by Ryan Casey
The second he laughed, Colin turned to him.
He clearly didn’t like the piss being taken out of him. But that look in his eyes right now… it was like this was the final straw. Like this was the thing that truly snapped him.
So he stepped towards Benny and pressed the knife to his neck.
“Whoa!” Kumal said. Gina covered her mouth with her hands. Harriet looked rattled. Even Colin’s mates didn’t look impressed.
“What did you say, Belly? Huh? Did you have something to say right then?”
Benny pushed Colin back, but Colin kept the knife pressed to his neck.
“Come on, Col,” Frank said, one of Colin’s mates. “Just get the prick’s bag and be done with it.”
But Colin didn’t look like he was snapping out of his trance. He didn’t look like he was letting go.
“No,” he said. “I wanna hear it from Big Belly himself. What did you say just then? What did you find funny? Huh?”
Holly wanted Benny to just apologise. To just do whatever Colin wanted to calm him down. That was the only way out of this situation, after all. No more antagonising. Just de-escalation, pure and simple.
But something else happened.
Something Holly wasn’t expecting.
Something that showed the new world order had clearly changed.
Benny stood his ground, looking Colin right in the eye. “I laughed at what Harriet said. Because it’s true. You’re a loser. And you won’t last a frigging minute in this world, mate.”
Colin stood there, totally still. His reactions were impossible to read. Everyone was silent.
And then Colin did something, finally.
He pushed Benny away.
He looked over at Holly. His eyes were glazed over. His cheeks were still flushed, like he was embarrassed at his feelings being exposed.
Benny brushed himself down. Looked over at Holly.
And Holly saw something across his face, then.
The same thing she saw in Colin’s.
Admiration.
She felt warmth inside as he smiled at her. And reflexively, she found herself smiling back.
But someone else saw that connection, too.
Someone else saw that smile.
Colin stepped forward.
Pulled back his knife.
“Fucking prick,” he said.
Then he stuck the knife into Benny’s back.
Benny’s eyes widened. Gina screamed.
But everything just blurred into the background.
Everything blurred away as Benny stared at her, eyes wide.
As he fell to his knees.
And then Colin pulled the blade away, friends in tow, and ran off.
Blood pooled out of Benny’s back.
Mike
The second Mike reached his home, he got that same ominous feeling he’d got when he reached Alison’s just an hour or so earlier.
The sky was lighting up far quicker than he’d expected. Morning was on its way. Soon, the sun would rise, and people would wake to the realisation that the power was still out; that relatives who’d died in crashes or in intensive care were still very much gone.
And then the mass panic, the mass hysteria, would well and truly take a hold.
Mike needed to gather supplies before that pandemic of fear really tightened its grip.
The house looked like it was sleeping. There were no lights on of course—but then there wouldn’t be anyway, would there? But seeing it like this, it was like Mike was just coming home from the pub to find Holly was staying at a friend’s… and he was all alone. No Caitlin to come home to. Nothing at all.
“Do you need a hand searching? Or…”
Mike looked at Alison and he smiled. “You wait out here with Arya.”
“I can come in there. If that’s what you want. You did the same for me, after all.”
“Seriously,” Mike said. “I’ll be fine. But thanks.”
Alison nodded.
Mike was amazed just how resilient Alison seemed to be. She’d only recently discovered her mother was dead, and she was taking it remarkably well. She cried every now and then. Took a few moments to compose herself. But she seemed to be managing her grief in a way that made him envious.
Maybe he’d have to ask for a few tips.
He looked to his side, at his neighbour Barry’s house. He knew Barry prided himself on his gadgets and his tech. He wondered how he was getting on now the power was out. He couldn’t hear the generator running, something Barry always set up whenever there was a power cut. He figured that must be quite a blow to him. Maybe he was low on petrol for it and hadn’t got round to refilling it. Or maybe it’d also been decimated by the EMP. Mike couldn’t be sure.
Either way, there was no sign of him. He must’ve been sleeping, too.
So he took a few deep breaths and walked up to his house.
The first thing that bugged him?
The smart lock.
The smart lock that Holly insisted they had fitted because they were “cool.” Of course, a smart lock was all fair and well when there was power and you could actually unlock the bloody thing without the aid of a key.
Fortunately, Mike didn’t trust technology for reasons like this exactly, so he carried a spare physical key with him.
He turned the key. Stepped inside.
And right away, he swore he heard footsteps somewhere inside.
He froze. Froze and listened for more noise.
The longer he stood there, the less he heard.
He stepped into the lounge. Then walked slowly into the kitchen. He had to be on guard. He swore he’d heard footsteps. If someone had sneaked into his house then he had to be well aware.
He lifted a heavy ornament from the side and carried it out of the kitchen back towards the stairs. He looked up there. No noises anymore. No sounds.
