him, to stop him. Then he stabbed me in the arm. They kicked me down, all of them.”
“And I’m hoping you managed to stop them before they got away?”
Mark looked distraught. “I’m sorry, Phillip. They’re gone.”
There was something about this whole scenario that just didn’t add up in Phillip’s mind. Mark was tough. He was armed, too. He could’ve acted and dealt with Scott before Scott had the chance to even get inside the supply caravan.
“I can go after him,” Mark said. “I—I can make amends. I swear.”
“No,” Phillip said. “No, you need to get that arm seen to. We’ll get someone else onto it.”
Mark nodded and turned from the door.
Phillip made his way over to his armchair and sat down in it.
“Mark?” he said.
“What?”
“Why are you lying to me?”
There was silence, then. Like Mark didn’t understand what Phillip was saying and getting at. “Lying? What makes you think I’m lying?”
Phillip smiled. “I don’t sleep well, Mark. You know that as well as I do.”
Mark’s whole demeanour changed. He scratched at the side of his head. “I don’t know what you—”
“I saw you. I saw you do what you did. So now tell me again. Why are you lying to me?”
Mark lowered his head, a look of shame on it. “They killed his people, Phillip. You have to see why he would want to go after them.”
Phillip didn’t say a word. He just sat there and watched.
“Besides,” Mark said, “we have plenty of weapons and supplies stashed away in there. More than enough. He’s not a bad man. They’re not bad people. They’ll return them; I’m sure of it.”
“If they make it,” Phillip said.
Mark sighed. “If they make it.”
Silence followed. Phillip could feel his body temperature rising. Part of him knew he had to keep himself in order. The other part…
Well. He didn’t want to think too much about the other part.
“Sit with me,” Phillip said.
Mark walked over, hesitantly. He sat on the edge of the chair opposite Phillip.
Phillip poured him some water. “You know why I don’t like this kind of situation, don’t you?”
“I can see why it might be problematic.”
“And yet you allowed it to happen regardless.”
Mark shook his head, holding the glass of water in hand. “It was a spur of the moment thing.”
“And the arm?”
Mark’s eyes met Phillip’s. “All me.”
Phillip leaned back and nodded. He watched Mark drink his water.
“You know, you should be careful who you trust.”
Mark gulped back the water. “What good is anything if we can’t trust?”
Phillip smiled. “That’s the kind of mindset that gets you into trouble. Big trouble.”
He drank more of his water. “Scott won’t be a problem to us. As far as I see it, they’ll be dead before they even get to Mike’s camp. And if they do get there, well. Is taking Mike out such a bad thing after all?”
“I wasn’t talking about Scott,” Phillip said.
A moment went by. Mark looked at Phillip. Phillip looked back
at Mark.
Then, Mark started to cough.
He fell onto the floor of the caravan. His coughing turned into choking. The glass he’d held in his hand fell to the floor, too, spiralled off across the room. He gripped at his neck, his eyes turning red, his face turning blue.
Phillip stood over him. He put a hand on his back. “Because when you trust people blindly, you end up digging yourself a hole. And before you know it, that person you trust stabs you in the back.”
Mark looked up at Phillip. The whites of his eyes were so bloodshot that they were barely visible.
He stretched out his hand, tried to grip at Phillip, tried to scratch at his face limply.
Phillip just watched, and he smiled. “Goodnight, Mark. Thanks for your service.”
His hand lashed at Phillip a few more times.
Then, it went limp.
It fell to the floor.
Mark stopped struggling.
Phillip lifted the glass off the floor, closed his bedroom door, and went back to sleep.
He’d deal with Mark in the morning.
He’d deal with everything in the morning.
Chapter Thirty-Six
If we’d had any idea what we were going to run into on our little trip in pursuit of Mike, we might have stayed at Phillip’s camp after all.
The sun was rising, which meant we must’ve been walking for quite a while. My throat was dry and I was getting dehydrated; I was sure of it. But I wanted to make what little water we had last. I had no idea how long we were going to be travelling. We had a rough idea of the direction Mike’s camp was in after our meetings—and we knew it was going to be a lengthy and challenging journey—but we couldn’t exactly be certain what to expect along the way.
Besides. The whole journey may end up taking longer than we thought.
Haz walked with Holly up ahead. Lionel was with them too. I was a little further back, Remy by my side.
Remy was as quiet as ever. In the early days, I wondered if perhaps he just didn’t really enjoy my company or any of the group’s company, but now I knew him better I saw it was just his way. He spoke when he needed to speak; when he had something to say. He wasn’t afraid to make his opinions known when he had them. He didn’t do small talk.
Now was a good time to find out what he thought about all of this.
“So what do you think?”
He glanced at me, as unrevealing as ever.
I smirked. “Right. So you think it’s a shit idea.”
“I think your intentions are good.”
“But the plan isn’t?”
“What plan are you talking about?”
I whistled. “Fair enough. Pretty cutting, but I’ll take it.”
Remy stopped and reached into the rucksack. He pulled out the water bottle and sipped on it. “Before the incident with… with Hannah, Sue and Aiden, you were too afraid to step out of your comfort zone. You were reluctant to reach out to anybody. Now, you’re the exact opposite. You’re plunging us headfirst into a fight we might not win.”
“If we don’t win, we don’t win.”
“And what about Holly?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat, carried on walking. “She’ll be okay.”
