‘And all of this happened in this fort?’
‘Yes and...’
‘Is the made up story,’ Gregori says, throwing the frisbee at Cassie.
‘That was too high!’ Cassie says, running after the frisbee. ‘Got it…right, so what happened to Randall?’
‘He got deaded and his brains came out and the lady showed her boobies to Dave.’
‘She did what?’ Cassie laughs.
‘Showed her boobies,’ the boy says, laughing too.
‘Why did she show her boobies to Dave?’
The boy thinks for a second, ‘maybe he was thirsty and wanted the milk from her boobies…’
‘Maybe,’ Cassie says, still chuckling.
‘But Dave killed her.’
‘Aw, for showing her boobies? That’s mean. You can’t kill a woman for showing her boobies,’ she says, still chuckling while giving Gregori a strange look before launching the frisbee as hard as she can at him. He still catches it though. Running backwards with perfect grace to stretch up and pluck it from the air. ‘I hate you! Stop catching it.’
‘Is easy,’ he says casually, giving a shrug.
‘For you maybe…’
‘You catch yes?’
‘Don’t be a…’ she stops herself from swearing with a glance at the boy. ‘Don’t be a naughty sausage.’
‘Haha! Sausage…Gregoreeee is a naughty sausage…’
‘I throw, is easy….’ He flicks his wrist, sending it gliding serenely up and over her head. ‘Run…catch….’
‘I AM RUNNING,’ she goes fast, sprinting while the boy laughs and leaps high thinking she’ll grab the edge but whacks it on to bounce off a tree deep into the undergrowth. ‘GREGORI!’
‘What? I throw. You catch.’
‘It’s gone in the woods now…bloody twat,’ she grumbles to herself, stomping into the treeline. ‘Frisbee? Where are you? Making me run…I bet he thinks I’m fat. I’M NOT FAT, she yells.
‘I NO SAY THIS.’
‘Bet you did,’ she carries on muttering, searching for the red plastic disc. ‘Ah, there you are…’ she rushes forward to the base of the bush on seeing the flash of colour, dropping onto her knees to reach in, her fingertips groping for the disc then pulling back on feeling the soft warm material of a shoe. She throws herself backwards in fright, landing on her arse and about to scream when she spots the face through the leaves. A child. Ten, maybe a little older. Dark haired and pale. Blood on her cheeks. Her eyes red and bloodshot.
Cassie’s heart booms in her chest, the scream still there, ready to come out. A shuffle further behind the girl. A man with the same red bloodshot eyes. More behind him and the more she looks the more she sees. Faces staring. Red bloodshot eyes everywhere. Creepy and awful, macabre and sinister but she feels another reaction too. An instant worry.
‘You can’t be here,’ Cassie gasps.
‘YOU NEED THE HELP?’ Gregori shouts.
‘NO!…you can’t be here,’ she whispers again, seeing more of them. ‘He’ll kill you…go back.’
They stare at her inert and unmoving. She rises to her feet then spots the frisbee a few feet away, running to grab it. ‘Go back…don’t let him see you.’
‘You no find?’
‘Casseeee?’ the boy runs in ahead of Gregori, making her panic and rush back towards the lawn, grabbing the boy to heft up into her arms.
‘Make them go back,’ she whispers urgently. ‘Found it!’ she adds in a bright voice, throwing the frisbee out to Gregori at the edge of the undergrowth. ‘Come on, time for lunch I think…then how about a drive in our new car? We can listen to music…’
She strides on, marching out onto the lawn to put the boy down so he can run then glances back at Gregori standing stock still and her heart whumps at the sight of his pistol in his hand.
‘What’s up?’ she asks, forcing her tone to stay light.
‘Hear something,’ he grunts, holding a hand out to silence her.
‘Fox, I saw it…it ran off, come on, are you hungry? Tin of mushky peas maybe?’ she braves the risk of a reaction and goes back to loop her arm through his, pulling him on while chuckling and making a game of it. He falters, unsure of the close contact, frowning at her but seeing the smile and the ruddy complexion in her cheeks.
