by Ryan Casey
Mike nodded. He knew what Nina was saying. It was still just weird to hear people outside his immediate circle talking about the state of affairs in such a nihilistic way. His people, they didn’t speak about the present state of affairs much. They just tried to do their best in their current situation.
But in a way, it was good to talk about things like this. It was good to address where things were at.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Mike said. “Like, in the future? Where do you think everything’s going?”
Nina puffed out her lips and shrugged. “People will segregate more and more into smaller communities. Eventually, over time, those communities will learn to work together. Humanity will rebuild itself, slowly but surely. But one thing’s for sure. Things won’t go back to the way they were. You can’t put the cat back in the box now it’s out.”
“That’s not the most optimistic view.”
“I dunno,” Nina said. “It could be worse. I mean, the communities could descend into war. Humanity could totally destroy itself. That’s another possibility.”
“Touché.”
Nina stopped, took a few deep breaths. They’d been on their feet quite some time.
And Mike found himself intrigued once again. Intrigued by how she’d ended up where she had. About her life before this chaos. “This extraction point. When they dropped you off in the middle of nowhere. How did you react?”
Nina looked up. Her eyes slightly unfocused as if she was recalling something dark, something repressed. “Well, you can figure that out for yourself. Safe to say I was pretty pissed. I felt betrayed. But more than anything, I felt embarrassed. The warning signs were there. I should’ve seen them. But I let that place lure me in. I let myself get too invested in it. Too caught up in its web. And when it spat me back out again… well, it almost finished me off for good.”
“I can only imagine,” Mike said.
“You really can’t. The hope we felt. The way we all went from banding together to hopeless and at conflict at the click of a finger. There were children. There were paranoid mothers. Mothers who were tearing themselves apart because they’d been torn away from their kids. A lot of them, they… they didn’t make it long.”
Mike could only imagine the horror. It must’ve been traumatic. Painful. The kind of thing you’d never recover from, not easily.
“And then I found Vincent’s place,” Nina said. “And everything changed.”
Mike nodded. He had his suspicions about Vincent, but he was beginning to realise that his motives didn’t seem nefarious—at least not to the naked eye.
He felt like he was getting to know Nina. Getting to understand where she was coming from. What drove her.
“Whatever happens,” Mike said. “I’ll make sure your friend gets out of that extraction point. I’ll make sure she gets away from it. And I’ll make sure you see her again.”
Nina half-smiled and sighed. “Don’t make promises you’re not sure you can keep.”
Mike looked at her. Looked at her sparkling eyes as they stood there in the middle of this derelict road.
And then he saw something.
Movement.
Right behind them.
“Get down,” Mike said.
Nina frowned. “What—”
“Just get down.”
They crouched.
Crouched behind a car.
Because Mike had seen them.
He’d seen them clearly.
The rifles they were holding.
The menacing looks on their faces.
And the way they were peering right in his and Nina’s direction…
Chapter Twenty
“So what do you think we should do?”
Alison stood in Gina’s room. It was warm outside, but she was shaking. Shaking from the fact that Kelsie was gone. And shaking from her chat with Richard.
Shaking from the fact that she was convinced there was something being covered up here.
Gina’s eyes were wide. She looked just as concerned as Alison no doubt looked. All of this, it just seemed surreal. They’d been so close to hope. So close to actually being able to believe in something.
And after everything—after how far they’d come, after starting to believe that perhaps this place didn’t have dark motives after all—she was sure that something was happening here. Mostly because of Kelsie.
“I don’t see any other way about it,” Alison said. “We need—we need to leave this place. We need to find Kelsie. We need to find out what happened to her for ourselves.”
But there was something to Gina’s face. A different look to the one Alison was expecting. A different expression.
“Gina?” Alison said.
“How do we know they aren’t just, like, concerned about Kelsie?”
Alison frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You say Richard insists they’re out there looking for Kelsie. And you say this… Aiden. You say he came back. That he looked… worried. And that he said Kelsie was gone. What if they’re just worried that Kelsie is out there? Or that they’re worried about something they found? What if they’re waiting until they’re certain about it before they tell us?”
Alison tasted sourness in her mouth. Because it sounded to her like Gina was being lulled into the comforts of this place already. Only a few days, and she was starting to buy its lies. That wasn’t like her. It wasn’t characteristic. At least not of her new self.
“Maybe so,” Alison said, attempting to bargain. “Maybe they really do just have the best interests of us and everyone at heart. But I don’t like this, Gina. I want them to be straight with us. We deserve that much. Right?”
Gina opened her mouth like she was going to argue.
Then she nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah we do.”
