by Ryan Casey
It was all part of the new world that Claire and her people were building towards, and had been building towards for some time.
He felt a crumple in his pocket. Stopped, reached inside. He felt the note there, and sadness washed over him. Kumal’s letter. The one he’d written for Gina. His confession of love to her before he’d died.
He felt sad for what had happened to Kumal, to this day. It’d been a turning point for him; a moment of realisation that things couldn’t get any more depraved. That he couldn’t get any more depraved. The future of the world depended on reining in those destructive impulses.
He took a deep breath of the icy morning air as he reached the gates of the community.
“Leaving without saying goodbye?”
Mike jumped a little when he heard the voice. Turned around, saw Claire standing behind him.
She was a short woman, with short black hair. She had really pronounced dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. She was wrapped up in a parka that almost swallowed her whole.
Mike scratched his head. “Figured I’d get to our trade run early,” he said, tapping the bag of meds by his side.
“I don’t blame you,” Claire said. “This place is hardly going to be fun today.”
“How’s Miranda holding up?” Mike asked.
“Like she’s just lost her husband.”
Mike nodded. He should’ve known better than to ask such a stupid question, especially after having been through it.
“You know… you don’t have to do this alone, if you don’t want.”
Mike frowned. “I’d say I do have to do this on my own—”
“I can come with you. Nobody should be alone today. Miranda lost, sure. But we all lost somebody. That’s… that’s not the kind of thing we should have to process on our own.”
Mike felt a knot build in his stomach. He shook his head. “No. You should stay here. The people here, they need you.”
“They don’t need me,” Claire said. “They’ve got each other. Let me come with you.”
Mike felt torn in two directions. Because he did want the company, he couldn’t deny that. But at the same time, he didn’t want Claire to leave this place. He wanted her to stay here. He wanted her to keep an eye on Kelsie. He wanted them both to be safe.
He smiled. “I’m okay. Really. But I want you here. I want you here for Kelsie. She liked Fred. It’s not going to be easy for her today. Dealing with death never is easy for any kid.”
“You’re a good father, you know?”
Mike stumbled. He looked away. “I was, once upon a time.”
“You still are. That girl, she looks up to you. She cares about you so much. Stay safe for her, Mike. I’ve no idea what she’d do without you.”
Guilt racked at Mike’s body again. Guilt over what had happened to Kelsie’s father; over what he’d done to him.
He tightened his fists, which were shaking, and he forced himself to look right at Claire again.
“I’ll make it back here. But until then… you look after her. You look after everyone. You just do what you do.”
Claire smiled, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe you’ll even buy me that drink we spoke about when you get back.”
Mike lifted a hand and waved as he walked away. “Look at me. I’m skint.”
“Maybe you’ll win the lottery on the road.”
“I’d better check my numbers, hadn’t I?”
“Gotta be in it to win it,” Claire said.
Mike banged on the gates then, which opened when one of the guards pulled them apart.
He watched them open, watched the outside world reveal itself to him, and suddenly he felt like he was in the open. He felt vulnerable like he always did when he went outside.
He looked back over his shoulder. Saw Claire standing there, waving.
He smiled. Nodded at her.
Then he took a deep breath and faced the road ahead.
And as he walked, he still couldn’t deny how strange the day felt.
And he couldn’t deny the feeling that somehow, from somewhere, he was being watched.
Very closely.
Chapter Ten
Holly saw the camp in the distance and felt a knot tighten in her stomach.
It was afternoon. Her and Alison had been out all day searching for a suitable camp to approach and ask for hospitality. Holly knew it was stupid. People were dangerous and should be dealt with upon first sight. But Alison was insistent. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in these woods. She didn’t want to keep on going to sleep at night not knowing whether she was going to succumb to hypothermia or not. She didn’t want what they had.
And it was naive of Alison to suggest that Holly wanted a life like this. If she could take her old, blindfolded life with the wool pulled over her eyes, she’d take it in a heartbeat.
But she’d seen reality. She’d seen human nature.
And for that reason, she had to face up to it, stare it in the eye.
She had to accept it in all its ugliness.
And she had to resist being a part of it with all the strength she had.
But now she could see someone up ahead. She could see a camp. Flames. A group.
The first thing she realised?
These people—the four of them she could see—were outside too. They looked frozen to the bone. It wasn’t like they had hot showers and comfy beds; they were surviving, just like Holly and Alison.
Alison was naive if she truly believed anyone was living a more luxurious life out there. After all, it was winter. Everyone was suffering.
Immediately, instinctively, Holly did a sweep of this group. She saw the flames. Saw the black coat the dark-haired man was wearing. Saw the hammers and the branches. And she saw the food, too.
