by Ryan Casey
Claudia was stunned by this. As far as she was concerned, she was happy to stay put in the hotel for…well. As long as she could. She’d had enough of outside. And now she was getting an open invite outside.
“Of course, you don’t have to,” Mike said. “Might help though. We’ll pad you up with some makeshift armour and stuff. And like I say, we only need to grab a few backup batteries out of the supermarket freezers. If there’s even any left. Might pick up a Ben & Jerry’s or two while we’re out.” He winked at Chloë, well aware that this would get her on side.
“I…I don’t know,” Claudia said. “I mean I—we—”
“Do the supermarket sell…Do they do everything?” Chloë asked.
“They come close,” Mike said. “But if you’re still sure you don’t want the ear of surp—”
“Mum, can we go? Please?”
Claudia couldn’t quite believe this. Her own daughter, who she’d just found a safe haven for, was begging to go back outside into a world that was full of nastiness. All those efforts to protect her and look after her and all she wanted was to go outside for some…whatever it was.
“It’s safe out there?” Claudia asked.
“We scan the streets before we go out from the highest point on the hotel. Then we scan again. And again. And we’re only going a few hundred metres down the road, anyway. It’ll take half an hour, if that.”
Claudia wanted to protest. She froze inside and her guts churned. She wanted to protest. But that look on Chloë’s face. That begging in her voice. Chloë wanted to be a part of this. For some reason, she wanted to leave this safe zone and go back out into the unpredictable, dangerous world.
“Okay,” Claudia said. “Okay. Do you have guns?”
Mike and Matt both looked a little stunned by this question. Their eyes drifted to Chloë, then back to Claudia.
“It’s okay,” Claudia said. “She’s probably a better little shot than the pair of you put together. Target practise on the boat. Shoot the seagull. Fun game…kind of.”
“You won’t need guns,” Matt said, his voice patronising and vindictive. “If you stick with us, you’ll be fine.”
He stared at Claudia just like he had before she’d entered her hotel room last night. That “I don’t trust you” look.
Mike didn’t argue with him. Seemed he had a few silent reservations about handing out guns willy-nilly, too.
But damn—wouldn’t Claudia? Wouldn’t Anna and Riley?
“Okay,” Claudia said. “Okay. As long as it’s safe. As long as it’s—”
“It’s as safe as it can be,” Matt said.
These words didn’t really fill Claudia with a whole load of confidence. Then again, that was probably the point.
Chapter Three
Claudia looked around as she and her daughter stepped out of the side door of the Draca Hotel. Fresh sea air blasted into her face. She’d never really liked the smell of sea air. Reminded her of when she was a kid and her parents used to drag her along to the seaside. The seaside always meant roller coasters and candy floss.
Which she hated. Yeah, she was a pretty weird kid really.
She gripped Chloë’s hand tightly. Mike and Matt were in front, large rifles raised as they scanned the abandoned street outside and surrounding their hotel. Empty crisp packets and fish and chip containers scraped along the street in the cold breeze, forwards, backwards, endless in their drift.
“How far is the shop, Mum?” Chloë asked. Her hand tried wriggling free of Claudia’s grip, but whenever it did, Claudia just held it even tighter. Chloë wasn’t going anywhere, not on her own.
“It’s just a few shops down,” Mike said, pointing up towards the line of abandoned, tacky old stores on the sea front. An Argos. A discount computer shop called “Partz.” All of them looked like they had been boarded up way before the end times had started. Maybe they had.
“Keep yer voices down and keep on guard,” Matt whispered, turning round with that ever familiar disgruntled look on his face. He always looked at Claudia like she didn’t understand the dangers of the world they were living in. But she knew. She knew too well. Probably better than he did.
“Iceland’s just here, see,” Mike said, pointing towards the red logo swinging like a pendulum from above a shop entrance. “There’s a good chance we’ve already burned through all the batteries. But—”
“What if we have?” Claudia asked. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s a problem for your lil girl’s Ben & Jerry gorging,” Matt cut in. From anybody else, this might’ve sounded like a joke. Not from Matt.
Claudia bit her tongue and followed closely behind Mike and Matt as they headed towards the Iceland entrance. Unlike the other shops, it wasn’t boarded up. The windows were smashed, and it was damp and dusty looking inside. Trolleys were spread out all around the dirty shop floor, some of them stacked with tins. An emergency shop that was never finished.
“How do you know this place is safe?” Claudia asked.
Matt looked at her as if she was living on another planet. “We don’t. That’s why we’re goin’ in there to take a look. And that’s why you’re watchin’ our backs.”
“Watching your backs? With what weapons?”
But it was too late. Mike and Matt were already wandering inside the Iceland shop, guns raised, padded out with the same heavy protective body armour that was weighing down on Claudia’s shoulders too. Claudia wondered where they’d got hold of all their supplies. Guns, armour. Must’ve raided a police station, or an army barracks.
Perhaps not the latter, actually.
