by Casey, Ryan
Out of nowhere, Jack heard a blast.
For a moment, he was confused. He thought it must be something to do with Hazel. He had visions of Wayne falling to the ground as Logan’s bullet cracked against his body. And he wasn’t sure he could take another loss. Not again.
But then… the person behind Hazel hadn’t been holding a gun.
In fact, he hadn’t seen any guns at all here.
So what was that sound?
He opened his eyes, and he looked over at Hazel.
She was covered in blood. Deep red trickled down her face.
But her throat wasn’t cut.
She was still on her knees.
The man behind her was on his back.
Jack looked around. Everything felt like it was stretching on in slow motion. He didn’t know what was going on. What was happening.
And judging by the wide-eyed look on Jefe’s face, neither did he.
And then Jack heard another series of blasts, and suddenly everything became clear.
A figure emerged between the shipping containers.
Followed by another figure.
When he saw them there, his eyes widened.
First, he saw Pete.
He was holding a pistol. Firing at every one of Jefe’s people he could see. Bullets pierced skulls. Necks split apart. Jack heard cries, and he heard screams, as this group descended into chaos. The people behind him ran towards Pete, knives in hand. But none of them got very far. All of them fell as bullets tore into them.
But it was the other figure that surprised Jack more.
The other figure that made him wonder whether he was just imagining this all along.
But the closer they got, rifle in hand, limping a little, the more Jack’s certainty grew, and the more he couldn’t deny what he was looking at.
Who he was looking at.
Susan.
She stepped into the compound behind Pete. She was just as ruthless with her gunfire, too. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t hold back.
She just kept on firing, one shot after the other.
Jack sat on his knees as these two people—two people he was certain he’d never see again—surged into the shipyard. He knew he couldn’t just stay here like this. He knew he couldn’t just stay on his knees.
It was time to get up.
It was time to fight.
He looked behind him at the man standing there, frozen.
And then he jumped up and punched him in the throat.
He knocked him to the ground. And right on cue, Jack saw the rest of the people on their knees fighting, too. Because as much as they were in this together, they had to fight for themselves now. This was their time to step up. This was their time to shine.
And then they had to get the hell out of this shipyard.
He held his hands around the throat of the guy on the ground. The guy stared back up at him, big blue eyes wide and bloodshot. He swung his knife at Jack a few times as bullets rained down on Jefe’s people. Jack didn’t know where Jefe was right now. He didn’t even know if he was still alive or not. He’d have to focus on taking him out when the time was right.
But then he felt a stabbing sensation to his left.
He winced. Looked down.
The man’s knife had pierced the surface of his skin.
He pulled back a fist and cracked him across the face.
The man’s hand went limp.
He dropped the knife.
And then Jack grabbed it and lifted it.
He saw the momentary fear in that man’s eyes. Saw the regret, as he held that knife there.
Jack took a breath through his bloodied nose. Then he tore the tape away from his mouth, and he smiled.
“Looks like I’m the one smiling now,” he said.
And then he rammed the blade down into his throat.
He looked up. No sign of Jefe. Plenty of his people trying to run, trying to flee. Bodies on the ground. Prisoners with tape around their mouths all standing up, all fighting. Some of them fallen. But some of them still going.
He looked around for Hazel and Candice. Hazel was on her feet, taking cover over by one of the shipping containers.
And Candice…
The hairs on his arms stood on end.
Candice was on the ground.
A woman crouched over her.
Knife to the back of her head.
Jack stood up and raced over towards her.
And then he felt something hit his side.
He fell to the ground. Rolled around onto his back.
The big brute who’d beaten him up before sat on his chest. He could hardly breathe.
But he wasn’t letting this bastard beat him again.
He swung his knife at the man.
But he just grabbed Jack’s wrist like he was swatting away an annoying fly.
He tightened his grip around his wrist.
So tight that Jack felt his hand might burst.
Struggling more and more to breathe with this immense weight crushing down against him.
And then the knife dropped from his grip.
The big man looked down at Jack and smiled.
“Think I’d use a knife on you? That’s way too boring.”
And then he lifted his hands and pressed his thumbs against Jack’s eyes.
Jack kicked out. He struggled. He tried to break free.
But that pressure just kept on building.
His eyeballs felt like they were going to burst.
Flashing lights filled his vision.
He kicked out, punched, tried everything he could.
But that pressure just grew stronger.
He saw Hazel in his head, her face flashing before him. He saw her more clearly than he’d ever seen anyone before.
And he knew he wasn’t going to see anyone again.
He gasped for breath and cried out as the pressure in his skull reached bursting point…
Chapter Twenty
Susan raced through the compound as quickly as her wounded body would allow, and she didn’t stop pulling that trigger.
