by Ryan Casey
But since the EMP struck… Alison hadn’t viewed these days in the same way anymore. She didn’t get the same positive vibes from them. If anything, she just got an unshakable, nagging, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Because every day was the same.
Every day was lonely.
Every day without Mike and the others.
She stumbled further through the grass. Because today, she was optimistic. She’d found the road that she’d strayed from a few days ago when she was in search of the extraction point. The supposed safe haven that turned out being anything but. That was hard to swallow, hard to deal with. She’d spent some time searching for Kumal and Gina after that, without much in the way of luck. But after that, she’d just sat there in a shocked stupor. Because the realisation had hit her. The realisation had hit her strong.
There was no getting out of this world. There was no happy ending. It wasn’t fiction. It wasn’t a story.
And reality didn’t work in narratives, as much as people kid themselves; as much as they try to lie to themselves to believe they do.
But this was different. There was optimism. Alison had found a trace of the road where she’d strayed from after leaving Mike to try and rescue Holly. She wished she’d stayed with him. She wished she’d helped him. Hell, she wished she’d gone down with him if that’s what’d happened.
Whatever it was, it was better than the last two days.
Alone. Stranded. Lost.
She stopped walking. Her legs were shaky, her body was weak. She’d been getting by on scraps, but that wasn’t easy. She’d eaten some bad berries a few days ago, and that’d only gone to dehydrate her even more.
She used to think she could make it in a world like this. She used to think she could survive, adapt, even thrive.
But she realised now that she’d been ambitious when she thought that. Hell, not even ambitious—she’d been deluded.
She’d got her strength from other people. And that strength had now been taken away.
She heard a whine by her side.
She looked down. Saw Arya look up at her. She was panting. There was no doubting the weight this poor dog had lost in the last few days. She hadn’t had anywhere near enough food, especially not for a big breed like her. It was sad to think she probably got more care when she was accompanying a homeless guy on the streets.
Alison crouched down. Ruffled her fur. “I’m sorry, girl. We’ll… we’ll find somewhere soon. We’ll find somewhere… somewhere better.”
She didn’t listen to the voice in her head telling her she was living in a dream world.
She went to stand back up. Because she had to keep going. If she’d found the road, then she was close to the camp where Mike had gone to rescue Holly. She wanted to find them there, safe. But even so… if she found them there dead, at least she had her answer. At least she had her closure.
She stepped onto the road. She’d tried to stay off the road until this point, not wanting to bump into anyone else, to attract any unnecessary attention. But she couldn’t hold back anymore. She couldn’t wait any longer.
She stumbled down the road, the sun beaming down on her burned forehead. She could see something in the distance. Something that looked like the place Mike had been heading to. Something that looked like the caravan Holly had been kept in.
She went further, knees weak, chest tight, throat dry. She wasn’t walking in a straight line. She could be walking past anyone, attracting any attention, but she didn’t care anymore. She just wanted to get to her destination. She just wanted to find Mike and Holly.
When she reached the front of the caravan, she noticed it was silent. And that made her heart skip a little. Did it mean the people here had gone?
Or did it mean…
Then she saw it, and her stomach sank.
There were bodies. Charred remains of bodies right before her.
Unidentifiable. Bits and pieces all over the place, flies buzzing around them.
One thing was for sure.
Something had happened here.
And Alison had no idea what.
And no idea who.
She walked towards the caravan, lump in her throat, and knot in her stomach. The closer she got to it, the more she found herself not wanting to go in there, not wanting to find out the truth.
But she climbed the steps.
And when she stepped inside, she saw it.
The caravan was empty. The cuffs had been cut.
This place had been cleared out.
She felt a smile tug at her cheeks. Because that was all she needed to know. That was all she needed to see. Just knowing that they’d got out of here was enough for her.
She went to step outside the caravan, went to head back outside, to whatever lay on the road ahead, Arya by her side.
“Come on, girl. It’s time to go.”
But then her eyes closed.
She felt the weight of her body toppling over.
Then she fell to the ground, crumbling the remains of one of the charred bodies with a crack.
At least Mike and Holly weren’t here.
But them not being here meant she was alone.
Them not being here meant she had to keep going on.
Her head went fuzzy.
A smile tugged at her face.
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Then everything went blank.
Chapter Four
Kumal sprinted as fast as he could, the sound of shouting and footsteps racing after him.
It was sunny, and he felt exposed. All around him and Gina, who ran beside him, he didn’t have the safety net of trees. He only had caravans. Caravans that people were still staying at. Caravans people were shacking up at, riding out this EMP fallout in their own way.
And a caravan in particular that he’d just stolen from.
He had to find a way to survive after all, right?
Everybody did.
Even if the method wasn’t exactly… well. Morally sound.
