by Wood, Rick
Something glistened briefly in the sunlight. Something around his neck.
“It’s a necklace,” he said.
It was a thick chain with something at the end, like a little circle resting in the centre of his chest. He took it out and opened up this circle, revealing a picture of a woman with brown hair and kind eyes.
“It’s my mum,” Hades admitted.
“Where is she?” she asked, thinking this was better than asking is she dead and instantly regretting how reckless this question was.
“It’s okay,” he said, and she became very aware how easy her emotions were to read. “She died.”
“Oh.”
“It was a few weeks before the creatures rose, actually. Which makes me feel better in a way. That she died before having to witness what happened to the world.”
It was a strange way of looking at things she hadn’t thought of, but it made sense in a way. Perhaps they shouldn’t feel sad for those who went before, and instead feel happy for what they didn’t have to face.
“She gave this to me,” Hades continued. “It’s the only thing I have left of her.”
Cia reached out to hold it, to see the picture more clearly. Hade’s hand brushed against hers and she felt both excited and terrified at the same time. A wave of anxiety overcame her, the kind of nerves she felt before a panic attack, and she willed it away.
She rested her hand on her lap and he reached his hand across and rested his on hers too.
“I’ve had a really nice time with you,” he said.
She smiled.
“Me too,” she eventually replied.
His arm lifted from her hand and rested on the bench behind her. He leant closer, and she prepared for attack then quelled her instincts as he rested his forehead against hers.
He smiled as his lips came closer and they pressed against hers gently, so gently, ever so gently, and she let it and she hated it and loved it and he pressed harder and suddenly she was back outside, with Dalton, her lips against his, the first of their kisses where he meant it and the second of his kisses where he didn’t because he had seen what she had done on the CCTV and was he already planning to kill her then was he already planning to hurt her it was a kiss he didn’t mean and suddenly she was sticking a knife through his foot and she was watching him die and she was burying herself in the corner and crying as she listened to the Masketes tear him apart and–
She leapt to her feet and her feet gave way. She landed on her hands.
Hades rushed to her side and put his arms around her and he probably asked if she was okay but the words faded like she was underwater, they were there but not quite, and she felt vomit come to her mouth and she spat blood and bile onto the street.
“Let’s get you to the doctor,” he said, and she lifted her hand to brush him off.
She looked up at him and Dalton was standing there but it wasn’t Dalton yet it was and–
She was crying.
She hadn’t realised it, but she was.
She stood.
The thought faded and Hades looked at her with concern, everyone here was so damn concerned.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes, I, just… stay away from me.”
She turned and marched away with her arms folded. She heard his footsteps go after her and stop.
She kept walking until she was back to Graham’s porch where he sat with her and she buried her head as she cried.
Graham didn’t leave, nor did he approach her.
Because he understood what it was like out there.
And he understood when to leave someone alone.
NOW
Chapter Thirty-Five
She steps between bodies like avoiding cracks in the pavement.
This is what this life is now, isn’t it?
An ocean of death?
She was foolish to think anything but it. To neglect her survivor’s instinct. She had let herself be conned by comfort, duped by duplicity, masked my mistruths.
She looks for a face she knows. Some she recognises from passing in the street or wayward glances or from buying an ice cream.
But there aren’t many faces left.
Yet, she does see someone she thinks she knows.
It looks like him, like the boy she thought she had a crush on.
Hades, his name was.
Of course, it isn’t him.
She knows that.
It can’t be. It’s impossible.
She saw him die before any of this happened, so it can’t be him.
But she pretends it is.
Convinces herself because she wants to see him again, just briefly.
And, as she convinces herself, this stranger becomes the man he isn’t.
She looks at him and gasps, shocked that he is here, but not sad.
He knew, after all.
He knew all along.
Does that make him more or less deserving of death?
The answer is: neither.
No one is more or less deserving any more. People die and people live and sometimes it’s more of one than the other, but that’s how it is. People exist without living and live without dying and die without caring.
She doesn’t feel guilt, because guilt no longer serves a function. Guilt was for a time when remorse appeased people around you.
There are no people around here.
Only dead ones, and they don’t deserve an opinion.
Still, she walks up to this man she has assigned to the corpse and stops.
She crouches.
Looks over his stunned face.
There is a slight slash down his cheek, and a large slash down his open chest.
His eyes are open.
As are his lips.
Those lips that touched hers. Briefly. Before she had an attack of anxiety that she thought was hindering her comfort but was in fact warning her of dangers to come.
“I’m sorry,” she says, because that’s what she’s supposed to say, isn’t it?
