by Ryan Casey
My second instinct? That it could just be one of the members of our group. One of the survivors from inside the camp. After all, even though we’d seen a lot of survivors leaving already, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that there were still people left inside, and that they might just fancy their chances of joining us.
But when I saw these people—and there were two of them—I wasn’t sure what to think.
Because on the one hand, they didn’t look like the rest of Ian’s group. They weren’t holding any weapons, weren’t pointing them at any of us.
But on the other hand, they didn’t look familiar, either. Which made me wonder whether they could possibly be survivors from inside our camp.
If they were, then why hadn’t I seen them before?
And if they weren’t… who were they?
“Woah,” the man on the right said. He was lanky, of Asian descent. He was wearing baggy cargo pants and a Firefly T-shirt. His hair was spiky, thinning on top. “Just—just hold off. We don’t want any trouble, alright?”
“Then who the hell are you?” I asked.
The second man beside him was small and plump. He wore glasses on the end of his nose. They must’ve been similar ages—the pair of them in their mid-twenties. Truth be told, they both struck me as run of the mill geeks. It was amazing they’d made it this far.
But then again, sometimes people were full of surprises.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” I said, in no time for messing. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Please,” the Asian guy said. He kept his long arms raised. “I—I’m Ibrahim. This is my bro, Harvey. Except he isn’t my brother. Not really. Not technically anyway. I mean, you can tell that already. But you know how they say ‘bro’ when they don’t actually mean—”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Cut to the chase. What the hell are you doing outside our camp?”
Ibrahim looked at Harvey. Harvey shrugged.
“Hey, what was that?” I said.
Ibrahim frowned. “What?”
“That look between you then. What’re you planning?”
“Trust me,” Ibrahim said.
“I find I immediately distrust anyone who tells me to trust them.”
“We’re just people, mate,” Ibrahim said. “We just… we had a home, just like you. And then those bastards. Those bastards led by the weird dude. They ruined our home. Took it all away from us. Burned it down. Our leader, Benjamin, he’d started plotting something, started trying to get out of the deal we were in. But it went wrong. Most of our people… most of them died.”
I saw the look of loss on Ibrahim’s face and I knew I should feel a smidgen of sympathy.
But I was still too distrustful to even feel that.
“Your friend,” Ellie cut in, stepping forward. “Why’s he not saying anything?”
Harvey’s eyes lit up. His cheeks blushed, like he’d been caught in the headlights.
Ibrahim rubbed the back of his neck. “He, um, he doesn’t speak.”
“He doesn’t speak?” I said. “Like, he’s mute?”
“Not mute so much. Just… he’s not a fan of speaking.”
I stood there, frown etched on my forehead. And suddenly I felt very silly standing here and holding a gun to these people. They were idiots, clearly. Harmless idiots. But also a liability to have sticking around.
I lowered my gun. “Get on your way. You don’t want to be around here when Ian comes back. None of us do.”
“We know something else,” Ibrahim said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Didn’t you hear me? Get on your—”
“We know where the camp is,” Harvey said.
I frowned. I looked at Harvey. “I thought you said he didn’t speak?”
“I didn’t say he didn’t speak,” Ibrahim said. “I said he wasn’t a fan of speaking.”
“Speaking isn’t something you just decide to be a fan of or not,” I said. “Jesus Christ. What’s this camp?”
I looked at Harvey, waited for a response. But I should’ve known better. He didn’t say a word.
I sighed and looked at Ibrahim again. “Help me out here, mate.”
“Okay. Okay. There’s… When we were making our way after Ian’s people. You know, to find out what they were doing, where they were going. We heard them talking about this safe place. And it turns out this place is really, really safe. Like, major safe.”
“Nowhere’s major safe,” I said.
Ibrahim smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong. This place is major safe.”
“What does major safe even mean?” Suzy asked.
“Just… Okay. I mean we don’t know for certain what makes it major safe,” Ibrahim said.
I rubbed my face. “God give me strength.”
“But we do know it’s somewhere Ian’s group is interested in. Very interested in. Only Ian’s group isn’t interested in making friends with this major safe place. They aren’t interested in joining it. They’re only interested in tearing it apart.”
I wasn’t sure whether to believe what Ibrahim was saying or to be sceptical. But I couldn’t deny two things. One: he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was capable of bullshitting me. And two: his story of a “major safe haven” kind of matched up with the story the guy had told me in the barn before I’d finished him off.
“Just believe us okay?” Ibrahim said. “We—we’re struggling out here, Harvey and me.”
“Just shut up a minute,” I said.
“We—we’ve been out here and we’re not so good at survival. I mean, we’re alright. We got this far. We must be alright if we’ve got this far at all.”
“Be quiet,” I said.
“But if you let us join you, we’ll help you out. We’ll help you get to this safe place. We’ll help you—”
“Just shut the hell up for a minute, alright?”
Ibrahim glanced at the ground.
A proud look came over Harvey’s face as he kept silent.
