by Ryan Casey
He could hear them getting closer and closer. It sounded like they were climbing down some stairs. Naturally he’d be concerned about any kind of group he didn’t already know about, because it paid to be sceptical of anyone’s motives in this new world.
But it was the look on the pharmacy worker’s face that made all of this a whole lot worse. That look of pure, unfiltered fear to her gaze. That’s the only way it could be described. Total fear.
She looked at Mike as she held onto the bloodied gunshot wound on her chest and her eyes went even more glassy.
“Get out of here,” she whispered, pain to her voice. “Quick.”
Then her eyes rolled back into her skull and she went still.
He stood still, frozen to the spot. The footsteps were getting further down the stairs, closer towards his position. He could hear they were coming from the corridor ahead of where he was at the moment. Which meant eventually, they were going to make their way down here. They were going to find him. He was going to face the same fate as this woman.
And then Holly, Alison, Arya, and the others…
He thought about Harriet. How desperate she was for medical attention right now. But as he crouched here, heart pounding, he knew something, deep down in his bones.
He wasn’t going to be able to get what she needed. He wasn’t going to be able to help her.
He had to find another way.
He turned around and went to step outside the pharmacy area of the medical centre.
That’s when he heard the footsteps stop at the end of the corridor.
He froze again. His heart raced. Because he knew what this meant. They were on his floor. They were going to head his way. He had to get somewhere, fast. He had to get out of here.
He looked around desperately for another exit. A door in the back of the pharmacy; some kind of opening in the ceiling.
But there was nothing.
Nothing, and the footsteps were getting closer.
They sounded heavy, like there were a few of them. He could hear them murmuring, but couldn’t figure out what they were saying. He couldn’t focus on anything—anything but the situation he was in, the need to battle his way out of it, the need to be free.
He stepped to the exit of the pharmacy again. But the footsteps were getting closer by the second. He was trapped, that much was clear. And even if he did manage to evade these people, they were still going to get outside to his people, to his daughter.
He thought about just alerting himself to their attention. Calling out for the others to get away from here because there was someone dangerous inside.
But in the end, he found himself doing something else.
Because he didn’t want to give up. Not yet.
He moved over to the pharmacy counter. Without looking properly, he lifted the dead weight of the gunshot woman up, blood covering his hands in the process.
He lifted her body on top of his. Covered himself.
And then he closed his eyes and kept as still as he could.
He listened as the footsteps got closer. Thought of Holly, and of Arya, and of Alison, too.
And he thought of Caitlin.
How close he was to being with her again.
How close this living hell was to ending, once and for all.
He heard the footsteps stop outside the pharmacy.
He went still. Totally still. Held his breath even though his heart pummelled in his chest.
And then he heard the voices.
There was a reason he hadn’t recognised them before. They were foreign. A language he didn’t understand. A language he definitely hadn’t heard before. It sounded… European. Or perhaps east Asian, he wasn’t sure.
All he knew was that these people weren’t English.
And he wasn’t racist in any way. He was far from xenophobic. But hearing these people speak with such confidence in these accents… and the artillery he knew they had. Well, it just made Mike wonder.
Was something going on here?
Something beyond what he suspected?
He heard the footsteps begin to walk on when the woman lying atop him gasped back to life.
He froze. His body went numb. He started shaking. She was dead. He was sure she was dead.
And yet…
She gasped. Pressed at her stomach, pushing more blood out onto Mike.
And then he heard one of the people stepping around. Laughing. Saying something to his friend.
He listened as the man got closer. He knew he’d either shoot the woman and send a bullet through him in the process, or he’d realise Mike wasn’t dead at all.
He was stuck.
Completely stuck.
He started to think about what he could do. All he had on his side was the element of surprise. He was going to have to use it. He was going to have to find a way to embrace it, no matter what.
He felt a bead of sweat roll down his forehead as the man got closer. He was so close he could hear him breathing now.
The woman kept on fighting, kept on struggling.
The man crouched opposite her. Said something to her in his language.
Then in the corner of his eye, Mike saw him lift his gun.
He held his breath. Prepared for the worst.
But then something happened.
Or rather, something didn’t happen.
The man hit the woman with the butt of the rifle, square on the forehead.
She jolted a second, then went still, letting out a final gasp.
The man shouted something else to one of his friends, then stood up and walked away.
All of them laughing.
Mike didn’t move for a while. He couldn’t. First, the guilt. That woman, she’d been alive. She’d been alive and he’d watched her—felt her—die.
But he’d done what he had to do.
And now he had to get out of here and make sure his people were safe.
He pushed the woman aside. Laid her to rest as peacefully as he could.
Then he rushed out of the medical centre, raced towards the front door.
The first thing he saw was the armed group. They were dressed all in black. They were off in the distance. Far enough away.
He was about to panic, to race around and search for Holly and his people, when he saw them.
