by Ryan Casey
When I looked up at him, I saw he had that wry smile on his face like he knew he was in the ascendancy after all.
“See, that’s your problem,” Garry said, looming large over me, gun in hand. “You pretend you’re strong. You try to convince yourself you’re some kind of warrior; some kind of fighter. But you are not.”
He threw my knife aside, and before I had the time to process what was happening, he sent a piledriver right across my face.
I slammed back into the dirt. I could taste blood building in the back of my mouth. Broken teeth chipped against my tongue. If I weren’t careful, I’d choke on it.
I tried to get back up. I could see the rest of my people were on their knees now, too. Jenny. Sue’s children. Haz. Hannah.
I looked over at Hannah through my bruised, squinting eyes, and I saw her looking back at me with fear. And that look in her eyes terrified me because it looked to me like a loss of hope. A surrender to other people; people who were stronger than us. People who were willing to do the things that we weren’t willing to do.
I wasn’t able to look at Hannah much longer because I felt a boot crack against my face, and I went flying back into the squelchy, wet mud.
My ears rang. Pain crippled my face. All I could taste was blood, and all I could see was the blurry silhouette of Garry, who was above me.
He leaned in towards me, then wrapped his hands around my neck.
“The thing about you is, you might think you can step up and be a leader. You might think you have it in you to do all the nasty, awful things this world requires. But believe me, you do not. And I’m gonna kill you with my bare hands. Believe me, I am. But only after I’ve made you watch me and my people take your friends out, one by one. Let’s see how much faith they have in their leader when you’re made to watch them die, hmm?”
Your friends.
He tightened his hands around my neck, and I felt my consciousness waning right away. I struggled to breathe, battled to inhale, to exhale.
But his hands just kept getting tighter.
He smirked at me, and I saw the beast behind his eyes. Really, that’s all this man was. He’d been a beast before the power went out, and he was a beast now the power had gone out. Only the world was a playground for beasts like him, now. They were the ones at the top of the food chain. They were the ones to fear.
He pulled his hands away, and I gasped for dear life.
He didn’t give me long.
He punched me again, this time hard enough to make me black out for a few seconds. I knew I’d blacked out because the next thing I knew, he was a few metres away from me, walking over to my friends, gun in hand.
“So who shall we go for first?” Garry said. He looked along the line, all of them kneeling. “How about this one?”
He pointed at Haz.
I felt my chest tense up.
Then he lowered the gun, moved further along the line.
“Or maybe this one. Maybe this little girl here.”
“Please,” Hannah said.
He turned to Hannah then. He walked over to her, looked right down at her.
“What did you just say?”
“I said please,” she said. “Don’t hurt the children. Anyone but them. Please.”
Garry paused for a few seconds. “That’s interesting,” he said. “You know, last time we met, I didn’t quite finish with you. I think we should catch up. Continue where we left off. How’s that sound, hmm?”
He nodded at his people.
All of them kicked down my friends.
All of them but Hannah.
Garry grabbed her by the hair. He dragged her towards me, then he threw her to her knees, right in front of me.
“You’ll look into her eyes,” Garry said. “When this happens, you’ll look right into her eyes.”
I felt helpless as tears streamed down Hannah’s face.
I felt weak like I couldn’t do a thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
But right away when I said that word, “sorry,” I knew it wasn’t enough.
Garry crouched down towards Hannah.
“You’ll watch her—”
He didn’t say another word. And it didn’t click properly at first, not even though I’d been the one to stop him speaking.
I’d punched him in the face as hard as I could.
He held his cheek. Then he looked back at me, slightly alarmed.
“What did you just—”
I punched him again.
Even though I was weak, worn down, broken and bruised, I kept on punching back, kept on fighting. I could see my people struggling with the rest of Garry’s people, who clearly didn’t know how to control the situation.
When I’d punched and kicked at Garry again, I scrambled for the knife of mine he’d thrown down, which was just metres from me.
I wrapped my hand around it.
Garry stamped on my hand.
