Sunlight

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  What Next from Ryan Casey?

  About the Author

  About this Book

  Copyright

  SUNLIGHT

  ***

  Ryan Casey

  ***

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  ONE

  Jack Simm knew something was wrong with his ex-girlfriend when he saw her stabbing her landlord.

  He’d driven over here to her bungalow in Broughton when he heard about the killings on the news. Stories of people—people with no previous record of violence—just picking up knives and stabbing people. Gang wars flaring with no provocation, no real reason. School playgrounds amass with brutal beatings.

  He stood outside Candice’s bungalow. Stared in through the glass of the front door. She was hunched over her landlord, Mr. Biggs, wearing a white t-shirt that had been splattered with blood. At first, Jack thought maybe they were screwing. Candice had a bit of a reputation since he’d left her.

  But then he saw the knife in her hand rising and falling and rising and falling in and out of Mr. Biggs, and he knew they weren’t screwing.

  The heat of the sun burned down on his already hot neck. A sickly taste invaded his taste buds; the dull remnants of a JD and Coke or nineteen the night before. As his heart picked up, he wondered what to do. What to say. What could Mr. Biggs have possibly have said to upset Candice so much? He knew she had a temper but… this. This was more than a temper.

  He didn’t have much more time to consider because she looked up at him through the window glass, knife elevated in the air.

  Jack stared into her eyes, and he knew something was seriously wrong, if he hadn’t already known that. There was a dullness to her blue eyes. A glassiness, like some blinds had closed over the colours and turned down their contrast. He always used to like her eyes. Always used to love staring into them while he fucked her.

  Now, he didn’t like them. They were more like her eyes when she was pissed at him.

  Very, very pissed.

  “Candice, I…” His heart pounded. He couldn’t think of what to say. The little suburban bungalow-laden side street that Candice lived down was empty. Sirens blared in the distance. Helicopters crackled through the sky.

  He knew it must be here now too.

  Candice, she must be one of them, whatever they were.

  “You should get the fuck away, Jack,” Candice said. Her bony fingers tightened around the handle of the knife, like someone was in control of her body. Her voice was weak, raspy, like she was losing control of it.

  “The… the kids, Candice. Sam and Jenny. I need to know where—”

  “Never fucking cared any… any other time…”

  She rose to her feet. Her legs shook as she did, and her hand got even tighter around the knife handle. When she stood up, her head twitched to one side, and Jack swore he heard something crack from inside her neck.

  “What’s… The stuff on the news,” Jack said. He placed his hand on the door handle, but he had no real intention of stepping inside, in coming face to face with Candice. “I… Candice, I need to know the kids are safe. I—what’s the guy you’re seeing called? Simon, was it?”

  Candice’s neck twitched some more. Blood dripped from her knife, onto the ravaged dead body of Mr. Biggs.

  Jack just took in deep breaths of the crisp early autumn air. Got a whiff of smoke as he did, but that didn’t matter. He just had to stay cool. Had to keep calm.

  “They’re… they’re in their bedrooms.”

  Jack’s stomach sank. Shit. Shit, he didn’t need this.

  A smash, across the road. The sound of a window breaking, a woman screaming, a chase of some kind through the street. Car horns honking.

  He looked back through Candice’s window glass and he saw her crying. Saw the blueness back in her eyes.

  “You… you need to take them, Jack. You need to… to… to protect them—”

  Her neck snapped to the side again. She clutched the knife tighter. Her eyes fuzzed over.

  Another shout from across the street. More screams. Sirens and burglar alarms blaring. The sun feeling hotter than ever on Jack’s neck.

  “Candice, you know I can’t…”

  When he looked back inside, Jack saw that Candice had gone.

  He brushed his hand up his right arm. Took a look through the windows—curtained, no way of seeing what was inside. At the end of the street, he saw three people watching him. Not chasing, just watching. All glassy-eyed. All covered in blood.

  He turned around. Looked at his grey Honda Civic. He knew he had to get away. He knew he had to find somewhere safe. Because the news—the news had said that what was happening was terrible. Some kind of rage, or something like that.

  And he’d taken it with a pinch of salt.

  But now it was here… it was real.

  He power-walked down Candice’s pathway and towards his car, pretending he’d never even been here, never known about what Candice had done, never had any idea his kids were—

  “Jack!”

  The voice came from behind him. It made a weight drop inside his chest, as screaming and sirens and smashing glass and the smell of burning all got louder, smellier, more prominent.

  He turned around. Saw Candice at the door on her knees.

  And in front of her were two kids.

  A boy and a girl, both nine years of age. Or would they be ten now? The boy looked very pale, couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder at the body of Mr. Biggs on the bungalow floor. He had light brown hair, just like Jack had back when he was a kid.

