The World After (Book 3)

by Ryan Casey

  Then without any more hesitation, I pulled the gag from my mouth, stood and turned around. “Holly, I…”

  I stopped speaking.

  Walter was standing right beside Holly and Lionel.

  He was looking right at me.

  Axe in hand.

  I felt the ground open up beneath me and I wanted to fall into it. I was surrounded. I had been caught trying to escape, regardless of everything Jim said to me about the consequences of trying to escape.

  “All you had to do was behave,” Walter said, walking slowly towards me.

  “Please,” I said. But instead of Walter, I found myself looking at Holly. I found myself hoping that whatever happened, she was going to be okay. That she was going to be safe.

  Walter kept on walking towards me. “All you had to do was stay put and wait for us to talk to you. Properly.”

  He stood right opposite me now. I could smell his sweat in the air, and no doubt he could taste the fear in my body.

  I held my breath and waited for the axe to hit me, for my fortuitous run of good fortune to end.

  But that axe didn’t hit.

  Something else happened.

  Something entirely unexpected.

  Something that changed everything…

  CHAPTER TEN

  I watched Walter fall to the ground right in front of me and right away I knew something was wrong.

  The weather seemed to drop, all of a sudden. Every hair on my body stood on end. The rest of the tent that I’d been held captive inside seemed to disappear all around me—Lionel, Holly, all of it.

  All I could see now was Walter’s body, blood pooling out of his back.

  And in front of him…

  A child.

  It was a boy. The boy could barely be much older than Holly. He had short brown hair, and was skinnier than any kid of his age that I’d seen. There was a deadness to his brown eyes, like he’d had a past, but that past was long gone now. It seemed like he’d seen lots of things. Like he’d been through lots of things, just as everyone in this world had.

  He was looking right at me—or rather, right through me—with blood on his hands.

  I kept totally still, not really through choice, more through fear.

  After all, this boy had a knife in his hand.

  A knife that he’d stabbed Walter with.

  I heard a shout from outside, then. I heard the panic and the chaos. Lionel was going mad, desperately trying to break free of his leash. He knew something was coming. He could feel it, just like I could, and just like Holly could too, no doubt.

  The boy looked through me a little while longer.

  Then he turned and started walking over towards Holly.

  I felt my heart picking up. He was walking over to Holly with that knife in his hand. He was going to hurt her. I wasn’t going to let him. Whether he was a kid or not, he wasn’t hurting Holly.

  I scrambled down for the ties around my ankles, but they were tied really tight, clamping my legs together. I pulled at them, hard, stretching them out as much as my hands could, but all that did was made my palms bleed.

  The boy was still walking slowly towards Holly.

  I realised then I didn’t need to break free of the ties. But Walter. Walter was on the floor. He had that axe. I could cut myself free.

  I grabbed the axe and steadied it as much as my shaking hands would allow. I hovered it over the ties around my ankles.

  I had images of missing, of catching some major artery or causing a deep wound in my leg.

  But still I had to try.

  I slammed it down and snapped the ties in two.

  I stood up then, the axe still in my hand. I stormed towards the kid, only seeing red now.

  Lionel jumped around aggressively even more.

  Holly’s eyes looked on, widening.

  Outside, more unseen chaos went down, and all I could see of it were silhouettes.

  But I kept on moving towards the boy, towards Holly.

  I grabbed him by the shoulder. I spun him around, then I pushed him to the ground.

  I pulled back my axe, went to bury it in his body.

  Then I saw it. Just for a split second, I saw the fear in his eyes, and I realised what I was doing.

  This was just a boy.

  It was just a boy.

  So I put the axe down and I grabbed the knife from his hand.

  Then, I stuffed the gag in his mouth, and I used some of the spare ties that had fallen out of Walter’s pocket to wrap around his ankles, then his wrists.

  I looked down at him as he writhed around on the floor of the tent and I saw that the humanity had drifted from his eyes again. All that was left was rage.

  I didn’t know what he’d been through. I didn’t know who had done this to him, or who had made him like this.

  Only that I didn’t want Holly facing the same fate.

  I freed her from her ties, then freed Lionel. I had to hold him tightly on his lead to stop him running away.

  “We’re—we’re going to get out of here,” I said, trying to comfort Holly.

  She was just looking past me, down at the boy as he tried to cry out, as he tried to shuffle around. “But—but—”

  “Don’t worry about him,” I said, patting her shoulder and stroking her hair. Outside, I heard more gasps, and I heard more footsteps. After that, it went quiet. “We’re going to get away. You with me?”

  “I—I—”

  “Are you with me, Holly?”

  She looked up at me then, and I saw lucidity returning to her eyes.

  She nodded, uncertainly. But any nod was enough.

  I half-smiled. “Good. Then we’re going to get out of here. We’re…”

  I stopped speaking when I saw the figures outside the tent.

  When I saw the tent door being opened.

  When I saw the person standing there.

