The Outcast's Journey

by Rebecca Fernfield

  The woman looks from Cassie to Ollie. “You’re frightening her, let me help get her dressed then we can take her back to the house.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah,” the woman replies looking at Cassie and nodding.

  Picking up on an unspoken communication the woman is trying to make, she nods her head and agrees. “Yes, I’ll come with you if you let me get dressed,” she says standing stiff in his arms. His hand moves up to her breast and caresses the soft flesh. She resists the urge to retaliate. “I won’t take long and then—then I’ll come with you. You seem like someone I want to get to know,” she says stroking his hand.

  “Oh,” he says loosening his grip and letting her step away.

  The woman holds out her hand to Cassie and guides her to the changing room.

  “Did you see the arse on that!” she hears the man exclaim as the curtains are drawn.

  “Yeah! You gonna share?” the other man asks.

  The woman looks to Cassie with a pained frown as they listen to the men talk about sharing her and what they’d like to do once they’d got her back to the house.

  “I’m not going back with them!” Cassie says in her quietest voice.

  “No,” the woman returns. “You said you had friends. Is that true?”

  “Yes, I came here with Rick and Justin. We live up at the farm,” she explains pulling on her knickers then reaching for her socks. “I’ve been so stupid!”

  “Have you lived there long?” the woman asks in a whisper.

  “Me, Rick and the kids came up in the summer,” Cassie replies, sitting on the single chair to put on her socks, “but Becca and Justin have been farming there for years I think.”

  “Sounds cosy.”

  “Yes, it is. They’re preppers or whatever you call them. They wanted to live off-grid in case of an EMP—that’s what Rick told me.”

  “An EMP? What’s that?”

  “Something about terrorists wiping out electricity—it would cause utter chaos. Anyway,” she continues pulling the t-shirts over her head, “that didn’t happen, but the plague did, so they were prepared.”

  “So you’ve got electricity and food?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about you?”

  “I live with Benson and those thugs.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “No. I stay because I’m too scared to leave.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen. We can help each other.”

  “Will you help me to get away from them?” Cassie asks staring at the woman, one unlaced boot in hand.

  “Yes, and then we can go up to the farm—together,” the woman says in a hushed, but insistent voice and Cassie recognises her desperation.

  “Justin!” Rick calls looking through the door to the hallway. An oak bannister with carved balustrade leads to the upstairs, brightened by the light flooding in through the panes of the hallway’s windows.

  “Yeah,” he returns stepping onto the landing upstairs and zipping up the rucksack. “Just checking the bathroom for stuff.”

  “You get anything?” Rick asks leaning through the kitchen doorway.

  “Yeah. Some soap and shampoo.”

  “Great. Cassie will be pleased about that.”

  “Hah! So will I. That Zak needs a few lessons in keeping clean.”

  Rick laughs as he thinks of the gangling teenager. “Well, I’ll let Cas have that conversation with him. She up there?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Rick says with a frown stepping into the hall. “I thought she was with you,” he says watching the man tread down the stairs.

  Justin slips his arms through the rucksack and stops. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her since the house before last. I thought she was with you. When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “Cassie!” Rick calls stepping into the hall and opening the door of what turns out to be the living room. The room is empty and silence meets his call. He turns with a questioning frown to Justin. “She must be outside? C’mon, let’s go look.”

  Rick turns and walks back through the kitchen to the garden outside. His boots crunch in the snow. Looking down the side of the path he can only discern two sets of footprints, both too big to be Cassie’s. A knot of anxiety pulls in his chest.

  “She didn’t come to this house with us!” he says turning to Justin standing behind him. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “A couple of houses back,” he says shifting the rucksack on his back. “If we go to the front of the house we should be able to see her tracks. Bet she’s still at that house. I saw her go upstairs—bet you anything you like she’s looking for clothes. There was some money in that house—fancy it was, and plenty of stuff left in the wardrobes.”

