by Ryan Casey
I looked over my shoulder, putting my hands on my knees.
It was quiet behind us.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d been running, how far we’d got, but it was… yeah. Suspiciously quiet.
“Come on,” Remy said. “We have to get back. We can’t afford to take any risks.”
I stepped forward. I could see the outline of our suburbs right ahead. “We warn them. We lock the doors and we get ready to fight. Because we’re going to have to.”
Hannah walked ahead of me, towards the road. “I told you. All this time, I told you. This place isn’t safe. We need to—”
Then, out of nowhere, I saw something I didn’t think was possible.
A Land Rover appeared, revving up its engine. An actual working vehicle.
It drove towards Hannah, who hadn’t even had a chance to acknowledge it.
My stomach dropped. My eyes widened. “Hannah!”
I ran towards the Land Rover, wishing there was somehow a way I could step in and stop it before it hit Hannah.
But it didn’t hit Hannah.
Someone leaned out of the back of it.
They grabbed Hannah by her arm.
And before I knew it, Hannah was being pulled up the side of that Land Rover as it disappeared into the distance.
I ran as fast as I could towards it. “Hannah!”
But then I stopped.
I stopped because I saw it wasn’t just Hannah on the back of that Land Rover.
“Our home,” Remy said. “The smoke, over there. That’s…”
I could see the smoke in the corner of my eye and I knew it was coming from our home.
But I didn’t even need to see that to know what had happened.
Because on the back of the Jeep, which was riding off into the distance, I didn’t just see Hannah.
I saw Sue.
I saw Aiden.
And then, they were gone.
Chapter Thirteen
I approached the house—our home—and I held my breath.
The afternoon had stretched on. Soon, darkness would be upon us. The wind carried a cool breeze over us, but it didn’t matter, not so much.
What mattered was what had unfolded a matter of hours ago.
The stand-off with Mike and his people.
Fleeing, getting away.
Then, watching Hannah get captured by them, and seeing both Sue and her son, Aiden, also on the back of that Land Rover.
The house looked empty. The street was quiet. There were flames coming from some of the other houses, the smell of smoke rich in the air. With Remy by my side, I felt my heart racing, because I knew that if Sue and Aiden were in the back of that Land Rover then they must’ve paid a visit to our place. The flames were just a way of messing with us, psychologically.
They must’ve been watching, waiting for us to leave, all along.
I didn’t say much to Remy. And Remy didn’t say much to me in turn, either. He was the silent type, and I appreciated that right now.
Although, that said, another part of me wanted him to say something. I wanted him to wake me up, tell me I’d been dreaming.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
I was going to have to go into our home.
I was going to have to discover the fate of Jenny, Haz, Holly and Lionel for myself.
Or not. Maybe I wouldn’t find them at all.
There was no way of knowing until I got there.
We walked across the street, Remy and I. When we reached the front door, I saw that it was slightly ajar. We never left it slightly ajar like that. If there was somebody left inside, then chances were they weren’t still alive to shut it.
No. I couldn’t think like that. I had to see the truth for myself.
Walking closer to the door, I felt like I was being watched. I looked up and down the street. There were cars parked on the roadside, left there ever since the EMP struck. Stray leaves and litter blew across the road in the gentle breeze. It was perfectly silent, which was anything but perfect in this world. Silence was usually for a reason—something had created that silence. Especially when you couldn’t even hear the birds. It meant someone else was around.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I spun around immediately.
Remy was standing there, staring at me. “One of us should go inside. One should keep watch. Just in case.”
My stomach turned. I knew Remy was right. But at the same time, I didn’t want to be on my own. We’d already lost Hannah, Sue and Aiden. Chances were that Haz, Jenny, Holly and Lionel would be gone, too. I didn’t want to be left with nothing.
“I—I’m not sure I—”
“I’ll go in there,” Remy said, patting my shoulder. “If that’s what you’d rather. I’ll go in there.”
He tilted a smile at me.
Then, he turned, and made his way down the pathway towards our home.
“Wait,” I said.
Remy stopped. He looked back at me.
“I should… It should be me.”
Remy frowned. “There’s no reason it should be you.”
“If it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t even still be here,” I said, the guilt stacking up inside me. “I… I called for us to stay here. If we’d moved on, Hannah and the others, they’d be…”
I stopped talking when I saw Remy’s eyes widen.
I heard footsteps behind me.
Every muscle in my body tensed. I waited for a hit or a shot from someone.
“Shit,” a voice said. “I thought you guys were long gone.”
I turned around.
It was Haz.
He was covered in sweat. He was shaking.
But he was alive.
He was alive.
And Lionel was by his side.
“Haz,” I said.
I moved over and grabbed him, to hell with the consequences. And then I crouched beside him and cuddled Lionel, tearful to be reunited with him. “Good boy. Good boy.”
