After The End (Book 1): The Furious Four

by Rendle, Samantha

  Even in the company of brainless grunts and swishy trees he can still hear the conversation inside. Steve laments about his sick niece, all alone back home. Poppy complains that she’s broken a nail. Kerry makes conversation with the strange man.

  ‘Kerry Twain,’ she says, and he pictures her shaking the bloke’s slender hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Kerry, I’m Basil Thorpe. That’s my girlfriend Poppy.’

  ‘Where are you from, Basil?’

  ‘Exeter. We were on our way to meet Poppy’s grandparents in Brighton before the car broke down.’

  Gabriel tries to block them out. He strokes the cat and wishes for some sort of distraction, anything to stop him thinking about their predicament. The Sanctuary, his favourite place, is already lost to them. It’s the only home he’s ever known.

  There have been times before when Gabriel has tried to remember his brief life inland, but blanks are drawn every time. Sometimes he has dreams about a dirty sofa or a pair of scratchy patchwork curtains, but he can hardly count them as memories. They’re only dreams.

  A shrill, musical sound slices through the calm like a klaxon, stirring the zombies and lighting up the room behind him. Gabriel glares through the door behind him, where a little oblong in Poppy’s hand glows like magic. He finds himself hypnotised as she draws a line across it with her finger and the music ceases. She raises it to her ear and the light disappears too.

  ‘Daddy,’ she cries, ‘thank God!’

  Silence lingers over the rest of them as they listen, the bellows of the Ailing below making her squint as she speaks.

  ‘No, we had to leave the car... Stuck with a bunch of Outlanders, Dad...’

  She says the word like it’s laden with filth. Gabriel hates her. Kerry meets his gaze and smirks.

  ‘No, I don’t blame you... I’d tell you to ring in the morning but I don’t think my battery’s going to last... Eleven o’clock? We’ll try, but there are zombies everywhere... Yes, zombies, Dad! Tell Mum we’re fine... Okay, bye.’

  The glowing oblong is turned off and put away. Gabriel stares for a moment at the place where she’d put it, and then turns away again. He shakes off his amazement; no matter what sort of magic she can perform, Poppy is still an idiot.

  ‘What did your dad say?’ Basil asks.

  ‘He found our car, but when he couldn’t find us he had to turn back,’ Poppy narrates. ‘He said he’d try to pick us up again tomorrow, at eleven. Oh, Bas, I’m really scared...’

  He is loath to admit it, but Gabriel is scared too. He can’t stand the thought of Beth and Preston being replaced by two bumbling city idiots. He can’t help but go over different scenarios in his head: never escaping the tree house and dying here, falling to his death and being eaten, Poppy’s dad never coming to pick her up and them having to babysit her...

  Why is it, he wonders, that there’s only ever one good scenario when you’re in a sticky situation? And why does he feel that it’s so unlikely to play out that way? Can Beth and Preston really stroll in here unarmed (why did he let them go unarmed?) and rescue them from all the monsters down below?

  Steve and the Inlanders settle down to sleep, at a loss for anything better to do. Gabriel listens as Kerry shepherds them into the other bedroom, and he smirks at the thought that Poppy has to sleep in the messy room.

  Kerry returns to him when all is quiet, and she sits beside him on the balcony. He offers her a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and she squeezes his shoulder.

  ‘Are you going to try to sleep?’ she asks, and he shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I could, either. But I don’t think they’ll be back until at least morning now.’

  ‘I know,’ says Gabriel softly.

  ‘So you won’t miss them if you want to sleep,’ Kerry says gently.

  ‘No,’ he says. His fingers are balled into a fist in the cat’s fur, like they used to do when he was a baby. ‘I already know I can’t.’

  She nods. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise to me for flirting with that Thorpe guy,’ he mutters. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s his girlfriend who’ll want an apology.’

  ‘I was not flirting!’ Kerry giggles, shoving Gabriel with her shoulder. ‘I was apologising for freaking out when you wanted to leave. I knew you were right, I just didn’t want you to be.’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t want to leave, either.’

