by Ryan Casey
She looked at it, like she was weighing it up.
Then she put her hand in mine.
We walked together, catching Haz and Lionel up, into the approaching darkness.
I knew I had to step out of my comfort zone. I knew I had to build bridges and be a good person if I wanted to get anywhere.
But I knew, deep down, I was going struggle, as I drifted into the long night in search of another makeshift home…
Chapter Forty-One
Mike looked out at his camp and he couldn’t stop the smile creeping up his face.
It was a cloudy, typical autumn day, but that wasn’t nearly enough to quash the way he felt right now. After all, a new group of prisoners were inside another of his caravans. And the original prisoners… they were working for him now. Seeing to the animals, planting the vegetables and crops. They were chained of course, around their wrists and their legs. But they were working for him. They were following his chain of command.
And if they didn’t, there were some perfectly capable armed men standing over them and watching their every move.
He listened to the singing of chickens, the sounds of spades hitting the earth. That was the sound of work. The sound of something being built, something special. After all, this was a new world now. For too long, people had clung to the ways of the old world. They battled for the remaining supplies, ignorant to the truth that eventually, those supplies were just going to expire like everything else.
Mike knew another way of doing things. He wanted to rebuild properly. He wanted to use the earth’s natural resources to create something better. Sure, it might seem a little idealistic, but he had grand visions of how the world was going to be. People weren’t going to tear themselves apart. They were going to live under a new order.
He wanted to be the first to be remembered for starting that new order.
And order always started, throughout history, with rulers that ruled, and people to be ruled over.
He walked down the steps he was on and through the gardens, where prisoners were planting crops in the winter vegetable gardens. Before they knew it, they’d have garlic, onions, things like that. They were even getting eggs from the hens, and when they’d bred enough of the animals, using them for meat.
It was a perfectly sustainable existence. It was even idyllic, in a way.
And yet somehow, Mike still longed for more.
He walked past his workers, their dirty faces, the smell of urine clinging to them. He smiled at them as he passed. But he could see the fear in their eyes that they looked back with.
And he couldn’t deny it. That fear didn’t make him feel bad. It made him feel strong. Even more like a leader.
He never thought the day would come when he got the opportunity to revel in leadership so much. He just had to make sure those days weren’t short-lived.
He was going to do everything in his power to make sure they weren’t.
He took a deep breath of the slightly smelly air, his teeth feeling a little furry and unkempt, when he saw someone over by the main gate.
There was someone standing there and waving at him. Someone with a gun.
One of his people.
And outside the gate…
Mike felt a sense of dread right away when he saw what he saw. Not because he feared it could be someone coming to attack his camp. No. Something much worse than that.
He had learned that there were greater things to fear than people attacking his camp.
Like people overruling his legitimacy as a leader.
He stumbled slowly towards the gate. Part of him wanted to believe that he wasn’t really seeing what he thought he was seeing. That it was just some kind of creation of his mind, or that he was still dreaming. He often had the dreams that something came along to threaten his position. That one day, when he was least expecting it, his order would just topple and he’d be left with nothing again.
Because that’s all you are. A nothing.
“No. I am a something.”
Then he took a deep breath and did the only thing he could—the only thing a leader could.
He walked to the gate.
When he got there, he saw that this wasn’t just a dream. His fears weren’t unfounded. Because someone was here. A man, dressing in military gear. And with him, a military vehicle. A working military vehicle.
The woman looked at him, scanned him from head to toe then smiled. She had something in her hands. Some kind of pamphlet. “You’re the man who runs this place?”
Mike smiled back. He liked that he’d been acknowledged that way. But at the same time, he’d enjoy making this false leader his prisoner. “I am. Who are you?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter so much,” she said. “It’s where I come from that matters.”
Mike wanted to take her prisoner, right then. He wanted to capture her and the three people with her and take their vehicle to add to their camp. After all, his only working car had broken down. They could do with a replacement, and this looked a damned good one.
But then the woman opened her mouth, and she said the words that changed things.
Changed every thing.
“I’ve got some news for you,” she said. “Some news for all of you.”
Then, she told him.
And everything changed.
Chapter Forty-Two
A day later and we still hadn’t found Mike’s camp.
The weather had taken a strong turn for the worse. The rain lashed down, soaking all of us to the bone. I took the rather morose move of salvaging a waterproof anorak from a dead man, but Holly didn’t seem too keen on wearing it. I gave it to Haz instead, although he too was reluctant.
I wondered what kind of a man it made me that I was taking this whole situation the best out of all of our people.
And in the end, I figured it just made me a resourceful one. A strong one.
One who was willing to do what had to be done to survive, even if it didn’t sit right with me at times.
