by Ryan Casey
“Don’t look behind,” I said, trying the door of a Vauxhall Astra. “Don’t look…”
I stopped when the door opened up.
I threw Holly into the car.
I turned around, standing behind the door.
The lioness was just feet away.
I pulled back the door and fell back into the car.
The lioness jumped onto the front of the car and roared.
I stared into its jaws as it stood on the front of the car, which crumpled under its weight. And as it stood there, I sympathised with this beast. It looked emaciated. It was hungry and it was scarred, just like the rest of us.
It was just trying to get by in this world.
Holly grabbed my hand. She started hugging my arm. “Don’t go away, Scott. Don’t let it get you. Please.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and stared up at the lioness as the glass began to crack beneath its paws. “I won’t,” I said. “I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.”
I held my breath as the glass cracked some more.
I waited for it to cave in, for the lioness to eat us both alive.
And then it stopped.
The lioness turned its head. It jumped off the front of the Astra. Just as it moved away, the glass cracked, leaving us exposed.
But the lioness was gone.
I lay there for a few seconds. Holly lay there for a few seconds. I could feel her heartbeat, and no doubt she could feel mine.
We didn’t say anything, and we didn’t move, caught in the grips of shock.
Not until I turned around and looked at her, little shards of glass on her cheeks.
I moved them away, then I moved the greasy hair from her eyes, and I smiled and laughed. Couldn’t control myself. It was just a part of the adrenaline rush.
Holly laughed too.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you,” I said. “I promised you I wouldn’t leave you.”
She leaned in and hugged me, and I hugged her back.
Both of us cried.
“Now come on,” I said, moving her away. “Let’s get out of here before it comes back—”
My words were cut short when I heard the scream.
A high-pitched scream, just a few hundred metres away.
A scream I recognised…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It didn’t take me long to find the source of the cry.
And when I found it, both my stomach and my heart seemed to sink simultaneously.
Remy was propped up against a VW camper. Haz was sitting by his side. There was blood on the ground in front of them. A long trail of blood.
I felt sick as I followed that trail of blood, Holly’s hand in mine, not really wanting to see where it led, not wanting to face up to the truth.
But the truth was plain to see.
There was a gaping bite wound on Remy’s stomach. His hand was resting feebly against it, like if he kept it there he might just be able to hold himself together or something.
But it didn’t take a genius to know that Remy wasn’t going to survive this.
I walked over to him, slowly. Haz tilted his head; that look of pained acceptance on his face, too. Lionel looked similarly concerned as he looked on.
“Take Holly away for a second,” I said to Haz, as I stopped by him.
“We need to get him away from here. The lion. It—it ran away. But it’ll be back.”
I looked at Haz and I swore he saw the uncertainty on my face. Like I was confirming to him that there really was no way out of this situation other than the inevitable. “Just take Holly away for a second. And take Lionel too. Please.”
Haz looked like he wanted to protest. But in the end, he had no choice, and he knew it. So he just looked back at Remy, half-smiled at him, and then walked away with Holly in one hand and Lionel by his side.
I turned to face Remy then. His eyes looked like they were glazed over, as if he didn’t really understand what was going on. He didn’t look totally lucid, like he was drifting in and out of consciousness.
“I suppose it was always going to end in such an unbelievable way, right?” he said. “Bitten by a lion.”
He started laughing at the hilarity of the unlikelihood of his situation. But he stopped as soon as the blood started seeping out of his stomach some more, the pain getting to him.
I put a hand on his shoulder, doing all I could to stave off the tears. “You… you just take some deep breaths and relax. Enjoy the sun.”
Remy smiled back at me. His eyes made contact with mine, a look of complete coherence on his face now. “You’re a good man, Scott. You… You’re going to be a good father. To Holly.”
I didn’t know what to say back to Remy about that. I just looked away, over at Haz and Holly, who was looking back at me before she disappeared with Haz behind a car. “Now, now,” I said. “Let’s not get sentimental here. You’re a tough cookie. You’re making it out of this.”
Remy looked down at his stomach, still bleeding badly. Then he looked back up at me, clearly disappointed to see that the wound was still there, and that it was still as bad as he remembered. “Don’t lie to me. We both know what’s happening here. Don’t lie to yourself.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and looked away. The thought of losing another group member—another friend who I’d known since the very first day—tore me apart. “We have supplies,” I said. “Jenny taught me how—how to stitch a wound. How to stave off infection and—”
Remy chuckled a little, like this was all some kind of joke. “Not this wound.”
He shuffled around a little, trying to sit himself more upright. All that did was make him look even more uncomfortable.
“You heard Haz. The lion can’t be far away. You should leave. Leave me here to enjoy the sun.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” I said.
“It has to. If you want Holly to survive, it has to.”
Remy put a hand on mine. It was cold, shaky.
“You’re a good man. A good friend. But… but there are things more important than friendship. That little girl is the future. If she dies… we all fail. Don’t let that happen, Scott. Don’t let that happen.”
