A Solar Winter

by Ryan Casey

  Sofia lifted her head, squinted at Alison. “Moving forward? Really? When my boy’s dead? I haven’t even buried him yet. I haven’t even… I haven’t even begun to feel the pain his death will cause me yet.”

  Alison couldn’t deny the sympathy she felt for this woman. But at the same time, she was seeing this situation through Holly’s eyes. Sofia was dangerous. She was unpredictable. She was a threat, as long as she was in this grief-stricken stupor.

  “And it’ll never go away,” Alison said. “The pain, it’ll never—”

  “What do you know about losing a child?”

  Alison gulped. “More than you’ll ever believe.”

  They were silent then, for a while. Alison stood there. Sofia stayed kneeling there. But all the time, those questions spun around Alison’s mind.

  How was this going to end?

  Where was it going?

  How was she going to deal with Sofia when she was in this state.

  She saw the knife in the distance. She could go over to it. Grab it. Silence Sofia before she had a chance to fight back.

  And with Ian gone, that’d leave the farmhouse all to herself.

  But… no. That was something Holly would do. That wasn’t something she would do.

  Was it?

  She heard Sofia mumble a few things, and she walked slowly around to the knife. Because she felt possessed now. She felt like she could do the things her mind was screaming at her not to do. She felt like she could put Sofia down here, end it all. It’d draw a line under everything they’d been through. There’d be guilt… but hell, there was guilt already, so it was just something extra to add to the cycle.

  But while Sofia was lying here… it just didn’t feel right. It just didn’t—

  “The girl,” Sofia said. “Holly. Tell me about her.”

  More uncertainty filled Alison’s body as she made her way closer to the knife. “She… she’s a tough kid. I won’t lie, she scares me sometimes. She’s… I’d say she’s built for this world. She has the mentality for it.”

  “That’s a worry.”

  “Or a blessing,” Alison said. “But… but she wasn’t always this way. I don’t doubt she was probably tough in the past. But… but this. This is different.”

  “Then why do you stand by her?” Sofia asked, still leaning there, still sobbing.

  Alison was right opposite the knife now. All she had to do was crouch down, lift it up and stab Sofia and be done with all of this.

  She knew what a monster it made her.

  But there wasn’t much time to dwell on the morals and ethics of these situations anymore.

  “I stick by her because I know she’s good, deep down. She’s messed up, sure, but she’s good. And I won’t just leave her behind. I won’t just let her die.”

  She held her breath. Waited.

  Then she crouched down and picked up the knife.

  When she stood, she expected Sofia to be standing opposite her. She expected Sofia to be looking back at her, weapon that Alison didn’t know about in hand. And in a way, that would’ve made things better. It would’ve made things easier. Because at least then she could put this down to self-defence.

  So she told herself the white lie that she was defending herself from Sofia, as she walked towards her.

  Because she was, after all. She was.

  Wasn’t she?

  “Maybe in another life, my son and this… this Holly. Maybe they would’ve got along.”

  Alison touched the back of Sofia’s neck. Moved her hair out of the way. Stroked her neck. “Maybe,” she said.

  She lifted the knife back.

  “Maybe… maybe she’s not the one who has to be punished after all,” Sofia said.

  Alison nodded. “May—”

  That’s when it happened.

  Sofia spun around.

  Punched Alison right in the stomach.

  And before Alison could slam the knife towards her, she was back on the ground again.

  Sofia pressed her down, tightened her hands around her neck. “I should’ve killed you while I had the chance.” Her eyes were manic. She was drooling. She looked possessed all over again. And it scared Alison. It made her fear she’d missed her opportunity.

  “It still doesn’t have to end this way,” Alison said, struggling for breaths, Sofia’s grip getting so tight that she couldn’t say another word.

  But Sofia just kept on tightening her grip.

  Sofia kept on squeezing, harder, harder.

  Alison’s vision blurred.

  Everything went dull.

  “It does,” Sofia said.

  And then Alison heard something.

  She thought it was her imagination at first. She thought she was hallucinating in her final moments.

  But when she felt Sofia’s grip loosen, she knew something was wrong.

  And she didn’t hesitate.

  She swung around, punched Sofia in the throat, then dragged herself from underneath her.

  She gasped, hands on her thighs, got her breath and her strength back as well as she could.

  Then she looked up at the source of the sound.

  When she saw who was standing there, she went totally still.

  There was a man.

  One of the foreign soldiers.

  He looked like he was out of breath. Like he’d been running.

  And he was pointing a rifle right at her.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When Holly woke up, she knew something was wrong right away.

  It was light. Lighter than she’d expected. It only felt like two minutes ago that she’d closed her eyes, drifted off to a sleep with dreams she couldn’t quite put her finger on but knew were disturbing, but now she was awake again, and it was a new day.

  When she looked to her right, she realised what was wrong almost immediately.

  Emma was nowhere to be seen.

  First, she felt that sense of dread deep in the pit of her stomach. Then, an urgency. An urgency to get to her feet and find Emma. She couldn’t let her disappear. She couldn’t lose her.

