The Gamekeeper

by J Porteous

  I jostled my way through the early morning crowds, craning my neck to see if I could see a distinctive half-head of hair anywhere. The atrium was already thick with bodies, travellers and traders alike dragging their carts and overladen bags across the cracked tile floors.

  I soon moved with the crowds down into the main mall itself. I climbed one of the broken escalators to the second floor, affording myself a better view of the throng below. I wanted to shout her name, to let her know I was looking for her, but my voice would have simply been lost with the other, louder sounds.

  I checked the other wings of the mall, marching up and down the walkways in a desperate search. I grabbed who I could as they walked past, asking if they had seen a girl with bad burns; I was either shrugged off or outright ignored.

  I was defeated. It was going to be nigh-on impossible to find a single person in these crowds, especially a young girl who could slip between people unnoticed. A sound caught my attention. The music again. I pushed onwards, back to the centre of the mall complex, the music becoming louder as I approached.

  She wasn’t there. My heart sank. The old man was sat by his little cart, smiling kindly to anyone who looked his way. I sat on the edge of the dry fountain, slumping down on the cold, hard tiles.

  The sensible thing to do would be to leave. Not too long back I would have done it without a second thought, but now I had a reason to stay, a reason to care. My eyes welled, and I dabbed them on the sleeve of my increasingly dirty coat. I have to stay. I have to find her.

  ‘Hey.’

  I looked up to see Deputy Thwaite stood over me. I rubbed my eyes on my sleeve again. ‘What now?’

  ‘I checked out those tunnels with your friend,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I believe you.’ She sat herself beside me and took off her hat. ‘I can’t promise I’ll get any action out of Daniels, the guy is as hard as a rock to move once he sets his mind on things, but I’ll try.’

  ‘And what if he says no?’

  ‘Then I’ll get any man, woman or child who believes me to follow me out.’

  I gave a thankful nod. ‘That sounds like a plan I can agree with. Where will you go if the city doesn’t hold?’

  ‘We’ll go north,’ Deputy Thwaite said, letting her gaze wander the crowds.

  ‘Is there anything up there?’

  ‘There should be,’ Thwaite replied. ‘I came down from there when I heard about Hope. I know some places we could stay temporarily. Old warehouses, things like that. Nothing special. You’re welcome to join us.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got to find Jessica first.’

  ‘The girl who was with you? I saw her heading towards the gate.’

  My brain switched itself back on. ‘What? When?’

  ‘Half an hour ago, perhaps? I thought she was going to meet one of you.’

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered to myself. ‘I need to go. Hopefully I’ll see you again.’

  Deputy Thwaite shouted something as I pushed my way out through the crowds, but I was too lost in my own thoughts to process it. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Jessica? You know it’s dangerous out there. I reached the gate and called for the guard to open it, the door swinging open as I approached.

  ‘Have you seen a girl?’ I asked the guard. ‘With a burnt face. She left not long ago.’

  ‘Burnt face? Aye, I saw her,’ the man replied. He pointed westward. ‘Wandered off that way. After that, I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The gate slammed shut behind me. I was out in the open once more; this time alone. I once relished this feeling, lived for it; the only time I ever truly felt safe. Now I felt isolated in a world which actively looked to hurt people. A hostile existence.

  The warming weather had caused the grey snow to recede, leaving only patches of footprints to follow. They were fresh, so Deputy Thwaite’s times had been relatively accurate. I followed them as quickly as I could; my body still ached, but I was hoping that Jessica would tire quicker.

  She was an easy follow. I occasionally hit a crossing of tracks, but the smaller boot size let me take an easy guess as to which path was Jessica’s. By now, the walls of Hope were far in the distance; still visible, but far enough away to be no safety to me if I ran into any trouble. I made a faithless prayer to whichever fucked up god ruled this world to spare me from the cultists as they marched, though I doubted very much it would change things for me if I was caught.

  I walked through increasingly dense woodland, Jessica’s footsteps vanishing from the ground beneath me. I looked for other signs; broken twigs underfoot, prints in the mud, though the trail was becoming ever trickier to follow.

  A small ravine opened up to one side of the trail, a thicket of brambles and thorns running down the edge and pooling towards the bottom. I wandered along for a little while longer, then realised I had lost the trail.

  There was nowhere for Jessica to simply disappear to. There were no outbuildings, no farms, nothing. I looked around, adamant that she must be nearby. ‘Jessica?’

  I spotted something. It was down in the ravine, a piece of material lay on the floor, unmoving. I looked closer, hoping to pick out some details, then realised it was Jessica’s coat. My heart quickened and a stone weighted down my guts. ‘Jessica?’ There was no response.

  ‘Jessica, I’m coming.’ I needed to get down there, but the drop into the ravine was a steep one. I edged off the side, gingerly placing one foot in front of the other. I held onto the gnarled tree roots of the old oaks which broke through the soil.

  My boots slipped dangerously in places. At times, the only thing keeping me upright was my grip on the roots jutting from the ground. I steadied myself momentarily, taking a few deep breaths and letting my aches subdue temporarily. I placed a foot down once more.

