by Casey, Ryan
Chapter Eighteen
Eddie saw the bloke standing at the foot of the driveway, and right away, he felt his hackles rise.
The man looked buff. Well built. So naturally, that annoyed Eddie. He guessed it was just an inferiority complex he was always going to have to carry around with him—especially when Kelly was close, and especially when things were so strained between them.
And especially when she was pregnant with his baby.
But there was more than that. This bloke. Long, greasy jet-black hair. White vest, muscles on show. Jean shorts and sandals, and a toothy white smile on his face.
He’d appeared from nowhere.
And now he stood opposite. Looking so confident in himself. So unconcerned by Eddie and Kelly’s presence, even though he didn’t know who they were, even though they could be really mean fuckers as far as he was aware.
But he stood here. Confident. Not a weapon in sight. And that disarming but unnerving smile plastered across his face.
And the worst thing?
The worst thing about all of this?
He reminded Eddie of Anwar.
The guy Kelly had a fling with back at Galgate.
The guy he was pretty sure she wished was still around instead of him.
“How you guys doing?” the man asked. Eyes mostly pinned on Kelly. Then her belly. Then back up to her eyes again.
Eddie pulled out his knife and walked down the steps. Tightened his grip on that blade. He’d learned the downsides to blindly trusting people in the past. And this was the first person he’d seen in weeks. He wanted to know who he was. What his deal was. Where he came from.
But most of all, he couldn’t shake the deep sense that he just wanted this man to go away.
“Whoa, there,” he said, raising his hands a little higher. “There’s no need for that.”
“I’ll be the judge of what there’s a need for or not,” Eddie said, knife raised, walking faster. “Who the hell are you?”
“Sunil,” he said. “My name’s Sunil. Seriously. There’s no need for that. If I were going to hurt you, why the hell would I have walked up to you in broad daylight? Please. I’m just here to talk.”
“You’d better get talking, then. We have nothing to say until you do.”
Sunil’s eye contact didn’t drop once. His smile didn’t falter, not at all. He just stood there. Stared at Eddie. Occasionally broke away to look at Kelly, but only for a fleeting moment. Then right back at Eddie again. Never for long enough to give Eddie reason for concern.
“Your girlfriend. She’s pregnant.”
“She’s… she’s not my girlfriend. But yeah. She’s pregnant. What does that matter to you?”
“Just an observation. My friends. We might be able to help her with—”
“Get to fuck.”
“Hear me out, okay? I’m a scout. I come from a place not far from here. A community of survivors. There aren’t many of us left in this world. You know as well as I do. But we’ve got a good setup there. Good people. Varied skills. And we’ve got trained medical professionals, too. People who could help your girlfriend… sorry. Who could help your friend here.”
Eddie shook his head. “Sounds likely.”
“I know how it sounds. But there are more of us out there. That’s why I’m here. This is my job. To find people. To seek them out. To invite them home. To start something new with however many of us are left. And somebody pregnant. Don’t you see how precious that is? Don’t you see how much we want to encourage reproduction in the new world? We can’t risk anything happening to anyone in such a precious position. Now even less than ever before.”
“Sounds like you’re more interested in your little society than you are in helping us.”
“Either way, the outcome is the same.”
Eddie paused. He looked back. Saw Kelly staring on. Wide-eyed. Hand on her belly. Right at Sunil.
“Lady,” Sunil said. “What do you think?”
Eddie spun around and pushed the knife to Sunil’s neck.
His eyes widened, and his smile broke for the very first time.
“Whoa! Seriously, friend. Don’t—”
“I’m not your friend,” Eddie said. “And you don’t call her ‘lady’. You don’t call her anything. You don’t even look at her. You speak to me. You understand?”
“Okay, okay. Whatever. I just… Your friend is pregnant. Heavily pregnant, by the looks of things. I thought you’d want what’s best for her.”
“Don’t question what I want for her. Don’t for a second.”
“Then let me speak,” Kelly said.
Eddie froze. He didn’t register. Not at first.
He looked around. Saw Kelly standing closer to him. Eyes wide and focused, still on Sunil.
“This place,” Kelly said. “How far from here is it?”
“Ten miles, give or take.”
“And you say there’s people there. How many?”
“Only about eighty of us. But we’re growing. Slowly but surely, we’re growing. And we’re the biggest group we’ve come across.”
“The biggest we’ll have come across too,” Kelly said.
She walked closer to Sunil.
And then she stood there a few seconds.
Quiet.
Eddie’s knife still to Sunil’s neck.
“Why should we trust you?” she asked.
Sunil looked at Kelly.
Then he looked right into Eddie’s eyes.
That smile back to his face. A little less sure of himself. A little more uncertain. But undeniably present.
“You don’t. It’s just an invite. You can walk away whenever you like. Right now if you want. But please. I… I’m here because I want to help. I know how much I’m risking my life just by speaking to you. But I’m here. And surely that counts for something. Right?”
Eddie didn’t want to concede any ground.
He didn’t want anything to do with this guy.
