The World After, Book 2 Page 3

  I didn’t even know exactly where I was going.

  I walked across the street. The silence of the place was even more striking now I was out here at this time. I squinted all around, to try and see some kind of evidence of where the scream came from.

  I held on to my knife at all times.

  I was about to turn around and look back at my home when I saw a door ajar, right ahead.

  It was a house belonging to a family. The Wilsons, I think they were called. There were three of them—a woman, Emily, a man, Phil, their son, Arnold.

  They definitely weren’t the type to go wandering out and about at night.

  I slowly walked over to that ajar front door. The closer I got, the more uncertain I grew about this whole thing.

  Just turn back.

  Just go back home.

  Leave it for someone else.

  But before I could bring myself to turn back, I saw movement, and I heard a whimper.

  My body froze, and the hairs on my arms stood on end.

  There was someone lying right there in the hallway.

  I moved even closer, my throat dry. I held on to the knife with my shaking hand.

  “Please. Leave us alone. Please.”

  I realised right then that the person lying in front of me, in the hall of her own home, was Emily.

  She was bleeding from her stomach. The blood reflected in the light of the moon and the stars.

  But even worse than that?

  I could see two more bodies on the stairs.

  I didn’t have to see their faces to know it was Phil and Arnold.

  “Leave. Leave me. Please.”

  I crouched down towards her. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Go—go away. Please!”

  I searched my pockets. No bandages. I had to get her back to our place as soon as possible. Jenny was a nurse. We could deal with the rest later.

  “It’s me,” I said, putting my hand on her cold, shaking fist. “It’s Scott from across the road. I’m here to help you.”

  I forced a smile, then I wiped her sweaty hair from her forehead.

  “Save yourself, Scott. Get—get away from this place and save yourself.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about at first.

  Then it clicked.

  She knew exactly who I was.

  And she was telling me to go away for a reason…

  I heard a creaking.

  And then, I heard footsteps.

  I looked up, right at the ceiling.

  There was someone upstairs.

  The people who’d killed Phil and Arnold were upstairs.

  And I was stuck in the house with a wounded Emily…

  Chapter Seven

  I crouched opposite Emily as she struggled for her life and listened to the footsteps creaking on the floor above.

  The darkness seemed to suddenly thicken, like it was wrapping its arms around me, sinking its claws into me. I could see the bodies of Phil and Arnold on the stairs, splayed out and blood-soaked, completely still. And as selfish as it was, as I looked at them, it made me think that this could’ve been my people. It could’ve been Hannah; it could’ve been Remy.

  But it wasn’t. And I had a duty to make sure Emily didn’t die along with her family.

  I reached my hands underneath her. She was heavy, and I wasn’t exactly the strongest of guys physically, but I had to try.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s… it’s going to be okay. I promise you.”

  She let out a whimper as blood puddled out of her stomach.

  My knees weakened. I lifted her slower. “Please. Please try to be quiet. I know it’s hard but… but if you aren’t, they’ll hear you.”

  She put a hand on my face. It was cold and shaky. “Save yourself.”

  I felt total pity for this woman I barely knew. She had stared horror in the face in the form of her family falling, and now she was telling a guy who was as good as a stranger to save himself. I wanted to, that was the hardest part. I wanted to run back to my people, because this was the outside world, a world I wasn’t supposed to interfere in, for interference could only bring chaos.

  But no. I couldn’t just give up and leave her behind.

  I steadied my grip and looked her right in the eye. “I know you’re scared. And I know you’re in pain. But I’m going to get you out of this and back to my place. I promise.”

  She looked at me with a mixture of apathy and disappointment, like surviving wasn’t something at the top of her list of priorities.

  I couldn’t exactly blame her. She’d just watched her family die, including her young son. I knew how painful it was to lose those closest.

  I heard voices upstairs.

  Voices, getting nearer.

  I froze as I crouched there, Emily in my arms.

  “I swear they have more than this. I saw ’em.”

  “Are you sure it was this place you saw?”

  “Definitely this place. That’s why I was so shocked it wasn’t well guarded, y’know.”

  I held my breath and my stance as those voices echoed around above us. My heart pounded. I knew I had a choice to make.

  Wait for the right moment to sneak out of here with Emily.

  Or make a break for it and to hell with the consequences.

  The longer time went on, and the more I heard those voices nearing, the more certain I grew that this wasn’t a time for sticking around.

  I put a hand over Emily’s mouth.

  Her eyes widened with fear.

  “Trust me,” I whispered.

  Then I used all the strength I had in the right side of my body to lift her up.

  It wasn’t as easy as I’d expected—and I hadn’t expected it to be easy. Lifting a person really was hard work after all.

  What was even more disconcerting was the little cries Emily was letting out.

  But I just had to focus.

  I just had to get out of here.

  I dragged her along, fast giving up on the hopes of carrying her out of here. It wasn’t going to happen that way, not anytime soon.