  I slipped. In seconds I found myself tumbling down the rest of the ravine, landing painfully onto the hard earth below. I groaned in pain as I led face down in the dirt. There was a sharp pain coming from my left leg, and I didn’t dare look back to see the state of it.

  I looked up and saw that I was close now. It was Jessica’s coat for sure, I recognised the over-sized thing back from when I had grabbed it in Community. I took a couple of deep breaths and attempted to stand.

  My leg twinged with pain, falling out from underneath me. I sat back down and inspected my ankle, feeling around the bones with both hands and moving my foot back and forth. Thankfully it didn’t seem broken, just badly sprained. It still wasn’t going to stop me.

  I pulled myself toward Jessica’s coat, crawling on my hands and knees, letting my one foot drag behind me. The coat was snagged on the host of brambles, thorns tearing into it. I pulled it free of the thorns and inspected it. In one pocket I found something which felt familiar, a glossy photo. I pulled it out, just to check, and my suspicions were confirmed. I looked down at her in that photo, a newborn child, possibly only a week or two old. There’s no way she would leave this.

  Something growled behind me. I froze, my muscles tensed in fear at the sound. I reached into my own coat and fumbled around for my shotgun. Shit. It wasn’t there. I could only assume that it must have come free of its makeshift holster as I tumbled down the ravine.

  I grasped for my knife, still tucked tightly into my belt, and spun around to face my attacker. My brain only had a brief moment to take in the wolf’s snarl before it lunged at me.

  I held an arm up instinctively, the wolf attempting to wrap its jaws around it. It struggled to get a grip against the fabric, its teeth tearing and biting at me. Its weight was oppressive, pain searing through my chest as sharp claws tore at me in desperation. I swung the knife wildly, hoping the blade would connect somewhere, my other arm pushing the snapping jaws as far away from me as possible.

  A loud bang. The wolf’s weight dropped onto me, knocking the air out of my lungs. Hot blood ran down my one arm, some of it soaking the side of my coat. The beast t
witched slightly, still drawing air, a quiet whimper coming from its throat. I gripped my blade and made it quick.

  I heaved the wolf off of me to see a frightened young girl stood holding my smoking shotgun in her shaking hands. Her eyes were wide and wild, her shoulders rising dramatically with each deep breath.

  ‘Jessica,’ I said gently. ‘It’s okay.’

  She stared at me for a moment, then moved her glare to the gun, dropping it in a sudden panic. ‘I’m sorry, I...I...’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I said, glancing at the still wolf. ‘You did a good thing.’

  ‘It’s a wolf,’ she replied, voice shaking as much as her hands.

  I nodded. ‘Well, I’m just glad you were here.’ I grabbed her coat and pulled the photo from the pocket. ‘I think you forgot something.’

  Jessica rushed towards me, desperate to hold the photo once more. She grasped it in both hands, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘What’s your coat doing down here?’

  ‘I heard noises in the wood. I got scared and ran, and my coat got caught. I had to leave it.’

  I looked at the wolf, its blood-matted fur steaming in the cold air. ‘You did a good job.’ I pulled myself to my feet, sparing any weight from my sprained ankle. ‘I’m glad your safe.’

  Jessica left the shotgun where it fell and ran towards me, burying her head into my chest. I winced as she crashed against my cracked rib, but just to hold her and know she was safe was worth the sharp jolt of pain.

  I stroked her knotted hair, wild from the antics of the last day. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I lied, and I’m sorry about your dad. I understand you’re mad at me, I get it. I wanted to find the right time to tell you, but it never seemed to come.’

  She sobbed against me, her voice muffled against my coat. ‘Thank you for coming to find me.’

  I took her coat and placed it over her. ‘It’s cold out, you should really put this on.’

  Her face was red and blotchy as she peeled away from my coat. She sniffed as she pulled the coat on and stuffed the photo back into its pocket. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I suppose we go back to Hope, get Prism, and head off.’

  ‘Are we going to go north again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you walk okay?’

  I wriggled my sprained ankle; it was still weak but slightly better. ‘I’m going to be slow, but we can do it.’

  She wriggled a hand free from her overly large sleeve and clutched my cold hand. ‘I’ll help you. My dad would have wanted me to.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The way back was slow going. I limped along as quickly as I could, but the sprain stung me with constant pain. Jessica held firm and steady at my side, still clutching onto my hand. To think it was only a couple of days ago that I thought she was dead weight, and now it was me who seemed to be it.

  ‘How did he die?’

  I looked down at Jessica. ‘I don’t think you need to know that.’

  She looked up at me with a sharp glare. ‘You didn’t think I needed to know he was dead.’

  My gut twisted with guilt. It was good that the truth was out there now, but I was under no illusion that the trust she had for me wasn’t shattered. ‘He was attacked,’ I said. ‘I found him in the snow. He was already dead.’

  Jessica sobbed again, her hand tightening around mine. ‘I hate to think that he died alone.’

  ‘He had that picture with him,’ I replied. ‘He wasn’t alone.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Do you usually take things from dead people?’

  The questioning was painful. ‘I did. I still would. You’ve seen how people are living, you’ve got to do what you have to. The dead have no use for anything.’

