After the Blast

by Ryan Casey

  Just how much further were she—and everybody—willing to sink?

  “I sometimes wonder what Mum would say,” Holly said.

  Mike stumbled a little. Her words surprised him. “About… about what?”

  Holly half-smiled, staring up into the distance. “About this world. About the things that have gone on since the EMP. I wonder whether she’d have been able to adapt? I wonder if she’d have been able to kill?”

  A bitter taste filled Mike’s mouth. He thought about Caitlin lying there on her death bed, deep in the depths of a medically induced coma, never to come out. “Never underestimate the power of the human condition to find a way,” Mike said.

  He stepped back through the trees, and that’s when he saw it.

  “Shit,” Mike said.

  He rushed over towards their camp. Stepped around it. Tried to figure out what to do about it.

  But it was too late.

  Their makeshift tent had fallen to the ground.

  The props holding it up had burned away.

  Their supplies had been stolen and ransacked.

  They were homeless and back at square one all over again.

  Chapter Six

  The moment Alison woke, she knew she wasn’t alone.

  She shot upright. Her head span. Her mouth was dry. Her vision was blurred. She had no idea what time it was, no idea how long she’d been out. She could barely recall what’d happened before she’d fallen unconscious.

  She looked around, and then it struck her.

  The caravan. The caravan that Mike had gone to; the one that Holly was being held captive in. She’d headed all this way here, only to collapse on the doorstep upon failing to find them.

  But she had found something. The bodies. The charred remains.

  But no trace of Holly in those remains. No trace of Mike.

  She stood up. Her legs were shaky, and her stomach rumbled with hunger. She heard movement by her side, saw Arya sitting there. She looked at Alison like she didn’t understand what was happening. Poor girl. She must’ve been sitting there wide awake all this time. Talk about loyal.

  She walked back inside the caravan, her head spinning, and her body weak. She sat down again, took a few deep breaths, tried to steady herself.

  And then she heard it.

  Shuffling outside. Saw Arya beside her, ears pricked up, growling at something out there; at someone out there.

  She looked out into the distance, and she froze.

  There were footsteps. Definite footsteps heading towards her and Arya.

  Her body seized. She didn’t know who it was, and she wasn’t keen on finding out. She stood up, slowly, even though her legs were wobbly, and then she hid behind the caravan door as the footsteps got closer and closer.

  She didn’t want to run into anyone out there. She just wanted to keep as low a profile as possible before continuing her journey to… well. Her journey to nowhere, now. That’s what it was, after all. There was no end in sight. Just survival.

  Survival was the only target she had in mind.

  She pressed herself back against the wall of the caravan. Arya was beside her, still growling. She lifted a finger, hushed her, but it didn’t seem to work. Arya was interested in whoever was outside. She was threatened by whoever was outside. Alison just had to hope this poor dog behaved long enough to…

  Right on cue, Arya did something that changed everything.

  She let out a deafening, booming bark.

  The footsteps stopped. Silence. Just the sound of the birdsong. The sound of the breeze against the trees.

  And then the sound of the footsteps picking up again, heading in the caravan’s direction.

  Alison’s body went still. Options and possibilities spiralled around her mind. She had a choice: keep on laying low and wait for a perfect moment to strike. Or step out. Reveal herself right away. Get a measure of whoever was coming her way.

  Anything but just standing here.

  Anything but just mulling over the possibilities.

  She looked over at the other side of the caravan, and she saw something.

  A piece of metal. It looked like debris of some kind. Big enough and heavy enough to defend herself with at least.

  She crept over to the other side of the caravan, the footsteps getting closer. She could only assume they were further away than she’d first thought, probably because everything else around her was silent.

  She picked up the piece of metal debris.

  And when she turned around, she saw him.

  A man was standing there. He had his hands by his sides. In his waist clip, a knife.

  He looked into the darkened caravan at her, the windows boarded up. She couldn’t make out his eyes properly. But the way he was standing there silhouetted by light, and the way he was looking at her… not to mention the way Arya was growling… all of them added to the sense of unease.

  She stood still, holding on to the debris, heart racing. The man stood still, too. It was like a silent game of chess, the pair of them trying to figure out the next move.

  Only there was a problem. Alison couldn’t make the next move. She was trapped.

  If she had to fight, she would.

  If she had to kill, she would.

  That’s the reality she had to face up to now.

  The silence went on a little longer.

  And then the man started walking towards her, slowly.

  “Hello, princess,” he said, his voice unusually high-pitched. “Are you lost?”

  A sickening taste washed through Alison’s mouth. There was no doubt about it—this man wasn’t well, mentally. She could tell from the way he spoke. She could tell from his demeanour. Might sound stupid, but she’d dealt with enough cases of wandering patients from mental health facilities that she knew what one looked like when she saw them.

  They were usually nice people.

  It just looked like, right now, she’d stumbled upon a bad egg at the worst of times.