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ she whispers. ‘We’ll stay together and we’ll be all right, whatever happens, wherever we go. I don’t know where we’ll end up, but who knows? Maybe we’ll find somewhere even better, like a cottage.’

  ‘A cabin by a lake,’ suggests Gabriel, his fist loosening in the cat’s fur.

  ‘A castle,’ says Kerry, ‘with turrets and flags.’

  ‘Better,’ he says.

  ‘Better,’ she agrees. She waits a beat before delivering the bad news. ‘Steve said if they’re not back by ten o’clock tomorrow, he wants to set the place alight.’

  Gabriel frowns. ‘He wants to start a forest fire? That’s...’

  ‘Bloody madness,’ Kerry concurs. ‘The others agree with him because he protected them and they figure he’s old and wise. I don’t know if we could overpower three of them.’

  ‘He’ll kill us all,’ Gabriel mutters.

  ‘We won’t let him.’

  ‘How do we stop him?’

  Kerry sighs. ‘For now we just have to hope they’ll be back early. If not we’ll have to get creative. For starters we can break his watch or tie him up.’

  ‘Feed him to the Ailing,’ Gabriel grunts.

  ‘Maybe not that,’ she says, ‘but we’ll think of something. Our deaths may not mean anything but I’ll be damned if they’re idiotic.’

  The Smuggler

  ‘I told you already,’ growls Beth, ‘you don’t just walk out of a Quarantine Zone. Even if you renounce your status as a citizen you have to hand in your passport. If you don’t have one, they’ll probably presume you an Outlander and throw you in jail. And tell me, Preston, what good are we in jail?’

  ‘I’d be all right,’ says Preston with a grin. ‘I bet I could find a fit bunkmate. You’d probably end up in solitary confinement for starting fights with the bigger girls.’

  ‘This isn’t a joke, you fucking imbecile!’ she bellows. ‘My kid-’

  ‘Is tucked up in bed reading a masterpiece,’ says Preston. ‘I’m actually jealous of the little bugger right now, I’d much rather be adventuring in Middle Earth than having my ear chewed off.’

  ‘I said last night that we should’ve been planning this,’ Beth despairs. ‘We should have had a Plan A, B, C, D – All the way to Z!’

  ‘Plan Z was killing wall patrol,’ Preston points out helpfully.

  ‘I’ll kill you, Preston Lancaster!’

  Preston chuckles, and in that moment Beth can’t believe she ever let that smirking mouth kiss her. She kicks up sand as she stomps away, seething. She knows that he’s right – she’s left Gabriel plenty of times before and he’s been fine – but she can’t stand when things don’t go to plan. She especially hates that she was wrestling in bed with Preston when they could’ve gotten back to the lorry in time and returned to the Sanctuary by now.

  Since they’d found the lorry to be missing, Beth had stormed off shouting expletives with Preston trailing behind her, laughing. Of course Preston would find it funny. Preston finds every unfortunate situation funny. She hadn’t stopped walking until they’d reached the beach, and all she can do now is pace.

  Finally she sits down in the sand, crosses her arms on her knees and rests her head on top, wishing she could block his presence out just for a minute. As if sleeping with him hadn’t confused her enough, she now has this raging anger she feels towards him too, even though it’s just as much her fault.

  He sits next to her, and even with her eyes shut and blocked out by crossed arms she can see the smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. She sees a soft pi
nk lip indented with shiny white teeth... Mentally she slaps herself. She looks up at him and glowers.

  ‘I have no idea what to do,’ she tells him, an appeal for help.

  He looks at her. ‘Some things never change, Singer.’

  Just as quickly he glances away again, his gaze drawn to the grey water. His lips are parted slightly, his eyes glassy. If Beth didn’t know better she’d guess the expression on his face is wonder. She follows his gaze out to sea. It looks miserable, mirroring the bulging black clouds.

  ‘Trust us to visit the ocean for the first time in eight years on an awful day like this.’

  Preston shrugs and lights a cigarette. As if it’s all the same to him. Beth watches him suck on the end for dear life: one of the only infinitesimal signs that he’s thinking about sad things, about the past. He acts like cigarettes are his lifeline when he’s sad, though his face tells a convincing lie in the form of a cunning smile.