He didn’t trust him one bit.
But then he felt Kelly’s hand tighten on his arm.
Tap it, just a little.
And then he pulled his knife away and stepped back and walked towards the house.
“Eddie—”
“I don’t like this.”
“Please. You heard what he said. We—”
“I don’t like this one fucking bit,” he shouted. Almost as if Sunil weren’t here at all.
But he looked into Kelly’s eyes, and he felt a deep sadness, a gaping void, right in the middle of his chest.
“But I’ll come with you. Because I’m the father of that child. And I care. So I’m not trusting this guy with you for one damned second. And you’d better believe it, Sunil.”
Sunil’s brown eyes twinkled in the sunlight.
His smile twitched back into full certainty. Full confidence.
“I’ll take your word for it, friend,” he said. And then he looked back at Kelly, and she looked back at him.
And it was in that glance that Eddie knew exactly why he was so reluctant.
Chapter Nineteen
Noah lay back against the springy double bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Jane was in another room. She’d asked him if she could sleep in his bed, but he didn’t think it was such a good idea. She looked kind of sad about that. If there was one thing he could say about her, it was that she was direct. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to express it.
She was a nice kid… Kid. Fuck. He needed to stop saying that. He’d almost slept with her months ago, and he couldn’t deny there was a level of interest there to this day still.
And there was no reason why they couldn’t sleep together. They were humans. They had needs. They were consenting adults. They were attracted to each other. And she was nice, too. As much as he tried to push back against it, she was nice to him. Understanding. Forgiving. They clicked.
But he couldn’t look past Jasmine.
He closed his eyes as he
lay there in the darkness. He always felt weird about occupying someone else’s bed. That knowledge that one day, everything here had just been ordinary. The last time the occupants of this bed slept here, they had no idea what the next day was going to bring. That was the true tragedy of the virus. It was so sudden. So abrupt.
And its final, most brutal laugh was to annihilate most of the population in one nasty gut-punch. The most brutal, devastating act of all.
But he was still here. Jane was still here.
And maybe she had a point.
Maybe people needed to learn to stick together.
He rolled over onto his side and tried not to think about tomorrow. But trying not to think about tomorrow just brought it to mind even more. He had to have some kind of plan in place. Where he was going to walk. What he was going to eat. Where he was going to end up.
And now, another element to the plan.
What he was going to do about Jane.
He felt guilty even having any thoughts about abandoning her. She was a decent person. No ill intentions. Good company, for what it was worth.
But she looked like she was coping fine. Surviving, anyway.
And he wasn’t sure he could spend much longer in somebody else’s company.
He wasn’t sure he could move forward with someone.
Especially not someone he was semi-attracted to.
He drifted off into cloudy thoughts and murky dreams. Dreams of making love, but wanting to push back, wanting to resist. Dreams of kissing Jane, losing himself in her body, only to open his eyes and see Jasmine staring down at him. Tearful. Judging.
And then he heard the bang, and he jolted awake.
Something smashing to the floor downstairs.
Another bang.
And a struggle.
Noah opened his eyes, and his first thought was Jane.
He jumped out of bed. Grabbed the hammer from the bedside cabinet. He opened the bedroom door, stepped out into the darkness. He wanted to call out for Jane. Wanted to check she was okay.
But at the same time, there was someone downstairs. Someone in their house. He had to be careful. They didn’t know he was here.
He stepped around to the top of the stairs, and he saw it all in a flash.
A blackened figure. Dragging someone towards the front door.
Dragging Jane away.
“Jane!” Noah started.
And then he felt it. Hard against the back of his head. So hard that as much as he struggled to stay on his feet, the dizziness just took over him, surrounded him, swallowed him up.
He went flying down the stairs. Tumbling below. Cracking his head on every single step. Feeling every single one of them like a punch. Tasting blood in his mouth. Smelling the rustiness of metal.
He hit the bottom step. Lifted his head, arched his neck up, just a little.
And in this dizzy, dazed haze, he saw them.
The two men dragging Jane out of the house.
Her wide, terrified eyes as she kicked and screamed and tried to fight back.
And then the figure stepping over him, standing right in his way.
They lifted the hammer from his limp, shaking fingers.
Looked down at him, smirk on their face.
“Don’t worry,” that muffled voice said. “We’ll take real good care of her, yessir.”
And then Noah felt another crack, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
Zelda stared at the boy by her side and wondered what the hell she was going to do about him.
He was young. About ten. He looked terrified. Those wide brown eyes kept on turning back towards the campsite, which they’d left an hour ago now. Staring on, longingly.
Barney sat by her side. Looked at the boy intently, too. Like he was trying to figure him out, trying to weigh him up. The dog seemed to have good instincts on that front. Sometimes, she wished she could lean over to him, ask him exactly what he was thinking about something or someone. Dogs seemed to work on a really instinctive level. They seemed to trust their gut feelings, and those gut feelings usually seemed right. She never used to value dogs so much. Never saw herself as much of an animal person. Far too much attachment to gamble with.
