by Ryan Casey
Martin heard those words, and he felt them resonating inside. Even though he didn’t want to accept them. Even though he didn’t want to believe them. He heard them. And he felt them. Felt their truth.
He walked over to Ella’s side. Put a hand on her arm. “Let me look at it.”
Ella shook her head. “It’s not—”
“Please. Let me have a look at it.”
Ella held her hand back for a few seconds.
And then she sighed and held it out for Martin to look at.
“It hurt when they did it. Hurt worse when they tried to seal it up. But it’s okay. Really. It’s no worse than any of the cuts I’ve had. Not really.”
Martin held her hand in his. He wanted to remove the bandage so he could see for sure, but he knew better than to expose it to the elements right now. At least they’d bandaged it. At least they’d wrapped it up.
He hoped that was the limit to their punishment. He hoped that was as far as they’d go.
“I’m so, so sorry, Ella,” Martin said. “I wish I could take it back. I wish I could do things differently.”
“You can’t,” she said. “But you can... you can do things differently now. We all can.”
Martin stood there in front of his daughter, and he heard her words, loud and clear.
He’d screwed up.
He’d screwed up bad.
But Ella was right.
They weren’t going to make it in this world by making enemies.
They had to seek out shelter, whether he liked it or not. Established shelter.
Even if that meant travelling through some dangerous places. Through places gripped by looters.
They’d lost everything. So now they had to start again.
“So what do we do now?” Ella said.
Martin put a hand on her shoulder, then looked at the caravan door, towards the muffled shouts, towards that darkness.
“We start by getting the hell out of this place,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harriet wasn’t sure how long she lay on the ground, Oscar on her chest.
She stared up at the stars. A while ago, she’d told Oscar to count as many stars as he could, just to try and calm him down more than anything.
He’d stopped counting a while ago. Drifted off to sleep. At least that was something.
Harriet knew she wasn’t sleeping, though. She knew she needed to get up. Get away from here. There was a bloody lion out here, after all. Even though it’d been shot... that fear still surrounded her. What if it came back?
And weirdly, worse than that, she thought of the people who’d hunted it down. Who’d shot it.
The bloke. Ally.
Who was he?
Who were this group?
And what would they do to Harriet and Oscar if they found them both?
She lay there in the dirt, shivering. She was hungry, but the thought of eating anything made her want to puke. The saliva from the lion’s drool had crusted to her face, gone all gooey. She still couldn’t believe what’d happened. She still didn’t believe what she’d gone through. How close she’d come to becoming that lion’s dinner.
She was just grateful she had a second chance.
One of her nine lives used up, that was for sure.
She looked back through the trees, gazed into the darkness. Some deep part of her made her want to go back to the shelter at Lancaster. Protest her innocence. Tell them Clive was responsible for Peter’s death and go back to that miserable but orderly existence of rapidly diminishing rations after the next.
But she knew that world was a dream world. It was a fantasy. A fantasy that had been deteriorating for a while now.
Reality was always going to rear its ugly head eventually. It was always going to strike.
It was all about whether she was capable of responding to it. Capable of adapting to this new world she’d been thrown into.
She listened to Oscar’s heavy breathing. Watched the air frosting above his mouth. She remembered one of the first nights alone with him. Harvey was working late. He promised he’d get back early, but he ended up stuck in traffic, so got delayed. She should’ve seen the warning signs of his commitment right then, but that was beyond the point.
She remembered lying there, listening to Oscar cry the house down beside her, hearing the neighbours banging on the walls and screaming at him to shut up, and feeling so lonely. So weak. So lost.
Because she never thought herself strong enough to look after herself. Let alone another person.
She felt like she was a fraud. Like she was just faking it.
But the more the years passed by, the older Oscar got, the more she realised that nobody was confident. Everyone was faking it.
It was just about faking it enough to convince yourself you were strong enough, after all.
She wanted to lie here all night. Wanted to forget today and get up and crack on tomorrow morning. Focus on her new life then. Figure things out then.
But then she realised she couldn’t just lie here. It was dangerous here.
She needed to find some kind of shelter.
She stood up as gently as she could. Oscar wriggled around a little, yawned.
“It’s alright, little man. You stay sleepy. You stay sleepy.”
She walked into the darkness, then. Continued in the direction she was heading in before the drama earlier. The shelter and all that happened with Clive seemed like a lifetime ago.
She walked, shaky, weak, into the dark. Tried not to think about what might be out there. Tried to keep her focus from the shuffling in the trees. From the movement in the darkness. It’s in your head. It’s all in your head. Don’t let it get to you.
She kept on telling herself that until she saw the eyes illuminate up ahead.
