by Rick Wood
Watching.
Waiting.
For the time to make the move.
To introduce myself.
And that time was almost near.
All that waiting.
Watching.
Witnessing.
I was time to make the introductions.
He had Cathryn, now it was time to acquire these two as well.
The time to step out of the shadows and appear as the saviour.
That time was arriving.
And it couldn’t arrive soon enough.
Book Three: After the Living Have Lost
Chapter One
Cia’s trainer, that was once white and was now a mixture of red and grey, lifts itself over a set of still stuttering lips; stuttering, of course, not because of breath that comes from life—but because of the gases released from the body after death.
She looks down at what she’s done.
The silent remains of mayhem.
Lives formed from fake liberty and ended in glorious decay.
Blood that had been splashed like scattered dust, released from bodies the world had already forgotten.
Her knees hit the floor and her head hits her hands.
Again?
All of this… again?
What happened to hope? Optimism? To grabbing a larger glass and filling it until it was half full?
She hates herself.
Except, she doesn’t.
She only wants to hate herself.
It was necessary.
But was it?
What is necessary anymore?
It is a different world. A different time. A time to celebrate the violent side of human nature, a time to dance upon the remnants of humanity.
Humanity had been a lie.
The end of the world had made that certain.
She has to push herself up. Take herself from her knees.
She has to find a way to her feet, regain her balance, and revive her muscles.
After all, it was her muscles that did this. How can they be so destructive one moment, then so lackadaisical the next?
“Nnnnnraaargh!”
She goes to scream no but doesn’t allow herself the luxury. Her wail turns into a moan, then she hates herself for moaning, so she morphs it into a defiant scream.
Defiant of what?
Her own actions?
Who has killed more—the monsters or her?
Don’t do that.
Don’t compare her to a monster.
To be a monster would be to remove responsibility.
To declare yourself a mindless killer, to claim a personality disorder or even psychopathy; those were the excuses society had used, once upon a time, to excuse people like her.
She says she did this to protect herself.
To protect Boy.
To keep them both from harm.
And she had brought yet more harm to others as a result.
It was, what, 2,000 in the Sanctity?
And she did away with Dalton soon after.
And now this…
She would like to say they didn’t deserve it, but no one deserves anything anymore.
Words like deserve and right and wrong are manmade.
And when man has fallen, those manmade declaratives are nothing but an aged ideology.
Once upon a time, mankind used god to explain the weather.
Once upon a time, mankind used demons to explain their actions,
And, once upon a time, mankind used words like right and wrong to try to bring some sense to senseless actions.
This isn’t one way or the other.
It just is.
And once she has wiped the blood from her face, she will walk on once more into this world and never look back.
After all, she doesn’t miss the father who had started this rage.
Maybe, someday, people will come to fear her as the fifth monster.
Then again, if someone saw the wreckage she was leaving, monster may not be strong enough.
THEN
Chapter Two
Ryker paused, taking a moment to regain his breath. Not that he needed to, the hill climb had done nothing to dent his stamina—but the girl was lagging far behind.
She was just a child, he reminded himself.
She was probably distressed from her ordeals, he reminded himself.
She would be useful to them, he insisted to himself.
“You all right?” he asked, though he didn’t really care.
She said nothing.
She had said nothing the entire time they had been travelling.
“It’s not far now,” Ryker said.
She paused, the wind pushing her off her stride. It wasn’t that windy, but she was tired and young and weak and for god’s sake why was he even bothering with her?
Because Arnold insisted.
They needed to the young.
Ideally female.
Ideally in peak condition.
She wasn’t old enough to bare child yet. They needed more children now, but with her they would have to wait.
Not long, he guessed. Her periods were bound to start soon.
But still too long for what the community needed.
Then again, Arnold wanted her for something else.
A child like her would be perfect for the event, and he couldn’t imagine Arnold being patient enough to wait for her reproductive organs to develop before using her such a task.
He looked over his shoulder. She was still struggling up the hill. Having been lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed just how long she was taking.
He waited and peered over the view. Looked over the world. Green fields next to wrecked farmhouses. Burnt-out buildings, but flourishing wildlife. It seemed that it was only what mankind had created that was destroyed. Nature was still the victor.
In the distance he heard a growl. Undoubtedly a Thoral.
He tried to see it. Strained.
And there it was, in the distance. Its giant body that didn’t look so giant from up on this hill shook the trees, their leaves quivering under the strain of its pounding footsteps.
Ryker looked beyond the Thoral, into the distance, to where a young woman was, along with the bizarre boy she insisted on dragging behind her.
He wondered if the Thoral would get to them before he did. It was unlikely - they were still quite a distance away from the creature, and with the sound it was making, they’d no doubt pick up on it and divert their course.
