by Ryan Casey
As he dragged his frail old body to the ground.
He kept on taking them as he stamped on the High Lord’s head.
As he kicked his skull into the floor.
Kicked the few real teeth he had left into the back of his throat.
He smashed the High Lord’s nose with his heel. He booted his eyes until they covered with blood. He kicked his throat, feeling the tiles beneath his neck with the tip of his toe.
He kept on kicking, stamping, jumping down again and again until—
Kyle slipped over. Fell back onto the floor.
He felt blood seep between his fingers. Felt something sticking to the bottom of his shoe.
When he looked down, he saw the front of the High Lord’s skull had caved in.
His face was unrecognisable.
He adjusted his collar and stood back up. Wiped the mashed brains and fragments of skull onto the High Lord’s naked chest.
And then he walked over towards the door, where his guards looked on, mouths wide.
“We find that girl,” Kyle said. “We find Kesha.”
“What about the other girl?”
Kyle narrowed his eyes at Kevin. “The other girl?”
Kevin pointed back into the High Lord’s chamber. “The shoe. Chloë.”
Kyle nodded. He looked out of the chambers. Looked down the island, where wooden crosses now decorated the slope. Looked at the sea bashing against the rocks.
“Kill her,” he said.
TWENTY-SIX
By the time darkness arrived again, Chloë was growing more and more uneasy about Kesha’s crying.
The woods was just the same as it was every night. Pitch black. Branches stretched across above her, in front of her, like hands reaching out, trying to take Kesha away from her. It was silent, too. Silent except for Kesha. Which made Chloë even more uneasy, because she knew that with Kesha making a racket, she was only drawing more attention towards their position.
And after what she’d seen—an Orion attack—she didn’t want to attract anyone anywhere near her. Any thing.
Chloë’s feet were sore. They were both bare again, having lost her second shoe earlier. She could feel them bleeding at the bottom. She remembered that’s what happened last time when she last got used to walking barefoot. But eventually, after the pain and agony of the blisters, she knew her feet would get solid on the bottom again. She knew that all the pain would be worth it in the end.
Worth it because she’d be wild again.
Kesha’s crying was giving her a headache. Well, not just Kesha’s crying. She was hungry, too. Hungry and thirsty. She’d found a few scraps of water back amongst the group after the Orion attack, but there wasn’t enough. Not enough between them.
She knew she had to feed Kesha. To bathe her. She knew she had a duty to do just that.
But she was afraid.
She kept on wandering through the woods. She was so tired that she didn’t even care about the movement she swore she saw to her left, to her right, straight up ahead. It didn’t matter. Didn’t mean anything. Maybe in a way, it’d be better if someone came and took Kesha. At least then she’d have something less to worry about. Something less to…
She stopped. Stopped, when she heard something.
It wasn’t the sound of a monster. Wasn’t even the sound of a human.
It was a trickling.
The trickling of a stream.
Chloë walked through the branches. She picked up her pace as she heard the sound of the trickling getting ever nearer. If there were a stream, then the water would be fresh. She could quench her thirst. Calm Kesha a bit.
It wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t ideal. But it’d do.
She pushed a little further through the branches, between the trees when she felt icy water squelch between her toes.
She looked down. Couldn’t really see anything in the darkness.
But she didn’t have to.
There was a stream running right in front of her.
She crouched down. Put Kesha down on the ground beside it. She went to cup a load of water in her hands. To dab it under her arms, across her body.
But then she heard Kesha crying and she stopped.
She turned to Kesha. And this time, she really felt for her. Kesha was alone out here. More alone than Chloë. More alone than anyone. And it was wrong that Chloë saw her as a burden. Because sure, she was hard work. But at the end of the day, she was a child. A child who needed help.
And judging by how much the bad people from Bardsey Island wanted her, she was an important child, too.
“Come on,” Chloë said. She lifted Kesha into her arm. Then she lowered her towards that water. There was no easy way of doing this with one arm. “Just—just sip it. Go on. That’s it. That’s it.”
She heard Kesha lapping up some of the water, like a dog, and she felt warmth inside. She felt like she owed this to Kesha. Like she wasn’t really alone after all.
And that’s because she wasn’t. She had Kesha. Kesha had always been here for her.
She’d just been afraid to accept that there was a possibility of bonding with someone who wasn’t her dad.
But the more time she spent with Kesha, the closer she felt to her.
The more she felt herself opening up.
She bathed Kesha after she’d finished drinking. Cleaned her all over. She wasn’t too dirty. And Chloë didn’t particularly enjoy it. But then she thought of all the things other people had done for her through her life that they didn’t exactly enjoy either. Dad taking her to the cinema when she was younger to watch the Barbie movie. Riley keeping her by his side even after she’d killed his people.
So many mistakes.
But so many times she’d been forgiven.
Because people were all together these days.
People did things for each other.
When she’d finished bathing Kesha, she lifted her away from the water. Dipped her toes in it to ease the sores. She was still thirsty, but she could cope. She could cope better than Kesha, anyway.
