by Ryan Casey
Riley put an arm around Anna. His stomach churned as he did this. Wasn’t something he was entirely comfortable with. But it felt like the right thing to do. And one thing he’d learned about Anna over these last few weeks was that usually, the right thing was enough.
“Let’s just enjoy this moment,” Riley said, the boat swaying from side to side—he still noticed it, but less and less by the day.
“Oh, God,” Anna said. Her cheeks flushed. “Now you’re going all fucking Eckhart Tolle on me.”
“Born and raised on a diet of pulp thrillers and Dan Brown books.”
Anna sighed. She twiddled her heart-shaped locket again. “You’re right. Let’s just…take the time to sit here and enjoy Pedro’s crappy sailing.”
Riley felt Anna’s warmth beside him. He could hear her breathing, so close to his ear. He wanted to turn around and kiss her. He wanted to look her in the eyes and tell her that everything was going to be okay, or some cliché action movie star line like that.
The boat tilted to one side.
“Ow!” Riley said, smacking his head on the wood wall again. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to that fucking wall.”
Anna smiled. “Enjoy the moment,” she said, breaking into a small laugh. “Enjoy the moment.”
Riley gripped the baseball bat tightly in his hands. He had to grip it tightly. In case anything else came. In case anything else happened.
He watched the fire burn in front of him. Smelled the smoky twigs drifting in his direction in the breeze. It reminded him of sitting in front of the open log fire in his country home he’d lived in during his late teens. The amber glow of the flames flickering in front of him, toes curled up and escaping the cold of winter. He watched the flames flicker and he pictured himself being back there, back in that living room, back before the world fell to pieces.
He heard something up ahead. Something rustling in the trees. He gripped the baseball bat tighter. Tighter, in case it was a creature—or worse. He waited for a groan. Waited for the creature’s decaying form to light up in the glow of the fire.
He waited. Waited some more.
Nothing.
He exhaled. Let the shaky breath escape his lungs. He could feel it in his pocket still. The reminder. The reminder of all that had happened earlier that day. The reminder of what he’d done, what he’d become. Of why he was here now.
He let go of the baseball bat with his left hand and reached into his left pocket. He knew it was there—he could feel its sharp edge digging into his leg—but he wanted to see it. Wanted to remind himself. Of what had happened. Of what would always happen. Of the new world he lived in.
He pulled it out of his pocket and his stomach sank. It was almost as if he’d been expecting it not to be there, or something. But no. It was there. It was real. And it would be there for the rest of his life, constantly reminding him of what had happened. The way things were going to be from now on.
He thought about saying something. Of speaking a few words to it.
Instead, he wrapped his fingers over the cold, bloodstained heart-shaped locket, and over the silver chain of the necklace, and he gripped it tightly before stuffing it back into his pocket.
He wanted to go back. He wanted to revisit the memory of earlier today all over again.
Then he realised he didn’t have to. Because he’d never escape it, no matter how hard he tried.
He heard something up ahead. A rustle in the distance.
He gripped the baseball bat tightly.
Chapter One
The crowd gathered on the main road of Heathwaite’s had long ago disappeared. There was a breeze around the place. A calm—or a triumph—after the storm.
Except to Riley, the storm had only just started brewing, he knew that now.
“What are we supposed to do?” Anna asked, her voice shaky and uncertain.
Anna’s words vocalised Riley’s thoughts. He could hear laughter and applause. He knew that from the caravan people’s perspective, this was a great victory over the lone creatures and over Mike.
But Claudia. Chloë. They were nothing to do with Mike. This was a mistake. A huge mistake.
“We speak to Rodrigo,” Riley said as if it was the only answer. “We have to speak to him. He’s got this wrong—his men have got this wrong. Claudia, Chloë they…they must just’ve been out there. Out there surviving. They can’t—”
“Unless they were,” Anna said.
Riley looked at her. Her head was lowered. She’d gone a really pale shade.
“You’re saying they’re bad people? Fucked up people that do the sort of thing Mike’s men did to Rodrigo’s?”
“I’m saying they’re survivors who might’ve stumbled across another group. We don’t know this Mike. We don’t know how he works, only what others have told us. And there’s two sides to every story—not that I’m defending Mike. But Claudia and Chloë…they might not know what he’s capable of. They might not know a thing about him. How’s the face?”
Riley stared up the hill and towards the caravans. Just looking up there made him feel sick to the stomach now. As for his face—he’d mostly forgotten it after the beating at the hands of Dave. Because there was another beating surrounding him now. Knowing that they’d just restored the peace here and all of a sudden, everything had changed. “You’re probably right. But we don’t know for certain. All we can do is—is speak with Rodrigo. I really don’t see another option.”
“Well,” Anna said, pointing to the top of the stairs. “Looks like someone else got the news.”
Riley looked over at the steps to the Heathwaite’s Leisure Centre. Pedro was walking in their direction. Wide eyes, and a face almost as pale as Anna’s.
“You saw?”
Pedro nodded. “Through the window, bruv. Thought I was goin’ fuckin’ crackers at first. Thought I’d finally cracked. But it was them, weren’t it? It was actually them.”
