by Ryan Casey
“You sure about that?”
She looked into my eyes, and I felt like there was something unrevealed about her boyfriend. Something she didn’t want to say, at least not in words. “Trust me,” she said. “He’s well suited for this world.”
I didn’t think of that as a negative. But the way Hannah said it… well, I wondered how she’d intended for it to be taken after all.
“So I’m assuming you guys are heading for the coast?” Derek said, breaking his silence.
I frowned. “What’s at the coast?”
“Over Blackpool way. There should be a military camp. Imagine they’ve got a view to getting people out of here.”
“Wait,” Remy said. “How do you know this?”
“Old radio in the garage,” he said. “I heard it. Must’ve… must’ve been just before the EMP hit.”
“So you’re saying the military knew this was going to happen?”
“I don’t for a second doubt it,” Derek said. “My theory is either solar flare, which turned out being stronger than expected. Fried a few satellites on its way down, things like that. Either that or an EMP attack from one of the the many rich, volatile governments who hate the west. Our government might’ve got intelligence that something bad was about to happen, and set the ball rolling. But by the time that EMP was ready to explode, it was already too late.”
“If it is a weapon,” I said. “Then that means there will be other countries out there willing to come in and take us out of here—or at least send people in to work on getting things back in order. Right?”
Derek lowered his glass. “That’s part of what I’m worried about. The fact we haven’t seen any evidence of outsiders at all… maybe it’s just that they don’t want to send planes or helicopters over a zone where an EMP has just gone off. But maybe it’s because…”
He stopped and wiped his lips.
“Because what?” I asked.
“If a solar flare fried the Earth hard enough… then there’s a chance this isn’t an isolated incident. There’s a good chance it’s the whole damned world that’s affected.”
I took a few seconds to take that in. I’d heard Haz hypothesising about that possibility a while back, but I didn’t for a second believe it could be true.
“What then?” Hannah asked.
“If that’s the case,” Derek said. He paused, just for a few seconds, deep in thought. “Well, we’d better get topped up on wine, ’cause we’re in for a hell of a bumpy ride!”
He poured himself some more wine. The rest of us topped up our glasses. I was starting to feel pretty drunk and beyond caring, and saw quickly how alcoholics let themselves be caught up in booze as a way of self-medicating away the world’s problems.
“To the end of the world!” Derek said, in a way that could easily have been interpreted as nihilistic but instead rang devastatingly true.
I lifted my glass. As did everyone else. “To the end of the world.”
We clicked our glasses.
We’d investigate the military camp that Derek had told us about over at the coast.
But for now, all we could do was drink.
Chapter Thirty
Garry looked through the trees at the house in the darkness and he heard the clinking of glasses and laughter from inside.
He was cold. He was exhausted. By his side, the same two people as before, Mitch and Peter, as well as a couple of others who had joined them since. They were on the same page as each other, though. They understood that this world was theirs for the taking, so that’s exactly what they were going to have to do from now on.
Take.
Take.
Take.
Garry took a deep, shaky breath. His stomach cried out with hunger when he smelled the food. He’d been following the group for a long time, ever since they’d left the suburbs, where he’d killed that man called Jason.
There’d been a few moments where he’d nearly been seen. In fact, he swore at one stage that one of the kids looked right into his eyes.
But he just put a finger over his mouth and descended into the grass.
“So are we gonna just wait here while they’re cooking something delicious or are we actually gonna do something about them?” Mitch asked.
Garry gritted his teeth together. His first proper meal since release from prison. Of course, he’d eaten things over the last few days. Snack bars he’d taken from the hands of people he’d beaten up. He had quite a few decent supplies to get him by, seeing as it didn’t look like the electricity was returning anytime soon. And that was something he was okay with. After all, the return of electricity meant that he would be on a list of escaped convicts. The government would have to try and get everyone back inside, starting with the most dangerous first.
But hell. He didn’t envy their job. Maybe they’d just hit a reset, unable to round everyone up. Maybe they’d offer amnesty to those who didn’t offend again. It’d cause problems. There’d be tension in the air, protests in the streets.
But that was a long way to be thinking ahead. After all, right now, he was living in a world without rules, and he was making the most of it while it stayed this way.
And he longed for a cooked meal.
“We wait,” Garry said.
Mitch sighed. “Wait? We’ve been waiting this whole damned journey. I mean, the guy has a car, for God’s sakes. We can take it right now and get out of here.”
Garry remembered the way the man looked him in the eye. He was the first person who’d looked him in the eye, without fear, for as long as he could remember. Everyone inside feared him. Even the prison officers.
And everyone he’d run into outside had feared him, too. He’d made that so.
But this man…
“Maybe we won’t have to take the car,” Garry said.
He looked at Mitch, and in the darkness, he smiled.
He knew Mitch understood.
He looked back at the house and listened to the chatter of conversation fill the air.
It was so perfect.
So beautiful.