Alison turned around, then. She looked out through the blinds and to the sunny grounds of the extraction point. She saw the smiles on the people’s faces. People working. People getting on with their new lives.
And she wanted to believe.
She wanted so badly to believe.
Then she looked up at Richard’s portacabin, and she took a deep breath.
“We go up there,” she said. “We find out what he’s hiding. Whether it’s good or whether it’s bad. And we get the answers we deserve.”
They stepped out, then. Together. And Alison found herself looking over towards the dog pen. Arya was in there, barking away. She had her paws up against the fences. Clearly struggling to get along with the other dogs. Clearly sensing something wasn’t quite right either, underneath the apparent harmony.
She kept on walking, Gina by her side. Closing in on the portacabin. Getting closer and closer.
And the more steps she made, the more Alison’s nerves and tension built up and grew.
Because she felt suffocated by this place.
She felt trapped by this place.
She wanted to be away from this place.
She wanted to be outside.
Away.
Far away.
She reached Richard’s portacabin, and the door opened.
Richard was standing there. He didn’t look surprised to see her. He didn’t look surprised to see either of them. Which threw Alison, in a way.
She was looking for a sign on his face that he was caught unawares. A sign not to believe in him. Not to trust him.
But instead, he just crossed his fingers, and he sighed. “Alison. Gina. I… I was just coming to see you—”
“Kelsie,” Alison said. “I don’t want any excuses. I don’t want any bullshit. I want to know where she is. You’re going to tell me. Tell me what you were talking about. Tell me what’s happened to her.”
Richard didn’t even look like he was attempting to cover up his emotions.
He just looked down at the ground, and he sighed.
And then he said the words that changed everything.
“I’m sorry, ladies.”
“But Kelsie is gone.”
Alison frowned. An emptiness built up inside her. “Gone? What do you mean she’s…”
That’s when she saw it.
The look in his eyes.
The look that told her everything she needed to know about what was coming next.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly. I was waiting for the right opportunity to tell you. But Kelsie isn’t… she isn’t with us anymore. She isn’t with anyone anymore. Kelsie’s gone.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kelsie saw Aiden and Dom heading in her direction, and she wasn’t sure if she had the energy left inside her to get away.
She was scorching hot now but shivering at the same time. Every single muscle in her body felt like it’d taken on a life of its own. The trees around her felt too bare, not thick enough. Because she needed to get away from the two guards. She needed to hide.
Because one thing was for sure.
She worried that if they caught her… they’d kill her.
If they caught her, they’d make sure they finished her off for what they must’ve realised she’d witnessed.
She dragged herself across the grass. Her stomach ached so badly she could barely move. She looked from tree to tree, tried to see a space where she could hide. One thick enough that she could just drag herself behind and hope for the best.
But she couldn’t see any that were thick enough.
She couldn’t see anywhere that would hide her enough.
She looked over her shoulder. Aiden and Dom were still heading in her direction. They hadn’t seen her, as far as she could tell. They hadn’t noticed her—yet.
But it was very much a case of when rather than if.
Because she wasn’t going to be able to lay low like this for very long.
She reached the side of a tree, and she saw an opening in the ground. A slight opening where the tree had been torn from its roots a little. She looked at it, then looked back at Aiden, back at Dom.
It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t perfect.
But she couldn’t run right now.
She didn’t have the energy in her to run. She didn’t have the strength in her to run.
So she clambered her way into that opening where the tree had once been firmly rooted and curled herself up into a ball.
She closed her eyes. Held her breath. She could feel things scuttling around her down here. Woodlice, spiders, cobwebs all caught up in her hair and around her face.
And as she curled up there, teeth chattering, she wanted to do something. She wanted to be strong. To go out there when Aiden and Dom weren’t looking and take them on. Take them down, one by one.
But she couldn’t.
She just couldn’t.
Even if she was at her strongest… she still didn’t trust herself to be able to take down two men. And two strong men at that.
She kept as still as she could as the footsteps got closer. Her heart pounded. Her stomach was in agony. She kept on having to take deep breaths to stop herself from heaving. But it wasn’t easy. Especially not with the nerves. Especially not with the fear.
She tried to tell herself that they were just going to walk past this opening. They weren’t going to find her. After all, they had no idea where exactly she was out here. For all they knew, she could be miles away. Miles to the west. Miles to the east.
Just typical that they appeared to have tracked her this far.
Just typical that she’d fallen dangerously ill just when she needed to be at her strongest and sharpest.
Maybe if she hadn’t fallen asleep, things would’ve been different. Maybe if she hadn’t been this ill… things would’ve been different.