But he still got the feeling someone was in here.
He still got the feeling he was being watched.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. Then, slowly but surely, he began to make his way up the stairs. He didn’t know what was waiting up there. He didn’t care so much, really. If it weren’t his daughter, he’d bash their skulls in. There was no room for messing around in this world. Day one and that was already clear.
He reached the top of the stairs. Still no sounds. Still silent.
And he found himself looking down the corridor at his bedroom. The one where he and Caitlin used to sleep. The room he’d barely been able to step inside for so, so long.
He walked down towards it, convinced he could hear movement in there.
Stopped by the door.
Listened.
Held his breath.
A bang.
Another bang.
Tension built up inside. He reached for the door handle, tightened his grip on the ornament in his hand.
Whoever was in there, they’d made a big mistake.
This was his room.
His and Caitlin’s room.
And they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near it.
He counted down from three.
And then he lowered the handle and stepped inside the room.
The first thing he noticed was that the room was in fact empty.
Then he saw the source of the banging.
The window was still partly open, but it’d fallen off its hook. It was tapping against the window-frame.
Mike didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that nobody was here.
But in the end, he was just glad that nothing had happened to his Holly in this place. That wherever she was… nobody was in this room.
He turned around, went to walk back down the stairs, when he saw the note pinned to Holly’s bedroom door.
He picked it up. Squinted at it in the darkness.
Slowly but surely, his vision adjusted, and he began to piece the words together.
Dad,
Came back. You weren’t here. Sorry about earlier but
I miss how it used to be.
With friends. Am ok. Heading to get supplies at ASDA then countryside, up the hills, like you’d want.
Will see you again. All will be okay.
You know where I’ll go.
Don’t worry.
Holly xx
As Mike read his daughter’s words, he felt himself welling up. Because on the one hand, at least she was okay. But on the other, he felt guilty. Guilty that she should feel she had to apologise at all. Guilty that he hadn’t been there for her when she’d come back here.
Guilty that he couldn’t have done more for her all this time.
But he had a location. He had a plan.
You know where I’ll go.
And if he moved quickly enough, he didn’t have to be estranged from his daughter for too long at all.
He opened the front door, stepped outside. Alison and Arya were still there.
Alison had a look of concern on her face. “Well?”
Mike looked at the note, then back at Alison. “It’s time for us to get some things together. Then it’s time to do some early morning shopping.”
Bobby Gilbert watched the sun rise and took a deep breath of this new world air.
It was a beautiful sunrise. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. Honestly, the birds didn’t know any different. They didn’t know a thing had changed. To them, the world was just the same as it’d always been. They didn’t rely on power. They didn’t rely on electricity. They just got by with life in their own way.
And in a sense, that actually made them more advanced than humans. Because they hadn’t become spoon-fed by what society provided them. They hadn’t become eternally attached to the breast of information that society held out, desperate not to let go, like a child latching on for dear life.
But every baby must detach from that tit eventually.
And right now, humanity was the baby that’d been thrown into the real world.
Only the vast majority of them wouldn’t make it.
Only those who were prepared.
Only those who were willing to do the bad stuff—the dirty stuff—to keep themselves alive; to keep the species alive.
“Is the telly still not working, Daddy?”
Bobby heard the sweet little voice of his daughter, Eleanor, and his stomach sank. He turned around to her. Smiled. “No telly for a long while, princess.”
She looked back at him with her long, blonde locks, disappointed look on her face. “But I wanted to watch Scooby Doo.”
“And you will again,” he said, feeling guilty for even saying as much. “Sometime.”
“But when’s ‘sometime’?”
“Just not yet,” Bobby said.
It was hard. Having to live as a single parent, it wasn’t easy. But after the accident his ex had suffered, he was left to his own devices.
And one thing was for sure.
No matter what, he wanted to make sure his daughter was strong enough. He wanted to make sure she was a fighter.
Because she needed to be to thrive before the lights went out.
Now things were different, she absolutely needed to learn if she were to survive, let alone thrive.
So he sat down opposite her. And as hard as it was, he prepared to tell her what she needed to know if she were to make it.
Because if anything happened to him… Eleanor needed to be ready.
“We’re going to have to go out today,” he said.
“But it’s school, isn’t it?”
“There isn’t going to be any school for a while.”
Eleanor looked confused. “Like a holiday?”
“Like a holiday. Only… there’s going to be some bad things out there. Some things you’ll see that you won’t like. But I promise that I’ll look out for you. And I’ll teach you some things. Some tricks that’ll help you. That sort of thing. Okay?”
Eleanor still looked baffled. But the fact she nodded her head was something. It was progress. It was a willingness to learn.
That’s all Bobby needed for now. Intention.
“First things first? I want you to go upstairs and grab your school bag. And I want you to fill it with cans from the kitchen. And knives from the drawers. But be careful with them, okay? You don’t want to hurt yourself.”