  He kept on walking towards her. Arya growled beside her. Her heart pounded, her chest tightened.

  “Stay back,” she said, lifting the debris.

  The man did stop. Just for a few seconds.

  Then he started walking again. Only this time, he’d reached into his pocket and lifted out the knife. “Cat got your tongue?” he said. “I like tongue. Tongue, tongue, tongue. Mummy used to always feed me tongue.”

  Sickness built in Alison’s body. Not just because of the way this man was coming towards her, the things he was saying, but also because of what she knew she was going to have to do to keep him away. “I’m warning you,” she said. “Stay back. Or I’ll… I’ll crack your skull.”

  The man stopped again. And even in the darkness, she saw the glow of his smile. “You aren’t going to crack anyone’s skull,” he said, lifting the knife. “Now let’s see what your tongue tastes like.”

  He lurched towards Alison.

  She pulled back the debris. Went to slam it over the man’s head.

  But it didn’t matter.

  He fell onto her with all his weight.

  She pushed back, kicked back, and struggled. Arya was by her side, but she didn’t seem to be helping. She was still just kicking her back paws, still just growling.

  And as she tried to fight back, as she tried to struggle free with her weakened body… something struck her.

  The man. He wasn’t fighting anymore.

  And she could feel something, too. Something warm on his back.

  Blood.

  She looked over his shoulder, and she saw it.

  There was an arrow sticking out the back of the man’s neck.

  She looked beyond it and saw someone else standing by the door.

  There was a woman. She was holding a bow and arrow. Staring right in at Alison and this fallen man.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, stepping inside. “I’m really going to need that arrow back.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kumal s
at in the middle of the abandoned park and tried to come to terms with just how silent this place was.

  Warm days like this usually made parks packed out. There were usually kids on the fairground rides. Ice cream vans serving cones that were running and dripping away in the heat. The smell of hot dogs, the sound of laughter and joy and paddling pools splashing in the distance.

  But today was different.

  Today, the rides were empty. The ice cream vans were still there, windows open as if they’d been abandoned in the middle of their shift. There were no smells of hot dogs, or of laughter and joy. Just the breeze. Just silence.

  As Kumal stared down the main walkway of the park, he thought back to the incident at the caravan site nearby. He’d been so close to stealing that deer meat for himself. But he’d failed. He’d failed, and it was beginning to make him question his survival instincts.

  He knew a thing or two about how to be measured in a situation like this, sure. But survival itself was a whole different thing completely. You could know the kind of animals you were supposed to catch, the kind of diet you were supposed to eat. But it had to go beyond that. You had to know the best ways of catching them. You had to be able to weigh up when a situation was worth pursuing and when it was worth abandoning.

  He remembered the way that group had raced towards him as he made a final lunge for that deer, and he wondered if he’d just taken the risk, he might’ve left there with it whole.

  “We’re going to have to start thinking long-term,” Gina said.

  When Gina spoke those words, Kumal’s stomach sank. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

  “We’ve been out here for days now, barely getting by,” Gina said. There was frustration and irritation to her voice. “We’ve stolen scraps. We’ve been lucky with some of our finds. But it isn’t going to always be this way, Kumal. We… we have to face the truth. We don’t know enough about survival to make it on our own.”

  She was silent, then. A pause that suggested there was more to be said.

  “So?” Kumal said.

  “So… I think we should be doing everything we can to find another group to join.”

  Kumal scratched his chin. “That’s not going to be easy.”

  “Maybe not. But at the end of the day, what’s the alternative?”

  “The alternative is maybe staying alive.”

  “I know there’s been some bad shit with other groups,” Gina said. “And I know that shit’s gonna take a while to get over. Believe me; I got captured by one of them. But I can’t just sit here and accept all groups are suddenly bad people. There’s good people out there. People like you and me. People just trying to get by. Even the people at the caravan site. How do we know they aren’t good people? We were the ones trying to steal from them, after all. That makes us the bad people in their eyes. Shouldn’t we be trying something else?”

  Kumal thought back to the group that abducted Gina. He thought back to the group that did whatever they’d done to that poor mother and her baby; the ones that hung from the tree. And as much as he wanted to believe there was goodness still out there—as much as he wanted to believe that there had to be people out there that were just like him and Gina—that lens of the past was clouding his present and making a positive future hard to see.

  “So what do you suggest we do?” Kumal said. “Wander back into that caravan site? Apologise and say we didn’t mean to steal from them, we were just desperate?”

  “I’m suggesting exactly that,” Gina said.

  Kumal shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, go on. That headshake. What’s that all about?”

  “It’s just… Gina, I think you’re living in a dream world, that’s all.”

  She did something, then. Something Kumal hadn’t been expecting.

  She slapped him.

  “I was captured by a group right at the bloody start of this mess. I was pulled away from you and from everyone. I thought I was going to die. But I’m still here. And I still have faith that there’s goodness out there. If I can have faith, what’s stopping you?”