  “Hah! Typical. Yes, I bet you’re right. Either that or she’ll be looking for stuff for the kids—you know what she’s like about them,” he says thinking of the love Cassie lets flow towards Harry, Celie and Zak. He never would have thought that the stuck-up woman he’d found tottering down the Golden Mile would have morphed into some kind of earth-mother type, even if she did still try to hang on to her glamour. Got to find her. Hell! He’d fallen deep. Damn!

  As they walk down the driveway Rick checks back along the path. Still only two tracks. “We’ll have to go back the way we came. She hasn’t come past here,” he says looking at the virgin snow laid on the road and path leading down into the town.

  “That’s what I thought. Bet she’s still in that fancy house.”

  “Yeah,” Rick replies although he doesn’t feel at ease. He squints into the distance following the pair of footsteps passing by the blanketed cars parked in driveways and along the road.

  “Rick!” Justin exclaims. “There’s footprints going across the road.” Rick follows Justin’s pointing hand and looks to the snow ten feet ahead; where two sets of prints lead into a large house with creamy pillars holding up the canopy above the door, another set diverge and cross over the road to the path on the other side.

  “What the!”

  “She didn’t follow us into the house!”

  “Damn!”

  “C’mon—at least we can see where she did go.”

  Following the footprints, Rick is thankful for the snow. It’ll take him straight to Cas. As they walk his pace quickens.

  “She went to the shops,” he says as the footprints take a left towards the pedestrianised town centre.

  “Yeah,” Justin says with a grim voice. “And she’s not alone.”

  A wide expanse of untouched snow lays between them and the other side of the street, but on the other is the evidence of a group of people where snow is squashed underfoot. He walks across to the mess and scrutinizes the footprints. “There’s at least three—looks like two men and possibly a woman—two big sets and one smaller. They went the same way as Cassie and haven’t been back this way.” The street is empty and there’s no movement in any of the shop windows.

  “Do you think it’s the same gang that came up to the farm?”

  “No! They left. I watched them leave. Just passing chancers.”

  “Then who could it be?”

  “I dunno, but there are bound to be survivors—same as us. We just don’t know about them because we’ve kept to ourselves up at the farm.”

  “C’mon,” Rick says with urgency, “follow her tracks.” He stands up and walks with renewed energy. He won’t be at ease until he sees her, has her safe beside him again.

  Cassie’s footsteps cross over from the other side of the road to a charity shop then disappear beneath the trample of feet. The trail stops outside a shop filled with upmarket clothes. “She’s in here,” Rick whispers.

  “So are they,” Justin adds looking down at the well-trodden snow.

  “There are no footprints that go beyond this,” Rick continues looking further down the road, “so they must still be inside.”

  “Let’s go in!”

  Rick reaches for the
door’s handle and pushes. The room is lit only by the light reflected from the snow and the back sits in dinge. The shop is empty. He walks further into the room, strides down the aisle between the bank of hanging dresses and the neatly folded pile of clothes down the shop’s centre.

  “She’s not here!” he says perplexed and looks about the shop.

  “She must be! They must be! There’s no sign they came back out.”

  “They must have gone out a back door then,” he says pushing his hand through his hair.

  “Cassie!” he shouts and flaps at the dresses, parting the hanging cloth to look for any signs of her.

  Clack!

  Rick stares at Justin and nods towards the back of the shop then walks with a light foot to the end of the room. Two doors are marked ‘Changing Room’ and ‘Staff Only’. He opens the changing room door. Snow, let in by the open window, lays sprinkled on a crumple of blue silk and a pile of lacy thongs.