Riley nodded. What else could he do? Claudia and Chloë were in Heathwaite’s. They were alive—which was a good, amazing, miracle of a thing—but they were in trouble. Rodrigo believed they were Mike’s recruits. And if they were, who knew what Mike had told them?
“They’re honest, that’s what counts,” Pedro said. “They’ll have seen us and as soon as Rodrigo gives ‘um a chance, they’ll tell the truth. They’ll tell him they know us.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Riley said.
“What do you mean?” Anna asked.
“What if Rodrigo gets the wrong end of the stick? What if he thinks we—we’re plants, or something? With what happened to Aaron, and then to Dave, and then the creatures following us back here. All I’m saying is maybe if they say they know us, Rodrigo might think we’re in on this in some way.”
Pedro was silent. So too was Anna.
Riley took this as a Yes, we agree, we really are in the shit here.
“So what do we do?” Anna asked.
Pedro didn’t answer. Which meant that the question was likely pointed at Riley. Old leadership shoes were growing around his feet once again.
“I’ll speak to Rodrigo before he speaks to Claudia and Chloë. I’ll be open and honest. He knows we were looking for two women, and he’ll put two and two together.” He remembered his conversation with Rodrigo earlier, or “Roger,” as he was really called. He was just a man trying his best to live up to his new identity. An honest, broken man, just like the rest of them.
“Well you better hurry, bruv,” Pedro said. “The longer Rodrigo thinks they’re Mike’s, the more bad stuff he’s gonna do.”
“But Chloë,” Anna said, her eyes watering. She dabbed them with the corners of her sleeves. “She’s just a girl. She’s just—”
“Human,” Riley said. “Like everybody. She’s grown up since these…these Dead Days started. So has everybody. And—and everybody knows that.”
“He’s right,” Pedro said. “It’s a brutal world now. No room for sympathy or what.”
Riley heard more voices up the hill. Chattering. Laughter. Gossip. A degree of normality returning all of a sudden.
“I’ll go. I’ll do it. You…you just make sure nothing—”
“We’ll go investigate,” Anna said. She half-smiled at Riley. Pedro sighed and nodded.
Riley had been about to say “make sure nothing bad happens to them.” He figured they’d worked the rest of his sentence out for themselves.
Riley walked up the road and up the hill. He walked past the caravans either side of him. He saw smiles. Smiles of children, smiles of old women. Smiles of volunteers who had been clearing out the creatures outside the fences.
The smiles of victory.
But Riley felt nothing but cold. Nothing but completely freezing as he approached the caravan at the top of the hill and on the right. He could see movement in there which could only mean one thing—Rodrigo was in his caravan.
His stomach tingled. He had to speak to him. He had to get it done with—fast.
As he walked over to Rodrigo’s caravan, he noticed a buzz to his left hand side. A sudden cluster of people. Some of them had anger on their faces as they crowded around the caravan. Some of them pointed at the caravan—men, women, children—shouting and pushing up to the van as close as they could. Around the caravan, there was a perimeter of people. They were all holding guns, stopping the crowd from progressing.
“Figured now would be the best time to let ‘em all in on what’s really going on round here.”
The voice came from Riley’s right. That strange, distinct American twang, it could only be one person.
Rodrigo.
He was standing on his steps. He had a big smile on his face. His breath clouded slowly from his nose, every breath controlled and satisfied.
“People were asking questions,” Rodrigo said, stepping further down the concrete steps and towards Riley. “I know I said I didn’t wanna scare them, but today was too…choreographed. And some of them knew what Mike was capable of anyway. Figured it was time to let ‘em all in on the truth. Especially with our new guests.”
“Rodrigo, I need to talk—”
“We all need to talk,” he said. He was right opposite Riley now, so close that Riley could smell the sickly sweet peppermint chewing gum on his breath. “We’ve all got questions for those women in there. And they’ll answer. Boy will they answer—”
“They might not be Mike’s,” Riley said, raising his voice but only loud enough for Rodrigo to hear.
Rodrigo frowned. “Whaddya mean they might not be Mike’s? My men saw them running out to a car we’ve confirmed as one of Mike’s regulars. The girl even shot at Paddy. And it looks like that mass of creatures was lured here by a load of meat on the road—meat on the road the women were running back down. So whaddya mean they aren’t—”
“Their names are Claudia and Chloë,” Riley said. Saying them out loud crystallised the reality of the situation—the dangerous fragility of it all. “They…they are the mother and the girl we were looking for back when we first got here. We were with them on the boat, and we were with them before the boat. They’re good people, I swear. And whatever they’ve got mixed up in, it’s an accident.”
Rodrigo didn’t reveal any emotion on his face. He just watched Riley. Stared at him closely as the mob surrounding the caravan grew louder and more excited.
Then, eventually, he spoke.
“Why didn’t you say anythin’ back at the fences?”
“I…I was shocked. I couldn’t—can’t believe they’re still alive, to be honest. And…well. What you said. About them being…being Mike’s. I guess I wanted to speak with you privately about it. Like this.”