He looked over his shoulder. He could see movement somewhere behind, but he couldn’t really make it out properly. He didn’t have to. He knew enough. He and Gina had sneaked into the garden of a caravan and stolen something.
What had they stolen?
The cooked remains of a deer.
That’s the kind of desperation this world led you to.
He felt a punch on his arm. Looked to his side and saw Gina. She was pale, and she looked tired. But then he had to assume he didn’t exactly look in his best shape, either. He didn’t have the luxury of a mirror to sort his hair out in. Looking after his appearance was always something he’d prided himself on. Strange just how much real problems and real shit could force you to adapt to a whole new way of being in such a short space of time.
Gina pointed ahead as the voices raged behind. “Can’t afford to look back,” she gasped. “Got to keep running. Got to keep on going.”
Kumal nodded, kept his focus up ahead, as much as nerves kept on biting away at his stomach. He didn’t like stealing. His parents had brought him and his brothers up to respect the law at all costs. Dad even shouted at him when he committed the slightest indiscretion.
Which made it all the more strange when Kumal learned his father was being arrested on charges of money laundering back when he was only thirteen.
It wasn’t something he spoke about much. But it’d confused him. He was convinced it was wrong. That there had to be some kind of mistake. After all the values his father instilled in him, things were really going to end the way they did? His dad wasn’t the hero he’d looked up to all those years?
He’d strayed from his dad after that. Even when his dad got out of prison. Even when his dad insisted it really was all a mistake. That was a moment of change. Nothing was the same, ever again.
And now here he was. After trying his best not to go down the path his dad went down, after doing all he could to uphold the values he’d been raised to honour an
d respect, he was breaking them.
But this was different.
This was in the name of survival.
He couldn’t help that he was just plain rubbish at setting up traps, after all.
“Just keep on going,” Gina said. “We can’t slow down now. We can’t…”
Her voice faded.
Because he felt something.
His foot giving way.
Then his body flying across the ground, surging down towards the road.
He hit the road with a slam. There was nothing slow motion about it, nothing glorified about it. Just a smack against his teeth, the taste of blood, the numbness of an ache crippling his forehead.
He struggled back to his feet, heart pounding, and chest tight.
But he could hear something.
The footsteps behind him.
The footsteps getting closer.
He knew what Gina had said. He knew what she’d told him about moving forward, about not looking back.
But instinct took hold, and he found himself looking around.
The people were so close. Six of them. All of them holding blades.
And between him and them… the deer.
The deer meat he’d stolen.
The deer meat he’d dropped.
“Just… just leave it,” Gina said.
But Kumal felt something growing inside him. An urge. He’d come this far. Both him and Gina had come this far. They couldn’t just give up now. They couldn’t just accept defeat. That deer meat could last them for days. It could be the difference between surviving and falling.
They’d got what they’d come here to get.
He couldn’t give up.
He surged back, back towards the group, back towards the deer remains, even though his ankle was on fire, even though the taste of blood was filling up in his mouth.
“Kumal!” Gina said.
And he didn’t understand the urgency. He didn’t realise why she sounded so desperate. Not at first.
Not until he looked to the left and saw more people running down the sides of the nearby caravans.
More people with blades.
He froze, then. Froze, metres away from the deer meat. And perhaps that’s what changed things. Perhaps that’s what swung the odds against him.
Whatever it was, he could see it. He could see the truth, and it broke him apart.
Because he knew that he wasn’t going to make it to the deer meat.
He knew he had failed.
But he looked again. Stretched out a hand. Tried to figure how long it’d take him to get there.
“Kumal!”
And then he remembered a video his dad had shown him. A video from back home, where they were from. Something that happened to one of his uncles. Hacked in the street for his beliefs—or lack of beliefs.
And Dad told him that’s what happened if he ever did wrong. That’s what happened if ever he was bad.
He remembered the screams of his uncle, the unnatural sounds as his body was hacked to pieces, and he felt a lump building in his throat.
“Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry.”
Then he stepped away and hobbled off into the distance.
He felt the group getting further behind. He felt them slowing their pursuit, realising he’d given up the goods he’d tried to steal. He felt them losing their interest, conserving their energy.
But all the time as he stepped out of the camp, he couldn’t deny how he felt, as he left empty-handed.
He’d tried to do bad.
He’d failed.
And where did that leave him in this world anymore?
Chapter Five
Mike walked through the woods, Holly by his side, knowing full well that they had to find some food—fast. If they didn’t, tensions were going to rise to say the least.
It was still morning. The sun was bright, rising through the trees. Mike listened as his and Holly’s feet crunched across the branches on the ground. There was spaciousness to the air. Freedom. The smell of freshness of being so far out in the open.
And Mike knew it was peaceful. He appreciated it.