She had no idea how much ammo she had left. She had no idea whether anyone here had any guns. She had no idea what these people’s stories were. She had no idea where they’d come from, or how they’d ended up here.
Only that she had to keep on pulling that trigger. Because she didn’t give a damn who they were. She didn’t give a damn how they’d ended up how they’d ended up.
Only that they paid for what they’d done.
She saw people running away. People fleeing, fear in their eyes. She saw Jack getting to his feet and disappearing out of sight. She saw Candice, and she saw Hazel. All of them were okay.
But she’d seen no sign of Emma. She didn’t even know if Emma was here, or if she’d ended up breaking away. She couldn’t know. Nobody could.
She could only hope everyone was here.
Because they were leaving here. All of them were leaving here.
She went to pull the trigger on another young man when she felt a pain in the right side of her torso.
It felt like she was being kicked in the stomach. She winced. Collapsed forward, gasping for air. Her chest was tight. Her knees were weak. She could barely move.
She saw colours filling her vision, covering her eyesight. She looked up, tried to see, but she couldn’t. Urgency kicked in. She was vulnerable. Weak. Someone could take her down at any moment.
She needed help.
And then she saw someone appear right up ahead.
She lifted her rifle with her shaky hands.
And then her vision’s clarity returned, and she saw someone standing ahead of her.
It was a man. A young man. Barely out of his teens. A little bit of fluffy facial hair on his chin. Spotty forehead.
He stood opposite Susan, knife in hand.
And then he did something she didn’t expect.
He got down to his knees.
“Please,” he said. “
I—I didn’t want to end up here. I just—I fell into this. Seemed like the safest place. My only option. Let me go. Spare me. I promise I’ll cause no harm. Please.”
Susan stood there, and her stomach sank. She held her rifle, pointed it at this guy’s head. Because as much as she didn’t want to let any emotions drift in and stop her from doing what she truly knew she had to do… she saw herself in this guy.
Because she’d found herself caught up in a situation like he had before.
She’d found herself trapped in the clutches of a group who seemed like they had her best interests at heart, when in fact, the very opposite was true.
She knew what it was like to be caught between what was right and what kept her alive.
She took a deep breath and kept that rifle pointed as this guy cried before her.
“Please. You don’t have to do this. Please.”
Susan looked around. She saw more people disappearing around corners. She heard the gunfire from Pete and Trent. And she saw more of the prisoners of this place standing their ground, fighting.
She looked around at this man, and she wanted to give him a chance. She wanted to give him an opportunity to prove himself to her. To prove he could be trusted. To prove he could change.
But then she saw something.
His right hand.
The glimmer of a knife.
“You don’t have to do this. You can let me go. Pl—”
She closed her eyes, and she pulled the trigger.
She kept her eyes closed a few seconds. Her head spun. Her body felt weak. She knew this was right because these people deserved it… but then she pictured herself in the eyes of a group standing against Matthew’s, too. She would’ve seemed like one of them. She was one of them, for a time.
And then there was Trent, too. He used to be a part of Martin’s group.
And then Pete. He’d betrayed their people.
Did everyone deserve this kind of punishment?
She opened her eyes.
The lad lay on the ground.
Bullet in his head.
Eyes wide and vacant.
Susan looked down to the knife in his hand, and her body froze.
He wasn’t holding a knife.
He was holding a necklace.
Susan crouched towards it. Lifted it.
And her stomach turned.
Inside a heart-shaped locket, Susan saw a photograph. A photograph of him and a girl on holiday somewhere. He looked so different. So smiley. So well-built.
So happy.
She turned to her right and threw up all over the ground. Throwing up hurt her belly. She looked down at it when she’d coughed up all that rancid vomit, her throat burning.
Her bandages. They were bleeding.
She covered her mouth, nausea picking up even more. She went to stand, but her knees were weak. And it was only then that she started to wonder if she’d made the wrong call. Maybe she shouldn’t have come here. Maybe she should’ve headed back to that place with the helicopters.
Maybe she should’ve left this to Pete and Trent.
But then she took a sharp breath in.
You’re strong enough to handle this. You’ve got this.
She stood up and turned around.
And her stomach sank.
More people. Jefe’s people.
She lifted her rifle. Went to fire.
Nothing fired from the rifle.
She was out of ammo.
She lowered it. The four people standing opposite looked right at her. Smiled. Like they knew exactly what her problem was.
She took a deep breath. Heart racing. Body wracked with pain.
She kept her eyes on these people at all times.
Held her fists tight together.
She had to run.
But she was like a cat getting ready to creep away from a dog.
She took a few more deep breaths as this stand-off stretched on.
You’ve got this. You can do this. You’re strong. Stronger than you’d ever believe.
And then she dropped the empty rifle, and she ran.
She didn’t get far.
She felt herself slam against somebody.
Tumbled to the ground.
