by Ryan Casey
For a moment, Bella wondered if they’d left the room. They’d gone quiet. Too quiet.
She opened her eyes, just a little, and peeked ahead.
The two feet stood there at the edge of the bed.
Facing the window.
Facing her.
She closed her eyes again. There was no doubting what she was looking at now. Any hope that this guy was someone she knew was gone.
His legs were bare.
He was wearing something white.
She clutched her hands to her chest, held on to that broken shard of mirror, and remembered the way she’d done the same when she was in the institution. She’d spent the bulk of her time in bed, curled up, eyes tightly shut, tears rolling down her face. She wanted to disappear, so many times.
But never more than she wanted to disappear now.
She hoped for a miracle. Hoped for something or someone to come her way and—
A bang.
A bang, somewhere at the front of the caravan.
The man’s feet turned.
The footsteps left the room.
Bella felt trapped. On the one hand, she wanted to stay here and wait. Leaving felt too dangerous.
On the other, she knew she might not get an opportunity like this again.
The man had already searched the bathroom.
If she could get in there, maybe she had a chance.
She dragged herself out from under the bed, slowly.
Then she stood up, her legs so shaky she could barely move.
She reached the door and she stopped and held her breath.
The footsteps were definitely at the other side of the caravan now.
She had to take this chance.
She had to move.
She took a deep breath.
And then she opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
She didn’t want to look to her right. She didn’t want to see where the man was, or even whether he was looking.
But she couldn’t help herself.
She glanced to her right.
Her body went numb.
The man was looking right in her direction.
He was tall. Bearded. The white cloak he wore was at odds with his somewhat polished looks. He looked like he might’ve been a businessman before. Or someone who worked on the wards. A doctor.
But the way he held that blade.
The way he twirled it around in his hand.
He scanned Bella, like he was weighing up whether he could take her down.
Then he took a step towards her.
She did the only thing she could do.
She threw herself into the bathroom.
Slammed the door shut.
Locked it on its flimsy latch.
She backed away. Heart racing. Body shaking. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know where to go.
But she knew one thing.
She had to fight.
Instinctively, she went to lift the mirror.
She realised something.
She’d left it. Left it in the bedroom, under the bed.
The footsteps got closer.
Shit.
She looked around. Looked for something she could use as a weapon. Anything she could use as a weapon.
And then she saw the lid on top of the toilet tank.
She’d seen people use those in films before. They were heavy. One good whack and it should be enough to knock the man to the floor.
She didn’t feel happy about it. Didn’t feel comfortable about it.
But she knew she had to do something.
She grabbed it. Lifted it off.
The footsteps so close now.
Then she climbed onto the toilet. Gave herself height.
The door banged and shook on its hinges.
She waited a few seconds. Sweat trickling down her forehead. Holding that toilet lid as she stood on the edge of the toilet.
The door shook a few more times.
She waited.
Held her nerve.
The door banged once more and she readied herself to bring it crashing down.
But then she heard something else.
Another bang, closer this time.
A struggle. A shout.
And then silence.
She stood there a few seconds. She didn’t know what’d happened. The door had stopped shaking. The banging had stopped.
But she stayed still.
A few seconds later, the latch to the door lowered.
She readied herself to bring that toilet lid crashing down.
And just when she was on the verge, she stopped.
Because she saw who was here.
“Bella?”
She lowered that heavy toilet tank lid and let to drop to the floor.
The man lay on the floor, blood trickling from his throat.
Behind him, Candice, Hazel, and Villain.
“It’s okay,” Candice said, stepping into the bathroom. “You’re okay. He’s gone. Now we… we need to focus on getting out of here. Right this second.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jack looked over his shoulder and braced himself for the worst.
But when he looked back, his eyes widened.
The sun peeked through the clouds. Light illuminated the people walking through the caravan site, right towards him.
A smile stretched across his face.
It was Hazel. Candice. Bella.
And Villain.
He knew he should prioritise the people in his life. He knew he should check they were okay.
But it was Villain who his attention was on.
And it was Villain who raced towards him.
He let Mrs Fuzzles go and ran towards Villain. He held out his arms as his eyes welled up with tears.
Villain jumped up, almost knocking Jack to his arse as he licked at his face, panting away.
“Alright, boy. It’s alright. I thought I’d lost you. I… I thought I’d lost you.”
He calmed Villain down, ruffled his fur, then looked at the rest of his people.
Hazel, Candice, and Bella looked back at him. Hazel was fussing Mrs Fuzzles, who looked happy to be back with her.
“I’m glad you made it,” Jack said.
