“Ugh! Geroff.”
“Move any closer and I’ll break it,” she threatens to Mike as he stands gawping, her temper finally breaking free.
Footsteps sound out on the stairs down into the café. She listens to the sound above the man’s grunting.
“You got more friends coming?” she asks angrily.
“Huh? What you talking ‘bout?”
She pushes her knee again into his back, but this time straightens to get a view of the steps. As her head rises above the counter and looks over Mike’s shoulder, a man’s body is in full view, his head hidden, cut off by the angle of the ceiling. She may not be able to see him, but from his khaki combats and black boots he looks like he means business. The rifle he holds against his shoulder, combat ready, confirms it. She kneels up, pressing against Enders’ back, stock-still as he descends the final steps. The deep brown of the soldier’s eyes meets hers as he swings the barrel of the rifle in her direction. He nods at her almost imperceptibly then trains the rifle on the short man the other side of the counter. The man beneath her bucks. She presses her knee harder.
“This man giving you trouble?” he asks, keeping his eyes glued to Mike.
“Not yet,” she answers. “But this one di-”
Enders bucks again throwing her off-centre. She crashes to the side, hitting her head against the thick glass of the under-counter drinks chiller. Half-straddled across his back, he pushes up and she drops to the floor.
“Ugh!”
“I am trouble,” Enders growls as he rises, “and-” his words jar as he looks across the room and raises his hands.
“You two,” the stranger commands, “get over to the wall.”
Cassie stands, rubbing at her head and watches as the soldier shoos the men across to the far wall of the café, gesturing with his rifle. She can see why they’re behaving now. He’s certainly very commanding. They can be his problem now. Reaching down, she lifts the heavy bag and grabs the filled cardigan. Heaving the bag straps over her shoulder, she pushes it onto her back, edges behind the soldier and makes her way to the stairs. Her thigh muscles burn as she takes them two at a time, and her legs tremble as she runs to the heavy double doors that open onto the street and pushes through them.
Rick can see from the shifting anxiety of the two men that they’re no real threat to him. Just two chancers who thought they’d found easy prey. Desperation makes even the best of men ruthless, but with these two that desperation hasn’t made them mean enough to try and fight back.
“You two are just a couple of lowlifes—stealing from a woman!” he throws at them.
“A man’s gotta eat.”
“We’ve all got to eat. Doesn’t mean you can steal from people.”
“She was stealing!”
“Stealing from who? Everyone’s dead!” he spits. “She found it first and she might have even shared it if you’d asked nicely. Did you think about that?”
“Nah! She looks like the type only interested in herself. Just a rich bitch who doesn’t care about people like us.”
“Yeah. She deserves what she gets,” Mike sneers. “That type were the worst. Wouldn’t give a homeless loser like me the time of day or even a few coins to buy some food.”
“Booze more like,” Rick retorts.
“What do you know about it?”
“I know I haven’t got the time, or patience, to stand around talking about whose life is the hardest with a couple of losers who’d steal off of a woman,” he replies. “Now get lost and find your own supplies,” he finishes stepping to the stairs, his gun still trained on the two men, backs to the wall.
Climbing the steps, he hears the heavy door of the store’s entrance swing shut. She’s out onto the streets again, rich pickings for anyone else out on the prowl with her bag full of food. Even if this part of the city is pretty much deserted, there must be more survivors out there, survivors who, with each day that passes, are increasingly desperate and ruthless.
“Hey,” he calls out as he steps out of the double doors. She turns to look then quickens her pace. “Hey, wait up.” She slows then stops.
“I’m sorry. I should have thanked you.”
“It’s OK. You don’t need to. I-”
“Listen. I do need to thank you. What you did—you got me out of trouble. I should have just handed over the food, but it was all I could find. Everything has been cleared off the shelves around here or gone rotten.”
“Yeah, it’s not a great place to find food—too many offices. Out of tow-”
“I’ve got to go. My husband, Dan, he’s waiting,” she says with a tight smile and turns.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing her arm.
She drops the bag and turns on him, chopping at his arm with an expert slice and his hand is knocked away.
“Whoa! Sorry. I just want to finish talking to you, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to touch me to do that,” she returns holding his eyes with a glare.
“No. Sorry. But listen, you and your husband, how’re you going to survive round here? If you’ll excuse me, you don’t look like the type.” She glares harder. “It’s just that you look like … like you’re used to being taken care of, not the other way round. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Rick keeps his eyes locked to hers, not flinching from the glare and watches as her expression changes, a flicker of uncertainty behind the hard blue of her eyes.
“Well … Bella always did do the shopping and the cooking, but I know how to cook. I wasn’t always … well, I can cook and clean just as well as any other woman,” she says with a shake of her hair, “and I could have handled those men myself. I was half-way done when you came barging in.”
“Hey, steady on. I didn’t mean to offend you and I’m not talking about that kind of looking after yourself. I’m sure you’re quite the scrubber,” he says unable to keep the tiniest smile tweaking the corner of his lips, “but we’re not talking about getting organised for a few days where food is scarce. We’re talking about full-scale starvation here. We’re talking about survival at its meanest. There’s no one left to make deliveries to your supermarket so Bella can’t pick up your groceries and cook for you. There’s no one left to even grow the stuff. We’re all going to have to fend for ourselves from now on. At least until we can work together and build a new life.”