  She stood up, heart racing, and looked around everywhere. Her eyes were still adjusting after waking, and she felt sickness in the pit of her stomach.

  “Emma!” she called.

  Her voice echoed through the streets.

  There was no response.

  She felt a nagging loneliness inside, not just for herself but for Emma, too. She knew she’d done well to get Emma to trust her. But this… this wasn’t good news. Not at all.

  So she went to shout Emma’s name again.

  That’s when she saw it.

  The footprints.

  The footprints in the snow.

  They were too big to be Emma’s.

  Dread intensified inside Holly, as well as loss. She looked at that path of footprints, of where they led.

  And when she saw they led right down the road, her stomach sank.

  Emma had been taken. It’d happened in the night, while Holly rested. That had to be it.

  She blinked a few times, made sure this wasn’t another hallucination or figment of imagination like the night before.

  But when she rubbed her eyes and looked down, she saw that the footprints remained, and that Emma was still gone.

  That dread built. Because her own mind, she could deal with. This was different.

  There was only one thing she could do.

  She grabbed her stuff—Emma’s rifle included, which she’d uncharacteristically left lying around—and ran in the direction of the footprints.

  She wasn’t sure how far she’d ran when she finally collapsed into the snow, stitch crippling her body.

  She rolled back. Looked up at the sky. Snow fell heavily again.

  She wondered if this was her punishment. Her punishment for killing Tommy, and all the other people. Make her get close to someone only to take them away when she finally did care about them.

  Or maybe they weren’t even real at all. Maybe
Emma was a hallucination. Maybe she was losing her mind completely.

  She was about to roll over and lie in the snow some more until she got her stupid head straight when she heard the shout.

  “Holly!”

  She shuffled around. Frowned. Got to her feet.

  “Holly!”

  There was no denying it.

  It was Emma.

  She was calling her name.

  Just ahead.

  Screaming.

  Holly’s dread and curiosity suddenly turned to total anger. Because nobody was laying a hand on Emma. Nobody was hurting her.

  Even the thought of it made Holly’s skin turn.

  She ran in the direction of the scream, hoping to God it wasn’t another manifestation of her mind; another hallucination.

  When she reached its source, she stopped.

  There was a van up ahead. An old burger van, the shutters closed. It looked like it was in a state before the end of the world, with ketchup and brown sauce stains all down its front.

  There was no doubt that there was someone in there.

  And one of those people was Emma.

  Holly tightened her hands around Emma’s rifle. She lifted it, pointed it in the direction of the burger van as she crept towards it. She reached the steps, made her way up them, heart racing, keeping as quiet as she possibly could.

  She was about to step inside when she heard Emma’s scream.

  And she knew right then there was no holding back.

  She slammed the door open.

  When she looked inside the burger van, her stomach turned.

  The place in here had gone to hell a long time ago. Ketchup was smeared everywhere. It stunk of vomit, piss, and shit. The windows on the inside were pasted with faeces.

  And there were bodies.

  Holly looked at these bodies, all of them small, all of them staring up at her with those empty eye sockets, and she knew what had happened here.

  Then she looked ahead and saw Emma.

  There was a man leaning over her, pressing her down.

  He had a knife near her face, near her eye.

  A jar of eyes by his side.

  He turned around, then. Looked at Holly, curiosity on his big, brutish face.

  “You sicko,” Holly said.

  Then she pulled the trigger.

  Small problem. Something Emma hadn’t told her or maybe didn’t even know.

  There was no ammo left in the gun.

  The man stood up and slammed into Holly, cracking her head against the back of the burger van.

  Holly tried to kick back, tried to break free, but this man’s weight was too much.

  She smelled his putrid breath on her face and saw his rotten teeth as he lifted that knife closer towards her right eye.

  “Maybe I’ll take yours,” he said, slaver dribbling from his mouth and onto Holly’s face. “You’ll look so pretty when I see what’s behind these eyes.”

  He pressed the knife against the bottom of Holly’s eyelid.

  She tried to break free. She tried to scream. But it was no good. She was stuck. Trapped. And she’d isolated herself, so there was nobody coming for her, nobody helping her.

  She’d turned her back on other people, so there was going to be nobody to save her now.

  She went to let out a cry as the knife started to cut.

  Then there was a thump.

  The man yelped, just for a second.

  Then there was another thump.

  His body rolled to the right.

  Holly looked at him, lying there, bleeding from the head. He was still moaning, still trying to get back up, but there was blood coming from his bald head.

  Then she looked around and saw Emma standing there.

  She had a heavy looking ornament in her hands.

  She looked at Holly and then back at the man and went to lift the ornament again.

  Holly raised a hand. “No,” she said.

  Emma frowned. “But he tried to kill me. He’s killed—he’s killed others.”

  Holly swallowed a lump in her throat in disgust at this man. She wanted to see him dead. She wanted to see him suffer.

  But in the end, she knew she’d done too much killing as it was.

  She went over to the man. Grabbed his knife. Rolled his head around.

  “We don’t always have to kill them,” Holly said.

  She moved the knife towards his eyes.

