by Ryan Casey
And for a while, Mum had actually believed it.
Until those people in masks set the house alight with everyone inside.
Danny remembered curling up into a ball when the smoke thickened around him. He remembered the heat of the flames getting closer. He remembered wanting to get away from that heat, wanting to escape it.
And then as the flames nicked at his body, covered his face, Danny remembered a weird moment, in that total agony, of acceptance.
He had to be violent if he wanted to survive.
He had to adapt to the conditions around him to make it through.
So he’d climbed through the boiling hot flames, he’d hurried down the stairs, and he’d made his way out of his house.
Burned, yes. Scarred for life, yes.
But alive.
All because he’d adapted.
All because he’d accepted the conditions around him instead of being a slave to them.
He burped, and tasted the charred meat he’d just swallowed. He didn’t think of it as human flesh anymore. Just meat. The kind of meat the body recognised better than any, nonetheless.
Part of that was probably in the cooking method. Or rather, cooking methods, of which Danny had found a few since the fall of the country. When they were fortunate enough, they could cook the meat using a wood burning stove in one of the old houses, but that wasn’t exactly the most common occurrence. They could use fireplaces, too. Just treat the thing as a campfire, use a hanging bowl for stews, things like that. The wood had to be right, of course—hard woods, and especially not sappy woods, which were a particularly large fire hazard. Oak, ash, maple. Anything like that.
Of course, they didn’t always have the luxury of a fireplace or indoors to cook. And as much as there were many methods, Danny’s preferred way of cooking was in a good old fashioned open fire. You use blocks or stones stacked a couple of feet from the ground. You dig a pit down an extra couple of feet, deep enough that your food won’t burn when you put your cooking pot—ideally iron—over it. Then basically just put a grate over it and you’re sorted.
Camping stoves were handy, too. But there was something more traditional about the classic open fire. Something more… wild.
Danny wouldn’t go as far as suggesting he’d adapted to eating other people. Accepting that was a shortcut to admitting you were insane, or something like that.
But he’d viewed his surroundings. He’d seen how trusting people could be when promised something, when offered an olive branch.
And he’d seen how easy it was to catch humans compared to animals.
They kept people. Probably around ten at a time. They fed them. And if the people didn’t eat, then they’d let them starve. Starve just enough until they were desperate for food, then start forcing them to eat again.
If they still weren’t eating, they’d kill them and take whatever flesh was on their bones.
It was brutal, sure. It wasn’t pleasant.
But it was life.
It was survival.
This was the new world.
“Danny?”
Danny snapped out of his trance when he heard the voice. It was Kevin. He’d been out all day looking for a fresh victim. He was walking towards him. And although it was dark, Danny could tell he was panicked.
“What’s up?”
Kevin put his hands on his knees. He was panting. “The woods. There’s—”
“Whoa, whoa. Slow down. What’s up?”
“I had one and I let them slip. I let them frigging slip.”
“Dammit,” Danny said. He allowed himself a moment to let out his frustration, kicking the ground beneath. He couldn’t allow himself too many moments of ill composure, though. He was a leader. He had a standard to set. His group wasn’t a bunch of savages. They were an organised unit which demanded respect, and respect started at the leader down. Danny had to remember to embody that, at all times. “Which way’d he go?”
“That’s the thing,” Kevin said. “I chased him. Chased him far. Couldn’t find him anywhere, and got lost on my way back. But that doesn’t matter. ’Cause—’cause I found something. Something I think you’ll want to know about.”
Danny’s eyes narrowed. He could tell from the shift in Kevin’s tone that he was more excited than he was nervous. “What did you find?”
“A shelter. No, more than a shelter. A whole damned community.”
The sides of Danny’s mouth twitched. “How many people?”
“Thirty, at least. Maybe more. It’s like a prison type place. And a farm. It looks good.”
“A farm,” Danny said. He couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of that absurdity. Because it was going to be a farm. A farm for them. Thirty people, at least.
A farm of people for them to harvest.
“What d’you think?” Kevin asked.
Danny stared deeply into those embers. He remembered the fear he’d felt as a child when the flames approached. Then he remembered that acceptance. The acceptance that made him adapt to his surroundings, accepting the monster he had to become in order to survive. The violence he had to face in order to live.
“It looks like we’ve got our new hunting ground,” Danny said, smiling.
He reached for the spit above the embers.
He pulled a piece of flesh from the arm hanging over it.
He handed it to Kevin. “Eat up. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
Kevin did eat up.
He didn’t glance at the meat like it was human flesh.
He didn’t look at it like it was disgusting.
He stuffed it in his mouth, and some of the juices dribbled down his beard.
And the hardest thing to accept?
The strangest, most awful thing Danny had to face up to?
He couldn’t stop his stomach rumbling at the thought of tucking into more of that delicious, juicy meat…
Chapter Six
I held on to Bouncer’s lead and walked around the outskirts of Heathlock.
