After the Blast

by Ryan Casey

  Gina,

  I guess I want to start this letter just being honest. Do you remember the first time we met? I do. We were in History together. I remember we ended up sitting next to each other and we barely spoke a word. I just thought you didn’t like me, at first, but it turned out it was just how you were with everyone at first. Soon broke the ice over a Kanye album. Remember? I loved it. You hated it. The rest is history, I guess. Or History. Ha Ha. Like the lesson. Okay I’m rambling now.

  I don’t really know why I’m writing this. I guess I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being straight with you, sorry for not being honest with you. And if we never meet again, I just want to get these thoughts down on paper so at least they’re out in the open; at least they’re off my chest. Not that you’ll ever read these words, not that you’ll ever hear them, but hell it makes me feel better by feeling like I’m talking to you.

  I want to tell you how I feel. I know a lot of people say I’m a good voice of reason, or whatever, that I’m good at moderating and all that, but truth is I find it really hard to say how I really feel. I found it hard growing up; I found it hard when I lost my dad to crime, and I found it even harder at school.

  But you were different. You were one of the only people I’ve ever felt like I could open up to. The only one I’ve ever felt like I can be my real self with.

  But even then, I never fully opened up. I never allowed myself to be comfortable.

  I just want you to know something, as I sit here on my own writing this now. I was wrong for walking away. But I’m going to come back and I’m going to make things better. I’m going to tell you how I feel. Which I guess invalidates this letter, but screw it, I’m keeping writing it anyway ’cause I feel a lot better if I do.

  It’s no fun on the road alone. Every step I take, I think of you. I know that sounds like a cheesy song, but it’s true. I think I love you, Gina. That came out wrong, didn’t it? There’s no “think” about it. I do.

  I’m coming back for you now. There’s nothing on the road for me without you. I hope you’re staying away from creepy David. Sorry, I know you have faith in him. And maybe that’s why I love you so much. Maybe it’s because you just want to see the goodness in things even when to me it seems so unclear.

  I’m stopping writing now. But thank you. I’ll see you soon.

  —K

  Mike stopped reading.

  His eyes welled up, and his throat wobbled.

  He put the letter into his back pocket, and he looked down at Kumal.

  He put a hand on his chest. Sighed.

  “I’m sorry, Kumal.”

  Then he dragged his body over to the grave, pushed it inside—a little less gracefully than he’d hoped—and he began to dig.

  As he dug, he could only think about Kumal’s words.

  There’s nothing on this road for me without you.

  And he knew it was right.

  He threw some soil over Kumal’s body.

  And as he buried him with more soil, rain peppering down, Mike knew a deep, dark truth.

  There was nothing on the road for him without Holly, either.

  But there was no changing that right now.

  There was no fixing that situation.

  Mike was on his own.

  And he didn’t have a clue what he was going to do about it.

  As he buried another of his daughter’s fallen friends, he swore he felt a tear drip down his cheek.

  Chapter Forty

  “Well? You did great, dear. Why’re you looking so grim all of a sudden?”

  Holly looked at the mess inside the church. She listened to the silence. She could smell the rustiness of blood in the air; feel it crusting in her hands, between her fingers.

  David was standing at the opposite end of the church now, after making sure everyone in here was dead. As far as Holly knew, there was nobody else left in here. Certainly wasn’t anyone making a sound.

  And that just went to remind her of what had happened, of how it had gone down, how it had unfolded.

  David walked towards her. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I mean, I really didn’t expect you to go through with it quite as successfully as this. But you’ve done a good deed, dear. You’ve cleared the world of some evil types—”

  “The pub,” Holly said.

  David frowned. “What about the pub?”

  Holly didn’t know what to say, what to think. Her mouth was dry, her tongue tied. “Something happened. Something happened at that pub. That woman, she said—”

  “And you believe what she said? You believe what some filthy liar said?”

  “She said a girl called Gina was here.”

  David narrowed his eyes. “Gina, hmm?”

  “I had a friend called Gina. That woman. She said… she said you killed someone called Gina. That you took her there and killed her, at the pub.”

  David’s face turned. Holly could see the facade cracking now. And all the while she felt her stomach sinking further, her world crumbling to pieces.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  David sighed. His face looked meaner. Or had it always looked that way? Was she only now seeing what she’d been denying all along?

  “Your children. Nothing… Nothing happened to them, did it? They weren’t even here, were they?”

  David wiped his knife and sighed. “I had to say what I wanted you to hear.”

  Holly charged at him. “You murdering bastard!”

  “Whoa there,” David said, raising his hands. “You can accuse me of whatever you like, dear. The truth of the matter is, you barely needed any pushing into doing what you did here. And it was you who did this here.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Holly, my love, you truly believe that all you needed was a little suggestion to massacre this place? You wanted an excuse. An excuse to take your frustrations out on someone; on somewhere.”