They were hiding. All of them, hiding behind a minibus.
Relief washed over Mike. He walked over to them, knees like jelly. “Thank God you’re okay,” Mike said. “Thank God you’re…”
Then he saw something.
They didn’t look happy. Far from it.
And it only took him a moment to realise why.
Harriet was lying in Holly’s arms.
She had gone completely pale.
Her eyes were dripping blood.
Holly looked up at Mike, tears in her eyes.
“She’s dead,” she said. “She—she didn’t make it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Holly stared into the hole in the ground that Harriet rested in and she’d never felt so low in her entire life.
The afternoon was dragging on. The sun had peaked, and now had disappeared mostly behind the clouds. They were well behind schedule. They’d put themselves behind schedule by visiting the medical centre, but now they were even more so.
And for what?
Harriet had died anyway. She’d died, and now she was gone, and all of them were behind.
She looked down at the ground as Harriet rested there. Gina and Kumal were by her side, both crying. First Benny, now Harriet. She’d managed to break down her inner boundaries and bond with Harriet. She didn’t think she liked her at first—didn’t think she could find a way to give her a chance because of how she acted with her.
But she’d broken past that idea of how Harriet was. She’d seen Harriet for how she really was, deep down. She was thoughtful. She was caring. Damaged, sure, but weren’t they all damaged now?
She hadn’t deserved this. Whatever had h
appened, she hadn’t deserved it.
She looked at Gina. Saw how she was just staring blankly down. It worried her, how Gina was acting. She was usually emotional and wore her heart on her sleeve. But she looked… broken. Like something had finally snapped inside her; something that’d been close to snapping for quite some time.
She’d have to keep an eye on her. She’d have to make sure she kept her cool, kept her composure.
She’d have to make sure she was okay.
“Are you ready, Holly?”
The second Holly heard her dad’s voice, her instinct was to recoil. She heard that niggling voice in her head blaming her dad for the fact Harriet had died.
But she knew that wasn’t true. It was the same destructive voice that had caused problems for her in the past in her relationship with her dad. The fact of the matter was, Dad had tried his best. He’d pushed past his comfort zone and gone into that medical centre solo. He didn’t have to do that, but he had.
And for that, she had to be grateful. They all had to be grateful.
Holly turned around and looked at her dad. She could see from the look in his eyes that he was beating himself up about this. But he was scared, too. Scared about those people—the people who he’d run into inside the medical centre.
Holly had seen them too, when she and the others had hidden from them as they passed by. She hadn’t heard them. She’d seen that they were armed. Only there was something different between this group and the prisoners they’d run into a few days ago. This group looked… organised, somehow. They didn’t look like scavengers.
They looked military.
She turned to the rest of the group. To Kumal, who taught her to give Harriet the benefit of the doubt in the first place. Then to Alison, Arya, Gina, and Richard. She looked at them all, saw their group sadness, and she found herself wanting to say something.
“I think… I think I should say a few words,” Holly said.
Everyone looked at her, standing there in this open field, specks of rain falling down.
She took a few deep breaths, got her composure. “Harriet and I didn’t get on great. Not at first. I used to always think she was just mean. But… but I got to know her. More in these last few days than ever before. I got to know her, and I saw I was wrong about her. She wasn’t mean. She was just… struggling. Just like everyone else.”
She saw tears building in Kumal’s eyes. Saw her dad’s half-smile of sympathy, of pride.
She saw the blank look on Gina’s face. Emptiness.
“Harriet… Harriet had her problems. She had her demons. But she had a way of dealing with them. A way that all of us should envy. She managed to handle them. She didn’t—didn’t let them define her. And right until the end, even though she had that snarky side… she believed there was hope. She believed in a better future.”
She took a few more deep breaths now, battling with her breaking throat.
“We owe it to Harriet to secure that better future. We owe it to her to go out there, to find it, to seize it. Whether it’s at this safe zone or somewhere else… we go out there and we do what Harriet would’ve done. And when we’re up against it—when things are tough, when we’re brought to our limits—we keep on going.”
She turned around. Watched a few tears drip down into Harriet’s grave.
“We do it for Harriet,” she said. “For Benny. For everyone we’ve lost.”
She looked back at the group.
“But more than anything, we do it for everyone who is still standing.”
She went quiet, then. Expected a few people to chip in with a few words. For more people to add to what she’d said.
But in the end, it was Kumal who walked over, hugged her.
“Thank you,” he said, emotion creaking through his voice. “What you said. Thank you.”
He stepped away then. And they all stood there by Harriet’s grave, all looked at each other.
Holly reached down. Grabbed a spade. “We bury Harriet. And then we make our final push. It’ll be dark soon. But we don’t let the dark scare us. We don’t let anything get in our way. We keep on going.”