“Yeah,” I said. “Take a leaf out of your mate’s book.”
Ibrahim didn’t look like he got what I was saying at all.
I looked around at my people. I didn’t want to let these two buffoons join. But I could see all my people looking at me with widened eyes, shrugging.
“What do you think?”
Suzy cleared her throat, stepped towards me. “I suppose I don’t see the major harm in letting them join.”
I sighed. “Ellie?”
“I guess… I guess they could help.”
I shook my head, then I looked over at Sarah, although I knew exactly what she was going to say already.
“What?” I said.
Sarah smiled. “Looks like you’ve found yourself some new best friends.”
I turned around, gun in hand, and looked at Ibrahim and Harvey. Looked at the desperation on their faces.
“Shitting hell,” I said. “Come on then.”
“Yes!” Ibrahim said. He rushed over, tried to wrap his arms around me. “Sorry. I read physical contact is a good sign of confidence. I thought—”
“We’ve got a long way to go before we’re at the physical contact level, mate.”
I stood together with my people.
I stood with my new “companions.”
Then I looked into the woods.
“Come on,” I said, unable to believe what had just gone down. “Looks like we’re going on a journey.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ian stood opposite the camp and smiled at the level of destruction he’d caused.
The afternoon sun was warm, something that always took Ian back to holidays in Spain. Used to go to the same place every summer, generally alone. He liked solo travel. That way, you didn’t have to rely on the whims of some other idiot dictating your trip for you. You could just go on your own path, do your own things.
That was a philosophy that very much bled over into many aspects of his life, and had been further advanced af
ter the EMP struck all those months ago.
But there was something bothering him too, as he walked through the bodies, counted the dead. They’d done a quick headcount of this group when they’d first arrived. And they’d done another couple, just to verify. And although the headcount was close to correct, Ian could see quite clearly that the guy called Alex was nowhere in sight. Neither was his wife and a few of the others.
And the fact that they’d got away from this place didn’t make him happy at all.
Especially when Gavin was supposed to be watching it closely.
He looked to his side at Gavin, who seemed particularly quiet and reserved about what’d happened. He wasn’t saying much about it. Wasn’t stepping up and taking responsibility. And if there was one thing Ian detested more than most things, it was people who didn’t take responsibility for their actions—especially when their actions were so wrong.
When he reached the barn and saw Harry’s body lying there in a bloody heap, his anger increased even more; his irritation bloomed.
“Oh, Gavin,” Ian said, putting a hand on his back.
Gavin flinched. He was a good man. Honest enough. But he was timid. And now he had discovered Gavin was careless, too. Not two good traits to have.
“I—I couldn’t have stopped this.”
“You came to the barn earlier, didn’t you?”
He nodded reluctantly.
“You were supposed to be monitoring this place, weren’t you? Making sure nobody got in and nobody got out?”
Gavin nodded again. This time, tears started to flow down his cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Gav? Come on. You can talk to me.”
He swallowed a lump in his throat and for a moment, his eyes met Ian’s. “I screwed up.”
Ian liked this. He liked where this was going. He liked it when his mere presence commanded respect. Even though he knew damn well he was in charge, he liked to be reminded of that fact from time to time.
Most of the time.
“And how did you screw up, pup?”
Gavin sighed. And with his sigh, Ian sensed a weight leaving his body; a weight he’d been trying to suppress. “I—I panicked. Panic attack. All the blood. All the bodies. I just… I couldn’t be out here. Saw a kid begging for their life, guts in their hands. And it just broke me. It broke me.”
He looked again at Ian.
“If anyone got out of this place it’s because I wasn’t watching them. I’m so sorry. Please.”
Ian shook his head and sighed. Then he wrapped his arms around Gavin. “Gavin, you don’t have to apologise to me. I understand. This… this stuff. It’s nasty. More than a boy can take, sometimes.”
He lifted his knife and slammed it into Gavin’s back.
Gavin flinched. Then he struggled. But as the blood poured down his body, Ian kept on stabbing and stabbing, holding Gavin in place, feeling his erection harden inadvertently; something he couldn’t understand but luxuriated in all the same. “Shush now, pup. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Not for much longer.”
Gavin struggled some more. Longer than Ian bargained for, in truth.
But eventually, he went still.
Eventually, he slid to the floor.
Eventually, the light in his eyes went out.
Ian wiped his knife on his trusty towel. Then he looked around at the cows, who stared on with curiosity—at least the ones who were still in here. “Don’t worry, girls. Don’t mind me. I was vegan before the end times.”
Then he smiled, stepped over Gavin’s fallen body and back out into the fresh air outside.
He looked across this broken camp, over at the hole he’d blown in the wall, and he thought about that beautiful day he’d be able to do the same thing to that ultra-special place, so close to where they were.
But right now, before then, there was something else he had to do.
Something even more pressing.
He was going to find Alex and his friends.
He was going to kill them all.
And he was going to enjoy every second of it.
Chapter Eighteen
We’d been walking for at least three hours before we finally came across the first signs of life.