The inner outskirts. Obviously.
It was morning. I hadn’t slept well last night. In truth, I didn’t sleep all that well the majority of the time. Mostly I lay awake listening for any sounds that were out of place. I’d listen to make sure my daughter was okay. Sometimes, when I drifted off, I heard my daughter screaming, and my eyes would widen and I’d run towards the door to get to her room, which was next to mine.
But I realised they were always just thoughts. Always just illusions. Torturous illusions making my life even more hell than it already was.
I should probably be more grateful, I know. I probably come across as whiny, or weak. But you just try having your whole world tipped upside down. Try adapting to a world no longer based on capitalist structures or materialist reward systems anymore. You might think you can go a week, two weeks, purging those material desires from your system. But you just try going a third, or a fourth. See how long you survive before your body just can’t resist its primal urges any longer.
And try living in a world where you know you’re not building towards anything, really. Where nothing is special. Where there’s nothing to look forward to other than another day of simply surviving.
Sure, that’s how the human condition was initially born. Survival was the prime purpose. But we weren’t raised in that world. Granted, I’d been at an advantage. I’d learned a few survivalist tricks from my late father. I had one or two up on most of the rest of the population.
But they were only short term methods. They were the kinds of tricks you learned about in prepper books and online manuals.
This was real survival. And real survival was way more mundane, way more frustrating than those guides would have you believe.
I zipped my parka up to my neck. The sun was low, and I could see my breath. Winter was rapidly approaching. A few days had passed since I’d had a go at Olivia for disappearing from her room and it felt like the seasons had turned in that time. The end of another year was app
roaching. It didn’t seem a minute ago since last winter, which was so harsh. As for the end of another year, some people spoke about it like the world was going to reset and fix itself on that day, but I knew damn well that wasn’t going to happen. I think everyone knew, really. All the dreams were just false hopes.
I pictured the people around the country waiting for some kind of sign, only for their dreams to be ripped to shreds and left to rot, just like everything else.
“Slow down, boy.”
I tugged back the lead, which Bouncer pulled against. He was usually good on his lead, but he was on the scent of something today. Speaking of scents, I could smell cow farts in the air. I could hear the cockerels waking each other up.
I didn’t usually get up this early. But when I did, I always appreciated it. A chance to just walk. An opportunity to clear my mind.
And today, I had something else in mind.
Another reason for being out here.
I felt my stomach tense when I saw the gate up ahead. The gate was guarded by two people at all times. It was a manual contraption, which had its positives and negatives. It was made out of corrugated steel and was around sixteen feet high with barbed wire wrapped around the top of it. On the outside, we’d attached a few long sharpened steel spikes to make it harder to access. It opened outwards, so you didn’t want to be standing behind it when someone opened it up.
I bit my lip and thought about what Kesha said about needing to face up to the real world. As much as I didn’t want to accept it—who in the world liked accepting they might be wrong about something?—I knew she was probably right. At least, I knew I didn’t have anything to fear outside these gates. We did daily scans of the immediate perimeter. And in the time we’d been here, we hadn’t added a significant number of people. I had nothing to worry about. I just had to make those first steps.
I reached the gate, Bouncer tugging me further along. “Morning, Sam.”
Sam—short for Samantha—lifted her head from her book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and grunted.
“How’s the book working for you?”
She glanced back down at it, looked at the cover like she’d only just realised what it was, then glared back up at me. “If this guy made friends using these methods, then shit. I’ve really been going about life the wrong way. What you doing here anyway? Aren’t you too chickenshit to go outside?”
“Asking questions about the other person,” I said. “That’s one of Carnegie’s principles. You’re learning.”
Sam frowned. “The hell you talking about?”
“Never mind.” I looked over at the gate. I felt my throat going dry. “Could you open this thing for me?”
Sam snorted. “You serious?”
“I just… hypothetically wondered if you can—”
“I can. But why would I want to do that?”
I looked at Sam and I realised I couldn’t kid her, or myself, any longer. “Look, I’ve had my issues. I’m afraid. Afraid of what the world outside turns me into. Of what it could turn my daughter into. But I at least have to take a step. I see that now. Just… just to get Kesha off my back more than anything.”
Sam narrowed her eyes. She walked over to the handle of the gate, a long piece of rope that pulled backwards from the inside. “Y’know, it isn’t so much the world outside you’ve got to worry about. It’s the people in it.”
“That’s kind of my point.”
Sam tightened her grip around the rope. “But if you’re willing to be like them, when you have to. Well, then you haven’t got a thing to fear.”
She pulled open the gate and I felt the tension hit me harder than I’d prepared for.
I saw the outside. And then I realised by extension of the open gate, that meant I was outside too. I saw trees in the distance. I saw hills. I saw the sunlight illuminating the orange autumn leaves.
I saw it, and I felt myself being drawn backwards. Out of that light. Away from that danger.
“Close the gate,” I said.
“Already? You haven’t even—”
“Just close the gate!”