Hazel puffed out her lips. “It wasn’t easy. We went to find Bella. Bumped into Villain on the way. But anyway. We’re here now. Laid low for a while, waited until we had a chance to leave, but we’re here.”
Jack nodded. “I’m glad.”
He realised something, then. His people, they were looking over his shoulder, concern on their faces.
He realised they were looking at the girl.
“Oh,” Jack said. “She… she’s with us.”
“With us?” Bella said. “Those people killed Harry. They—”
“I’m sorry about what happened to Harry,” the girl said, walking towards Jack and the rest of the group. “My people, they… they can be brutal.”
“No shit,” Hazel said. “You just butchered the bulk of our camp. And now we’re supposed to just trust you?”
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” the girl said. “I’m telling you that you’re still in danger. And if you don’t leave this place in the direction I’m heading right now, you’re going to be in even more trouble.”
Hazel didn’t look sure. Neither did Bella or Candice.
“I can vouch for her,” Jack said.
They looked at him, just as uncertain.
“I… I don’t know who she is. I don’t know what her story is. I don’t even know her name. But what I do know is that she came here to help me. She wanted to get me out of here. To get more people out of here and away from here.”
He looked right at her then as she stood there, blade in hand, staring at the ground with those vacant eyes.
“I can’t trust her,” Jack said. “But I believe she’s trying to do the right thing. And I believe we should follow her.”
“And you’re ready to actually
own that decision?” Hazel asked.
Jack looked right at her. He knew what she was getting at. This was his call. This was him stepping up and taking responsibility, something he wasn’t comfortable with in the slightest.
But he knew the moment called for it.
Whether he liked it or not.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “If it goes wrong… it’s on me. But I don’t think it will.”
He saw Candice smile at him, just a little.
He remembered her words.
He knew he had her backing.
He looked back at Hazel, at Bella. They looked less convinced.
But it was Hazel who broke the silence.
“I guess if… if you’re sure. I guess we have no choice.”
Jack nodded.
He looked around at the girl.
And then something hit him.
He looked back at his people.
“Emma,” he said.
They looked back at him like they were just as uncertain as he was.
“We haven’t seen her,” Candice said. “Nobody’s seen her. Dead or alive.”
Jack swallowed a lump in his throat. “Then that has to be good news, right? She must’ve got away. She—”
“It’s not good news,” the girl said.
Jack looked around at her. “What?”
The girl stared into space as she stood there in the middle of this road. He still felt so exposed.
“Hey,” Jack said. “What did you mean by that? You can’t just say something like that and then stop talking.”
“If you haven’t seen her dead or alive, then there’s a chance He has her.”
Jack felt his mouth go dry. “Matthew?”
The girl cringed, like hearing his name was summoning him in some way.
“What does he do with them?”
She looked at him. Her eyes widened. He could see the growing fear building up.
She opened her mouth, went to speak.
And then he heard something in the distance.
He looked around. Saw movement up ahead.
“There’s no time to explain,” she said. “We need to get away from here. Right now.”
There was so much Jack wanted to ask. So much he wanted to grill her about.
But that time had to wait.
Now wasn’t the moment.
He looked around at his people. Looked at Candice. At Bella. At Hazel.
And then he looked at the girl as she stood there, urgency on her face.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go. Now.”
He wanted to apologise to his people for what had happened to this place.
He wanted to tell them how sorry he was for all they’d lost, all over again.
But in the end, he could only look back at this caravan site, at this scene of disaster, and sigh.
“Come on,” Jack said, the reluctant leader awakening inside him, just for a moment. “Let’s get out of this place.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Emma sat in the darkness and wondered if her people were okay.
She had no idea what time it was. She’d lost all concept of time and place; of whether it was light or dark. All she could see was the blackness of whatever was tied around her head, covering her eyes.
And all she could think about were the fallen bodies and the people who had knelt beside her.
At first, she was confused, as she’d stood there, chained to Gordon next to her. She didn’t know what the man called Matthew was talking about, but he’d said something about her being strong; about her being different, and having a chance to prove it. She didn’t understand, but she knew that he was bad, and whatever he had planned for them couldn’t be good.
But there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Not while her eyes were covered. Not while her hands were bound behind her back, and her ankles together.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for. She didn’t know how much longer she was going to be waiting.
Just that she was here, and there was nothing she could do to get away.
She thought about Jack, about Candice, about the rest of her people and Villain and Mrs Fuzzles, and she hoped that no matter what was going to happen to her, no matter how afraid she was, they were okay.
She just hoped they hadn’t fallen like the rest.
She hoped that because she hadn’t seen them in the living alongside her or the dead before her that they’d managed to make it away.
