by Casey, Ryan
A man. Long, dark hair. Asian look to him. Beaming brown eyes. Wearing a vest and blue shorts, with casual flip-flops on his feet. Well built. Muscular. Attractive, yeah.
He looked at Kelly, and Eddie, and smiled.
“Hey, folks,” he said. “What a pleasure it is to see some actual, living faces out here.”
Chapter Fifteen
“So. How the hell you been, stranger?”
Noah heard Jane’s voice, and he felt every inch of his body creep with goosebumps. Just hearing another human voice was weird and uncomfortable in itself. It’d been a long time since he’d heard one. Two weeks, four days. A man who called himself Ranger. Wandering through the streets all bearded and disheveled, smashing the windows of every car he passed by. Running at Noah with that bloodied face that made Noah wonder if he was infected or just insane. Noah putting him down anyway, and feeling kind of sad about it, but also sensing an inevitability about it, too.
But Jane.
Shit. Jane. Malcom’s daughter. She’d had a mad crush on him back at Galgate. He’d slept with her—next to her, not with her—on the final night before The Event.
He’d held her in his arms as those infected waves hurtled towards him.
And she’d been there when everything fell apart between them, too.
Noah had to admit he was kind of pleased to see her. Relieved to see she was alive and well. It’d been months. Four long months. And even though he was still around a similar area to where he’d left the group, he never expected to bump into any of them again. Especially not Jane.
“I’m getting by,” Noah said. “All good with you lot?”
Jane smiled. Noah noticed she was missing a couple of teeth at the front. Looked like they’d been bashed out recently. “Us lot? There is no ‘us lot’ anymore. Just me now. Been this way for… oh God, I don’t know how long anymore.”
“Eddie,” he said. “Kelly. They okay?”
“Last I saw them they were doing just fine. Why? You decided you care now?”
Noah glanced at the road. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Eddie or Kelly. Things had grown tense between them in the final months. Tension over where to go. The direction to go in.
And Noah’s anger kept on building. His desperation. His depression.
And it spilled over in some pretty shitty behaviour. Reactionary behaviour. Telling Kelly she should consider an abortion because it would drag the group down. Not trusting outsiders. Being quick to the draw—too quick to the draw, people said.
And there was something else, too.
The fight. With Eddie.
Telling him he was getting obsessive about Kelly. Finding him staring at her in the night, and just getting this utterly icky feeling about it.
And the way Eddie looked at him.
The way his best friend looked at him…
“I never stopped caring,” Noah said.
Jane raised her eyebrows, laughed a little.
“What’s so funny about that?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I just figure you telling your ‘best friend’ to get a grip, telling him he wasn’t cut out to be a father, telling Kelly she needed to abort her baby and telling them to go fuck themselves pretty much was a sign you didn’t care so much anymore.”
Hearing it like that brought shame to Noah. He didn’t feel that way. He didn’t feel any of it. He was just in a hole back then. A pit of delayed grief. He was angry. Furious about his losses. And it all came spilling out whenever he saw someone happy. Whenever he saw joy. Because nobody deserved to be happy. Not with all the loss. The pain. The loss of direction.
“What did you see in Bolton that sent you so loopy, anyway?”
Noah didn’t want to talk about what he’d found in Bolton the day he’d decided to leave the group. The final straw.
But he carried those memories with him.
“It’s none of your business,” Noah said. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, anyway?”
He expected Jane to look broken down and wounded by his words. She always was a little emotionally melodramatic.
But instead, she just smirked at him. Shook her head. “I leave the group, just like the goddamned rest of them. Not before Princess Peach leaves with Barney, but early enough. I spend God knows how long bouncing between house to house, totally on my own, convinced I’m losing my mind sometimes. I bump into the guy I spent a hell of a few weeks crushing on six months back. By some miracle—I’m not even sure if it’s in my imagination or not yet—I bump into him again. And he drops me. Just like he did last time. Really nice, Noah. I can see you’ve been really working on your interpersonal skills while you’ve been out here. Such a nice guy.”
“Being nice gets you nowhere in this world.”
Jane tilted her head. “Not exactly true. Not anymore, either. I’ve met a couple of people along the way. Been pretty nice to them, and them to me. Mostly people are just happy to see other people. There must be, like, what, a few thousand left, total? If that? What do you think?”
It still chilled Noah to hear someone else put it this way. He kind of deludedly hoped he was wrong about the sheer scale of the extinction event. But hearing someone else corroborate it just brought home the reality.
“Where you heading, anyway?” she asked.
Noah shrugged. “Same place as usual.”
“Which is?”
“What does it matter to you?”
Jane shrugged. “Figured two lonely people on the road might as well shack up for a little while.”
Noah looked at her and felt a combination of emotions. He wanted to connect. He really wanted that.
But then the shame.
And the fear…
“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” Noah said.