  “It’s not—”

  “You wanted a reason to butcher these people. And you got it. You got it, and you didn’t even read the lines. You barely even questioned my story. Shit. You must’ve been desperate. But now it’s done, why don’t you just see through the illusion? Swallow the damned red pill. We’re animals, all of us. And the sooner you get in touch with your animal nature, the better.”

  Holly’s heart pounded. The horror of what she’d done kept on hitting her, crashing against her in waves. It felt like she’d woken up from a nightmare only to realise the nightmare was actually real, and she was the monster after all.

  There was no going back from what she’d done. There was no outgrowing how much these horrors were going to stick with her.

  And the hardest thing?

  The bitterest pill to swallow of all?

  Holly knew that deep down, David was right.

  She had been looking for a reason to let out her anger.

  She had been looking for an excuse.

  And what did that make her?

  “You’ve done something awful, Holly,” David said, slight smile to his face. “But you need to own it instead of wallowing in it. You need to embrace it instead of falling victim to it. That’s the nature of this world. We all do horrible things if we want to survive and thrive.”

  “This isn’t surviving,” Holly said. “This… this is murder.”

  David shrugged. “Call it what you want. You did it. Own it.”

  She couldn’t control herself then. She took a swing at David’s stomach, with the knife.

  But he was prepared.

  He sidestepped the swing.

  Tilted his head.

  “Bad move,” he said.

  He smacked her across her face, busting her nose and sending her falling back against the solid floor of the church.

  And then he crouched over her. Lifted his knife.

  “I could finish you right here. But you know what’s stopping me? You know what’s holding me back?”

  “Get—get o
ff me.”

  David moved the knife closer to Holly’s neck. “I see something in you. I see potential. You’re a rough diamond, sure, but you’re a diamond all the same. You just need a little polishing.”

  Holly spat in David’s face. He looked shocked for a second. Stunned.

  But then his smile just widened further.

  He wiped the spit away.

  Put it back on Holly’s lips, his salty fingers entering her mouth.

  She went to bite down on his fingers.

  And he let her.

  He let her keep biting as he drew blood.

  He let her keep going, not seeming to budge.

  Then he smacked her again, and she automatically released him.

  David leaned in close to her ear. He put the knife to her head.

  “You’re going to take some training,” he said. “You’re going to take some changes. But you’re a special kind of girl. And I’m not going to let that go to waste, whether you like it or not.”

  Holly went to push herself up towards David. She went to head butt him. She went to do anything just as long as she was able to defend herself.

  But David put the knife to her hair.

  He started to tug at it, to slice it away.

  “But you need to lose your past before you face your future,” he said.

  Holly wriggled. She tried to struggle free.

  But it was to no avail.

  David cut away at her hair, chopping it from her head, piece by piece.

  The long hair she’d always loved so much.

  The long hair that Mum had always said was so beautiful.

  And all she could do was lie in the blood of those she’d slain and feel nothing but total emptiness.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Alison sat and listened to the pouring rain lash down from above as day moved into night.

  She was still in the forest, still tied to those trees. Of course she was. After all, there was no way she was getting out of this situation; no way she was escaping this mess.

  And in a way, in a morbid sort of way, there was a comfort to her predicament. A certainty to it, in this world of few certainties. She’d been walking the tightrope of order and chaos all her life, and only recently had it slipped over into full-blown unpredictable chaos.

  But now an order had returned. It was a grim, twisted kind of order, but it was an order all the same.

  What was that order?

  The certainty of death.

  She inhaled a sharp, deep breath. She was shivering from the rain, which was icy cold. If this was a taste of what winter was going to be like, then she didn’t want to be around for it, that was for certain. She was dodging a bullet. If only she could take a bullet and get it all over with quicker.

  The thought of sitting here, starving, dehydrating… sure, it wasn’t appealing.

  But it was better than going on in this world, especially after everything she’d lost.

  She thought about Arya and Gina, wherever they were. Those people, that military group. The British accents they had, not foreign like the group she thought were the enemy. Was that what things had descended to? Were even their own people working against them now in this mess of agendas and twisted priorities?

  Or was it simply because she’d stood up to them, and they didn’t like it?

  Alison didn’t know. She didn’t even particularly care.

  She just hoped that Gina and Arya were okay, wherever they were.

  She thought about something, then. A memory. A memory of something Gina once said to her. How Alison was tough. And Kumal—he always said that Alison was the toughest of the group, deep down, and that she’d have the fewest problems surviving out on her own.

  At the time, Alison thought maybe Gina and Kumal were right. Maybe she could make it on her own.

  But that had changed. Surviving out here had changed her drastically. It had challenged her.