And she hoped Jack could find a way to step up to the mark and bring their people back together, make them strong again.
Because he was the only one who could.
She heard something before her and the hairs on her arms stood on end.
She got that sickening sense that someone was right here.
She didn’t know what to say. Whether to speak or not.
But in the end, she figured there was nothing to lose.
“I know you’re there.”
There was no response. No sound at all. For a moment, she wondered if she was imagining things.
And then she heard the shuffling right before her, and light followed.
She blinked. Tried to shake the blurriness from her vision.
The first thing that hit her was that it was day.
She looked around. She was on her own, in some kind of tent. Light peeked under a gap in the fabric.
She saw him, then. Sitting on a stool right in front of her. He was holding a knife in one hand and an apple in the other. The second Emma noticed him, he started to slice.
Matthew.
He cut that apple. A perfect, thin slice.
Then he reached over to Emma, rested it right on her bottom lip.
“Eat,” he said.
She kept her mouth firmly shut.
Matthew sighed. He moved the apple away, and then he ate it himself. He cut himself another slice. As much as Emma wanted to eat it, for the burst of juice more than anything to aid her dry throat, she resisted. Held off. Showed strength.
“Always prefer slicing these things,” Matthew said. “It’s surprising, isn’t it? How something can be so tasty when it isn’t in its whole form, yet so unappetising when it is?”
Emma watched him eat and she wasn’t sure she knew what he was saying, or whether what he said mattered. She just wanted to know what he wanted. Why she was here. What he had planned.
But he spoke first.
“Your camp. Your friends. What you had to witness. What you had to go through. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Emma saw the flashes of what happened to Harry and Gregory.
She saw it all in its awful violence and she made damn sure she kept her eyes on Matthew, eager to maintain her show of strength. “I’ve seen worse.”
Matthew’s smile widened, then. There was something charming about him. Something that reminded her of…
No. Don’t think like that. He’s nothing like Logan. He’s a bad man. He’s evil.
“You know, I’ve had a good feeling about you ever since I saw you. A kid like you, making it this far in this world? A kid who hasn’t been mollycoddled? Who chooses her own path rather that allows adults to tell her what to do? That’s something special. Something very important. It’s an asset.”
Emma felt sick. She didn’t know what this man was saying. “An asset?”
“Yeah,” Matthew said. “You see… what we do appears bad. I’m not denying that. The acts we commit, they seem violent and they seem atrocious. But when you really consider it, it’s how nature has always been. The strong always survive. Whether it’s in work or whether it’s in sports, or whether it’s just in life in general, it’s the way of the world.”
“So that’s what you do?” Emma asked, daring herself to speak out. “You kill the weak so the strong can survive?”
Matthew’s smile widened. He shook his head. “You mistake our primary goal. We don’t just kill. We… redistribute.”
“Redistribute?”
&nbs
p; “What more is there to say? We make use of the living. And we make use of the dead. The strong survive. The weak fall. Like it’s always been.”
Just then, Emma felt a hit of what Matthew was saying.
She thought about the people she’d watched die. Mostly women and children.
And then she thought about the people who were alongside her.
The workers.
The strong.
The ones who he’d captured.
“But…”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Matthew said, leaning towards Emma. “Why did we spare you?”
Emma gulped. It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, but it was what she was thinking. She didn’t say a word.
He edged further towards her. So close that she could smell his breath, that hint of apple on it.
“I spared you because I think you’re strong,” he said. “Are you strong? Or are you going to prove me wrong?”
Emma found herself caught up with an impossible decision. She wanted to stand up for herself. She wanted to tell Matthew to get lost, and that she wasn’t even going to entertain whatever sick fantasies he had for the world.
But then there was another side of her that realised she was trapped here.
She was a prisoner.
So the only way she was going to get out was if she told this man what he wanted to hear.
It might be the only way.
She looked at the apple in his hand.
Then she looked into his eyes.
“I’ll eat now,” she said.
Matthew smiled.
He sliced away a piece of apple.
And he moved it towards Emma’s lips, dangling it on the edge of that sharp blade.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She wanted to push back. Wanted to resist.
But in the end, she knew she had to keep on playing the game.
“Emma,” she said.
She felt the blade against her lips falter, just a second.
She felt it cut her, just slightly, as she reached for the apple.
And she saw the way Matthew’s face dropped, just slightly.
She wanted to ask him what was wrong as she crunched on it and tasted blood mix with it, Matthew watching her all the time.
But in the end, she didn’t want to do anything too risky.
If she couldn’t escape right now, she was going to escape eventually.