She held Kesha’s warm body close to her. She’d stopped crying. Kesha reached out her hands and tugged at Chloë’s hair, which had grown long again. She made a little burping noise, which made Chloë laugh, made her smile.
“Little burper,” Chloë said. “Pardon you!”
She heard her own voice. Heard the joy in it. The happiness.
And it made her blush.
She knew Kesha wasn’t safe. She knew neither of them was safe. Not yet. But for the first time, she saw clearly what she had to do. Where she had to go.
Kesha was important. Not just because there was a secret surrounding her. But because she was a child. Because she was another human being.
That was the most important thing of all.
Chloë walked away from the side of the stream. Headed back through the trees, into the darkness. She was scared, sure. There were nasty things hiding, waiting to attack. And she wasn’t totally sure of herself. She still wanted her dad here to guide her. To be by her side. Because he was the person she loved more than anyone. He was the last thing Chloë had left.
And as much as she wanted to go back and see if Laura had been lying about him still being alive, Chloë knew there was something much more important for her to do.
She walked for a while. Then she stepped out of the trees. Stepped onto the road.
She looked up at the road as it shone in the moonlight. Looked at it swerving through the mountains, towards the hills.
She had to get Kesha to safety. And there was only one other place she could think of.
The Manchester Living Zone.
Back home.
TWENTY-SEVEN
After two days had passed, Chloë wished she’d drank some more of that water back at the stream.
The sun beamed down. September was turning out nice as it had been back on Bardsey Island. It didn’t seem to be showing any signs of easing off. Chloë was never really into the summer, mo
stly because she never used to do much outdoors in the summer anyway. Her sister was the one with most of the friends.
But now she was outside, she hated this time of year even more than she used to.
She stared up the road ahead. The mountains were long behind her. She’d been walking non-stop for two days now. She’d encountered the occasional monster. She’d dealt with them accordingly with her knife, and with the remaining bullets in the gun she’d taken from the islanders who attacked her.
But she didn’t have her knife anymore. Not after she lost it back in the night. And her gun had run out of ammo, too.
She bit her dry lip and tried to think about anything other than food, than water. She felt stupid for losing her knife. But she’d seen a quicker monster racing towards her and Kesha. She’d had to do something about it.
So she’d thrown it.
And she’d missed.
Sent her knife tumbling down a cliff at the side of the road.
The monster followed not long after that. Probably the only positive Chloë could take from all of that.
Her ears were ringing, but not with Kesha’s cries anymore. No, Kesha was fine. She’d been fine for a long time. Chloë wasn’t sure whether her silence was a good or a bad thing. But for a baby who hadn’t eaten for days, she seemed amazingly healthy.
Chloë wished she could say the same for herself.
She knew she was losing weight because her shirt felt baggy. Her trousers, already missing a waistband, barely clung on to her hips—which were growing as it was. At least her feet were a bit better now. Sure, she’d had some nasty cuts and blisters. But they were getting hard on the bottom. That’s what Chloë wanted. That’s what she needed.
If she wanted to get to the MLZ, she had to be tough.
She thought about Manchester. She knew she was getting closer. She’d passed the “Welcome to England” sign earlier that morning. She’d been past signs for Chester too, which she remembered well from when she was younger. A Roman city, apparently. She always liked the Romans. They interested her.
But in a way, the Romans were just like the monsters. They came in. Took what they thought was theirs. Grew used to it. They might not have the same minds, but they had stronger armies.
Thinking about it, the Romans would probably clap if they saw what the monsters had done to this country, done to the world.
That lingering knowledge of Dad crept to the forefront of her consciousness when she thought back to her past. She still felt bad about leaving him behind, especially after Laura told her he was still alive.
But she couldn’t take Laura’s word. She couldn’t just believe a woman who’d done the horrible things she’d done.
Besides, the last thing Dad told her to do was leave. Leave with Kesha. Get Kesha to safety.
So there was only one direction she could go.
The direction of the MLZ.
She looked down at Kesha. Checked she was still looking… well, alive. She didn’t know a lot about caring for kids. Hadn’t really ever been interested in caring for kids. Being a grown up always seemed so far away, and honestly, Chloë wasn’t even sure she wanted kids in the first place.
But now?
It felt nice. It felt kind of nice having Kesha in her arm. Carrying her.
She didn’t feel completely alone.
She saw the road dipping. And when she looked down that dip, her stomach sank.
A load of abandoned cars.
In the middle of those abandoned cars, monsters.
Lots of monsters.
Chloë swallowed a lump in her dry throat. She backed away. None of the monsters were groaning, so hopefully they hadn’t seen her. But even so, they were acting in weirder ways nowadays. Scarier ways. Like they knew what they were doing sometimes.
So Chloë kept on backing away. Towards the trees. Towards the woods.
She felt more safe when she stepped into the woods. It felt warmer in there. More sheltered. But really, as she walked as far away from the road as she could without losing track of the direction she was going in, she knew it was really just because she’d lived and survived in the woods before. It was more like home to her. More like safety.
