by Ryan Casey
“Then why not today?”
Danny’s eyes twitched. Alan was looking right into them now. Standing up to him. Belittling his authority. Questioning his methods in front of others.
He couldn’t go getting ideas above his station.
He felt a quivering sensation creep up his neck when he remembered his twenties. The times he’d been convinced people were working against him, out to get him. The days when he’d suffered from paranoia. He’d learned that the only way to get the upper hand over people in this dog-eat-dog world was to make an example of them. This wasn’t a world for people who played nice. Who followed the rules. Truthfully, it never had been.
Danny patted Alan on the shoulder. “Because we’ve got more work to do before we–”
“I know what this is about. That woman. The one who took you down. And the guys and little girl with her. You’re still thinking about them. Aren’t you?”
Alan’s frankness took Danny back again. He wasn’t expecting him to be so straight. But Alan was right. As much as Danny didn’t like to admit it, Alan was right.
Danny’s hunting instincts were taking over.
The people that’d stood against him. The people including his prisoner, Andy.
But mostly the man that’d faced him and been willing to die if it meant protecting his daughter, his mutt.
Danny was supposed to have killed him. He was supposed to have fun with him.
But he’d been denied that moment.
And for that reason, he wanted more than ever to go after them.
“You think you’ve got things in order,” Alan said. “You think you’re all sound, up there.” He tapped the side of his head. “But you’re not, Danny. You’re not. And I see it in your eyes. You’re gonna bring us all down. The whole lot of us. And I’m not gonna stand by and let that happen.”
Danny felt deflated about Alan’s stance. He allowed himself a moment to feel sorry for himself. For Alan.
And for what he was about to do.
Then he sighed, glanced and nodded at Bobbi and Sarah.
They stepped up behind Alan and grabbed both of his arms.
“Wait. What’re you—”
“You’ve been a problem for a long time, Alan.”
“What the hell do you think you’re—”
“I tried to give you chances. Opportunities. I tried to give you the time to see why we do what we do.”
“You’re insane. You’re a monster.”
“And maybe so,” Danny said. “But right now, it’s time you were made an example of.”
Danny nodded at Bobbi.
Bobbi pulled out his knife and pressed it against Alan’s chest.
So too did Sarah.
Danny looked away.
He heard the sounds. Heard the struggling. Heard the crying out in agony. But he didn’t look. He couldn’t watch poor Alan get stabbed to death. He’d been one of them, once. And for that, he deserved respect. Total dignity in death.
When Danny was sure the deed was done, he walked over to Alan, who was gargling blood.
He put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in his eyes, the blood from his torso splashing onto Danny.
“Sleep well, my friend. Some of us have a long, long day tomorrow. And we’re going to need our energy.”
Danny looked down at Alan’s body and as the life faded from him, he didn’t see a man anymore.
Just food.
Meat.
Then he looked back over at the open gate.
Tomorrow, he was going to go after the people who’d defied him.
Tomorrow, he was going to hunt them down.
Because he knew exactly where they were heading.
He smiled as his old friend exhaled one final pained breath.
Chapter Eighteen
Waking up outside the walls was one of the most terrifying sensations I’d had in a long, long time.
I jolted upright. The sun brightly peeped through the trees, which were losing their leaves. There were so many of them all around me. Everywhere I looked, I felt like someone was behind them, watching me. I could hear movement too. The wind blowing the leaves. Birds singing. My own gasping.
I tasted sick and I looked to my left.
Olivia had fallen asleep beside me.
Olivia had…
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Olivia was still there. She lay flat on the floor of the forest, my coat draped over her. I hadn’t had chance to grab a wool blanket on my way out of Heathlock. It sure would’ve come in handy right now. But still, on we had to go. My teeth were chattering. I felt like I had a film of frost covering me, and that it’d take a long time for it to defrost.
But Olivia was here. She was fine—as far as I was aware. That was the main thing.
I leaned over to her and checked she was breathing. She was, thank God. Snoring lightly.
I wanted to brush her hair from her face, but I knew my fingers were freezing. I didn’t want to wake her. Because in all honesty, I didn’t know how much sleep we were all going to get out here. I didn’t know what lay around each corner. How could I?
I sat back up as quietly as I could and looked to my right. In the near distance, I could see Kesha and Andy sitting around a smoky fire. Bouncer was by their side, trying to steal whatever food they’d caught. I smelled burning meat and it knocked me sick, but I knew I had to get something down me. I had a long journey ahead.
I stood up and walked over to them, my head aching. I can’t have got much sleep. And what I did get was hardly quality sleep. I kept on waking up, which was to be forgiven, I suppose. I kept on having dreams that I was back at Heathlock and I was trapped. Trapped by those savages. Trapped by the cannibals led by the man with the burned face, Danny.
There was another dream, too. My wife, Kerry, was in that dream. Only I couldn’t make out her face properly, or hear what she was saying. It felt like she was far away. Far, far away. So far that making contact with her again was out of the question.
“Morning, sleepyhead. Sweet dreams?”