She froze. Blinked a few times. Told herself she was imagining things. This wasn’t reality.
But those eyes.
They were still there.
So bright in the light of the moon.
She had visions, then. Visions of lion’s cubs. Hunting her down. Chasing her. Finishing the job their mother couldn’t.
And then she saw those eyes move closer towards her, and she realised this was something else altogether.
A dog stood before her. Looked like a Labrador. Chocolate or black, she couldn’t tell in the darkness.
But this dog didn’t look vicious.
It stood there.
Tilting its head.
Whining.
Harriet took a few steps towards him, still a little cautious. “You okay there?”
The dog tilted its head again. Like it was uncertain.
Harriet kept on walking towards it. She had a bad feeling about this. A feeling like someone was close by. Watching. Ready to pounce.
But she kept on going anyway.
“You okay there? You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The dog tilted its head again.
And then it ran off into the distance.
Harriet stood still. Had she imagined it? Was that dog a hallucination after all? She’d been through enough that she could be forgiven a hallucination or two at this point.
She kept on walking, Oscar still sleeping in her arms. Walked in that direction the dog headed. She knew it was risky. Knew it was a gamble. She didn’t know where this dog came from. Who it belonged to.
But she kept going anyway.
Because she was curious.
She walked a little further. The dog had vanished. Maybe she had been hallucinating. Maybe the dog was all in her head.
Just as she was about to turn around, she saw it again.
Sitting there.
But not staring at her.
Staring into the distance.
Panting.
She frowned. Walked a bit further towards it again. Not as confident, now. More uncertain.
She reached the dog’s side. “What’s getting to you? What’s...”
She stopped speaking because she saw it.
Up ahead, there was a caravan site.
About five caravans. All of them static. The place looked a little overgrown. But it looked comfortable. Homely. The kind of place where she might find shelter.
She went to take another step when she saw something else.
First, movement inside one of the caravans at the back. Laughter. The slight smell of smoke in the air. Like something had been cooking.
And then she saw something else.
Movement over to her left.
A group of people dressed in black. One of them leading the others. Finger covering his lips.
Rifle in hand.
Approaching that caravan.
She stood there and watched. It was all she could do. She didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know what was going down.
She just watched that man with the rifle reach the caravan door.
Watched him lift his hand to the two people behind him.
Watched him put a hand on that door handle.
“You sure about this, Ally?” a shorter, chubbier guy by his side whispered.
The man—Ally, whose name she remembered from earlier—looked back around at him and nodded.
And then she watched him lower that handle.
After that, everything unfolded so quickly.
Ally lifted his rifle and fired it inside the caravan.
Harriet heard shouts. She heard cries. She heard struggling.
And then she heard Oscar’s voice. “Mummy? What’s happening?”
She held him close and lowered down as the massacre at this caravan continued.
As that man—Ally—kept on firing bullets inside it.
Firing and firing until everything went quiet.
He stopped.
Stepped down the steps.
Smile on his face.
“Looks like we’ve found ourselves a camp for the night,” he said. “Not to mention a bunch of supplies. Should tide us over for a while.”
Harriet held on to Oscar. Nausea creeping through her body. Tension filling her bones.
The dog beside her put his head on the ground and whined.
She didn’t know what she’d run into here.
Only that this place wasn’t safe.
She had to get away.
She looked away. Turned around. Walked as quietly as she could into the trees.
She only made it a few steps before she heard the footsteps beside her.
She looked around.
A man stood there.
He had long, dark hair. A strange bull tattooed on his neck.
Rifle in hand.
“Don’t move a muscle, princess,” he said. “Not if you want to live.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
When Martin heard the bangs and the shouts, he knew right away something was happening.
He didn’t know what time of day it was. Figured it was still night. Ella lay on the caravan floor, getting some shut-eye. Soon ended when those bangs erupted, though.
Gunfire. No doubt about it.
He’d heard gunfire enough in the military to know what it sounded like.
He looked around at Ella. Saw her staring up at him, wide-eyed, clearly a little confused. Just as he was, really.
“What is that?” Ella asked.
Martin rushed over to the other side of the caravan. He tried to peer through the edge of the doorway, but it was no use. He couldn’t see a thing out there.
He could just hear gunfire.
Shouts.
Those shouts getting gradually quieter.
And then silence.
He stood there by the door. Didn’t know what’d happened. Imagined all kinds of things. Had someone attacked the caravan site? Or was the gunfire from the caravan people? Maybe they had someone captured, and were taking them all out, one by one?
He didn’t know. Truth be told, he didn’t recall seeing any rifles or weapons here at all. Which worried him.
Just that he felt an even more urgent need to get out of here.