Claudia turned away from the shop entrance and looked further down the road. It went on for miles, culminating in a huge power station in Heysham. To the other side, beyond the derelict looking pier and a road block further down, across the greying sea, Claudia could see green specks in the mist. A caravan site, it looked like. A beach resort of some kind. To think of it, a caravan site might not be a bad place if there was enough power and providing the caravans were strong enough, of course. Maybe somewhere to consider if Draca ever got overrun.
Then again, all the best places were already taken.
“What’s that, Mum?” Chloë asked.
Claudia was surprised by her daughter’s voice. Chloë was looking at the opposite side of the road, by the railings that guarded the pavement from the beach. Beyond the railings, there was a playground. A see-saw. A slide, shining like it was brand new. A pair of swings. Rubber floor.
But there was something else, too. A roundabout. Only it looked like there was somebody already on it.
And they were naked and covered in blood.
“You two doing okay out there?” Mike called.
Claudia looked around briefly inside the Iceland shop. Mike and Matt were checking one of the freezers closest to the door, but it seemed like they’d had no luck there judging by the way Matt tutted and cursed.
“Yeah,” Claudia said, turning back to the roundabout.
The thing on the roundabout. From here, she could tell now that it was human. But why were they naked? And to think of it, why didn’t they look like they had any bite marks? In fact, they had nothing other than a gaping, bloody wound between their legs. Their skin was pale. It didn’t look like they’d been out there for long.
Who other than a creature would do something like that?
“Can we go see them?” Chloë asked. She tugged at her mother’s hand, trying to get free.
Claudia gripped Chloë’s hand tighter. The swings shook in the breeze. More cartons scraped across the road.
“No, love,” Claudia said, checking to her left, her right, above, behind. “No. You…you stay here with me.”
“Thank fuck!” Matt shouted. “Found one. Found one!”
Claudia turned around. She saw Matt with a massive sincere grin on his face and a smaller than expected black object in his hand.
Then, she saw the creature approaching him from behind.
The rest was a blur.
“Matt!” she shouted. “Behind you!”
She wasn’t sure why she went flying through that window and towards a man who clearly hated her guts. She wasn’t sure why she barged past Mike, who still had his head in the freezer, and slid across the glass in Matt’s direction.
She wasn’t sure why, but she pushed against the creature with all the force she could.
The creature went tumbling to the ground as Claudia pushed it. Matt looked at Claudia then at the creature, panic in his eyes as he held the battery. The creature snapped and groaned, clinking its teeth together. It was missing an arm. Thank God it was missing an arm, or it’d have had Matt.
“Sneaky fuck,” Matt said, lifting his gun. “Sneaky little fuck.” He tickled the trigger, then instead, he lowered his gun, grabbed a large bottle of inexpensive-looking champagne from the upper shelf above the freezers, and he rested it against the side of the creature’s wobbling head.
“Have a bit of this,” he said as he smashed the glass into the creature’s temple. With the creature knocked back, Matt straddled himself over it as it scratched at his body armour with its one arm, and he held the smashed bottle over its face.
“Sneaky little fuck.”
He jammed the serrated edges of the glass right into the creature’s face and twisted, pushed and turned with all his strength. The glass crumbled in the creatures eyes, its nose, every part of its face, blood oozing out of its once rather attractive complexion.
When Matt had finished twisting and turning the bottle into the creature’s face, sweating as he did, he brought a sharp piece of broken glass right into its soft temple.
The creature stopped groaning. At last, it’d been put out of its misery.
Claudia was shaking with the shock. She wasn’t sure why she’d helped Matt. Maybe so he’d trust her, more than anything. To prove herself to him. Not that she needed to prove herself to a man, but if it made things go smoother back at Draca, then it was worth it. Matt would respect her more.
He got up off the creature and wiped his bloody hands against his black body armour. He looked at Claudia momentarily and nodded.
That’s about as much as she could ask for.
Claudia squeezed Chloë’s…
Wait.
She looked to her side.
Chloë wasn’t there.
She turned and looked back at the entrance to the Iceland, back at the smashed windows and out at the playground with the body.
“Claudia?” Mike said.
Claudia marched back outside. Her heart pounded. She was just by the door, and she’d gone to look at the playground. That’s all it was—she was just being nosey, as ever.
“Where’d she go?” Mike asked. “I swear she was right there.”
Claudia looked across at the playground with the body. She looked down the road towards the power plants in Heysham; down the other side of the road towards the pier and the blockade, near where they’d stayed on the beach that first night.
Then she looked again, and again, and again.
But it was no use.
Chloë was gone.
“I swear she was there a minute ago,” Mike said.
His words were nothing to Claudia. Nothing without her little girl’s hand in hers. How had she been so fucking stupid? So fucking stupid to let her go? And for what—to save a life of a sadistic nutjob just to make herself look better? Fuck that. Fuck it.
“I mean, she can’t ‘a gone far—” Matt started.
“She has to be around here,” Claudia said as she marched across the road and towards the playground. It was the only place she could think to look. The only place that Chloë had shown any interest in since they’d been out here. Why did she have to go running off? Why?
