Collapse (After the Storm Book 2)

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  After the Storm, Book 2

  Ryan Casey

  Contents

  Bonus Content

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

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  After The Storm, Book 2

  Chapter One

  Callum Hartson never ran fast in his adult life. Never really saw the need to.

  But right now, he legged it. He legged it quicker than he’d done in a long, long time.

  ’Cause he knew what was chasing him.

  Who was chasing him.

  The night was pitch black. Real pitch black. Probably the one realisation everyone had in common since the world’s electricity and power supplies collapsed around a year ago. Just how much darker the night seemed. And sure, it was nice seeing the light from the stars above, and the vibrancy of the moon. It made a change to the usual light pollution that plagued the world.

  But right now, Callum wanted nothing more than a little light pollution to guide his way away from his pursuers.

  He felt sweat dripping down his forehead, and he tasted it on his lips. As well as tasting blood. Blood from the chapped corners of his mouth, dug into by a gag for so, so long. His legs were weak and shaky. He used to have a bit of weight to him. Nothing above average, around twelve stone, so pretty perfect for a man of six foot.

  Now, he’d be surprised if he was anything over nine stone.

  He’d lost a lot of weight in captivity. But he hadn’t died in captivity.

  And that made him special. Very special.

  Because so many people he’d got to know had either died of starvation or of…

  Well. He didn’t want to go into that.

  Just that there was a reason Callum lost a load of weight while in captivity. A reason why he didn’t accept the food they offered him.

  ’Cause he knew what fate lay ahead for him if he did, and he’d rather take the starvation route.

  He heard the tree branches rustling around him in the breeze. In the corners of his eyes, he saw movement as those branches shook, as the autumn leaves crunched beneath his feet. He could see things everywhere, and hear whispers. He knew they were close. He knew they were closing in on him. He knew they were…

  No. He couldn’t think that way. He’d escaped, and nobody knew he’d escaped. He’d had a good head start. He didn’t have to worry.

  For the first time since he’d started running, Callum leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. He gasped, a stitch biting at his chest. The taste of sweat and blood got thicker and thicker. And as it did, the memories came flooding back. The memories he was trying to hold back, to repress. But now, as much as he wanted to repress them, he couldn’t. They were so deeply cut into his system that he couldn’t run away from them any longer, like scars on his psyche.

  The beatings.

  The force-feeding, which always ended in the taste of vomit.

  And the smell…

  It was the smell that made Callum’s skin shiver the most. Because that smell was always a reminder of what their fate was going to be, inevitably.

  The smell was worse when combined with the laughter of the group. With the laughter and the normality and the celebration.

  Callum wasn’t sure he’d ever get those smells, those sounds, out of his mind.

  In fact, screw that. He was absolutely sure he wouldn’t.

  Nobody got over the sounds of death, especially when you’d been surrounded by its chorus so many times.

  Callum gasped, his stitch easing. He thought about Mary and little Joe. God, his Joe. He missed him so damned much. He didn’t know his fate. Not exactly. He just hoped that wherever he was in this world, he’d fallen in with some good people.

  But he doubted that very much. ’Cause he wasn’t sure there were many good people left at all.

  Mary, on the other hand…

  He knew exactly what’d happened to her.

  He remembered the sounds. First, screaming.

  Then he remembered the smell. And when he caught a whiff of that smell, there was a strange… intimacy to it.

  Because he knew that smell was the smell of her. He’d just never smelled her like that before. And in a way, in a horrible, sick kind of way, that made them closer.

  Then he’d heard the group’s laughter and their joy and celebration and knives and forks rattling, and he knew right then that his wife was nothing more than food to be digested, to be shat out.

  She was going to be excrement.

  And that almost made Callum crack.

  Almost.

  Because he’d found an opportunity. He’d caught a break. One of the newer group members had shown a sign of weakness, and he’d let Callum and a few of the other captives run.

  Some of the captives had fallen. Some had got caught.

  But Callum saw his chance to climb the fence, to throw himself over it, and then he’d run into the woods and hadn’t once looked back.

  That was… well, it had to be ten minutes ago.

  And now he was here, alone in the woods. A life of his own ahead of him. A life of survival ahead of him.

  He thought about where to go, his mind spinning. What to do. How to survive. He’d done okay up to now, but he’d been part of a bigger group. A group that’d fallen apart when his captors attacked.

  He’d grown to calling his captors Hungries. But he didn’t even like to name them anymore. Because naming them made them seem more real. It made them—

  He heard rustling to his right.

