After the Blast

by Ryan Casey

  She felt it against her stomach. Felt it like a scratch, only deeper.

  When Alison looked down at her stomach, she couldn’t see anything because of the darkness.

  But when she put her fingers where the scratch had hit her, she felt it.

  Blood.

  He’d sliced her.

  “Alison, quick!”

  Alison heard Holly, and this time she wasn’t too late.

  David lunged towards her.

  Alison fell to her right. She landed on the forest floor.

  David was on top of her.

  He pressed his foot down on the cut along her belly. She cried out right away, the agony crippling her.

  He leaned down towards her. Grabbed her hair. “You should’ve thought better than putting a mere piece of wood to my head.”

  He smacked Alison across her face, hard.

  For a second, a flash. Everything went black.

  And then another punch just as her vision regained.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  When he finally let go of her, Alison’s face was on fire. She could feel it swelling up already. She could feel the bruises, hot and tender.

  And she could feel the blood oozing out of that slice on her stomach, slowly pooling out of her body.

  “You should’ve learned to stay away,” David said, leaning in towards her, knife to her neck. “You should’ve learned to—argh!”

  Alison didn’t know what’d happened, not at first. She just heard the shout, heard the struggle, and felt David’s weight falling back away from her body.

  And then she saw it.

  Holly was on his back. She was sinking her teeth into his neck. Biting down, hard.

  She could see the way Holly was looking at her. See the way her eyes were darting to the knife in David’s hand; the knife that Alison had to grab from him; that she had to get to.

  She went to grab it. Pulled at it.

  But David kept on holding tight, trying to shake free of Holly, swinging from side to side.

  Alison punched his hand. She reached for a piece of wood, went to jam it into the back of his hand.

  And then he punched her again and knocked Holly away from him, onto the ground below.

  He put a hand to his neck, which was bleeding badly. “Bitch!” he said. Then he turned away from Alison, turned his attentions away from her and to Holly.

  She looked at the piece of wood in her hand.

  The sharp edge.

  David walked over towards Holly, knife raised. And despite the pain that Alison was experiencing, despite the blood she was losing, she held tightly onto that piece of wood, and she clambered towards him.

  “You know, I really thought you were the one for me,” David said, crouching over Holly, blood dripping from his neck, knife in his hand. “But maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not someone I can control. Maybe you’re not someone whose violence can be tamed and turned into something quite special. Maybe you are just weak.”

  Holly spat at him. He smirked and wiped it from his face.

  Alison edged further towards them both, strength lowered, not much left in the tank, everything spinning around her.

  David put the bloodied knife to Holly’s neck. “Goodbye, angel,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.”

  Alison reached David.

  Holly looked into her eyes.

  David frowned. Started to turn around.

  But it was too late.

  Alison cracked the rock down on David’s head.

  She smacked him to one side. Then she cracked it down again and again. And when she was sure he was unconscious, she dropped it, then went to grab Holly’s hand, to check she was okay.

  But Holly didn’t come falling into her arms.

  It wasn’t the reunion Alison imagined.

  Because Holly grabbed the knife from David’s limp hand.

  “Holly?” Alison said. “Just—he’s unconscious. Leave him to—”

  “It’s not enough,” Holly said.

  “You can’t—”

  But it was too late.

  Holly rammed the blade down into David’s stomach.

  She pushed it. Hard. Listened to him struggle, listened to him gargle, listened to him wheeze.

  She pulled back the knife and stabbed him again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And when he’d finally coughed his last breath, she dropped that knife and looked over at Alison, a glassiness to her eyes.

  Only Alison saw something different in her eyes.

  She saw horror.

  She saw fear.

  She saw emptiness.

  Holly walked over to Alison.

  She fell into her arms.

  But there was no warmth to Holly’s hug.

  There was nothing but detachment.

  Alison held onto her anyway, and she felt herself begin to cry.

  “I’ve got you,” she said as she stroked her torn, broken hair. “I’ve got you.”

  Holly didn’t shed a tear.

  She didn’t say a word.

  All she did was stare off into the distance.

  Empty.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Mike opened his eyes.

  He was inside somewhere. It was light outside. There was brightness to the sky, but not in the way that usually accompanied summer. In that crisp, post-summer way, hinting at an impending autumn, followed by winter.

