by Ryan Casey
“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. We’ll be in there soon.”
She looked at me then smiled.
She took my hand, and just for a second it felt like we were young again.
“Wow. Lo and behold, the great one returns.”
I turned around and couldn’t help smiling.
“Kesha,” I said.
I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her. It was a totally instinctive response, and one I never thought I’d be capable of in front of Kerry. “Oh, Kerry,” I said, scratching at my chin. “This—this is Kesha. We’ve been friends for a while now. She helped find Olivia and save her. Used to run a community up north, but it…” I stopped. I didn’t like thinking about what might’ve happened to Heathlock. It scared me too much. Made me realise just how easy it was for a seemingly solid society in this new world to just… crumble.
Kerry extended a hand and shook Kesha’s. They looked at one another for a few seconds like they… were they jealous of each other? Shit, Will. Calm yourself. No need to be too arrogant about things.
Have to admit, though. I definitely got the jealous vibe. It didn’t feel all that bad to have two amazing people feeling something for me.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Kesha said. “I’ve heard a lot about…”
She stopped speaking. I realised why a few seconds later.
Kerry wasn’t focusing on Kesha at all. In fact, she’d completely pulled her hand away and started walking around the side of her, staggering past her.
She wasn’t focusing because of who was standing at the foot of the barracks steps.
I could see Olivia looking at her mother, wide-eyed, from a distance. I could see the pain. The confusion.
But most of all, I could see the joyous relief.
“Olivia?” Kerry mumbled. She staggered further around Kesha, her uneasy knees gradually picking up pace. “Olivia is that…”
Then she snapped back into reality, and along with Olivia, she ran.
I watched them run towards one another, tears rolling down my face. I saw everyone else looking at the pair reuniting, too. Roger. Kesha. Even Martin. All of them looked emotional like they were witnessing something beautiful.
Nothing could ruin this moment of reunion, as Kerry stretched out her arms and lifted Olivia up, falling to her knees and holding her tight. Nothing could make this moment anything but perfect, no matter what.
And then I became aware that Stu was right beside me.
He leaned into my ear.
“You turn around, right now, while they’re distracted. You walk away.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him in disbelief. “What?”
Then I saw the gun in his hand and the gun in Carter’s hand. Sabz and Hannah were also armed. All this time and they’d been armed. “You turn around. You leave. And you take your mutt with you.”
“And why would I—”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll put a bullet through them.”
I didn’t believe what Stu was saying at first. It shocked me so much that it pulled the rug from under my feet. “What…”
“If you stick around here, everyone you care about dies. So you leave. Now. Understand?”
I looked back inside the barracks. I saw Kerry and Olivia still holding one another, laughing, crying, so joyous. I saw Martin leading Stu’s people inside. I even saw Kesha drifting further towards the barracks gates, distracted by the apparent beauty of this moment.
“Leave. Now.”
And as much as I wanted to fight to be a part of this reunion, I knew I couldn’t risk losing my family. I knew there was nothing else I could do. I’d played my part. I’d made my sacrifices. Now, I had to make one more.
Myself.
I felt my bottom lip quivering as Olivia and Kerry looked over at me, smiling, waving.
I lifted a hand, but they turned before they could even see it.
“You okay?”
I looked ahead. It was Kesha. She was frowning like she knew something was wrong.
“Sure,” I said, wiping my cheeks. “Just… just something I need to do. I won’t be long.”
She looked like she was going to question me. In the end, she just nodded and half-smiled. “Well don’t be long. Olivia’s dying to tell you about what we’ve been up to while you’ve been gone.”
A lump swelled in my throat, and I felt the ground opening up beneath me. “Right.”
Kesha turned around and walked back into the barracks.
I realised then that I was all alone. Just Bouncer and I, all alone again.
I took a few deep breaths and watched as my family reunited.
Then I watched Stu walking over to them, putting his hand on Kerry’s back, and then lifting Olivia up with a smile on his face.
I swear he looked over at me like he was just testing me.
I wanted to fight.
I wanted to turn that bastard’s head to a pulp.
But I knew what I had to do.
“Come on, Bouncer,” I said, barely managing to spit the words out. “Our work’s done here.”
Then, I turned away from the joy of the barracks, looked towards the trees, and I walked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I walked into the storm with Bouncer by my side.
I could see the clouds thickening overhead, and I knew what that meant. Another storm was on its way. Soon, the skies would open, and I’d be drenched from the forces above all over again.
I didn’t care.
I had Bouncer by my side.
He was all I had now, and I had to be content with that.
I walked over to the side of a tree and started work on a basic shelter. I strung some paracord between two trees and then draped the tarp I’d packed into my new bag over it. When I was finished, I felt the rain falling down on me, the specks of it getting gradually thicker and more forceful. At least I had a shelter now. And at least I didn’t have to get anywhere in a hurry. I had no goal. No direction. Not anymore.