  Sighing, she lets him brood for a while. Sometimes, when she’s in the forgetting-Preston-is-mental mood, she wishes she knew what it’s like in his head. But then she remembers he’s mental and she’d probably lose her mind just being in his for a second. Mad as a box of frogs is Preston.

  ‘It’s probably lunch time,’ he declares suddenly.

  ‘Then we’d better come up with something quick,’ says Beth.

  ‘Come on,’ he grunts, getting to his feet and neglecting to offer her a hand.

  After a brief stop at a chip stand for a shared cone of hot food, Beth follows Preston seemingly aimlessly. Every now and then she notices him glancing at pedestrian street signs, but he moves too quickly for her to stop and look properly. His brisk walk means Beth has to jog to keep up. She knows Preston has a flair for the dramatic, so she lets their destination be a surprise, vowing to murder him if it’s anywhere stupid.

  It starts to drizzle again but they don’t mind. When Beth’s glasses start to fog up too much she gives up on them and pockets them. It’s a habit, nowadays, wearing her glasses. They were prescribed to her so long ago that they probably don’t work now. Yes, she wears them out of habit, but she also feels they break up all the flesh tone her bald head provides. Even now her old vanity lingers; she often wishes she still owned eyeliner.

  They walk for maybe half an hour, backtracking every now and then, and Beth can’t help noticing they’re getting farther away from the wall, farther away from the Sanctuary. She tries not to despair.

  ‘Yes,’ mutters Preston when they finally round the last corner.

  Brighton train station looks right at home in the coastal city, with cheery blue pillars and a white-and-yellow brick exterior. People weave in and out of the bollards, excited to spend a day by the misty sea on a Saturday they refuse to let be ruined by the weather. Beth looks up at the building uncertainly, and slows as Preston approaches.

  ‘Pres,’ she calls, pulling him back by the sleeve, earning herself a dirty look. She lets go. ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘We’re getting the westbound train,’ he replies, like it’s obvious.

  ‘Nothing gets through that thick skull, does it?’ hisses Beth, suddenly angry. ‘We. Need. Passports. For literally everything. You’re going to get us arrested!’

  ‘You mean to tell me,’ he chuckles, ‘that you made it sixteen years without ever jumping the gates in a train station?’

  ‘I wasn’t a hooligan.’

  ‘Well you weren’t all good,’ Preston argues. ‘You had a kid at fifteen.’

  Beth glares. ‘So we’re jumping the gates. What happens then?’

  ‘We wait for the train to clear the wall and then we pull the emergency brake.’

  ‘Your first plan didn’t work,’ she points out. ‘What if this one doesn’t?’

  ‘There’s always Plan Z.’

  Rolling his eyes, Preston resumes his brisk, confident pace to the station. Beth tails him, glancing nervously around and wondering if it would be better to pick pockets for tickets. But then, she reasons, they’d still need passports if they were to use said tickets.

  He halts before the timetable, consulting it in the casual manner that almost convinces Beth that he’s an innocent passenger. She can never quite believe his powers of manipulation, even when it happens before her very eyes.

  ‘So how do you want to do this?’ Preston mutters. ‘I can cause a distraction to guarantee you a spot on the train.’

  ‘We should stay together. How would you even get out if that worked?’

  ‘Preston always has a plan, sweetheart, not to worry,’ he grunts. ‘I just thought you’d stop moaning my ear off about your wretched kid if I got you on that train unscathed. We have two minutes until it arrives, Bethany, yes or no?’

  She narrows her eyes. ‘You care about him, don’t you?’

  ‘Two minutes,’ he repeats.

  ‘We’re not splitting up,’ she tells him, touching his shoulder. ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do but I can’t leave you behind.’

  ‘I’m trying to get a day of peace and maybe a Big Mac,’ he chuckles, ‘nothing more.’

  A smile tempts her lips, and she pulls the lower back with her teeth to suppress it as Preston once again checks the electronic timetable overhead. Westbound, it reads, and then it goes on to list a small number of stops before finishing with, 1 min. She glances uncertainly at the barrier, which is guarded by a man in a yellow vest. It’s only one man, but he’s bigger than even Preston. Beth wonders if he’s a faster runner.