He tightened his grip on the knife.
He couldn’t wait to destroy the serenity.
Chapter Thirty-One
I was in the middle of my best night’s sleep in a long, long time when a sudden bang woke me up.
I jolted upright, gasping for air. The darkness around me was intense and disorienting. I knew right away where I was—in Derek’s place, in one of the spare bedrooms. It was a large old cottage, so he had plenty of room to share with us.
For a moment, as I sat there gasping, the taste of sweat on my lips, I wondered if the bang I’d heard was something in my dreams. After all, it was entirely possible. It wasn’t out of the question that I should be a bit jumpy with everything going on; a little bit on edge.
I sat there for a few seconds in the darkness, listening for any other sounds.
When I didn’t hear a thing, I took a few deep breaths and leaned back onto my pillow. It was damp with my sweat. Whatever I’d been dreaming, it must’ve been intense. Stress dreams were something I just had to put up with. I ground my teeth when I was anxious, and obviously I didn’t have my dentally crafted bite guard with me, which wasn’t just going to be a pain for the people around me, but in the long run was going to cause me serious tooth problems.
That new problem reached the forefront of my mind, threatening to keep me awake.
Then I heard another bang.
This time, I sat right up. My heart pounded. My skin tingled.
I’d heard a bang. No doubt about it.
I couldn’t be sure what it was, only that I swore it was coming from downstairs.
I listened to that bang once again. It sounded like someone was trying to break in. Was I the first to hear the bang? What did I do about it?
I decided the only real course of action was to get out of bed and see for myself.
I walked as steadily as I could across the room, towards the door. The darknes
s was suffocating. I had a little torch with me, though, one that Derek had kept in his many Faraday cages. I didn’t want to use it, though. I wanted to keep darkness on side until I was absolutely certain what was going on here.
I reached the door and pushed it open. It creaked, noisy in the night.
“Derek?” I whispered as I stepped out into the corridor.
Another bang against the front door.
Somewhere downstairs, a growl. Lionel.
I walked to the top of the stairs and I saw the door moving.
Someone was trying to break in here.
No doubt about it. Someone was trying to get in.
I clenched my fists. I took another few steps towards the top of the stairs.
Then I felt a hand on my arm.
I leapt up so much that I almost tripped and fell down the stairs.
“Hey,” a voice said. And after a few seconds, I realised I knew that voice.
“Hannah,” I said, trying my best to hide my embarrassment of my terrified reaction. At least it was dark. “Don’t make me jump like that.”
“Never mind you jumping,” another voice said. It was Derek, this time. And it soon became clear to me that everyone was standing on the landing area, now. Remy. Haz. Sue, and her two children. Even Lionel had come upstairs to join us. “Most important thing here is we get to the safe room.”
“The safe room?” Hannah said.
“The room with all the weapons and supplies,” Derek said as if it was just common knowledge and Hannah was asking a stupid question.
“But those people,” Sue said. “They’re going to get in here.”
“Maybe so,” Derek said, walking to the top of the staircase. “But they aren’t gonna get much further than the front door when we’re armed to the brim. Now come on.”
He started walking down the stairs. We all followed him, one by one. It seemed like he was moving steadily, like he didn’t want to bring attention to himself. I couldn’t help worrying about that door. It sounded like it was going to cave in any second now.
“Shouldn’t we get a move on?” I asked.
“Yes,” Derek said. “We should. So hurry yourselves up, and make sure you’re ready for—”
Derek’s voice was interrupted then.
The door slammed off its hinges.
We stood there at the bottom of the stairs, all of us huddled behind Derek. There was a pause as the light from the stairs peeked into the house.
At the door, five silhouettes.
I swore I could see things—weapons, like knives and wrenches and hammers—in their hands.
“Well, well,” a voice said, and it was a voice I swore I recognised. “We meet again.”
I didn’t register who it was. Not then. It’d be a while before I realised that it was the prisoner I’d come head to head with way back in the suburbs. The one who’d killed Jason.
Right now, all I registered was the fact that they were in the house.
They had the weapons.
They had the advantage.
“Get to the safe room,” Derek muttered.
I frowned. “What?”
“You heard me. There’s no way we’re gonna defend this place if all of us run now. The code’s 6-4-5-2. And yes, the lock’s surge-protected too, in case you’re wondering. So get there. Now.”
I didn’t like the way Derek was talking. “What about you?”
The men started to walk inside the house towards us.
Derek smiled, a look of defeat on his face. “A captain always goes down with his ship.”
“But everything you know and—”
“Get to the safe room. And whatever you do, look damned well after my dog. Go. Now!”
I turned around then, and I ran. Remy ran with me. As did Hannah, Haz, Sue and her kids.
I didn’t look back to see Derek. I just scrambled by the door, inputting the numbers with my shaky hands.
6-4-5-2.
Shit. I’d missed the “2”. A red flash. Needed to be steadier.