  The girl, she was crying. Still in her elephant-print pyjamas. Holding a teddy under her arm.

  Not looking at Mr. Biggs’ body though. Just at Jack.

  Just at her dad.

  Candice crawled back through the door. Her muscles twitched, her blue eyes switched between blue and hazy and blue again. “Take… take them. Look after… keep… safe.”

  Jack stood there completely frozen. His vision blurred, as his kids, Sam and Jenny, looked back at him, and as he looked back at them and wondered what to say, what to do.

  “Candice, I can’t—”

  “Take them, Jack. Take t
hem. Be a…”

  And then Candice shut the door and she was behind glass.

  Jenny turned around. Banged on the window. “Mum, what’s… what are you doing, Mum?” Her voice was quivery. Weak. “Mum please. Please stop this. Please.”

  Jack gulped. Dampened his dry throat, as the chaos ensued around him. The people covered in blood at the opposite end of the street, they were walking his way now. Walking fast.

  “Kids, you… come with me.”

  “Mum!” Sam banged on the glass. He was even more panicky than his twin sister now. “Let us in, Mum! There’s bad people coming!”

  Jack walked up to his kids. Took a deep breath. “Kids, you need to—”

  “Mum, please!” Jenny cried.

  Jack looked to the left.

  Bloodied people close now. Picking up in speed. More people coming from behind them too.

  He looked back at the kids. Looked at the glass. Looked through, as Candice twitched away in a pool of blood on the floor. Watched her eyes haze over completely, her hands waving around like she was having a fit.

  Her kids crying and begging for her to come back even though she was already gone.

  He took another deep breath. Smelled petrol. Did the only thing he could do.

  He grabbed the kids by their arms and he dragged them down their driveway and towards his Honda Civic.

  He listened to them scream. Listened to them shout out, felt them try to wriggle away, even as their mum banged away on the bungalow window, scratched away with her fake nails.

  He threw them into the back seat of the Honda Civic. Climbed into the front. Stared up the engine, blood-soaked runners behind him getting thicker and faster.

  He turned the key with his shaking hand and started the car as the children’s screams and cries and struggles got louder and more desperate.

  As he sped away from Crescent Square, the last thing he saw in his rear-view mirror was a bloodied Candice chasing his car down the street, knife in hand, and not a glimmer of humanity in her eyes.

  TWO

  “Kids, you… do you like music? Something like that? The radio or… or something?”

  Jack Simm was stressed out enough as it was as he drove down Woodplumpton Road and out of Broughton. He’d just narrowly missed colliding into three, four people running through the road. Black smoke oozed from semi-detached houses, the smell of it lingering in his nose, making him feel queasy. Didn’t help that he could still taste last night’s booze, either.

  But what especially didn’t help was the sound of his children’s wailing on his back seat.

  He peeked in the rear-view mirror. Looked at Sam, tears streaming his cheeks, little blue Chelsea FC shirt stained with blood from his mum’s hands. And then he looked at Jenny. She was covering her bony face with her hands, sobbing into them.

  And then he looked back at the road and had to swerve fast to stop himself flying into a sprinting person.

  He narrowly missed them, their fingernails scraping against the side of the car. He pounded down on the accelerator, breathing fast, trying to cope with the smells and sounds and the whole fucked-up-ness of this entire situation.

  He tried to deal with the fact that he was a dad now.

  For the first real time in his life, he was a dad.

  He switched on the radio. Twiddled around with the buttons, tried to find a working channel. All of them just buzzed with static. The occasional one had a glimmer of sound—emergency news reports urging people to stay in their homes—but they soon fizzed away, just like the houses lining the road fizzed away to the flames, the smoke.

  “Okay, so… so no radio,” Jack said. He opened his glove compartment, keeping his eyes on the road. Searched around a load of pirated CDs he’d downloaded from the Internet and burned to disks at various stages of his life. “How about, er… how about some Robbie Williams? Everyone likes a bit of Robbie Williams? Right?”

  Still no response from his kids. Sam kept on crying, calling for his mum. Jenny kept her hands over her face.

  “No Robbie Williams. Okay.”

  He threw the disk back in the glove compartment and carried on driving.

  He’d never asked to be a dad. That was just something that happened. One of those accidents that happened in life, like getting too drunk, or being caught with class A drugs. Yes, that had happened to him once upon a time, too. Four years ago, in fact. And yes, he’d served his time. He was very sorry, all that.

  But he was out now. He was free. He was enjoying life again.

  “Was” being the key word here.

  He took another peek in his rear-view mirror. His children. His own, actual flesh and blood. But children he hadn’t seen for, what, four or five years? Was it a bad thing that he didn’t know their age?

