After the Devil Has Won

by Rick Wood

  That’s when Boy stopped.

  He stopped running and covered his ears.

  Cia halted, knowing they were close behind her.

  “We don’t have time for this!”

  It was too bad. He was making his whining noise and his legs were fixed to the floor like they had roots as deep as the trees around them. He shook his head.

  He wasn’t moving.

  There was no way to get him back from this.

  She put her hands on his arms and tried to shake him. Tried saying his name, tried snapping him out of it, tried anything she could.

  But it didn’t work.

  He was stubbornly fixed, and the Wasters were moving in.

  8

  A ditch to her left. A perfect hiding spot.

  But they’d know. They’d find her. They would find both of them.

  And so she made a decision: she didn’t matter.

  Her life wasn’t important.

  She had to save Boy. Had to keep him quiet.

  She grabbed his arms away from his ears and looked him in the eye. His face changed; it curled up into panicked rage. He couldn’t handle his hands being taken away; this was his safety, and she was removing that from him.

  So she started reciting the poem.

  “The devil has departed, And you are not alone.”

  He listened. His face relaxed. His body remained stiff.

  “You want to hear the rest of it?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you have to lay down. Over here, come.”

  She dragged him, quicker than he was allowing her, to the ditch, and laid him down.

  “Now, I need you to stay here, and do not move until I come back.”

  “No!”

  “Keep reciting the poem to yourself. Take time to rebuild, Your love in our home.”

  She grabbed the nearest leaves and fallen branches and twigs and anything she could find and covered him.

  “Shared time it is slowing, The pace of our heart.”

  She pulled a large log closer and placed it over him.

  “Finish it off for me,” she told him.

  “But from now to the end, We won’t be apart.”

  “Perfect.” She looked up. Her task now was just to draw the attention away from Boy; she was as good as caught, she knew that. “Now close your eyes and keep whispering it, and don’t stop until I tell you.”

  He nodded.

  “Go on then!”

  He covered his ears, closed his eyes, and began whispering. “The devil has departed, And you are not alone…”

  She stood, ran a few yards away, spread her arms out and made her body big so they could all see her, so they couldn’t miss her.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Over here!”

  Like she needed to do that.

  One jumped out of the tree above and almost landed on her, but she ducked out the way, falling to her feet.

  He grabbed hold of her ankle, and she could feel the slime of his sweaty palm as she pulled her leg free.

  She got up and ran. And ran. And ran.

  More jumped from the trees, more she had to duck, more she had to keep out of reach of.

  She sprinted, jumping over obstacles, as far as she could.

  She saw a house. A farmhouse. In the distance. It looked dark, abandoned. That was her target. That was where she could hide.

  From her right, one ran across her path and barged into her. She went to the ground, rolled, and went back to her feet again. He grabbed hold of her top and ripped it, exposing her navel. His tongue hung out and she ran harder. Faster.

  She cleared the mass of trees and made her way into an open field. As she sprinted forward, she turned over her shoulder and saw exactly what she was up against.

  They were coming from all angles, a complete semi-circle of them closing in. There must have been at least thirty, forty of them. All primitive, wearing nothing but rags flapping in the wind behind them.

  What were they going to do to her if they caught her?

  When they caught her.

  She knew she hadn’t much hope. She had to start to come to terms with that. She may have to accept being captured, then figure out what to do after.

  But what would she be able to do?

  Forty strong, lustful, fatal Neanderthals, hungry and horny, gathered around her.

  No, she had to escape.

  The house. It was so close.

  Maybe she could barricade herself in.

  She barged through the door that was thankfully unlocked. A sofa covered in moss and stains sat at an angle in a dusty room that reeked of moisture. She grabbed the end of it and pulled it toward the door, then went to the other end and pushed hard against it.

  The windows either side of the door easily smashed, and a bombardment of bodies came through them.

  She ran to a set of stairs, but one of them just blocked her path.

  She backed away.

  They circled around her. Licking their lips, grabbing their crotches, rubbing their hands. Smirking. Ogling. Sneering.

  She was nothing. She was food, a rag doll, a harlot.

  She may as well take her own life now.

  She considered it. Just ending it all before a fate worse than death found her.

  Then she remembered: Boy.

  She couldn’t end her life, because he was relying on her. He was waiting, somewhere in that wood, probably still reciting the poem, still with his ears covered, being obedient, waiting for her – not moving until she returned.

  Which meant she had to return.

  She went to her knees and held her arms out, reluctantly surrendering.

  One of them stood over her. She could smell him, the body odour, the breath, the rot of its sweaty groin.

  It grabbed the back of her hair in its hand and she refused to scream. It swung her head to the ground and knocked her unconscious.

  9

  Her eyes opened to a road.

  She was walking.

  She had been walking for a while, but she felt light. Like she could fly at any moment, like her body was empty, void of weight but full of life.

