by Ryan Casey
She just had to bide her time.
She just had to wait for the right moment.
And then she had to get out of here.
And before she did, she was going to take this man out.
She was going to get close to him and then she was going to destroy him for what he’d done.
But all this time, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Matthew said.
She couldn’t stop tasting that blood on her lips.
Are you strong? Or are you going to prove me wrong?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jack looked back at the caravan site and felt a weight in his chest.
The sun had finally burned through the clouds. The air was thick and humid. In the distance, he swore he could still hear the echo of gunfire, but he figured that had to be his imagination.
Instead, he tried to focus on the gentle breeze brushing against the trees. On the sound of the birds chirping all around them.
He had to force what had happened to the caravan site from his mind.
Because there was no time to dwell on it. There was only time for moving forward.
And figuring out what to do about Emma and the rest of the missing people.
The girl walked ahead of the group. She wasn’t one for talking. And Jack felt uneasy that she seemed to know so much about his group when he knew so little about her.
He didn’t know what’d driven her away from her people. He couldn’t even be certain she legitimately had been driven away from her people.
Maybe this was a trap.
Maybe there was a catch.
He didn’t know. And that was the problem.
“Wait,” Jack said.
The girl slowed down and stopped. She turned, looked back at him. “There’s no time to wait.”
“You can’t just say that,” Jack said. “Not after everything that’s just happened. We… we need time.”
“Time for what?”
“To figure out what happens next. And… and to figure out where we’re at, right now.”
The girl looked at Jack. Her eyes narrowed. “The less you know the be—”
“You can’t keep saying that,” Jack said. “You told us we should be worried about Matthew. You told us we should get away from him, as far away as possible. But you won’t tell us why. You won’t even tell us your name.”
She looked at Jack, then at Hazel, Candice, Bella. Villain and Mrs Fuzzles stood alongside one another. Jack just hoped Mrs Fuzzles wasn’t corrupting Villain with her negative influences now she’d had a taste of blood. Creepy cat.
“You have to see this from our perspective.” It was Candice who spoke now. She walked forward, towards this girl. “We appreciate what you’re trying to do for us. But we’ve just lost our camp and we still don’t even know why. We don’t know anything. If we did… maybe we could have a better idea of where we actually go from here.”
“You go away from here,” the girl said, quite abruptly. “You’re lucky to escape this time. You won’t be so lucky next time.”
“You have to understand why we can’t do that,” Candice said. “Why we can’t just walk away. Right, Jack?”
She looked at Jack and he saw the rest of them looking at him, too. Once again, he felt those rival forces. He wanted to get away. He wanted to flee. He wanted to accept his losses but be grateful for what he still had and take them while he still could.
But that didn’t sit right with him.
“Candice is right,” Jack said. “As dangerous as this may be, as worried as you are for us… we need to know more. We need to understand what we’re dealing with. At least then we can decide what we’re going to do. How we’re going to go forward.”
The girl lowered her head, shook it. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Then let us make it,” Jack said.
She looked up at him. Then she looked over at Bella. “Your man. What happened to him. He was one of the lucky ones.”
Bella’s face turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You see? Are you sure you even want to know, really?”
Jack tasted bitterness in his mouth. He could tell there was so much this girl had to say, but she was afraid.
“We have to know,” he said. “I know you’re only trying to look out for us, but we have to.”
She looked into the trees. Her face flushed. She scratched her arms.
“Let’s start with your name,” Jack said.
“My name doesn’t matter.”
“Your name does matter. Who are you? How did you get to where you are now? What’s your story?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Jack said. “We’re here for you. All of us are here to listen to what you have to say. Tell us who you are and tell us what we’re dealing with.”
She looked up at Jack and for a moment, he saw pure fear in her eyes.
He saw resistance.
But he also saw an urgency to offload.
“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s start with your name. Let’s start with—”
“Susan,” she said.
Jack frowned. “Susan?”
The girl closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.
Then she opened her eyes and looked right into Jack’s.
“My name is Susan Kale,” she said. “It all started with a plane crash…”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Susan held Tommy’s hand as she reached the camp and felt a smile stretch across her face.
It was an old town. Entire streets had been cordoned off by fences and concrete blocks. In the middle of it, there were people, lots of people. They had smiles on their faces, too. They looked like they were happy. Getting by. Working for one another. And they looked welcoming.
“This is our home,” Sergeant Ben Wisdom said. “Been living here ever since it all began. We’ve got police here. We’ve got supplies here. Everything you’d ever need, until the power comes back on.”