He looked down at me, and he smiled, gun pointing down at me. But this time, his smile had nothing in it but pure malice. Like he was going to enjoy what he was about to do.
But I didn’t feel fear. Not anymore.
I just felt…
“Garry. One of them’s…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what one of Garry’s people said.
I just saw a window of opportunity—a window where I had no choice but to act—and I exploited it.
I punched Garry between the legs with my free hand. Hard.
The punch made him slip off my hand.
I scrambled for the blade.
Wrapped my hands around it.
Then before Garry could punch at me again, I stabbed it through his shoulder.
The cry of pain was instant. I felt a hot splatter of blood cover me as Garry dropped the gun instinctively and tried to yank the blade from his body.
But I was pushing. Hard, now.
I felt no shame.
I felt no fear.
Only justice.
I was on my feet, now. I was weak, but I was standing. Over the top of Garry, I could see my people still on their knees. But the other prisoners weren’t looking at them. They weren’t doing anything.
They were just looking over at me and Garry with shock.
I looked into Garry’s eyes. And from the way he was looking at me, as I pulled out the knife, I knew I had that same look I’d seen in his eyes.
That animalistic look.
“You’re wrong,” I said.
Then I slammed the blade into the middle of his chest.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my people safe.”
He coughed up blood. He spluttered. He took a weak swing at me, then just fell to his knees.
When he’d fallen, he looked up at me, blood rolling down his chin.
“You’ll live with this,” he muttered. “You’ll… you’ll live with this forever.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But you won’t.”
Then I took a final swing with the knife, and I ended Garry’s life, right there.
Silence followed. The wind brushed through the grounds. Nobody said a word.
Garry’s people looked on, stunned.
“Well?” I said. “Do you want the same thing to happen to you?”
They looked at one another like they were plotting a move in retaliation.
Then, at the same time, all of them turned around, and all of them ran.
I hobbled over to Hannah. I held out a hand, helped her back to her feet.
“Scott, you don’t look good.”
I ignored her, and I made my way over to Sue’s side.
I dropped beside her and looked down into her open eyes.
Then I put a hand on her stomach, which was still warm.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I went to close her eyes.
“I’m—”
I felt myself dizzying. I felt myself losing consciousness.
But in my last moments, I swore I saw Sue open
her eyes, and heard her splutter…
Chapter Forty-Five
“Do you think we’ll ever live in a normal world again?”
When I heard Holly’s words, all I could do was look at her and smile, like her question was about something fantastical, like Santa Claus or tooth fairies. And the only way I could act was by delivering the same kind of answer as I did about those two topics, too. “Maybe. If you behave well for your mum.”
Holly tilted her head like she was considering what I was saying.
I looked ahead of me, out of the window of the house where we were staying. We’d been walking for a week since the incident with Garry, and eventually, we’d found a home in the suburbs that was empty and had a few supplies left.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a permanent setup. Soon, we would have to move on because nowhere and nothing was permanent now.
Our lives were just jumping from one safe place to the next. Or at least, one place with the illusion of safety to the next.
And there was no other way about it.
I stood up when I saw Sue walking into the room. She was holding her son’s hand. It was a miracle she’d survived at all after Garry stabbed her and she’d fallen unconscious. I was so convinced she was dead that I’d gone to close her eyes, only for her to cough up blood and splutter back to life.
Her survival was a miracle, especially with the lack of sanitation. But Sue was wrong when she said she wasn’t a survivor. She was. And this was proof.
We’d all pulled together. We’d all fought to keep her alive.
And here she was, still here for her children, still here for the group.
“All okay downstairs?” I asked.
Sue nodded and smiled. “All good.”
I nodded back at her, then walked past her, heading towards the landing area and down the stairs.
“Scott?”
I turned back.
Sue looked at me closely, intently. “I never thanked you.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“For killing the man who killed their father. Thank you.”
Sue’s words were said with such gratitude, so much so that they made the hairs on my arms stand on end. After all, she was talking about someone’s death. A death that I had been responsible for and not the first.
But similarly, I sensed a strength building in Sue, as she stood beside her two children, united, together, alive.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I said.
