by Ryan Casey
“Now come on,” Dad said. “Think it’s about time me and you had a chat. Don’t you?”
THREE
“Are you settling okay?”
Those four words made Chloë feel uneasy as she sat beside her dad staring out at sea. After all, how was she supposed to answer them? Did she answer the way Dad wanted her to? Or did she tell the truth?
What even was the truth anymore?
The sun glistened on the waves as they crashed against the beach down below. Behind, Chloë heard voices. The chatter of the island. A living, happy island. A place where she too was supposed to feel happy; supposed to feel at ease.
A place where she was supposed to be settled, just like Dad said.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t settled. And she wasn’t sure how anyone could be settled. Not after what they’d all seen, what they’d all been through.
“I’m fine,” Chloë said.
“I know when you’re lying to me, Chloë. I can read you like a book. And not a good one.”
He smiled at Chloë. The book thing was always his little joke, even if Chloë didn’t really understand why he found it so funny.
“We’ve been here three months now, Chlo,” Dad said.
“I know.”
“We’ve lived here. We’ve… I’ve pulled my weight. Done what I can to put food on the table. To settle in.”
“It’s just—”
“We have responsibilities now, Chlo. All of us. And that includes you, as much as you like to pretend you’re still that same little leader who brought us here in the first place.”
Chloë thought back to the treacherous journey they’d made to Holyhead. The lives they’d lost along the way. Not always to death. Sometimes just to lack of trust.
She’d stepped up. She’d become a leader. She’d become a person people believe in.
And now she was bottom of the food chain on this island.
Now, she was just a child again.
The problem was, she’d never felt like a child. Not a normal child. Not really.
As much as it scared her to admit it, she’d felt more like herself when she was out in those woods, leading those people.
She’d felt more like herself when she was allowed to breathe.
She’d felt more like herself when she was ripping the monsters’ throats out.
“So the babysitting. That can’t be too much responsibility, can it?”
Chloë lowered her head. Plucked some grass between her fingers. “I don’t like babies.”
“You used to love kids.”
“Did I?”
Dad held his mouth open for a second. Then he tilted it. Shrugged. “Must’ve been… must’ve been Elizabeth who liked them. Sometimes I forget.”
Chloë swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth. Any mention of her sister or her mum was still raw even if it had been nearly a year since she’d lost both of them.
She sometimes woke up in the night. Thought she was all alone all over again.
All alone, walking through the woods.
Before she was strong, in the days just after her mum and Elizabeth went away.
They were the scariest days she’d ever lived.
“I just want to help this place. Not babysit. That’s boring.”
“You are helping lead by babysitting.”
Chloë shook her head. “By changing nappies? Don’t think so.”
“Chloë, the children are the future. Not just the future of this place but the future of the world. And, like it or loathe it, sunshine, but you are still a child. You are a part of that future. So you need to do what you can to… to step back. Into a normal childhood. Be a normal girl again.”
“But I’m not a normal girl,” Chloë mumbled.
“What?”
Chloë shook her head. “Nothing.”
She knew Dad had heard her. He just never knew how to talk to her about her arm, or the scars on her face. More than anything, he didn’t know how to talk to her about her mental scars. The ones that stopped her from being the normal girl he wanted her to be.
The ones that stopped her making friends with anyone. Trusting anyone but him.
“You’re gonna have to make some friends your own age some day,” Dad said, as if reading her mind. “Not like I’m a spring chicken.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well,” Dad said, that ever-present smile on his face. He looked out to sea. “I’m not gonna be around forever. None of us are.”
Chloë felt her chest tighten. She knew Dad was telling the truth. He wouldn’t be around forever. Nobody lived forever.
But just the thought of being alone. No. Not just that. The thought of having to make new friends so she wasn’t alone… it scared her.
Dad was all that mattered to her. It wasn’t going to ever be any other way.
“So are you going to go down to Margery’s and apologise for your lateness, and get to your babysitting duties, or am I going to have to explain to the High Lord that we have a little rebel on our hands?”
Dad grinned when he said this. But Chloë didn’t find it funny. “It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” Dad said. “You don’t need telling that after the things you’ve seen. The things you’ve been through. But hell. We’ve got something here. And I’ll be damned if I don’t take the opportunity to give my daughter what she deserves.”
“Dirty nappies?”
“No. A childhood.”
Chloë looked back out at sea. Sighed. She knew it was pointless arguing with Dad. Knew it all along.
“What if I’m rubbish?”
“What if you’re rubbish at what?”
“Babysitting.”
“Oh, trust me. You will be, knowing what you’re like. But someone’s gotta do it.”
Chloë glared back at Dad and saw he was grinning again.
She got up. Shoulders slumped. Started walking away from her dad. “I hate you for this.”
“I hate you too, my little brat.”
Chloë smiled. Shook her head.
Then she walked away from the cliff edge and towards Margery’s nursery.
“Chloe.”
She stopped. Turned around. Dad was looking at her. He had a more serious look on his face.