“If we die, she’ll be okay? If she gets captured, she’ll be okay? You saw what Mike did to Aiden. You saw how he just took him out, no hesitation, just to get to you. That’s really the kind of man you want Holly to grow up with?”
I looked ahead at Holly as she walked with Haz. They were smiling. The scene was so innocent, so beautiful. “She’s taken what happened better than we could’ve expected.”
“She looks ill. She cries herself to sleep. She’s been left totally alone in this world, other than us. But yes. Otherwise, she’s taken it well.”
I felt guilty about bringing Holly along after all. Would it have been better leaving her behind with Phillip? Someone that I knew, while he had his flaws, wasn’t a total tyrant. “If you’re so uncertain about this whole thing, why are you even here?”
Remy smiled at me then, as he stood up and started walking. “Because if anything happens, I want to be there to make sure Holly isn’t completely alone.”
I nodded. “That’s honourable of you.”
We walked on further. The road grew higher and became gradually more filled with cars. Even though these cars had been long ago abandoned, there was still something eerie about scenes like this.
The road was full. Inside the cars, I saw relics from their past owners. CDs sitting on the dashboard. Teddy bears left lying on their side across the back seat. Shopping bags abandoned, swarming with flies.
I swallowed a lump in my throat and kept on going.
“Looks like a toll road,” Haz said.
“What’s a toll road?” Holly asked.
I walked up by Haz’s side, Remy joining me. The mass of cars stretched on ahead. That sense of unease grew as we stood there in the rising sun.
“Is there no other way?” Haz asked.
I looked at Remy. He shrugged.
Then I looked back ahead. “It’s creepy, sure. But they’re just cars. There’s no one here.”
“You sure of that?” Haz asked.
I looked around at the cars, at those reminders of the lives that had been affected. Some of them would still be living. Some of them would be dead.
Some of them wouldn’t even be the same people, not anymore.
I shook away the shiver rising up my spine and I looked back ahead. “I’m sure. We just have to…”
When I looked up the road, I saw something.
I wasn’t sure what it was. Just that it was moving. My first impression was that it was another person, and that they were crawling along between the cars.
“Do you see that?” Haz asked. “Does—does that look like ‘no one’ to you?”
I watched it come more into view. And as I stared at it, moving slowly towards me, I just froze. Because what I was looking at couldn’t be real. It couldn’t actually be real.
But then I saw the brown road sign marking a tourist attraction, and I felt like I’d fallen into a hole in the ground.
“Knowsley Safari Park,” I said.
Holly turned to me, smile on her face. “Is that where we’re going?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and pulled Holly close. “I don’t think we’ll have to.”
Because walking down the road, between the cars, there was no mistaking what was coming towards us.
It was a lioness.
And she looked hungry.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I watched the lioness getting closer towards us and I knew there was only one thing we could do.
“Get down,” I said.
I crouched down, Holly by my side. There was a Land Rover beside us. We could get under there, hide under there and wait.
Holly was shaking, like she’d suddenly realised the severity of what was happening. “I’m scared, Scott.”
I tightened my grip on her hand. “You don’t have to be. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you. Okay?”
Holly didn’t look convinced, but she stayed by my side anyway.
I pulled her under the Land Rover. The further we got under it, the less certain I got about this as our hiding place. Lionel was starting to whine, growing uncomfortable about everything, and sensing our discomfort, too.
“Come on, boy,” I said.
He looked at me, panting.
“Come…”
I stopped speaking when I heard the footsteps building up in speed.
I saw the looks on Remy and Haz’s faces. The terrified expressions.
Together, they turned, with Lionel’s lead in Haz’s hand.
Together they fled, but in different directions.
I kept hold of Holly, keeping completely still. My heart was racing. My chest felt like it was going to explode.
But I kept still anyway, as I listened to the footsteps of the lioness as it got closer.
As I listened to its low growl.
And as I saw it drift into view.
It was low. It looked like it was searching the area for us, like it knew someone—prey—was close.
I could hear Remy and Haz running off into the distance too, and I didn’t know what was happening to them, where they were going, Lionel with Haz.
I just had to hope that they’d be okay, no matter what.
The lioness crept closer towards us. I saw that the gap under the car wasn’t that small after all. If we could get under here, then the lioness was going to get under here, too.
We had to get this right. We couldn’t put a single foot wrong.
“Holly,” I whispered. “We’re going to have to move.”
Holly was totally still. She was gasping. She sounded dangerously close to hyperventilating.
“Holly,” I said, tightening my grip on her hand as the lioness edged closer. “Please. We need to move. We can’t stay here. It’s not—”
The lioness lunged underneath the car, towards us.
I dragged Holly away, not caring about the hurt I might be causing, more worried about our long-term survival, our preservation.
I pulled her out from under the Land Rover and went running down between the cars.
I could hear the lioness not far behind. I imagined it nipping at our heels, getting closer and closer. I pulled Holly along, faster than I knew her little legs could run; the only thing I cared about getting her to some kind of safety.
But how could I get her to safety?
What kind of safety were we going to find?
I started trying doors of cars. I couldn’t see Haz or Remy, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe I’d seen them for the last time. Maybe this was where everything fell apart.
Just me and Holly.
And if I fell… just Holly.
No. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I’d made a promise to her. That wasn’t how it was going to play out.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the lioness hurtling towards us.
“It’s coming!” Holly shouted, pure terror in her voice.