by Ryan Casey
But they were real. Very real.
The freezer room was filled with bodies. Dead bodies. Preserved bodies. Bodies of soldiers, some of them still clothed. Other bodies, unidentifiable.
“I didn’t want you to find out, but I knew you would eventually.”
Riley turned around. Ivan stood by the door of his room. His face was pale and his arms were covered in goose pimples. The fear was prominent in his dark, deep-set eyes.
“I wanted to tell somebody. At first, I thought maybe I should be open about it. Because that’s what we are, right? Open?”
Dread spread through Riley’s body. Took a hold of his throat and prevented him from speaking. The cold air seeped out of the door beside him. A faint smell of wretched, frozen death was ripe in his nostrils.
Ivan approached him slowly. He was wearing his usual green camouflaged uniform. He always wore it. A sense of authority. A sense of order. But there was nothing ordered about this.
“How did… Why did…”
“I’ve not been completely honest with you, Riley. And I’m sorry to have to tell you that, but it’s the truth.”
“Too right. Too fucking right.” An intensity spread across the muscles of Riley’s chest. “You’ve got… you’ve got people in there. Dead people. What—”
“Ssh,” Ivan said. He raised his hand. The voices from the canteen were muffled behind the double door. Happy voices. Cheerful, optimistic voices. A whole world away from what Riley had seen. What he knew.
“When we heard the news at the barracks,” Ivan continued, “some of us left right away. And that’s the truth. I’ve always been honest about that. Some soldiers went back to their families. Some probably got caught on the road. But there were about forty of us left. Thirty or forty. And we were penned in here. We were penned in and—and we were struggling.”
Riley started to move his head from side to side. He knew where Ivan was going with this. He could sense it. Nausea crept up his chest. His stomach began to churn.
“And sure — we had some food. Yes, we had food. But we were worried. Worried about what would happen when we ran out. Worried about… about what we’d do if we could never make it out again.” He paused. Took a deep breath. “So we killed them.”
Riley was speechless.
“I killed them. Me and a couple of others, anyway. Went in their dorms in the night and slipped a knife in the side of their heads. Wouldn’t have suffered, not for long. And… and then we threw them in there. Gutted them when it was appropriate. Threw them in there just in case. We didn’t want to have to… to delve into the… the human meat. We thought we had enough food to last us some time. But then you people joined us. And food started going quicker. Faster.”
The words buzzed around Riley’s head. He understood what Ivan was saying, but he couldn’t comprehend it. It didn’t seem real. This sort of thing didn’t happen in a real world. Things were meant to be okay now. A sense of order was supposedly restored. But so much started to make sense.
Ivan reached down for the shiny key that had tumbled from Riley’s hand when he opened the padlock. “I’m not proud of what I did. It haunts me every moment of my life.” He slipped the key into the padlock. “But I did it because I was looking out for my people. And I know you are one of my people now. But before, back before we met. How far would you have gone for your people?”
Riley was still struggling to speak, but images were coming back to him. Little memories and things he’d noticed over the last two weeks. Incidents that were barely weighty enough to warrant the name, but in light of what he now knew, so significant. “Pedro didn’t go on a run for meat this morning, did he?”
Ivan sighed. Shook his head. “No. He didn’t.”
“Which is why you didn’t save the mother and child. I just thought you were insensitive. Leaving this place to feed us and not look out for others. I couldn’t understand it. But… but actually, you’re terrified. Of leaving here. That’s what it comes down to. Right?”
Ivan diverted his gaze away from Riley. He didn’t have to answer. His subdued body language said it all.
“And… and that look in your eye. That disappointment at having to shoot the mother and child. You weren’t bothered about them. You were… You were just more concerned that we’d missed out on fresh meat. Right?”
Ivan’s head sunk further into his chest. He looked like an embarrassed school pupil shown up in front of his friends by the teacher. “I had to do something. We couldn’t just risk starving through the winter.”
