by Casey, Ryan
Kelly shook her head, rolled her eye. Walked over to Noah. “I’m with you ’til the end, you fucking idiot. Whether you like it or not. Besides. You still owe me for messing up my car seats.”
Noah raised an eyebrow. Smiled. “I’ll repay you for that someday.”
They looked across at Shel, then. Who stood there. Rifle in hand. Narrowed eyes. Like she didn’t know what to do. Like she wasn’t sure which road to take.
“Same applies to you,” Noah said.
“Yeah,” she said. “And I don’t need you to tell me that.”
Noah nodded. “Then I guess I’ll see you around?”
Shel looked over at Jaan.
Then she lowered her rifle.
Walked over to Noah.
“Nah,” she said. “You’re gonna need a mean bitch on your side to keep an eye on you. Just in case this prick tries anything.”
She stopped at Noah’s side. Half-smiled, the closest thing to approval she’d ever show.
Noah half-smiled. Nodded back. Secretly pretty pleased to have Shel along.
They all looked at Jaan, then. Saw that smile on his face. That brightness to his eyes.
“Well,” he said. “How about we get started saving the world?”
Chapter Twelve
Anton stood on the Liverpool docks and stared out into the distance.
It was a bright day. Nice and cold, just how Anton liked it. Reminded him of home. He missed Russia a lot. Used to complain about the cold a lot when he was there. Used to complain about the snow. Used to complain about the boiler breaking. Breath frosting. Waking up in the morning, teeth chattering, not wanting to emerge from the bedcovers because of the knowledge that it was only going to be worse outside, colder outside.
But right now, Anton felt at home in the colder weather. He found himself longing for winter, weirdly. Winter was going to be different this time. Very different.
It was going to be the first winter of the new world.
The beginning of something new. The start of something fresh.
He looked around at the mass of helicopters. Two hundred of them that he’d counted, and undoubtedly more that he hadn’t. All of them here. Phase Two completed. Every inch of Britain graced with their presence. So few still left standing.
That was the bitter side to all of this. The number of people who had been sacrificed to ensure a safer, virus-free new world.
But when they looked back—when they really assessed whether it was worth it, emotional attachment aside—the survivors would see that it was the right thing. That it was the best thing for humanity.
And history would view those who fell as martyrs. History would view them as the heroes of humanity. The greatest ever sacrifices.
Because they would be the ones who eliminated the virus. Who purged it, once and for all. Never to resurface. Never to return.
Right now, it was about waiting. Waiting for the arrival of the supplies. Waiting for Phase Three.
The beginning of which was due to start imminently.
Anton had to admit he was feeling a little anxious about Phase Three. This whole exercise wasn’t an easy one. It wasn’t a quick fix. It would require the traversing of a lot of land, and it would take time.
But once they started the process, once they began, it was irreversible. Once they began, the long journey towards a new kind of normality would start.
And once Phase Three was complete, Phase Four could begin.
Distributing the new leaders to certain areas of the new world. Beginning new governments. New ways of ruling.
And ensuring that people never mixed between these groups again. Ensuring the freedom to travel ended. Ensuring people stayed in their groups. Because that was the way towards ensuring something like this never happened again.
But even greater than that. It was the way to ensuring constant control. Constant security.
Democracy had failed. It had failed again and again. It was a nice idea, in principle. But the truth was, freedom was an illusion. A dangerous illusion.
The sooner people accepted this, the better. Because the sooner they accepted it, the sooner they grew comfortable with the new way, the sooner they could begin to adapt to the new reality.
A beautiful reality. A reality that would serve their best interests. That would help them dearly, if only they truly looked it in the eyes; if only they allowed themselves to see.
“You okay, buddy?”
Anton looked around. Saw Sam standing there. Cigarette in his mouth, between his yellow teeth. Bald. Constant smell of smoke hung around him.
“Yeah,” Anton said, nodding.
“Tense, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Sam put his rifle on his shoulder. “When the shipments come, we’ll be started in no time. Get the helicopters locked and loaded. Three days. That’s all we have to wait. Three days. Then it begins. It all begins.”
Anton nodded. “I know. I get that.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
Truth be told, Anton didn’t know what was bothering him. He just had this weird sense about him whenever things were on the brink of going wrong. He’d had it before when his parents split. No signs. No arguments. Nothing like that. Just a feeling things weren’t quite right, and his instincts were right.
And when his wife was having an affair. Again, no signs. No secret messages, that kind of thing.
Just a feeling that things weren’t quite right. That they were too good to be true.
And then, bam. The confession. The divorce papers.
Over. Just like that.
He had that sense right now. Wasn’t sure if it was because of the things that’d happened to him in the past or because this was one of those same events. Only that he felt it. And it scared him.
He took a deep breath. Sighed. Stared out into the blue skies.
“Nothing,” he said. “Really, it’s nothing. It’s like you say. Refuelled. Restocked. And given the all-clear. Then in three days, we end this.”