I felt something warm trickle down my cheek and I knew it was a tear. Jenny. Sue. Aiden. Hannah. And now Remy. All of them, falling victim to the new world in the many different horrible ways.
I looked down at the knife in my pocket. “I can… I can make it easier. If you’d like that.”
Remy shook his head. “You have enough on your plate without having my death on your hands. I’ll end things on my own terms. For now… get the bloody hell out of my way and let me enjoy some sun.”
I found myself laughing, and Remy laughed too. We perched there, opposite one another, in the light of the sun.
“Goodbye, Remy,” I said.
Remy smiled. He was crying now too. “Goodbye, Scott.”
I stood up. I walked away, over to where Haz, Holly and Lionel were waiting.
I looked back over at Remy as he sat there, a beam of sunlight shining right down onto him, a flat smile on his face.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Come on,” I said.
And without hesitation, Haz, Holly and Lionel followed me away, leaving Remy alone.
I looked back at him one last time.
His eyes were closed already.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Remy opened his eyes and he saw his sister, Olea, standing over him.
She was blocking the sunlight, which was lovely and warm. He wanted to tell her to move because when someone stood in the sunlight, he went so cold. He was frozen to the bone without it. He wanted the sun’s rays to just swallow him up whole, take him away with them to wherever they were going to go.
But Olea just wouldn’t move out of the way.
Remy tried to move, but he was frozen solid. He tried to move his lips, too, but they were also sealed shut. Doing anything—even thinking—seemed like a stretch too far.
He didn’t know why. He didn’t have the energy to know why. But he guessed it was something to do with the searing pain that stretched across his stomach; the pain that had now gone.
“Where did they go, Remy?”
He heard Olea’s voice and he wanted to tell her. She was kind and she was beautiful, with long, dark hair and a laugh that could spark joy in even the most miserable of people. Even in the darkest times, Olea had made Remy feel so happy. She’d been his best friend. His rock.
When she’d died, he didn’t know how to live again, not for a long time.
But she was here now. Which meant her death must’ve been some kind of mistake. She was still alive. He wanted to jump up with absolute joy that she was still here, and that everything was going to be okay because she was by his side.
But he couldn’t move.
And she was blocking the sun.
And she just kept on saying those same words.
“Remy, where did they go?”
He swallowed a phlegmy lump in his throat. He had to be strong. He had to find the strength and the courage inside to say what had to be said. She wanted to find his friends. She could help his friends, just like she’d helped everyone. She was so selfless. So thoughtful. She was the kindest person Remy had ever known.
“I’m going to ask you one more time.”
He spluttered some inaudible sound. And the sad thing was, that sound really took an absolute burst of strength. There was nothing else he could do but make small noises like that. Words were out of his grip. Even the comprehension of words was starting to slide.
But he knew something for sure.
Olea’s voice had changed when she’d last addressed him.
It was deeper than he remembered. Harsher.
He felt a dark cloud building over him, spreading right across him. And as that cloud spread, dread started to fill up inside Remy’s body. He felt scared, like when he lost his parents in the supermarket that time when he was just five. He’d searched aisle after aisle for what seemed like forever. He was convinced his world was ending.
And then he’d seen Olea and they’d got lost together and everything was fine after that.
The silhouette standing over him, blocking the sun, was shifting. It seemed like it was growing, morphing into someone else—something else.
It was only when the face of the silhouette came right up close to his that he realised it wasn’t Olea at all.
“Remy, I don’t know what happened to you. I won’t pretend it’s a priority anymore. But I need to know how far ahead the others are. Can you tell me that?”
He knew the voice, now. He knew the face, too. Phillip.
And it wasn’t just Phillip, either.
There were people standing behind Phillip, looking down at Remy. He couldn’t make their faces out clearly, couldn’t decipher their expressions or their looks, whether he knew them or not.
But they looked like they were waiting for something to happen.
“I…” Remy started. “I…”
“Good,” Phillip said. “That’s a word. It’s progress.”
“I’ll… never tell you… never…”
Remy saw the shift on Phillip’s face then, and he knew he’d been wrong to ever trust this man in the first place. He wasn’t the saviour he pretended to be. He wasn’t a good man. Sure, he’d spared their lives. But he was dangerous, just like Mike. As much as he denied he wanted conflict with Mike, he was very much embroiled in one, whether he liked to admit it or not.
And he was dragging his people along with him, into certain death.
Phillip sighed and backed away. And at that moment, Remy felt a hefty dose of fear. He feared for Scott, and for Haz, and for Lionel. But mostly he feared for Holly. She was going to get caught up in the battle. She was going to get caught in the middle of an awful, unavoidable situation. And as much as Remy wanted to get up and somehow tell Scott and the others, warning them to steer clear of Mike’s place and end his revenge mission because there were bigger matters to worry about, he knew he couldn’t.
Not just because he didn’t have the strength.
But because he knew what was coming.
