“Shut up, Flynn!” Serj said.
Fire rushed up in Flynn, but he swallowed it back down again. Of all the people left in Home, he trusted just one of them. A deep inhale and he kept his mouth shut.
The sound of Flynn’s and Serj’s footsteps called through the canteen as Flynn followed the leader of Home to the foyer. The collective attention of the room burned into him still, but fuck them. Fuck them all.
When they reached the foyer, Flynn watched Serj walk over to the windows and look out. For a few seconds he stared at the diseased as if looking for faces he recognised.
Flynn stayed put. The diseased were creatures and nothing more. He didn’t need to see familiarity in their twisted expressions.
When he’d finished, Serj turned to Flynn and spoke in a quiet voice. “She chose to go, mate.”
The sounds in the canteen had picked up a little, the white noise of collective chatter showing Flynn they weren’t listening to him and Serj anymore. Still, he kept his voice low. “Hardly a choice though, was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, those lot in there didn’t exactly give her many options. And why didn’t you try to stop her?”
At that moment, Serj looked at the floor and let go of a weary sigh. “I would have stopped it if I could have.”
“It?”
“Her.” A shake of his head as if to clear his mind and Serj said, “Her. I would have stopped her if I could have. It had to happen.”
Flynn’s rage resurfaced. “What the fuck are you talking about? The war had to happen. Vicky choosing to leave didn’t have to happen. That definitely didn’t have to happen.”
When Serj stepped forward, Flynn tensed up and scowled at him.
“I’m sorry,” Serj said as he got closer. “I’m sorry about everything. I want you to know I’m here for you whenever you need me. I promised Vicky I’d look out for you.”
Another look into the sad deep brown eyes of Home’s leader and Flynn’s rage left him. His bottom lip bent out of shape and the lump he’d been pushing down rose up, wedging in his throat like a dry ball of bread. Although he drew a deep breath, the foyer around him still blurred through his tears. His bottom lip bent out of shape. He tried to say the word, but only managed to mouth it. Why?
Serj stepped forward and hugged him.
The man’s embrace broke Flynn and everything rushed out of him. Hot tears burned his eyes and soaked his cheeks. He’d lost his mum and dad, and now Vicky. Sobbing, he shook his head into Serj’s shoulder as he finally got his words out. “Why, Serj? Why?”
But Serj didn’t respond. Instead, Flynn felt him grip tighter as he too shook with his own grief.
Chapter 1
TEN YEARS LATER
They hadn’t moved any quicker than a fast walk, yet the hot June sun burned strong enough to lift sweat on Flynn’s body. He had to squint against the glare as he stared into the distance at their destination, a tight grip on his baton.
The town on the horizon stood as a skeleton of what it used to be, picked clean of anything useful. Only desperation and hope kept them coming back. Maybe it would have the supplies they needed. Maybe they hadn’t checked every inch of it already.
A look at Serj, and Flynn saw him also squinting against the glare of the summer day. “Do you think we’ll find the lead in there?”
Serj shrugged. “Dunno. It gets us out for the day at least, eh? Good to stretch our legs.”
“That depends,” Flynn said.
“On what?”
“On what we meet in the city. The more years that pass, the more feral the human race seems to be getting.”
Although Serj opened his mouth to respond, the words remained in his gaping jaw as he looked behind them.
When Flynn heard the voices too, he also looked over his shoulder.
They didn’t need to have a discussion about it, they’d dealt with threats a thousand times before. As one, they dropped down into the long grass.
The people were still far enough away for Flynn to duck walk over to one of the rusty trucks on the old road without being noticed. The ground felt uneven beneath his feet. What used to be a highway now existed as broken lumps of concrete and asphalt. Nature had won, the grass slowly growing through it and tearing it apart over the years.
Where he’d sweated a little before, Flynn now had to wipe his brow with his sleeve to stop it running into his eyes. He leaned against the body of the old truck and kept a tight grip on his baton. If he pressed against the rusty vehicle too hard, it felt like the thing would turn to dust.
The grass stood at least a metre tall. That seemed to be about the optimum height for it in this area. For years it had remained the same. It made Serj completely invisible from Flynn’s current position. Until the gang passed, they were on their own.
The loud voices of men and women drew closer. The abandoned cars marked out the old road, and despite it not being there anymore, Flynn and Serj always walked down it. A force of habit the gang had also seemed to adopt.
Flynn fought against his panic and drew long and slow breaths. Although his rapid heart begged for him to breathe quicker, his head, close to spinning out, fought against his natural reaction to fear.
As each breath satisfied him less than the previous one, Flynn gave in and breathed faster. Of course he wouldn’t be able to calm himself down. There might be no diseased left in their part of the world, but the humans who remained were worse in a lot of cases. Especially marauding gangs like this lot; at least the diseased were predictable.
A glance up through the long grass and Flynn saw the head of one of the men. He wore what looked like the top half of a human skull as a cap. Dirt streaked his hairy face, gathering in his weathered wrinkles and drawing black lines on his skin. His wild eyes sat wide as he scanned the area. Tension coiled in his body, lifting his shoulders while he clenched his jaw. He looked on the very edge of losing his shit.