Haz patted my back. “Hannah. Where’s…”
He didn’t finish. I saw the way he looked from me to Remy, then back again. He knew what our answer was. Hannah was gone.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I saw some group show up. They had a car. Two cars, actually.”
“Two cars?”
Haz nodded. “They came inside. I… I ran and hid. It was all I could think of. I… I should’ve gone in there. I should’ve helped. But I hid.”
He looked down, like he was ashamed.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “You did what you could.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t mean to interrupt,” Remy said. “But I think it’s about time we checked out inside. Don’t you?”
Tension filled my body. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Right.”
Then, I walked past Haz, past Remy, and with Lionel into the house.
Stepping inside the house that we’d called home when I knew something serious had gone down had a strange feel to it. The sun peeked into the hallway. There was the faint smell of stew, which we’d cooked last night, back when everything was normal.
There was silence in here. Total silence, like I’d just walked into an unoccupied home while the owners were away on holiday.
I was about to turn into the kitchen when I heard a whimper.
I froze. The hairs on my arms stood on end. I looked behind me, over to the doorway to the airing cupboard under the stairs.
Had I heard what I thought I’d heard?
Or was it just my imagination?
I was about to turn away again when I heard another whimper.
I felt my muscles crumble then, as I turned to face the airing cupboard door. After all, I knew what that whimper meant. It meant that there was something bad in there. Something I was going to have to face up to. Something I didn’t want to look in the eye.
I moved s
lowly towards it, begging that whoever it was, they were okay. That they were safe. Lionel stayed by my side, clearly just as reluctant as I was.
I put my hand on the handle.
Held my breath.
Then, I lowered the handle and opened the door.
When I opened it up, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Not at first.
Sure, there were two people.
Two people I recognised.
But I just couldn’t put two and two together.
“Please wake up. Please wake up.”
I heard that sad, crying little voice, and I realised it was Holly.
And underneath Holly…
“Oh no,” I said.
Holly looked up at me, tears running down her face. “Make her wake up. Make her wake up.”
I looked past Holly, whose face was specked with blood, and I knew there was no waking up the person lying by her feet.
A bullet wound was dripping blood, right in the middle of her forehead.
Her eyes were wide and glazed.
There was no doubt about who this was.
It was Jenny.
Chapter Fourteen
I covered Jenny’s body with the last of the dirt and looked up at our beautiful suburban street.
It was early morning, and I was the first to rise. We’d decided not to bury Jenny right away. Mostly, it was a naive clinging to the hope that perhaps she wasn’t dead. That somehow, she’d spring back to life, and everything would be okay.
The weather was nice, at least. Birds swooped overhead. I knew it was no real consolation, but if the weather were awful then it would make the whole scene even worse.
Oh, screw it. What was I on about? The weather making a big difference?
Someone had died. A friend had died.
And sure, I hadn’t known much about Jenny. She’d told me she was going to tell me more about her background someday, back when we were out in the woods searching for traces of Mike’s group just days ago. She’d opened up, and she’d told me that I needed to branch out, to take a gamble on the outside world and on other people because after all, I’d taken a gamble on her.
I hadn’t truly taken in what she’d said at the time. And the hardest thing about all this was that it was other people who had done this. The same “other people” who had taken Jenny’s life and kidnapped Hannah, Sue and Aiden.
But it went deeper than that, too. The whole thought of branching out into the wider world made the hair on my arms stand on end because I remembered what happened when I branched out last time.
Harriet.
I’d branched out in order to meet her. I was struggling in my personal life up until that point. I was a recluse who was afraid of other people, especially other women.
But with Harriet, I’d taken a gamble. I’d trusted her. I’d fallen in love with her.
And then she’d been taken away from me.
I looked down at the earth where I’d buried Jenny, and I knew there was truth in what she’d said. There were good people out there. The world could band together and be stronger for it.
But there were bad people out there, too. And they were the ones we had to worry about.
I lowered the spade and I walked away from Jenny’s grave, Lionel by my side. Remy, Haz and Holly were at the front door already, bags packed, waiting for me.
“You done?” Remy asked.
I looked back at the grave in the garden, the sun shining on it, and I nodded. “Done.”
“Are we going to find my mummy? And my brother?”
I looked around and saw Holly glancing up at me, like she was unsure about this whole situation.
Then, I crouched beside her and took her hands.
“We’re going to do everything we can. I promise.”
I hugged her, and I felt even worse for having lied to her. After all, Sue and her son were probably gone. We weren’t going to find them.
Our worlds had changed, and they weren’t unchanging anytime soon.
I looked at the house behind me. The door was closed. I wanted to just open it again and go in there to Jenny’s laughter, to Hannah’s jokes. I wanted to hear the children giggling as they played with one another, Sue telling them to calm down, but clearly loving their joy, too.
