by Ryan Casey
They kept on going. But Mike couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. He couldn’t help watching as more shop windows were smashed. He couldn’t help watching as more people were dragged out into the streets, as more homes were ransacked. He couldn’t help watching the poor old man sitting by the grave of someone in the cemetery, blood dripping down his face, beaten to within an inch of his life.
He wanted to do more. He wanted to stop this madness. He wanted to help.
But he knew how ineffective helping would be right now. He knew how much danger he was putting himself in.
He knew he had to get out of here, and that he had to get these people—the people he cared about—to safety.
He started to turn a corner when he was stopped in his tracks.
There was a man standing opposite, blocking Mike’s exit from the town.
He was staring right at Mike.
And he was holding a knife.
Chapter Fourteen
Bill Michaelson looked at the group heading down the road into Longridge and he knew what he had to do.
It was late morning. Four days had passed already since the power went out. Or was it five? He didn’t know. He was already losing count.
At first, he’d done what most people had done: dismissed it. He had faith that the power would come back. After all, the government always resolved things, for better or for worse, right?
But then that first day went by, and there was still no power. And then another day went by, and then another, and another, and before he knew it, here he was—without any stocks, without any supplies, and forced to watch as the town he’d grown up in—the town he’d loved—tore itself apart.
He was amazed, in a way. Amazed at just how quickly the world could crumble when something as simple as electricity and communication was taken out of the equation. It scared him. If power was the only foundation that a stable society was built on, then what hope could he possibly hold for the future?
He looked around at the streets. The shop windows had been smashed. The takeaways had been ransacked. He saw family businesses—businesses he’d watched launch, grow and thrive—nothing more than empty shells.
And as he stood there, looking at this mess, he wondered just how it would be possible for the world to go back to normality after all this. Because it felt like a scab had been peeled, and now the blood was flowing, it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.
He thought about his friends. He thought about Baz and Jonny. He wondered how they’d be doing. They’d gone to Manchester to watch a gig on the night the power went out. Where would they be now? Making their way back home? Trying to get by over there?
Whatever they were doing, wherever they were, he hoped they were safe.
He looked at the palm of his hand. Looked at the knife he was holding. It felt absurd holding a knife. He’d never hurt anyone in his life. Not unless you count drunken street brawls after wild nights out in his younger years, but then hasn’t everyone been in a drunken scrap at some stage? No, he wasn’t a guy that liked getting into fights unnecessarily.
But there was a reason he was holding a knife.
And that reason was back at home, waiting for him.
He felt his body go numb when he thought about his daughter, Kelsie. He felt bad leaving her home alone. But he just had to hope that she’d be okay. At least he knew their home wasn’t in too busy a location, or anywhere the looters might break into before choosing somewhere else to move onto when they realised he had nothing.
But still. She was home alone, and he was out here. Anything could happen to her.
But then he reminded himself why he was out here on his own at all. Kelsie wasn’t well. He wasn’t sure if it was malnutrition—whether that kicked in so early—or dehydration or infection from one of the many sources of inevitable illness now the power was gone. But she was ill. She needed stuff. Food. Water. Things to keep her safe until he could find something more long-term, something better.
They just had to ride out the worst of this storm. And then, maybe then, things would be okay.
But he couldn’t deny the feeling in his gut that things weren’t going to be okay at all.
He took a deep breath, tightened his grip around the knife. Up ahead, he could see a few people in the streets. He could hear shouts, laughs, screams. And if this was one of the first days of the collapse, then he dreaded to think where things were going from here. He dreaded to think how much worse things might get if order had already been turned on its head this much.
He dreaded to think what a month of this world would look like—and he dreaded to think just who might still be around when all that time had passed… and who might not be around.
He thought about Kelsie again. He wasn’t used to seeing her unwell like this. He’d had another daughter with Jenna when he was younger. Sarah, they called her. She was an angel. Born ill, but a little fighter. So much so that she fought through her illness, fought through her weakness, battled the odds, beat them and returned home to their loving arms.
It was by a cruel twist of fate that Sarah died not long after they took her home. Cot death. A moment in Bill and Jenna’s lives that turned them cold.
They hadn’t even considered having another kid for a while after that. And when Jenna got pregnant, it wasn’t planned. They discussed terminating the kid. But in the end they decided to carry through with it; to give this child the best life they could. Sarah hadn’t had a chance to live a life. So they were going to give their next child all the care and support they could.
It was just a pity their relationship collapsed in the months that followed, leaving their new baby girl born into an abnormal world from the off.
Kelsie was five, now. And it was Bill’s week of looking after her.
He thought about Jenna. Even though they’d separated on not great terms, he knew how much she loved her daughter. He knew just how much she cared that she was okay, that she was safe.