I took a breath then I tried again.
6-4-5-2.
This time, a green light flashed. The door clicked.
I went to turn the handle when I looked back at Derek.
He was on his knees. He was facing us now. One of the men had a hammer raised above his head.
Beside me, Lionel whined.
“You can run,” the man behind Derek said. “But you can’t hide.”
I wanted to go over there and help Derek. I wanted to save him.
But I knew from the look on his face that it was already too late.
Two of the people were stepping around him, rushing towards us.
I wasn’t armed yet. None of us were.
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking Derek in the eye. “I’m so sorry.”
Derek looked at me and then at Lionel, a tear rolling down his cheek. “You be a good lad, Lionel. You be a good lad.”
I saw the hammer slamming down towards Derek, and I closed my eyes.
Then I stepped inside the room, slammed the door shut, and sunk back into the darkness once again.
Lionel whined as the hammer came down on Derek a second time.
And after that second thump of the hammer, there was silence.
Chapter Thirty-Two
We backed up against the wall right at the back of the safe room and listened to the men start to bang on the door.
It was so dark in here, redefining what we understood darkness to be. It could be any time of day, but we knew it was still the thick of night because we hadn’t been in here for long. Outside, I kept on hearing that banging on the door, and it flinched me out of my trance and back into the everyday reality.
But in the spaces between the banging, I disappeared back into that haze, which was filled with one thing.
The image.
The image of seeing that man, with the hammer, standing behind Derek.
Seeing Derek on his knees like something out of some kind of snuff film or ultra-gritty television show.
And the sounds…
No. I didn’t want to think about the sounds. I couldn’t let myself. After all, thinking about those sounds just made the whole thing seem all the more real.
“Scott?”
It was Hannah. She was right by my side. Beyond her, I could hear Sue and the children crying. Further along, Lionel, growling and whimpering as he grieved for his fallen companion.
“Scott?” Hannah said. “We need to decide.”
I looked at her. “Decide what?”
“What we’re going to do.”
I understood what she was saying right away. I could fully interpret it. She was suggesting we did something. Fought back. After all, we were in a safe room; a room filled with all kinds of weapons that we could defend ourselves with.
But fighting back with weapons?
Even contemplating using weapons to defend ourselves?
No, worse. To attack?
That wasn’t the sort of thing that we were supposed to run into. It wasn’t the kind of problem that normal upstanding citizens like me and Hannah and everyone here were supposed to have on our plate.
This was the sort of thing that experts dealt with. That people in armies, and in gangs, had on their plate.
Not web design workers. Not sociology students.
“That door’s not gonna hold forever,” Remy said.
“It might,” Haz said.
“Doesn’t matter how strong it is,” Sue said. “We can’t just stay holed up in here forever. I mean, there’s supplies. There’s stuff we could get by on. But not forever.”
I looked across the room at where Sue was. I was both scared and impressed to be hearing what she was saying. It was quite a turn, from a woman who had previously expressed such reluctance, such fear, to get involved and on board with what we were doing, with what we had to do.
But now she was suggesting something even I was uncomfortable with.
“And he huffs,
and he puffs,” a voice called. I heard that chuckling, and I knew whose the voice was. I knew Hannah probably realised who it was, too. I just wasn’t sure whether I wanted to tell Sue whether this was the man who’d killed her husband. I wasn’t sure if it would aid us in any way, not really.
It might just make us all the more reckless.
I stood up then, realising that we only had one choice.
I stepped in front of the rest of the group. I flicked on the little blue torch; one of the ones Derek had kept in his Faraday cage.
I moved it across each and every one of the rest of us, then back up at the wall.
“It’s not something I want to do. It’s something I’m… hell, I’m scared about doing. But Sue’s right. We can’t just stay trapped in here. Not forever.”
As I scanned the torchlight against the walls—the little contraptions Derek had created, and most importantly, the three guns—I knew for a fact that everyone was going to be on the same page as me, now.
“We need to stand together,” I said, walking over to that smaller handgun—the brand of which I wasn’t sure about. I didn’t even know how to load one of these things besides what I’d seen in the movies.
“We need to fight,” I said.
And then Remy stood up and took the second gun.
There was a pause over the third gun. But in the end, it was Hannah who stepped forward and took it.
We stood together, the guns in hand. It didn’t matter so much that we didn’t know how to use them. What mattered more was the fact that we were going to look much stronger, much more assertive, much more powerful with these weapons in hand.
I stood at the door. Hannah and Remy were beside me.
We tumbled back a little when another bash hit the door.
“Open up! Open up now!”
I looked at Remy, then at Hannah.
“Ready?” I asked.
They nodded.
And then Sue switched off the light and turned the handle.
What happened next was a blur.
We opened the door, and immediately, Sue shone the bright light into the eyes of the man standing nearest.
Then in that moment of confusion—which surely even these men didn’t expect to happen—we pointed our guns at them and stepped out towards them.
