After the Blast

by Ryan Casey

  He tried to shuffle back around, just to give himself some ground.

  But before he could do a thing, the man kicked him in his ribs. Hard.

  He winced. Gritted his teeth. He went to spin onto his back again, but then another kick followed, and another.

  And as much pain as he was in, as much as he was struggling, still his thoughts right now were with Kumal; still his hopes were that maybe he could still help him, maybe he could save him, maybe he could be okay…

  Then he felt someone grab his arm and pin him down flat on his back.

  He looked up, heart racing. It was pitch black, and he couldn’t see a thing. He tried to wriggle free of the situation that he was in, but with no success. He was stuck. Trapped. He’d seen what’d happened to Kumal, and if he wasn’t careful, the same thing was going to happen to him, too.

  “You should’ve learned a lesson,” the woman said, flecks of her spit falling onto his face. “Should know damn well not to stick up for those savages. Should know well enough to stick up for your own.”

  “And you’re my own?” Mike shouted. “You’re the kind of people I should be sticking up for? Look at yourselves.”

  The woman tutted, clearly filled with disgust at Mike’s words. “He’s too far gone, boys. Not a thing we can do for him. Calvin, grab that torch. I want to see what colour his insides are.”

  Mike felt a hand loosen on his left side.

  And knowing he had to do everything he could to get out of this situation… he knew that was a big mistake.

  He made a swing at the person to his right.

  His fist connected with their face, loosening their grip on him immediately.

  “Shit!”

  He stood up, then. Looked around, but it was still dark, still suffocatingly dark. He tried to figure out where the knife was, where he’d dropped it.

  Then he saw a glint.

  Just a glint in the torchlight.

  His knife.

  He rushed towards it. Jumped down for it, even though Calvin and the other guy were coming for him.

  He landed on it. Grabbed it. Spun around.

  Calvin slipped on top of him.

  The knife pierced his chest.

  Mike pushed it into him, harder. He felt the warm blood from Calvin’s mouth pour over him. But he kept pushing, kept twisting, feeling no mercy, no restraint.

  When he was done, he pushed Calvin aside and watched the man with the torch standing there, hands shaking.

  He saw the caution in his eyes. Saw the hesitation.

  But again, that wasn’t going to get this guy anywhere.

  He pulled back his knife and stabbed the guy in the neck, again, again, again.

  The guy fell to the ground. And soon it was just Mike and the woman.

  She looked at him in the glow of the torch. Eyes narrowed. Long blade in hand. It looked like she was smiling.

  “You should’ve thought carefully before you did that,” she said. “There’s still time for you, you know? Still time for you to make a change.”

  Mike took a deep breath. Lowered the knife. “I know. But there’s no time for you.”

  He threw the knife right at the torch, triggering total darkness.

  Then he threw himself at the woman.

  He pinned her down as she fell beneath his weight. She tried to stab his back, but he just held onto her arm, tried to pull the blade free from her tight fingers.

  She bit his arm. Her teeth sunk right in, digging deeper. Agony split through him. But he kept on tightening his grip on the blade, kept on pulling it away, kept on trying to loosen her grip on it.

  She let out an agonised cry as her bite drew blood.

  Then her grip slipped.

  He pulled the blade free.

  And for a moment, in the glimmer of the stars, he saw the way she looked up at him, and he thought about holding off. He thought about letting her live. He thought about forgiveness and moving forward.

  Then he rammed the knife down into her throat.

  Her eyes widened. She struggled side to side, reaching for her neck, for the knife, blood drooling down her front.

  Then her head fell back, and she lay there, gasping, gulping.

  Mike wanted to finish her off. He wanted to punish her more for what she’d done.

  Instead, he rushed over to Kumal’s side.

  “Kumal,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m…”

  But as he held Kumal’s body, looked into his glassy eyes, he stopped speaking.

  Kumal was already gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Holly took a deep breath before stepping up to the churchyard, completely unaware of just what she was walking into.

  But she kept tight hold of the machete that David had given her at all times.

  It was early now. The sun had just risen. She’d slept last night before embarking on her journey. David had wished her luck. But he hadn’t stopped speaking about his children, Abi and Kane. How much he missed them. How much pain he felt for what these people had done to them.

  And she felt his rage.

  She felt like his rage was providing her with an outlet to let her rage out, too…

  Two of the residents of this place turned to look at Holly the second she entered the grounds of the church. Two women. They ran over to her, concern on their faces. Was it concern for her? Or was it concern for themselves?

  Or something else?

  Something else completely?

  She remembered what David said about trusting these people.

  “Are you okay?” one of them asked, stopping at Holly’s side.

  Holly made herself a little wobbly; a little unsteady. She had to make it look like she was weak, so that they didn’t perceive her as a threat, or cotton on to what she was doing.

  “Darling,” one of them said. “Why don’t you sit down and let us grab you a glass of water?”

