Vanished

by Eden Darry

  “No. Ellery, we need to leave. Now.” It was no use. Ellery ignored her. She reached out and held her fingers to his neck.

  “He’s alive.” She looked up with a relief that nearly broke Loveday’s heart. Ellery was such a gentle soul.

  “Then we need to go.”

  “But—”

  “No. Ellery, he came at us with a knife. He’s dangerous, and we need to leave.”

  Ellery looked up at Loveday with such pain in her eyes it took Loveday’s breath away. “I can’t just leave him to die.”

  “Why not? It’s exactly what he would have done to us.” Loveday couldn’t keep the coldness out of her voice.

  Ellery flinched. “I’m not him. We’re not him.”

  “What do you suggest? Stay with him until he wakes up and tries to stab us again?”

  “No. I—”

  “The world has changed, Ellery. Whether we like it or not, it’s changed, and we need to look out for ourselves. No one is going to help us. There’s no police to report him to. No courts to punish him if he hurts us.”

  “I don’t want to live in a world like that,” Ellery said quietly.

  The man groaned, and Loveday was gripped by the knowledge they needed to get away from him. Fast. They wouldn’t get lucky again. She knew in the way she had. A certain knowledge.

  “Grow up.”

  Ellery flinched.

  “Don’t be a fucking martyr all your life. He’s going to wake up and kill you. You aren’t a hero, Ellery. This isn’t a bloody film. God isn’t going to protect you. He’s not going to save you.” Loveday took a deep breath and prepared to deal the fatal blow. “If he wakes up and stabs me or Rocky it’ll be your fault.”

  Ellery flinched again, and Loveday tried to ignore the ache in her chest. She didn’t want to hurt Ellery, but she had no choice.

  “Okay.” Ellery stood on shaky legs and stepped over the man who groaned again. “But this is wrong.”

  Ellery walked past her, and Loveday wondered how much damage she had done.

  * * *

  Terry thought he was dreaming. A figure stood over him. A man but not a man. The winter sun was bright behind him and left his face in shadow. Terry squinted. The man who wasn’t a man had a long face, longer than a human’s should be, and suddenly Terry stopped trying to make it out. He didn’t want to see any more. He didn’t want to know.

  “I can’t move.” Terry’s voice was hoarse, the way it usually sounded after he’d been on a bender.

  The man who wasn’t a man shifted away from the sun, and Terry slammed his eyes shut like a child who thinks they’ll keep the bogeyman away if they just don’t look at it.

  “Just do what you’re going to do. Get it over with.” Terry’s fingers dug into the soft earth. He braced himself.

  He heard footsteps. He thought it crouched down, and he felt its breath on his cheek. It smelled like Plasticine.

  What was it doing? Sniffing him. The fucking thing was sniffing him. Would it eat him? Tear his throat out like an animal? Would it be quick or slow and drawn out into long minutes of agony? How would it feel to be eaten alive? Terry felt his bowels go watery. “Please,” he begged, “please, just do it quick.”

  “Terry.” It said his name in a funny way, like it was testing it out, moving the word around its mouth. Tasting it. “Terry.” It was a flat, cold voice. And Terry Pratt who was scared of no man began to cry.

  “Terry. If you want to see your son, do not look for me again. Trust that I will always be around. Watching you. Marking your progress. Take the girl to Rosemary Decker, or I will tear your intestines out of your arsehole with my teeth.”

  “Who are you?”

  Terry heard it shift again, finally, mercifully away from him. “I am the Bringer of Chaos. I am older than all things.”

  The devil. That’s what it really meant. That thing was the devil, and what did it make Terry if he was doing its work? What did that mean for the girl? Was his son even there? With this Rosemary Decker? The first thing you learned about the devil was he lied.

  Terry heard it move away. He refused to look, certain if he did he’d go mad. He knew instinctively not to look at it. Was it definitely gone, though? What if he opened his eyes and it was there, right in front of his face, staring at him?

  The devil lied.

  Would Terry be taking the girl to her death for nothing? His head throbbed from the blow. This was all too much. Too much. Terry lay on the ground, stared up at the sky, and wondered what to do. It was only now, as the birds began to sing again, he noticed they had been silent before.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Loveday put Ellery’s pasta down beside her on the grass, and Ellery mumbled her thanks. They hadn’t spoken at all since the incident with the man, and Ellery didn’t know how to bridge the chasm that had opened between them.

  Also, she was conflicted. On one hand, she knew Loveday acted out of concern for them both, but she had used Ellery’s sense of responsibility for them all against her. Had made her do something she was ethically and morally opposed to—leaving someone to die. It was true the likelihood of him coming around while she helped him and trying to stab her all over again had been high. He was unwell—that much was clear. What was less clear was whether his instability had come about as a reaction to everyone vanishing or the dreams.

  Loveday had done what she thought was right. Ellery couldn’t blame her for it even though part of her wanted to. Maybe this was the result of ignoring the dreams and not heading north. It drove people mad.

  And what about her? She’d hit someone over the head, could have killed him, but in the moment she hadn’t cared. What did that say about her own nature?

