by Ryan Casey
“The Animals?”
“They ride pushbikes around,” Patrick said. “They wear these creepy masks. Animal masks. They cause havoc. Set fires. And they take stuff. Food. Water. But mostly people. Vulnerable people.”
I felt sick and dizzy. The thought of my family being around savages like that was… Ugh. I couldn’t even describe it.
“Where do these ‘Animals’ live?” I asked.
“Trust me, you don’t want to—”
“No, you trust me. My family is out there and they’re in danger. I’m not giving up until I find them.”
“You won’t even make it to them.”
“He might if he has his stuff,” the woman said.
I saw Patrick glare up at the woman. “Michaela, you know we’re struggling enough as it is.”
“This man’s after his family, Patrick. He’s after the people he loves. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen how much he’s given up just to find them. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies anymore. He just wants to know they’re okay.”
Michaela smiled at me. And I smiled back at her.
Patrick sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Shit. Shit.”
“Give it him back, Patrick. Right this second. Or we’re having your balls for tea.”
Patrick glanced at me and shook his head.
Then he tossed my stuff back to my feet.
“And the knife,” Michaela said.
Patrick reluctantly threw that to my feet, too.
I lifted the bag. Then I lowered it again. Reached inside it. Pulled out some canned food and rabbit jerky.
“Take these,” I said.
“You heard my wife. We can’t—”
“It wasn’t a question. I owe you. Big time.”
Patrick looked up at Michaela. She narrowed her eyes and nodded, and Patrick took the stuff from me.
I put my bag back on my back. It was lighter, and felt better. “How far?”
“Not too far, but far enough. You’ll know when you run into them. You don’t have to do this.”
I put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “I do. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Patrick nodded. “Good luck, I guess.”
I walked past him, and past Michaela, who I thanked. I walked further down the railway lines.
Only this time, I knew I was going somewhere.
I was going into the belly of the beast, sure.
I was walking into something terrifying and dangerous, absolutely.
But my family were out there. They were alive.
And I was finding them.
Finally, this whole journey was coming to an end.
If only I knew what was waiting for me.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
When I saw the dead body dangling from the telegraph pole, I knew what Patrick meant when he said I’d know exactly when I was close to the Animals.
It stunk of rotting flesh. Flies flew all around the body. A crow plucked at scabs on the man’s shoulders. He was completely pale, like a mannequin, to the point that I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at was actually real, until the smell hit me all over again.
A lump filled my throat. This was what the Animals did to people. These were the people Olivia and Kerry were with.
These were the people I had to save them from.
I lowered my head and continued my walk onwards. If that body was some kind of sign to stay away, then I knew I had to be close, and also that I had to be extra careful. These people weren’t messing around. I had to keep a low profile.
I climbed off the railway line and walked alongside it, in the trees. I was constantly alert. I kept thinking I saw things, heard things, but it was just my mind screwing with me. I took a sip of water, but even that tasted off after staring up at the dead body.
I was tired. Exhausted. I just wanted to get to my family.
But I knew that I couldn’t give up. I’d come this far. I wasn’t turning back.
If I ended up dangling from a telegraph pole like that too, well, so be it.
I wasn’t giving up on my family.
I remembered what Patrick told me about the Animals. They went around causing chaos in animal masks. Burning, taking food, water… and vulnerable people.
I shuddered at the thought of what these prehistoric arseholes might’ve done to the people I cared about.
No.
I couldn’t think that way.
They weren’t touching my daughter.
And if they did, I’d cut off their fingers and make them eat them while I watched.
I knew my thoughts were getting more violent. But that’s what this world had made me into. Not intrinsically violent, but violent to stay alive. I’d become that person way back in the early days when I’d stabbed that hoodie in the supermarket. I hadn’t believed what I was doing then. I wanted to run away from that version of myself.
But now I had to embrace it.
I had to kill if I wanted to survive.
That was just the grim reality of the world I lived in now.
I walked past a station. It was burned out. I could still smell the smoke. I knew the Animals must’ve been here at some stage, which meant I was getting close.
When I walked out of the station, I saw another man dangling from a telegraph pole.
I covered my mouth. The smell was even worse here, as was the state of the man’s body.
His intestines had been torn out. He was hanging from them.
And his eyes were open wide, like he’d died in agony.
On his chest, there was a message carved into it.
STAY AWAY.
I wanted to. My God I wanted to.
But I couldn’t.
These people might be dangerous, but nothing was as dangerous as a man who’d been torn away from his family.
A man with love on his side.
I kept on walking. In the distance, I saw more of these telegraph poles.
And the further I walked, the more I realised that they all had something in common.
Someone was dangling from each of them.
I tried not to look at them as I passed. They got closer to each other, too, which made me feel like I was closing in on the Animals’ camp. Every instinct in my body cried at me to turn back, to run away, to find another route.