  Holly sat on one of the steps. She looked around at these churchyard grounds as one of the women disappeared inside. She could see children about. And it made her sick. The thought of what these people had done to David’s children. The thought of what they’d been through.

  “Where’ve you come from?”

  Holly looked. She saw the big-eyed ginger woman staring at her, concern on her face. That implacable concern, there once again.

  And Holly, figuring mystery was the best thing to have on her side right now, decided to go down that route. “I—I don’t know.”

  “She’s confused,” another voice said from somewhere over her shoulder.

  “Looks dehydrated,” another said.

  As she sat there, hearing all these things about herself, Holly started to believe in this myth that had been created around her; the myth that she was weak, and she was lost.

  And for a second, as one of the women brought her a glass of sediment-filled water, she started to actually like it. She started to wonder whether this place really was so bad after all.

  And then she remembered exactly why she was here.

  David.

  She remembered what he’d said to her. The things he’d seen these people do. The way they’d made his innocent children suffer. And no matter what stripes they were wearing now, there was no denying what they were hiding.

  And if they could do that to a man’s children, they could do it to anyone.

  They didn’t deserve to be in this world.

  They didn’t deserve to be alive.

  “Can we offer you any food, dear?” a voice said.

  Holly stood up, tension in her knees. She saw a man standing there, balding, missing a tooth.

  She looked him right in the eye.

  Then she took a deep breath and inside, she felt her emotions switch off, just like that.

  “You can’t do anything for me,” she said.

  Then she pulled back the knife and rammed it into his belly.

  She heard him gasp with pain. But before he could react, before he could alert anyone else, Hol
ly had the knife out of his body.

  She walked over to the woman who’d given her the water and stabbed her in the neck.

  Then she stepped away from her. Moved inside the church.

  There weren’t many people in there. Six, seven. Fewer than David had made out.

  But none of them seemed alarmed. None of them seemed prepared.

  So Holly walked up to the first of them—a ginger man—and stabbed him in the chest before he could react. And as the pandemonium erupted, catching them off guard, she moved onto the next person, then the next, then the next, chasing some of them down, urging the children to get out of here so they didn’t get in the way, so they didn’t have to live with what they’d witnessed.

  And while she was doing this, Holly couldn’t deny something deep within. Some dark, dormant urge. She felt like this was making her better. She felt like it was relieving some of her pain, of her frustration. She felt like she was being cleansed. Like this wasn’t even David’s revenge at all, but hers.

  Then she heard gasping behind her, and she stopped.

  She turned around. Saw one of the women lying there; one of the women she’d stabbed. She was holding on to her stomach. Bleeding.

  She looked up at Holly with total fear in her eyes.

  But it was what she said to Holly that got to her.

  It was what she said that stuck with her, truly.

  “He’s got to you, hasn’t he?”

  Holly frowned. She walked slowly towards this woman. “What?”

  “David. He’s… I knew he’d still be out there somewhere. I knew—I knew he’d come back. He got to you, didn’t he? He made you do this.”

  Holly stood over the woman. She was starting to feel uneasy. “I know what you people did to him. What you did to his children.”

  She stepped over her, lifted her knife, prepared for the next blow.

  “Really?” the woman said. “Do—do you really?”

  Holly stopped. Because she got the sense that something was amiss. The story she’d wanted to believe wasn’t the truth, all along.

  But she had to stay focused.

  She had to do what David had sent her here to do.

  “The pub,” the woman said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “The pub where he killed Gina. That’s the truth. That’s… that’s where the real victims are. Not him.”

  A pause. Holly’s mouth went dry. “Gina?”

  It was a coincidence. It couldn’t be real. There was more than one Gina. There had to be.

  “I…”

  “Well done,” a voice said.

  She looked up.

  David was standing over her. Smile on his face.

  “It looks like we’ve got what we wanted after all, doesn’t it?”

  Then he brought his blade down on the woman’s head and silenced her.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Alison wasn’t sure how long she’d been stuck with this sack over her head, only that she was in deep shit.

  It was dark. She didn’t know whether that was because it was night or because she was blindfolded, or in some dark, confined space. She couldn’t tell. Either way, it didn’t matter. She’d ended up cornered by that armed group. She’d stood her ground. Resisted.

  And when they hadn’t been able to shoot her, they’d captured her and dragged her away anyway.

  She tried to turn her head, but it was heavy and sore, and her neck was stiff. She strained to hear something, but there was nothing but a high-pitched humming in her ears, which she could only assume was from the smack to her head they’d given her a few miles back. Her nose was stuffy, blocking her sense of smell, but she could taste a hint of metallic blood on her tongue, some of it congealing in the back of her throat.

  Wherever she was; whatever situation she was in, she could only come to one conclusion.

  It wasn’t good.

  She thought of Gina, who’d knelt by her side. And she thought of Arya, too. She’d worked so hard to save her, especially after the drama of what happened with Jenny. She thought she’d lost everything at that moment. She’d been convinced that after Jenny fell, Arya was going to follow, too.