“And how did you decide?” Riley’s skin burned with adrenaline. His voice sounded like it was full of rage, but he was shaking. Fearful. Completely and utterly stunned. “How did you decide who died? Who you killed?”
“We voted. The least fit. The least useful.”
Riley shook his head. The echoes of the voice in the canteen. The meat they’d eaten tonight. So different to the other food. So much richer. Riley’s stomach churned. He needed to puke. Badly.
“But only… only tonight. Only tonight did we have to start delving into… into there. I promise. We… we cooked and prepared when you people were sleeping. There was no fuss. And everything else you ate was—”
“Nothing else matters,” Riley said. He squared up to Ivan. As commanding a presence as Ivan usually was, he seemed completely broken down. His justifications to Riley sounded more like justifications to himself. “All that matters is that you’ve deceived us. Who else knows? Who else?”
Ivan sighed. Took in a large breath. Exhaled. “Pedro. And Chef.” He paused for a moment. “And that’s it.”
Riley shook his head. Pedro knew. All this time, sitting atop the wall and guarding the barracks with him, and he knew. “You think you’re strong. You think you have the last word here. But when those soldiers in there find out what you’ve done to their friends… when they find out, they’re going to kill you. You know that. Right?”
Ivan trembled. “I was just trying to do the right thing. The right thing for all of us.”
Riley barged past Ivan and headed in the direction of the double doors. “Spare me the bullshit.”
“Where are you going?”
“To tell everybody, that’s where. To tell them what’s going on in here. And then we’re going to pack our bags and we’re going to leave.”
Ivan jogged after Riley. “Wait!”
Riley shook his head and went to push the double door. The voices got louder and clearer as he did. They were disorienting. Made him feel even more nauseous as he still got to grips with what he’d discovered.
“Claudia. Her little girl. Elizabeth. She’s in there.”
Riley froze. A laughing emerged from the canteen. The sound of chess pieces clinking against one another. Cursing.
He turned around. Ivan was standing upright. His eyes were narrowed. The colour had returned to his cheeks. “What did you…” Riley started.
Ivan pointed at the freezer room. “Claudia’s girl. Elizabeth. She’s in there. Couldn’t have her going to waste.”
Riley’s knees went weak. “But… the urn. The ashes—”
“Oh come on, Riley. Don’t insult your own intelligence. It’s a wonder what a little dust and a fancy container can do, huh?”
Riley shook his head. The tingling sensations moved down his hands and up his arms. His breathing was speeding up. His heart raced. Keep control. Stay in control…
“You hear that? In the canteen?”
Laughter. Raised voices. Good spirits.
“I hear it too. So by all means go in there and tell everybody about this. But just think of the damage you’ll cause. Just think of how hard we’ve worked to keep the spirits up. The stress we’ve been through today. Just think about that before you go storming on out there. Okay?”
Riley stared at his hands. He couldn’t see any blood anymore. He didn’t get the guilt running through his mind over the difficult choices he’d made. But if he walked on out of here and kept this a secret, t
hat blood would splatter all over him again.
“Just rest on it. And if you decide you want to leave, then… then we can talk about that tomorrow.”
But if he went out there and told them, it would shatter the happiness. They’d had a taster of that before. Earlier, when the arguing over the mother and child’s fate started. They’d stared back into the darkness again, and it didn’t look good.
“I’m just trying to do the right thing, Riley. Just trying to do the right thing.”
Riley pushed the double doors open.
The sounds of the room erupted around him.
Laughter over at the chess table in the far right corner.
Chattering between Claudia and her daughter and a few of the other soldiers.
And the clattering of pots at the far side of the room. Chef cleaning the dishes. Pedro behind the counter with him.
Riley stepped into the room. Warmth ran through his body. The sickness returned to his stomach. He needed the toilet. He needed to get out of here. Fast.
“You okay, Riley?”
He looked to his side. Claudia was staring at him.
Elizabeth’s body was in the freezer. He had to tell her. He had to tell her.