He’d been following this woman for a while.
He’d seen what she’d done.
How she’d pinned a guy to the floor by his feet and hands.
Took him to the point of death, then hid inside as she let the Masketes finish him.
It was brutal.
It was deplorable.
It was brilliant.
They were running out of warriors. They needed someone with this savage mentality and taste for war. They needed a woman like this.
Shame about the boy, though.
Arnold would not want the boy.
Ryker was sure he could dispose of the strange child before they arrived back at the community. There were plenty of places to lose him, and plenty of hungry monsters to devour his pointless little body. They’d console her, then give her the role she could so aptly fulfil.
The girl finally reached his side.
No matter how useless that boy seemed, he’d find it tough to be as pathetic as this girl.
Ryker tried not to look at her with disgust. He was physically fit; he knew that—but she was a joke. He was so used to being on his own, scavenging, only occasionally recruiting.
But when the event comes around and Arnold makes his choices, community members tend to deplete in numbers quickly.
All for a good cause, of course.
Ryker took a bottle of water from his bag—the heavy bag he was carrying, compared to the nothing the girl was struggling up the hill with. He unscrewed the top and
handed it to her.
She paused for a moment. Looked at it. Took it and gently sipped.
“Stop being so fucking dainty,” Ryker commanded. “It’s water, not whiskey. Drink it.”
She did as she was told, then handed the water bottle back.
“So you going to talk to me or what?” he said, then looked to the girl expectantly.
“What’s your name?” he tried.
She looked down.
“I’ve helped you, so talk to me. What’s your name?”
She looked at him, her eyes so weary, so scared.
“I said what’s your fucking name?”
“C—C—Cathryn.”
“See, how hard was that Cathryn? What’s your deal, then? Doubt you’d made it this long on your own. Not someone as out of shape and annoying as you are.”
She looked back at him with her wounded expression. Maybe he was being a little harsh.
“Right, fine, sorry, I’m not used to talking to people. Well, I am—just not irritating kids who don’t bloody talk. Where’s your mum?”
She looked down.
“Your dad?”
She wiped her eyes.
“Ah, right. Dead. Yeah? That right? They dead?”
She nodded without looking at him.
“Fuck.”
He took in a deep breath. Looked over the horizon once more. Knew that he should pretend to care, but let’s be honest—everyone had lost someone. No one left alive had been left alive without suffering death and loss. In this world, they needed to get over it, and get over it fast, before they became a burden.
Footsteps approached, and Ryker finally saw the man he was waiting for.
“Hello, Hades,” he said. “Which is a stupid name, by the way.”
“I know,” Hades replied, with a far more charming smile than Ryker’s grimace. “You tell me that every time I see you.”
“I mean, what, you the god of water or something? Seriously?”
“Hades was the god of underworld.”
“I don’t give a shit. This is Cathryn.”
Hades smiled at Cathryn. Cathryn blushed.
Damn, how this guy always seemed to charm everyone. Ryker could barely get a word out of the girl, now she was blushing at this charlatan.
“You not coming?” Hades asked.
“Why, you scared to be on your own?”
“It’s half a mile, I’ll be fine. Besides, Cathryn will protect me.”
He smiled at Cathryn. She blushed again.
This fucking guy.
“There’s someone I need to go back for.”
“Arnold didn’t want more kids.”
“This isn’t a kid. It’s a warrior.”
“A man?”
“Young woman.”
“Well, you do that. Come on, Cathryn.”
Hades held his hand out. Cathryn took it and strolled away from Ryker, staying close to Hades.
Ryker sometimes wished he had Hades’ charm. Then he realised it would mean becoming a weak little prick like him, and decided he was far happier being who he was.
He needed to control his temper, though. Cathryn had wound him up, but he had a feeling he would need to be far nicer to coerce this woman to come.
He put on his smile.
Put on his nice voice.
Removed the curse words.
And began his descent down the hill.
Chapter Three
They were having a rest for Boy to eat some fruit, or so Cia had told him.
He sat peacefully, a few paces away, mindlessly scoffing a collection of grapes and apples that she had recently acquired.
This allowed Cia to have her breakdown without him watching.
She didn’t know what it was, nor did she understand it, or want it—but it kept happening. Sometimes every few days, and sometimes every few hours. And now, it was as bad as it ever had been.
It had only started a few weeks ago.
Back when she had…
Dalton appeared before her and, even though she knew he wasn’t there, she reached for him, swiping her hand through the man she had fallen in love with and forced to murder for the safety of her and Boy.
She was being smothered.
She wasn’t—she was just sitting there, on a log, staring at an absent body, staring back at her. Yet it felt like a pillow was being held over her face, pushing down on her, squashing her breath. She panicked, despite there being nothing to panic for. She’d checked their surroundings. The tremble of a Thoral had passed, but it had been distant, and the ground had only shaken rather than seized.