Phillip pressed the knife to Remy’s temple. He looked into his eyes, deeply and intently. “Any last words, my friend?”
Remy closed his eyes, tears stinging them. He took as deep a breath as he could. Then he opened them again, focusing on Phillip. “Go to hell.”
Phillip smirked. He sighed.
Then he pushed the knife into Remy’s skull.
For a second, Remy felt a sharp jolt of pain.
Then, as his memories started to fuzz, he saw Olea standing opposite him again, holding his face in her hands, smiling at him, laughing.
“Come now, little brother. It’s time to go now.”
He reached up and touched the side of her face.
“I’m coming, sister.”
Then Olea stepped aside and the warm sunlight covered his body, and he let the warmth carry him away into the beautiful blue sky.
Chapter Forty
Haz, Holly, Lionel and I walked on. But after the encounter with the escaped zoo lion and Remy’s fate, it felt like there was a gaping hole in our group, and one which threatened to rear its head at any moment.
It was late in the afternoon. The sun was lowering with increasing rapidity as the day stretched on. The nights were definitely drawing in. I hadn’t noticed it much while we’d been at Phillip’s place, but I immediately realised the urgency of finding shelter now, out on the road again.
All kinds of things waited in the light, sure. But even worse things waited in the darkness. I didn’t want to encounter them without light on our side. Not now the urgency of our situation had increased now there were so few of us left.
Haz walked alone with Lionel. He hadn’t said a lot. I could tell he was struggling to comprehend and cope with all the loss we’d suffered in such a short period of time. He was a good lad, no doubt about it. But this world was causing real strain on him.
“Do you think we’ll ever see Remy again?”
I looked to my side. Holly was looking up at me, inquisitively.
I half-smiled. Part of me wanted to satiate her innocence and tell her what she wanted to hear. But I knew I would be doing her a disservice in the long run. She needed to be strong, in case anything happened to either me or Haz—or both of us.
“We won’t be seeing him again.”
“Is he dead? Like my mum?”
My words stalled. I felt like this was someone else’s responsibility. As much as I wanted to be a parent when I was with Harriet, it was meant to be the kind of role and responsibility you grew into, not something you were suddenly thrust into. “He’s very, very sick.”
“My brother was badly sick once. Now he’s dead too.”
The way she spoke about all this loss she’d experienced and been through, so matter-of-fact, well it made my throat well up and my skin go cold. She should be playing with friends, laughing and joking with kids her own age. She should have a loving home to go back to, a family who thought the world of her.
I thought of the loss that family had been through—the loss of Sue and Jason’s other two children before they’d had Holly and Aiden—and it pained me to think that Holly was the only one left from this family.
“Where we’re going,” Holly said, clearly still inquisitive about the whole situation. “Will there be nice people there?”
Again, another bitter taste in my mouth. After all, it wasn’t like I was taking Holly to some kind of sanctuary. I’d long ago learned the truth about the world—there were no sanctuaries. There were just different places, some better than others, where people pursued their own agendas and lived out their own idealised versions of what they thought the “right way to live” was.
There was no one true safety or security. There was only the safest and the securest we could manage at any given time. And even those places had no sense of permanence to them—t
hey were just stopgaps before the next best place came along, and then the next.
And where was I taking Holly?
To Mike’s camp. A place that wasn’t even safe at all, on some revenge mission to avenge those she and I had loved.
But was that really what I should be doing?
“Holly,” I said, slowing down and crouching opposite her as we made our way down the motorway, which was totally abandoned, but still filled with the fossil-like relics of old cars. “I need to know you trust me. That you know no matter what, I’m here for you, because that’s what your mum wanted me to be. And because we’re strongest together, all of us. You understand that… that there might be some difficult times ahead. That sometimes, we might be scared, all of us. But we’ll be okay, because we’ll stick together. You know that, don’t you?”
Holly looked at her feet, in that way she did when she perhaps hadn’t totally understood something. “I’ll not see my mum again. Or my brother. Will I?”
I felt a weight on my shoulders at having to be the one to tell Holly the straight and honest truth; a truth she knew, deep down, even though she’d witnessed directly what happened to her mum and her brother. And it just increased my anger and rage towards Mike; my desire to finish him off once and for all. “That’s not entirely true,” I said.
She looked up at me, curious.
“One day, when you’re old, and when… when you go to heaven, you’ll see them there. Just like you’ll see everyone there. All your friends.”
“My daddy said heaven was rubbish. Do you believe in heaven?”
I looked up at the sky, the clouds covering it. And for all the challenges, all the things I’d been through, I found myself taking a deep breath and smiling. I looked back at Holly. “I have to. Because there has to be more than this.”
She nodded. “I trust you.”
Mixed emotions washed over me. Relief. Fear. Happiness.
I put a hand on Holly’s shoulder, smiled back at her. “Good. Now come on. It’s getting late. We’d better find some shelter.”
I stood up, and offered my hand to Holly.