It was the food that really caught her eye.
Tinned food. Tins of tuna, protein bars.
Chocolate bars.
Things that should have gone but were still here, still accessible to this group, somehow.
She found herself caught in two minds. One of them wanted her to go over there, to hold her hands up and let these people take her as a member of their group. But there was no knowing how trustworthy they were. There was no knowing what they’d do to her or what they’d do to Alison if she came here too. There was no knowing anything like that.
So there was another choice.
She could wait for these people to move, and she could steal from them.
Or, she could find a way to pick them off, patiently, methodically… and she could have their source of supplies, too.
It wasn’t that she enjoyed taking people out. Quite the opposite. It was just that bonding with people scared her too. Because the thought that she might lose everything all over again just tore her apart.
She didn’t even have to think as she crouched there, holding her breath so that they couldn’t see it frosting in the air. Not anymore.
As far as she was concerned, these were other people, which meant they were dangerous and couldn’t be trusted.
She lifted her knife as the group disappeared, leaving one man left sitting around the fire. She looked at the knife. Saw the crusted blood around its edges. She asked herself why she didn’t feel any guilt for what she was about to do. She asked why she couldn’t just bring herself to try and make some kind of bond with these people or see the potential for goodness that she believed Alison so blindly saw.
She tried to convince herself that this was wrong, that she didn’t have to do this.
But then she stood up, knife in hand, and she walked down towards the one man still sitting there, right by the fire.
The closer she got to him, the more her heart raced. The more she thought of the church where she’d slaughtered those people months ago; where David told her she’d done it because she’d wanted to do it, not because she truly believed in what he was asking her to do or why he was asking her to do it.
She’d imparted her own meaning onto a situation
to justify what she’d, deep down in her bones, wanted to do.
She didn’t know why.
She’d never felt this before, not beyond occasional violent impulses when people said mean things at school, or the times she’d been chopping vegetables and Dad had really annoyed her and…
No. That wasn’t the same. What she was doing now was because of the way the world had crafted her.
It was this world that had changed her.
It was this world that had made her into… this.
It was—
It all happened so suddenly.
The man sitting at the fire turned around.
He looked right at Holly. Then at her knife. And then he looked at where she’d been looking too, over towards their food and supply store.
He could’ve seen the goodness.
He could’ve hesitated.
But instead he did something not even Holly was expecting.
He shouted for his friends, and he lifted an air rifle.
Instinctively, she turned, raced off into the trees. She knew she was stronger hand to hand in that her perceived weakness made other people underestimate her. But a gun was a different matter entirely—air rifle or not. A gun could give the weakest person an advantage. It was gold in a world like this—especially in a country like this, which was so gun-light, to its detriment at the end of the world, clearly.
She heard a blast from behind. Birds flew from the trees around her. She heard footsteps. Shouts. They were onto her. They were chasing her. They were hunting her down. She had to get away.
She ran further through the woods. She felt her head spinning; felt disoriented. She needed to find Alison. Because no matter how different their views were, Holly cared about Alison. She cared about her more than anyone. And if she didn’t get to her, she could be in danger.
This was it.
This was why Holly feared others so much.
Shit like this happened.
She heard another gunshot. Heard the people getting closer as she headed further back into the woods. She wanted to look over her shoulder, but she knew it was risky, knew it was dangerous.
She went to call out Alison’s name to warn her when she saw her standing there, right up ahead.
She looked at Holly as she raced towards her. Frowned. “Holly? What’s—”
“Run!” Holly shouted. “Just—just run!”
Chapter Eleven
Tommy felt so proud about how much he was going to help Mum and Dad until he heard the bang.
He’d got up really early. He knew Dad got up really early, and he wanted to be up before him. He wanted to surprise him and come back with some of the catches from the traps. He wanted to build a trap too, to show how strong he was. He heard Dad saying how strong people had to be to survive in this world, and how sometimes they had to take risks. This was a risk, he knew it. Mum and Dad might not be happy he was out here.
But when he got back, they were going to be so, so happy.
But then he heard the bang, and it threw him. Somehow, he thought it was a firework, but then he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t see anything above the trees. But maybe that was just because it was day time. And even though it was cloudy, he knew from when his friend’s dad set off some fireworks in the day once that you couldn’t always see them.
He tried to keep his head down, tried not to worry too much about the bang.
But then he realised he was lost.
He hated the feeling of being lost. Even though he liked going on adventures with his friends, wandering off into the woods, he liked to know how to get back if he wanted to. Like he was attached to the outside world by a rope or something.
But as he looked around now, deep in the woods, he wasn’t sure which way home was. And that scared him. It scared him a lot.