She shovelled some of the dirt down onto Harriet. Felt guilty, imagined everything Harriet would be saying about dirtying her face, about getting muck in her eyes.
But as she did it, as she buried Harriet, and as her friends and her people joined in, Holly looked down into Harriet’s soft face, and another tear flowed from her eyes.
She’d never looked more at peace.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mike headed the group as they marched towards the final obstacle on their journey—the small town of Garstang—and he tried to get the memory of what’d happened back at the medical centre out of his mind.
Night was closing in. It’d be dark before they knew it. Their plan of getting to the safe zone before nightfall was well off target. Mike was certain they were going to have to stop and rest for the night, especially now they were so near to Garstang. The night had two sides to it: on the one hand, it was easier to be sneaky. On the other, Mike knew damn well the gangs and the looters would be in full force.
He’d rather be somewhere safe, somewhere sheltered. Hell, he’d rather be at this supposed safe zone—as sceptical as he had been about it.
But he had to take one step at a time. He couldn’t get ahead of himself.
As he walked, Mike was running through a few wilderness survival tips in case he needed them. He remembered something he’d read once about how a tent wasn’t really a great long-term solution if you were surviving in the wild. The best thing to do was to build an insulated shelter, just small enough to fit you inside, with tree branches and the like, filling the gaps in with small rocks, and adding insulation using bark, leaves and moss.
Winter was on his mind again too, even though it was some time before he should start worrying about it. One benefit of winter was snow, which could be melted to water as an easy source of hydration. Something not a lot of people realise is that absorbing the liquid from snow actually takes up a lot of energy, so melting it first is crucial.
There were other things he was pondering, too. A few other ways of sourcing water. Ways of lighting fires—one of which required using the spark of a battery, so off the table for now. And there were other things too, like knots—bowline and double half hitch in particular.
Oh, and the best way of creating a spear. Let’s just say his mind was heading into overdrive about all these options, all these possibilities.
Alison walked up to his side. She hadn’t said a lot since they’d buried Holly. But Mike could tell she had something on her chest.
“Go on,” he said. “Spit it out.”
Alison rolled her eyes and sighed. “You really do know me well, don’t you?”
“I know that look on your face. That look when you’re eager to say something. So I reckon you get it out in the open before it bursts your head.”
Alison sighed. “I just… Well, it’s a few things.”
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Alison ignored him. “First, stop beating yourself up for what happened with Harriet. You tried your best. You did everything you could. It was… it was always going to be a long shot. And even then, without really knowing what was wrong with her, there was no guarantee we were going to be able to do anything.”
Mike let out a long exhale, kept his focus on the road ahead. “I just can’t help but feel like if we’d been quicker, or if we’d—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
Mike wanted to carry on. He saw Alison raising a finger, getting him to stop.
“Stop that train of thought in its tracks right now, idiot. You did your best. We all did. It’s just… it’s one of those awful things. I think the main thing we should be worried about right now is—”
“The group,” Mike said. “Armed. Speaking some different language. And Holly says they were dressed in, like, military gear.”
“Oh,” Alison
said. “I wasn’t going to say the group. I was going to say Gina.”
Mike frowned. Slowed down a little. “What about Gina?”
Alison pointed to the back of the group. “Take a look for yourself.”
Mike looked over at Gina. To be honest, he didn’t really know the girl. She seemed quiet. A bit of a worrier. Which could be forgiven after all she’d been through.
But when he looked at her now, he knew right away what Alison was saying.
She was staring into the distance. She looked totally spaced out, totally emotionless.
“It’s…”
“Not like her?” Alison said. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
Mike scratched the back of his neck. He saw shades of himself in Gina when he’d lost Caitlin. Course he’d gone through the grieving stages, but there were other elements too. There was that stage where he didn’t feel anything. Like his senses were dulled to the world around him.
He wondered if that was the stage Gina was in now. If she’d seen so many stark, devastating things that she was closing off.
And all he wanted to do was help her.
“I won’t be a second,” Mike said.
He walked over to Gina. She barely acknowledged his presence.
“Hey,” he said. “Mind if I walk with you for a bit?”
She glanced at him as if she’d only just realised he was there.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” he said.
They walked. Silently for a while. And the further they walked, the more Mike sensed Gina was repressing her feelings. That she was hiding away her emotions. That she was at breaking point.
“It isn’t easy, losing anyone,” Mike said. “I know that too well. But… but I just want you to know something. I’ve been in the stage you’re in now. I’ve felt so far down the hole that I’ve wanted to just… give up. But just remember something. Please remember something. We’re all here. We’re all with you. And we’re all going to listen to you when you’re ready to talk and comfort you when you’re ready to be comforted, no matter what.”
She didn’t respond to Mike at first. Didn’t even acknowledge him.
He was about to walk away. To allow Gina her time. After all, that’s what she needed. She needed to make these decisions alone.