The laughter at the chess table.
Riley wiped his forehead and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Just feeling a bit sickly. Need a lie down.”
“Well I hope you get well soon,” Claudia said, as Riley rushed past her and headed straight for the canteen exit.
Riley lay back in his bed. He covered his eyes with the quilt. Tried to drown out the sounds from downstairs. Laughter. Messing around. The happiest and most upbeat they’d sounded in days. The incident with the family had proven nothing more than a welcome eye-opener. A necessary explosion of tensions triggering a reset button. Now, the honeymoon had set in.
But not for Riley.
He tried his best not to think of the images. The things he’d seen. The bodies, stacked atop one another. The sickly rich taste of vomit in the back of his throat. He’d had to spew it up. He couldn’t keep it in his system, not now he knew.
The door creaked open. He made sure the quilt cover was pulled right up to his neck. He didn’t want to talk to them tonight. Ivan had told him to sleep on it. Consider his response the following day. But, of course, he’d told him to sleep on it. That was the easy suggestion to make, considering he wasn’t getting a wink of sleep tonight.
“Ssh,” somebody whispered. “Don’t want to wake Riley up.”
Riley’s stomach turned. Claudia. The way she sat the urn on her bedside cabinet. A reminder of what she’d lost, but also a reminder of hope. “It makes me realise that there’s some truly good people out there.” She was so grateful to the soldiers — to Ivan — for giving her little girl a civilized send-off. A send-off that barely anybody was fortunate enough to get these days. She’d been so strong.
She had no idea that the urn contained nothing but dust. That her little girl was in that freezer, waiting and waiting to be cooked. Consumed. Defecated.
Riley gulped. Squeezed his eyes shut. She couldn’t know. She’d come so far. She couldn’t find out, not yet.
More footsteps shuffled through the bedroom doorway. The voices had disappeared from the canteen below. Riley wasn’t sure how long he’d been in bed, but he figured everybody was coming to sleep.
Sleeping on a full stomach. A full, rich stomach.
“I’ll beat you next time,” Ted said. He winced as something sounded like it punched him. Presumably Anna.
“Night.”
Riley peeked out of one eye over at Ted. He fell flat on his bed and rubbed his stomach, which still seemed to be rather plump despite a significant fall in fried and fatty foods these past two weeks or so. But it was the smile on his face that caught Riley’s attention. The smile of content. The smile of not knowing the truth or the secrets behind these walls.
“Just think of how hard we’ve worked to keep the spirits up…”
Ivan’s words. Begging. Pleading Riley not to tell anybody about what he’d found. Because in some twisted way or another, telling everybody the truth made Riley the guilty one.
But what was the least guilty route? Hiding what he knew from the others and keeping them happy for the time being, or telling the truth and destroying their happiness?
His heart pounded as he tightened his eyelids together and everybody settled down in their beds. He needed to decide. He needed to do the right thing.
He opened his eyes and looked around the room. Everybody was in place. How best did he tell them? One by one? Or announce it to the room like he was some sort of film character, all high and mighty? No. He’d speak with Anna. He’d speak with Anna and they’d go from there. He wouldn’t mention Elizabeth first. Fuck. How was he supposed to bring up Elizabeth? After how far Claudia had come, how was he supposed to tell her the truth about the fate of her little girl? And Chloë — she’d just about settled back into some sort of normality. Playing tennis with her mother, reading whatever stories they had stashed in the barracks. She was becoming a little girl again. Growing down. What would learning about her sister’s death do to her?
As Riley raised from his bed, his head throbbing, he noticed something was amiss. Something was different in the room. Ted was in his bed. Anna was in hers. Chloë was there, too.
But Claudia. Claudia wasn’t in the room.
Riley’s hands started to shiver. She’d definitely entered the room. She’d told Chloë to quiet down — that was definitely her. But now she was gone. Nowhere to be seen.
