After the Storm (Book 1): Blackout Read online

  “Mike, please.”

  “What is it? What’ve you done? What’ve—”

  “I killed someone!”

  I pushed Mike back as I shouted. I realised then that I’d no doubt blown our cover. I didn’t know what that meant for me. I didn’t know what the ramifications would be.

  But the truth was off my chest.

  And in a way, shivering in the dark, I felt something like relief.

  “I killed someone,” I said. “A man. No. Not even a man. A boy. I killed a boy. And now I just don’t want to have to kill anyone else.”

  The mood was disappearing behind clouds, but I could tell that Mike looked relatively amused by what I’d said. Creep. “See. You’re not such a naive good guy after all, are you?”

  “I did it because if I hadn’t, he’d have killed my dog. And he was in my way. In my way of getting back to my family.”

  Mike stepped up to me. Squared right up to my face. “Then you’ll know exactly why I have to go back to my caravan right now. And if something’s already gone down in there that could’ve been prevented if we’d avoided this little conversation here, I promise I’ll wedge this knife so far up your backside, you’ll squeal.”

  He said it with an air of a joke.

  But I could never tell when Mike was joking. Not really.

  He disappeared into the darkness, towards his caravan. I saw him inspecting it, investigating it. I looked at Bouncer, who looked back at me, a glare to his eyes like I should be doing more to help out.

  “Alright then,” I said. “We’ll take a look around then. Come on.”

  I searched the rest of the caravan site. It was eerie. I kept thinking I saw movement in the corner of my eyes, which made my skin crawl. But there was nothing. It seemed clear. Everything had to be fine.

  I walked back around the side of the spare caravan that Mike had told me about and I saw Mike wasn’t in front of his caravan anymore.

  Part of me wanted to take this opportunity to go in there and steal his bike and a few supplies, or something.

  But another part of me knew Mike had gone out of his way—and his comfort zone—to make sure I had a roof over my head. So I owed him way more than that.

  I started to walk towards Mike’s caravan when I heard footsteps in the woods to my left.

  I spun around.

  Nothing there.

  Bouncer growled.

  “What is it, boy?” I asked. “You see something?”

  He stared at the…

  Wait.

  He wasn’t staring at the trees.

  He was staring behind me.

  Right behind me.

  I felt a lump in my throat when I suddenly realised I wasn’t alone.

  I felt something press to the back of my head. Hard.

  “Lower your weapon. Hand over your stuff. All of it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Hand it over. Now. I’m not messing around mate. I’m serious here. In case you didn’t notice.”

  I stood totally still in the darkness. I felt a chill cover my body from a combination of the breeze and the situation I was in. There was something to the back of my head. A gun, no doubt. By my side, Bouncer growled.

  And the man holding it, pressing it into my skull, wanted all my stuff.

  I swallowed a lump in my dry throat. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Nobody has to—”

  “You’re telling me you’ve never done something bad? You’ve not done a thing like this since the world went to shit?”

  “I’m saying we have a choice.”

  The man sniggered. I wanted to turn around and look him in the eye, but I didn’t want to risk my brains being blown apart. “That’s where you’re wrong, man. We don’t have a choice. We have no choice at all. Only choice we have is how far we’re willing to go. And this is how far I’m willing to go. For…”

  He paused. Hesitated for a second. And I sensed the pain in his cracking voice.

  “Just give me your frigging stuff, okay?”

  I looked around everywhere for a sign of Mike. He’d vanished. Completely disappeared. “Look,” I said, trying to bargain with the man. “I’ll give you some stuff. But my friend, he’s… he isn’t as understanding.”

  “You don’t have to worry about your friend.”

  The words locked in my chest for a second. “What… what do you mean?”

  “Just give us your stuff. Food. Weapons. All the gear you’ve got. In fact, that caravan yours? That could be handy.”

  “That’s not mine to give away,” I said.

  A pause. I felt the gun getting shaky against the back of my head. “Just… just do as I say, man. Please.”

  Again, I heard desperation in his voice rather than defiance. So I took a gamble. A stupid gamble, perhaps, but one I hoped would pay off.

  I turned around.

  I looked into the man’s eyes for the first time. I could see he was a similar age to me, in his thirties. He had a thick black beard that he’d clearly been growing long before the end came.

  He didn’t have a gun in his hand.

  Just a metal pole.

  He saw my eyes bounce to it, then looked back at me.

  I couldn’t help smiling. “So you’re going to blow my brains out with that?”

  The man’s eyes drifted away, then he cleared his throat, colour flooding into his cheeks, illuminated by the moonlight. “Just do as I—”

  “You have family. Somewhere out there, you have family, don’t you?”

  His eyelids twitched. “What does it matter if I have family?”

  “Because I have family too.”

  “And?”

  “That’s the only reason I’m staying here. I’m moving on. Tomorrow, actually. Back down to Preston. My wife, Kerry. Well, ex-wife, but we’ll see if the apocalypse changes that in any way. And my daughter. Olivia.” I felt myself welling up when I said her name. “I… I just want to get back to them. And I need some stuff to get there. Not all my stuff. But some of my stuff. And as a family man, you have to understand that.”