We were on a long stretch of suburban road. On our right, newly built detached houses. Some of them hadn’t even been finished yet, which added to the eeriness of this whole place. It was a shame to think that the government had put so much money into the construction of all these new houses only for them now never to be lived in, at least not legally.
But in a way, I guessed there were some people here to make these homes their own, for as long as they could survive around the suburbs.
Which, in truth, wasn’t all that long.
“What’s that smell?” Holly asked. She squeezed her fingers around her nostrils.
I could smell something in the air too, and I didn’t want to tell her what it was. It smelled to me like a dead body. Of course, I never used to know what a dead body smelled like, but I’d smelled a few since the collapse of society. A few too many for my liking.
I thought of how those dead bodies had got to the state they were in. Whether they’d starved or died of thirst, or whether they’d just fallen ill to disease. And then of course, there were the people who were reliant on medication to live, or old people in homes who would’ve all started falling slowly, gradually, as their carers abandoned them in search of a better chance of survival and left them to slowly realise what was happening to themselves.
The thought of it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about.
Haz dropped back so he was walking beside me. He’d been notoriously quiet these last couple of days, by his standards. We’d found a couple of places to shelter over the nights. They hadn’t been perfect, but they’d done the trick. Haz spent his time crafting things—traps, weapons, all kinds of prepper stuff.
He was a clever, useful guy to have around.
He was one of the last friends I had left in this world, Holly and Lionel aside. And they weren’t exactly friends in the conventional sense.
“You okay?” I asked.
Haz shot a look at me. His eyes were bloodshot an
d he was sniffing. “What? Me?”
“Are you sure you’re—”
“I’m good,” he said. “Just tired. The dreams, you know. Finding it hard to sleep after…”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence for me to know what he was referring to. After seeing what had happened to Remy, Jenny, Sue, Hannah, Aiden… the list went on. That shit had got to him, just as it got to me. It’d made me very aware of my own mortality; of just how unforgiving this world could be.
I wagered a bet that Haz was feeling the same way.
“We could make it together, you know. The four of us.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?”
Haz sighed. “This—this revenge mission, or whatever it is. It’s dangerous. Too dangerous, especially now our numbers are down. We don’t have what it takes to get inside Mike’s camp. And even if we do… even if we take out Mike, we aren’t going to come out alive, Scott. Holly needs us. Lionel needs us.”
Lionel turned around when he heard his name, like he was missing out on the conversation. Admittedly, it wasn’t a conversation I thought he’d want to hear anyway.
I wiped some of the rain from my forehead as we kept on walking past these new developments, all in different stages of completion and incompletion. “I’m not doing this just for a revenge mission. I’m not doing it just to scratch some itch. It started as that, sure. But not anymore.”
“Then why are you doing it?” Haz asked.
I smiled at Haz and prepared to tell him as frankly as I possibly could. “I’m doing it because I’ve spent too long running away from my problems. I’ve let my past stop me from wanting to reach out to the outside world for help, mostly because of how things have turned out for me when I have done in the past. But not anymore.”
“That’s all well and good,” Haz said, as he walked alongside me. “Really, it is. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
I smiled back at Haz. “Some things are greater than our survival. If we can take Mike out, we can help people. Phillip’s people, and so many other people. If we can start some kind of mutiny in his camp, then who knows what happens.”
“Sounds like an awful lot of ‘ifs’ to me. What about finding somewhere safe?”
I looked to the end of the road. “We will find somewhere safe.”
Haz shook his head. “I wish I had your blind faith.”
“It’s not blind faith,” I said. “It’s just inevitable. We’ll end up on the right road eventually…”
I stopped when I heard the voices.
“Down,” I said. “Behind this wall. Quick!”
We scrambled behind the wall by the entrance to the new housing development. There were definitely voices and footsteps.
I leaned slowly around the side of the wall.
When I looked inside, I saw children kicking a football to one another. I saw a woman smiling, her arms around her chest. And I saw some men, too. Tough looking men.
“Is this a safe place?” Holly asked.
I put a hand on her back and I smiled. “It’s something,” I said.
Then I looked at Haz. “I told you. Keep the faith.”
As I looked away from Haz and back at this group, I felt butterflies in my stomach.
Because, deep down, I knew what I had to do.
I knew what this opportunity was.
I knew, as risky as it was, what was going to happen here.
I clenched the handle of my knife.
Chapter Forty-Three
Alison Watkinson watched Dan and Emily kicking the football to one another in the middle of their suburban street and tried to convince herself that there was nothing wrong with the world and that all was well.
The rain had eased, which made things a lot easier. When it rained, Alison suffered, in truth. She’d never liked the rain. Too many short winter days working away in Iceland. Which was a lovely place, of course. But during the winter, the change in weather and climate could be a challenge.