‘I like mushky peas,’ he says, allowing himself to be turned.
‘I like mushky peas,’ she copies his voice, barging her hip into his to keep his attention on her. ‘Your arm muscles are like rocks,’ she says, squeezing his upper arm. ‘You’re so strong…I was thinking about doing some exercise? Would you help me?’
She breathes a sigh of relief at getting him inside the house, glancing back to the treeline as though expecting to see them all edging out into view. ‘Come here, my lovely…you need a wet flannel to cool down,’ she lunges after the boy, laughing and joking as she gets him to the sink to rinse a cloth that she starts wiping over his face as Gregori goes out and a second later she hears the toilet door closing. ‘They can’t be here,’ she whispers. ‘Gregori will kill them.’
‘But…’
‘No buts, make them go further back…right back…’ the toilet flushes, the sound of running water as Gregori washes his hands. ‘Are more coming here?’
The boy nods, his blue eyes fixed on Cassie. She kisses his forehead, sighing quickly.
‘I can’t stop them,’ he whispers.
‘Okay,’ she hears the door to the toilet open. ‘We’ll think of something…’
Music on. Noise made. Food prepared. Coffee brewed. Food eaten then out the house into the car. Gregori goes with it. His senses sharp and he felt the prickle of something when he reached the undergrowth in the garden earlier but then Cassie said she saw a fox then grabbed his arm, pressing her body into his.
The only sex Gregori ever had was with women supplied by his masters. A reward for a mission completed. Not all the time but now and then. The women were always silent and sullen. Either on a trafficking route or already at their end destination to be passed around and used as reward, payment or for simple income. He only ever kissed one, but she tasted like an ashtray. After that, he never bothered, and it was always over within seconds. No passion, no comfort, an act for the sake of it and one that he wasn’t all that fussed about.
His mind was so mission focused and he was always caught up in the kill. In being the ugly man. Flying into countries, into states, into places to be taken to the target then exfil out.
Now there are no missions and so his mind can think of other things. Things like mushy peas and pies. Things like the music that Cassie plays on the devices. Things like the boy playing frisbee. Simple things. The sway of her hips. Things other than killing. Other than hurting and suffering. Other than driving fear into the hearts of men. The scent of her perfume and the strands of hair that stick to her forehead when she’s hot.
‘Oh my god that’s so good,’ she groans pleasurably in the passenger seat as the big engine of the Range Rover sends ice cold air flowing through the inside. Gregori grips the steering wheel a bit harder in response to the noise she makes. Shifting in his seat. His eyes staring ahead at the road. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ she asks, gasping a little.
‘Is good,’ he grunts, his voice even deeper and more gravelly than normal. She groans again, stretching out and lifting her hands above her head in a way that makes him glance over to see her nipples straining against the inside of her top.
‘Whoa! What happened?’ she asks, jerking up from the car swerving to the left.
‘Is rabbit,’ Gregori lies quickly, correcting the vehicle. ‘It ran…I swerve yes…rabbit…is rabbit.’
‘Wow, lucky rabbit…music?’
‘Is good. Yes. Music.’
‘Really? You like music?’
‘Yes. I like.’
‘Ooh spot the serial killer being more human…’
‘I no this thing.’
‘Joking! Right…let’s get this going…haha! Can’t beat some eighti
es pop…You’ll love this…Tiffany, I think we’re alone now…’
The magic happens. The magic of driving just for the pleasure of it. Of seeing sights while music blasts out. The thumping beats rattling the frame. Eighties classics. Electro synth. Rock hits, modern pop and heavier tracks with a solid bassline that Gregori can feel in his bones.
No place to go. No place they need to go. They have everything they need right here. Food, drink, shelter and a man that can kill the world to make sure the boy is safe and right now, there is no place either of them would rather be.
Fields and meadows go by. Vast tracts of open land. Hills and valleys. Through villages torn apart from the end of the days where the corpses lie bloated and rotten and the flies rise when the Range Rover swooshes past with the music blaring.