But now she shook. Now she seized. She lifted her arms to head height, staring as they helplessly trembled, quivering and shivering and shaking and rocking and why are they doing that…
She tried stiffening them, but her shortness of breath caught her once more.
Boy had nearly finished his lunch, and she needed to regain control.
Was this because of what happened with Dalton? What she’d had to do to him?
Or was this because of what happened before? When she let monsters free to slaughter the sick and twisted minds of the sanctity—including her neglectful father?
Or was this because she was a bad person? Had these things turned her evil and this was her comeuppance?
But she had to remind herself: evil doesn’t exist anymore.
There were no rules in place to dictate who one should and shouldn’t kill, what one shouldn’t steal, or what one should find ethical or corrupt. Laws had disappeared with most of the human race, leaving just as quickly as the minds who thought it up.
And now it was her. Sat on a log. Her heart bursting against the constraints of her chest.
A trickle of sweat trickled down her forehead and dropped into her eye.
She was freezing.
Cold, yet fiercely hot.
Empty, yet heavy and slow.
She went to stand and fell, collapsed to her knees, her hands landing in thick mud.
Funny, she used to care about things like mud. She used to hate getting mud on her hands or her clothes. She’d get a spec of dirt on her and have to go wash it off.
Now filth was a part of life. Wearing dirty clothes and washing sporadically. Living in the outdoors where flies would swarm around her face and she wouldn’t even notice them.
Boy finished. Turned toward her.
She willed her breathing to return. She wheezed like the broken squeaker of a toy, coughed like there was something to cough up.
“Rosy?” Boy asked.
Sweet Boy. So wonderful, yet so unable to understand. If society was still intact, they would diagnose him with autism. They would claim he had a problem.
To her, he did not have a problem. If anything, his mind was more advanced than everyone else’s. The things he could remember, recite and recall were beyond amazing; to her, it was everyone else’s minds that were yet to evolve to the brilliance of his.
She raised an arm, presented a hand, and the arm fell just as quick.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
He wouldn’t know whether she meant it. He had no perception of subtext. If she said she was fine, she was fine—and his confusion came from how she did not seem fine. And she could see in his face how that confusion created such anxiety, that lack of ability to recognise what was going on when words and actions contradicted so much.
She closed her eyes. Forgot about the world for a moment. Pushed Dalton from before her, allowed herself to breathe; forced herself to breathe.
In time, her heart slowed down, her sweating lessened, and her body’s shaking turned from a furious shudder to a mild wobble.
She opened her eyes and Boy was next to her. His hand on her back.
“It’s okay,” she told him. She had to keep him calm, even if she couldn’t keep herself calm.
She pushed herself to her feet. Gave him a smile and pretended to mean it.
“Did you have your lunch?” she asked.
Boy nodded.
“Was it nice?”
Boy nodded again.
“Which was your favourite fruit?”
“Grapes.”
What she’d do for some grapes. She hadn’t eaten properly in so long. They hadn’t enough food to keep both of them fit and healthy.
They’d survived years together, but she wasn’t sure how many more weeks they’d manage. All supermarkets had been ransacked and emptied of most of their contents, and what hadn’t been looted was now covered in mould. They could pick some fruit, but even plants and trees with ripe food were dying with no one to take care of them.
She did not know how they would survive much longer.
She took his hand. He knew none of this. He didn’t need to.
They had always found a way.
They just had to keep moving. What they were moving toward, and what she was moving from, she didn’t know. It just felt like they needed to keep walking. Try to find somewhere that food would be easier to come by.
Even though that place would not exist.
“Let’s go find somewhere to sleep for the night,” she said, and led him forward.
She did not want Boy to have to suffer, but she was wondering how she could prevent that much longer.
She willed her mind to be quiet, as impossible as that was, and walked on.
That’s when Cia heard it. The crunching of leaves, the unmistakable sound of breathing.
She kept walking, but also kept listening.
Getting ready.
They were not alone.
Chapter Four
Their tracks weren’t tough to follow. Wide strides of a smaller foot followed smaller steps of a longer shoe. Like she was marching forward, and he was always shuffling behind.
Such a liability.
Why did she bother?
Why risk her survival for him?
Ryker paused behind a tree and watched. The boy shovelled down fruit like it was the only thing left in the world.
And she was… well, Ryker wasn’t sure.
She was sat on a log, staring wide eyed at the ground, rocking, shaking, unnoticed by the boy smearing grape juice all over his face.
He watched her intently, peering at her like she was a specimen beneath a microscope, and he was trying to learn what she was. Like she was a newly found amoeba, and he was studying her actions, deciphering what her actions meant.