  He looked up. Squinted into the dark. He’d definitely heard something this time. It wasn’t just a trick of the mind either, or a trick of the darkness.

  He’d heard rustling.

  Footsteps, maybe.

  Whispers… maybe.

  He swallowed a big lump down his dry throat and started to creep closely forwards. It was just as dark to whoever was after him as it was to him. So if he kept quiet, laid low, he could creep his way out of this.

  Then he heard footsteps ahead of him.

  He stopped. Froze, completely. Up above, the light of the moon shone down, and suddenly he felt very exposed. He longed for that cover of darkness again.
Total darkness. In a sinister kind of way, he wished he was chained to that wall again, which he could press himself up to and wrap his hands over his head and cover his eyes and pretend he was somewhere far, far away.

  But then he heard a whistle to his right, and he knew his days were numbered.

  He started to run to his left.

  Something tripped him up.

  Or rather, some one tripped him up.

  He went flying face first into the twigs and the mud below.

  He waited for someone to grab him. For someone to turn him over, put a knife in his belly and finish him off.

  But they didn’t.

  He gritted his teeth. Thought of Mary. Thought of Joe. He prayed to them and to whoever was up there that he’d be okay. He prayed he’d get out of this one. That they’d help look over him. Not that he didn’t want to be with them. He’d thought about opting out of life a few times since they’d disappeared.

  He just didn’t want to go this way.

  Because this way was terrifying.

  He rolled over onto his back, half hopeful that his mind had just imagined all the sounds and the whistling and the movement.

  He hoped he’d just fallen over a tree stump. Nothing more.

  Then he saw the dark silhouettes in the moonlight.

  There were four of them. Maybe more behind. And when Callum looked across them, he knew that no matter how far he ran, no matter how much he tried to get away, they had him now. They had him.

  So all he could think to do was beg.

  “Please. You’d have done the same. You’d have—”

  “Hush, now, Callum. Hush now.”

  That voice. The one that gave him nightmares. The one he’d heard so many times.

  Callum felt tears rolling down his face. He felt all the fight drifting from his body. “Just have some mercy. I—I had to try. You know I had to try.”

  Silence.

  Then, the man with the burned face leaned forward and looked right into Callum’s eyes.

  “I know you did. I know.”

  He put a soft, gentle hand on the back of Callum’s head.

  “But you know what we do to runaway piggies. And hey. You’re skinny. But you’ve still got some meat on that arse of yours. Come on.”

  “Pl—”

  Callum felt a crack over the head.

  Then, he saw nothing but darkness.

  He would’ve hated to have died in that moment. A moment of fear. A moment lacking so much dignity.

  But it was far, far superior to the way he was going to die, as the Hungries stoked the fire, sharpened their blades, and licked their lips…

  Chapter Two

  There were few things that could scare me more than going to my daughter’s room and seeing she wasn’t in her bed.

  It was morning, which meant by definition she should be in her bedroom, still sleeping. Or maybe sitting up, reading a book. She never went missing. Never. Sure, there were other kids her age living in Heathlock, a low-security prison that we’d converted to a living space when the world collapsed. Quite a large place, with farm areas attached to it, and a small population of around fifty. All ages, all races. We had to defend it sometimes, of course. That’s what you got when you were in control of a pretty enviable piece of land, especially from the city-types, who realised this kind of place was where the real power was now the world had collapsed.

  It’d be quite something if everyone were as easy to look after as Olivia was.

  But this morning, she wasn’t in her bed. Which meant she was missing.

  My Olivia was never missing.

  So something was wrong.

  I searched under her covers, my heart pounding. Then I went over to the window, peered outside. I looked under the bed. Then I rushed back to the door and looked up and down the corridor, where many people were still sleeping in the old cells—or rather, rooms, now.

  “Olivia!”

  I heard a few curses. I knew I’d probably woken a few people up. But I didn’t care. Olivia was way more important than their sleep.

  “Olivia!”

  I raced down the corridor, over towards the breakfast hall. On the way, though, I stopped, and I banged on a few doors.

  The first one was Mike’s room. He was a couple of years older than Olivia. He opened the door, sleepy-eyed, his stark ginger hair burning into my retinas. He was one of Olivia’s best friends. As far as I was aware, anyway. She hung around with a lot of people in here. Seemed like her best friends changed every day.

  “Mike,” I said. “You seen Olivia?”

  I could tell from the look on his face that he hadn’t. But I had to hear the answer for myself.