“Me and Dan—we’ve got each other,” she says, but softer now. “We’ve got our apartment. We’ll be safe there.”
“Yeah and when there are no more packets of biscuits left in your favourite coffee house then what?
“Then I’ll check on the other streets.”
“And when the electricity finally fails?”
“The electricity fails?”
“Yeah, haven’t you noticed the flicker? If there’s no one left to keep the power stations running …”
“What should we do then?” she asks her eyes widening as comprehension burns to understanding. She sags a little and Rick watches as her eyes flit to the broken windows of the shops then scan the deserted cars blocking the road.
“I’m heading out of here—into the country. I have friends out there who have a farm. They know a thing or two about survival.”
“Oh? How can you be sure they’re alive?”
“I spoke to Justin three days ago, before my mobile went dead. He and his wife Becca are alive and well. They’re immune—same as us by the sound of it.”
“And they want you to go there?”
“Yeah, they could do with the help. You and Dan—you should come with me.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, the blue of her eyes hard on his, intent on his reaction. “You don’t know me.”
“True, but you seem kinda normal—well, privileged normal—not a nut job.”
“Oh,” she smiles. “I’ll take that as a compliment—I think?”
Chapter 11
Cassie shifts the heavy bag from one hand to the other. “No, it’s OK. Really,” she r
esponds when Rick offers to take the bags. She doesn’t want to seem weak, but relents as they push through the huge plate glass doors at the base of Morgan Towers.
“This where you live?”
“Yep. Right at the top?”
“The penthouse?”
“Yes,” she replies slowly, waiting for him to continue.
“Those guys were right. You are rich.”
“Yes,” she says holding her head a little higher, “but I ain’t no bitch!” she shakes her head with pursed lips, a smile creeping into her eyes as she taps in the code of the lock. The lights flicker again as they walk across the foyer.
“It’s rank in here,” Rick coughs as he walks by her side towards the door to the private lift.
She looks over to the slumped form of the blackening man. “It’s him,” she says walking closer. “I guess he died a few days ago. I don’t know. Me and Dan—we’ve been hiding up in the apartment. I had to push him out of the way with the door so I could get out. Now he’s blocking it again.”
“So I can see.”
She covers her mouth and nose with her hand and looks away to the glossy fronds of the ferns in their enormous pots either side of the lift doors that lead to the higher floors of the building.
“Let’s take the other lift,” she suggests, “we can take the stairs from the top floor to the penthouse.”
Standing at the front door to her apartment, Rick at her side, she’s suddenly anxious, but presses down the handle and pushes the door wide. For the first time since she left, the air tastes clean. She takes a deep breath and smiles at the tall, muscular man at her side. “This way,” she beckons as he stands hesitant at the door. “Dan’ll be in his office probably. Dan!” she calls out stepping into the entrance hall. “We’ve got a visitor.”
No reply.
“Dan!” she repeats, a frown creasing her brow at the silence. A breeze surges round her legs and her frown deepens.
Again nothing but silence returns.
A draft of cool air slips round her legs again. Dan must be on the balcony. He never goes out onto the balcony!
The silence is broken by a grunt then a crash and her skin prickles with goosebumps.
Dan looks down at the street below, a street that heaved with life just a few weeks ago, a street scattered with red, blue, white, and black cars, strewn like building blocks across a carpet. For a second, he’s taken back to being a child sitting on the soft carpet of the living room, his box of multi-coloured blocks just touching the skin of his knee as he sits cross-legged, the corners of the bricks pressing into the tips of his fingers as he pushes them together. A voice booms from behind and his heart pounds. He turns to smile despite the spark of fear and offers his blocks to his father, showing his creation. The man only frowns and looks at him with the cold grey of his eyes then turns to shout for his mother. A gust of wind breaks him from his reverie and he clenches the metal railings of the balcony a little tighter. He’s not sure he can stand one more day of being alive, of being the monster they say he is. That’s what they’d screamed at him, that’s what their placards had scrawled across them, ‘MONSTER’. He’d hidden up here like a coward whilst they died. Watched as the world fell into chaos from the comfort of his home, saw the horror of the virus as it ate them alive. He groans as the visions scarred onto his memory surge again and grips the metal of the barrier tight until his skin burns. Each day, through the camera’s lenses, he’d watched as their numbers dwindled. Yesterday only a couple had turned up and today, well today no one had come. The TV channels had stopped updating the breaking news, stopped relating the newest horror days ago and now the screens were blank. Sure, there was one channel left running, but he figured it was a tape on a loop and who wanted to watch the same inane kids’ programmes running day in day out, hour after hour anyway? If there was anyone left to watch them.
