As they headed off towards the sunset, Annabelle watched Elliot worryingly. Noticing this, Bertie put his hand on her shoulder.
“They’ll be back, don’t worry,” he tried to reassure her.
“They’ll be back,” she mimicked his words, “But alive?” Fearful of seeing another wave of crucifixes, she moved her hand up to Bertie’s, on her shoulder, and locked fingers with it. She gripped his hand tightly.
Prague
Everything was quiet in Prague. Everything was too quiet, in Prague. On a lone road headed towards the centre of the city, there was an olive green jacket blowing in the wind, headed down the road; it was Erica’s.
Further back, but on the same road still, there was a ponytail tied to a lamp post, as though it were some warning/way marker. It was not finely cut, it appeared as though it had been ‘sawed’ off. It was extremely reminiscent of Ellie’s hair, however.
A photograph blew with the wind, out into the wilds of Europe. It had been blown from the direction of Prague. The photo was from a rather long time ago: It was a picture of a young Annabelle celebrating her birthday, being held in her father’s arms…
Chapter 25: On the Path of Death
As the group ventured towards Prague, they were all equally on edge. The terrifying sense that they were being watched was prevalent amongst their ‘shared’ mind-set.
Occasionally, they would all take turns to spin around, and glance over the surrounding area. After all, none of them wanted to run the risk of ending up strung to a crucifix.
“Sunset…” Elliot pointed, squinting his eyes, as he nodded across the horizon. Unfortunately, the beautiful sight was behind them, as they were headed away from it.
“I haven’t felt the warm glow of it for, so long,” Scott rested for a moment, to take the mild heat in. Dawn joined him at his side.
“You tree huggers,” Taylor mocked them, as he crossed his arms.
Xavier walked up to Scott, and gave him several seconds out of respect. “Scott, listen man, it really is a beautiful sight. No one’s gonna deny that. But we have to keep, moving… These ‘people’,” he used that term very lightly, “Could be waiting to kill us right now. Loitering around like this might be exactly what they want us to do.”
Scott nodded, as he turned his back on the sun. Walking on in complete silence.
“Ouch! Shit!” Kristina winced, as she tripped up over something unseen. The sun had completely set now.
Bertie assisted her back onto her feet. “Elliot, we’ve got to stop. It’s way too dark to go on!” He suggested.
“We’ve got flashlights,” Elliot refuted him. “Besides, if we stop, we’ll be easier targets. Just because, as far as I believe, they don’t want to kill us, that doesn’t mean they won’t seize us if they get half the chance.”
Tina put a head torch on, and nodded in agreement with Elliot. He’s right. After all, one sleep was enough to get Celeste killed, and she was surrounded by a whole camp of people, indoors. We’re outside, on a road to a place we’re not even sure exists. We have no security. If Celeste could’ve been taken that easily, we’ll be even easier.”
Tina’s justification was seemingly a valid explanation to everyone, as no one said anything more.
Once they were far enough down the road, the treeline along the side of the road had ended. The group could now see the half-moon up in the night sky.
“It’s not as good as the sun,” Scott comically broke the silence.
“You’re right… It’s even better,” Taylor satirically played along with Scott’s humour.
“Come on now Taylor, it’s been hard for all of us.” Dawn backed up her friend, “Let us have this.” She ‘pleaded’.
“There it is!” Elliot sounded jovial. It was another rare occurrence, as made evident by his rare smile.
“The Czech Republic-German border.” Tina added. “Never thought I’d be so happy to literally see a god damn country divider.”
“Kris,” Bertie whispered to her, “Can you believe it? After all this time of wandering aimlessly under Sonia’s brutal command… We finally made it! We made it to the place she heralded for so long.” He couldn’t contain his excitement, and decided to deeply embrace his long-time former-astronaut friend. “I just wish the rest of the Gemini would’ve survived long enough to see it…”
Similarly: Scott, Xavier and Dawn all celebrated with each other as well.
“Don’t be too premature guys! That’s just the border… We’re still nowhere near Prague itself just yet.”
“Seriously Elliot?” Bertie sounded disgruntled, as he broke off his embrace with his friend. “We’ve been walking for like four or five hours now. My legs are like lead. We’ve gotta rest before we push on, surely?”
“I must admit,” Elliot shook his own legs, “… Alright, fine. I’m sure we can find a place to hold up in one of those buildings surrounding the Border.”
Now, Bertie could resume his embrace with Kristina.
Fortunately for the group, not too much further into the town behind the border, there was an abandoned hotel. They all headed straight to the top floor, naturally. There were more than enough rooms for each of them to have one room each.
Whilst lying back on his bed, Elliot’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. He was finally able to take a breather, and reflect on the events of the apocalypse.
In the medical cabin, Elliot’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. He was finally able to take a breather, and reflect on how he had cheated death.