I shrugged as Kesha stoked the flames of the fire. Atop it, on a makeshift skewer, what looked like a squirrel was roasting away.
“It’s not quite what we’re used to behind the walls. But hey. Everyone loves a camping trip from time to time, don’t they?”
“I’m not—”
“Not eating’s out of the question. Eat up. We’ve got a long day ahead. A long few days. And we’ve no idea when our next meals are going to be.”
The reality of our situation was getting rapidly more evident by the second, and harrowing. We were outsiders again. And in a way, it made me understand that we always had been that way, really. We might’ve had the illusions of homes and jobs to support us. But in reality, we didn’t have a thing. They were just illusions. It didn’t take a lot to take that supporting framework away, sending our lives shattering around us.
Those foundations were even weaker now we were living in the real world again. The world without structures. The world without things to fall back on.
The real world.
“Been chatting to Andy here about the plan,” Kesha said, as she chewed down on some of the squirrel’s flesh. “While you’ve been catching Zs, Andy’s been a whole lot more open.”
I stroked Bouncer’s head as he sat beside me, much more eager for squirrel than I was. “Is that so?”
Andy nodded. He didn’t look fazed by the squirrel. Probably out here long enough that squirrel was just normality to him. Or at least anything was better than being forced to eat human flesh. “Look. Back at Heathlock. I… We all said some things—”
“And you have to understand why those things were said,” I said.
“I do. I get why you were mad. Both of you. But you have to see things from my point of view, too. I want to get back to my camp just as much as you do. I had to make sure I could trust you.”
“Well now you don’t have much of a choice, why don’t you give us an idea what we’
re working towards?”
“Carlisle,” Kesha said.
“Huh?”
“Carlisle’s where our camp is,” Andy said. “It’s a good forty hours walk from here, so we’ve got some travelling on our hands. But if we’re lucky— if we’re really lucky—we can make it.”
“Forty hours.” I looked over at Olivia, who was still sleeping. “It’s doable. But if we’re talking that kind of distance, why are you so worried about Danny’s group chasing us?”
Andy glanced away. I sensed a whole load of evasiveness at that moment.
“What’re you not telling us?”
“Look, Danny’s group are bigger than you think. They aren’t just Danny. They’re… They have vehicles. Vehicles that work, somehow. Vehicles that make the whole distance thing a lot easier for them. And they have people all over. It’s like they’ve got a way of communicating, I dunno.”
“It’s possible they have working long range portable walkie talkies,” I said. “If they kept them in a non-conductive metal before the blackout. The idea is no part of the walkie talkie is exposed. The pulse enters the foil and dissipates around it, not affecting the electronics. A DIY Faraday cage, basically.”
“Clever clogs. Then maybe that’s it. But even so, they just have a way of finding people. Of closing in when you least expect it. That’s what scares me. Besides. It’s not just them we have to worry about out here.”
I looked around at the vast expanse of the woods. I felt totally, utterly alone out here. Out of my comfort zone. Out of my depth. Andy was right. There wasn’t just Danny’s group to worry about. There were other dangers, too. And not all of them were human. There was infection. Starvation. Dehydration. Exhaustion.
The whole world had it in for us. And we were playing with it. Toying with it, dangerously.
Kesha sucked some of the squirrel flesh from the bone. “Whether Danny has people out here or not, the truth is, we’ve gotta get moving.”
She handed me some squirrel, which Bouncer’s nose followed like a radar.
“So you eat up. You get ready. And then you wake your daughter and we get moving.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I didn’t want to do this. I wasn’t ready to be what this world wanted me to be.
But my wife was out there.
Forty hours away, my wife waited.
I went to take the piece of squirrel, and Andy interrupted.
“I haven’t been back to camp in a long time,” he said. “I can’t even know if… if…”
He didn’t have to continue. I knew from the look in his eyes what he was saying.
He didn’t even know for certain if Kerry was still alive.
I picked off a piece of the squirrel. The fattiest, juiciest bit.
Then I took a deep breath.
“We don’t know. We can’t know these things. Not for certain. But there’s only one way to find out.”
I stuffed the squirrel in my mouth and chewed down on my first meal as a wanderer again.
If only I knew what lay ahead…
Chapter Nineteen
It was the following afternoon when things started to take a turn for the worse.
We’d walked a good distance of our journey, and things had gone fine so far. Worryingly fine. We hadn’t bumped into anyone in the forests. We hadn’t seen any signs of threats. We’d caught food; we’d stayed hydrated. We’d even found a nice shallow lake to bathe in. Olivia didn’t seem to be taking the travelling too bad, either. In fact, she seemed like she was enjoying the adventure of it all.
The blissful naivety of youth was a wonderful thing.
It was a beautiful day. Considering autumn was in full flow, it wasn’t particularly cool today. I’d told Olivia she could wear my coat if she wanted, but she’d given it me back, and I was carrying it instead of wearing it. Bouncer was enjoying running alongside us, something we had to keep an eye on so that he didn’t draw too much attention to himself, and in turn to us.
