by Ryan Casey
Dad smirked, then. And Holly smirked too. Because he could tell she was joking. They both were.
“Truly,” Dad said. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Nah, you were probably right. Booze isn’t for me, anyway. Suits you better.”
“Hey. Watch it.”
Holly lifted her hands. “I’m just saying.”
They sat there a little while longer. Then they found themselves looking up at the stars.
“Do you think she’s up there somewhere?” Holly asked.
Dad paused. He took a deep breath and smiled.
“Wherever she is, she knows how much we love her.”
They stayed there for a while longer, silent, watching.
And eventually, Holly stood, headed to her tent, Dad by her side.
“Get some sleep,” Dad said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day, by the looks of things.”
Holly smiled at him. “You too. Those bags under your eyes don’t look good on you.”
He smiled back at her. Then he leaned in, kissed her on the head. “I love you, Hol.”
Then he turned away and headed towards his tent.
“I love you too,” she said.
He didn’t hear her. But just saying it was enough.
She looked at the woods, into the darkness, as the fire flickered out.
Tomorrow was the day.
If only they knew what lay on the road ahead…
Chapter Eleven
Day Seven
One week in.
One whole week, and still no power.
Mike took a deep breath as he stepped out of the woods and back into the open, fully aware that he was on a journey that could go either way—a journey he was sceptical about, but knew he had no choice about.
It was looking like another beautiful day. The birds were singing even louder than Mike had noticed before. The sky was totally clear. It was nice at least. Nice that they could make the most of a decent summer before the eventual turn of the seasons. Unless the EMP was sparked by a CME of course, meaning that there was some kind of mess-up in the atmosphere. For all he knew, the poles could be shifting. Wouldn’t that just be typical?
He was walking with Alison. Holly and the rest of the young ’uns were further behind. He looked over his shoulder now and then, just to check everything was okay with them.
“You shouldn’t worry so much about her,” Alison said. “She’s a smart young woman. Clearly doesn’t take after her dad.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think I’m smart?”
“Hey. I’m not the one who got pulled over for driving way over the limit.”
“That’s a fair point.”
They kept on moving. They were out of the woods now. Being in the open made Mike feel uneasy, like there was someone nearby, watching their every move. He could see the country lane ahead. He could even see the town of Longridge in the distance, and the houses at the side of the country lane. He could see farm animals in the fields. They wouldn’t be there for long if the farmers weren’t careful. People would steal them for meat.
But the farm animals that were looked after… they were a part of a future. A future that echoed an agricultural past that humans went through many years ago. A life of growing crops, of living off the grid.
It was a vision of life that Mike didn’t mind himself. Setting up a proper homestead, growing crops, raising animals. Maybe one day, if this plan didn’t go well, that’d be an alternative possibility. He knew agriculturalism wasn’t going to be easy, and it wasn’t to be totally glorified. The agricultural revolution sparked one of the hardest, most taxing times in human history, of course, something that the layman often overlooked.
But he had to hope that this journey wasn’t in vain. He had to hope there was something optimistic waiting at the end of it.
“How you holding up, anyway?” Mike asked.
He realised he’d not really spoken with Alison about the first day of the event. She’d found her mum dead in her home. She seemed to be dealing with things extraordinarily well. But as Mike well knew, there was no telling what was going on under the surface.
“As well as someone grieving can be,” Alison said, rather candidly and frankly. “All of this… this is a kind of distraction, I guess.”
“It’ll hit,” Mike said. “And when it does… I just want you to know that I’m here for you. We—we’re all here for you.”
Alison half-smiled. “I appreciate that, Michael.”
Mike looked at the ground, face blushing. “Don’t call me Michael.”
“Hit a sore spot?”
“It’s just nobody ever calls me Michael. Nobody except my grandad, back in the day. Didn’t believe in shortening names, giving nicknames. Which was funny considering he was called Eddie.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Insisted that was on his birth certificate. Me and my cousin went on a wild goose chase for the certificate once. Found Edward on his driving license. He said they’d made a mistake.”
“Grandparents, eh? The best people in our lives.”
Mike smiled. He thought about how sad it was that Holly had never known her grandparents. He thought about how sad it would be that Holly’s kids would never know their grandma.
He hoped he’d be around to be a granddad. He hoped the world would be suitable for someone to bring up a child, to raise them.
He didn’t hold out much hope. He knew what the speculation about EMP events said. It could take years before things were back together.
And when order was restored… would it be restored, really?
Or would it usher in a new era of fear of the same thing happening again?
Would a realisation of our mortality see in a new age of consciousness?
And who would even be around to witness it?
He took a few steadying breaths to stop his thoughts getting ahead of him. He had to walk before he could run, after all.
They stopped after a couple of miles.
“I think you made the right call,” Alison said. “Coming along.”
