by Ryan Casey
And that was the key word her. His.
There was no sign of the man. No sign of the girl.
Which meant whoever had done this had to be on their side.
He listened to the wind brush against the trees. Thick clumps of icy snow slammed against his face. He had some people left, sure. Plenty of people back near the place that they’d destroyed.
But sometimes Theo longed to be accepted. Sometimes Theo craved just settling down like everybody else at the end of the day.
But then he remembered what these people did to his family.
His mum. She was innocent. She’d just been doing what she had to in order to get by.
And one of the people from the mental health facility… they’d dragged her away from Theo. They’d raped her and made him watch.
And then when they were done, they didn’t kill her.
They raped her again.
And again.
And all the while Theo was forced to watch as the resolve slipped from her face.
All the while, Theo was forced to watch his mother beg him for help, then realise there was nothing he could do for her.
He was hopeless.
He was weak.
Until they killed her, and then he wasn’t.
They’d beaten him up. Sure, they’d done things to him that he didn’t like, either. Things that would haunt him. Things he’d never forget.
And sure. This might just be the actions of a small minority of the group.
But when they’d cast him aside, told him never to show his prick-face again, Theo had made a choice.
He could sit back, let things go.
Or he could restore order in his own way.
He could set the record straight.
That’s exactly what he was going to do.
He was going to make them pay for what they’d done.
They went back to their little base, and he followed them. He watched. He waited. All the while, he found people to join him. He found people who believed in him. He did know how to survive in this world, after all. And knowledge was a key commodity.
He’d resisted the urge to go in there and destroy the place. He’d shown patience. He’d shown restraint.
But when those people—when that man who’d raped and murdered his mother—next emerged, Theo didn’t show any mercy.
He tortured him. Did unforgettable things to him.
And then when it was done with, he didn’t even kill him. Not properly, anyway.
He left him to bleed out, slowly, painfully.
He thought his lust for revenge would be satiated then. But that wasn’t the case.
He killed more people. Destroyed more communities. Built his group.
And all the time, he had that same end goal in sight.
One day, he was going to burn the Grey Lodge Mental Health facility to the ground.
Only he’d lost so much in the process.
He looked at his pistol, and what little ammo had remained in it. There was nothing left now, and he knew the chances he’d find any more ammo were slim. Just the way of this world. Just the way it went.
He looked at the bodies. He crouched down, saw the bullets, and he knew his people had been ambushed in some way.
He curled his hand around one of them. Looked up and saw footsteps in the snow leading away from the bodies. He saw patches of blood, and he knew they must belong to the girl.
A path of footsteps, a path of blood, leading out into the trees.
Theo took a deep breath as he heard his remaining people reach his side. He heard the cursing when they saw the bodies; heard the despair as they looked at the chaos.
But all the while, he could only look through the trees, look at that path of footsteps, of blood, and think about the next step.
“What now?” one of them asked.
Theo stood up. He threw the bullet to the ground. Because the path ahead had never been clearer.
“We’re going to hunt them down and make them pay for what they did to our people.”
Chapter Thirty
Holly walked with Emma by her side, and she hadn’t felt this much of a sense of purpose or responsibility for a long, long time.
The sun was high in the afternoon sky. There had been a large snowfall overnight, and the pair of them had woken up pretty buried in snow. Holly says they woke up, anyway. She hadn’t slept lots, mostly because she’d been so focused on keeping an eye on Emma, on making sure she was okay.
She felt a strange union with her. A strange bond that she hadn’t been expecting to form, at least not quite so easily.
But it felt like now she had someone there with her to look out for… she could really start being a better person.
Not that becoming a better person was the only reason she was looking out for Emma. It went beyond that. Far beyond that.
She wanted to help. Not to prove herself to anyone. Nothing like that.
She just wanted to help her out of the goodness of her heart.
Emma was by her side. She didn’t speak much. And one thing Holly noticed was that she always held on to that rifle. The rifle was almost too big for her to hold. It looked like the kind the foreign military group used.
Holly wondered how she’d got hold of that. She wondered where she’d got it from, how it had got into her hands. She knew what the foreign military were like, after all. She knew how ruthless they were.
So how had a little girl got a weapon like this in her hands?
She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to ask, though. Emma didn’t seem too keen on answering questions. She didn’t know how long she’d been out here, surviving. But whatever the case, she must be tough if she was still here.
“What were you into before all this, anyway?” Holly asked.
Emma looked at her, glared. “Why does it matter?”
Holly shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t. I’m just not keen on walking all this way with someone if they aren’t even going to talk to me.”
Emma was silent. She didn’t seem to bite the bait. Intelligent kid.
“I used to be a dancer,” Holly said.
She felt a twinge of regret when she said it. A longing for a past long gone. How she’d danced on that final day of the normal world. The way Dad had rushed to see her, only to miss her after everything.
