Lee Kerr - Welcome to the Apocalypse

And so, thinking only of those who really matter and how she can escape, she opens the door and feels the welcome light of freedom flood through her goggles, an immediate reminder that the darkness is no longer her home.

After I had faced down the barrel of my gun nothing else seemed to scare me. I wasn’t able to end it, not without knowing what had happened to her, and so I moved back down through the house in some sort of trance. The weapon was hung by my side; I didn’t point it at anything the whole time. I didn’t seem to care if I made it out alive, or if I suddenly found Carlos or Marius hiding around the next corner. As it happens I made it out unharmed, yet clueless about where they are.

I walk around the house and find Terry and the other two women on the front lawn. The other two are starting to wake up; they are still disorientated but at least able to stand. They remain huddled together, their few clothes barely covering them. I end up stopping Terry from breaking into Marius’s car: she seems to have found her balls from before I met her, before all this happened. ‘You shouldn’t break into a police car,’ I say, risking starting some big discussion about why there would be a car here without any policeman. I tell her not to think about that now, not wanting to risk telling her about who her jailors really were.

There’s a sudden bang in the distance which makes us all jump onto the ground. I look up to see several flashes, followed by more loud bangs, as the skyline of many miles lights up with its own special pattern of destruction. I watch as buildings I have often visited now burn and collapse, and I city I have called home all my life, slowly falls to ruins as the army launches things at an enemy I don’t even dare to imagine. I follow the lights and picture the explosions as realise that they are not too far away – maybe only a mile in the distance.

‘What was that?’ Terry asks, a fearful look returning to her eyes. It’s the same look she had when I found her, when I shook her awake; she naturally thought I was one of the bad guys, back for another round. ‘We need to get out of here,’ she says.

I nod but I don’t really agree. I have to find Lucy; have to figure out what is happening. I was so preoccupied with getting into the house that now that I have searched it I don’t know what to do next. I look at these three women; they are people I have saved from certain death, yet I couldn’t feel more confused and angry. I sit down on the lawn and look around the neighbourhood, knowing there has to be something I’m missing.

‘Did you hear me?’ Terry says, shaking my arm. ‘We need to leave.’

I don’t answer her, looking only at the house straight ahead – the house that’s opposite and the one that Lucy identified in the last few moments of her call. I grab my notebook out of my bag and flick through the pages, all the time trying to block out Terry’s very fair demands.

She is still shaking me when one of the other women starts to cry. ‘Please, we have been through enough, you have to get us out of here!’

I say nothing, but reach for my car keys and hand them to Terry. I look into her eyes, knowing it is the only freedom I can offer her. ‘I have to get my girlfriend.’

Terry shakes her head, tears forming in the giant craters where her eyes once shone, now looking only hopeless and defeated. ‘There were other girls, you know that, right?’

‘She’s not dead.’

‘But she’s not in the house, either.’

I push my keys into her palms. ‘My car is down the street,’ I say, absently indicating with my head where they will find it. ‘I know you want to get far away but please wait for us because I promise we will be coming. Wait at the corner of Moorland Avenue.’

‘Thank you,’ Terry says, nodding repeatedly as she tries her best to assure me that they will wait. ‘But how long should we give you? The helicopters are getting closer.’

‘Give me thirty minutes. It’s all I will need.’

She nods and starts to motion the other two women to get up, her protective instincts taking over. ‘I don’t know what else you can do,’ she says.

‘I do,’ I say, looking at Number 12. ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do because I know Lucy is in that house.’

We both look at the house over the road; all the lights are off and the front door and bottom windows are boarded up, just as they were last time I was on this road.

‘I don’t understand,’ Terry says, although I’m not sure she really wants me to explain.

‘Every time I have been to this road over the last few days that house has been empty and all the lights have been off. The owners had apparently abandoned it weeks ago.’

Terry quickly nods. ‘It looks abandoned.’

I nod back, showing her a page in my notebook. ‘If it’s abandoned then why are the upstairs curtains, which were open yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, now closed?’

Terry smiles, showing the fight that is still left in her, even though her brown mouth is full of the stains and troubles of such a tormenting week. ‘Two houses, even more trapped women. But you can’t go in there alone,’ she says, and then holds out the car keys, freely giving them back to me.

I nod, feeling relieved, immediately thankful for the help. ‘Get these two into my car and then meet me in the basement of this house.’

‘This one?’ she says and frowns, as she looks back at Carlos’s house. ‘But it’s empty.’

I nod, looking at the road. ‘It’s also our way in, because I think he built a tunnel between the two houses. Maybe they planned to use both or maybe one of them is the decoy, but I know Lucy is trapped in Number 12.’

‘We’re helping too,’ one of the other women says.

I only nod, not even asking her name. The look on their face says they want revenge; they want to storm the keep and kill the demons and end this nightmare once and for all. We all walk back through the garden and into the house, all with our own axe to grind.

As we walk I rummage through my backpack and find the other tool I brought today. I didn’t know how I would get into Carlos’s house but I figured there would be a need to force my way through a door. I didn’t know what I would do if he launched his missiles at me, shouting all manner of threats, as I finally got through the threshold. I had never thought that far ahead, but one thing I had thought about was how strong those doors must be, and how some explosives would probably come in handy.

I hold the dynamite in my hand, wondering if it will even work, or if that thug sold me a stick filled with sawdust. All I know is that it’s my last hope, my only way in, and all we have to do is to find is the right door.

‘Help me search this basement,’ I ask them, hoping they will be quick, praying they will be thorough; knowing we need to do a better job than before and in a fraction of the time.

Lucy hobbles down the stairs, knowing she needs to move quicker than her wound will let her without making her screaming out in pain. She pushes a hand against the wall, letting it support her as she takes each step one at a time, her good foot constantly bracing her injured one. There is something stuck in it, something digging further into her skin, but she can’t worry about that now. It’s already gone too deep for her to be able to get it out herself and so she continues on her mission of escape.

She knows there has to be at least one more of them somewhere in the house, but she wonders if there are several of them spread throughout this place. It’s a horror story she needs to find the answer to, despite how scared she is. As she makes it to the landing she figures she has to be at least one more storey above ground level. She only has a stinking blanket for warmth and wraps it tighter around her, almost feeling some sort of connection to this bloodied and stained rag. It has been her only comfort for as many days as she can remember; it has seen her through more trauma than she has ever known before. She holds it tight as she looks at each of the closed doors in front of her. She needs to go in, needs to find someone, but hopes with every ounce of her that it isn’t one of her captors that she runs into.