  She’d lost her faith in herself. Lost her belief in herself.

  But she could see now that she couldn’t let herself wallow in self-pity.

  She had to pull herself together.

  She had to act.

  She had to fight.

  It was only through fighting that she could ever hope to pull herself back from the jaws of hell.

  She tugged at the ties around her wrists.

  But they were wrapped around her tight, digging deep into her flesh.

  She tugged harder and harder. Kept on tugging for all it was worth. Because it didn’t matter how much pain she was experiencing. She couldn’t just roll over and die. She could just accept defeat. She was a fighter. She had to fight.

  As long as there were people she cared about out there, she had to fight.

  She tried to pull harder against the ties as the rain fell down even heavier when she heard something to her right.

  She stopped. Froze.

  But there was no doubting what she’d heard.

  No denying it.

  Movement.

  She went deadly still. Every muscle in her body tensed up. She could feel her heartbeat bouncing against her ribcage, so loud as it echoed around her skull.

  She started to wonder if maybe she’d just been hearing things when she heard it again.

  This time, it was to her left. Like there was more than one person; like there was somebody on both sides, both of them heading right in her direction.

  She scanned through the options in her mind. It was dark. She just had to lay low. Just had to keep still. She couldn’t see anyone, so they wouldn’t be able to see her.

  Keep still.

  Keep—

  “So this is how you’re trying to get me on side? This is how you’re trying to train me as your little protege? Well, it’s not working. It’s not—”

  A smack.

  A gasp of pain.

  Then another voice. Male.

  “Keep walking, rat.”

  But there was something bothering Alison. Something about that first voice.

  Something familiar about it. Not from recently, not too recently anyway.

  But a familiarity all the same.

  She recognised that voice.

  And then it clicked.

  “Holly,” she said.

  She didn’t say it loudly. She was close to shouting it, close to calling for help.

  But she got the sense that Holly was with someone who she didn’t want to garner the attention of.

  Someone she needed to beware of.

  She waited for the footsteps to disappear further into the distance. She noted exactly where they were. Exactly which direction they went in.

  And when she was sure they were far enough out of the way, Alison yanked at those ties again.

  She gritted her teeth.

  She felt the ties digging so far into her wrists that they were bleeding.

  But she kept on pushing through.

  Kept on tearing them away.

  Because she had to be strong.

  Not just for herself, but for someone else, now.

  Especially for someone else.

  She heard that voice in her head telling her how strong she was all over again.

  And this time, right on cue, the ties around her wrists snapped.

  She was still. Still for a few seconds as the blood pooled down her arms.

  But there was no time to waste.

  She broke out of the ankle ties a lot easier now she had her hands to help.

  And when she was done, she stood up in the pouring rain, wiped her damp hair out of her eyes and stood staring in the direction the voices had taken.

  Holly was out there.

  Holly was with someone nasty.

  And Alison had a duty to protect her.

  She tensed her fists as blood dripped down her hands.

  There was no more time to mess around.

  It was time to stand up and be strong, once and for all.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  When Mike reached
the next town, his stomach sank completely.

  He’d walked right through the night. He hadn’t slept a wink. He was starting to hear voices; he was growing that hungry and thirsty.

  But all the way, he’d kept on telling himself that this would be worth it.

  That there was a chance—small as it was—that Holly might, just might, be in this town.

  The town was empty. It was much like many of the towns now that people had realised there wasn’t much here for them anymore. Windows smashed. Cars abandoned. Graffiti all over the place and litter blowing across the ground.

  There was something different about this town, though. Something quite distinct.

  And that was the bodies hanging from the ropes at the bridge up ahead.

  Just like the guy back at Woodbridgeton told him.

  When Mike first saw them, he could barely look. Because he remembered what that man had told him about the young girl hanging, and he couldn’t help asking himself whether that was Holly; whether he’d made it this far only to find her in such a state.

  He didn’t even know how long he’d been apart from her now. He’d lost sense of the days and the nights entirely.

  He just knew that he was running low on energy, and he wasn’t sure how much further he was going to be able to push.

  He looked at these hanging bodies. Looked at them, one by one, preparing for the worst.

  But as he moved from one to the next, his optimism started to rise. His hope started to rise.

  Because Holly wasn’t amongst them.

  He saw another rope dangling between them. A snapped rope. He moved over towards it, frowning, curious as to what it was.

  It was when he reached it that he noticed something.

  A ring. The ring that belonged to Holly; the one that her mother gave to her before she died. The one she’d lost before. That damned ring.

  It was here.

  Holly had been here.

  At first, a tension in Mike’s chest. A realisation that Holly had swung from this rope. That someone had attempted to execute her.

  But then… there was a reason she wasn’t here anymore. There had to be.

  He picked up that ring and stood up.

  And that’s when it dawned on him.