But it wasn’t safe. And if she didn’t get Kesha to the MLZ—to her old home where her old group used to be, soon—Kesha would die.
Chloë thought about the MLZ as she wandered along as quietly as possible. Riley. Jordanna. Tamara, James, and everyone else. She hoped they were okay. The last time she’d seen Riley, Mr Fletch was stabbing him. Maybe he’d made it. Maybe he hadn’t. She didn’t know.
And as she walked along, she started to wonder if the MLZ would even be there anymore. Because it’d been a long time since she’d lived there. Maybe the people there would be the same. Maybe they’d be different.
No. They’d definitely be different. No matter what had or hadn’t happened there, they would be different. That’s the only thing Chloë could be sure about.
She knew if she saw someone she used to care about, they’d still see her as the old Chloë. The little psycho kid. She knew that’s what they thought of her. What they said about her.
But she’d grown up.
She was different now.
And she had to get Kesha to them unless—
She stopped. Fell back into the mud.
Voices. Voices up ahead.
She got back to her feet. Starting to move in the direction she’d come from, back towards the road, determined to do anything other than bump into any other people. They could be hunting her. Trying to catch her.
But when Chloë looked between the trees in the direction of the voices, she couldn’t help freezing.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Chloë stared down towards the voices and tried to comprehend what was right in front of her.
The afternoon sun peeked through the trees. Made the scene ahead seem even more unrealistic, even more impossible.
But there was no denying what she was looking at.
Up ahead, down the hill, there was a wall. Nothing too well-built—some sheets of metal, about twice Chloë’s height. Nothing that’d keep the monsters out indefinitely, like the MLZ walls that Chloë had to take Kesha to.
But these walls stretched around a perimeter.
And inside that perimeter, there was a group.
Chloë looked at the tents. Looked at the fire crackling away on a bunch of logs. Smoke seeped up into the sky. She could smell something cooking; something like rabbit. Just the thought made her salivate.
But even more interesting to Chloë were the metal containers of water sitting around by the tents. Water. She needed water. She desperately needed water.
And yet, there was something even more interesting about the scene in front of Chloë.
The people.
There were a lot of them. At least ten. They were all women that Chloë could see. All of them were dressed in scruffy clothes. All of them were covered in scars in some area or other.
But they were smiling. They looked happy.
Like they were handling things.
Chloë crouched down with Kesha in her hand. Stared down at this group.
She saw one of the women turning the meat over the fire. Another sipped back on some water. Another thing—they were armed, but very primitively. A few knives. Sharpened sticks, like javelins that Chloë used to be rubbish at throwing back at school. A bow and arrow.
She looked at this group and she realised, right there, right then, that they had everything Chloë needed. Everything she needed for Kesha.
She pictured herself walking over to that wall. Knocking. Telling them her story. Telling them about Kesha, and what she had to do.
But the more Chloë pictured it, the more unrealistic the image in her mind became.
She knew what happened when she walked up to strangers. She knew what happened when she trusted strangers.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t just walk in there. Wasn’t too fussed about putting herself
at risk anymore, but Kesha…
Chloë didn’t want to put Kesha in danger. Because she had a duty. A duty to get her to the MLZ. A duty to get her to safety.
So she had to go with the other option, as little as she wanted to.
She had to sneak into this place.
Chloë thought back to the times alone in the woods where she’d raided camps. Where she’d killed people. She never used to enjoy doing it. If there were an easier way of surviving, she’d have tried it.
But the truth was, you couldn’t just trust any old person in this world. You couldn’t just walk on into a camp and expect them to be good people.
And even if they were good people, they didn’t know a thing about you, either. So you couldn’t just expect them to trust you.
She looked at Kesha. She was sleeping. Her face was a little pale, snot was dribbling down her face, but she looked okay. She knew she’d be desperate for food soon, though. She knew there was only so long until this good kid act expired.
“I won’t be long,” Chloë said.
She lowered Kesha down. Right down to the ground, which was grassy, spongy.
And then she looked back at the group’s stronghold.
She knew she was risking it. The people might not seem aware or prepared, sure. But they were armed and she wasn’t.
Maybe she should just walk up there. Ask for water. Ask for food.
But she couldn’t take Kesha with her. She couldn’t risk Kesha’s life for this.
She started to descend. Started to head towards the wall. And the closer she got, the more unsure she grew. These people. How did she know they didn’t want her? How could she possibly be sure this wasn’t all some kind of set up? Some kind of ploy to get Kesha from her? If the Bardsey Island people were after Kesha, then maybe other people were after her too. Or maybe these people were something to do with the Bardsey Island people. She didn’t think so. She wasn’t sure.
But she had to be sure to make any decision.
The less certain Chloë felt, the more she knew she had to turn around. Walk away. Because this was just a temptation. It would be good to get food. It would be good to drink, or maybe even rest for a while. But she couldn’t rely on a group of strangers. They were women, but they looked savage. Like they’d killed a lot of people, let alone a lot of monsters.