There was a bit of trepidation about those final words. Susan had glimpsed the evils of this world in the short time since the power went out. She’d faced up to the prisoner, Andy. She’d watched Tommy’s dad die right before him.
And she’d stood up to her controlling father, once and for all.
If there was one thing she was sure about, it was that there was no way anyone was just going back to normality after everything that had happened.
The power might come back one day. But the world was still never going to be the same again.
She looked at Tommy as he stood there. This boy who represented hope. The one person who she’d pledged to do everything for now. She was his rock. That’s what she had to be. She had to put her own feelings and her own hopes to one side, all for this boy.
Because he needed someone. It was only right.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Tommy looked at the camp ahead. He really scanned it, really studied it.
But his eyes settled on an ice cream van right in the middle of the road.
“Reckon they’ll have real ice cream?” he asked.
Susan smiled. “I doubt it. But we can always enjoy some more Pretend Ice, right?”
Tommy looked back at her and smiled.
Then, he nodded.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go see our new home.”
When Susan reached the ice cream van and saw no sign of Tommy, worry took over.
They’d been here a month now. The early days had been good. The rations had lasted, and people seemed to have an understanding that supplies were limited, so they just had to make the most of the supplies they had.
But gradually, as the days passed by and hunger grew, things had grown more strained.
The police started to tighten their grip on the supply chain. After a week, conflict broke out. A child was killed.
And the people who were left, police included, were forced into a very precarious situation that felt like it was going
to fall apart at any moment.
Susan thought about getting away. She thought about escaping and making a break for it on the road.
But she still thought this place was safer than the outside.
She’d seen the horrors of man.
She knew the kinds of evils in this place.
She didn’t want to risk facing the unknown.
At least in here she knew exactly what she was up against.
“Tommy?”
She looked inside the ice cream van. Then she scanned the derelict streets. It was quiet. There were only about eight of them left now. They didn’t particularly get along. Hunger was growing. Dehydration took its grip every day.
But they powered on, because they had to power on. They had no choice.
She ran up the street. Passed by a man called Steve.
“Have you seen Tommy?”
Steve glanced up at her as he sat there reading a book. He shrugged.
“Thanks,” Susan muttered. “Very helpful.”
She kept on running down the road when she noticed something, then.
She stopped.
People.
There were people at the end of the street.
They looked strange, unlike any group she’d seen. Some of them were wearing white.
Most of them were holding knives.
They looked like they were some kind of religious group.
Or some kind of cult.
Sergeant Ben Wisdom stepped up, lifted his rifle and pointed at them.
“Wait,” Susan said.
“No time to wait.”
“But Tommy—”
“I don’t give a shit about Tommy,” he said. “Now step out of my way and let me deal with these bastards.”
Susan shook her head. She couldn’t believe how Ben had grown so cold. But then with the things he’d done, she supposed it added up. He’d lost his grip, and that grip was slipping even more by the day.
It was what he had to do to maintain control.
“Move,” he said, his angry eyes peering back at her. “Right this second.”
She held her ground.
Then she stepped aside reluctantly.
Ben lifted his rifle and pointed it off into the distance.
“Good,” he said. “Now we fire.”
He pulled the trigger.
The people in the distance dispersed. They ran into the side streets. Some of them disappeared into buildings.
With the click of a finger, they were gone.
Ben lowered his rifle. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
But there was something in the distance.
Something Susan could hear.
A cry.
Her skin went numb. Sickness hit her like a wave.
That cry.
Like an animal.
An animal that hadn’t been put out of its misery.
She didn’t even think.
She ran off towards the source of the cry, towards the people in white.
“Susan!” Ben shouted.
She didn’t stop. She kept on running. Even though she didn’t want to face that cry. Even though she didn’t want to find what deep down, she feared she was going to find.
She reached it and she stopped.
Her entire body went cold.
Her world fell underneath her.
“Tommy,” she said. “No. No!”
She fell beside him. Held his hand as he bled from his chest. She told him he was going to be okay. That the pain was going to go, soon. That all of it was going to disappear.
And then without any drama, he died right there on the road, his body turning still, the wails still echoing around her skull.
She wasn’t sure how long she crouched there, crying.
She lost all sense of her surroundings, all sense of what was even real anymore.
And then she looked up, back at her camp, and she saw it.
Ben was dead.
He was lying on the road.
A man dressed in white with long, dark hair and a bushy beard stood over him, Ben’s rifle in hand.
His green eyes glistened as they stared into hers.
He walked over to Susan, then. More of his people approached alongside him. Some of her own people came, too.
He stopped when he reached her. And Susan just wanted him to end it. She wanted him to finish her off, because she had nothing left to live for, now.
He looked at her. Pointed that rifle at her. Her entire world was still.