And the thought that she was out there somewhere, on her own… well, he still cared about Jenna too, of course he did. The thought of her struggling almost brought him to his knees.
He looked at this group again. Looked at the man, the woman, the kids, and the dog.
And most of all, at the water bottle in the hand of the Asian guy, and the rucksacks on their backs.
And then he looked back down at his knife.
He knew it was bold. He knew it was risky.
But they just had to hand over something.
They just had to share something.
And that would be enough.
He thought about just asking. About asking them for their help.
But he’d seen what people were like already.
Nobody could be trusted in this world. Not anymore.
He closed his eyes. Cleared his mind. Took a deep breath.
And then he opened them again, steadied his breathing.
He stepped out, towards the group, stopping them in their tracks.
It was time to get what he wanted.
It was time to protect his baby girl.
Chapter Fifteen
Holly looked at the man standing opposite, knife in hand, and she started to wonder whether maybe her dad had been right about this journey all along.
She felt hot all of a sudden. Red hot. It was sunny, but this was different. This was the same raw heat she’d felt inside that burning house a few days ago—but not the heat caused by the fire.
This was the raw heat of fear.
She’d heard the cries in the streets and she didn’t know how to react to them. Mostly, they sent shivers up her arms. Because as much as she knew the streets weren’t a safe place to be right now… she still couldn’t believe that things would fall apart so quickly, so easily. It’d only been days. Her group, her people, they’d managed to find ways to pull together, to keep things in order. They’d managed to find ways to salvage, to ration, to learn how to make traps and to survive.
But then
she knew how many people were afraid in these towns. She knew how many people were hungry and thirsty.
And it was only going to get worse.
She saw that now.
It was a pity she saw it through a man standing in front of her holding a knife.
She took a deep breath. She could smell sweat, and she realised it was her own, that hot fear in her body. She could feel dryness in her mouth, which was getting worse by the second.
And as she stood there, shaking, all of these factors added up to a situation she knew she was going to struggle to get out of.
This man didn’t look happy. He had mean eyes, with big bags underneath. He was holding the knife tightly, and didn’t look totally there to be honest. Just looking between each and every member of the group, weighing them all up.
And then at the bags they were carrying.
“Just—just drop your stuff. That’s all I need. No need for trouble here.”
Holly heard the words. And she found promise in them. She found hope in them. Because perhaps that was all this guy wanted. Perhaps they could come to some kind of amicable resolution here.
But then she saw her dad step forward.
Dad moved towards the man, bag in hand. He stared right into his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “No chance.”
Holly’s stomach sank. She knew Dad was right to be cautious of people, but this was different. They had a chance. A chance to make things right. A chance to fix things. A chance to avoid a real showdown here.
The man’s face turned. He looked puzzled, like he wasn’t expecting that kind of a response from any of them. Then he looked around the group again. “I’ll ask again. Drop your stuff and this can be over with. There’s no need to–”
“Yeah, we heard you,” Mike said. “We heard you loud and clear. And I’ll tell you something. We’re not scared of you. We’re not scared of an idiot with a knife. So I suggest you step aside, unless you want to find your arse on the ground.”
The man stepped back a little, then. And for a second, Holly wondered if this was it: he was giving up. Her dad’s methods had worked. He might be tough with his words, but it was for a good reason after all.
But then something else happened.
Something else entirely.
The man lifted his knife and made a lunge.
Holly wasn’t sure why it happened. She wasn’t sure how it was allowed to happen. Perhaps a mixture of confusion and distraction, caught up and lost in the moment.
But the man grabbed the first person close to him.
And that person was her.
She felt the blade press into her neck. She tried to struggle, but when she did, the man just pushed the blade down even harder.
“Now you’re—you’re going to drop your stuff,” the man said, “or this girl here gets it.”
Holly saw her dad move forward. She saw the fear in his eyes; the same pain he’d had whenever they’d spoken about Mum since her death.
But as he stepped forward, the man pressed the blade down a little harder.
“Hey,” he said. “Lis—listen to me, okay? I’m not messing around. Drop your stuff. Hand it over. Or—or she dies.”
Holly’s heart raced. She wanted to break free, but she was frozen to the spot. She could feel that heat of fear building up again, and looking into the eyes of her friends and her dad opposite just made that fear even worse, like they were reflecting how she felt.
But there was nothing she could do.
Nothing at all.
“Okay,” Mike said. He went to lower the rucksack down. Holly could tell by now that this was literally the only thing he could do to protect her. But those things were their supplies. They needed that stuff to survive. It was their food, their water, their tools. He couldn’t give them up. He just couldn’t do that.
“No, wait,” she said, coughing to get a word in.
“Holly,” Mike said. “It’s okay. I’m putting the bag down. We’re putting the bags down and—”
“There’s a safe place,” Holly said.
She wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea saying it right away. She could tell from the way Dad’s face turned that he wasn’t happy.
But she had to try anything.
And keeping their supplies—and their lives—was more important than anything right now.
The man looked down at her. Frowned. “What?”
She tried to take a deep breath, cautious of the knife right by her throat. “A… a safe place. Military drops. Peacekeepers. That’s—that’s why we’re going this way. That’s why we’re heading through the town. We just… You can come too. Nobody has to be left behind. Please. Please.”
She saw the look in the man’s eyes. The cloudy, watery way he looked at her.
And for a moment, she thought she’d broken through this situation. She thought she’d got him to see.
And then she noticed something else.
Something that made her stomach sink.
Dad had the rifle out of the rucksack.
He was pointing it at this man.
“Let my daughter go, right this second.”
The man’s demeanour shifted. He tightened up.
And then he sighed, loosened the knife. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “But I call your bluff. Besides, I really need your stuff.”
He smacked the top of her head.
He put the blade against her neck.
And when Dad didn’t fire that trigger, the man began to cut.
Chapter Sixteen
Mike watched the man slice the blade against his daughter’s neck, and his whole world froze.
He lost sense of what time it was. He lost sense of where he was, of the sounds around him, the smells, the tastes. He lost sense of the very feelings inside his body.
Because this blade was slicing against his daughter’s neck.
And not just that.
But he saw blood.
He dropped the rifle and he did the only thing he could.
He threw himself towards the man, towards his daughter.
He thought he heard shouts from behind. He thought he heard voices telling him to watch out, to be careful. He thought he heard screams.
But all he could see was right in front of him.
All he wanted to see was right in front of him.
And he wasn’t ever going to let a thing happen to his little girl.
He wasn’t ever going to let a thing happen to his angel.
He grabbed the man’s hand. The blade had cut some of Holly’s neck, but it didn’t seem to be deep.
But now he had another problem.
The man pulling back his other hand, punching him in his stomach. Hard.
He winced, curled over. He didn’t wallow in the pain though. He’d been in the military. And he’d been through emotional hell. He knew how to deal with things as superficial as pain.
He stood back up, went to take a swing at the man.
But then he noticed something different.
The man had let Holly go.
And he swung the knife at Mike.
Mike crouched down, dodged the knife in an instant.
And then, while he had the chance, he ploughed his full body weight into the man’s torso, knocking him off his feet.
He felt the knife smacking against his back as he pushed the man to the ground. He didn’t know whether the stab wounds were deep, or whether they were superficial, or whether they were even stab wounds at all, only that this man was trying to slam that knife into his body.
He just pushed this man to the ground, red mist in his eyes, an urge for revenge coursing through his bloodstream.
The man slammed against the ground with force. And when he hit, Mike pushed his knife-hand out of the way, pressing it against the ground.
And in a fell swoop, he spun it around, twisted it and snapped it.
The man let out a deafening shriek. The knife dropped to the ground. Behind, Mike heard
winces. The winces of his people. The winces of his friends. The winces of the people he cared about.
The man turned his pained face, looked up at Mike. “Please,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just—”
But Mike wasn’t in a mood for listening.
He pummelled his fist into the side of this man’s face.
And then when he looked back up, he did it again.
Then again.
Then again.
And he kept on going until the bruising appeared; he kept on going as the man’s eye went bloodshot, as blood started pooling out of his mouth and his ear and his nose, and he kept on going as he felt Holly grab his arm and beg him to stop because doing this made him the same as them—doing this made him the same as the very people he was trying too hard not to become.
But he kept on going.
He stopped when the man’s face had swollen up to unrecognisable proportions. And only then did he reach for the knife, press it against the man’s neck.
“You tried to kill my daughter,” Mike said.
He pushed the neck down, just enough to cut the skin.
“Mike!” It was Alison. But he wasn’t in a mood to listen.
The man looked up at him. Through his one good eye, Mike thought he saw something. The person underneath. The real person underneath; a person who had just been tainted by this world.
But it didn’t matter.
This man had still tried to kill his daughter. He’d still put a knife to Holly’s neck. He’d still directly threatened the person Mike cared about more than any living being in this world anymore.
“You tried to kill my daughter,” Mike said. “You would’ve fucking killed her if I hadn’t stopped you.”
The man spluttered out a tooth along with a load of thick, gloopy blood. “My daughter… my—my daughter. Please.”
“I don’t give a flying shit about your daughter,” Mike said, pushing the knife down harder on the man’s windpipe, so hard that it felt like it was about to give way. “I care about what you just did to my daughter. And you’re going to pay for it. Right now, you’re going to pay for it.”
The man looked up at Mike, and Mike saw something different entirely. He saw fear. Total fear.