But it’d been so long since we’d bumped into anyone, crossed anyone’s path, that we were letting our guard down. For better or for worse.
“You know, it’s funny,” Andy said.
I looked at him. He was walking beside me, Kesha slightly up ahead. I’d only just realised I was next to Andy, in truth. When I did talk, I spoke to Olivia. Andy and I hadn’t really got to know each other. After all, how could you make small talk with the man who was seeing your ex?
“What’s funny?” I asked. “’Cause I don’t see a whole lot of funny around here.”
“Kerry,” Andy said, smiling. “She said you seemed more at home in the great outdoors than you did cooped up inside. You don’t seem too comfortable right now.”
Whenever Andy brought Kerry up—and especially whenever he brought Kerry talking about me up—it felt like I was being drawn into some strange alternate universe where life had been going on without me, and that I’d woken up from a coma, left behind by the world. “Yeah, well. This isn’t exactly the great outdoors.”
“She said you were good with stuff.”
“Good with stuff?”
“Like, survivalism. That kind of thing.”
“Did Kerry and you talk about me a lot?”
“Have to admit, it got me kind of jealous. It was like she was trying to relive every moment you two had together, good and bad, and I was just there to hear her out. But she’s a good woman. And you guys had something special. Memories are there to be cherished.”
“Are you talking about Mum?”
I looked around and my mouth went dry. Shit. I’d spoken about Kerry in front of Olivia. I didn’t want her to know her mum might still be out there, because I didn’t want to destroy her hope if something had happened. I’m not sure a child could ever get through a thing like that. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get through a thing like that.
“Oh. Yeah. Andy, um…”
“I knew your mum, once.”
Shit. Andy was opening his big mouth. I had to—
“Before the collapse. We were old friends.”
“School friends?”
Andy smiled. “Something like that.”
I looked at Andy, appreciative that he’d helped me out. He nodded back at me. He didn’t have to understand why I didn’t want to tell Olivia the whole truth yet. If he were ever a father, he would just get it.
“Did you ever—”
“Ssh.”
Kesha’s voice broke the conversation. When I turned around, faced forward, Kesha was standing completely still. She was looking ahead into the trees in front.
“You okay?”
“You hear that?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Hear what?”
Kesha didn’t respond. She just went quiet. Totally quiet.
Then she shook her head. “Must’ve just been me. Come on. Let’s keep going.”
By the time we kept moving, descending into some thicker, darker woods, I forgot what I was about to ask Andy before. We had small talk. The usual chitchat about the weather, about various devices and contraptions we knew about. Andy had spent a lot of time in the wild. I knew a thing or two about survival, but he was full of tricks. He taught me some off the wall survivalist methods, like tampon fishing. A tampon has four parts—a tube, cotton, string, and an airtight wrapper. For a quick fishing bobber, Andy told me to open the wrapper at one end, take out the tampon and then tie the wrapper closed with a bubble of air inside. Now you can tie the bobber to a fishing line and just leave it there. Besides, the cotton makes great tinder for a fire or a good filter for drinking sediment-heavy water. And in the worst case scenario, it made a good bandage for minor cuts.
Hell. Maybe I’d bring my tampons along the next time the world ended.
He’d also told me about a makeshift weapon I could create, which would very much come in handy. Basically, you mix some Scotch Bonnet peppers with a quarter of a bottle of the strongest alcohol you could find. Everclear worked best, but with importing of the 95%
alcohol being banned in the UK, you had to settle for something a bit more tame. Anyway, the trick was to mix about eight peppers together as well as you could and then set aside for a week. After that week, give it another mix and you’ve created a lethal pepper spray. One that could have dramatic effects on the eyes and the respiratory system.
However, with the availability of peppers being limited by circumstances, Andy recommended some good old fashioned wasp spray. Enough to blind an attacker in an instant, and possibly kill them, eventually. Which was a shame, because as far as I was concerned, they were better used on wasps. Those evil little things.
And as he told me these tricks, I realised why Kerry had fallen for him.
It was a bitter realisation. But Andy wasn’t all that different from me, and I wasn’t all that different from him.
Only Andy knew what he had to become to survive in this world.
Andy was willing to make the difficult calls.
Whereas I was still too afraid to face up to reality.
I always had been too afraid to fight for what I loved.
“If we do get back there,” Andy said. “We need to talk about… Well. Our situation. With Kerry.”
I frowned. I hadn’t actually thought of that. I’d been taking it for granted that Kerry would just take me back. But we’d separated. Sure, there was always going to be an element of love there, but we were over, before the world collapsed. Besides, Kesha was with me now.
“I guess that’s Kerry’s decision to—”
“Stop.”
I heard Kesha’s voice again. Only this time, she sounded more concerned. More troubled.
When I looked ahead, I saw her standing between two trees. The evergreen canopy covered my view. But Kesha had seen something.
“What is it?”
Kesha looked back. “Olivia, darling. You might want to cover your eyes.”
Then, Kesha stepped aside.
When I saw what was on the ground in front of her, I felt fear.
Real, undiluted fear.
Chapter Twenty