“Wrong, brother,” Sam said. “We begin this. The new start. The new world. We begin.”
Anton looked at him and smiled.
He wanted to believe things were all going to go to plan.
He wanted to believe everything was going to work out.
But still, that voice in his head, blabbering at him, torturing him.
What if it didn’t work out?
What if something went wrong?
He turned around and saw the outline of a ship in the distance, heading right their way.
He smiled.
Maybe things would work out after all.
Chapter Thirteen
They didn’t wait ’til morning to begin their journey.
Time was of the essence, after all.
Noah stared at the long stretch of motorway ahead of him. There were still the remnants of the old world here—cars abandoned long ago, rusting away. Skeletons of people who had died years ago. Dust-laden discarded crisp packets. Coke cans. iPads, cracked, value-less, children’s fingerprints still smearing the glass screens.
All these reminders of the past were nothing more than relics now. They had lost their meaning. Lost all value.
And yet weirdly, there was a ghostly presence about them. An aura. Like walking in a dream and seeing something that made you wonder whether this was reality at all?
A strange sense that a world like the one that used to be might return one day. That that world was the status quo, and this was the blip. As impossible as that now seemed.
It was dark but for the brightness of the moon, which gave off a surprising amount of light. Stars peppered the black sky like spotlights, their reflection bouncing off the car windscreens. They’d decided to get moving immediately. Time was of the essence like he said. Three days, Jaan estimated. Maybe less. Three days until the helicopters were refuelled and Phase Three began.
And once Phase Three began, there was no stopping things. There was no p
reventing things.
It was all or nothing. And it felt like the odds were stacked well in the favour of “nothing,” that was for sure.
But he’d be fucking damned if he didn’t try.
Bruno walked by his side. He hadn’t left it, not once. Strange for Bruno. Usually such a whore for new people.
But he seemed to be a bit uncertain around Jaan. Which Noah probably should take as a warning sign. But hell, fuck it. That whole “dogs having better judgement” shit was a myth and one that’d proven a myth far too many times in the past.
He didn’t trust Jaan, sure. But he had no reason to doubt what he was saying. He had no reason not to believe him, as far-fetched as it sounded.
He glanced to his right. Jaan walking along, not saying very much. Clearly picking up on the vibe that they weren’t here for conversation. They were here for one reason only: getting to Liverpool. Stopping Phase Three. Ending this shit, once and for all.
It seemed batshit. Far-fetched as fuck.
But at the same time, wasn’t everything these last few years like something out of a goddamned novel?
“You okay?”
Noah looked around. Saw Kelly staring at him with that one eye.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Noah said.
“Why? My eye give you the creeps?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Sure. It’s cool. It’s not like your fucking one hand doesn’t creep me out a little bit too. Stumpy.”
He smiled, and Kelly smiled back. There wasn’t a lot of love in the words they shared. They took the piss out of each other incessantly. But that’s just how they were. That was their friendship.
“How do you think this is gonna go?” Kelly asked.
“What?”
“Sorry. I just keep thinking… of all the things that have happened to us, this is the fucking craziest, no doubt about it. We’re usually wrong when we imagine how things are gonna go. So I guess I can’t help but wonder where you’re at with all this?”
Noah looked back over towards Jaan. At Shel, rifle permanently pointed at him, eyes never shifting from him.
And then he looked down at the road before him. “I want to believe this will work. That we’ll get there. That Jaan’s right, and I’m really as strong as he believes.”
“But?”
“But… I just don’t know, Kel. It’s like you say. Things don’t usually go the way we expect. Not exactly got the best track record on that front, huh?”
Kelly shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Why? What do you think?”
She looked off into the distance, then. Didn’t say anything, just stared.
“Kelly?”
“I don’t know,” she said smirking.
“No, go on.”
“It’s probably stupid.”
“Hey. If ever there was a time for sharing stupid projections about the future, it’s now.”
She looked around at Noah, and he saw something to her face. That look of vulnerability about her. That air of loss that hung over her, an air she’d tried to hide from for so, so long.
“I don’t know. But a part of me wonders if… if maybe we could get back to some kind of normality. Maybe not… maybe not how it used to be. It’ll never be how it used to be. And would we want it to be? Really? But I don’t know. Maybe we can get back to a time where we pulled together. But on a wider scale. A world that understands what it went through and never lets that shit happen again. Never goes to war again. Never tears itself apart again.”
“Fat chance of that as long as humans are around,” Noah said.
“Fair. And I dunno. Sometimes I… sometimes I see myself with… with a kid. Like, raising a kid. A little boy, maybe. It feels like there’s a whole life me and Edward should’ve lived that’s still out there. You know?”
She looked at Noah, and he felt a knot in his stomach.
Because he felt it too.
That desire for normality. Hell, even the thought of having a kid. Thoughts he’d never had with anyone except Jasmine, all those years ago.
He looked away from Kelly, cheeks flushing.