Dread built up inside Riley as he stepped to his feet. Nobody else in the room flinched, as they held their eyes shut. A bad feeling spread through his body. He couldn’t quite make sense of the feeling, but he knew something wasn’t quite right.
The bodies. The soldiers. Fuck. Having a semi-photographic memory was more a curse than a blessing.
He crept towards the bedroom door and pulled it open. The corridor light flickered on. Somewhere behind him in the bedroom, somebody yawned and shuffled around.
“Mate, what are you doing?” It was Ted.
Riley ignored him. Stared down the corridor. The stillness of the buzzing bright lights. The closed doors. And the silence right the way down the stairs and into the canteen area.
“Mate, what’s—”
“Where’s Claudia?” Riley asked, as he turned around to face Ted.
Ted shrugged and looked over at Chloë.
“She went to say thank you to Ivan for everything,” Chloë said, as she lay beneath the covers.
Utter dread kicked Riley in his stomach. “We cooked and prepared when you people were sleeping.”
But before he had a chance to consider his options, a blood-curdling scream cut through the silence of the barracks. A woman’s scream. A mother’s scream.
Claudia’s scream.
CHAPTER SIX
Riley stormed down the corridor towards the screams. His heart raced. His head went dizzy. Claudia knew. She’d been downstairs when they were moving the bodies — gathering more food — and she’d found them.
“What the fuck was that? Riley?”
Ted rushed out of the bedroom and caught up to him.
“Where are you two going? Did you hear that too?” Anna appeared at the door and followed down the corridor.
“Was that my mum?” Chloë peeked out of the door. She too followed. She couldn’t follow. None of them could see this. He was supposed to tell them first. It wasn’t meant to happen like this.
Riley tried to descend the staircase but Ted blocked his path. Another door opened up behind them. Soldiers awakening from their slumber. Spectators to the show.
“You have that look on your face,” Ted said.
Riley stepped around Ted but Ted moved so he couldn’t pass him. The screaming and crying was dampening downstairs. Somebody was making sure that was the case.
“You tell me what’s wrong. Right now.”
Riley squared up to T
ed. Stared him in the eyes. The others gathered behind them as they stood at the top of the staircase in stasis.
“Tell us, Riley,” Anna said. “Just tell us.”
Riley turned around to the others. Barney was frowning as he stood behind the group. He, too, looked completely puzzled by the situation. What did he say? How did he say it?
He looked at Ted again. “You need to see it. You need to—”
“No,” Ted said. He didn’t flinch. His voice was stern. “You tell me if you know something. Tell us all. Right now.”
Riley sighed. He gulped down the sickly taste in his throat. He had to tell them. There was no other way about it. “I wanted to… I tried to tell you. I tried, but—”
“Just tell us. What is it?”
Riley looked down at his feet. He should have told them earlier. He should have walked on in to the canteen and told them when he’d had the chance to. They’d see this as him telling them because he had to. He’d lose them for this.
“I… The food. The food we ate tonight. The food that Ivan told us was—was meat he got on a run. That Pedro got on a run.”
“Riley, what are you trying to say?” Ted asked. His eyes were watering. Riley got the sense from the look on Ted’s face that he understood that something was desperately wrong now. “You’re freaking me out, mate. What is it?”
Riley gulped down the lump in his throat and just let the words exit his mouth. “We ate dead bodies for dinner. Dead human bodies. The freezer room — it’s stacked with troops. The troops Ivan told us had left. It’s stacked with them. And…” Riley could hear a whimpering downstairs. Claudia. He had no idea what they’d do now she knew. They needed to get down there to her. Ted needed to move. “And Elizabeth,” Riley said. He tried not to look at Chloë.
Everybody was completely silent. Anna’s face grew pale. Ted’s eyes widened and he lurched to the floor and spewed up the brown, greenish contents of his meal.
“But what…” Barney said. He looked stunned. “My friends. The—the others. What… Ivan said they’d left. Said they’d all… all left. Right?”