Just survival.
I stepped inside the shelter I’d created and watched as the rain blasted its way to the ground in front of me. Bouncer sat beside me, resting his head on my lap, watching the rain fall too.
“We’ll be okay, you and me,” I muttered. “We’ll be fine.”
I stroked his head and thought about my family.
Kerry.
Olivia.
And now, Stu.
He might’ve been scared of me. He might hate my guts. But he was going to keep my family safe.
I didn’t believe for a minute that he would harm them. Sure, he’d find some people at the barracks frustrating. He might not get along too well with Martin, but who did? And anyway, the world might be a better place without Martin around after all. Maybe Stu would find the guts to get rid of him.
The main thing? He was going to look after Kerry and Olivia. That was all I needed.
I heard the thunder rumble overhead, saw flashes of lightning in the distance, and I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth.
Then I closed my eyes, listened to the rain, and stroked Bouncer’s head.
This was life now.
This was what I’d worked for.
This was the world I got.
When I opened my eyes, I saw someone standing over me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“So you’re just going to sit under a frigging A-frame trap shelter and mope now, are you? Or are you actually going to do something about it?”
I was surprised—relieved in a way—to see it was Kesha standing over me and not some nutter who wanted to take what little supplies I’d kept for myself from me.
I looked around at the woods, the rain blurring my view. Kesha looked soaked. “You follow me out here?” I asked.
“Course I did,” she said, walking over to the shelter. For a second, I thought she was going to get under it. But instead, she pulled at it.
“Hey!”
“You shouldn
’t be sitting out here like this. Not when your family are back at the barracks.”
“They’re not my family anymore. They’re Stu’s family.”
Then, out of nowhere, I felt a hand crack across my face.
“Don’t you hear yourself?” Kesha shouted. “You worked so hard to get your family back together. I left Heathlock to help you re-find your wife. You finally get your daughter and Kerry back together, and all of a sudden you’re just giving up?”
“I’m not giving up. It’s—”
“Stu, right?”
I shook my head. “Kerry’s made her choice.”
“No, you made a choice. I saw the look on your face when Stu spoke to you. What did he say to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does matter. Because whatever he said was enough to get you wandering off in the wild like a drama queen again.”
I hesitated. I really didn’t want to have to tell Kesha exactly what had been said, because, in a way, it just made me look worse off. I didn’t see myself as having abandoned my family. But even I had to look in the mirror and admit that what I’d done didn’t look great, on paper.
“He said he’d kill people if I didn’t leave.”
Kesha narrowed her eyes. The rain had plastered her hair to her head. “He’d kill people?”
“He said that if I didn’t leave, he’d kill people. That I should leave him alone. Walk away. And I guess he has a point.”
Kesha shook her head. She looked at me like she didn’t recognise me. “A man threatens to kill people, and you just walk away.”
“I walked away to keep people safe.”
“No. You walked away because it was the easy thing to do. You walked away because… because you weren’t sure you could fight anymore. Not after all the fighting you’ve already done. But I’m here to tell you something, you wimpy idiot.”
She pushed a gun into my chest, pressed it against it.
“Where did you get—”
“Where I got it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re going to fight, and I’m going to help you fight.”
I felt my throat welling up. I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen.”
“If you don’t fight, then I’ll fight myself. I’m not having that Stu just wander into the barracks with all his alliance talk bullshit and think he runs the place.”
“Kerry wants Stu. He’s with her now. I have to step back and give them a chance. It’s… it’s what you always told me to do. Trust other people.”
Kesha laughed and shook her head. “Don’t use my words against me, Will. If there’s one thing you don’t do, it’s that. And you should know that already by now.”
She pushed the gun into my chest harder, signalling for me to take it.
“Maybe we won’t have to use the guns. Maybe we won’t have to fight. But we’re going to go back there, and we’re going to make a stand. Maybe Stu will live. Maybe he’ll live happily frigging ever after with Kerry, and he’ll be part of a nice big family. But I’m not letting you just turn away. I’m not letting you leave. You know, you once told me that before the EMP strikes, you always turned your back on problems rather than facing them head on. I didn’t believe you at the time because you always seemed so pro-active. I couldn’t see how you could possibly be talking about yourself. You said that’s part of why your wife left you. Well, now’s a chance to make things right.”
She dropped the gun, and I scrambled for it before it could hit the soggy earth.
I lifted it up and looked at her. She had a gun too, and as we stood there in the rain, Bouncer beside us, I felt like for the first time, I was hearing her. I understood her.
“We’re going to go back to the barracks,” Kesha said. “Both of us. We’re going to go in there, and you are going to tell Stu how things are going to be. Then you’re going to decide what to do based on whether he likes what you say or not.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Kesha glanced at her gun. “Then we know what we have to do.”