When the man pulled something up to his mouth and took a bite, Flynn’s stomach flipped. A human arm, it had been cooked, the outside slightly charred, the split skin revealing lightning streaks of pink flesh beneath. More animal than human, the man chewed as he walked.
The man disappeared from view for a few seconds while he passed on the other side of the rusty truck. The grass swooshed in his wake as he ploughed through it, and the sounds of all of the others’ feet dragged over the lumpy ground.
Flynn held his breath as he shifted along the truck and he peered around to see the man on the other side. He wore a leather vest and had a belt with an old bloodstained machete hanging down from it.
When Flynn looked next to the machete, his stomach lurched. As long as the blade next to it, it hung down, the stump end of it glistening from where it had been hacked off at the elbow. It had turned blue from where it hadn’t been cooked yet. The lower part of an arm, it probably belonged to the same person as the one the man currently chowed down on.
Flynn pulled back out of sight and continued to lean lightly against the truck, his heavy pulse rocking through him. As he listened to the people pass, they said things to one another he couldn’t make out. Toothless mouths and a strong accent made for a garbled and indecipherable slur.
It seemed to last an age, but the gang of people thinned out as they all passed. At a guess, Flynn would have put their number at maybe thirty. Over the years, he’d learned the best way to deal with nomads: get the fuck out of their way and let them through. Because they rarely stopped during the day, if you could avoid being seen for the time they were there, it would be safe to come out again.
What must have been one of the last people in the group suddenly called forward to the others. “Hawk!” she shouted.
Flynn gasped and raised his baton. The woman stood on the other side of the rusty truck.
A grunt came back at her.
“Deer!” she called out.
Not that Flynn could see them, but because the group had stopped, the silence allowed him to
hear the animals running through the meadow next to the old road. His pulse spiked. The woman would have to pass him to get to them. He lifted his baton a little bit higher.
No one in the group spoke, but as one they rushed off the road toward the sounds. The woman on the other side of the truck moved slightly slower.
Flynn clenched his jaw as he listened to her pass through the long grass and he got ready to swing for her. At least he’d take one down before they had to either fight or run from the rest of them, and one less cannibal in a world chock-full of the fuckers wouldn’t be a bad thing.
The swoosh of the woman’s movement stopped. Before Flynn could look up, he heard one of the men call from the meadow beyond. “Swan, what is it?”
When Flynn looked up to his right, he saw the wild, almost animal face of the woman staring down at him.
She had her head tilted to one side as if she listened to him rather than looked at him. Blonde hair clogged with dirt, filthy skin, and very few teeth left in her mouth.
Flynn stared back at the bright and wide blue eyes of the woman.
“Swan!” The call came again.
She looked in the direction of the man’s voice.
“What is it?”
At least that was what Flynn thought he’d said. Hard to tell.
She looked back at Flynn, her eyes narrowing as she snapped her head to the other side.
Chapter 2
Flynn and Swan continued to stare at one another. If she moved for him, he’d crack her skull. She might have animal reflexes from years of living like one, but he’d move quicker if he needed to.
The smell of the long grass ran up Flynn’s nostrils when he pulled in a deep breath. He definitely had the beating of one of them, but an entire pack would overwhelm him and Serj.
In the few years since the nomadic groups had sprung up, they’d earned quite a reputation. Two men from Home, Mark and Alan, had a run-in with them a few years back and never returned. Others from their community found two skeletons picked clean of flesh a few days later. They had scrape marks on the inside of their skulls from where someone had eaten their brains. The nomads moved through the world like a plague, consuming anyone they could get their hands on.
“Swan?” The call came again, the wind tossing the grass around Flynn and the tattered lady.
Despite her twitching movements—her snapping of her head from one side to the other, her slightly pulled-back arms—something in Swan still clung onto her humanity. Flynn saw it in the pinch of her blue eyes. Sadness stared out of them. Trauma from a hard life of atrocities. What had happened to her to land her with a bunch of savages? She stared regret down at Flynn. Empathy.
Flynn tensed in anticipation of yet another call from one of the gang before Swan snapped her head in the direction of the sound. “It’s fine,” she called back at them as an animalistic caw. “Thought I saw something. Nothing. Not a critter like I’d hoped. Nothing.”
She turned her back on Flynn as if he didn’t exist and headed in the direction of the others, picking her way through the long grass with stabbing steps.
Flynn let go of a breath that went on forever. As the air left his tense body, he turned limp, pressing into the rusty shell of the huge truck behind him.
Despite relaxing a little, Flynn still kept a tight grip on his baton. The nomads weren’t known for their generosity; to take her at her word would be foolish.
Chapter 3
About ten minutes passed before Flynn saw Serj appear.
After he’d looked down at Flynn, Serj turned and looked behind him in the direction the nomads had gone. “I think we’re okay now.”
Flynn stood up and was momentarily dazzled by the sun. He too scanned the meadow, the grass moving with the wind. “I think I preferred it when the diseased were here. At least we knew what they’d do.”
“And what’s with all the animal names?” Serj said.