The afternoon sun was low. My legs were already beginning to ache, which didn’t bode well. That said, the group of us had been walking a little quicker than we were used to back at the camp, especially because we were well aware that Ian’s group would be hot on our tails.
But I was hopeful. Hopeful that we’d already travelled far enough to shake them off. Trepidatious of course, mostly because Ian’s people had working vehicles and could make up the three-hour walk we’d just taken in a fraction of that time.
But I couldn’t worry about things that were out of my control. Instead, I had to focus on the things I could change, and that was getting to some kind of safety with my people.
And getting through this village without bumping into anybody.
On our way, we’d gathered some fresh water, filtering it with some of the remaining water purification tablets we had stockpiled back at our home… or rather, our old home. We’d found some netting too, which we knew we could use to catch fish if and when we needed them. Things were looking good. Suddenly, all the wondrous ways of surviving out here were returning to me—lighting fires, catching and cooking freshly caught food… sure, I was terrified of facing up to this new world. But I couldn’t deny there was a part inside me that had missed it, too.
We stopped right on the edge of this village and looked into it. It was just a typical sleepy Lake District village, in truth. Stone-bricked buildings. Little unique shops like antiques shops and fish and chip places. The bulk of them had been boarded up, the shutters pulled down on them. But other places—a newsagent, an old-fashioned sweet shop—were still open as if they were just going through a slow patch of business.
The first thing that struck me about this village was just how well-maintained it looked compared to the bulk of the towns and cities. Sure, there were a few broken windows, a few signs that life had crossed through this place. But it was mostly well-kept, mostly untouched.
And that gave me hope.
Hope that if this place looked relatively untouched all this time after the EMP strike, it could be somewhere we could stay—at least for now. Somewhere safe.
“Are we gonna get this done quickly or what?”
The second I heard Ellie speak, my stomach sank. “I was thinking maybe we could stick around here.”
“Stick around here?” she said. “Why would we want to do that when this safe haven’s in the distance?”
I looked at her and then at the rest of my group and I could see they were all on side with Ellie. This talk of a “safe haven” had really captured the imagination of this group. So much so that they seemed willing to trust this buffoon Ibrahim and his friend Harvey—who, though harmless enough, I still couldn’t quite stretch myself to show any real faith in. “We should at least check the houses around here for supplies, things like that. The village looks relatively untouched. Maybe we’ll find some stuff that’ll come in handy.”
I saw Ellie look at Suzy, then Suzy look at Sarah and Sarah to Ibrahim and Harvey. And then reluctantly, I saw them all nod, all agree. “I guess there’s no harm in a pit stop.”
Feeling a sense of relief, I turned around and made for the sweet shop right away. “It looks like there’s flats above the shops. If we can get in there then who knows what we might find.”
“Or who we might find,” Suzy said.
I stopped. Looked around.
I could tell that Suzy was testing me. That, as she stood with her two kids beside her, she knew damn well that the last thing I wanted was to bump into somebody out here, mostly because of the problems that bumping into somebody would bring. I’d already had my trust pushed to the brink with the introduction of Ibrahim and Harvey to our group. I didn’t want things to get even more challenging, that was for sure.
“We go inside and we check them out. We should go in pairs. Suzy, you stay out here, look after the kids. Ibrahim and Harvey, you two go together. And Sarah and Ellie… you two stick together too.”
I made my way towards the sweet shop.
“In pairs?” Sarah said. “What about you?”
I smiled at her. “I’ll be fine alone.”
And before anyone could protest, I was walking inside the sweet shop.
A little bell rang when I opened the door. It was echoey like it was the first sound in here for an eternity. There was a thick film of dust over everything in here and a sugary smell from the mass of sweets locked away on the shelves. I smiled as I walked past childhood favourites like cola bottles, hard boiled pear drops, liquorice and blackcurrant… all of them made me lick my lips, all of them made me salivate.
I had to focus on the task at hand, though. I had to check the flat upstairs for anything that could be useful. Sure, I could take a few sweets jars on my way out too. Give us some sweets for the journey, and when we were done, the glass jars would be handy for collecting and carrying water in.
Besides. Sweets were good for morale. That was a scientific fact, apparently.
I walked to the door at the back of the shop, the silence of the place making hairs stand on the back of my neck. The closer I got to it, the more certain I grew that if there were anything of any value in here, it would already have been taken. Someone would’ve already been in here.
I grabbed the handle, expecting the door to be locked.
It opened right away.
I felt the door open out and I felt in two minds about it. Part of me was surprised and relieved that I hadn’t had to break into it. But on the other hand, it further convinced me that if it were open, someone would’ve been in here. Someone would definitely have been in here.
I stepped through the door and saw something unexpected.
It wasn’t stairs like I’d imagined. Instead, it was an area where a load of spare stock was lying around.
And not just spare stock of sweets, either.
There were protein bars—and lots of them. Remarkably, the rats didn’t seem to have got to them either.