  It was a man. Only it wasn’t just any normal man. He was wrapped up in thick furs, and wearing one of those novelty Venetian masks; a feminine one at that, golden with a purple feather.

  But it was what was around his neck that caught my eye.

  A necklace of noses…

  Human noses.

  He looked at me for a second. Then his attention diverted to Holly, and then to the child on the ground.

  It was when I saw what was behind him that I understand what this was.

  There were three children. All a similar age to the boy on the ground.

  All holding knives.

  And all with that dead-eyed expression that filled me with terror.

  I knew then that we were surrounded. That there was no way out of the tent via the entrance.

  There was only one way we could go.

  I looked at the kid on the ground, who kept on kicking and writhing, like a feral animal.

  Then I looked at Holly.

  I held my breath.

  Then I took her hand.

  And, with Walter’s axe in hand, I ran to the back of the tent and slashed my way out.

  I knew the rival group wasn’t far behind…

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I held tightly onto Holly’s hand and Lionel’s leash and did the only thing I knew how to do anymore.

  I ran.

  I ran as quickly as I possibly could. Specks of cold, icy rain lashed at my cheeks as I hurtled through the trees. Above, the clouds were forming, and darkness seemed to be arriving. I didn’t want to even think about being stuck out here in the middle of the night while that… that group was on our trail.

  Just the thought of them made the hairs on the back of my neck stand right on end.

  The man. The Venetian mask.

  The noses around his neck.

  And worse than anything, the children…

  I shook my head and kept on moving. I didn’t want to think about them. Because thinking about them just made me realise that Holly could’ve been like that if she’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. She could’ve been turned, just
like they had, and the thought of it just terrified me.

  But she was here right now.

  She was with me.

  I had to protect her.

  Now, more than ever, I saw the urgency of the need to look out for her.

  She stopped, then. And when she stopped, I felt myself being dragged back too to check she was okay.

  “What’s up?”

  She winced. “My—my foot.”

  “What’s up with it? Did you stand on something?”

  She started to cry a little. “It’s… I twisted it. It really hurts.”

  I felt caught between two rival forces. One was telling me that we needed to keep moving, so no matter how bad Holly might feel, we needed to press on.

  But on the other hand, I felt sympathy for her. I didn’t want her to be in any pain. I wanted her to be okay.

  I looked over her shoulder at the trees we’d just come out of. It was silent. Well. There was wind. There were branches cracking seemingly of their own accord. And every time I saw movement—whether of a bird or a branch swaying in the wind—I was convinced that our enemy was onto us.

  “They’ll be far away now,” Holly said. “We don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat and wished I could have the same sense of certainty that she had. “We can’t know that. Not for sure. Can you run?”

  Holly took a step onto that right foot.

  She fell down to her knees, tears pouring from her eyes with the pain.

  Lionel looked on, concerned.

  I crouched opposite Holly and eased her boot from her foot. I wasn’t happy about being stopped here. I knew that the rival group could be onto us. They could’ve been chasing us right out of the camp and just waiting for us to slip up. But of course, I couldn’t force Holly to push on through the pain. If she was hurt badly then I needed to do whatever I could to make sure she was okay.

  I looked at her right foot. It was bruised down the outside, and there was a little cut. But it didn’t look too bad. “You’re going to be okay,” I said, holding onto her foot. “I think you’ve just sprained it, that’s all.”

  I eased her foot back into the boot and she stood. She walked on that foot, stretching it a little. She seemed like she was okay.

  “I think I’ll be able to walk. But I don’t think I can run as fast. Not anymore.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something. “That’s okay. We don’t have to run.”

  I took Holly’s hand in mine and moved away from the woods. The darkness was rapidly increasing. I didn’t like the idea of being stuck out here through the night, not now I knew of the other threat on the horizon. I wanted to be back in the suburbs. I wanted to be in that nice suburban home with Hannah, Jenny, Remy, Haz, Sue and Aiden. I wanted everything to be back how it was.

  But I wasn’t going to get that. It wasn’t going to happen.

  We walked further, neither of us saying much. To be honest I was still in shock. Shock not only that we’d managed to escape capture, but that the people who had attacked our captors had been in such a state; such a condition.

  “Scott?” Holly asked, curiosity in her voice.

  “What’s up?”

  “Those children. Why were they bad?”

  I thought about the boy who had stabbed Walter. The way he’d thrashed around on the tent floor. I wanted to give Holly a straight answer, but I knew there had to be… well, complexities to what I’d witnessed . “Maybe they weren’t bad.”

  “But that boy. He was going to—”

  “We don’t know what he was going to do. And we don’t know what he’d been through. What he might’ve been told. What he might’ve seen.”

  I looked at Holly and for a moment I remembered that this girl had witnessed the death of her mother and brother, first-hand. How easy it would’ve been for her to crack.

  “But we’re safe from them now,” I said. “That’s the important thing. We’re far away from them. We don’t have to worry about them. Not anymore.”

  She looked up at me and smiled, tightening her grip around my hand. “Promise?”