  “Sometimes, we just have to take away what makes them hurt people. You might want to stand outside for this.”

  Emma did stand outside.

  Which was just as well.

  Because when Holly pressed the blade to the bottom of the man’s left eye, his screams almost deafened her.

  And that was just the beginning.

  Holly stepped out of the burger van.

  The man had stopped screaming now.

  She held out a bloodied hand for Emma.

  “Ready to keep on going?” she asked.

  Emma nodded. “Ready.”

  Holly looked at the road ahead.

  In her left hand, Emma held on.

  In her right, the man’s eyeballs squelched between her fingers.

  She hadn’t killed him, sure. She didn’t always have to kill. There were always other ways.

  But one thing was for certain.

  He wasn’t hurting any children anymore.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Mike looked at Kelsie lying on the road, and he knew he was in deep shit.

  It was getting late. Darkness was already halfway upon them. The air had gone bitter cold again, winter’s assault never letting up.

  He winced as he lifted Kelsie up. He looked at Yuri and Andrei’s bodies. How quickly things could unravel; how rapidly everything could fall apart.

  Yuri told him there was a place they could go to. A place where the foreign troops could provide Kelsie with some medical attention.

  But he had no idea where that place was. The only path he had now was the road ahead.

  Yuri and Andrei were dead.

  And now Mike was stuck out here on his own, lost. He had no idea where to head other than a vague idea of the direction to this supposed safe place, this supposed sanctuary.

  But he wasn’t sure he had it in him to make it another mile, let alone however long it took to get him to this new location.

  But he’d try. Because he couldn’t just sit back and admit defeat. This was about Kelsie, too. She needed help. She needed medical attention. Even if he had to go to the foreign military group himself to help her… he’d do it if he knew it might give her even the smallest chance of making it.

  But the more he tried to stand, the more he tried to move, the weaker he felt. Because Yuri and Andrei’s deaths had taken it out of him completely.

  He looked over at Andrei. At Yuri. They seemed good people. And Sergei… Sergei had seemed a good person too. It’s just for whatever reason, he’d got scared. Scared about running into his old companions again. Scared about the path Yuri was leading them down.

  And Mike could see that. He could understand it, truly.

  He knew what it was like to fear someone else’s decisions, especially when your life was at stake.

  But Yuri didn’t have to shoot his friends and almost kill Mike to prove a point.

  That’s where he’d crossed the line.

  Mike stumbled to his feet. He stood up.

  And as he looked ahead, he realised visibility was reducing, and he was going to lose sight of the road ahead as the snow started to fall thicker and heavier than ever before.

  He turned around. Stumbled to Kelsie’s side. Held her in his arms. He could tell she was still breathing, lightly. Her heart was pumping slowly. She was still unconscious. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, just that she needed urgent help.

  But he wasn’t going to be able to give it her.

  He’d failed her.

  He felt tears welling up. He’d failed Kelsie, and he’d fai
led Holly, too. He’d lost Holly. And as much as he told himself she was still out there, somewhere, he was starting to face up to the possibility—the likelihood—that Holly wasn’t alive anymore. Because chances were she wasn’t. She was too good. Too noble. She could make tough choices, sure. But the person this world turned you into in order to survive… he wasn’t sure Holly was capable of becoming that.

  He stroked Kelsie’s hair out of her eyes, and he said the words he’d been repressing for so, so long.

  “I’m sorry for killing your dad. I’m sorry for what I did to him. But it was him or my daughter. And I’d do anything for my daughter. Just… just like I’d do anything for you.”

  He leaned forward. Kissed Kelsie’s head.

  When he raised his head, he saw Kelsie’s eyes were open.

  A mixture of emotions. First, relief. But then dread.

  Because he’d just said those words.

  He’d just admitted the truth.

  “You killed my dad?” Kelsie asked.

  Mike’s stomach dropped. His heart pounded. “Kelsie, I—”

  “Why did you kill my dad? Why?”

  Mike looked away, his mouth dry. He could tell from how Kelsie was speaking that she was still not completely with it. In a way, he hoped that meant she wouldn’t remember this conversation at a later date…

  But there was no repressing the truth now.

  There was no holding it back.

  “I killed your dad,” Mike said.

  Kelsie was silent.

  “Back on the road. We ran into each other. He threatened my daughter. Got close to killing her. So I… I guess I didn’t hold back. I could’ve shown mercy. I could’ve shown forgiveness. But I didn’t. Anyway. He mentioned you. Your picture of him, I recognised him. And since then… since then I’ve wanted to protect you. It started out of guilt. But it’s much, much more than that, Kelsie. I want to keep you safe. Do you understand? I’m going to keep you safe.”

  Kelsie looked at Mike’s face, eyes darting around like she was trying to get a proper read on him. She coughed, and Mike waited for whatever it was she was about to say next.

  What she said surprised him.

  “Your daughter,” she said. “Is she gone too?”

  Mike thought of Holly. His throat welled up. His body tensed. He took a deep breath of the cold winter air, and he let out a sigh—a sigh that felt like another truth was emerging after all. “I think she is,” he said. “I think she—”