“Wow. Alright. Just never ask me to open it again.”
As the gate closed, I was still transfixed on the shrinking gap between the outside and the inside.
I was so focused on it that I didn’t feel Bouncer make one final, fateful tug against the lead.
I didn’t have time to stop the lead slipping between my fingers.
“Bouncer!”
And I didn’t have time to stop Bouncer as he ran between the gap in the gate, disappearing outside.
“Wait!”
It was already too late.
The gate slammed shut.
Bouncer was outside.
Bouncer was gone.
Chapter Seven
The gate slammed shut, and Bouncer was gone.
“Bouncer!”
I threw myself at the gate. Slammed into it, face first. I bashed my fists against it, trying eagerly to get out even though I knew it was futile. Beside me, I could hear Sam saying things, telling me to back off and calm down, to get the hell away from the gate.
But I couldn’t.
How could I get away from the gate when I knew Bouncer was out there?
I collapsed in front of the gate and started shaking. I became aware of more people approaching, waking up to see what the commotion was. I tasted vomit creeping up my throat, as the shock of adrenaline made breathing and seeing and everything difficult.
“You need to take a shitting breath,” Sam said, appearing in front of me out of nowhere and grabbing both of my shoulders. “You need to look into my eyes and take a shitting breath.”
I looked into Sam’s eyes. But all I could see was that moment. The moment Bouncer, my trusty black Labrador, slipped out of my hands. Made a break for the opening in the gate, probably after a rabbit or something he’d seen in the distance.
He had no idea what kind of a world it was out there. Dogs didn’t remember things in the same way as humans.
But it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
Because Bouncer was gone.
“Will!”
I felt a slap around my face and realised it was Sam again. I was shaking, gasping for breath as the panic of facing the world outside welled up within.
“Bouncer. He’s—he’s—”
“He won’t’ve gone far,” Sam said.
“He’s outside. He’s outside.”
“And we’ll find him. We’ll get someone out there to look for him immediately.”
“I’ll go.”
Sam’s jaw was agape for a few seconds. “What?”
“He’s my dog. I let him go. So I’ll… I’ll get him back.”
There was an uncomfortable moment of uncertainty. A moment where Sam looked at me like she didn’t think I was capable of carrying out the task I was offering to do.
But I knew I had the final say on this. It was my decision. And as much as it was a decision I hated, it was my decision to make.
And I needed this. I needed to conquer this, for myself more than anything.
“I’ll go,” I said, not quite believing I was saying those words. “Let me out of this place. Now!”
I stood, and Sam nodded, reaching for the rope. Behind, I heard whispers. When I looked, I saw people glancing at one another with uncertainty.
“He’ll come back to my voice,” I said. “No one else’s. He knows me better than anyone.”
I realised then, when I turned around, that the gate was wide open again. And when I looked, that fear got me again. That uncertainty wrapped its arms around me and pulled me back towards the draw of Heathlock.
Maybe I didn’t have to leave.
Maybe Bouncer would just come back.
Maybe…
“No,” I mumbled.
I knew what I had to do.
I knew where I had to go.
I walked past Sam and I put a hand on her shoulder. “I
f I don’t make it back, make sure Kesha looks after Olivia.”
“You will make it—”
“Just make damned sure.”
Sam nodded.
I carried on walking towards the gate.
The closer I got, the heavier my footsteps grew.
Still time to turn back. Still time to change your mind…
No.
I had to do this.
I had to go after Bouncer.
I had to be quick.
I reached the boundary between the gate and the outside.
I felt an almost magnetic pull drawing me back to the comfort zone of Heathlock.
“Screw it,” I said, my teeth chattering when they met. “Screw it.”
I took a deep breath.
Held it.
Then I stepped over the threshold.
That first step wasn’t as dramatic as I’d expected. I didn’t feel any different, even though I hadn’t left this perimeter for the best part of a year.
But now I was outside, I was aware of the sheer vastness of space around me. Just how open the world we lived in was.
“Well go on,” Sam called. “You better hurry if you wanna find him. We’ll be right behind you if you—”
“Bouncer!” I called.
I started walking, then. Walking further into the unknown. Although I’d seen this place from the inside, and walked these steps less than a year ago, it felt so alien to be actually retracing them. It felt like a lot had changed during the time I’d spent away from here.
I walked faster. Then as my walking got to its fastest capacity, I started jogging. Then the jog became a run, and before I knew it I was flying full pelt towards the trees I’d seen Bouncer heading for.
“Bouncer!” I shouted. He had to be in the woods. He loved the woods. Loved rolling around in the leaves, sniffing for small animals.
But he’d come back to my name. He always came back to my name.
When I was close to the trees, I made the mistake of looking back. And it filled me with dread, just to see how far away from Heathlock I really was now. The safety of the inside wasn’t immediately available. And my daughter. My Olivia. I’d left her there. What kind of an example was that setting? What kind of a father…