  Jessica looked off into the trees. ‘I guess I wouldn’t have had that photo at all if you hadn’t taken it. Why did you take it? It’s not really useful, is it?’

  ‘It’s not, to me at least,’ I said. ‘But if I hadn’t had it, would you have come with me?’

  ‘I probably would have waited for him.’

  ‘Then it was useful in some way.’

  ‘You didn’t know that when you took it though.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I replied. I had to be honest with myself now, not just Jessica. My stomach lurched as I retrieved long-buried memories. ‘It reminded me of something, something I once had.’

  ‘Before everyone got ill?’

  ‘Yes. I had a wife, a son. A family.’ The pain was still fresh as I tore open that mental wound. ‘They died.’

  ‘What were their names?’

  I squeezed those painful names from my throat. ‘Cait. And Toby.’

  ‘How old was Toby? Was he my age?’

  I trudged through the slushy snow, a little quicker now. ‘He was four.’

  Jessica squeezed my hand, this time in compassion rather than pain. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Did they get ill too?’

  ‘No, they weren’t ill. Did your father tell you much about what happened?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jessica said. ‘My dad just told me that mum got ill, and after that we lived in the barn.’

  ‘It wasn’t a good time,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame your dad from shielding you from what happened.’

  ‘Well, what did happen?’

  ‘The world used to be a lot warmer. Too warm, by all accounts. Did your dad mention global warming at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The world was heating up, and it was our fault. We didn’t do anything to stop it, and some of the colder areas of the world heated up too. There were places which had always been covered in ice.’

  ‘Always?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘As long as we knew about,’ I said. ‘It was called permafrost. It held lots of things in it, and some of them were old diseases which had slept for thousands of years. When the world warmed up, they woke up too.’

  ‘And that’s how everyone got ill?’

  ‘It is,’ I said. It felt odd to bring up something which I assumed everyone knew about, but the isolated souls of this new world could be brought up not knowing anything about what happened. ‘It spread really quick, and really far. Within months there were pandemics in every country.’

  Jessica scuffed her boots through a fresh pile of twigs, sending them scattering. ‘Dad said that Mum got ill very quickly.’

  I nodded. ‘A lot of people got ill quickly. The people who ran each country had their own ways of trying to deal with it. Ours decided to set up quarantine zones around all of the major population areas.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘They put up big walls around each city, like the ones we saw around Old Oxford. That way no one could get in or out.’

  ‘And what then?’

  I shrugged. ‘We thought they were going to make us wait it out, hoping that the plague was going to burn itself out.’

  ‘No one gets ill with it now. Did it work?’

  ‘We didn’t get a chance to find out.’

  ‘You were in one of the cities?’

  ‘I was,’ I replied. ‘A place called Gloucester.’

  ‘But you got out?’

  I held back tears as the regrets bubbled up in my brain. ‘I did. I found a way to get out and come back, and I don’t think anyone else knew about it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’

  ‘My wife was a nurse. She wouldn’t leave the people of the city as long as they needed her. Food was becoming scarce, so I’d leave the city to hunt rabbits, then return to make sure my family and others had food.’

  ‘She sounds like a good person.’

  ‘She was. The best.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I left to go hunting one day, but it seemed the people who ran the country were done waiting. People were still getting ill and dying, and it didn’t look like the plague was running out of steam.’

  ‘Is that when they died?’

  ‘It was.’

 
‘What happened?’

  I stopped fighting the tears, letting them well in my eyes. I had never told anyone what had happened to them, and speaking the words aloud seemed to cement the fact that they were both dead.

  ‘I went out to hunt as usual, through the old sewer tunnel I had been using. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong at first. I had a good catch, about five rabbits, so headed home. Just as I reached the edge of the woodland, I could hear planes. Not normal planes, but fighter jets.’

  ‘What did they sound like?’

  I forgot that Jessica had never seen one in her life. ‘Really loud,’ I said. ‘It would make you cover your ears. They came down low and circled over the city. I watched them as they flew around, wondering what they were doing. Then I saw them dropping their bombs.’

  ‘Bombs?’

  ‘Yes. They were big weapons they dropped from the planes, and they were filled with fire.’ I looked down at Jessica. ‘I think that might be where you got your burns from.’

  ‘Dad said that we used to live in a city, but that we went away from it,’ Jessica replied. ‘How did you know they were dead?’

  The memory erupted in my mind, still as fresh as the day I had buried it. I could still remember the searing heat from the flames as they rose high above the tall concrete walls of Gloucester, the black stacks of smoke rising seemingly to the ceiling of the sky. They came around numerous times, carpet-bombing the entire city. I watched from the edge of the woods, seeing everything I cared about vanish in minutes.

  ‘Gamekeeper? Are you okay?’

  I looked down at Jessica and realised we had stopped. She looked up at me, concern etching her brow. Tears rolled freely down my cheek; I brushed them away on my sleeve. ‘Believe me, I knew they were dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘I’ve never told anyone what happened before. It’s almost good to hear it out in the open.’ It was liberating, as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders and the ghosts which haunted me had been put to rest. I sat down among the wet twigs and sobbed uncontrollably, years of pent-up mourning released in one go.