But there was nothing I could do, only progress.
It was when I reached the final bodied telegraph pole that I heard a gargle, and a gasp.
I looked up.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The man dangling from this telegraph pole had those same letters etched into his chest. STAY AWAY.
He was hanging by his wrists, his flesh torn from where nails had been slammed through them.
And somehow he was still alive.
“Run,” he said.
I felt shivers creep up my arms then I heard voices.
Voices, somewhere in the distance.
I looked around. I felt like I was being surrounded. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to leave this place.
But then I saw them.
Three of them, up ahead.
Men wearing masks.
A ram.
A cheetah.
A frog.
All of them perched on bikes.
All of them holding long, bloodied knives.
I crouched down right away. Hit the floor. I didn’t think they’d seen me, but I couldn’t be certain.
Above, the man kept on struggling, swaying from side to side, his blood hitting the ground beside me.
I held my breath and dragged myself over to the side of the path. I had to move slowly. I couldn’t risk attracting their attention or I’d be on a telegraph pole next.
If there were three of them here, their camp had to be close.
My family had to be…
I stopped when I saw movement right ahead of me.
I looked up.
A man stood opposite me, a horse mask over his face.
Then he pulled back his machete and slammed it at me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I didn’t even think about what I was doing as the man in the horse mask swung his machete at me.
I lunged to my right, staying close to the ground. I kicked at his shins, eager to take him down before his friends could be alerted to his presence. They seemed to be distracted by something. I didn’t know what, but whatever it was had them looking the other way, down the tracks.
“You’re mine, you fucker,” the man muttered, his voice muffled underneath the horse mask. I could see his blinding blue eyes through the little holes in the mask. He was panting, and he smelled of sweat. “You’re all mine.”
I felt his weight crush down on my chest and I knew I was trapped. I knew I was in big trouble.
But then I stretched for my pocket and grabbed my knife.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
I swung the knife at the man. He batted it away, holding it off with the arm he had a knife in too. We pushed against each other. Kept on pushing, a battle of strength. One slip, and the knife would pierce through my neck. One harder push, I’d slit this guy’s throat.
I heard him laughing then. Laughing under the mask. Ahead, I saw the telegraph pole where I knew they wanted to erect my body onto. Another sign of their strength. Another warning to people to stay away.
I could hear footsteps, too. Commotion. I knew the rest of the masked group were coming my way. It would all be over soon.
“I’m gonna enjoy slicing you up,” the man said, pushing harder against my arm, the knife just catching my throat. “Gonna slice every damned piece of skin from your body.”
I pushed back harder. “So you keep saying.”
This death grip between us kept on going for longer.
Until I saw the man raising another knife in his opposite hand.
“You’re fucked now,” he said, as the footsteps of his companions got ever closer. “You’re really fucked.”
I held my breath.
Closed my eyes.
Then I let my pushback against the man’s arm loosen.
He fell forward. Fell towards my neck.
And if I’d been a second later, or if I hadn’t moved an inch further to the right, I would’ve been choking on my blood right now.
But I landed to the right.
Then suddenly I was the one with the height on the guy in the horse mask, and he was the one on the ground, his knife stuck into the earth.
He looked up at me and I booted him in his face.
I landed on him. Pushed his knife away. I looked up. His companions were getting closer.
“No messing around anymore,” I said, pressing the knife to his neck and holding up the photograph of my family. “These people. My wife. My child. Where the hell are they?”
I saw the man’s eyes darting behind the horse mask. I knew I didn’t have long.
“Speak to me!” I said, pushing the blade in further.
“Oh I’ve seen ‘em. Seen ‘em real close. If you know what I mean.”
I pulled back the knife then slammed it into the man’s palm.
He squealed, surely alerting his friends to his presence.
I grabbed the sides of his face. “This is where you cooperate. This is where you tell me where my family is.”
“You’ll never find them. You’ll—argh!” He cried some more as I twisted the knife around his flesh, and as blood dribbled out of the top of his hand.
“Try me,” I said.
“I can’t speak. I don’t speak.”
I went to turn the blade again. “Then the pain’ll only get worse.”
“No! Please. I—You have to understand. They’ll kill me.”
“Honestly, I don’t really care whether they kill you or not. So you’ll have to do better than that.”
I pulled the knife out of the man’s hand and went to bring it down on his other hand.
“Selly Oak station!” he shouted.
I stopped. Held the knife over his hand. “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
The man laughed again hysterically as his friends got closer. So close that I knew I didn’t have much time to get away from them. “You don’t. You’ll just have to trust me. Just have to—what? What the hell are you—”
The man didn’t say anything else.
What I did to him, well. That doesn’t matter. It isn’t relevant.
He was a part of the group who’d kidnapped my family.
He’d alluded to doing my family great harm.