  Ellery looked at the pasta next to her. Limp, pale noodles and anemic peas floated in a watery, tasteless broth. Her stomach turned over.

  And what about the girl? They were still no clearer on who she was or where she was.

  What if they didn’t find her?

  “It’ll get cold, and it’s horrible when it’s cold,” Loveday said.

  Ellery looked up and gave Loveday a weak smile. She picked up her mess tin and poked at the congealed crap inside. They would need to find somewhere to restock soon. With the extra food for the pets, they weren’t able to bring too much for themselves.

  “I’m not mad at you,” Ellery said. She watched Loveday pause with her spoon halfway to her mouth, put it back down.

  “I’m sorry anyway,” Loveday said.

  Ellery nodded. “You were right, I think. I would have been taking a chance trying to help him.”

  “I know I was right. He would have hurt you.”

  “Maybe. But it wasn’t worth the risk.”

  “Definitely,” Loveday said.

  “You can’t know that.” Okay, so maybe Ellery was a bit mad.

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  Loveday sighed loudly and plonked her mess tin on the grass. “I just do.”

  Ellery shook her head. “Not good enough.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ellery put down her own mess tin and went to sit by Loveday. “You’re so…secretive. And that’s fine. Unless it involves me and you made me do something I would never—”

  Loveday jumped up like she’d been burned. “I didn’t make you do anything.”

  “Fine. You manipulated me, then.”

  As quickly as she’d fired up, Loveday deflated. “Yeah. That’s true.”

  “Why?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m mad.”

  “Are you going to tell me aliens made you do it?”

  Loveday huffed out a laugh and sat back down. “No. But something equally strange.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I suppose you could say I’m sort of psychic. I know how that sounds, but it’s true.”

  Ellery stayed quiet and waited for Loveday to continue.

  “I’ve had it since I was little. One time I stopped my mum from taking us o
n a bus that crashed. Another time, when I was a teenager, a club caught fire. Today I knew that man was going to hurt you. Maybe even kill you, and I had to get you away. Do you think I’m crazy? I know how I sound.”

  Ellery thought for a moment. Did she think Loveday was crazy? Her only experience of psychics was in horror films or at funfairs. Women with headscarves and big hooped earrings. Not attractive women who were perfectly normal in every other way.

  It was funny how quickly she was changing. A couple of weeks ago, she would have nodded and backed away slowly from Loveday, convinced she was at best on a wind up, and at worst, unhinged. A lot had changed. Her mind was slowly opening. Ellery’s ex would be shocked.

  “No. I believe you,” Ellery said.

  Loveday let out a breath Ellery hadn’t realized she was holding. She imagined this was stressful for Loveday. Even in the short time she’d known her, she understood vulnerability was hard for her—well, it was hard for everyone, but it seemed especially hard for Loveday. Ellery had the sense she’d been let down badly in the past.

  Ellery handled Loveday like one of the injured animals. From refusing to admit her feet were blistered and raw to trying to carry her fair share of the equipment even though Ellery found it easier, Loveday could not admit weakness—or what she thought was weakness—and she would do anything, it seemed, to avoid it.

  Telling Ellery she was psychic must have been excruciating.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Ellery didn’t know for sure, but she had a feeling.

  “No. That’s it.” Loveday’s gaze slid away.

  “You’re a terrible liar.” Ellery grinned.

  “I don’t think I can tell you.” Loveday looked so unsure, and Ellery wanted to hug her.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “That you’ll think less of me. I just don’t think I can.”

  “I think it’ll make you feel better.”

  Loveday shook her head and looked away. “I like you, Ellery, and I want you to think well of me. And not just because I’d be useless out here on my own. I’m scared if I tell you, you’ll think I’m a terrible person and weak and just fucking awful, and I couldn’t bear it.” The words rushed out of her like air out of a balloon, and now she sat there, facing Ellery like she was waiting for some sort of judgement. Judgement Ellery would never pass down. But Loveday didn’t know that.

  Ellery had her own fair share of moments of weakness. She’d made bad decisions—she’d hidden away from the world most of her life, hoping to get on unnoticed and under the radar. Sometimes she’d stayed quiet when she should have spoken out and backed down when she should have fought her corner—or someone else’s.

  “I can’t imagine anything you tell me will make me think less of you. I don’t think you’d do anything bad.”

  Loveday snorted. “You can’t possibly know that about me.”

  “Yes, I can. Today, you could have run and left me to it, but you didn’t. You tried to draw him away from me.”

  “Self-preservation. I need you alive.”

  “Bullshit.” Loveday’s words stung, though Ellery saw them for what they were. An effort to divert and deflect. To move away from the thing Loveday didn’t want to talk about. She wasn’t so different from some of the animals Ellery treated, lashing out in fear and pain.

  “You don’t know me, Ellery.”

  “I think I do. I think you’ve revealed yourself quite without meaning to.”

  Loveday’s head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. This was the worst thing, Ellery knew, she could say to her because it was the worst thing she herself could imagine someone saying to her. She took a deep breath and ploughed on.

  “Want to know my greatest shame? The thing I hate about myself and I’m terrified of anyone finding out?”