  He pulled himself up and felt a searing pain in his left side right away. He looked down, saw the stab wound. Only it’d been stitched up. Someone had seen to him.

  He looked around, then. He was in a bedroom. The door was closed. He had no idea where he was, only it clearly used to belong to someone else, photographs on the side, jewellery once worn daily never again to be touched.

  He felt a little dizzy, a little dehydrated, as he got to his unsteady feet.

  But when he stood, the reality of what had happened dawned on him in a big way.

  He’d tried to flee the group that he knew had had a run in with his daughter somewhere down the line.

  He’d found himself in an alleyway. Cornered.

  And at that moment, he’d tried to reach out to them. He’d tried to make them see that it didn’t have to be a lifetime of conflict. That they could find a future in each other. Because nobody was going to get anywhere by fighting one another. That was only going to tear this wild west world apart even more.

  The thing that was going to carry them forward was unity.

  The leader of the group hadn’t been keen on Mike’s idea, though. He’d stabbed him in his side.

  But Mike had knocked him to the ground. He’d watched as the rest of his group powered towards him, bracing himself for the end…

  But they hadn’t attacked him.

  They’d attacked their leader.

  He saw the look in their eyes as they picked him up, dragged him away, punching him and kicking him. And as he’d watched that, he’d fallen to the ground, smile on his face.

  Because he finally believed that goodness really could prevail.

  He walked over to the door of this room. He could hear something outside. Voices. He was a little tense. After all, these people could’ve decided to do away with him, too. They might’ve made him their prisoner.

  But they’d saved him.

  They’d saved his life.

  Surely that had to count for something?

  Surely if they had other plans, they’d have just let him die?

  He reached for the handle of the door. Lowered it.

  And when he opened it, he saw what was outside right away.

  The bridge where the hanging bodies were was right in front of him. The bodies that had previously hung there had been cut away.

  However, there was just one there now.

  A new one.

  The old leader of this group.

  Mike stepped outside, down the steps, and he saw someone walking
towards him. Walking from a small group gathered in the road, cooking over a fire.

  The man walked over to Mike. He was short and stocky with a tight afro and deep brown eyes. He held out a hand. “Jason,” he said. “And I’d like to apologise for the first impressions we might’ve made. Nobody should have to deal with that shit.”

  Mike reluctantly took Jason’s hand. He shook it, tightly. He was still uncertain about trusting this guy. He was reluctant about trusting anyone.

  But again. One of these people had saved his life. The former leader of the group was hanging from a bridge.

  It was something.

  Mike pulled his hand away, still without speaking.

  “Kelvin didn’t run this place like we wanted,” he said. “At first… yeah, he seemed strong. He seemed like the kind of person who could keep a complex operation like this together. But in time… well, we realised he wasn’t what we wanted. But we were already in too deep to turn back. We didn’t know who to trust. Turns out if we’d just trusted ourselves a little, maybe we wouldn’t have got to this stage.”

  Mike nodded. He could hear what Jason was saying. He wasn’t totally on board. He didn’t like that this group had descended into such violent lows. But he didn’t know what they’d been through. He didn’t know the kind of lies they’d been forced into believing.

  So he could only do one thing.

  “We’ve all done things we regret. It’s about how we move forward. That’s what matters now.”

  Jason nodded. “You’re right. We heard you when you said that. After… after Kelvin stabbed you, we saw things clearly, maybe for the first time in a long time.”

  “Whoever stitched me up, I owe them my life.”

  Jason shrugged, laughed a little. “Put it down to my medical experience.”

  Mike took Jason’s hand again. Shook it. Hard. But there was something else bothering him. Something else getting to him. “My daughter,” he said. “Holly. Can you tell me what happened to her, really?”

  Jason opened his mouth like he was thinking carefully about what to say. But in the end, he was blunt, and he was straight. “Holly fought her way out of this place. We chased her down, but we didn’t get far. Wherever she ran… well, I can’t help feeling she got a long, long way from here.”

  Mike swallowed a lump in his throat. He looked out past the town, towards the woods. Wherever Holly was out there, at least she’d got away. Wherever she was in this world… he had to believe she had the strength to survive.

  Because that’s what she was. She was a fighter.

  And she was going to keep on surviving whatever this world threw at her.

  Mike walked past Jason, then. He walked over to the group, who all sat there; all looked up at him.