I didn’t know completely what we had to do. But I understood what the implication was.
I might not like it. But she was right. There was no other way.
I wasn’t turning my back on my family.
I wasn’t sulking away from my problems like I used to always do.
I was a fighter. This world had made me a fighter.
It was time to start honouring the warrior this world was turning me into.
It was time to stand up to Stu.
It was time to go home.
“You ready?” Kesha asked.
She held out a hand.
I watched the specks of rain fall from her fingertips. I took a deep breath, and then I reached out, put my hand in hers. “I’m ready,” I said. “I think… I think I have an idea.”
“Good,” Kesha said. She looked up at the sky as thunder rumbled and lightning struck. “Because if I’m honest with you, I wouldn’t mind getting the hell out of this rain as soon as frigging possible.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Two days later…
HAILEY WATSON LOOKED out over the walls of the industrial complex and wondered if she’d ever see Stu again.
It was a nice, peaceful day. The storm that had threatened to rear its head once more seemed to have subsided, making way for a spring-like chill. With spring always came optimism, even though it was a kind of muted optimism now, in this world. Because the usual spring and summer activities that families usually looked forward to—holidays away, barbeques out in the garden until God-knows-what-time, early morning jogs and late nights drinking… all of that was going to be different now there was no real world to enjoy it in.
Or at least, an illusory world. After all, that’s all the old world really was. It was a temporary state that people had got way too comfortable in. They’d come to rely on their steady jobs and the roofs over their heads and the putting the bins out on a Tuesday afternoon, so they didn’t forget the collection on the following day. They got used to their televisions, their electricity, their home comforts. So used to them that when they went away and disappeared, a lot of people just didn’t know how to cope anymore. They didn’t know how to survive.
Hailey was one of those people, at least initially. She’d struggled to adapt to a world where she couldn’t take a shower or a long, indulgent bath when she was relaxing. She’d struggled to find food, to find supplies. In a way, she’d struggled for a long time to accept that the power wasn’t just going to magically turn back on. And that put her at a disadvantage because a lot of people had already made the most of a lot of the more easily acquired supplies.
She’d spent a good amount of time learning her skills, trial and error. She’d gone days without food and days without water. Some of the days she had drank water, it’d been dirty water, leaving her ill and dehydrated for many days after that.
She’d seen horrors that no person should have to see. Hailey believed in the fine line theory. That was a theory where she believed people should be aware of the bad things in the world, simply from an empathetic perspective, without totally getting too close to it. Maybe it was hands off. Maybe it was a real first-world problem, as her younger brother, Calvin, used to say. But she preferred to keep a safe distance from the emotional baggage that horror could cause. In a way, it’s why she preferred not to read too much news. More just the headlines. The imagination could be a horrible thing in itself. Better to let it just do its thing.
Since the world had changed, Hailey had seen plenty of horrors. She’d been so close to the horrors that she couldn’t shift from her psyche no matter how much therapy she took.
She’d seen houses full of dead people. She’d seen flies feasting on rotting corpses. At least, feasting on the remaining bits of flesh that the rats hadn’t already gnawed away. She’d seen men doing horrible things to women; women doing horrible things to men. She’d seen the ugliness of humanity rear its head, time and tim
e again.
And the worst part about it all was that she’d done bad things, too. She’d pulled a trigger when Stu had told her to. She’d killed people who might be ordinary and innocent.
And those mental scars and memories of the things she’d done would never fade. Never.
As for Stu, well, they kind of just ended up here together. She met him on the road when there were just four others with him. She’d watched his group expand to the point where they’d created a whole world for themselves. But Stu was always keen to keep things to a decent number, not too many to drain resources.
That’s what worried her about Stu departing for Will’s place. It was uncharacteristic of him to go off, leaving this place behind like that.
Something was wrong.
She was so caught in her thoughts that it took her a few seconds to see the two people walking towards her in the distance.
At first, she pointed the gun and went to pull the trigger, a reaction that scared her more than it did reassure her.
Then she realised she knew one of these people.
There was a woman. Dark hair. Short. She didn’t recognise her.
But the man…
The man was Will.
He had his hand raised. In it, a gun. It was strange that he was on his own. Or at least, without the majority of Stu’s group with him. Maybe something had happened on the road. Hailey had kind of been expecting that… but she didn’t expect Will to be the one still standing.
“I don’t want trouble,” Will shouted. And he did shout. More assertive, more composed than she’d ever heard him. In truth, he struck her as a little meek and detached—aloof even—when she’d last seen him. “I don’t want any conflict. What I want is your help.”
Hailey narrowed her eyes. She tightened her finger on the trigger. She heard voices as the rest of this camp came out to see what was happening. “Where’s Stu?”
“Stu took every one of your people back to the barracks where I’m from. He got them there safely. You don’t have to worry about Stu.”