“Yeah?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Smiled. “You’ve got to learn to bond, Chloë. Humanity is important, but humans are more important. Those kids, they matter more than anything. I’m not trying to beg you to be a kid again because it’s what humanity wants. I’m trying because I care about you as a human. And that’s what’s most important now.”
She looked up at the top of the hill. Up where the High Lord lived.
“I hate you for this too,” she said.
She spat down onto the grass.
Then she walked away.
She had to do what she had to do.
But she wasn’t making any friends anytime soon.
FOUR
Kyle looked into the High Lord’s eyes and wished he could say exactly what he wanted.
The sun was setting over Bardsey Island. Another day rolled by, wasted, no change at all. And every time Kyle saw that sun set from high above the rest of the island, he felt a twinge of fear inside. A twinge of regret. A sense that perhaps when it rose again, it wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be standing. That somebody would just take it all away. Erase it.
He knew he was probably being paranoid. His sister, Laura, told him he was just being paranoid.
But he couldn’t change the way he felt.
“Is there a reason the pair of you are standing there with grim looks on your faces when you should be out in the town enjoying a meal? Or are you going to say something?”
Kyle glanced to his left. Looked into Laura’s eyes. His sister had always had such pretty eyes. Something people always commented on, like when she was a baby growing up. “Oh, she’s got such pretty eyes.” It became such a routine saying. Such an expected saying.
The reason it was so commonly said?
Not just because Laura had pretty eyes.
But because there wasn’t a hell of a lot else to compliment about Laura.
Laura narrowed those bright eyes of hers. Glared at Kyle. Tilted her head, like she was prompting him to speak.
Kyle sighed. Shook his head. “We’re here because we’re worried.”
“Worried?”
Kyle took in a deep breath. Caught a whiff of Brutus, the High Lord’s trusty Rottweiler. It was always by his side, no matter what. Certainly made the old man seem a lot more intimidating than he really was.
And that was part of the problem. The High Lord had too much respect for a world like this.
“The food supplies. The—the respect towards you from the people down there. Social order.”
“All of it’s in order, the last time I checked, Kyle.”
Kyle bit down on his lip. Held back his true thoughts. Stared the High Lord in his beady old eyes as he sat there at the other side of the room in his tall chair. Shit. He looked like someone out of a fantasy movie. Lord of the-Fucking-Rings. Was this what the zombie apocalypse had turned people into? Had people really snapped in such a relatively short space of time?
Kyle dreaded to think of some of the types he might bump into in a year’s time if so.
If he was still here in a year’s time.
If anyone was still here in a year’s time.
“What we’re saying,” Laura interrupted, her voice harsh and raspy, “is we need to make sure there’s some kind of… of safeguard. In place.”
The High Lord narrowed his eyes. Stroked Brutus’ head. Behind him, Jardah stood. Tall. Skinny. Another being always by the High Lord’s side. His adviser, apparently. Kyle had never liked him. His dad taught him to be suspicious of two men who spent all their time in each other’s company. It wasn’t normal. Wasn’t natural.
“And do you have any suggestions for this… this safeguard you talk about?”
Laura looked at Kyle. Kyle felt the spotlight turn to him again. “We were hoping you’d just consider—”
“With the greatest of respect to the pair of you, these aren’t your problems. They aren’t what you should be concerning yourselves with. You’re scouts and guards. You’re not organisers.”
“And respectfully,” Kyle intervened, doing all he could to keep a lid on his temper, “I’d argue that it’s our very responsibility as loyal servants to you over the last few months.”
“You hit the nail on the head. Loyal servants.”
“So we’re just slaves to you?” Laura cut in.
Kyle raised a hand to stop Laura. He knew what she could be like when she started arguing, hence why he’d wanted to be the one to talk in the damned first place.
“Look,” the High Lord called. “I invite you in here. You drink with me. You can at least be straight with me. I’ve spoken to enough liars in my long life to know when somebody is keeping something from me.”
“And so have I,” Kyle muttered.
“Is this about Alex?”
The name made the flesh on Kyle’s arms stand on end.
“Because I told you how it happened. We were out there, together, back when I left this godforsaken rock. We were surrounded. Alex told us to run. It’s the way he wanted it to happen.”
“So you keep telling us,” Laura said.
Kyle wanted to respond to the High Lord right away. But every time he told him about his brother’s sacrifice that day in May, the recreated memory always sparked complex emotions inside.
They’d only just found their way onto the island, Kyle and Laura. Been reunited with their brother when they got there.
And then he was gone. Just like that. Finished. Over.
Dead in the middle of a rescue mission.
A rescue mission they’d been trying to get to the bottom of ever since.
“I can assure you, that’s not the issue here,” Kyle said, a lump bobbing at his throat.
“Then what is?”
Kyle looked back at Laura. She nodded again, in that way that Kyle understood like nobody else, a language of her own, all in action. “The girl,” Kyle said. “The one you brought back that day.”