  Loveday nodded.

  “My parents are raging alcoholics who think so little of me they moved without giving me their address. I have no idea where they are, and they don’t care. What’s so wrong with me that even my own parents don’t want to know me?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all,” Loveday said in a small voice.

  “It’s why I hide myself away. Why I’ve spent my life hugging the walls and trying not to be seen. There must be something wrong with me.”

  “I killed my girlfriend,” Loveday whispered.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rosemary heard the screams before she walked through the door. They echoed around the hangar, and she was sure people could hear them from the makeshift mess hall. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Rosemary hated drama, and this woman was proving to be very dramatic.

  When she’d ordered the troublemaker removed from her sermon, the guards automatically brought her here. They were using this room to store food, but it was the only area in the hangar with a door that locked from the outside. The troublemaker had found something, a tin by the sound of it, and was alternating between screaming at the top of her lungs and battering the door with the tin.

  This would not do. Even now, the woman remained unafraid. Even though she’d been dragged out of the service and effectively locked up, she still didn’t grasp the reality of her situation.

  The world had ended, and a new one was about to begin, but still this stupid woman thought she had rights and recourse in the way of the old world, the old Britain. Rosemary sighed. She was getting a headache.

  Rosemary approached the locked door, currently guarded by the same two men who’d dragged the woman out. They’d been with her since the beginning, and she was glad they’d survived the vanishing. They were loyal and believed the same things as her.

  “Open the door,” she commanded.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Miss Decker. She’s been pretty violent,” one of the men said.

  Rosemary looked at him with all the authority of her position. “Open it. Now.”

  The man’s gaze slid away, and he used his key to unlock the door. “Be ready for her if she continues to be unreasonable,” Rosemary said.

  Rosemary pushed open the door, saw the woman was backed against the far wall with what looked like a catering tin of baked beans in her hands. Her arms shook from the weight.

  “You can’t do this,” the woman said. There was still too much strength in her voice for Rosemary’s liking.

  “The problem, as I see it, isn’t that I can’t do this, because clearly I already have. The problem is that you won’t accept it. Even though it’s happening. Even though you’re currently cowering in the corner of a cupboard with a tin of beans as your only defence. And it is your only defence. Did it not escape your notice that no one came to your aid earlier? That no one told me I couldn’t, or I shouldn’t do it?”

  The woman lowered the tin of beans, nestling it against her stomach, but still kept hold. “This is still a free country.” Her voice was less angry but still defiant.

  “No. No, it isn’t. All the old laws and ways are gone now. Swept away. Or at least they will be soon. This is a new beginning. A new world shaped in God’s image and as He intended it to be. Honestly, can you look in your heart and say you were truly happy with the old way? That it worked? Food banks being used by nurses. Children being fed by teachers because their parents couldn’t afford to do it themselves. Knife crime, rape, murder out of control. The rich getting richer? They stood on our shoulders to reach what they thought they deserved and didn’t feel us groaning under their weight. What did you really have?”

  “The right to marry who I wanted. The right to a fucking lawyer if I got arrested,” the woman said, pointedly. “The right to say what I wanted without being locked up.”

  “Small things,” Rosemary said.

  “What?”

  “Small things that mean nothing.”

  “Freedom means everything. The right to choose.”

  “The right to work every day for less money than you would have earned thirty years ago? The right to live in abominable sin
while everyone around you pats your shoulder and tells you it’s fine? We moved so far away from God we were never going to find our way back. Until this happened. Everything has changed. Take my hand and come with me into a bright new world.”

  The beans dropped to the ground with a bang and rolled a few feet away. “You are not the answer,” the woman said.

  “No, I’m the messenger. God is the answer.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Come with me,” Rosemary said. “Please. Please come with me.” She held out her arms to the woman.

  “No. Never. Let me go, you mad old bag.”

  “I can’t.”

  The woman dropped to the ground, picked up the tin of beans, then launched herself at Rosemary. She was fast. Faster than Rosemary thought she would be. But still, not fast enough.

  Rosemary stood her ground. Waited for the woman to raise the tin above her head. She slipped the knife out of her sleeve so the handle was in her palm. It was sharp, that knife. And it cut through the woman like butter.

  The tin of beans crashed to the ground. Rosemary wondered if it would be salvageable. They couldn’t afford to waste food like that.

  The woman followed the beans to the floor. On her knees in front of Rosemary, bent forward, hands clutched at her stomach, and watching blood and God only knew what else run through her fingers. She looked at Rosemary, disbelief in her eyes, as though she couldn’t quite understand how it had come to this.

  Rosemary leaned down, not too close. “I’m sorry. I tried to tell you. You wouldn’t listen.” And she meant it.

  She straightened and walked out of the room. The two men had probably seen everything and looked almost as shocked as the woman. “I had no choice. She attacked me. You saw it.”

  Rosemary didn’t wait for either man to respond. She tucked the knife away again and walked quickly back into the main part of the hangar. She didn’t like to be away from the Ark 2 for very long.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The girl’s eyes widened, and Terry thought he must look like shit. His head throbbed, and he could feel the dried blood tight and tacky on his face.