  But then she’d found Gina, and at the same time, she’d found hope. Because she wasn’t supposed to find Gina. Their paths weren’t supposed to cross. It was the kind of event that was supposed to be reserved for fiction; the kind of thing that didn’t happen in reality.

  But it had. So it did.

  And if that didn’t instil her with a renewed sense of hope, then what would?

  She tried to move her hands, but they were tied behind her back. She tried her feet, but they were stuck, too. She shuffled her sore head from side to side and realised she was blindfolded after all. But despite her senses being dulled, she swore she could feel a breeze. Did that mean she was outside?

  She lifted her head, tried to shuffle it from side to side, to free herself from this blindfold. If she could at least see her surroundings, at least then she’d be able to weight up her situation and do something about it.

  She moved even more, whatever she was tied to rough against the back of her head. It sent a splitting pain through her skull. But she kept on going anyway. Nothing could stop her anymore. Nothing could get in her way.

  She thought about Mum. Thought about the way she’d found her dead like that. And she felt a sudden smack of grief. She’d barely even processed her mum’s death until this point, which was weird considering how long had passed already. But she’d been keeping herself so busy every day, and when she put her head down to sleep, she was usually so exhausted that she just drifted right off into painful, tormenting dreams.

  But now she was alone. And now the silence was kicking in. And with that silence, there were the thoughts she’d been pushing back; the thoughts she’d been trying to repress.

  She thought about the good times she’d had with her mum. The times they did things together: went for walks, went to the beach, went for little coffee and cake trips.

  But she thought of the bad things, too. The times they’d argued. The times they’d fought. The times they’d gone years without any kind of contact.

  She thought of all these times, and she wished she could have them back, warts and all.

  But she knew she couldn’t.

  They were gone.

  Everything about her old life was gone.

  Even the life she’d made in this new world was gone.

  She struggled, shuffling side to side even more, trying to free herself from the blindfold.

  And then she felt the blindfold come free, and she saw light.

  It was bright. It put her in a daze right away. Instinctively, she squeezed her eyes shut, allergic to the brightness, to the searing glare.

  But eventually, she opened them again. Tried to see what was ahead; who was ahead; where she was; where anyone was.

  When her eyes adjusted to the light, she realised.

  Her hands were tied behind a tree. Her ankles tied right in front of her, around another smaller tree.

  She was in a forest.

  Right in the middle of a forest.

  Alone.

  She thought about all the things she’d told herself about staying strong. She thought about how many times she’d told herself to hold herself together, to stay optimistic, no matter what.

  And she felt her bottom lip shaking.

  She felt that optimistic voice in her head fading.

  “Keep it together, Alison,” she said, tears flowing more freely. “Keep—keep it together. Keep it…”

  Then that wave of grief over her mum hit again in full force—everything hit in full force.

  She stopped speaking.

  Her resolve cracked.

  There was no hope left.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Mike stood over Kumal’s grave as the rain fell down heavily from the thick clouds above.

  It was late afternoon. A whole day had passed since the chaos that led to Kumal’s death la
st night. And Mike could hardly face up to the reality. He couldn’t believe it.

  Another good person, gone.

  Only this one was gone for good.

  He thought about the first time he’d met Kumal. Thought he was a bit of a smart-arse at first, but he’d soon seen beyond that. Kumal really was intelligent beyond his years. He saw the big picture. He grounded Mike, grounded everyone, and gave a balanced, thoughtful perspective.

  And now he was gone.

  The moral compass of a group that had long ago fallen to pieces, gone completely.

  Mike looked down into the empty grave. He hadn’t got around to dragging Kumal’s body in there yet. He’d spent the morning doing normal everyday stuff like boiling some noodles he’d got from Claire’s group over a fire. But he didn’t feel like eating. Mostly just like puking.

  Because he’d just been delaying the inevitable. Delaying the reality of what had to be done.

  “Come on then,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s get you to rest.”

  He reached Kumal’s side, and he felt the shock spark inside his chest. Just seeing him in this way ignited horror in Mike. Because it was wrong. So wrong. Not just because this could so easily be his daughter… but because it was someone he’d got so close to. Someone so good.

  Another sign of just how off, how rotten, this world could go.

  He looked away from Kumal’s closed eyes, from that gaping wound on his neck. He thought about how unnecessary his death had been. In the name of what? Some racist pig who’d had an agenda of her own. But pointless. So pointless.

  Mike had no regrets about what he’d done to that woman and her people. Not for what they’d done to Kumal.

  He went to grab Kumal by his legs, to drag him towards the grave, when he noticed something.

  It didn’t catch his eye immediately. After all, it was best not to look at whatever Kumal had in his possession. It wasn’t Mike’s business. And it just made all of this even harder; an even more bitter a pill to swallow.

  But it was when Mike saw the blotchy writing that he actually did look at it. The crumpled paper. The folds.

  He wanted to see exactly what it was.

  He unfolded that letter, and he began to read.