  She cried as I pulled her, and I felt so bad for doing so.

  But I had to get her out of this place.

  I had to get her across the street.

  I had to—

  “Whoa whoa whoa. What do we have here?”

  My stomach sank. I didn’t want to turn around, but I knew I had no choice.

  At the top of the stairs, I could see three people.

  All of them were holding knives.

  One of them had a gun.

  “Please,” I said. “She’s—she’s no harm. Just let her—”

  “You don’t give the commands around here, mister. And if you think you do, well you’ve got another thing coming. Now let her go, and we might let you walk. At least, we’ll give you a chance.”

  I looked down at Emily. I could barely make out her features in the darkness, but I could tell the life was fading from her.

  “Let her go,” the man said. He raised his gun. “Or I’ll put you down with her and see who dies of blood loss first.”

  “And if you do that, you’ll regret it.”

  I didn’t know where the voice came from at first.

  Not until I looked over my shoulder and saw Hannah and Remy by my sides, with Jenny not far behind.

  There was a pause, then. Silence, as the other people tried to figure out how to handle the changed circumstances.

  “There’s two ways this can go,” Hannah said. “My friend back there has a gun pointed at you. You can get the hell out of this place right now, or she will shoot. That’s my final offer.”

  I heard a few chuckles from the men. The guy with the gun cleared his throat. “She is a feisty one, isn’t she? I reckon she’d be an asset back at camp.”

  “Your time is running out. I’m losing patience.”

  “Okay,” the man with the gun said, raising his hands. “Okay.”

  He took a few steps d
own the stairs.

  “Only I’m not sure I believe you have a gun.”

  He took another step.

  “Do you want us to prove it?” Hannah asked.

  Another step. “If you had a gun, you’d have used it already. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat, the tension of the situation at breaking point. “Then what are you still doing here?” I asked.

  The man, whose pockmarked face I could just about make out now in the light of the moon, tilted his head and smiled. “Oh I’m just here to finish what I started.”

  He lifted the gun and fired a shot into Emily’s skull.

  Dread filled my stomach. My jaw dropped. Everything went still.

  I looked down and saw that Emily was gone, well and truly gone.

  “We’ll be seeing you around,” the pockmarked guy said.

  Then, he ran over to the back window, together with his two companions, and disappeared into the night.

  I saw Hannah and the others run past, try to catch them, their lack of a gun exposed after all.

  But all I could do was crouch beside Emily as the warmth left her body.

  On the stairs, I saw the perfect bodies of her husband, of her son, and then I saw her eyes, glassy and wide.

  Just months ago, this would’ve been impossible.

  They would’ve been sat at home, in front of the television. Because things like this didn’t happen. Not in the old world. Things like this might’ve happened overseas, in conflict zones, but not here, not in Britain.

  I closed Emily’s eyelids and took a deep breath.

  Then, I stood.

  This wasn’t Britain anymore.

  It wasn’t the old world anymore.

  This was somewhere new.

  And it was tearing itself apart one innocent person at a time.

  Chapter Eight

  One day after the attack and we were still clueless about the group who had killed the Wilson family.

  It was late morning. I was outside, Jenny by my side. The sun was beaming down. It seemed to be getting increasingly warm the more time went on. I knew it was just a false hope though; an illusion. After all, things would take a turn for the worse. This late summer would make way for autumn, and then autumn would make way for winter.

  Winter was something I was dreading. It was something everyone was surely dreading. After all, summer had a way of casting an illusion over everyone, convincing people that no matter what the circumstances were, things could always get brighter.

  But winter was going to be long, and it was going to be dark, and it was going to be cold.

  Surely of those who had managed to somehow beat the odds and survive this far, winter was going to take out another mass of them.

  But right now it was sunny, and it was warm, so we had to take advantage of that. All around us, there were trees. We only went into the woods to hunt and to gather water from the streams. Otherwise, we didn’t just traipse on into it. After all, there could be many dangers in the woods. Dangers we didn’t want to face up to; that we didn’t want to cross.

  The trees were tall, towering above. There was a total silence other than the chirping and singing of birds, getting along with their lives. I could feel blisters on the bottom of my feet, but I was used to those now, so I just pushed on through them, taking deep lungfuls of the fresh air and counting my blessings that at least some things were different.

  But it was kind of like the old joke. A man loses both his legs in a car accident. One bonus? He’ll still be able to sell his slippers.

  Every little advantage of this world was massively outweighed by the negatives.

  “Are you actually looking or are you just gonna spend this whole trip staring into space?”

  I glanced around at Jenny. She was walking right ahead of me. Her dark hair was long, and she walked with over-extended strides. She was very skinny. Not as skinny as when we’d first found her and saved her from that hellhole, but skinny enough.

  I cleared my throat and took a few steps forward, looking at the ground for a sign of footprints. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “Anything interesting on your mind?”