And then he lowered the rifle and held out a hand.
“Come on,” he said.
She looked at it. Tears covering her eyes. Drifting, like she was in the clouds, her mind blurry and incoherent.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You are strong. You’ll get the opportunity to prove that strength. And to prove your loyalty.”
She wanted to resist, but she found herself feeling weak; feeling like she needed someone to step in and help her; feeling like she couldn’t be here with Tommy on her own.
She looked down at Tommy. Leaned over and kissed him on his cooling cheek.
And then she looked back at that man’s outstretched hand.
She reached out and took it.
His smile extended. A warmth to his eyes.
“I’m Matthew,” he said. “And you don’t have to worry anymore. You’re one of us now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack listened to Susan’s story and he felt exhausted.
Everyone was silent. Nobody said a word, from the start of Susan’s tragic story to the very grisly end.
She’d been through so much. A plane accident that killed all her friends and left her the sole survivor. A journey to find safety and security for a young boy called Tommy. Taking up the responsibility of looking after him herself.
And then losing him in the most tragic way.
That’s when she fell in with Matthew and his people.
“I was at a low point,” Susan said, staring into space as they stood there in the woods. “I… I was in shock. Matthew held my hand and told me he was going to help me, if I could help myself. He told me if I proved I was strong, I could belong, and at that moment I just needed something to belong to. I wasn’t thinking straight. You have to understand that.”
Jack thought about the ways he’d acted when grief got to him. He knew exactly what Susan was talking about.
“He told me that his people were a community. He… he told me they had ways of surviving that might be hard to accept. They had methods that I wouldn’t be comfortable with, not at first. I just didn’t realise the extent of it. Not right away.”
Jack gulped, bitterness in his mouth. “What kind of methods?”
Susan looked right into his eyes and said the words he’d been fearing all along. “Taking out the weak and using them for what he called a better purpose. Letting the strong live… at least those who stay in line, anyway. Those who prove their worth. He wants to build a truly strong group. A group without weakness. I don’t know what went on in his past, but something must’ve to make him this way. But his past doesn’t matter. He’ll stop at nothing to achieve what he wants to achieve. And he’ll make damned sure the weak don’t go to waste, either.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m talking cannibalism.”
“Shit,” Jack said.
“It didn’t start that way,” Susan said. “He… he didn’t just throw the cannibalism on us. It got to that point when we were starving. When it seemed like we had… no choice.”
She looked away, wiped her eyes. It was like she was only just realising the extent of her own involvement, sharing it for the first time.
“What changed?” Jack asked.
“I woke up,” Susan said. “I saw how deep I’d fallen. I decided to go to Matthew and tell him about my thoughts. He always told us to be honest if we had concerns. That’s when he told me I’d made a mistake. He held me captive. I think he would’ve killed me,
really I do. But someone helped me escape. I ran. Didn’t look back. That’s—that’s when I ran into you.”
“Wait,” Jack said. “You knew what he had planned for my people and you didn’t tell me?”
“I tried to warn you,” Susan said. “I told you to leave the caravan site.”
“You didn’t tell me exactly why.”
“I shouldn’t have had to. You should’ve just listened.”
“People died,” Jack said. “People’s deaths could’ve been prevented if you’d just been straight with me.”
She looked down. The guilt on her face clear to see.
“I’ve made so many mistakes,” she said. “I’ve messed up more times than I care to admit. But I thought… I thought if I could at least help you, at least warn you, maybe I could do one good thing. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She turned and went to walk away.
“Wait a second,” Jack said.
Susan stopped. Looked back. “What?”
“You’re just walking away? Just like that?”
“I’ve told you everything there is to tell. I have no purpose here anymore.”
Jack sighed. He walked towards her. “You’ve told us things. And I appreciate that. But there’s something else we need your help with.”
She looked at him. Shook her head. “No. I can’t help with anything—”
“Matthew,” Jack said. “He has someone close to us. A young girl called Emma. A girl I swore to protect. He has her. And I’m not giving up on her. None of us are giving up on her. We’re not giving up on any of our people.”
“You’re going to get yourselves killed.”
“Then so be it,” Jack said. “But you’re going to help us. And maybe when you do, you’ll finally be able to shake that guilt. You’ll finally be able to look other people in the eye again. How does that sound?”
She glanced at him, just for a few seconds, before looking away again. “It’s dangerous. Nobody has ever got close to Matthew.”
“But you’re not nobody,” Hazel said.
She stepped forward.
“What are you suggesting?” Susan asked.
Hazel looked at Jack.
Candice looked at Jack.
Bella looked at Jack.