The sickening pain that has overwhelmed him for the last weeks is strong this morning, unbearable. He grips the edge of the balcony’s railing and his skin squeals against the metal as he rotates his clenched hands backwards, forwards, looking down to the blocked street below. The muscles of his arms tremble and the pain in his chest tightens. He lifts his leg to the waist-high wall and crouches, steadying himself, his toes gritty from the dust settled there. The wind buffets him, feels greasy on his skin with the reek of death it carries. He looks down. So far down. He’s seen people jump before, seen the footage of desperate people throwing themselves from high towers. People do it every day—did it every day. He groans as the image of thousands crowded around their local hospitals assaults him again, the desperation, the anger, the blackening faces. His heart pounds heavy in his chest and the pain crushes at him, weighing him down. He closes his eyes and slowly leaves go of the railing, pushing stiffly from his knees until he stands tall, his arms lifted for balance, Jesus welcoming his flock, he giggles, remorse instant. God, I’m sorry. So, so sorry. Forgive me. He takes a deep breath and looks again to the ground. His stomach sinks. He thinks he may puke or mess himself. Serve me right. Monster! The door of the apartment slams shut, caught by the breeze from the open windows. Cassie. He lurches. Her footsteps are light and quick. Now!
“Dan!” she screams. “Dan!”
He feels himself floating as he sways into the wind.
“Dan!”
A steel band locks round his waist and he’s crashing, falling the wrong way, slamming hard to the marbled tiles of the balcony.
“Ughh!”
“Dan, what are you doing?” Cassie’s voice carries a tinge of horror and he squeezes his eyes shut not wanting to see the hurt in her eyes. Pain wracks through him, but it does nothing to diminish the agony of self-loathing.
“Cas,” he groans as she leans over him, her arm scooping him up, pulling him onto her knee. He can’t look at her and turns his head to the wall.
“Dan,” she soothes, her voice trembling. “I told you. I told you it wasn’t your fault,” she whispers.
He sobs. The pain still overwhelms him.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me. I was ready.”
“You can’t leave me,” she says stroking his cheek. “I’d be all alone.”
“You’d be better off without me.”
“She needs you Dan,” a man’s voice interrupts, breaking him out of his reverie and he turns to look, a frown pulling at his brows, as he takes in the stranger. “Are you with the army? Are you coming to evacuate us?” he asks confused by the gun-toting, khaki-trousered stranger standing in the doorway.
“We were, but the virus spread too quickly to make evacuation any use. It’s just us now.”
“We’re going to the country, Dan. Rick knows a place where we can be safe and find food—maybe a new home.”
“Perhaps,” interrupts Rick. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, we need to get out of the city. Looks like we’re immune from this virus, but the diseases that’ll come from the dead—well, perhaps they’ll get us instead if we stay here.”
Cassie leans in to him. “We can start again. Where people don’t know us,” she whispers gently. The ache inside ebbs a little. “You can start again,” she strokes his cheek and this time he takes her gentle love and lets it soothe him.
Rick watches as Cassie cradles her husband’s head on her lap, his heart still beating hard from the exertion of launching himself at the flailing body and hauling it back to the safe side of the balcony. He looks familiar, but he can’t place it. Probably just the generic rich guy, though he’s looking a bit scraggy, obviously lost interest in his appearance over the last few weeks from the look of his untrimmed beard. As Dan turns to look at him, Rick recognises the hollowness in his eyes—they would have mirrored his own a few years back—after Iraq.
“We need to be making our way to the farm,” he says to Cassie, catching her eyes, pushing down the bitter memories. “I want to get out of the city before nightfall.”
“Yeah sure. That won’t be difficult. We just need to find a car
.”
“Won’t be difficult?” Rick questions with a disbelieving mutter and a small chuckle. “Lady, you really have no idea about what’s out there do you.”
Thirty minutes later, Rick looks her up and down as she steps into the bright living room of the Morgan’s apartment, conscious of his heavy boots on the too-white carpet and sighs.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he says with a nod in her direction and a raise of his brows. She frowns in return, brushing at the blonde curls of her hair and looks down at the floating dress and low strappy sandals she’s put on to walk through the city.
“What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?” she asks terse. “I didn’t put on heels because we’ve got to walk.”
“Listen. Getting out of here isn’t going to be easy. We may have to sleep rough. You need something warmer for a start, and trousers—clothes that will protect you and keep you warm, and boots—strong boots for walking and running if we need it—not a skirt and strappy sandals like you’re going for a walk in the park.”
“Dan likes me in a dress. I don’t have any trousers.”
“Listen. I know you’re not this dumb—not really—I saw you deal with that man in the coffee shop—so you can drop the rich, blonde bimbo act.”
He watches as her blue eyes become steel and her eyes flicker to Dan and back to him. “I’m not a dumb, blonde bimbo—I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve got.”
“Sure, I get it, but you’re going to have to fight a whole lot harder just to stay alive, and looking at him,” he looks over to Dan staring aimlessly out of the window, “you’re going to have to do it for the both of you.” He watches her closely as she looks over at her husband and sees the pain flicker there. “I don’t know what his problem is, but he needs to buck up soon—if he wants to survive.”
“Of course he wants to survive!” she replies and he watches as she walks over to her husband and strokes his arm, and wonders why he listened to the nagging voice that told him to make sure she was safe.
The Road to Ruin: A post-apocalyptic survival series (A World Torn Down Book 1) Page 6