There was a difference in visiting a place on holiday for a week or two, seeing the sights, and actually living somewhere for months on end. Alison had well and truly discovered that difference.
She looked around at the new-build homes on the avenue she was living on. It wasn’t an ideal setup. They could be closer to somewhere where hunting was easier. They could be nearer to fresh water. After all, the treks the group took were long and arduous, and there was no guarantee they were going to come back. They might just run into trouble on the road and never return.
But Alison had hope. She had faith. This group had pulled together and been a good thing from the very beginning. She hoped—and knew, deep down—that the collective togetherness between them was going to reign strong.
She watched her son, Dan, boot the football a little too hard down the road.
He put his hands on his hips, a smirk on his face. “Now you go get it.”
Emily looked around at Alison, total disapproval on her face. “Mum!”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Dan, go get your football.”
He frowned. “But the rules of the game.”
“I don’t care about the rules of the game. Go get the ball. And don’t boot it as hard next time. Okay?”
He shrugged and groaned, then he wandered off in pursuit of the football.
Alison looked at Emily, who smirked back at her, knowing she’d got her way.
“Careful, missy. Thin ice.”
She feigned that upset-looking face of hers all over again.
They were terrors, the pair of them. Always had been. You know when you get those mothers who go on and on about how good their children were, how well-behaved they were in the night, how they’d never caused any headaches whatsoever? Dan and Emily weren’t those kinds of children.
It was hard on Alison, a single mother. Their dad, Paul, wanted nothing to do with them, really. Seemed like he sensed their tearaway nature.
And sometimes Alison wondered if in turn, their dad’s neglect rubbed off on them. She did her best job of raising them. And for all their flaws, she wouldn’t have them any other way. Those proud mums could keep their perfect little angels; she had her monsters to keep her happy and sane.
She looked over at where Dan had run off to in pursuit of the football.
She almost fell to her knees when she saw what was there.
Dan was standing still. He was staring at something.
No. He wasn’t just staring at something. He was staring at someone.
That someone was holding Dan’s football. With him, there was a dog.
He threw the football at Dan.
Dan watched it bounce beside him.
And then the man, with his dark hair, looked over and met Alison’s eyes.
She paused. Just for a few seconds. Just long enough to make a decision on what she was going to do.
Then, “Callum. David. There’s someone here. There’s someone on our street.”
Chapter Forty-Four
I threw the football back to the little boy, but already I could tell from the look on his face that I wasn’t exactly going to run into the greatest of welcome parties.
“Callum. David. There’s someone here. There’s someone on our street.”
I heard the woman’s voice—presumably the mother of this boy—and my stomach sank immediately. Callum and David. They must be part of the guard of this place; the people I was up against. I fantasised, for a moment, how wonderful it would be if just one time, I could run into a group of people who didn’t want me dead, and who I could negotiate with, straight up.
Because that’s exactly what I was doing. Negotiating.
I was going to talk these people around to helping me, with the promise of a camp at the end of it.
Sure, they had it good where they were right now. I didn’t know the ins and outs of this place, but it looked like they had shelter, and they were clothed. They must have food, too. Something was good about this setup.
But I wa
nted to pitch it to them that they could have it even better.
“Dan. Get back here. Get back here right now.”
I heard the fear in the mother’s voice. I saw the look on Dan’s face. The wide-eyed look of total fear.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You go back to your mum.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, like he was trying to figure out whether I was tricking him or not.
And then he bolted back towards his mum.
I went to follow him over to his mum, slowly.
I didn’t make it far.
Not when the two men appeared.
Both of them were armed.
“Don’t move another inch.”
My stomach sank. As much as I wanted to protest my innocence, I saw I had no choice right now. I raised my hands above my head and slowed my walk right down. “I’m not here to threaten you.”
“You’re a stranger,” the man on the left said. “We can’t just trust you. You understand how the world works.”
“Better than most,” I said.
“Who are you with?”
“There’s two people outside these walls. A man a little younger than me called Haz. And a little girl called Holly.”
“And who else?”
I shook my head. “No one else.”
The man on the right—who turned out to be David, the other one Callum—frowned. Callum was tall and bulky, whereas David was short, with a scarred, pockmarked face. He looked like he’d been through multiple ordeals even before the world went to crap. “There’s no one else with you?”
“There was. But we lost them. They’ve… they’ve long gone. You know how this world works too.”
There was a pause, then. I saw more people emerge from the houses behind. There were lots of them. Ten, at least. A few of them held knives. Others, air rifles. They looked like they were well kitted out.
“If it’s safety you’re looking for, then we can sort you out with a house. After we’ve vetted you properly.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. A part of me wanted to accept that offer. After all, it was what I wanted. And this place seemed nice. Idealistic, not a long-term solution, but nice, for now.