“Is this like a game?” Eleanor said.
“Sort of. But it’s a real one. Now go on so I can be grabbing a few things myself.”
Eleanor ran upstairs, smile on her face. And Bobby found himself marvelling at her reaction, at her resolve. The naivety of childhood. What an asset it was.
It was heart-breaking that Eleanor’s naivety was going to be broken so soon. So much younger than it had to be.
It’d already been damaged by the death of her mother at such a young age.
It was about to be damaged even more; if not destroyed completely.
Bobby walked over to the window and looked outside. There wasn’t a glow to the sky anymore, not one that was so visible. But he could sense something there. That quietness. The hum of electricity that nobody even really noticed when it used to be there—that bouncing of radio waves from one to the other, all of them stopped.
And despite how difficult it was going to be going forward—knowing full well this was some kind of EMP event—he found himself quite content with that peace.
But it wasn’t going to be peaceful for long.
People would scrap for supplies. Currency would go down the pan. And no matter how much the people in power tried to kid themselves, they were just like everyone else now.
Their grip on society was gone. New mini-societies would grow in their place. Cults would form. New towns would emerge.
And as natural with humanity, new wars would begin.
But as Bobby listened to his daughter singing as she gathered supplies for the first leg of their journey, he was clear about one thing in his mind.
He wasn’t going to be left behind by this world.
He wasn’t going to let the old ideas of morals and ethics get in the way of doing what he had to do.
And whatever he had to do… he’d do it.
“Got the knives, Daddy!”
Eleanor walked back into the room. The rucksack was full to the brim. He looked inside the rucksack, then back down at his daughter, and he smiled.
“Good kid,” he said.
And as he looked at her, in all her beautiful glory, he knew one thing for certain.
He’d kill for this girl.
He’d hurt for this girl.
He’d do anything he had to in order to survive, for this girl.
And he didn’t give a shit who he did it to.
It was live or die now, as much as people might still be in denial about the new way of things.
And he wasn’t going to be late to the races.
Holly
Holly watched as Benny fell to the floor and everything around her blurred into the background.
She lost all sense of whether it was day or whether it was night. She heard shouting, screaming, crying out, but all of that slipped away too. Even the anger she felt towards Colin—and his friends for just standing there and allowing this—all of it seemed to slip into irrelevance.
And that was because of what had just happened to Benny.
She stepped over towards Benny, as he collapsed against the shelves, knocking a few detergent products down onto the floor beside him. She eased him onto his side. Held his hand.
But it didn’t take a genius to realise this wasn’t good.
It wasn’t good at all.
Benny was wincing with pain. He was breathing fast, like doing so was hurting. Every few seconds, he let out a little cry, a little whimper.
And Holly felt so, so sorry for him. So, so bad for him.
She looked down at his back. She’d already seen the blood pooling on the floor around him. And a part of her didn’t want to look at his wound. She didn’t want to see the severity of it, as if somehow not seeing i
t would prolong Benny’s life, somehow.
But she did.
She looked at it.
And when she looked at it, she knew right away that this was even worse than she’d first thought.
The wound was deep and wide. Blood was pouring from it. It was in his lower back, so probably near one of his kidneys.
And more of that blood pooled out by the second.
“We—we need to do something,” Kumal said, panic in his voice. “We need to cover up the wound somehow. We need to disinfect it. We… we just need to do something.”
Holly heard the defeat in Kumal’s voice with those final words. And she felt her own resolve slipping away, too. Because this was bad. This was far, far worse than anything she’d ever come across.
And she’d been through bad stuff in her life already. She’d been through hell.
So to say this was the worst thing she’d ever witnessed was quite something.
“We need a doctor,” Gina cried. “An ambulance. We need something!”
But the more Gina tried to convince herself that outside help was what they needed, the more Holly realised that those hopes were a delusion.
Because there was only what they could do to help Benny.
That was how it was now.
“We need to apply pressure to the wound,” Holly said, remembering something from a first aid thing in school. “I need a blanket. Something to put over the wound. Anyone!”
Right on cue, Harriet took off her cardigan, passed it to Holly. “It’s a shit cardigan anyway. Anything that’ll help.”
Holly nodded and took it from her. She looked at the wound again. Benny’s face was growing more progressively pale. “You hold on in there,” she said, keeping as calm and composed as she could. “We’ve got this.”
She covered her hands with the cardigan. Went to push it towards the wound.
But at the moment of contact, Benny let out a cry.
More blood spurted out of the wound. At the end of the aisle, Holly saw a man standing there, trolley loaded with supplies, little girl by his side.
She looked up at him.
He looked back at her and Benny, eyes wide.
She wanted him to help. To prove that humanity was still sticking together, especially with it being so early into what seemed like a disaster.