  No. He wasn’t their dad, not really. Mick from the pub once told him that there was more to being a father than biology. This Simon guy that Candice was seeing, he had to be more like their real dad.

  He was the one who’d have to look after them.

  “Kids, I… Simon. Where’s this Simon live?”

  Sam made eye contact with Jack in the mirror. Eye contact with a sort of knowing twinge to it, like he knew exactly who Jack was but just couldn’t dare say it.

  “I’m trying to help you out,” Jack said. No idea what else to say to calm down kids. He wasn’t a father. Not really. And that’s the way it was staying. So how was he supposed to know how to handle situations like this? They’d just seen their mum stab their landlord to death before pushing them out of their own home to be with a stranger who was their own dad. How did anyone handle a situation like that? It was hardly due course to put on a clown mask and make them laugh.

  “Look, kids,” Jack said, keeping his eyes on the road, trying not to look at the burning houses on his left, or listen to the screams and the breaking glass of windows. The sunlight peered down on the windscreen, hotter than the standard early September sun. “Simon. He’s… he’ll look out for you. I promise I’m just trying to get you there. Get you there to safety. So if you… if you have any idea where he lives, that would—”

  “Barnacre. He lives on Barnacre.”

  The little girl’s voice took Jack by surprise. He had to double-check in his rear-view mirror to see he’d heard correctly.

  Jenny was looking right at him. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. Her bottom lip twitched.

  But she’d spoken to him. He’d heard her speak to him for the first time since she was a toddler.

  He cleared his throat. Looked back at the road. “Barnacre. Close around Sherwood. Right. We’ll… It shouldn’t take too long to get you there. And then we’ll… you’ll be safe.”

  “What happened to Mum?”

  Little Sam’s voice. Made Jack’s heart sink, as unattached as he was trying to be.

  “Your mum, she’s… Look, it’s best if you speak to Simon. He’ll… he’ll be able to help you better than me. I’m just… I’m just the taxi man. Just think of it that way. You’ll be okay if you… if you don’t cry. Just stay… stay quiet. Please.”

  Funnily enough, the kids did go silent when Jack asked them this. Maybe that’s how he should just have played it all along. Open and honest.

  Maybe he should just tell them he was their dad.

  But no. That’d just add too many complications. Too many unnecessary complications.

  Just get them to Simon. Then get them off your hands.

  And then go your own way, like you always have. Like you always will.

  Jack drove over the motorway bridge leading towards the Fulwood area. If he was lucky, and avoided any wild traffic like he’d seen back in Broughton, he’d be able to get the kids to Simon in the next ten minutes. Then he’d be able to plan his next step. His next move.

  A move that likely involved alcohol at the end of it.

  “Woah. Look at all the cars, Jen.”

  Sam’s excited little voice made Jack look out over the motorway bridge, as much as he was tryi
ng to avoid any outside surroundings that might freak him out too much.

  But this… this was something he couldn’t help but stare at.

  The motorway was absolutely filled to the brim with cars and vans and trucks and lorries. Filled to the brim, and not moving an inch.

  Doors were open. People were running between the cars, jumping over them, climbing and standing on top of vans.

  They were running from something.

  They were running from those running towards them.

  “Are they what our mum turned into?” Sam asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jenny said. “‘Course they are. They look angry just like Mum did.”

  Jack blinked away the water in his eyes. Stared at a man clawing his way up the side of a lorry, and people—no, not people, but whatever they were, clawing at his leg, tugging him back down as he screamed away.

  He turned to look at the road ahead when the man’s leg came close to being torn off.

  When he did, he had to swerve to the right immediately.

  There was a woman in the street in front of him. Blood splattered all down her front. She was holding a wrench, which was tainted with bits of meat.

  The car veered off to the right. Jack tried to control it. Tried to spin it back onto the road, but it was heading towards the trees, heading towards the grass verge at the side of the motorway, heading into nowhere.

  He held his breath.

  Tried to brake, as the kids screamed again, as the car spun onto its side.

  And then he felt a bang to his head and he saw nothing but blackness.

  THREE

  It was the smell of petrol that woke him.

  At first, Jack thought he was back at home in his little rented house and he’d left the stove on, something like that. The splitting headache, that must be from the amount of drink that he’d consumed the night before. He was used to that feeling.

  But then he heard the shouting and the crying and he knew something wasn’t right.

  He opened his eyes. His vision was blurred, and it was dark. There was a little light peeking through ahead of him. Grass, and what looked like a road.

  The shouting. The screaming. It was coming from behind him.

  He tried to shift to look over his shoulder but he was stuck. Completely stuck under whatever it was that was clamping him down. Had he had a stroke, or something? Josh from the pub used to tell him to curb his drinking or he’d end up in a hospital bed some day. Maybe today was the day.