  A door to the right of Mike’s room opened. Bill and Caitlyn stepped out. They were Mike’s parents. Although Mike didn’t look a thing like any of them. Not sure where the ginger hair had come from.

  “Everything okay, Will?” Bill asked. He rubbed his stumpy arms. He always looked ready for a fight. I wasn’t keen on the guy.

  But right now, I had to be co-operative.

  I rubbed my hands through my hair. “It’s Olivia. She… she’s gone.”

  Bill narrowed his eyes. “Gone? Gone where?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I don’t know, Bill. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen her.”

  I forced a smile. “Thanks. I’d better get—”

  “I saw her.”

  The voice came from behind.

  I turned around and saw a young girl peeking behind the door opposite Mike’s room. She was tiny, a little younger than Olivia for sure. She had long, brown hair. I recalled seeing this girl a few times now, hanging around. She’d insisted she didn’t want her hair cut. That she was going to let it grow until the power was back and Nana could cut it again. I remembered seeing the guilty expressions on the faces of her parents as they couldn’t quite bring themselves to share the news that Nana probably wasn’t with them anymore.

  She was sweet. But I’d seen her hanging around with the kids Olivia didn’t get on with a few times, too. The Bullies, Olivia called them.

  So I wasn’t sure how seriously to take her right now.

  “Claire, right?” I asked.

  The girl nodded. She wouldn’t look me directly in the eye.

  “And where did you see Olivia?”

  She lifted a finger and shyly pointed down to the end of the corridor.

  “She… she went to the food hall?”

  For the first time, Claire lifted her head and looked right into my eyes. I could tell from her uncertainty to say anything that my daughter hadn’t gone to the food hall.

  I crouched down, right opposite Claire. “Claire, I need you to be honest with me. If you saw Olivia and you know where she went, I want you to tell me. Please. Because this isn’t a game. This is serious. This—”

  “She wanted to see what was outside the fences.”

  Those words wounded me. They actually made me lose balance, and I tumbled out of my crouch onto my backside.

  Olivia had gone outside.

  I’d told her so many times about the dangers of going outside. A guy called Stu had gone missing only the other day. But mostly, I’d seen the dangers of the outside so many times myself. I’d seen that world. What it could turn people into. What it could turn me and every man and woman into.

  It was a violent world. And it wasn’t a world I wanted Olivia to be a part of. It felt like her just stepping out of the fences was enough to taint her with some of the evils from outside.

  I hadn’t been outside in a long time. Almost a year, in fact. And as bad as things were a year ago, much had changed outside in that space of time. For the majority of unfortunate people, they would’ve suffered starvation, been taken out in conflicts. Some people estimated that nine out of ten citizens would die within the first year of an EMP event. The people left would be those strong enough to build a sanctuary of their own, and salvage working technology and supplies. />
  But those people weren’t necessarily all good people.

  Yet still, it was the past that bothered me more than anything. The things I’d seen out there in the early days when I was forced to travel down to Birmingham in search of my wife and daughter, then right back up this way again… I’d seen things that nobody should have to see in this day and age. I’d seen what society looked like when it collapsed; when it caved in.

  And that’d only been a matter of weeks into the collapse.

  I knew the world was bound to be a much more violent, much more evil place now that badness had been given the time to fester. Now that groups had found the time to spread their virus-like wings.

  Society was gone. In its place, pure badness.

  And Olivia was outside in that world.

  I heard people saying things to me in the corridor, and I stood up, ignored them and ran outside.

  I heard barking when I got outside. I knew Bouncer was there, in his kennels with the rest of the dogs. I usually went over to him first thing, gave him a big hug and a treat, and let him out to roam most of the time, seeing as he was so well behaved. But this morning I didn’t even have the time to glance at him.

  I was too focused on the fences.

  The fences that Olivia was behind.

  “Olivia!” I called out.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw Kesha running towards me. She’d been the first person I met in this group at Heathlock, so I got on with her better than anyone around here. We were close; there was no denying that. It was awkward between us because I still hadn’t totally got over Kerry, my ex-wife. I didn’t know where she’d gone. Whether she’d made it or not. Just that she’d last been seen in that awful train cabin with Olivia. Then, she’d fled. She’d promised Olivia she’d go back for her.

  Then, gunshots.

  And no sign of her since.

  As for Kesha, right now I didn’t even acknowledge her, either. Instead, I just kept on running to that fence. Running to the part of the fence outside that the other kids sometimes sneaked out to. Towards that place of evil.

  “Will?” Kesha called. “What’s wrong?”