He sat down by a small puddle of melted snow. It was cold through his trousers, but that would be okay. He’d be able to dry them out when he got…
But wait.
What if he never got home?
What if he was going to stay lost forever?
He sat there for a few seconds and did what Dad told him to do whenever he was in a bad situation.
Think it through. Think through every option. Imagine you’re a grown up and ask, “what would the grown up do?”
He tried to ask what Dad would do in a situation like this. First off, he wouldn’t worry. He definitely wouldn’t cry. He’d probably use…
That was it.
The compass.
A smile crossed his face as he reached into his pocket for the compass he’d brought along with him. He remembered the sun rose over the fields in front of the house every morning, which meant that was east, if his teacher in Year Three hadn’t been lying or making up the “sun rises in the east, sets in the west” thing.
Which meant he would have to head west as soon as he found it on the compass.
He lifted the compass.
At first, he felt relief. Because the needle was pointing clearly in one direction.
But then something happened.
It jolted to the bottom of the compass.
And then to the left.
Then to the right.
Tommy felt that tension building again. He knew compasses weren’t supposed to act in this way. He’d learned how to make a compass in the woods at school before, but he couldn’t remember how to do it.
Besides, compasses weren’t supposed to break. They were supposed to be always right.
What was making this happen?
And why was it happening to him?
He threw the compass to the ground in a fit of temper. He heard it smash against a rock, which he regretted right away. He rubbed his hand through his long, brown hair and looked around, trying to remember exactly which way he’d come from.
Then he thought of what Dad said again.
Ask “what would the grown up do?”
He asked himself what Dad would do.
And then he took a deep breath and looked ahead at the woods.
“Got to just keep going, I guess.”
He went further into the woods. Confidence built as he kept moving. If he found home, then that was good. But if he found the traps Dad had lain, at least he’d know he was on the right track, then he could just head back from there.
Walking helped him feel better. It stopped him worrying. He’d always liked walking, even when he was younger, going up mountains with his grandparents.
He wished they were still here.
He wished so many people were still here.
He heard something again, then. Another bang, which made him jump. But it was quite far away now. Further away than he’d thought.
But there was something else he could hear.
Footsteps.
People running somewhere in the distance.
Shuffling.
And…
He froze, right then. He froze because he heard it, loud and clear.
Voices.
And he saw it, too.
The bushes right in front of him.
There was someone in there.
Someone moving.
Adrenaline—not that he understood what it was at this young age—surged through Tommy’s body. Part of him wanted to walk away.
But another part wanted to know who was in those bushes. It wanted to see who it was.
He walked slowly over towards the bush. He wasn’t sure what to say. He just knew what Dad would say to him if he knew he was walking up to a stranger like this. Don’t. Don’t even think about it.
And that made Tommy wonder if he was making the wrong move.
That made him wonder if there wasn’t a better way of going about this.
But he did keep walking. He did keep moving. And the further he walked, the more he wanted to know who these people were. The more he wanted to know why they were hiding, and what they were hiding from.
He pulled his kitchen knife out. Lifted it. Because he had to be ready,
too. He had to be tough.
He had to do what the grown-up would do. What Dad would do.
He had to be strong.
He saw the bush shuffling some more. Heard the voices. And for a moment, he wondered if it was Mum. It sounded like Mum. Maybe her and Dad were watching him. Maybe they were playing around.
He felt excitement inside. He walked right up to that bush, heart racing, knife in the air. He smiled as he reached it, barely able to hide his excitement.
“Got you!” he shouted.
He pulled the bush to one side.
There were a couple of things that hit him. A couple of things that happened all at once that he processed, but fuzzily, in a detached kind of way.
The first was the scream.
And then there was the fact that these two people—this woman and this… this short-haired girl. They weren’t Mum.
But there was something else.
Something that hit him more than anything.
And that was the pain in his stomach.
The sharp pain, right in the middle of his neck.
He looked down.
Saw the knife pressed there.
He heard the woman screaming out, shouting out.
And he saw the girl’s hand holding on to that knife.
Horror in her eyes.
Little Tommy saw all these things.
And as he fell to the ground, he swore he heard his mum and dad shouting out to him, getting closer.
At least he’d been strong for them.
At least he’d tried.
At least he’d…
Chapter Twelve
Mike was just two hours from home when everything began to fall apart.
It was late afternoon, later than he’d intended or expected. The sun was shining, though, which made a nice change, reminding him of the summer that had just gone. Even then, with the power out, there had still been such hope because of that sun; such optimism that maybe things could work out okay after all.
Of course, it’d all been ill-placed. Winter had arrived early—and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere either. It was early, and it was strong, and it was, quite frankly, torturous.