“Elliot…”
Or so he thought, at least. Tina entered the room, with some startling news for her friend.
“Someone’s here to see you.” She bluntly informed him, before heading outside again.
Confused, Elliot slowly sat up on his bed. Then, one foot at a time, he stood up. He staggered over to the door.
“Jesus, Tina,” he stretched his back and his arms, as he walked over to her. “My bones are still kind of, you know, aching like all hell right now. What’s so important that you had to drag me all the way out here?”
“Elliot…”
Already, he was fed up with hearing his name on this day. Except this time, it wasn’t Tina’s voice. It was the voice of someone far more familial.
He paused mid-stretch, and slowly lowered his arms back to his sides.
“A-Annabelle?” Elliot was startled by her return. “Oh my god!” He was happy, in a way, though still not happy enough that he would allow himself to smile. Instead, he had wide eyes mixed with a neutral mouth. As his stepsister ran to him, he opened his arms, and accepted her embrace.
“You’re back?” He was confused.
“Oh, nice to see you too, big brother,” She jokingly replied.
“I didn’t mean it like that, no, sorry… Let me rephrase my question: Where’s mum? Why aren’t you with her?” Elliot broke the hug.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to travel with her for the rest of my days. I’d rather spend it with you.” She craftily responded.
“Is… Is she dead?” Elliot was hesitant to ask, as his eyebrows dropped into panic.
“Oh no, not----” Annabelle ceased her answer. She thought to herself, one ‘white’ lie, would be far easier than explaining over a month’s worth of truths. She looked down into the ground, gently brushing her feet through the dirt.
“Annabelle? Where is she?” Elliot pressed her for an answer.
Whilst looking down at the ground, Annabelle had forced a tear out of her eye. She looked back up at Elliot.
“S-she is… Yes, s-she,” she deliberately slurred her words, “The car, t-the SUV it… She was driving it-t, a-a-and… Look, Elliot, she wanted to drive, I didn’t ask her to, o-ok? She volunteered to go on, in the middle of the night,” Annabelle’s façade was clearly fooling Elliot over, as his eyebrows were fixed into that sad and dwelling expression now.
“S-s-she was really tired… I’d fallen asleep. I-I-I woke up, and
the next thing I knew… We’d spun o-over… The car, it… She must’ve drifted a-asleep, and up a rock… Because we-we-we were upside down…” She cleared her throat, “I was thrown, I’d landed on the g-grass… So I had mere c-cuts and bruises… But mum… She’d gone through the windshield of the SUV… her corpse… Horrible, grotesque… Gave me re-recurring n-nightmares… It was mutilated… Glass shards digging into her… Her guts… They caked the road…”
Elliot turned away, and threw his head into his hands – He believed Gwen’s ‘death’ to be his fault…
“Elliot…”
Or so he thought, at least. From behind the hotel room door, Tina was asking for entry.
“It’s open,” Elliot bluntly shouted back.
Confused, Elliot slowly sat up on his bed; wondering why Tina was visiting him.
“Are you ok?” She checked with him. Elliot had begun to realise that Tina was becoming rather ‘protective’ of him, all of a sudden.
“Of course I am. Why do you ask? And why are you suddenly so agreeable with everything I do?” Elliot refused to leave himself wondering, so flat out asked the pressing question.
“What?” Tina was taken aback by this remark.
“You never used to be like this, what changed?” Immediately after asking this question however, Elliot had answered his own question in his mind: Elliot was now one of only two people from London that Tina still knew. The rest were either dead, or far away. “Never mind. I’m sorry,” he apologised to her.
“How are you?” She retried her question.
“I’m… ok, I guess.” Elliot shrugged. “I was just thinking about the time Annabelle lied to me about Gwen’s death.”
Tina nodded, “I remember that, too.”
Elliot resumed his story, “I remember when Reed went out on that supply run, and he retrieved the scout SUV… Except it wasn’t wrecked, or totalled in any way. The windshield was still intact as well.” He need not say anything more, for Tina could perfectly recall the rest of the story.
“And then you absolutely went off on one at Annabelle.” Tina unintentionally scolded him.
“Yeah. Yeah I did…” He clearly felt guilt…
The following morning, Elliot had called upon everyone to gather outside of the hotel.
“So,” he began, holding his hands together behind his back. “As you all know; we are headed to Prague. We are headed there to get assistance. More bullets, more supplies, more people… Things that we will need to go after the group that killed our friends. However, there is of course also a chance that, the people who killed our friends are in fact the same people who we shall meet in Prague. If that is the case, if you even so much as suspect that, to be the case… Then we will light the place up. We will kill, absolutely everybody, if we have to. We’re taking no more chances. We shall not have Reed, Celeste and Zach turning in their graves. Not on our account, no-no.” He paused after delivering such a dramatic monologue.