  In the distance, the road carried on. Single track, gravel, surrounded by desert. Red hills in the distance.

  She wasn’t worried.

  But she couldn’t figure out why.

  She was young again. Smaller. A child. The age she was before her dad…

  No. Don’t think about it. Can’t think about it.

  It was strange, though. She felt like he was with her. Even though he wasn’t next to her, or around her, he was close, and they were going to a place of safety.

  She didn’t know why she felt so safe, but she did. That constant feel of fight-or-flight she felt in every moment of survival was gone. It had been replaced with pure joy, that she was saved.

  The Sanctity.

  It had let her in.

  But why?

  As she looked down, she realised why.

  She held her hands out, separated her fingers, looked at hands she’d never seen before. They were white. Pale and untanned. She was wearing a light-purple dress, unlike any she knew.

  Cia rarely wore dresses. There was a wedding she went to once, when she was really little, and she wore a dress then. But ever since she could remember, she would go on adventures with Dad wearing a vest and shorts. She would trek through the forest, through the ransacked houses, running from the creatures, in vest and shorts.

  So why was she wearing a dress now?

  It felt so…unfamiliar.

  Her hair blew in her face.

  That was different too.

  It was blond.

  Her black, curly frizz had gone. She was now blond.

  A Caucasian, blond girl wearing a dress.

  This was not her.

  And it was as if the realisation broke her from those eyes. She stood back and looked down upon the body she’d previously been inhabiting.

  The girl stood before an open road.
<
br />   The girl turned back and looked at her.

  Smiled. Like a Waster’s smile. Like a smile you should never see on a little girl.

  Cia looked down, and she was herself again. The blend of light and dark in her skin, her clothes correct, her body hers – but she no longer felt weightless.

  She no longer felt light, or like she could fly, or full of life.

  The girl laughed.

  Cia knew this girl was laughing at her.

  “Why?” Cia asked.

  Inside of her hurt, a deep stabbing, as if it was thrusting up her, further, grappling her insides with fingers made of knives. She bent over and recoiled in pain.

  “What is hap–”

  Before she could ask any more of her question she fell to her knees, the pain intensifying, surging through her cervix, firing into her womb. So deep, so hard, so violent. An aggressive burning.

  The girl just smiled and laughed.

  Why was she smiling? Why was she laughing?

  The girl shook her head. Mockingly. As if to say, you really are pathetic.

  Spoilt little rich girl, white and blond, looking back at her, mocking her.

  The girl reached out and took a hand. Cia couldn’t see who the hand belonged to, but she knew who it was. Who he was. The kind wrinkles, the tight grip, the authoritative smile.

  That kind, meaningful smile.

  She missed that smile.

  “Dad?” she asked.

  But he didn’t look at her. Not that she could see him, or that he was actually there, but she could feel him, a familiar presence, a warm omen, a heavy sensitivity.

  The girl just kept shaking her head.

  “Please, I–”

  Cia fell to her front.

  The pain was worse, as if prompted by her talking; it was worse, so much worse.

  She couldn’t take it.

  She cried, please make it stop, why won’t it stop, please…

  The girl just took the hand and walked away. Walking down the single-track road, between the desert, toward the red hills, beneath the red clouds.

  The girl was stood at the forefront of the end of the world and she had no worries or qualms about it whatsoever.

  Short, young, blond, white, and pretty – she left.

  The pain ended. Slowly, like it was dripping out of her, lessening and lessening until she was a mess with indents of gravel on her skin.

  That’s when her eyes opened for real.

  10

  She awoke in the dark, exposed. No idea what had happened to her in the past few hours, but with a feeling that she should be grateful that she had been unconscious.

  She tried sitting up, and realised she was tied up. Her hands bound with rope, and lots of it, and it was tight, the frays of the coarse surface grating her wrists. Her ankles were tied together, but with a long piece of rope between them, meaning her legs weren’t forced together.

  She bowed her head.

  She had to think of Boy. That’s what she had to do. It was the only thing she could do, the only way she could get through this. She had to cling onto the thought of getting back to him and making sure he was safe.

  She looked around herself. Her eyes adjusted to the night and she realised she was outside. The rope between her ankles was joined to another rope, and she traced it with her eyes back to a tree, where someone else was also tied. The flicker of flames ten yards or so away told her that the Wasters were nearby.

  She watched them. Eating. Holding meat over an open flame then shovelling it into their gobs, opening wide and filling their cheeks, excess meat dropping down their chins, excess fluid dribbling down their torsos.

  “Hey,” Cia whispered, trying to get the attention of the other person attached to the tree. In the darkness, she could just make out her shape. She was laid on her side, her back to Cia.

  “Hey,” she tried again, a little louder, but still a whisper, so as not to catch the Wasters’ attention. “Hey, can you hear me?”

  She heard sniffing. There was definite sniffing. Like the girl was crying.