“Me neither. To be honest, you seem even more psycho than I remember, and you were always pretty psycho back in the day.”
“Thanks.”
“But… I’m telling you something right now. I’m coming with you. I’ve spent enough time on my own. And I get the sense you have, too. So, I’m coming with you, and we’re going to find somewhere together. And if you don’t like it, you’ll have to physically stop me. Or kill me. Which is it gonna be?”
Noah looked into Jane’s eyes. Teasing, almost. He wondered if he could physically stop her. Or kill her. Then he hated himself for such a fucking evil, awful thought, and he sighed and shook his head.
“You’re persistent,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”
“Is that a yes?”
He gritted his teeth. “For now.”
Jane smiled. “Perfect. Shall we hold hands or link arms?”
“Don’t push your fucking luck,” Noah said.
He laughed a little. Found Jane laughing, too.
And for a moment, despite all the resistance, all the uncertainty, he forgot about all his doubts, and he felt pretty glad to have company.
For now.
Chapter Sixteen
Zelda saw the smoke in the distance and raised her sword right away.
It was four days since she’d last seen somebody. Quite recent for her, to be honest. But the further south she travelled, the more she’d seen. The more pockets of life. Not many. Two here. Three there. More bodies than living. And more useless living than useful living.
Mostly fearful people. Terrified people who didn’t know how the fuck to look after themselves.
But when she saw that smoke rising up ahead, something about it made her hackles rise.
“Stop,” she said.
Barney stopped beside her. She didn’t like dogs, as a rule. But Barney had got himself attached to her, back when they were in a group. And when she’d decided there was nothing that group could offer for her anymore—why get lumbered down with a pregnant woman and her weirdo clinger, after all?—she walked off in the night, alone.
Only to find Barney following her.
She shooed him. Told him to get back at first. Because she couldn’t l
ook after a dog. Didn’t know how to.
But as time had passed, she’d grown more used to what she was doing. She’d started to actually enjoy the company of this dog in a weird kind of way. Didn’t chat back like people. Didn’t question her motives or her intentions.
But right now, the pair of them stopped.
There was a campsite up ahead. Caravans, static caravans mostly. A few motorhomes. It smelled of meat in the air. Like there’d been a barbecue recently.
And there were bodies lying in the middle of this grass.
She walked over to them, slowly, hesitantly. Her instinct was to turn around, to walk away. There were bodies everywhere. There was no reason why this place should be any different.
But these bodies. They looked different.
Because they looked… fresher.
Like they’d only recently been killed.
She reached the fire. Saw a scrap of squirrel dangling on a spit around it. Salivated at the thought, Barney clearly getting the same idea, too.
“Wait,” Zelda said. “Don’t touch.”
Barney sat down and whined. Sniffed at the bodies around the fire a little.
She looked at this group. Three of them. A man, a woman, a child. The man and the woman looked about mid-thirties. They looked healthy. Hell, Zelda might say they even looked happy before they’d met their fate.
But their fate was clear.
Throats slit.
Bled out onto the long grass.
Stained the buttercups.
She looked down at this devastation. Then up, into the silence. Just the sound of birds. Of wind. No movement. Peaceful. Warm.
But the sense that someone was close.
Watching.
A sense there was an unknown force on the horizon just waiting to rear its head.
She sighed. Grabbed the squirrel. There wasn’t a lot she could do with the bodies. There were bound to be nutters out there. People were cruel. That was their nature. And that was why it benefited nobody to start rushing back to larger groups.
Better to just survive alone in this world.
She stuffed some of that meat into her mouth. Charred. Burned. Still warm.
Saw Barney looking up at her. Tilting his head either side.
She sighed. Threw him a few scraps. “If you must.”
He wagged his tail and hoovered it up, then looked back up at her. Like he hadn’t even realised he’d eaten anything at all.
“Greedy pig,” she said. “No more for you. That’s your lot. It’s…”
A sudden movement somewhere over her shoulder.
She spun around. Stretched out the blade.
Nobody there.
Just in her head.
Just…
She saw something, then.
Movement. Underneath that static caravan up ahead.
She took a few deep breaths. Gritted her teeth. She knew someone was watching her. She’d had that feeling ever since she got here.
Someone hiding under that caravan.
Whoever had done this.
She crept across the grass. Held out her sword. She didn’t see movement anymore. But she became aware of just how watched she felt. Just how exposed she was.
She didn’t like it.
She wanted to get away from here.
She wanted to just turn and run.
But she kept walking across the grass. Heart racing. Blade raised. Reached the edge of that caravan. Curious, mostly. Curious who’d do something like this to a family. An innocent-looking family.
That poor little girl.
She stepped around the side of the caravan and thought of all the ways she could torture whoever had done this.
And then she saw him.
A little boy.
Long, curly hair.
Terror in his brown eyes.
Tears covering his cheeks and blood speckled across his forehead.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he said. “P—please.”