A need to—
“Over here,” Ella said.
Martin turned around. Saw Ella sitting by the front of this emptied out caravan.
He didn’t know what she was pointing to. Not at first.
Then he saw it.
A hole. A hole in the caravan where a bullet had fired through. He swore he heard something clatter against it earlier. Must’ve been a stray bullet.
A hole he could look through.
A hole he could see through.
“See anyone out there?” Martin asked.
Ella squinted through that hole. “I’m not sure. It’s dark. I... Wait a sec. There’s someone there.”
Martin gently moved Ella aside. Looked out through that hole in the caravan wall.
He didn’t see anything at first. Darkness. More caravans.
But then he saw it.
That caravan just up ahead. The one where a bunch of the caravan people stayed, he was sure of it.
The door was open.
There was...
“Shit,” Martin said.
“What is it?”
Martin looked back out of that hole in the window. Brought himself to focus on what was outside.
And in the twinkling candlelight, Martin saw blood.
The leader was dead. So many of them were lying there, dead. Blood flooding from their bodies. Bullet wounds peppered right around that caravan.
Martin wondered who had done this. Some old enemy? Someone seeking revenge? Someone who could help him out of here?
“Do you see who did it?”
Martin was about to say no when he saw movement.
Movement right beside the caravan.
And he felt his stomach sink.
The man standing there with the rifle was tall. Well-built. Dark-haired and bearded.
He looked familiar.
As did the people alongside him.
He knew why, right away.
“Shit.”
“Can you stop swearing and tell me what’s going on?”
Martin looked back at Ella. “The people who burned down the cabin. They’re here.”
Ella’s face dropped. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit indeed.”
He looked back out through that gap in the wall. The group, they were looking all around the caravan site. Gathering whatever they could. If they came this way, they’d slaughter Martin and Ella. He didn’t doubt that for one moment.
They had to do something.
They had to act.
But what could they do?
He checked the hole. Tried to see if pushing it opened up any weakened defences.
But it was no use.
“Are we actually gonna do something here?” Ella asked.
“I’m trying.”
“Are you? Or are you just—”
“Ella, I’m trying. Okay?”
She looked like she was going to say something else. Like there was something she could say that might change things. That might convince Martin—and herself—that they hadn’t checked this whole damned caravan a thousand damned times and found absolutely jack shit in the way of weaknesses.
He stood there. Tried to steady himself. Tried to calm himself down. Tried to bring in some of those mindfulness techniques he’d been taught in the military, even though they did jack shit for his scattered attention.
He went to check the boarded caravan windows again when he heard footsteps right at the front of the caravan.
And then a voice.
“Hey, Sajid? I think I heard something in here.”
Martin’s stomach sank. He rushed back over to that hole in the wall as quickly and quietly as he could.
Looked outside.
When he saw what was outside, his stomach sank even more.
Someone was walking their way.
Rifle in hand.
Eyes on the caravan.
Martin stumbled back. Hea
rt pounding. Sweat pouring. He reached Ella’s side. That nausea gripping hold of him. That sense that they were trapped in here. That there was nothing he could do.
Ella grabbed his arm with her shaking hand. Stood there in the darkness beside him.
“What’re we going to do, Dad?”
Martin felt his daughter’s warm body press closer to his. Stood there, nausea building inside, the taste of vomit tingling at his throat.
“Dad?” Ella asked. “What’re we going to do?”
Martin held his ground as those footsteps reached the front of the caravan.
As the door started to shake.
“Is someone in there? Hey? Is someone in there?”
He held on to Ella’s arm. Stood his ground. Braced himself to stand up. Braced himself to fight.
The door shook on its hinges.
“One last chance. Is anyone in there?”
Martin looked into Ella’s eyes. And for the first time in this whole sequence of events, he felt truly cornered. Truly lost.
Like he was staring death in the face, and there was no turning away.
He looked back at that door. Watched it shake on its hinges even more.
And he braced himself for the gunfire.
“I’m here, Ella-bear. I’ve got you.”
He saw that door smash open.
He saw the man standing there, rifle in hand.
And he saw the smile on his face.
“Gotcha,” he said.
Lifting the rifle.
Tightening his grip on the trigger.
Preparing to fire.
Martin held Ella’s hand tight.
He moved her behind him. Braced himself for gunfire.
And then he heard a bark.
The man looked around.
Dropped his gaze, just for a second.
But a second was all Martin needed.
He threw himself towards the man.
The man spun around. “What—”
Martin clattered him out of the caravan.
He punched him in the throat repeatedly while the man turned his rifle, swung it around, tried to point it at Martin.
And Martin looked like he was close. Like that mouth of the gun was close to turning to him. Close to—