“Now, Prague is still over a day’s walk away.” As Elliot said this, everyone sighed, and threw their heads back in disbelief.
“And thankfully, we’re not walking it,” he had misled the entire group. They all pricked their ears up at him now.
Without saying anything, Elliot walked over to a white minibus parked on the curb opposite the hotel.
He opened the driver door, and turned the keys in the ignition. He, awkwardly, had to spin the keys multiple times, before the engine started.
Everyone began to smile, and this time, their celebrations really weren’t premature whatsoever.
“That’s right! In this thing, and with this map,” Elliot raised the curled-up map in his dominant hand, “We can make it to Prague in no more than four, maybe even three, hours!”
Wasting no more time, everybody gratefully ran towards the minibus. Elliot slid the side-door open, as everybody piled in through it.
Tina was the last to board. As she stepped on, she leant over to Elliot. “You know something?” She smiled at him. Elliot smiled back at her, perhaps now, this would no longer be a rare occurrence.
“Olivia would be proud of you…” With that compliment, Tina boarded, and slid the door shut behind her.
Still smiling, Elliot looked up at the clear blue sky. “Are you?” He asked her…
Epilogue
West England
A few years back…
A large group of survivors, who had killed, destroyed, decimated, ran, and adulterated their way into staying alive, had finally run out of luck.
They were running through an eerie, misty and abandoned city. All desperate to hold up from whatever beast was chasing them.
“Quickly! Let’s get in here!” The man at the front kicked open the door to the city’s pharmacy, as everybody piled inside. They were all armed with melee weapons, only a few handguns were in circulation around the group.
The survivors at the back of the pack were about to be left behind, due to such a large gap.
A large beast pounced at one of them, the mist covering whatever gore was happening.
“I’m sorry!” Worm, the leader of the group, called out, as he slammed the pharmacy door on the other two survivors.
Thinking ahead, some of the survivors pushed a medicine cabinet in front of the door. They blockaded it with chairs, and even tills; whatever they could find, really.
“There. That’ll do the trick,” Polaris smacked his hands together, brushing off the dirt.
The entire barricade began to shake violently, as the beast outside pounded itself against the door.
“You sure about that, Pol’?” Naomi noted.
“Guys, look!” Mick looked at the beast from the far side of the window next to the door. “Is that a… tiger?” He was unsure. It looked exactly like a tiger, except with one problem, it was far too big.
“Look at those eyes!” Naomi was fascinated. The tiger’s eyes were dark red.
“You guys reckon this has something to do with that bright flash we saw over the channel a month back?” Naomi turned to the others; besides her, there were around twenty of them, though half had already run off to explore the and raid the back of the pharmacy.
“Radiation…” Darius, who was a scientist back in the day, mumbled. “Of course, the bright flash? It was a nuclear explosion… Think about it! Nothing else makes sense. This explanation is evident! How else would a tiger become so... monstrous?” Darius approached the window to get a closer look at it. As he did so, the tiger stopped charging at the door, and instead, with its’ red-filled eyes, stared back at him through the window. It growled deeply.
Darius noticed the tiger’s claws spring out. His eyes widened, as he realised what was about to happen.
“Everybody down!” He grabbed Mick and Naomi, and took them to the ground with him.
Then, the tiger jumped through the glass, shards scattering everywhere. The beast was now inside…
In the back of the pharmacy, one of the survivors had been scratched by the tiger. Long claw marks scraped down his back. He suddenly threw up; though not vomit, dark-red blood. Dark, as in not the normal red-colour which blood has.
“Jesus! Are you ok Mark?” Julian stepped back to avoid the blood spewing on him.
“Mark?” He poked his friend.
Then, something revolutionary happened. ‘Mark’ looked up into Julian’s eyes, except they were dark red now, just like the tiger’s. Mark groaned.
“Oh, shit!” Julian jolted back instantly. Mark’s low groan had developed into a loud roar, as he launched himself at one of the other survivors, biting deeply into his jugular…
‘Whatever this is… This infection… Virus, or whatever… It’s not limited to animals. It can go cross-species...’
About the Author
Finlay Borthwick grew up in a small village in South-East England. His entire life he has had a sweet spot for writing and storytelling from a very young age. Whenever it came to writing a story in primary school, Finlay always obtained th
e highest marks in his class. Even through his teenage years, this carried on, achieving some of the highest grades in his secondary school English classes as well.
Aside from writing, he also plays bass guitar in his free time. For a while, he also took up the sport of tennis, and even karate. Both of which however he ultimately decided were not for him. Writing on the other hand has stuck with him his entire life.
He has also written a series of books in a post-apocalyptic based franchise entitled “Human Nature”, a dystopian set following a global crisis which has ended the world.
Also available:
-Human Nature
Human Nature (Book 2): Human Nature II Page 14