  Quicker than she expected, the train pulls up on the platform just ahead of them. Beth moves towards the barriers, but Preston holds her back, shaking his head. She falters and shoots him a quizzical look.

  ‘Let everyone else get on first,’ he advises.

  She cranes her neck, probably far too obviously, watching the other passengers get on at old people speed. A man in glasses struggles to haul his oversized suitcase onto the train with him, and a couple wrestles with their pram.

  Finally the last group climbs aboard, and Beth clocks the conductor raising a whistle to his lips. In a panic she hurries forwards, pursued by Preston, and – oh god, the barrier man is looking – they leap over the gates like competing athletes. Before her feet even hit the ground she hears yelling and the shrill scream of a whistle.

  The train doors begin to slide shut, but she knows she can make it, she’s nearly there... She sprints for her life, barely registering Preston shouting her name before it’s too late – suddenly she’s on the ground, tackled by the stupid ticket man. She lets out an animalistic scream.

  Landing a hard kick in the man’s face, Preston frees her and she scrambles to her feet. The train doors are shut but they make for them anyway, hope quickly dissolving as two officers in black police uniforms rush at them. They slow to a stop as the train hisses and pulls slowly away from the platform.

  Beth shares a despairing look with Preston as it slides ignorantly away and the officials approach. Preston’s face says fight, but Beth shakes her head.

  ‘Excuse me,’ says one of the policemen, a stocky black man with a thin beard.

  ‘Hello,’ says Preston smoothly, his hand finding Beth’s, their fingers lacing together.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ the officer asks. ‘We heard shouting, saw you two running...’

  ‘Uh, yes,’ Preston chuckles good-naturedly. ‘Sorry, my girl forgot to get our tickets and we were late for our train. We’ll just get the next one.’

  ‘Ah. Well, make sure you’re here on time next time.’

  Beth glances behind her as they speak. The barrier guard is getting to his feet, his nose gushing blood onto the tarmac. Urgently she tugs on Preston’s hand. She’s sure he can feel her pulse vibrating at light speed. He follows her gaze.

  ‘Well, bye,’ he says just as the police officer spots the man with the battered nose.

  Before the policemen can put two and two together they’re running again, too flustered to remember to let go of each other. They dive
over the barriers as shouting rises up behind them, flying out of the station followed by gunshots. Beth squeals in surprise.

  Preston wrenches open the door of the taxi in the front of a rink and drags Beth in with him, ducking in the seat and avoiding the gaze of the driver. Beth doesn’t dare rise to look out the window as Preston commands the cabbie to drive.

  ‘You two all right?’ the driver asks tentatively.

  ‘Just go,’ pleads Beth, cringing as another gunshot sounds.

  Startled, the driver brings the taxi to life and pulls out of the rink. He clears the station, casting nervous looks behind him as he drives, before asking where they’re headed.

  ‘West of the wall,’ says Beth, figuring she might as well try the truth on for size.

  Supposing they’re far enough away from gunshots to be safe, the driver pulls up on the curb and kills the engine, turning around to give them each a stern look as they finally straighten up in their seats. His face is square, with deep wrinkles like beaten leather. His grey hair is swept neatly to the back of his head like an ocean wave, and he has wire-rimmed glasses and a thick moustache.

  ‘You know you’re meant to book in advance for an Outer-Zone journey,’ he scolds.

  ‘Well we don’t have a phone,’ snaps Beth, ignoring a warning look from Preston, ‘and we don’t have internet. We’re Outlanders.’

  Something akin to fear crosses the driver’s face. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘We can pay for the journey,’ Beth says. ‘We have more than enough. Please...’ She checks the driver’s ID on the compartment window. ‘...Sydney. We have a friend who’s unwell. We had no choice but to sneak in here for medicine. We just need to get back without any complications... Please.’

  ‘I-I’m sorry,’ stammers Sydney, ‘but I can’t... D-do you know how much trouble-?’ He hesitates as his phone rings, picks it up to answer. He looks at Beth in the rear-view. ‘I’m sorry, but please just get out of my taxi. Yes, hello, Poppy...’