Kyle always valued his ability to read people. Something he’d been good at ever since he was a young kid at school. He could always tell when other kids didn’t like him. When they didn’t really want to ask him out to play or invite him to their parties, but felt they had to ’cause their parents felt bad snubbing him.
He’d clung onto that ability to read people right into his adult life. If anything, it’s the only one true thing he’d ever been any good at.
When he saw the High Lord’s eyes narrow, his forehead wrinkle, he knew right away that the stories were true.
He was hiding something.
Someone.
The High Lord’s face returned to a faux state of normality again within seconds. “The girl?”
“Don’t lie to us,” Laura said. “The one you brought back that day. Is it true? What they say about her?”
The High Lord’s face slipped again. Kyle knew he wasn’t expecting this. The news of the girl was supposed to be secret. Absolute secrecy. But word got out. Especially word this big.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Not sure I believe that,” Kyle said.
“You come in here,” the High Lord said, voice suddenly raised. “You start rambling on. Asking about some girl. What on earth do you think you’re playing at?”
“Like we said,” Laura cut in. “Safeguarding this place.”
“And how on earth do you expect to—”
“If the stories are true. And you know exactly what stories I refer to because you were there that day. If they’re true, then it’s something we have to talk about. For the island. For everyone. That’s all I wanted to say.”
Kyle stared into the High Lord’s eyes. The High Lord stared back into his. The longer Kyle stared, the more Brutus started to growl.
And then the High Lord broke Kyle’s stare. Patted Brutus’ head. “It’s okay, boy. Calm down. They’re friends of ours. No enemies here.”
He glanced up at Kyle, and he could see that uncertainty on the High Lord’s face again. A face that was usually so assured. So confident.
“But if you don’t know of the stories I speak, then I apologise for wasting your time.”
Kyle stepped further back. Half-smiled at his sister. She turned and started to walk away.
He looked back at the High Lord. Saw that narrow-eyed stare. That glazed expression. An air of suspicion.
Kyle smiled. “Good night, sir.”
The High Lord didn’t say a word in return. He just nodded.
BRUTUS DIDN’T STOP GROWLING until Kyle and Laura stepped out of the High Lord’s chambers.
“You need to keep an eye on them,” Jardah said.
The High Lord kept on staring out over his balcony as Kyle and Laura descended the hill. He kept waiting for one of them to turn back. To look up at him. To give him a reason to suspect.
But they didn’t. Not once.
He lowered his head. Then he looked at Jardah. Smiled. “They’ll come round. Eventually.”
He started to walk back inside his home. Some people liked to call it his “palace,” but he was far too modest to join them.
Far too modest. He had people call him the High Lord. Who was he kidding?
“And the girl?”
The High Lord stopped. Felt his heart thumping faster.
He thought about adding something else. Thought about saying something reassuring to Jardah. Something poignant.
“They’ll come round to our way of thinking,” he said. “Eventually.”
“And if they don’t?”
Another pause from the High Lord.
Then, “They will.”
He walked back into his room.
The orange sunset grew red as darkness approache
d.
FIVE
Chloë heard the gunshots split the silence and she knew it was happening again.
She opened her eyes. She was staring at something. A caravan site. Inside the caravan site, people. Some of whom she recognised. Riley. Anna.
Mum.
Someone had a gun to her mum’s head.
Pressed it against her skull.
Chloë tried to scream out. Tried to shout. Because she knew what was going to happen. It always played out in the exact same way. But she couldn’t open her mouth.
She could only look down at the gun in her own hands.
The gun she didn’t want to pull the trigger of.
And when the man holding her mum pulled the trigger, when her brains blasted out of her skull, Chloë couldn’t help herself. Because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she was alone, all over again.
So she felt her body turning. Felt it turning without really being in any control of it.
And she pointed it at Anna.
Anna, who’d looked out for her. Who’d been her friend. Who trusted her.
She saw Anna look into her eyes. Saw the shock on her face. Saw that glimmer of understanding.
She pulled the trigger.
She gasped. Lifted her head. Opened her eyes.
She was in the darkness. Lying on her bed. Cold sweat rolled down her body. It was silent outside. Silent, but for the sea crashing against the shore. The constant reminder of where she was, of the world she lived in now.
Chloë leaned forward. Rubbed her stinging eyes. Just a dream. Just another nightmare.
Another nightmare just like the ones she always had.
The day Mum died. The day she shot her old friend, Anna.
The day the world really changed. ’Cause it’d changed before then a bit. The monsters arrived weeks before that day.
But that was the day things really got different.
That was the day she found herself.
She looked over to her left. Squinted. She could see Dad’s chest rising and falling as he lay there in his sleeping bag. He’d told Chloë they’d get a separate tent one day, but that was a while ago and he hadn’t mentioned much of it since. Chloë didn’t mind sleeping in the same tent as her dad. She’d have liked a bit more independence, but at the same time, it comforted her being so close to her dad.