“Didn’t really have a choice, did I?”
“I think deep down you want the same as everyone. You just have different ways of going about it.”
“I’ve done my research on events like this. That’s the difference. I know when to be sceptical. But hey. Like you said. We’re all here now. I guess whatever happens to one of us happens to all of us, huh?”
Alison raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s convinced, to me.”
Mike walked back up to the field. He could see the road up ahead. A farm and a few houses on an adjoining road in the distance.
“We’ll have to cross the road if we want to bypass the other houses. Which to be honest, sounds good to me.”
“Does this place not seem… well, quiet to you?” Kumal asked.
Mike frowned as they made their way to the road. “It’s bound to be.”
“No,” Kumal said. “I mean… you said it yourself. People will’ve headed to the countryside, right? Well, this already is the countryside, pretty much. So where is everyone?”
Mike stood still and observed the silence. He couldn’t deny there was an eeriness to the area. But he dismissed it as speculative. “People have probably done the opposite. Probably got walking to the supermarkets, the old trap that’ll get them nowhere, really. Get caught up in the mess in the towns. Probably never come home.”
Harriet raised an eyebrow. “Nice to know your rosy world-view’s still in place, Mr Callaghan.”
“What’ve I told you? It’s Mike. Really. It’s—”
“What’s that?”
Holly’s sudden interruption made Mike stall.
He could see she was looking at something ahead. Looking with wide eyes. Something further up the road.
“What…” he started.
Then he saw it.
He saw it just as Holly saw it.
First, the sight.
&nbs
p; Then, the smell.
Then, the realisation.
“Oh shit,” Harriet said, before throwing up.
Her words pretty much summed things up.
“Looks like we’ve found your missing people, Kumal,” Mike said, as he looked at the scene ahead of him…
Chapter Twelve
Mike looked at what was in front of him and right away, he got the feeling that coming on this journey was a bad idea after all.
The sun was high in the sky, which didn’t help with the smell. The smell was so bad that a couple of the group were vomiting, a few others gasping, cursing.
But all Mike could do was stand and stare at what was ahead.
Try and understand what he was looking at.
There was a group of bodies in front of him. They’d been stripped down. Men, women, even children. Flies were buzzing around them. It looked like animals had already started eating their rapidly decaying flesh, the elements at work in no time.
But the worst thing?
The scariest thing of all, of this image that would not shift from anyone’s mind for a long, long time—if ever?
The bullet holes between the eyes of these people.
“What the hell happened here?” Richard said.
Mike took a deep breath, the ghastly smell working its way into his nostrils, making him want to heave. He looked around. Looked at the houses, which seemed so empty nearby. Everywhere around seemed so silent, so quiet.
And yet… why had this happened?
Why had all eight of these people been executed, then left out in the street?
“This—this can’t be right,” Gina said. She sounded like she was hyperventilating. “It’s only seven days in. People can’t have lost it this much. They can’t have lost it already.”
“I told you coming out here was a bad idea,” Mike said. “We should head back to the woods. Lay low.”
“Bullshit,” Alison said.
Mike turned around. Frowned. He wasn’t expecting any kind of contrary opinion right now. “Got a better idea?”
“We don’t know who did this. We don’t know what went down.”
“I’d say what went down looks pretty clear,” Mike said. “These people. Men, women, children. They’ve been shot.”
“It could’ve been some sort of skirmish. It could even have been those savages we ran into—the ones who…” She didn’t finish. Mike knew who she meant. The prisoners who attacked the log cabin, murdered innocent people and almost killed Holly and so many others in the process.
Mike nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe not.”
There was a pause, then. A silence, as the eeriness of this situation mounted. All Mike knew was that he had a bad feeling about all of this. A really bad feeling.
He didn’t want to run into the people with the guns.
He didn’t want to find out why these people had been killed.
Holly, surprisingly, was staying quiet. Which was something considering she’d been the one who’d led the charge on heading through the town of Longridge, getting towards Garstang and tracking down this safe place in the first place.
“Holly?” Mike said.
She looked up at him, eyes wide, dazed expression on her face. Then she cleared her throat. “I… I think we should keep on going.”
Mike sighed, shook his head. “Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s actually seeing this here.”
“Maybe so,” Kumal said. “I mean, it might be awful. But… but that awfulness isn’t going to just stay out of the woods. We can’t hide from enemies forever.”
“No, we can’t. But we could do a lot better than actively bloody walking into their path.”
Mike looked around at the others. Saw Harriet wiping her mouth, then taking a deep breath. Saw Gina, traumatised expression in her eyes. He saw all of them, and he just wanted one of them to have his back; to agree with what he had to say.
“Anyone? Is anyone with me right now?”
Nobody responded. All of them just looked.