For that, I could have no forgiveness.
I stood up when I’d finished, when the man had gone silent. Opposite me, I could see the men in the animal masks, just metres away now.
“Don’t move a muscle,” the one in the cheetah mask said. “Don’t you dare move a—”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
Because by that point, I was already running.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Danilo Capri felt like a somebody.
For the first time in his shitty twenty years on this earth, he felt like a somebody.
He looked down at the dead body of his friend, Stu. Stu had been stabbed in both hands. His throat had been sliced. He was still staring up in that weird way that bodies always did—as if the last thing they’d ever seen was still etched on their eyes forever, and that they’d take those images to the grave.
“What should we do with him?”
Danilo looked to his left. Mart was wearing his cheetah mask. Bob had stayed back with his frog mask. In truth, Danilo thought it looked stupid when he’d first been taken under the wing of the Animals. He’d been a standard jobless twenty year old floating around a country lacking in equality and opportunity.
Then the Animals had come along and made him feel special.
There was a recklessness to them in a way. A craziness to their behaviour. Danilo would go as far as calling it nihilism, if he knew what that meant. There was a strange camaraderie about the group. They knew they were going to die. They knew they weren’t going to live forever.
But this was their world now, and they were going to do their damnedest to make the most and enjoy it while it collapsed.
Of course, Danilo wasn’t so keen about all the things the Animals made him do. He didn’t like to think about the screams of pain he heard in the dead of night, the laughter that accompanied it.
Some things were just too far for him to ever get his head around.
But then again, he never thought a month ago that he’d be standing here holding a knife and wearing an animal mask, at least fifty murders to his name.
How time changed people.
“I guess we could use him,” Mart said.
Danilo frowned. “Use him?”
He pointed up at the telegraph pole which towered above. “Think it’d be a shame to waste him.”
“No chance. He’s one of ours.”
“You heard what the Rhino said,” Mart said. “No one should go to waste.”
Danilo bit his tongue. He didn’t like the way they addressed the Rhino. He was their leader. As you might’ve guessed, he wore a rhino mask.
The thing about the Rhino was, nobody knew his name. Nobody had seen his face.
He was the only member of this group with any real veil of secrecy.
And that veil was enough to frighten the bejesus out of Danilo into doing everything he ordered.
He’d seen the Rhino’s ruthless streak. He wondered if he was mad, like some kind of psycho or nutty.
Whatever he was, he had a way with words. He had a hold over people.
He was good at what he did.
Creep.
“Look, we can worry about Stu later,” Danilo said, lifting his head and looking around at the trees, at the little derelict train station. “You saw him too, right?”
“Course I saw him,” Mart said, nodding. “I just… I guess I thought Stu had him.”
“You don’
t have to lie.”
“What?”
“About why we left Stu to him. All this… this killing. This violence. It catches up with you.”
For a split second, Danilo thought he had someone to confide in, with Mart. He thought he saw the agreement in his eyes, through those tiny holes.
But then Mart sniffed up and looked away. “Speak for yourself, loser.”
And just as quickly as that hope of somehow getting away from this cult one day rose, it disappeared.
“He can’t have gone far,” Mart said.
The pair of them stepped into the trees, knives raised. Danilo kept an eye everywhere. He thought he heard rustling behind him. And as soon as he looked behind, he turned forward, convinced he’d heard footsteps.
“You see anything?” he called.
Mart didn’t reply.
Danilo swallowed a lump in his dry throat. The further into the woods he got, the more uncertain he grew. He wasn’t supposed to be away for this long. None of them were. If they weren’t careful, they’d end up banished. Rhino was extra paranoid about people who’d been away for a while. Worried they were planning something.
Maybe this was his chance, Danilo thought. Maybe he could make a break for it. Start a new life. A maskless life.
Then he thought of all the food and the water and the fun they had back at Selly Oak and he knew he was kidding no one.
“Mart? You there?”
He heard his voice echoing around the woods. And the further he got, the more convinced he was that he just had to turn back and get away from this place.
That was until he saw the rock in the distance.
It was some kind of trap. Inside it, there was a dead rat.
Danilo grinned, not quite believing his luck. If he went back with a rat then at least it proved he’d been out here for something. More than Mart could say. More than…
He felt a snap beneath his feet right before he reached the rat.
And then a heavy rock—a different rock to the one the rat was trapped under—fell down hard onto his ankle.
He yelped out, went to scream.
But he didn’t get the chance.
Someone grabbed his mouth and went to pull the mask from his face.
Danilo felt his face bleeding as the mask was dragged away. He felt the staples ripping from his skin. He felt the superglue tearing away the lining of his eyelids, yanking out his eyelashes. And he felt the little razor blades ripping open his chin. Because this was the price you paid when you pulled off your mask. This was what identified you as a deserter. A traitor.