It’s only for the deceased onlookers.
It’s only for show.
She doesn’t feel sorry. She feels nothing anymore.
She just feels…
Empty yet full.
Light yet heavy.
Angrily content with being painfully numb.
She places her hand on his lips. Those lips that prompted so much hysteria and stress and oh how she realises how little it mattered now.
But it isn’t really him.
Hades is dead like the others. Like all of them.
He died before this happened.
She saw it.
And this stranger…
Who killed him?
Did she?
Did she kill any of them?
Well, that would be a matter of opinion. Subjectivity in its finest glory.
She leans down and placed her lips against this stranger’s.
She has no flashback now. No return to a life she will now resume, no glance at a life that once was and now is.
Dalton is no longer in her mind.
He is lower down on her list of murders now.
If you call this murder, that is.
You could call it justice. But, then again, you’d be missing the point, wouldn’t you?
She lifts her lips, finding no moisture or warmth. If only she’d kissed him like this a few days ago, she may have experienced a brief, joyous flutter she could now reminisce about.
She does not regret, but she wonders what if?
What if she’d been able to kiss him?
If he had been a part of her life?
If it mattered?
She stands.
“Goodbye, Hades,” she says.
And she moves on.
THEN
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cia spent another evening sat on the porch, frantically still, as Graham taught Boy how to conform to this new society he had never truly experienced.
She watched him l
earning about body language and subtext and what people say and do and how to interpret it, and she tuned out the voices, and just watched in content silence.
Boy was smiling.
Not just smiling like when he had some grapes for lunch, or when they didn’t have to run from a monster, or when he slept somewhere more comfortable than mud under a log.
No, he was really smiling.
Like he was taking great pleasure in achieving something, like his confidence was growing, like he was able to flourish.
Such a life he could now have.
A life she had finally accepted, finally come to terms with living. This was good. It was great. It was perfect.
Too perfect, but she had pushed that thought away.
It was real.
She hadn’t believed it, but she did now.
It is real.
And she felt a pang of guilt for how she had treated Hades.
He’d kissed her. She freaked out; to him, inexplicably so. She had just collapsed and said goodbye. Maybe she owed him an explanation.
No, she didn’t owe anyone anything.
But maybe it would be good for her to just talk to Dalton.
No, not Dalton—Hades.
Dammit.
That was the problem, the only qualm with this place—that her instincts, acquired from so much fighting, had prevented her from adjusting.
When she was young, her dad had a friend that came to her eighth birthday party. A balloon popped, and he started freaking out and her dad had to take him outside.
Her dad had, later that night, explained that he had been in a place called Afghanistan. That he had returned from a war, and a balloon bursting reminded him of that war.
Through her child’s eyes, she hadn’t understood. She had just seen him as the idiot who almost wrecked her party. She wanted to help him, but he had distracted everyone from the forthcoming cake.
Now, she understood.
He had been in a war zone, and he couldn’t adjust.
You adapt to that war zone, then when you come out of it, your environment changes but you don’t.
But Dalton couldn’t understand that.
So maybe she should–
Shit!
Hades, not Dalton!
She did it again.
And, just as she cursed herself for doing it, she was back kissing Hades, and then she was back kissing Dalton. That cold kiss he did not reciprocate. That kiss of death, the one before he lost it, the one after he knew what she had done to his friends, to the sanctity.
Her arms shook. Her legs buckled. Her heart thudded.
No, not again.
She felt her breath catch; she began wheezing, and then–
No.
Not this time.
She closed her eyes.
Told herself that Dalton was gone.
Dead.
Fed to the Masketes.
He was not coming back. He was not hurting her, or Boy.
And Dalton was not Hades.
She controlled her breathing. Concentrated on in, out, in, out. Listened to her breath, watching her own chest rise.
Dalton was gone.
She said it to herself again.
Dalton is gone. Dalton is gone. Dalton is gone.
And, just like that, the panic attack was over before it had begun.
She was back on the porch, watching Boy learn contentedly.
Neither Boy nor Graham had noticed.
Which was good. It meant the panic attack hadn’t been that bad.
And she had brought herself back. From the strength this place had given her, she had readjusted her mind set.
Maybe if she could readjust that little bit, she could readjust to it all.
Permanently.
Maybe, just maybe, this was the life she was meant to live.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Cia and Boy took to their afternoon stroll with a mild delight. The sun was high in the sky, people were happily doing their jobs, and they were walking peacefully without danger ready to pounce at any moment.