  I wanted to. I really wanted to.

  But then something caught my attention.

  A noise. A noise in the trees behind us.

  I turned around slowly.

  There was a rustling sound.

  And that rustling was coming towards us.

  I felt dread fill my body. My knees went weak. The only feeling I could compare it to was an old Playstation game I used to play, Resident Evil: Nemesis. Every time you thought you were safe from the monster, he’d appear, out of nowhere, to haunt you and chase you some more.

  Except this wasn’t a game.

  This was real.

  “Hide,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just—just hide. Right now. They’re here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I held my breath as I crouched in the bushes and hoped to God the man walking in our direction wouldn’t see us.

  I was low down, close to the ground, and Holly and Lionel were by my side. My heart was racing so fast that I was sure if someone walked by too closely, they’d hear it. I felt sick, right to my gut. I could feel sweat trickling down the side of my face even though it was as cold as ever. I just wanted to get up and get out of this situation.

  But I could hear the footsteps getting closer, and I knew we had to keep our cool. We had to hold our ground.

  We had to stay hidden. ’Cause God knows what might happen if we showed ourselves.

  I felt Holly’s hand tighten around mine. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay. I wanted to promise her that I was here for her, no matter what, and that I was going to get her out of this mess.

  But the time for making promises I wasn’t sure I could keep was gone. Long gone.

  The sooner she adjusted to the fact that there could be no promises in this world, the better.

  Because knowing that truth might just keep her alive.

  I listened to the footsteps get closer, and I knew who this was. It was the enemy group. The one with the Venetian masks on, with the children by their sides. I thought of that boy I’d knocked down to the tent floor back at the camp we’d been held prisoner in. The way his eyes had been completely dead, like every bit of good had been brainwashed from him, and he’d been turned into a tool. Nothing more than a tool.

  Maybe that’s what this was. Maybe that’s who these people were.

  Monsters, who preyed on the weak, exploiting them to further their own advancement.

  If there’s one thing I’d learned since the beginning of the collapse, it was that there really were all sorts of types in this world. In a sense, the world before was very samey. Everyone stood in line. Everyone behaved in public. Everyone did the things they were told to do. And if they didn’t, they were condemned to prisons or other institutions. Their lack of conformity was the death of them.

  But people had always had fantasies. Even the “normal” ones who conformed. That’s why top earning, high-flying bankers went home to murder aliens on video games. It’s why happily married women ended up embroiled in multiple affairs with bad boys. That was just the way of the world—people wearing clothes, covering up their skin, when in fact the real humanity was underneath that skin, and as much as we tried to cover it up, we all knew, deep down, that it was there.

  That’s what caused groups like this—seemingly mad, seemingly impossible—to thrive in the new world.

  They were just fantasists, finally living out the life they’d always wanted to live, but never been allowed to thanks to society’s constraints.

  They were just the tip of the iceberg.

  As the man got closer, I squeezed Holly’s hand. I kept on stroking Lionel too, who was keeping very still. He was good like that. He didn’t growl at people when he could tell we were doing our best to stay quiet. It could’ve been disastrous if he did. We probably wouldn’t have made it this fa
r, that was for sure.

  As my heart raced, I kept on stroking Lionel with my left hand and squeezing Holly’s hand with the other. I saw the silhouette of the man pass by the front of the bush we were hiding behind. I couldn’t see anyone with him, which made me assume he was alone. But I couldn’t be certain. I’d seen the way these people moved. I’d seen how they acted. I didn’t want to risk anything, as much as getting up and killing him felt tempting to me right now.

  Wow. What had I become for killing to seem like the most pragmatic option?

  Wasn’t I just another creation of this new world without limits?

  I watched him stop right in front of the bush.

  I kept still. So still that I wasn’t breathing. My head spun. My whole body went heavy. I had to be ready to act.

  He stayed there a few seconds. And I was sure I could see him looking right through that bush, right towards me.

  And then he turned away and carried on walking.

  I let myself gasp. Sweat was all over me now. I was shaking. My adrenaline levels must’ve been off the charts.

  But we’d hidden. He’d walked on. We were going to be okay.

  I looked at Holly, squeezed her hand again and smiled.

  Then I heard Lionel growl.

  When he growled, I looked around at him.

  He was looking beyond the bush.

  On the other side of the bush, I saw the man who’d been walking toward us stop walking away from us.

  I saw him turn around.

  And I saw him look right at us.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I watched the man start to walk in our direction again and I knew he was on to us.

  A cold breeze blew against us, through the bush. It made me shiver all over, although that could just be a combination of the adrenaline and the cold.

  I looked through the branches at this person heading my way. I could just about make out the Venetian mask they were wearing, which confirmed my suspicions about who they were.

  In their right hand, they were holding a long blade. It looked like there was dried blood on it.

  As this man walked towards us, I felt an urge to turn around and run. After all, what else could we do? We were trapped. And I’d seen how this man’s people had acted when they’d got to our group of captives—who probably weren’t bad people in all truth.