“So we keep on going. We keep on going and hoping for the best. Is that it?”
Kumal shrugged. He caught another glance at the bodies, clearly regretted doing so. “I just… I just don’t think we have that much of a choice is all I’m saying. ‘Cause we’re going to run into people whether we like it or not. Might as well try and get to this safe place. If anything, it gives us even more of a reason to seek it out.”
Mike looked around. Looked at the people around him. And as much as he found his reluctance building, he found himself sighing and nodding.
“Whatever you say,” he said, marching past the bodies, on towards the fence that led into the field. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Remember this. Okay?”
The rest of the group took a look at the fallen bodies.
Then, reluctantly, they followed.
Whether they liked it or not, their journey was continuing.
And Mike didn’t like it one bit.
Kumal walked up to Mike. Half-smiled. “We’ll be there in no time, Mike. We’re prepared for this sort of thing. Everything’s going to be okay. Right?”
We’ll be there in no time.
If only Kumal knew how wrong he was.
Chapter Thirteen
When the group reached the outskirts of the small town of Longridge, Mike knew this whole expedition was a mistake.
The morning was passing by fast. That was the thing in this new world—time seemed to fly by at a rapid pace, especially when they were on the move. In some ways, that was a good thing, because it meant that whatever end-game was in sight, it was getting closer and closer. Whether that was someone working on getting the power back online, or another nation readying a mass-extraction from the country, some plans just had to be in order.
Didn’t they?
But at the same time, it was a negative thing, too. Especially when they were trying to reach a supposed safe zone. What if it wasn’t there when they got there? What if there already was some kind of extraction operation going down and they missed it, just?
And then there was the state of affairs in the towns and cities. It was naive to think they wouldn’t be descending into progressively worse states of crisis. The shops that still stood would be broken into, looted. Hunger and thirst would be kicking in. And those who felt they were the strongest would be doing everything they could to make sure they held on to whatever supplies were left.
It was short term-ism at its worst, of course. The supplies would run out, and those who took the stores and the warehouses for themselves would have even less real-world experience than the ones who they were forcing to fend for themselves.
It really was survival of the fittest, but not in the obvious way one might expect.
The town of Longridge was much as Mike expected. The usual, really: abandoned cars in the streets, shop fronts smashed in, people running around and looking over their shoulders, holding various things under their arms. The whole place had a tense, shifty vibe about it. Like it wouldn’t surprise Mike if someone just stepped out and knifed them all right now.
“Do we really have to go through this way?” Gina asked.
Mike swallowed a lump in his throat, looked at Holly, then at Alison. “Hey. It wasn’t my idea to come this way. Maybe you should ask the leaders.”
He didn’t pursue the line of argument any further, and nobody bit the bait either. They’d made their opposing views perfectly clear to one another already, after all.
But as Mike looked at the long street ahead, he knew there was no time to wait around, not if they wanted to get through this town and out the other end in one piece.
“Well, better get going.”
The further they walked, the more Mike’s uncertainty began to grow. He could hear shouting and whooping from the estates nearby. Someone laughing at the top of their voice while someone else screamed. As he looked around, he felt detached somewhat, like he was witnessing a movie or walking through some VR world rathe
r than actually living this life.
And every step, it just made the hairs on his arms stand on end even more.
But he had to keep going. He had to keep pushing. No time for waiting around.
As he walked further, he noticed something on his left. Something that made him sad. A dog, lying there by the side of the road. It had bled out, looked like it’d been stabbed. A little lead trailed by its side.
And as Mike looked at the dog, he felt his body tensing, everything inside him welling up. Because there was no need for such chaos. There was no need for people to sink to such depths. And yet they did. It was human nature to destroy itself when it was on the brink of destruction itself.
He heard movement to his right, and immediately, he froze.
There was a group of people in the cemetery nearby. They were punching someone. They barely looked old enough to be behaving like this. Just kids, younger than Holly and her friends.
They were bloodying an old man up, beating him. And when they’d finished, they pulled something from his limp hand—a chocolate bar. A measly chocolate bar.
And then they turned around and looked right in Mike and the group’s direction.
Mike’s body went numb. He heard more movement up ahead; saw another group of bulky looking men walking along, cash register in the hands of one, hammer in the hand of another. And then more screaming up the road—more signs that people weren’t co-operating, and that things were falling apart. It felt like they’d stepped into this town at the very moment of collapse.
“We have to get out of here,” Mike said.
Alison shook her head. “But—”
“No buts. We need to get the hell out of here, right this second. Even if it takes us twice as long by bypassing Longridge… we need to find another way.”
Mike turned and started walking away. He half-expected the rest of his group to stall, to argue, after all, they’d not exactly shown much willingness to have his back thus far.
But then something else happened. Something unexpected.
The rest of the group started following.
Made a pleasant change.