Some people even said hello. She must look different, she thought; happier, for people to break from their chores to smile at her, to wish her a good afternoon, to enquire how she was.
Eventually, they reached Hades’ house.
She paused. Looked at it. Considered what she would say, and she panicked, thinking she should have thought more carefully about this, should have contemplated in more detail what she was going to–
No.
She had to stop it.
This was stage fright. Nerves. Pre-talk jitters.
She would just explain what happened, why it happened, and let him know it wasn’t because of him.
“Can you wait here?” she said to Boy. “I just need to speak to someone.”
He nodded. Even Boy was content to be left alone for a period of time. Something she had never imagined.
He found a bench where he sat and ended up in conversation with someone working on a vegetable patch.
Cia approached the door, went to knock, hesitated, then noticed the door was already open. She pushed it and it creaked open further.
“Hello?” she shouted.
No answer.
She stepped in.
“Hello? Hades, are you there?”
Nothing.
But she heard shuffling. There was definitely something.
Powered by instinct, she strode into the house and into the dining room, where she found… Ryker.
“What are you doing here?” Cia asked, regretting how irately she had asked it.
“Nice to see you, too,” Ryker said.
“Where is Hades?”
Ryker had looked to be going through some drawers. Why was he going through drawers?
“He’s gone,” Ryker said.
“Gone?”
“Yes. On a mission. He hasn’t returned.” Ryker paused, looked at her, then added, “Yet.”
“But… where has he gone?”
Ryker looked her up and down.
“On a mission.”
He closed the drawers and walked up to her.
“What were you looking for?” Cia asked.
“Is there a reason you are here?”
Cia paused. Perhaps it was as much of a surprise for Ryker as it was for her to see him.
“I was looking for Hades. I—I wanted to talk to him.”
“Like I said, he’s on a mission.”
Ryker looked to her expectantly, as if she was meant to do something. Cia was about to ask what, then she realised he was waiting for her to leave.
“When will he be back?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Cia, but I have things to do here.”
“Here? In Hades’ home?”
“Yes.”
“Did Hades ask you to do it?”
Ryker frowned. “Is it any of your business?”
No.
It probably wasn’t.
If anything, she was likely to be the person intruding.
She nodded, backed away, and paused by the stairs, looking up and listening.
He didn’t seem to be here.
Maybe she’d try again after their hunt that afternoon. Or tomorrow. Or whenever he was back.
She left the house to see Boy playing with a puppy. She smiled at the delight on Boy’s face and promptly forgot about the perturbing conversation she had just had.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ryker watched Cia leave with Boy, off to enjoy the luxuries of civilisation.
He’d never met a girl like her before.
She was tenacious, inquisitive, and stubborn.
Both good and bad assets to have.
She was a wonderful contributor here; a fierce warrior who would defend this community with all she had.
But she was also a burden.
Someone who would never just accept things as they were.
And if she wouldn’t accept Hades’ disappearance, how was she goin
g to accept his partaking in the event?
Hades had agreed to his invitation.
Eventually.
After a fight outside the walls that Ryker inevitably won.
In the end, Hades knew it was a responsibility that someone would have to take on at some point. There was no way around it; the event had to happen, and he had to be involved.
But Cia would not see it that way.
Ryker was sure of that.
She would not agree to live in a community where such things happened.
The community saw it as a necessity. They saw it as an unwanted importance, a regretful expense.
She would see it as an atrocity.
And he liked her, truly, he did.
And it was a shame.
Because the more and more she did not accept…
The more and more she asked questions…
The more and more she would not adjust to Boy’s future involvement in the event…
The more Ryker realised he would have to kill her.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Against her better judgement, Cia spent most of her expedition that afternoon ruminating about the sudden disappearance of Hades.
It was not unfeasible, nor was it unprecedented, for Hades to be sent on a mission. That was his role within this society—to stray beyond the walls and investigate or learn or do whatever it is they do when they roam the real world. He had no obligation to tell her when he was leaving, nor did he have reason to, especially after how their date ended.
It just felt like Ryker was being dishonest.
She knew it was just familiar feelings resurfacing. She had come to terms with this community and her presence in it. She was content to be here, happy even.
It just felt the same way it did when Cathryn supposedly ran away.
Suspicious. Unsettling. Unnerving.
But those were just old feelings resurfacing. It was the caution that constant survival had embedded into her, that was all.
She had to tell herself to stop thinking about it.
Ryker led the group, followed by the same three burly men who had been on the last expedition. It was part hunt, part checking that there were no more Wasters. She was not there for the hunting part; she was there to protect the group, which felt strange considering they were all large men.