  I saw a glimmer of understanding in the man’s eyes. He sniffed up. Didn’t speak for a while. Then, “What’s your name?”

  “Will,” I said. “Will Stuartson. Yours?”

  “Billy McPhail.”

  “Nice to meet you, Billy. Can you lower that metal pipe now? I’m worried something’s going to fire out of it.”

  Billy didn’t move the pipe. Although it couldn’t shoot, I had no doubt Billy could bash my brains in with it if he wanted to.

  But I could see from the look on his face that he didn’t want to.

  He just wanted to keep his family safe.

  Like me.

  “Where’s your family at?” I asked.

  “What does it matter?”

  “Are they safe?”

  “Yes. No. I dunno. Do any of us know?”

  “No. Not really. But… look, Billy. I can give you some food. Some water. I can even give you some weapons. We can figure something out here.”

  Billy half-smiled and shook his head. I could see his eyes were bloodshot, with big bags underneath. I wondered if he’d slept a wink since things went to shit. “I can’t trust you.”

  “No. And you shouldn’t. Just like I don’t trust you. But like you, I’ve got family out there that I care about. They’re all I care about. So I understand. I understand your pain. I understand what situation you’re in.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Seriously, I—”

  “My daughter’s diabetic,” Billy spat. “Type 1. The type that requires meds. If she skips her meds too much, she gets bad. Starts… starts having seizures. It doesn’t get pretty. And she’s… We’re running really low. I just want to make her—her last days comfortable, you know? I just want to make ’em as comfortable as possible. Before…”

  The metal pole slumped to his side.

  I saw tears glistening in
his eyes.

  “Hey,” I said. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, look at me.”

  Billy reluctantly lifted his head.

  “It isn’t over. There’ll be places where you can find meds.”

  “But for how long?”

  “Well, the blackout’s not gonna last forever.”

  “Really? You really believe that?”

  When Billy asked that question, I couldn’t lie. Not anymore. “No,” I said. “I think it’s going to last for a very long time. But you’ll find a way. You’ll find a way to help your daughter. Because it’s what love drives us to do. And nothing’s more powerful than love. Right?”

  Billy nodded. Half-smiled. “Right.”

  “Now come on,” I said, pointing over to the caravan. “I’ve got a friend who’s missing and I kind of like knowing where he’s at. We should…”

  I didn’t finish my sentence.

  I didn’t finish because I saw the movement right behind Billy.

  I wanted to jump in and stop what I knew was about to happen.

  But it was already too late.

  I saw the shock on Billy’s face.

  I saw him look down, then fall back, as the knife slammed into his body again and again.

  I saw the horrified look of loss in his eyes.

  Then I saw the blood dribbling out of his lips.

  Some of it spitting out at me.

  He fell to the ground in a heap, skin paling, more blood spurting out of his torso.

  Mike stood right behind him, bloodied knife in hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Day Eight

  I STOOD outside Mike’s caravan and looked at the spot where Billy McPhail was murdered just hours ago.

  The morning sun was low and warm, promising another pleasant day. We were into the second week of the blackout now, which had a strange kind of poetry to it. Any hopes that law and order would be restored were gone, because if law and order were going to be restored, it would’ve definitely been within the first week. Shit, it would’ve been within the first few days.

  The first milestone was done with. Soon, it’d be the first month. Then the first year. Then the first decade.

  If humanity even made it that far.

  Yeah. I was definitely getting ahead of myself.

  I stared at the patch in the grass where Billy fell. Just replaying those events in my mind made my skin crawl. He’d seemed a decent guy. An honest guy trying to get back to his family. His daughter was suffering from an illness. He just wanted to go back to her and make sure she was comfortable.

  But now he wouldn’t even go back to her at all.

  And I hated to even consider what that might mean for her.

  I listened to the breeze brushing against the trees. I took in a deep breath of the fresh air. I thought I’d miss this place. It was secure. Secluded. Safe.

  But as I stared at the patch, a little blood still speckled on the grass, I couldn’t wait to get far away from here.

  “Leaving before breakfast?”

  I heard Mike’s voice at the caravan door and it made my skin crawl.

  I turned around. And as much as I tried to disguise my feelings, I could tell from the look on Mike’s face that he knew how I felt about everything.

  “What’s that look for?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I was thinking of leaving on foot. Not ideal, but—”

  “What I did last night. I did it to keep us both safe. You realise that, don’t you?”

  My skin crawled. “You killed a man in cold blood.”

  “He had a pipe to your head.”

  “He was called Billy. And we’d figured things out.”

  “Oh you figured things out did you? Well good for you. What happens when everyone else wants to figure things out with you? What happens when there’s no food left to keep ourselves alive, we’re so busy feeding everyone else?”

  “You really have no faith at all. Do you?”

  “I guess not,” Mike said. “I’ve seen what people can turn into. What they can be like.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking directly at Mike. “Me too.”

  Mike stepped up to me. “You’re tough. But you’re stupid. And that isn’t going to get you far in this world.”

  “And you’re intelligent, but you’re weak. So I guess we’re mirror images in that respect.”