“Wait up,” Mike said. He jogged in Claudia’s direction as she made for the playground, where the bloody naked body was strapped down on the roundabout, even creepier this close up. “We…shit, Matt. Shit. What is this?”
The three of them, when they’d all reached the playground, stared at the body. It was a man. The blood between his legs hadn’t been accidental—his penis was missing. It looked like it had been bitten off. Or sliced off.
“Do you think they…they did this?” Matt’s voice was shaky. Uncertain.
“Who?” Claudia asked, turning to look at them both. “Who are ‘they’?”
Mike didn’t look like he was in the mood for speaking. He looked very much like he was holding something back. Something he didn’t want to talk about.
Something that Matt didn’t seem to want to talk about either.
“If you know anything about where my little girl—”
“There’s another group,” Mike said. The words sounded alien. Choreographed, even.
“Another group? And what gives you the impression they—”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve found somebody like…like this,” Matt said, pointing at the castrated body. “One of our own, once.”
The hairs on Claudia’s arms pricked up as she tried to understand—to comprehend—what she was being told.
“So…so you’re telling me these people might have Chloë. These people—”
“They’re capable of it,” Mike said, not looking Claudia in the eye. “But that doesn’t mean they do. It’s…We have to get looking. We have to get—”
“Look where?” Claudia shouted. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She was angry. Furious. Angry at anything and everything. But mostly she was angry at herself for letting her daughter go.
Mike and Matt looked at one another. Then, they looked over in the direction of the sea, staring across it.
Claudia looked too. The green specks on the tree-laden hills across the sea. The caravans.
“That’s where they stay? Right there, on our doorstep? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Mike held his breath. Waited a few seconds. Then, he offered a single nod.
“If they have your daughter, then they’ll…that’s where their camp is. That’s where they’ll be heading.”
“So that’s where we go,” Claudia said, looking Mike directly in the eyes.
Another moment’s pause. Another bit of hesitation.
“Claudia, there’s a lot you don’t—”
“If they have my daughter, then I get her back. It’s as simple as that.” Claudia started to walk out of the playground and down the street.
“We have to think very carefully. They’re stronger in number than us. More armed. And as you…as you see, they’re ruthless. We have to—”
“Mum!”
The voice sent shivers down Claudia’s spine. She looked first not in the direction it came from, but over at the caravan site in the distance as if somehow her daughter was speaking to her from right over there.
But she wasn’t right over there. She was running across the street from the Argos store, smile on her face, little black box in hand.
“I got your surprise,” Chloë said, opening up the black box, panting away as if nothing had happened as Mike and Matt stared on in stunned silence. “The surprise I told you about. I got it you.”
Claudia couldn’t speak. She wanted to shout and scream at Chloë but she wanted to hug her too. “Surprise…surprise…what—”
Chloë opened the black box. “Your early Christmas present,” she said. “A pretty one, just like Anna’s.”
Claudia stared inside the black box, tears in her eyes.
Inside the box, there was a silver necklace with a heart-shaped locket attached to it.
“Merry early Christmas, Mum,” Chloë said.
Chapter Four
It was safe to say that Chloë didn’t get any Ben & Jerry’s that evening.
Claudia had experienced a whole range of emotions upon her daughter’s
safe return. Anger at her daughter for running away, at herself for letting her go. Delight at seeing her back. But also a sadness. A guilt. Her little girl had just gone to get her a present. A pretty necklace with a little heart locket from Argos. The pride on her face when she’d run out of that shop towards her mother.
That was her secret. What she’d wanted to do. Why she’d wanted to go out. That was it.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” Chloë said as she spooned her chicken & mushroom soup into her mouth. Karen and Keith had moved onto another table to give them some space. Space was probably what they needed right now.
“You don’t have to keep apologising,” Claudia said, finishing off her own soup—tomato. “It’s done. Just don’t do anything that stupid again.”
Chloë swirled her spoon around the soup. Mumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” Claudia asked.
Chloë sighed. Puffed out her lips. “Nothing.”
“Anyway. It’s not Christmas for another couple of weeks yet. You had plenty of time between now and then to go find something.”
Chloë lifted her head from her soup and looked her mum directly in her eyes. “Mum, you know we might not be here at Christmas. We…we can’t wait when those creatures are outside. I just wanted…I wanted to give you that pretty necklace to…to say I love you and thank you.”
Claudia’s eyes welled up as she stared at the disappointed face of her girl. How could she be mad at her? How could she?
“It’s okay,” Claudia said, grabbing her daughter’s hand. Tears were flowing freely down her face now. “It’s okay. I…I’ve got it on, see?” She showed Chloë the necklace. “It looks very pretty, doesn’t it?”
Chloë smiled. “Very.”
Claudia smiled back at her. “You just got me scared, that’s all. One minute you were there, the next you were—”
“You know I can look after myself. I’m big enough to look after myself.”
Claudia melted a little bit more inside. “I…You’re tough. But you’re still my little girl. And you always will be. Okay?”