She opened her eyes, then. Because she hadn’t heard the footsteps. Not for a while. And she was starting to wonder. Starting to hope. What if they’d walked on? What if they’d kept on walking, and she’d just missed them?
She lifted her head, just a little.
Then she froze.
The two men were inches away. Walking right past this opening in the ground.
Kelsie kept still. She couldn’t move back to the position she’d been in. Any movement was dangerous. Totally risky.
So she just had to stay still.
She just had to hold her breath.
She just had to wait.
She could hear these men muttering things to one another. Dom. He looked like he was smiling. Like he was enjoying this hunt.
But the other man, Aiden… he looked more serious. More focused.
And that scared Kelsie.
Because she’d looked into his eyes back at the camp already, and she knew he would do everything he could to cover things up and make sure the secrets of the extraction point stayed secret.
They kept on walking when Aiden stopped suddenly.
He looked around. Looked to his right. Then to his left. And then he looked over his shoulder.
And Kelsie’s body went totally numb.
For a moment, she thought she saw him look at her. Look right at her. Must’ve been a trick of the light.
Because almost immediately after, he turned around and kept walking.
She kept still. Heart beating so fast she was surprised they couldn’t feel it from here. She watched as they walked between the trees. Listened as their footsteps got quieter; as their voices got more muffled.
And then a sudden bout of sickness took a hold of her stomach, and she found herself vomiting uncontrollably.
She couldn’t think of anything else as she hurled up. The pain was so intense, and the sick was so acidic and burning. Her eyes stung, watering like mad.
But she knew at the back of her mind that this meant danger. This meant trouble.
She just had to hope she’d been quiet.
She just had to hope they hadn’t heard her.
She wiped her greasy hair from her eyes.
Then she lifted her head.
When she looked out of the opening she was hiding in, her stomach sank.
Dom was standing at the outside of the opening.
Aiden was by his side.
Both of them had rifles in their hands.
Pointed at Kelsie.
“Out,” Dom said. “Right this second. And don’t you dare try anything stupid.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mike ducked behind the cars in the middle of the abandoned, derelict town, convinced that the people in the distance had seen him.
He held his breath. Heart racing as the sun beamed down. Nina was by his side. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. Even though he was sure these people had seen him. Even though he was certain they were onto him.
And they would be here. They would be upon him. They would close in.
And there was nothing he could do.
At least he thought not.
Not until he looked at Nina and saw the knife in her hand.
She was perched low, but not crouching completely. She looked focused. Focused on these people. Focused and ready to do whatever she had to do.
And Mike found himself torn. Because on the one hand, he wanted to fight. But on the other, he found himself valuing his own survival more than anything. He wanted to survive for Kelsie. For his people. He wanted to survive so they knew he was alive but also, so he could tell them the truth. So he could let them in on the reality of the place he was certain they were heading towards. The place they were destined to end up at, if only they kept walking.
He should’ve known not to trust Calvin. Even if Calvin didn’t know the truth about that place, he should’ve known better than to believe in a path to salvation that he was so keenly promising.
He heard the footsteps getting closer. Heard them pounding against the road. And he wanted to turn and run. He wanted to survive. That was his priority. That was his ultimate goal.
“Nina,” he whispered. “We need to get away from here.”
But Nina seemed focuse
d. Nina seemed certain about what she wanted to do. She was looking in the direction of these people heading their way. Staring right towards them.
“I have to stay alive,” Mike said. “We—we both do. We can’t take any risks. Not risks that could get us killed.”
She looked at Mike, then. Looked right into his eyes, lowered the knife. Like she was waking up to what he was saying. Like she was seeing the truth in his words.
She took a deep breath, and she nodded.
“You’re right,” she said. “We need to…”
The footsteps were just a few metres away.
Mike pulled himself underneath a car in front of him. Nina went to follow.
But when she went to go under the car, Mike noticed something.
The people. They’d stopped.
Right by the front of this car.
He lay flat, Nina by his side. Mike noticed Nina had the knife in her hand again. She could stretch out. She could stab one of these people in their leg.
But they had to keep it cool.
They had to lay low.
Mike held his breath and waited. Convinced these two people had seen them earlier. Armed people nonetheless.
And then they looked under the front of the car two cars to their right.
Mike’s heart started to race even more. They were checking the cars methodically. Which meant they were going to look under this car soon. They were going to get to this car.
He saw them rise from that first car. Saw them move to the next car, both of them, then look underneath.
And Mike knew they had to time this right.
He knew they had to move.
He knew they had to shift.
He waited until they’d lifted their heads. Waited until the last possible moment to shift. Because if he went too soon, they’d see him between the cars.