  Mike narrowed his eyes and laughed. “Oh I’m weak, am I?”

  “Yeah. Yeah you are. You shack up here because you’re afraid of the world outside. You kill people when you come into contact with them because you’re worried what might happen if you let them too close. You aren’t even willing to go after your family.”

  I knew the last words were pushing it a little bit. That I shouldn’t really say things like that to a guy who I’d already established was pretty insecure. But screw it. It was the truth. I’d been running away from the truth my entire life, and where had it got me? If I had to fight, then so be it.

  Mike didn’t fight, much to my relief. “I’m going to forget you said that. Pretend you never said it at all. But let me make myself clear. I want you to leave. And I don’t want to see your face within a mile of this place ever again.”

  I nodded. Sure, being banished from Mike’s little camp wasn’t the way I wanted to go out exactly, but I accepted I’d probably burned my bridges with him. “I’ll leave right away. Come on, Bouncer.”

  I gathered my pack. Made sure everything was in there, including the extras that Mike gave me. I saw them and I knew I’d at least got something out of my stay with Mike, as traumatic as it might’ve been at making me realise the brutality of the new world.

  But that was a brutality I wasn’t willing to accept.

  It was a brutality that wasn’t going to swallow my family whole.

  I went to shake Mike’s hand, but he didn’t even offer one to me.

  He was looking at the ground though. Like he was sad. Sad to see me leaving.

  I started to turn away when I heard Mike’s voice.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I turned back. I saw him rustling around in the garage area of his caravan.

  After a while, covering himself in tonnes of spiders, he dragged out a bicycle.

  And by its side, a little carrier.

  “It’s a little rusty. And the gears aren’t great. But it works just fine.”

  “Mike, I can’t—”

  “Course you can. You need it more than me. And your dog can hop in the carrier here. I used to put Judy in there. Judy’s my staffie. She’s… Well, I don’t know where she is now. Back home, probably. I dunno. But anyway. It’s all yours.”

  I wanted to turn it down. But at the same time, I knew turning down golden currency like a bicycle in this world was madness. Plus I felt like Mike owed me after what had transpired between us.

  “Thank you,” I said, as I clipped the carrier on and Bouncer hopped into it, immediately making himself at home. “For everything. Really.”

  Mike nodded, and attempted a smile. “You know where I am. If you ever… you know.”

  “I thought I wasn’t allowed within a mile of this place?”

  “Yeah, well. We’ll see what kind of a mood I’m in.”

  I steadied myself onto the bike. I took a deep breath of the morning air. Another day ahead. The start of another journey. I didn’t know who I’d come across. I didn’t know what experiences I’d go through.

  But I was getting to my family.

  I was getting to my daughter.

  No matter what.

  “I’ll see you around some time,” I called.

  Mike nodded. Lifted his hand and waved.

  I set off, the carrier on the bike making it a little wobbly, but soon I got the hang of it.

  When I’d descended the hill, I looked back, hoping for one final glance of Mike and his caravan.

  But he was already out of view.

  And I knew somehow I wouldn’t be seeing him again.

>   CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Day Fourteen

  THE SECOND WEEK was less eventful than the first.

  But it didn’t take me long to lose my damned bicycle.

  I was in the middle of the woods and I was exhausted. In all truth, I was constantly exhausted these days. I could tell from the way my jeans were slacking around my waist that I was losing weight. Bouncer was looking a lot thinner around his back end too, but he’d needed slimming a little bit so maybe the end of the world was a good thing for him.

  I lay flat in the middle of the grass and stared at the Spring Spear Trap. It was a trap like Mike had taught me to set. I’d not had any success with this kind of trap—yet. Making it was just too damned difficult. But I was persevering with it. I was keeping on going.

  Where in the past I would’ve given up at the first sign of trouble, now, I was really believing in myself.

  Sure, my survival skills were rusty. I wasn’t as good at adapting to a post-apocalyptic world as maybe I’d convinced myself I would be. But I was learning. And I figured with the things I knew and the tricks I’d been taught by Mike, I was a lot better than the vast majority of people.

  I sipped on some water. I poured a little pool for Bouncer to lick up the water from, too. He lay there and slurped it up. “Good boy,” I whispered.

  It was hot again. Perhaps one key thing I’d forgotten to pack in my bug-out bag was some kind of suncream. Honestly, though, who wears suncream in Britain? Usually, the sun isn’t out long enough to warrant it.

  This last week had been different. I wondered if it was something solar. Whether it backed up the theory that the EMP strikes came directly from the sun rather than anything man-made.

  I didn’t know. I probably never would know.

  And when push came to shove, it didn’t really matter.

  I rubbed my tired eyes as the afternoon stretched on and the urgency to push on to my family grew, and I knew I needed to be patient.

  As much as I wanted to reach my family as soon as possible, I knew at that same time I couldn’t be rash. I had to pace myself. I’d end up making myself sick again if I didn’t. I was rash in the early days, and that got me into deep shit. I couldn’t afford that. Not again.

  Plus, I was on foot. Which, yeah, was a bummer.