Chapter Seventeen
Noah sat back on the white leather sofa, and already, he felt tired of not being alone.
It was late. Sun had set a long while ago. Outside, it was dark and rainy. He’d have kept walking a little into the night if it was more decent, but it wasn’t worth it when it was like this. Besides, where was he even going anyway? Sometimes, he just walked to give himself the illusion of direction. The illusion that he was on a journey that had some kind of end point. Everyone needed an end point, after all.
Even though in the back of his mind, he knew he was just drifting from one day to the next.
But now, there was Jane.
He heard her shuffling around on the armchair at the opposite side of this lounge they were in. It was a nice house. Detached. Kind of a new build look to it. Fancy television in the corner. Picture frames filled with photos of a family that looked so idyllic, Noah wondered if it was a show home.
And there was no smell, either. No trace of life. No trace of death. Always a bonus.
Jane tucked into a cold tin of beans. A few of those beans dribbled down her chin, made Noah feel a little sick.
She glared up at him, over the tin. “What?”
Noah shook his head. “Just don’t like messy eaters.”
“Wow. Am I really bothering you that much?”
“I didn’t say you were bothering me. I just said—”
“I remember when I first met you, I had such a crush on you.”
“Jane…”
“But it wasn’t because you’re particularly good looking or whatever.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, you are good looking. But you just seemed… warm. Like you cared. Even though you were suffering and struggling, you cared. I found that attractive. Anyone would.”
Noah looked away from Jane. He didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next. But he could read between the lines and figure out it wasn’t exactly gonna be flattering.
“But,” Noah said.
“You changed. A lot. Gradually, at first. You just got angrier. More detached. You pushed people away until you gave yourself no choice but to walk. But I don’t think that’s you. Not really. You’re a good guy. Caring. I think you’re still under there. I think you’re just… hurting.”
Noah looked out of the window into the darkness of the street outside. The lampposts burned out long ago. He thought about how good things seemed at first. That initial buzz of escaping the compound. Of moving forward, reunited with his friends.
But the more they moved on, the more everything that’d happened ate away at him.
Jasmine.
The immunity.
The mass deaths right across the country.
The rules changing, all over again, and the sheer hopelessness of it all.
“What are you now?” Noah asked, not looking Jane in the eye. “A psychotherapist?”
“Actually, I was studying psychology at Birmingham before all this started. Something you’d know about me if you’d ever cared to ask. Or maybe you did ask, but you just weren’t listening.”
“Yeah, well. Sometimes people don’t listen because they’ve got their own shit going on.”
“What happened in Bolton, Noah?”
Noah tightened his fists. The memory of heading out there that day. Needing to find them.
His grandma. Her home in Bolton. Needing to get there. Needing to find her. Needing to know, seeing as they were so close.
He’d walked down those empty streets he used to play on as a kid. Council houses either side of the road, empty, quieter than ever.
He stood at the end of the driveway. Looked up at that brown-bricked building ahead of him.
And he felt sick. Totally sick.
Because his parents’ car was right in front of this house, too.
He walked down the cracked tiles of the pathway. Through the overgrown grass, a lawnmower lost somewhere in the middle of it.
He opened the front door.
The smell.<
br />
Usually, the smell that hit him when he reached his grandparents’ was the smell of a delicious Sunday roast. The sound of the football scores coming in, a little too loudly on the old CRT television. Granddad perched in front of it, squinting at it on a little stool.
Grandma somewhere in the kitchen, cooking, getting everything ready.
But that day was different.
The sour smell of rot hung in the air.
He stepped into the lounge. Saw the old furniture. Heard the tick of the grandfather clock, so soothing. Saw Grandma’s old VHS collection—old war films were her favourite—stacked in the corner of the room by the television, mould growing up the cream walls by their side.
And then he saw her sitting in her chair.
Grandma. Gaunt. Grey-skinned. Skeletal. The flies still buzzing around her.
And then at the kitchen table, he saw something else.
Two others.
His parents.
“I couldn’t go in there,” Noah said. “I… I couldn’t move. I know I should’ve. I know I should’ve gone over. Laid them down. Buried them. But I was scared. I was so scared. So I turned around. I ran out of that house and back to camp. Eddie said something to me that night. Something that just… tipped me over the edge. And I hate myself for reacting the way I did. But I knew it was game over the second I told him they were a burden. All of you were a burden. I knew there was no choice. But really I… I was just hurting myself.”
Jane didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Not for a while.
And then she did something.
She got up.
Walked over to the sofa.
Sat beside Noah and put a hand on his arm.
“There,” she said. “Doesn’t that feel better off your chest?”
He wanted to tell her to fuck off.
But instead, he just let her hand rest there.
And he smiled.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said.
“And you too.”
They sat there together. Quiet. Unmoving. Silent.
But it was just nice.
Just so nice.
He didn’t see the figures standing outside the darkened window, staring in, watching.