  Guilt welled up inside Kumal, then. They wanted the same thing, at the end of the day. They both wanted to find safety. Kumal just wasn’t sure he bought into this “everyone’s in it together” philosophy anymore, not after the things he’d seen.

  “You’re right,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I just… Forgive me for being skeptical. I just don’t want to see either of us caught up with the wrong people, that’s all. Not after all this time. Not after all we’ve been through.”

  Gina reached out a hand. She put it on Kumal’s arm. When she made contact with him, the hairs on his arm stood on end. They felt like they were on fire.

  He looked away, his cheeks flushing, as Gina spoke.

  “We’ve got each other,” she said. “And that isn’t going to change. No matter who we end up with… we’ve made it this far like you say. We’re not going to let anyone get in our way. Not now. Not after all this.”

  Kumal looked back at Gina, her hand still moving up and down on his arm. He smiled.

  And at that moment, he wanted to tell her she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. That he’d always had feelings for her, but they were getting stronger and stronger by the day. That he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to hide them from her for much longer.

  “We push forward,” Gina said. “We find another group. Okay?”

  Kumal went to nod and agree.

  But then he saw the movement behind Gina.

  And he knew right then that they weren’t going to have to wait long to find their group after all.

  Because they were already here.

  Chapter Eight

  Andrei listened to the begging man’s cries as he held the gun to his daughter’s head.

  It was a pretty day, in all truth. Not the kind of day you usually hear about in Britain. Britain was hardly known for its weather. It was one of the reasons he was pissed when he was deployed here. Not only was there shit weather—the power was down, too.

  Although that latter part was the very reason he was sent here after all.

  The very reason his government had deployed his people here.

  Restoring order. Getting the power back online.

  But the truth?

  Establishing a military presence that by the time the power was back online would already be too significant to topple.

  And establishing order sometimes required a little… heavy-handedness.

  “Please,” the man begged as he stood there. Andrei’s colleagues were holding his arms. He was a mess of a man. Typical Brit. Bald, sun-tanned, with a big pot belly. Football shirt, too. Back in the day, Brits used to be the pride and joy of the football world. Their fans were renowned for their brutality, for the way they’d fight to the death. True hooligans.

  But every dog had its day, and Britain had clearly done so. Especially since it’d pulled itself out of the European Union, it didn’t have the same international clout anymore. And it didn’t have the same sort of protection against advances like this.

  Which made Britain all the more appealing to his nation now he was here.

  He looked down into the little girl’s bright blue eyes. She was cute. That innocent look on her face that she must’ve learned from so many movies. The one that says, ‘you’ll be let off the hook if you just give it your best “innocent” expression.’

  But Andrei didn’t buy into those movies. He didn’t buy into those myths.

  Andrei’s goal was to make people afraid of him. Afraid of his people.

  And the best way to do that was to threaten to take away the thing they cared about most.

  “Why are you doing this?” the father begged. “My—my girl. She’s just like your daughters, back home. There’s no difference between them. Don’t do this. Please.”

  Andrei turned to the father. Although he didn’t totally agree with him—
he didn’t think his daughters back home were anything like this filth—he could see where he was coming from. What had the kid done, after all?

  He lowered his gun. “You are right,” he said.

  He walked over to the father. Looked right into his eyes.

  “Our children should not have to pay for the mistakes of their parents, no?”

  The father breathed heavily and shakily into Andrei’s face. He smelled like fish. Something that rubbed him up the wrong way even more. “Please,” he said.

  “Oh, stop saying please. Is that all you say? Is that all the fight you Brits have in you?”

  He turned around. Walked over to the little girl. Pushed the gun right between her eyes.

  “Stop!” the man shouted.

  “I want to see you really fight.”

  The father shoved and tried to break free of the people holding him. But it was pathetic. Too emotional. Too defeatist.

  He looked at the little girl. Tightened his finger around the trigger. Smiled at her.

  “I want to see you give it your all,” he said. “To show her how much she means to you.”

  He tightened the trigger some more.

  “No!” the father shouted.

  Andrei saw something, then. In the corner of his eye. The father punching out at one of the men holding him, elbowing him in his face.

  Then he saw him kicking free of another, racing towards him, towards his daughter.

  Andrei stepped back, lifted the gun in the air. “Good,” he said. “That’s what I like to see.”

  The father held his daughter. Tightened his grip around her. Whispered things to her. “You’ll be okay, Emma. I promise. I promise.”

  She just kept on looking over his shoulder, that innocent gaze to her eyes.

  Andrei sighed. He crouched behind them as they held one another. The men who had been holding the father had their rifles raised, now.

  “You know, it’s a shame,” Andrei said. “I like to see fighting spirit. It’s a shame we’re not going to see much more of that.”

  He put the gun to the back of the father’s head.

  And before the father could do a thing, he pulled the trigger.