  “I know a place,” Mike said. “A place where things are starting to rebuild. A place built on unity and trust. They have a medical centre and a load of other places growing, too. But you have to make a choice. You have to decide if that’s the future you want.”

  The group looked at one another, spoke amongst themselves. Then they all turned back to Mike.

  “We’re in,” one of them said. A few others followed, and before Mike knew it, they were all in, all agreed.

  Mike looked at Jason, who nodded.

  He took a deep breath, and he looked back down the street, back over towards the woods where Holly had gone.

  “I’ll find you again someday,” he said, a lump welling up in his throat.

  Then he turned to the group.

  “Then it’s time we got going,” he said. “It’s time we stocked up and got on our way.”

  “To where?” someone said.

  Mike looked at the road ahead, stretching off into the other direction. “To the new world,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Holly stood at the edge of the woods and watched the sun rise.

  It was cool today. That was the first thing she noticed. It’d been a scorcher of a summer. Even when it’d rained, there’d been humidity to the air. The kind of warmth that usually wasn’t so common in this country. And sure, there’d been cooler nights.

  But today was different.

  Today, it was actually cold.

  She heard footsteps crunching through the branches. A few leaves had fallen from the trees. When she looked, she saw Alison walk to her side.

  Alison was in a bad way. Her stomach had been sliced but fortunately the bleeding had stopped. But that wound still needed seeing to. It still needed treating.

  Her face… that wasn’t in such a good way either. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. She was barely recognisable.

  But she was on her feet, and she was by Holly’s side.

  And that counted for more than anything.

  “We should get moving,” Alison said her speech slurry. “Try—try to get some food and water. We—”

  “Alison,” Holly said.

  Alison’s eyes narrowed when Holly spoke, then. She turned away. “We can’t waste any more time. Gina. Arya. They’re out there somewhere—”

  “I killed David because he deserved to die. If I hadn’t, he would’ve done the same to so many others. I know it’s not nice. I know it doesn’t seem, well, right. But I had to kill him. It was just something I had to do.”

  “You didn’t have to do it,” Alison said. “I could’ve—”

  “No,” Holly said. “He was my responsibility. He was my problem to sort out. And now he’s gone, and the problem is fixed.”

  Holly stepped forward when she said those words. But there was something bothering her. An uncertainty. A vision of the past; of something she’d done.

  The people in the church.

  The people she’d gone in under David’s commands and slaughtered.

  One by one.

  They could’ve been good people. Many of them innocent people.

  But she’d done it.

  She’d killed them.

  That was on her.

  She felt the ground swallowing her whole. But then something hit her. Something stopped her.

  She looked up. Looked to the light of the sky above.

  She’d done what she’d done. And yes, she had to own it. She had to live with it. She had to accept the demons that would no doubt terrorise her for the rest of her life as a result.

  But she was strong.

  She was going to live with what she’d done.

  Because Dad was right when he’d told her that she couldn’t just go blindly trusting anyone. This was her lesson.

  It would haunt her and scar her forever, but good. Because she needed that kind of haunting and scarring to know just how bad people were in this world.

  “What now?” Alison asked.

  Holly looked at Alison. She looked at her, and for a moment, she felt something like disappointment. Disappointment that she hadn’t wanted Holly to kill David. Disappointment that she didn’t see the world quite the same way Holly did.

  But she would.

  She would, and it would change her, at some stage.

  Holly turned to the woods ahead. She remembered the words Dad told her; what he’d said to her all that time ago when none of them knew what the next step was.

  And she thought about her dad. She thought about where he was out there. How he was doing.

  And as much as she missed him—as much as she loved him… she felt stronger now than she’d ever felt before.

  She had him to thank for that, she knew.

  But this was a new world. And things were going to be different now.

  Holly took a deep breath. Rubbed the patchy baldness on her head, where her beautiful long hair once rested.

  Then she stepped forward.

  “We make this world our own.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Three months later…

  Mike looked outside, and dread filled his body.

  “What is it?” the voice asked.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. To
ok a deep breath.

  “Snow,” he said.

  The person stepped up beside him. Frowned as they looked outside, too.

  “It’s here,” Mike said, watching the snow fall heavily from above, fear of everything changing all over again building every second. “Winter’s here.”

  Want More from Ryan Casey?

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any reference to real locations is only for atmospheric effect, and in no way truly represents those locations.

  Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Casey

  Cover design by Damonza

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Higher Bank Books