And as she lay there, figures standing over her, body wracked with pain, she knew her time was up.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack felt the brute’s thumbs digging into his skull, and there was nothing he could do but wait for his head to burst.
And then he heard a crack, and the man’s hands loosened their grip.
A sudden burst of flashing light filled his visual field. For a moment, as he blinked and shook his head, he wondered if this was what it felt like to have his eyes gouged out. Was this blindness he was experiencing?
But then he saw something above him as the brute’s heavy weight pressed down on his body, suffocating him.
Something he hoped wasn’t just a vision.
Someone was standing over the brute. Pistol in hand.
The more Jack blinked, the more he realised who it was.
“Pete,” he said.
Pete pushed the brute out of the way, with something of a struggle. And then he held out a hand to Jack, his pistol in the other hand.
Jack ignored his hand and dragged himself to his feet, relieved to finally be able to breathe again. He appreciated Pete helping him and his people, but he wasn’t ready to let him help him to his feet just yet.
“What the hell happened to you?” Jack asked.
Pete shook his head. He kept on scanning the area they were in like he expected someone to walk out at any moment. But as far as Jack could see, the bulk of Jefe’s people were either on the ground or gone entirely.
But he was right to be cautious.
“I escaped them,” Pete said. “Fought free of ’em. Ran into Susan and Trent on the road. And Villain.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “Villain? Where is he?”
“He’s okay,” Pete said. “We tied him up just outside the compound. He’ll be okay there. Out of the way of the conflict. He’s okay, mate. Don’t worry.”
It was the way he said “mate” that made Jack really feel uncomfortable. Because that’s how they used to speak to one another. They used to say it in a forced way, taking the piss out of how much people who weren’t really mates said it to one another to prove a point.
Jack thought about calling Pete out on it. He thought about telling him not to call him that.
But hell. The guy had saved his life, and he’d saved his dog’s life.
“Where’s the others?”
“Cleaning this place up,” Pete said. “Gathering as many survivors as they can. But we’ve really got to get away from this place, Jack. We’ve really got to leave. Before it’s too late.”
Jack tensed his fists. He looked around. “Not until I find Hazel. Not until…”
Right on cue, he saw her.
She emerged around the corner. Beaten. Bloodied. Lips all swollen from the tape that’d been wrapped around her mouth. Candice by her side.
She was here.
Both of them were here.
They rushed over to Jack and Pete. And for a moment, Jack felt awkward, because it looked like Hazel was just as stunned as he was to see Pete here. And in a way, he wondered if she might go to Pete first, even though he knew he was bang out of order for even thinking like that right now.
But she stopped before them both. She looked at them both. And she smiled at them both.
“It’s good to see you. Both of you.”
The four of them stood there then in the middle of this shipyard. It felt surreal. The two most significant people of his life, in a way. Both for very different reasons.
But both of them here with him.
“We need to get out of here,” Pete said.
Jack shook his head. “The others. We can’t leave them behind.”
“Trent and Susan are seeing that they’re okay.”
Ja
ck sighed. “I’m not leaving until I know everyone’s okay. And until I know… until I know Jefe’s out of the picture.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Now’s not the time to get caught up in who’s alive and who’s not alive, Jack. We’ve got to get out of this place.”
“He did this to us. He tried to destroy all of us. We can’t just sit back. We can’t just let him win.”
“But he hasn’t won,” Pete said. “Because we’re still standing. All of us are still standing. Look.”
Jack turned around. And in the distance, in the fading light of day, he saw something.
Trent. Emma. And others, too. All of them in the distance. All of them together.
“We’ve got to follow them,” Pete said. “We can get out of here. This is our chance. But we’ve got to go now.”
Jack watched his people in the distance. And as much as he felt like he needed to take Jefe out of the equation—or at least needed to know what had happened to him… he saw what Pete was saying.
For the first time in a long time, he actually saw what Pete was saying.
He looked around at Hazel and Candice.
Then, he looked at Pete.
“I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. But I appreciate this. Really, I do.”
Pete looked into his eyes, and he smiled. “That’s all I wanted in life, really. Jack Drake’s appreciation.”
Jack smiled back at him. Shook his head at the absurdity of this whole situation.
And then he turned around and looked to the road ahead.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s…”
He stopped.
Because in the distance, he saw movement.
Around the side of a shipping container on the right, more figures appeared.
A handful of them.
“Oh, shit,” Hazel said.
Jefe.
Jefe and his people.
Blocking their route.
And they had Susan.
Knife to her throat.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Emma stared up the side of the muddy pit as Trent stood at its edge.
She was surprised to see Trent. She hadn’t seen him since she’d reached this place. Wasn’t even sure if he was still alive. If anyone she hadn’t seen was still alive.
But he was here now, and that was what counted.
She had to make the most of it.