Rodrigo nodded. Colour flushed his cheeks. His breaths were growing shorter. Less controlled. More agitated, just like the mob around the caravan.
“I don’t deny they might’ve got caught up in something,” Riley said. “But we need to hear them out. Hear what they have to say. Because I promise they—”
“Whatever they were, that doesn’t matter in this world. It’s what they are. You told me that yourself. But I’m glad you came to me one-on-one about this. What you have to realise Riley is…just look at these people.” He pointed at the mob around the caravan. Some of them cursed, right in front of their kids. One of said kids was throwing little stones at the caravan window, which was chipping on contact.
“They’ll understand. If I can speak to Claudia and Chloë—find out what they were doing out there, find out the truth, then we can work out the next step. Even if they were with Mike, think about it. They’re just survivors washed up on a beach and saved by another group. Just like us.”
Rodrigo blinked a little longer than he normally did at this remark. Clearly, the comparison to Mike and his group had hit a nerve. “You might trust these two. You might trust them, and think you know them, and whatever. But I don’t. I don’t, and my people don’t. You know what it looks like to us. It looks like we’ve caught two of Mike’s foot-soldiers—”
“She’s just a kid, for heaven’s sakes—”
“Which Mike has previous experience of utilising to his own interests. Like I say, you might trust them. But to us—to me—we’ve just stopped these fences falling right down. We’ve just foiled one of Mike’s attacks—an attack that must’ve been down to finding Stevie. No other way he’d flip. And we’ve got two of his again now. If he cares about them, I know what he’s like. He’ll hold off. They’re just what we need.”
Riley could see the sense in Rodrigo’s words. Having Claudia and Chloë here wasn’t such a bad thing. “But there’s better ways than keeping them prisoner,” Riley said. “Instead, we can just tell them the truth. About Mike. About—”
“One version of the truth against another. And after Dave—after Dave earlier today—how am I supposed to just let someone wander in here and trust them again?”
Riley’s body turned to jelly. Rodrigo’s trust had been stripped away. He was paranoid. Scared. Everything he promised he wouldn’t become. “Just let me speak to them. Before you do anything. Please.”
A moment’s pause. More shouting around the mob-crowded caravan. And then a nod from Rodrigo.
“You can speak to them. But let me get this straight Riley—the time for sittin’ back has ended. So when we get what info we can from them—if there’s a slightest indication that Mike gives a shit about them in any way—then we learn where we can hit Mike and we finish this once and for all. We cut all ties. And I mean all. That’s the only way we survive now.”
Riley didn’t like the tone in Rodrigo’s voice. He didn’t like the look in his eyes. “What does that mean, exactly? For Claudia? For Chloë?”
Rodrigo peered at Riley. “Just talk to them. Do what you have to do. But just remember the context here, Riley. Remember how this looks to me. From my perspective.”
Another pause.
“Peter,” Rodrigo shouted. He waved at one of the tall, bald men guarding the caravan.
“Yes, boss?”
“Let Riley in,” he said.
Most of the mob turned around. The guards looked on in amusement and bewilderment. “But I thought. I thought—”
“Let him in. Now.”
The mob parted. The guards stepped aside. Riley walked—or slumped—through the crowd, like he was doing some kind of walk-of-shame in P.E. class back in the day.
“Be careful,” Rodrigo called as Riley reached the frosted glass door of the caravan.
Riley grabbed the handle. Lowered it.
Be careful.
To everybody else, the words might just sound like a friendly warning, but Riley sensed—felt—the subtext beneath them. He felt it, and he knew
.
One way or another, this wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter Two
Although Riley had already seen Claudia and Chloë being pushed through the gates of Heathwaite’s Caravan Park, it took seeing them again in this mob-surrounded caravan to actually understand that yes, they were alive.
He stared at them as he closed the door of the caravan, the voices from the crowd dampening as he did. He’d been allowed to enter alone—where could he go, after all? And even if he did try to tell them something or other, what could he do? Nothing. He could only talk. That’s all he could do. And, when he thought about it, it’s all he wanted to do.
But what then?
He approached Claudia and Chloë. They were sitting on the floor underneath the glass drinks cabinet. Their arms were tied with handcuffs to the handles of the cabinets. Their mouths were sealed with duct tape, now.
Their eyes, though. Their eyes were clear. And the way they looked at Riley, filled with tears and bloodshot. They looked at him like he was a stranger.
He figured he was probably looking at them in a similar way, too.
After his beating, he probably didn’t look great, either.
The first thing he did was walk over to them, crouch in front of them, and grab the duct tape, first from Claudia’s mouth, then from her daughter’s. Both of them flinched back slightly as he reached out for them, their eyes wide, focused. When their mouths were free, still they didn’t say a word.
Neither could Riley, not at first.
Something hard clunked against the side of the caravan. Riley flinched. Another missile from the mob. They wanted Claudia and Chloë’s heads. They wanted their heads and they didn’t even know why. Because they had something to do with this “Mike,” who Rodrigo had finally created a negative picture of. And sure—Mike did sound like a terrible man, but Rodrigo’s move sounded more like the move of a man craving leadership approval than anything else.