55
TED Days later…
Ted moved to the front of the group, everyone looking to him to say something. In his previous life, he’d been a divorced builder with a daughter he loved. Now, he was the half-blind leader of a camp and a father to three-dozen children. It wasn’t what he had ever planned to be, but it was a role he would never turn away from.
Buried in the ground at what had become the camp’s graveyard were three new crosses. One was for Hannah, who had tried to save them all with her dying breaths. One was for Philip, who had given his life to make sure she succeeded. The third was for Nathan, a boy none of them had trusted, but had somehow turned out to be their savour. Kamiyo had witnessed the boy throw himself into the lake when all else had failed. If not for Nathan, everyone here would be dead.
Ted cleared his throat and began. “Before all this happened, I had a daughter. Her name was Chloe. I spent most my life building things, but she was my greatest achievement by far. Until she was born, I didn’t know something could be so perfect.” He smiled at the thought of her. It still hurt, but the memories also brought him joy. “Last Christmas, I dressed up as Santa and asked her what she wanted. She told me she wanted to have a sleep over at the North Pole and help Santa deliver all the presents to the good children. She didn’t ask for anything for herself, just to help spread joy to others. When the demons came, Chloe, in her innocence, kept telling me I needed to head to the North Pole to Santa’s workshop. Santa had invited her to stay and would keep us safe. With all that was going on, I just humoured her with a laugh and a pat on the head. Then the monsters took her away from me, and I realised all of my mistakes at once, in a single moment. I should have spent Chloe’s last days heading towards something, not staying still and waiting to die.”
He wiped tears from his eyes before carrying on. He pulled the photograph of Chloe from his pocket and held it out to the assembled crowd. “After she died, I promised I would get her to the North Pole, if only in spirit. As long as I was alive, I would head north and drop her photograph, and myself, into the North Sea. Stupid, now that I think about it. The last thing Chloe would have wanted is for me to be alone.” He looked at the faces in front of him—his new family. “I’m done trying to outrun my guilt. This is where I’m supposed to be, making Chloe proud by taking care of people and allowing people to take care of me.” He wiped more tears from his eyes. “I’m just sorry that my new family is short so many members. Jackie, Hannah, Steven, Eric, Bray, Philip, Emily, and others who I barely even got to know. We will never forget them.
“Civilisation has restarted, and this is our graveyard to remember those who got us this second chance. Hannah and Philip died two nights ago trying to save us, and they did that through their actions. They courageously stepped out amongst the monsters and fought them, which allowed Nathan to slip by unnoticed and throw himself through the gate.
“None of us here understood Nathan. He was strange, and perhaps even dangerous, but he was brave too—perhaps braver than us all. He sacrificed his life to save us all. So I just want to say to Nathan, in case there’s any chance he can hear me, that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder to you Nathan, and I also want to say thank you. Thank you for showing us that we can do the right thing even when people don’t deserve it. If Hannah is up there with you, tell her I want my sodding knife back. Cost me a monkey down the pub, that did.”
The crowd chuckled.
“Anyway,” Ted continued. “Today is a new beginning. The demons are gone because of the sacrifices of our old friends, and we welcome new ones in their place.” He pointed to Pritchard and the newcomers from the supermarket. “We will spend the next weeks and months and years building a real community. We don’t know what radius the gate cleansed for us, but for the time being at least, we can go scavenging in the surrounded towns with relative safety. Now is the time to gather supplies and find more survivors and reinforce ourselves here. I promise that the next time the demons face us, we will be an army like the one in Portsmouth. We’ll push them back every time they dare to attack and show them what Hell truly is. Mankind is not something to be crushed, it is something to be feared.”
The crowd cheered and whistled. The teenagers were already looking full grown—the events of the last few days had aged them. With Pritchard’s group, they were now almost a hundred strong, and they had learned lessons from the siege that would see them more prepared than ever. Ted would set about reinforcing the walls further and creating a thousand arrows for the bows. He would build more catapults, and more spears. He would seek out every scrap of iron that existed. The demons would not be defeated with bullets and tanks, they would be beaten by stone walls and iron gates.
Demonkind was on the run. They had been routed like any other panicking enemy, and that fear, used so effectively against mankind at the beginning, would spread throughout their ranks. Their leaders were falling, and the promise of their paradise was