She’d turned her back on him. He’d crossed the line.
But that seemed so minor now, in the grand scheme of things.
She missed him. She hoped wherever he was out there, she’d see him, somehow.
“What sort of dancing did you do?”
Holly felt a flicker of surprise at hearing Emma ask her a genuine question. She turned to her. Saw the curiosity in her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “A few types. But my favourite was ballet.”
Emma’s face lit up. “I love ballet. Ballet dancers are like… like princesses!”
Holly smiled. “I wish we were,” she said.
“No, really. You should do some ballet right now.”
Holly saw the rifle in Emma’s hand, heard her voice, and she felt like the two things were at odds with one another. Like they juxtaposed pretty radically.
But she couldn’t deny this girl’s curiosity.
“I’m not sure ballet dancing right now is the best idea,” she said.
“Maybe you can teach me,” Emma said. Then she lowered her head, her guard rising once again. “Well. Someday. Maybe.”
Holly felt bad for her then. Because at the end of the day, she was just a little girl trying her best to adapt to this new, vicious world, while underneath there were still the remnants of her childhood fighting through.
She nodded at Emma and smiled. “I will show you. When we find somewhere safe, somewhere to live, I’ll show you. I promise.”
Emma looked up at Holly. And for the first time in a long while—perhaps the first time since they’d met—she did something she hadn’t done before.
She smiled. Genuinely.
Holly smiled back at her. “What’re you doing alone in this world, anyway?”
Emma lowered her head. “There were others. But before that… my dad. The foreign troops. They…”
She looked up at Holly, and right away, Holly knew.
“I’m sorry about th—”
“I’ll find the man who did it. One day, I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him.”
Holly felt taken aback by Emma’s words. It didn’t sound right hearing such an innocent looking kid say these things.
But then she knew how much this world could screw you up.
She knew it first-hand.
“Try just to focus on surviving, now,” she said.
Emma nodded. Caught Holly’s eye. Smiled.
And then she heard it.
It was coming from behind. She couldn’t make it out at first. It seemed so unreal; so unnatural.
But then she placed it.
She realised exactly what it was.
“It’s an engine,” Emma said.
Holly looked at Emma. Saw the surprise on her face.
Then as she stood there in the middle of the road, she remembered the last time she’d heard a working engine like this, and what it meant.
The foreign group.
“We need to get off the road,” Holly said.
“But—”
“We need to hide. Now.”
Holly grabbed Emma’s hand. She ran over towards the buildings at the side of the road, hid behind a few cars.
The engine rumbled closer, and Holly’s heart raced.
She found herself holding on to Emma’s hand tightly and felt Emma holding her hand back.
And in a way, it made her feel more secure.
It made her feel safer.
The vehicle rumbled on. It was definitely large, definitely some kind of truck.
But when it reached the road beside Holly and Emma’s position, it stopped.
A door opened. Feet hit the ground.
And then footsteps came heading in Holly and Emma’s direction.
Dread built inside. A sense of nausea took hold. Holly tried to squeeze Emma’s hand tighter.
But Emma did something.
She pulled her hand away.
Reached for the rifle.
Holly shook her head as the footsteps got closer. But Emma looked afraid. And looking afraid like this reminded Holly of what she must’ve looked like before she’d done the awful things to other people; the things she could see now had crossed the line, time and time again.
The footsteps kept on coming.
Emma crept up a little, raised the rifle.
And then the footsteps stopped, before turning away.
Holly sighed with relief. She listened as the footsteps headed back to the van. Heard the door slam shut, the engine start up again.
And just as it began to move away, she took her opportunity to take a look.
She saw a few things.
The van was an old VW camper. Not the military vehicle that Holly had been expecting.
There was a woman driving it off into the distance.
Or rather, a girl.
And when Holly saw who that girl was, she could barely contain herself.
“Gina?” she said.
She stepped out into the road. She tried to shout. Tried to call out.
But all she could do was watch as that VW looped around the corner and disappeared off into the distance, leaking oil all the way.
She crouched. Dipped her fingers in the oil, tears building in the corners of her eyes.
“You know them?” Emma asked.
Holly sniffed up, took a deep breath.
“She’s my friend,” she said. “That—that was my friend.”
“But where was she going? And how was she driving like that?”
Holly stood up. Looked at the trail of leaked oil ahead. “That’s what we’re going to go and find out.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Mike walked in the glistening winter sun, and for the first time in ages, he felt a sense of optimism.
It was afternoon. They were just outside a small town, which was totally derelict. He had been walking with Yuri, Sergei, and Andrei for a good few hours now. Kelsie was doing well too, it seemed. Every now and then, she got pretty tired, as was natural after taking a bullet, so Mike carried her. But she was in good spirits. She seemed strong. So Mike couldn’t help being optimistic about the future.