  Chapter 11

  Deacon looks down at the petite blonde as she hooks her arm through his and stands at the entrance to the supermarket and wonders where the huge blond man - he’s guessing that’s Sergei - is. This is the closest he’s been to the supermarket and certainly to the woman. She’s pretty, but there’s a fakeness about her, ‘contrived’ Jules would have called it and if she was feeling particularly mean she would have called her a ‘trollop’. She didn’t suffer fools gladly did his Jules. Pulling his arm away from hers, he stands and looks at the stacked shelves inside. There’s not as much here as he imagined there would be, perhaps only enough food for a few more months. She stiffens a little as he pulls his arm away and he smiles quickly to placate her.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” he says to the hesitant smile on her face. She brightens and shakes her curls, they bounce against the leather of her jacket. She’s pretty, he’ll give her that, but spite oozes from her with each glance she gives the men that follow them. He’s going to have to play it real careful with this one.

  “Yes, I’ve worked hard to get it into shape. Of course, the looters made a mess, but most people round here died pretty quick so there was still some stuff left over and the stores at the back …” She bites her lip and quietens. “We do everything we can to protect it,” she says smiling back up to him, the steel in her glance unmistakable. Perhaps that’s where the main stock is then—in the stores at the back?

  “We’ll kill to protect it won’t we, hun,” Murray interjects.

  Deacon watches with appalled amusement as Saskia turns to the skinny man, the red of his beard peppered with grey, his face gaunt, and catches the flicker of her top lip curling with anger as she scowls at him. The man flinches almost imperceptibly and Deacon wonders what kind of woman makes a man like Murray, a leader among his rabble, cower.

  “Well,” Saskia simpers turning back to Deacon, “kill is a strong word.”

  “You nearly killed that woman and those kids.”

  “I never did!” she says turning on the short man. “I was protecting our supplies, protecting us from starvation,” she retorts, her voice defensive as she looks up at Deacon, her eyes pleading. A noise outside catches her attention and she turns to the windows. She stares out and Deacon watches her closely as her face hardens, the prettiness slipping away. “Anyway, that bitch deserved it. She was stealing,” she says turning back to look at him.

  “Well,” Murray adds, “That bolt you shot through her will make her think twice,” he says with a low chuckle. “And you should have seen how the bolt sliced into the cars,” he finishes with an air of pride.

  “I thought she’d hit one of those little kids,” Carl says, his voice flat.

  Deacon turns to look at the man. He wasn’t like Murray, or Saskia, that was easy to see, perhaps he was someone to work on.

  “Well,” Deacon says looking at Kit. “You have to protect yourselves. And if people steal …”

  Kit returns Deacon’s gaze and raises his eyebrows though he stands tense, looking from Saskia to Murray with apprehension.

  “Is it just you then?” Deacon asks as they step further into the building.

  “Oh no!” Saskia replies taking his arm again. Her heels clack over the tiles and Deacon looks down at her tiny frame and the spiked heels of her black boots. “There’s my brother Sergei and Loz.”

  “Where are they today?”

  “They’re at the ware-”

  “Out,” Murray replies, his voice gruff, cutting off Carl’s response.

  “Here we are,” Saskia says, her voice bright as they reach the office. “Carl, put the kettle on,” she commands as she sits down on the angular sofa set at the side of the room. She pats the seat as she looks at Deacon. “Sit! You can have that coffee you asked for now. Or would you prefer tea” she continues nodding towards a table shoved against the other side of the room. On the table is a small camping stove and beneath it a red steel bottle with a tube connecting the two. On the stove is a tin kettle and next to it a jar of coffee and a bag of granulated sugar.

  Deacon watches Carl’s movements, unable to take his eyes away from the preparation of the coffee.

  “We don’t have fresh milk of course, but we do have dried.”

  “I’ll have it black,” he says watching as Carl turns on the gas stove and strikes a match. The flame leaps and burns as a ring. Deacon can smell the coffee even as Carl opens the lid and spoons a teaspoon into the mug. “I like it strong,” he says unable to help himself.

  “Just how I like my men,” Saskia says squeezing at his bicep. “Wouldn’t you like to take your coat off,” she asks. The softness of the couch, the aroma of the coffee, and the warmth of the room, even the inviting tone of her voice, are seductive and Deacon begins to relax. He could get used to this.