But at the same time, he found it eerie. Because he knew damn well there were other people out here, just as quiet as he was, watching, waiting…
It was a few weeks in. There were no signs that electricity or power was being restored. The only sign of authority was from a foreign group, who were heavily armed and seemed intent on giving the citizens of this country hell. It added fuel to the fire of the invasion theory that Mike had suspected for some time.
But then Mike hadn’t seen them for a while, so their presence couldn’t be as widespread as perhaps he’d first feared. Then again, he’d been keeping a low profile, staying out of the way.
Perhaps they were out there, somewhere, waiting…
It would be easy to start feeling sorry for himself. It’d be easier to just give up and admit defeat than it was to keep on surviving.
Perhaps if he was alone, Mike would’ve given up by now.
But not while his daughter was by his side.
He thought about the deer. The one that’d got free, and then ran right into the path of that other group. The guilt he’d felt for considering killing them to take it for himself.
He was caught up in a world of twisted morals, and he wasn’t sure he was ever going to come out the other side the same.
If there even was another side to come out of.
“Maybe we should think about going back into one of the villages,” Holly said.
Mike’s stomach sank the moment she spoke. He stopped. Looked at her. “What?”
Holly brushed back her long, dark hair. “I’m just saying. We can keep camping out here, but it’s not going to be nice forever. Especially not when the winter comes. The tent’s barely even good enough now and it’s summer.”
The mention of winter made Mike’s stomach descend even more. He cleared his throat, shook his head. “We think about survival in the now. And right now, being out here is best. The tent’s not ideal, but we’ll improve it when we need to.”
“We’re not having any real luck hunting,” Holly said. “We’re going to bed starving ’cause we’re worried about burning through our rations—and we’ve barely got any left anyway. How can finding a quiet village be any worse?”
Mike thought about the scenes back in the town of Garstang. The burning. The chaos.
And then he thought about all the things he’d read about what would happen to a society in the days and weeks after an EMP event, and he didn’t want to risk that. Not for his daughter. Not for anyone.
He crouched opposite her. Took her warm hands in his, and then looked into her eyes. “Holly, I know you want to believe there’s a better world out there somewhere. I know you want to believe that. But… but we have to go off facts. Everyone’s just finding their way in this world. Everyone’s doing whatever they can to survive. There’s going to be bad days. Days that make you want to give up. But there’ll be better days. I truly believe that. And us, staying alive, that’s what this is about. It’s about us getting to those better days. About us making sure we’re around to see them.”
He stroked some of her greasy hair off her forehead.
“I’d do anything for you, angel. Just not this.”
She sighed. And Mike stood up then. He turned around, held out a hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Time to go check the traps.”
They walked another couple of miles off into the woods. Mike was surprised just how quiet it was in here, in all truth. Of course, he’d seen the occasional group of survivors. But it really did seem like many people were struggling to leave their homes behind. They didn’t know how to make it in the wild, so they didn’t even begin to try.
Little did they know, failing to try to adapt put them at a strict disadvantage. Because the sooner they learned the ways of survival in this world, the better the chance they had of surviving long term. It went without saying.
Ninety per cent. That’s what the predictions said. Ninety per cent of the population, gone in the click of a finger in the grand scheme of things. People unable to adapt to the change in circumstances. People unsure how to hunt their own food or unwilling to leave their own homes—or unprepared about just how nasty they might have to get to keep themselves alive.
Ninety per cent. Gone.
He didn’t want to become a part of the statistics of the new world. He wanted to be a voice that gave the history lesson—the history lesson to make sure the world never took power for granted ever again.
Or at least, that’s what he wanted for his daughter.
They reached the first of their traps, and a smile crept up Mike’s face.
There was a squirrel trapped in the deadfall trap. One that Holly had set. It was pretty simple in principle: you grab a large, flat rock and hold it up using three sticks. Throw some bait underneath it—peanut butter in this case. Then assuming the rock’s heavy enough, it’ll kill the animal upon contact.
Sometimes these traps weren’t quite effective enough to kill the animals right away, which made it a cruel way to go.
Fortunately in this case, the squirrel was dead. Wouldn’t have known a thing.
Mike looked at his daughter, smiling. “Good job.”
She frowned like she was brushing off his praise, even though he could tell from the flushing of her cheeks that she was secretly proud, too. “Good job? Don’t patronise me.”
She walked over to the squirrel, removed it from the trap. She looked at it for a few seconds, that connection between animal and food clear to see before her.
“I can do it,” Mike said. “If you’re not ready. I can…”
She stuck the knife into the squirrel’s neck and started skinning it on the spot.
Mike felt a couple of things as he headed back with his daughter, who was covered in squirrel blood. Pride. But also, discomfort. He’d seen his angel commit an act of violence. An act that just weeks ago—maybe even less—she wouldn’t have even contemplated.
What would the next weeks bring?