They pass places of survivors. Even glimpsing the odd figure here and there, some that run and hide while others rush out to wave and scream for help but they don’t stop because theirs is not a happiness or security to extend to others. What they have is theirs and theirs alone. Bought and paid for. Owned outright and Cassie stares out at them, her eyes hardening at the sight of mere people suffering in their dirty sordid lives. Scrabbling for life while she rides in a luxury car and sings with a boy and an Albanian serial killer.
They find their favourite songs, playing them over and over, learning the lines to sing out and she sees his lips moving and bursts out laughing in delight, taking the hand from his leg to move through his hair with an entirely natural gesture, running her fingers down the back of his neck while singing and laughing with the boy.
The gunshot comes as Gregori slows the Range Rover on driving into a village and spots the road ahead blocked with cars dragged out to form a barrier. A bottleneck made. Houses on both sides. Trap. Danger close. He brakes hard while the music plays, anchoring on to bring the speed down, intending to go into reverse and get out.
That’s when the shot comes. The boom of a shotgun from the right side that peppers the bonnet and wing with hundreds of metallic strikes. Cassie screams out. Gregori brakes hard, opening his door and grabbing the pistols from the door pocket and the central console as he goes. A second shot comes. A shout. More shouts. Loud angry voices. Cassie jabs to release her seatbelt and scrabbles between the seats, diving to cover the boy with her body as Gregori spots the shooter in the first-floor window of the house and shoots him dead, the pistol in his right hand booming out.
He twitches fast, sensing movement and firing into a window on the other side. A scream. A gargled yell. Cassie lifts her head, scrabbling to get the sawn-off shotgun out from under the passenger seat, holding it ready while the boy stays silent beneath her.
‘No! Please…please…stop…’ a female voice screaming out. Cassie looks up through the open window to see the door to a house opening and a woman rushing out. She aims and fires the shotgun without thinking, without thought. Killing the woman outright who flies back off her feet through the door she came from then snatches a look to see Gregori standing in front of the car with his arms out, aiming his pistols left and right while the music still blasts from the stereo.
He comes back slowly, working a safe retreat to the car then into the driver’s seat, sending a flurry of shots into windows and doors while reversing the car back down the road, slamming it round to face the right way before powering on and only then does he snap the stereo off.
‘Hurt?’ he asks, turning to look at them as he drives.
‘My ears hurt,’ the boy says.
‘He hurt?’ Gregori asks, alarm in his voice.
‘No his ears, from the shotgun…he’s fine, we’re fine…are you…did they get you?’
‘No,’ he says in a way that suggests the question is entirely stupid.
Silence for a few seconds. The wind rushing past the windows. She pushes the hair from her eyes, shaking her head. A look to the boy then to the rear-view mirror where she locks eyes with Gregori. She smiles in shock, then grins in a way that makes Gregori frown slightly.
They should be terrified. They should be panicked and fretting but to Gregori, this is life and normal and to Cassie, it was just bloody exciting. Firing the shotgun. Hearing Gregori shoot. Hearing people scream out. The adrenaline. The feel of it. Besting people that had set a trap who now lie bleeding and dead. She wants to whoop and shout out, she wants to yell at their victory and then kiss Gregori but she stays silent, shaking her head and grinning at the boy.
Back home. Back to cold showers and food made. She watches the treeline, not seeing any of the things anywhere in sight while thinking of earlier, the fun of the drive, the music, the shootout. Oh my god it was so good. So fucking good.
‘What this?’ Gregori asks, looking down at the boy drawing on paper at the kitchen table as the sky darkens outside with the night coming.
Cassie looks over at the sight of the boy holding a crayon in each hand while drawing circles. His right hand working clockwise, his left anti-clockwise but both so close together with a bizarre symmetry of motion. He adjusts fluidly, drawing a flow one way then a contraflow the other while overlapping and creating incredible patterns across the sheets. His face a mask. His eyes focussed.
He gets faster and faster, looping circles with a speed that isn’t quite right. A muttering from his lips that grows louder with a tune given that makes Cassie lean closer to listen.