  “Kit,” he says looking at the boy. “What would you like? Tea or coffee?”

  Cassie’s coat sleeve tightens as the woman grips it.

  “We’ll never get away from them!” she says, her breath coming hard as she squats. “They can see our tracks in the snow. They’re just going to follow us.”

  “We will,” Cassie returns, her voice calm as she takes another breath, her chest heaving.

  “Where are your friends?”

  “I don’t know. We were looking through houses on the road into town—the big ones,”

  “Brigg Road?”

  “I dunno,” Cassie replies tracking back through her memories. “Yes, perhaps.”

  “They’ve caught up!” the woman exclaims with a whisper, pushing up from her crouched position.

  Cassie listens to the voices of the men as they walk closer. The woman is right. They can just follow their footprints—no need to run after them if they can just track them down!

  “Listen …,” she stops and realises she doesn’t know her name.

  “Ruth,” the woman fills in.

  “Listen, Ruth. You’re right. We’re not going to be able to outrun them. Well, we could, but the snow is just going to lead them straight to us.”

  “What we going to do then?”

  “The first thing you’re going to do,” she says, Milo’s voice calling to her memory, “is stay calm. Panic makes you weak.”

  The woman nods, accepting Cassie’s guidance.

  “We’re going to stand up-”

  “But they’ll see us!,” she blurts with a low hiss.

  “We’re going to stand up and fight,” Cassie says with determination.

  The woman’s face drains of colour and an air of defeat washes over her.

  “No!” Cassie says taking hold of her arm and pulling at her. “You can’t give up without trying.”

  “We can’t beat them in a fight! They’re too strong.”

  “Hah!” Cassie returns. “Sure, they’re men, but they’re not in great shape.”

  “Wes! Looks like we’ve found them.”

  “What you playing at, Ruth?”

  “Ollie!” Ruth hisses.

  “They haven’t found us yet,” Cassie s
ays looking out from the industrial bin. The men are standing about ten feet away, mumbling between themselves, keeping their voices low, no doubt planning how they’re going to deal with them both. Cassie tugs again at Ruth’s coat and locks on to her eyes. “We’re going to give them a surprise,” she says looking down the passageway that leads back into the main street. “C’mon,” she says pulling at Ruth as she pushes up, keeping her head below the bin’s wide lid. “I want you to go behind this bin and stay there.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to sort these two out?”

  “On your own?” Ruth asks with frightened eyes.

  “Yes,” she says staring back at the woman, understanding her fear and the flicker of relief there.

  Ruth crouches and moves along the length of the industrial bin then shifts into the space behind.

  Cassie takes a deep breath and lets a calm strength pass over her. Don’t let me down now Milo. Pushing against the snow with her hands she stands up, shoulders back, head held high and steps away from the bin and out into clearing. Ollie and Wes stop talking and look at her. A wry smile spreads across Ollie’s face.

  “You ready to give up then?” he asks with a laugh stepping towards her. Wes follows behind.

  Cassie stands silent as the men approach.

  “You want some really don’t you. I can take good care of you—give you want you need,” Ollie says taking another step towards her.

  “Give her what she wants more like,” Wes laughs cupping his balls and squeezing as he takes another step forward.

  Cassie takes another breath. ‘Stay calm. Stay in control. Breath Cassie. Let the power take you.’ Milo’s voice rings loud in her mind and she takes a step back, her feet planted firmly hip-width apart.

  “She’s gonna run again!” Wes blurts as Cassie shifts. “Run rabbit, run,” he calls and she locks on his eyes, sees the cruelty there. He’s gonna get it first!

  He stares back at her and frowns as she raises her arm and puts out her hand as though to take his. He smiles, confused, then looks at her bewildered as she turns her palm upwards and beckons him with her fingers. She watches as he turns to Ollie, “Looks like I get first dabs!” he says with a mocking laugh. Ollie turns and scowls at him.