“I’ve got a theory about that.”
“Go on.”
“If they give themselves animal names,” Flynn said, “behave more animalistic, and communicate in a series of short sentences and grunts, then they’re regressing from humanity, right?”
Serj shrugged. “Okay.”
“Well, it must be quite a thing to get your head around. Eating people, I mean. Anything to make it slightly easier …”
“Like pretending you’re not human, distancing yourself from the atrocity of it?”
“Exactly.”
Another shrug and Serj looked at the town on the horizon, the sun high in the sky above it. “This place always reminds me of her, you know.”
Flynn would be lying if he said he didn’t see it coming. He and Serj had been into town several times in the past few years and Vicky always came up. Instead of looking at Home’s leader, he looked at the broken office block that dominated the craggy skyline. What had once been a town now looked like jagged shards pointing at the sky.
“I can’t believe it’s been ten years,” Serj said.
Tension pulled Flynn’s back tight. Did Serj really need to go there with this?
“And I can’t believe it’s been eight years since the last of the diseased died off.”
“You think they’re all gone?” Flynn asked.
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I keep thinking she’ll come back,” Flynn said, the words falling from his mouth before he could stop them. “I know it’s been years, and logic would tell me I’m a fool to have any kind of hope, but I’d give anything to see her again. To ask her why she left.”
Serj continued to stare at the town in front of them. “What do you think she’d make of things now?”
“Of Brian and his lot running Home?”
“Hey!” Serj turned to Flynn. “They don’t run Home.”
“As good as. Were it not for you, they’d take the place over in a heartbeat.”
“That’s why I stop them!” Serj said.
The sound of the wind carried over the vast meadow.
Flynn finally spoke. “Do you think she’ll ever come back?”
“I don’t know, mate.”
The tension that had coiled in Flynn’s back moved to his jaw and he bit down hard. His pulse quickened. He still had a hold of his baton and he squeezed it tighter than ever. “Why did she leave? Did I do something wrong? Was I too moody with her?”
“No!”
Flynn shook his head and heat rose up beneath his cheeks. “How do you know? No matter how many times I run through what happened in my head, I just can’t understand it. I was sixteen, for fuck’s sake.”
Flynn watched several birds flying over the ruined town in the distance. “All she wanted was to mother me, yet she left. What was wrong with her? I was a fucking child. I needed her and she didn’t give a fuck. She didn’t give a fuck about anyone but herself.”
Another few seconds passed where neither of them spoke. Serj broke the silence this time. “It’s like a hot coal, you know?”
“What is?”
“No matter who you throw it at, you’ll still get burned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Anger, Flynn.”
“You think I don’t have a right to be angry?”
“I didn’t say that. But you’ve held it for a long time.”
Fire rushed through Flynn and he raised his voice. “That’s because she left me!”
“Maybe it was more complicated than that.”
Before Flynn could reply, Serj added, “And even if it wasn’t, you need to find a way to stop it burning you.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Forgive her. Whatever reasons she had, we both know how much she loved you. She made a choice. Whether it was a good or a bad one, she loved you nonetheless. And if you can’t do it for her, do it for yourself. You need to find a way to let go of your hurt because it’ll consume you. It’ll mess with every relationship you have and keep on stinging you until you overcome it.”
&nb
sp; Flynn refused to look at Serj, the wind stinging his already sore eyes. He ground his jaw and breathed through his nose.
When Serj nudged Flynn, he squeezed his baton harder.
Serj said, “What do you think she’d say if she could meet Angelica?”
“She knew Angelica,” Flynn said.
“Not when she was your girlfriend.”
Heat spread through Flynn’s cheeks and he didn’t reply.
“Come on,” Serj said, “you’ve been together for two years now. It’s okay to call her your girlfriend. I reckon she’d cry with happiness. You were her baby boy.”
A couple of heavy gulps and Flynn shook his head. When he looked at Serj, he saw the man’s intention and relaxed a little. Another gulp against the burning lump in his throat and he nodded. “I think she’d cry too.”
A broad smile spread across Serj’s face.
“Thank you,” Flynn said.
“For what?”
“I needed someone when Piotr died and Vicky went away. You didn’t have to do it, but you were there for me and I’ll never forget that.”
“Does that mean I have to cry about you and Angelica now?”
Flynn couldn’t suppress his smile when he looked at Serj.
“Come on,” Serj said and nudged Flynn again. “Let’s go and see if we can find some lead in that cursed town.”
Chapter 4
“So, what about you?” Flynn said to Serj with a smile, his voice echoing as they passed beneath the railway bridge leading into the town.
“Huh?” Serj said, his attention fixed firmly in front of them as they walked.
“Come on, you old dog, don’t hold out on me. I’ve seen the way Sally looks at you. You can’t tell me there’s nothing there.”
Unlike a lot of the town, the railway bridge remained standing. It probably wouldn’t hold up against a train going over it anymore, and bricks had fallen from it to the ground, but it hadn’t collapsed yet. Their footsteps were amplified from walking beneath it. Flynn looked at the structure above their heads. Hopefully it wouldn’t fall at that moment.
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