‘Amaziiiing Grace…’ the boy sings in a whisper as though to himself. ‘All the way up and round and round and round and…’ he carries on drawing the circles while many miles away the infected run in dizzying circles on the top level of a multi-storey car park, ripping Howie from the others.
Faster and faster, his hands whirling on the paper that becomes thick with the lines. Then he stops with the crayons snapping in half as he pushes down. ‘Howie’s got a heart in his mouth…’
A blink and he’s back to the boy smiling at the two adults. ‘Can we play frisbee tomorrow?’
Seven
Day Twenty Four
Grief is a powerful thing and brings forth a range of emotions. Guilt being one of them. Guilt that you are still here when others have perished.
A virus has spread across the world and infected billions of people. Some are immune, and some, as in her own case, appear to be infected but not suffering the same effects as everyone else.
Charlie can compute that. She is highly intelligent. She can understand and grasp those things, and likewise, she can grasp that millions have perished and those deaths, although awful, are understandable in the context of the situation.
What Charlie struggles with, and the thing causing the ever-increasing surges of guilt loaded grief, is why Blinky died the way she did, and why, when the world is falling apart, men in uniform that swore an oath to protect, wished only to harm and rape and sometimes, every now and then, the mind won’t let you move on from those thoughts, no matter how hard you try.
The morning after burying Blinky, Charlie exercised hard. She trained so hard she almost puked. Then she worked all day with Jess. Guarding her team. Ranging out when needed but isolating herself from the others.
Now, in the morning of the twenty-fourth day since the world fell, she exercises again. Harder than before.
‘You’s alright, Charlie?’ Mo asks tentatively, taking a break from Dave training.
She pauses mid-pull-up, her body dangling from the edge, the muscles in her arms and shoulders showing taut and defined.
‘I lost Jagger, he’s my best mate too…hurts but…’
‘Mo,’ she snaps, intending to tell him to go away.
‘I love you, Charlie but your crew need you, get over it yeah?’ his voice hardens as he speaks, the street tone rasping and direct. The boy that broke into an army base to save them and she carries on doing pull-ups with a lump growing in her throat and the tears spilling from her eyes.
It wells up inside. It has to come out and vent. The grief is too much. The sheer overwhelming feeling of it. She starts to weep and
fights to keep the sobs silent, feeling ashamed, embarrassed, angry and wronged.
Images in her mind of the men holding her down, their hands in her hair, dragging her along and in the rush of all the emotions that’s the thing she keeps focussing on because a woman is defined by hair, that’s the feminine against the masculine. Charlie knows she is pretty and knows part of the perception of her looks is her hair, the same hair the men dragged her by and used to pin her down, rendering her defenceless while Blinky lay dead.
She sobs again, suppressing the noise as she rushes inside the horsebox out of sight. Her hands wiping frantically at the tears. Willing herself to man-up and stop sobbing like a girl but it hurts so much she drops to her knees and grabs at her kit bag, pawing at the flap to get the box out, the box she took from the shelf in Boots when everyone was grabbing the things they need. She told herself she needed them for Jess. All horses have to be clipped now and then and having battery operated clippers on hand is a good thing.
That’s what she told herself but the reality, deep inside, was for herself and so she rips the box open and sobs harder, fighting to stay silent while pulling the hairband from her hair and yanking the strands free before turning the hair-clippers on and pushing the bare blades over her scalp.
She won’t be feminine. She won’t have hair. She won’t have the thing that men used to drag and pin her down or the thing that men say when they’re trying to fuck you. I like your hair, Charlie. You’ve got nice hair, Charlie. Let me fuck you, Charlie.
That’s all they want and if it’s not given they’ll take it. Not again though. She won’t ever be in that position again. She’ll be strong and fast. Hardened and not feminine and so she pushes the blades across her skull watching with choking sobs as the locks of hair tumble down.
Mo runs swiftly, vaulting a straw bale to land next to Paula, dropping to a crouch, his hand on her shoulder.
‘What?’ Paula blinks from sleep to awake, her heart hammering not at the sweaty sight of Mo but at the worried look on his face.
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