I wanted so much to go back to that life.
But I couldn’t. None of us could.
I walked over to Haz. His cheeks were stained with tears. He hadn’t once looked at Jenny’s grave yet.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “You’re going to pull through this. We all are. It’s what she would’ve wanted.”
He shot me a momentary glance, like he was so close to saying something, bless him.
Then he sniffed up and looked away.
We stood together, all of us, and looked out at the suburban street in all its glory. We’d had good times here. But Hannah was right. It was a fantasy. Those good times were never going to last.
“You ready?” Remy asked.
I took a few deep breaths. Every instinct in my body told me to turn around, to go back inside the house and hide in there forever. Sure, the rival group led by Mike could be back for us. They probably would be back for us. And if they had two cars that Haz had seen, then they were much bigger than we’d first feared.
But facing up to the real world seemed infinitely more difficult.
“Scott? Are you ready?”
I looked at Remy. Then I looked at Haz, and at Holly.
I looked over at Jenny’s grave, then I looked up at the house.
I swallowed a lump in my throat and ground my teeth together.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Then, with my three friends and my dog beside me, I walked out through the garden gate and into the unknown, and whatever dangers lurked ahead.
It wasn’t safe here anymore.
It was time to move on.
Chapter Fifteen
Aiden wanted to be back with his sister, back at the nice house, where everything was okay.
It was getting dark, which made Aiden scared. He didn’t like the walks in the dark. The walks in the dark were scary, because there were all kinds of bad people out there. He used to feel safe, when his dad was around. But Daddy was gone now, and even though Mummy told the good stories before bed, which Aiden always stayed awake for, right until the end, Daddy was the one who made him feel safe.
He was cold, shivering. The bad people had taken his coat away when they’d grabbed him. He didn’t know why. Sometimes bad people did things that had no reason to them. Aiden was too young to truly understand that.
But he just knew these people didn’t have good things in mind for him, or for anyone.
He looked around at the road they were on. The hedges were tall and dark. Aiden was scared by them, like there could be monsters or ghosts watching from them. But another part of him was glad they were there, because he knew that if he threw himself into one and ran across the other side, he could get away from these people.
And then he could go back to the nice place where Holly and the others were.
Everything would be okay again.
He felt the grip tighten around his hand, and he realised it was Mummy’s. He looked up at her. She looked scared, and was shaking. Up ahead, in the distance, there was Hannah, too. The men were joking, saying cruel things about her, things Aiden didn’t really understand.
Again, he just knew they didn’t have anything good in mind. They weren’t good people.
There was a small group of the bad people walking behind them. One of them had a gun. Then there were some others in the front, leading the way. They’d been in a car originally, which Aiden thought was pretty cool at first because he hadn’t been in a car for a long time.
But then they’d taken them out of that car for some reason, getting all annoyed, and started walking. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking, only it wasn’t dark when they’d started and now it was.
A part of him hop
ed deep down that they were going to some nice place, where everything would be okay.
But even at his young age, he knew that wasn’t the case.
He’d seen the monsters on the television shows and the movies. He knew by now they were real.
“Keep it up, kid. No slowing down.”
Aiden heard the voice from the back and he knew the man was speaking to him. He looked up at his mum, for reassurance more than anything that everything was going to be okay. All she could do was smile, weakly.
Aiden knew then that he was going to have to make a break. He didn’t know where he was going. And the thought of being on his own scared him. But his mum wasn’t strong. His dad was strong, so he had to be like his dad. He had to go back and find his sister and then they could all be together again, all of them.
Because that’s how it worked out on the films, too.
Even though there were monsters and bad people, the good people always won.
In the distance, Aiden saw something. There were flames lighting up the place. He could hear voices and see movement. There were caravans, too. And the closer he got, the muddier the ground became under his feet. That made him even more nervous.
“If I did something, Mummy. Something to help Holly. You wouldn’t be mad at me, would you?”
Sue looked down at him, a frown across her face. “What’re… what do you mean, sweet pea?”
Aiden looked ahead and saw the men in the distance weren’t looking, and neither were the men behind.
He pulled free of his mum’s hand.
Then, he started to run.
He ran headfirst into the hedge. It was thicker than he thought it was going to be. The branches pushed back against him, scratching at him.
He felt tears pouring down his cheeks as he pushed and pushed. Behind, he could hear shouts, and footsteps running towards him. He knew they were coming for him. He knew they were getting closer.
But he just had to get away.
He had to get to Holly.
He had to get to the nice place.
He had to be strong.
He had to—
A hand grabbed his arm, and it tossed him to the ground.
He felt pain right in the back of his head. His vision was blurred. Mud covered him. Somewhere near him, he could hear his mum screaming, begging for the people holding him down to show mercy, to let their little baby live.