But she liked his company.
But this boy…
He sat there. Quiet. Staring into space. Every now and then, he’d look around at her, unsure, uncertain. Looked at her sword, and his eyes would widen, and tears would appear at the corners of his eyes. She didn’t know his name. But she figured he was a member of the group at the caravan site. Maybe even a family member of that group around the fire. That awful massacre of that innocent-looking group. That poor family.
She looked over at the boy. It was getting late. They were going to have to get moving soon. She didn’t like it out here on this park bench in the middle of this overgrown forest of a public space. The memory of the scene at the campsite back there. The knowledge that some sinister group was out there, and they could return at any moment.
And this boy…
What the hell was she going to do about him?
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
The boy spun around. Looked at her with those wide eyes. “Finn.”
“Finn. What happened back there?”
Finn’s eyes widened even more. Looked like he really didn’t want to talk about it. “My… my mum. My dad. My sister. We… They were just cooking. And I went back to get some cutlery from our caravan. And I heard them. The people talking. I looked out the window. Saw Dad standing up to this… this tall man. This tall, smiling man. Shaking his head. And then I walked away and got some more cutlery because I thought it might be nice we had a guest. But then I heard a scream. I went to the window and I… I saw them. The ginger man with the big head and the googly eyes. Stabbing Dad. Then Mum because she tried to fight. And then my sister, too. Maisie.”
Zelda found it hard not to feel a knot in her stomach as this boy spoke so frankly about what’d happened. But she found it hard expressing her own emotions. Found it hard sharing her own feelings. Never was good with kids. Not even when she was “Sarah”. When she was a kid. “Sorry. That must’ve been rough. How many were there?”
Finn looked around at her. “How many what?”
“People. Who killed your fam… Sorry. I’m not great at this. But how many were there?”
Finn just wiped his eyes. He looked tired. Exhausted. “Four. Maybe more.”
“And they just left when they’d… when they’d finished? Didn’t take anything? No idea what they wanted?”
“I hid. They came looking in the caravans. I think one of them might’ve seen me. The smaller one. The woman. But she… she didn’t do anything. She walked out of the caravan. Said she hadn’t seen anything. I miss them. I fought with Maisie, but I miss her so much.”
He buried his head in his hands and sobbed into his palms. Again, Zelda felt mightily uncomfortable. Was she supposed to hug this kid? Put an arm around him, or something?
In the end, she settled for a gentle pat on the back. It felt weird. Unnatural. Thought it might freak the kid out more than anything. “It’s okay. Well. It’s not okay. I know it’s not okay. But you’ll get through it. In time. We all do.”
“I don’t—I don’t know what I’ll do without them.”
Zelda didn’t want to commit to anything. She didn’t want to suggest or agree to anything she wasn’t sure about. Not yet. “You’ll find a way to survive. You’re strong to make it this far.”
And then he did something she was totally unprepared for.
He leaned in. Tucked his head into her neck and shoulder. She felt his warm tears on her bare skin. “I can’t. Not on myself. I got bullied. I’m not strong. Even Dad said I was weak.”
Zelda wanted to pull away. Wanted to drag herself from this boy. She already had a dog with her, and he was needy enough. Couldn’t have a kid dragging her down too.
But she couldn’t.
She was stuck
to him.
Magnetic, almost.
She just let him rest his head there and cry and kept up this weird back-patting ritual that weirdly seemed to be having the right effect.
“Sometimes our parents aren’t always right,” Zelda said. “Sometimes they say mean things. And it’s… it’s usually the people who get bullied who end up strongest in life. ’Cause they’re better at dealing with things down the line.”
She let him rest there a few minutes—minutes that felt like hours.
And then he moved his head away. Looked up at her through teary eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
A hesitation. Resistance. Not wanting to bond. Not wanting to attach. “Zelda.”
He frowned a little but didn’t ask anything else about her name. “Can I come with you?”
She felt her cheeks flush. She wanted to say no. Wanted to push back. Wanted to resist.
But how could she?
How could she possibly abandon this boy and live with herself?
“Yes,” she said, her voice cracking away. “Yes, you can.”
Chapter Twenty-One
First, a sudden brightness clouding his entire visual field.
Then a banging pain at the back of his skull and the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth.
He looked around. Didn’t know where he was. Didn’t particularly care, in all truth. His back ached like mad. Fuck, every inch of his body ached. He wanted to stay lying here, twisted, contorted, not moving.
But he knew he had to get up.
Something told him he had to get up.
He pushed himself to his feet. He was at the bottom of a staircase. Looked like someone’s home. There was blood on the cream carpet where his head had rested. He reached for the back of his head and saw blood on his fingertips. Shit. That bastard. Some bastard had raided this place in the night. He’d heard movement downstairs. Reached the top of the staircase and seen Jane being dragged away by two goons.
And then the smack against his head. Jane struggling, screaming.
Now here he was.
He walked over to the front door—or rather, he limped. His neck was sore, and his ribs stung. It hurt to breathe.