The scary thing?
I said those words with complete honesty.
I walked down the landing area, down towards the lounge. On my way, I saw Remy in his room. He looked at me, nodded his head, and I nodded right back at him.
“How’s the face?” he asked.
“Still sore,” I said. “Still a tooth or two short. But I’ll live.”
He nodded again, with absolute seriousness. “That’s a good thing. Really.”
As I made my way downstairs, towards the kitchen, I could smell the food coming from the stove already. It was a portable stove, which meant we were technically only cooking things the way we cooked them outside. But there was something about a home that made the whole experience completely different. Something about being inside that really made me and all of us feel… well. A degree of normality that was otherwise robbed from us by this world.
When I got to the kitchen, I saw Jenny and Haz sitting at the table, Haz practically salivating—over the food or Jenny, I couldn’t be certain.
Standing over the stove, Hannah.
She looked around at me and smiled right away. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Where else would I be?”
“When there’s food around? Yep. I supposed you’ve got me.”
Lionel came running at me. I ruffled his fur, tickled his back, which he always loved. Then I took a seat near Haz and Jenny. “How’re we for water?”
Haz tilted his head to one side. “We’ve been better. But we can head for a stream just down the road later. Check this out I’ve made.”
Has had made a filter using a plastic bottle, a coffee filter, some charcoal, sand, and gravel. The idea was to filter the water through several natural layers before boiling to totally clean it. I was still amazed at Haz’s level of knowledge. It was really quite something.
“You know, I’ll never know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Retain all this useless information.”
He chuckled. Jenny laughed, too.
“Not so useless now, though, is it?” he asked.
I smiled back. “I guess not.”
I sat there a little longer, and I watched Hannah make the food. She turned around a couple of times, smiled at me. And every time she did that, I felt like I really could move on. Like I didn’t have to stay stuck in the past. Like I could honour Harriet’s wishes after all and fall for someone new.
But falling for someone had its dangers, too. Namely the fact that we’d opted for survival, constantly on the move, ahead of searching for some kind of hypothetical extraction point that probably didn’t even exist. That had put us at an advantage.
It was a tough pill to swallow. But swallow it, we had to.
We all sat at the table an hour or so later and tucked into the rabbit stew, the rabbits of which we’d caught ourselves. And as the sun set, I didn’t feel fear anymore. I didn’t feel helpless. I felt more together with other people than I’d ever done before.
“I like it here,” Hannah said when we were tucking into the last of our meal.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
“Do you think maybe… maybe we’ll be able to stay here?”
I sighed and half-smiled. I had to be real. “No. I don’t. Because I think the second we believe that’s possible, we put ourselves at a disadvantage.”
She looked back at me as if the moment’s fantasy had gone, evaporated, in an instant. “Cheers, killjoy.”
I raised a glass of wine and chinked hers. “My pleasure.”
We joked about it, but we knew it was true. Soon, we would move on from this place. We would hunt. We would find water. We would scavenge, and we would do all kinds of uncomfortable things, all because we wanted one thing more than anything—to survive.
But we would never forget our humanity.
As difficult as it was to cling onto your morals when you had killed people… when the images wouldn’t stop flashing in your mind… I kept on praying that I’d be able to hold on to that humanity and morality forever.
“I just thought of something,” Hannah said.
“And what’s that?” I asked, growing more intoxicated by the wine, more drawn towards her, more tempted by that voice in my head to make my move and have no regrets.
She smiled back at me. “When my Kindle lost charge. I just realised had a paperback book packed all along.”
She laughed, and I laughed too. And then I heard Haz and Jenny start to laugh, and before I knew it everyone was in this kitchen, all of us smiling, all of us laughing, all of us together.
Because that’s what we were now. Together.
And that’s who we were now.
We were the survivors.
And we were going to make this world work in our favour. No matter what it took.
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended
by the author. Any reference to real locations is only for atmospheric effect, and in no way truly represents those locations.
Copyright © 2017 by Ryan Casey
Cover design by Damonza
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Published by Higher Bank Books