He was hopeful about this place Yuri had told him about. And that hope was overriding any scepticism about where he was walking, and also any fear he felt over Kelsie’s condition. Not just her wound—as good a job as the troops had done, but her diabetes. If this place really was as great as Yuri made out, then surely they’d have something for her. Something medical.
Hopefully.
He ignored the news Yuri told him about how it seemed like they’d been cut off from the rest of the world—how that made it look like the whole world had fallen—and what that meant for people like Kelsie who were reliant on medication to survive.
After all… he had to take things one step at a time. Solve one problem at a time.
“Beautiful winter’s day,” Yuri said, smiling. “Not the kind we hear about in Britain.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Always grey here, apparently. Always grey, people miserable. Doing a good job of beating those stereotypes.”
“Yeah, well,” Mike said. “There’s similar things said about your country.”
“I guess stereotypes are hard to kill, hmm?”
Mike smiled. As they walked further, he found himself wanting to know more about Yuri, his life back home.
He wanted to know more about Sergei and Andrei, too. But to be honest, neither of them spoke good English. And even without speaking English, he sensed there was something about Sergei he wasn’t sure about. Like Sergei wasn’t keen on him. It made him uneasy.
“What kind of a life are you leaving behind, anyway?”
Yuri sighed. “Not much of one. I didn’t have the best start in life. In and out of prison. But ever since I joined the military… well, it became my life. I did meet someone, eventually. Gave it all up for her, only for fate to strike in the cruellest way.”
Mike nodded. “I know how you feel. On the military and the fate front.”
“Former military man yourself?”
“For a time. Not as much of a career soldier as you, clearly. But hey. I served my time. I did what I had to do for my country.”
“And that’s the most noble thing a man can do.”
Mike nodded. But there was something really getting to him. Something he was curious about. “What you told me… about how your people were sent here to bring peace rather than conflict. Are you serious about that?”
Yuri sighed. “Why would I lie to you, Mike?”
“Because I’ve been lied to before.”
“Look,” he said. “I know what some of my people have done in the name of peace. I am not blind to the evils of individuals. But that cannot be controlled. It never has been controlled. All we can do is do our best, as people. And maybe then, hopefully, the world can be a better place.”
Mike nodded. He wanted to believe in Yuri. He wanted to trust in him.
He just didn’t want to see his world crumble all over again.
“The girl,” Yuri said. “Kelsie. You do a good job with her.”
Mike nodded, feeling a defensiveness over Kelsie rising the second she was mentioned. “I try my hardest.”
“What happened to you? To your daughter?”
Mike thought about the awful moment he’d lost Holly. Out in the woods, driven by his desire for revenge… then hearing her shout, and her disappearance.
“I can see it hurts you. Whatever happened.”
Mike nodded. “I just have to hope she’s out there somewhere. The thing is… I know deep down that she’s a good person. Good, but tough. And she�
�ll find a way. Wherever she is, whatever she’s been through, she’ll find a way to survive.”
“And they’re the best kind of people in this world.”
Yuri smiled at Mike. And Mike smiled back. As reluctant as he had been to trust this guy and his people, he could tell his heart was in the right place. That was going to count for a lot.
“We’d better keep going,” Yuri said. “Wouldn’t want to keep our new friends waiting.”
Mike went to walk when he heard something behind.
A shout. A shout in another language.
And when he looked back, he saw Sergei standing there, eyes wide, concern on his face.
Mike didn’t understand what it was.
Not at first.
Not until he saw Kelsie lying on the road.
Unconscious.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alison walked, Sofia behind her with the knife to her back, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to get herself out of this situation.
Only that she had to. Because she feared where it was going. She feared what she’d agreed to.
She feared for Holly.
It was afternoon. She’d been walking with Sofia ever since morning. They’d worked their way through the trees first. And the hardest thing of all?
They’d stumbled upon little Tommy’s body.
She smelled him before she saw him. And when they reached him, the sight was even more stark, even more horrifying than she could’ve imagined. His little body had frozen. His eyes were closed now. Someone had clearly come back and done this.
But it was Sofia’s reaction that struck Alison more. She crouched down opposite her son. Wiped his frozen hair from his face. Then she leaned down and kissed his head, then stood up and looked at Alison, knife still in hand.
“Come on,” she said. “We’d better get going. Ian can’t be far away.”
Alison felt tension inside. Because she feared what Ian would do to her when they found him. Further to that, there was Holly. She’d agreed catching her, agreed hunting her down, but she didn’t want that. As scared as she was of what Holly was turning into, she didn’t want her dead.
She wanted her to change.
She wanted to give her the opportunity to change.
“You don’t have to do this,” Alison said.