  “What’s your name? Mine’s Cia.”

  The girl lifted her bound arms and buried her face into them. Cia could see on one of her hands that she was missing a few fingers.

  She turned and looked at the Wasters eating. One of them was grinding the meat off a finger with his teeth like she did with chicken that time her dad took her to Nando’s.

  She wanted to lurch. She looked down at her own fingers, worried about what the Wasters were going to do to them. Was she next? After this girl, were they going to eat her fingers?

  “Hey, come on,” Cia tried again. “You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

  The girl’s head lifted slightly, still obscured by shadows, and the whimpering seemed to pause.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  The girl didn’t reply.

  “Look, we can get out of these ropes, I’m pretty sure, then we can run – if we do it together, we stand a better chance of–”

  The girl turned her entire body around.

  Cia had to supress the need to vomit.

  This girl wasn’t going to be running anywhere.

  Beneath her waist were two stumps, broken bones pointing out, and dribbles of blood seeping out of the space where her legs once were.

  “Help… me…” the girl whispered.

  Cia looked back to the Wasters and their feast, then back to the girl.

  There wasn’t much left of their banquet, just like there wasn’t much meat left on the girl. Fairly soon she was going to bleed out and die, and the Wasters would be unlikely to choose dead flesh when they could choose…

  She looked around herself.

  There were no other prisoners.

  Just this girl and Cia.

  And soon, just Cia.

  THEN

  11

  It was inevitable. Someday, Cia was going to ask this question, and he knew it.

  He had been prepared for it. Prepared in the sense that he knew it was going to happen, yet he still felt unprepared for how to deal it – yes, he had answers ready, but had no idea the feeling of loss and nostalgia that would combat him.

  “Well, Dad?” Cia asked.

  He sighed. “What is it, sorry?”

  He knew what she’d said. He just needed time to think.

  “I want you to tell me about my mum.”

  He took his glasses off and placed them on the chair of the sofa. He put a bookmark inside his book and placed it on the coffee table. He brushed a speck off his trousers, sat up, and faced her.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “What kind of person was she?”

  He thought about that. Then he looked back at Cia. Right there, he had the answer.

  “She was like you.”

  “How?” she asked. She jumped onto the sofa and pushed her way beneath his arm.

  “Well, she was headstrong. Lots of tenacity. Lots of passion. She was an incredible woman.” He looked at her eager face. “And I loved her.”

  “How did she die?”

  That was a difficult one. He was expecting that question to come later.

  “Well,” he began, taking a deep breath. “She put you to bed – you were two at the time – and she went to make us both a hot chocolate, and found we were out of milk. Then she left to get some from the corner shop and, well… she never came home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone driving a car hit her. And she died on the road before the paramedics could get to her. They did all they could, but…”

  He had to stop.

  The memory was becoming too vivid.

  Him running out of his house, hearing the commotion, seeing his neighbours leaving their homes. Seeing the car, a man stood with his hands over his mouth, just saying over and over, “I didn’t see her, I didn’t see her, I didn’t see her.”

  He’d thought the body would be of some punk kid that hung about the neighbourhood, ridin
g their bike across everyone’s lawn, driving recklessly. He never expected to see his wife laying in a pool of her own blood, her eyes wide open yet not moving.

  He’d dove to his knees, he’d grabbed her hand, and he knew straight away.

  “Why did he hit her?”

  “They charged him with being on his mobile phone whilst driving, but he was found not guilty. But, the last thing she did,” he said, trying to give the conversation a more positive tone, “was kiss you good night.”

  “I wish I could remember her.”

  “Me too.”

  “Did she love me?”

  “Oh, more than anything. And look,” he said, pointing at a picture on the fireplace. “Any time you want to see her, she’s right there.”

  Cia peered at the picture. She had black skin, unlike her father who was white, and unlike her, who was neither.

  “Why am I not black, like her?”

  “Because you’re mixed race. You’re a mixture of both of our colours. And there is nothing wrong with that, and if anyone tells you otherwise, you just put them straight, you hear me?”

  Cia continued to stare into the eyes of the picture. Normally the eyes of the pictures followed her around the room and were quite creepy, but not this one. This one had caring, warm, green eyes like hers, which went really well with her peaceful smile.

  “Did she like science too?” Cia asked.

  “Ah, she pretended to. She listened to my waffle as much as I chose to waffle at her, and she would say she found it interesting, but, honestly, it was her art that she loved.”

  “She liked art?”

  “Oh, yes. Paintings, galleries, she even did a few herself.”

  “Where are they? Can I see them?”

  He looked down, regretful.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “I threw them away.”

  “Why would you throw them away?”

  “I really wish I hadn’t, Cia, I really wish I hadn’t. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking straight, and each of those paintings just reminded me of her spirit, and her love, and her passion, and – well, I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore.”

  “You could have just put them in the attic.”