Looked off at the road ahead.
“Eyes on the road,” he said. “The infected might be gone, but we know by now it’s the nutters who’re left that we’ve got to worry about.”
He stared ahead into the darkness, down the motorway, towards whatever storm awaited them.
And as he walked, his heart racing, he couldn’t get the thought of standing by Kelly’s side, baby in her arms, out of his mind.
Chapter Fourteen
Renault wandered down the middle of the empty, abandoned motorway and wondered how the hell he’d ended up living a life as goddamned shitty as this.
It was late. Pitch black. Didn’t fucking bother him. Preferred walking when it was dark, anyway. Always had. Took him back to his childhood when Dad got home and started shouting at Mum. When the banging started. The screaming. At first, he’d just sit in a corner and cover his ears and maybe scream into a pillow.
But eventually, he started climbing out his window. Going on long walks. Sometimes he’d only get back when the sun was rising again.
And they never knew. Neither of them. Both so caught up in their own shit that they didn’t know what in the name of fuck was going on with their son. How he might be feeling. How their crap might be affecting him.
So he felt a weird sense of comfort right now. Even though he was fucking starving. Even though he hadn’t eaten for four days, and four days ago, he’d only gone and eaten a partly raw rabbit that’d given him the goddamned shits for another day, too.
He was exhausted. Running out of energy. Needed refuelling and fucking fast at that.
But the more he walked, the more he got the sense that he wasn’t finding any kind of meal any time soon.
It all changed a month ago. A normal day at Fucksville. Everyone working. Everyone doing their best to maintain order. Sure, that Shel bitch hadn’t shown up, but maybe something had happened to her out there. Wouldn’t be the first time.
But then the helicopters passed over. Sprayed this weird-ass gunk down all over him, all over everyone. And at first, he wondered whether it might be some kind of cure. Some way of disinfecting people who were still alive, or whatever the hell sciencey types did. He didn’t know. He worked as a postman before all this shit came to pass. Science wasn’t his area.
But then people started dropping dead around him. Clutching their throats. Gargling blood. Coughing, shrieking, gasping for air.
And then they died. Just like that. The whole damned lot of them. Bar a few, anyway. A few of the slaves. People he didn’t really give a shit about.
He felt his stomach churn when he thought about them. About what he’d done to them. What he’d had to do to them. ’Cause he relied on others to supply him and everyone else with food. He relied on others to keep things ticking over.
And when he was left with nothing, he was faced with a few rotten-ass decisions.
Safe to say those slaves weren’t alive anymore.
He stopped when he saw a car up ahead. A man slumped against the side of it. Considering he’d clearly been dead for a good few days, his body didn’t look in too bad a state. A few flies buzzed around, not as many as in the summer. Skin looked pale. Prune-like. That sour smell surrounded him, but that was nothing new to Renault; nothing he wouldn’t get used to.
He looked at this man, and deep down, he felt fucking sick. Because he was actually entertaining what he was entertaining. He was actually thinking about what he was thinking about.
He knew he wasn’t no monster. He wasn’t no savage. He was a survivor. Anyone who’d made it this damned far had to be a survivor.
But looking at this body lying here right now, he wondered if he could disconnect from the reality of what he knew he had to do. Survival. That’s what it was. Survival.
And this body was long gone.
This body was just meat now.
This body was just food now.
Fuel.
Renault pulled out his knife and walked over to the body.
He crouched beside it. Studied the man’s muscles. Decent biceps. He could cut those away. Cook them over a fire. They’d give him plenty of meat, plenty of fuel.
The tongue, too. A surprisingly underrated chunk of meat. And it saved a lot of the faff of the rest of the body, too.
He heard the screams of the slaves as he sliced their tongues away.
Tasted the saliva through the burning, charred barbecue tang…
Pushed those thoughts to one side.
Just meat.
Just meat, and nothing goddamned more.
He moved the blade towards this man’s bicep. Hovered a hand over it. Got ready to dig in. Ready to slice.
And as he stared at this decaying mess, he wondered if this was just his starvation kicking in. Affecting his judgement.
Maybe he was being batshit cray-cray. Fucking insane.
Maybe eating a dead body wasn’t a fucking good idea.
But fuck it. If he didn’t try something, it wasn’t like he was gonna have anything left.
He went to cut the bicep away when he heard footsteps.
Right behind him.
Moving towards him.
He ducked down.
Dragged himself under a car, right beside that stiff body.
Lay there. Stared out. Doing his best glassy-eyed dead body impression imaginable.
Those footsteps. Quite a few of them.
He looked ahead as they walked on by.
Four of them.
Two blokes. Two women.
And a dog.
And one of the women holding a rifle.
A woman he recognised.
Shel.
Holy shit.
He stared at them as they walked by, totally oblivious to his presence, even the goddamned dumb-ass dog, and he smiled.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to eat dead meat at all.
Chapter Fifteen
It was still dark when they stopped for a breather.