  “How I can know someone for so long without actually knowing them.”

  I smiled at Jenny. I saw the way her cheeks flushed a little, and how she looked down at the ground nervously.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to talk.”

  “I know I don’t.”

  “I just sometimes think it’s better when we get things off our chest.”

  Jenny sighed. She kept on marching forward. “Maybe it’s better when you get things off your chest. But maybe there’s nothing on my chest at all.”

  “You were locked away in a room by that psycho family. Honestly? I’d say you had pretty good grounds to have some baggage.”

  Jenny’s eyes glazed over, like she was replaying her memories from whatever horrid hell she’d been through.

  I regretted what I’d said right away. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just—”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I do have demons. I do have trust issues. I’ve had them all my life. I grew up with a dad who told me that the world outside my home was dangerous, and a mum who went off drinking until God-knows-what hour. That kind of situation can really mess a person up. Until my rebellious phase, anyway.”

  “Your rebellious phase?”

  Jenny chuckled. “The usual. Drank a lot. Did a lot of drugs. Joined a cult.”

  “Joined a cult? ‘The usual’?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jenny said. “I’ll tell you sometime. Rest assured, I got away.”

  “Only to find yourself kidnapped by another band of nutters.”

  “I’m pleased you find my kidnapping so amusing.”

  I felt instantly shitty. I lowered my head. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

  Jenny laughed a little. “Like I say. We all have our ways of getting through our problems. It’s not always as simple as those checkbox stages of grief. And if it is, then God knows what stage I’m in right now.”

  She stopped, then, right in her tracks.

  “I could’ve turned you away in a heartbeat. And you could’ve turned me away too. But you didn’t. You saw something in me, and I saw something in you. And here we are.”

  I heard what Jenny was saying. After all, I’d trusted her. I’d let her in. Blind faith, but faith nonetheless.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s head back. I don’t think we’re going to be finding any trace of the attackers out here.”

  She turned away and walked off back through the woods.

  “And chances are, we won’t see them again at all,” she said. “Just the way the world works now.”

  As I looked at the trees, then up at the sun, I swallowed a lump in my throat and listened to the birdsong.

  Maybe we wouldn’t bump into them again.

  Perhaps they were just another in a long line of enemies who we’d encounter, then who we’d drift from.

  I hoped so. I really did.

  But deep down, I felt fear.

  Fear that they were going to come back.

  Only next time, they were going to be even stronger.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the following night that we finally had the conversation—or the debate—that I had been dreading.

  Outside, I could hear rain pattering against the windows. It was somewhat refreshing in a way, a nice change to the seemingly constant summer-like weather over the last few weeks.

  On the other hand, it brought a sickly taste to the mouth, because it was a reminder that it was September, so the end of the year was coming, along with all its accompanying dramas and dangers.

  We were in our dining area. The table was lit by candles. They were good for now, gathered from a nearby shop that specialised in them. But like everything, those candles would go out someday, too, and we would be left in the darkness.

  It w
as Hannah who started the conversation, planting the seed of the idea in the heads of the other people.

  “I don’t think it’s safe staying here,” she said.

  My stomach sank. I shook my head. “Where else are we supposed to go?”

  Hannah lifted a glass of wine to her lips, not quite meeting my eye. “Anywhere but here.”

  “Hannah has a point,” Remy said.

  I felt the weight of the situation mounting up on me even more heavily. I turned to Remy. “And what other suggestions do you have?”

  “This place has been good to us,” Remy said. “Let’s make no mistake about that. It’s well positioned. It’s been safe… up to now. But we are wrong to ever make the mistake of assuming what we have here is permanent in any way.”

  I lowered my head. The hardest thing was knowing that Remy was right. This place wasn’t a permanent solution. It never had been.

  But if we didn’t have this place… what did we have?

  “I think it’s only fair that everyone should have a say,” Hannah said. She leaned back and looked around at the rest of the group. “Do you all feel safe here, still? After what happened to the Wilson family? Really?”

  I saw Sue glance down at the table. Haz looked similarly noncommittal.

  “It’s unlikely they’ll come back,” I said.

  “What?” Hannah asked.

  “I said it’s unlikely they’ll come back.”

  “And you know that for certain, do you?”

  “It’s impossible to know anything for certain. But I know that there were only three of those people. Three opportunists who took advantage of some of the weakest people on this street. If they come back here, they’ll be outnumbered. They don’t want to cross us. You know that.”

  “And what if there’s more of them?” Hannah asked.

  I lowered my head again. I had to keep my composure. “If there’s more of them? That’s hypothetical.”

  “We live in a hypothetical world,” Remy said. “I’m just saying. We need to consider all our options. It would be unwise to discount anything.”

  I looked down at Lionel. He was right at my feet. I was his favourite, and I think it was because he could sense how much I cared about him; how much of a duty I had to look after him, especially after Derek’s death. What are you thinking, pup? What do you say?