"Someone found you, remember?" Rae's voice had softened considerably, and I had to think it was because of me. Because of what'd just happened. Because of the reaction I might have to their words.
That trip had taken a huge toll on Gabby and I. I couldn't understand why she'd ever be willing to go through something like that so unprepared ever again. I wasn't. And I didn't want either of them to go through it either. We couldn't just wander off without a plan. Not this time. Nobody would be out there to save us if the same thing happened again. They'd be there waiting to destroy us.
"How could she? She was practically dead by the time help arrived." There was a moment of silence after my words floated out into the room.
When she spoke again Gabby's voice no longer held such a strong note of anger. It was more resigned. She didn't think there was any other option. And I wasn't sure if she was wrong.
"You wanted us to leave anyway. What's the difference between doing it now or later?"
"Later we'd have had enough time to make a plan. We wouldn't be wandering blindly into nothing."
"We have a map. Blind is the one thing we are not. Not this time. Waiting will only diminish our supplies."
"This isn't a good idea. I don't want to lose you out there."
"Well what else can we do? It's not like we can just go back. There's nothing to go back to even if we tried. And if by some miracle something is still there, well then you said it yourself. We'd die there. This is all we have," she gestured to the sad selection of supplies we had littered over the table, her movements lingering over the map.
"This is where we are. And all we can do now is move."
TWENTY FOUR
We spent the evening and half of the next day travelling in a straight line before Gabby realised we were headed back towards OTF territory. My body tensed up when she made the connection and we turned immediately to change course. We only paused to reinstate ourselves on the map when my legs were burning too much to continue moving and I was forced to stop.
As we walked through the dead country, the silence that surrounded us was only ever interrupted by our own stilted conversation. We had a constant soundtrack of harsh breathing and heavy footsteps filling the air the rest of the time. The relative quiet gave my mind too many opportunities to think.
As hard as it was to admit, the chaos we'd run from had provided us with the perfect opportunity to escape. But that didn't mean I was okay with it.
The scariest part about the whole thing was that I couldn't be sure who did it.
Was it the Xiets? With their misguided hatred and fear.
John and Trisha might have done it to be sure we could never expose them. Or maybe their son did it out of spite. Because we got away. Because I got away. Because we now posed some kind of absurd threat to their entire organisation.
Maybe they truly thought it was the best thing for us. To just be killed. Maybe it had nothing to do with me and they just thought killing everyone left in Palla was a mercy. If they could think of a way to convince the others it was the best option then I'd have had no doubt that they could have done it. Though if you'd told me that a couple of weeks ago I would have heartily disagreed with you.
God, had it really only been such a short amount of time? The stabbing in my chest that started up every time I thought like this became a frequent visitor.
And so, the travel continued.
Nights were the hardest. At least during the day we were moving. Idle chatter distracted us from wandering thoughts while we tried to maintain focus on where we were going, what we were doing. In the darkness, once the sun had fallen, there was nothing to protect me from the swirling abyss in my head.
My dreams were nightmares, filled with the images of the dead.
The child trapped under the wreckage.
The faceless woman in blood.
The young man of glass.
My mother.
My brother.
I felt dirty. The ashes of the people lost to the blaze still clung to me, in more ways than one. We would never be clean of our losses.
✽✽✽
Three and a half days passed and all we had left were three bottles of water, one can of meat, a third of the can of mixed vegetables and just under half the bag of rice. And salt, not that we would get much from eating that.
Gabby and Rae had moved their attention from looking for road signs to finding the shortest way to the edge of the map. To where we hoped we'd find the entrance to civilisation. We'd also realised that we needed to conserve our energy better. We were only going to get weaker as time went on, and we didn't have the resources to recuperate. We needed to set a steady pace that wouldn't put too much strain on our weakening bodies.
I was frightened to notice that we were getting slower as the days passed, and it was often too hard for me to keep pace with the others.
On the bright side the season continued to change. If that could be considered good. I was no longer assaulted by the blistering heat of the sun with every step through this open graveyard. But the days were still bright enough for us to cover decent ground, while the temperature had dropped considerably. Sometimes it was too cold. In the mornings my fingers began to feel like they'd been dipped in ice water overnight and we were now on the lookout for any signs it might rain. As good as the water source might be, it wouldn't be ideal to get caught in the downpour.
Thankfully water had yet to become a major issue. We were rationing it well enough, though we still suffered the effects of minor dehydration. It was nothing I couldn't handle. No headaches, just incredibly dry lips and skin. Hopefully we would be coming up to a stream or river soon. If the map was to be believed.
We didn't have much else to put our faith in at this point.
Gabby had taken charge of the map while Rae was watching out for anything that might have been edible. He'd armed himself with some small chunks of stone in case we came across anything he'd be able to hunt. Gabby had let it slip multiple times how much easier she thought this would be if she'd just had a gun. I shuddered to think of the thing being in my sister's hands.
But she had a point.
Having been trained with the weapon it would have provided us with a much better chance at getting anything out here. Plus we'd have had an added layer of defence should any Xiets or OTF members come within our range.
If it weren't for the fact that we had to keep going in search of water, I believed we might have set up in one of the old houses that that been left mostly intact and taught ourselves to hunt. Figured out a garden. Lived off the land. Settled here and lived like wild people.
The idea was actually quite appealing to me. We would never have to worry about murder or betrayal. No one would even know we existed.
The further we got from Palla the more wildlife seemed to rebel against the ideas of death and scattered itself around the wreckage. Large patches of grass, long overgrown, were interspersed by gorse bushes, or other weeds left to sprout in mankind's absence.
It was mesmerising to see the beauty that had emerged from such tragedy.
Noticing the wistful look on my face, and maybe feeling the same way, Rae called for a break. Immediately I sat down on the lush grass. Just to my right was the excess of hard tar we'd been walking along for days.
From our position at the top of a hill I was able to look out at the world from a different perspective. It made me feel free to be able to walk these roads, even while I knew I was trapped. Danger was surrounding us, hidden in every shadow. But we were still moving. We could find a better life. Maybe even people to help protect us.
That was a big maybe.
I would never be able to forget what had happened the last time we'd been 'rescued'. I had to be prepared for the world to hurt me. To hurt the ones I loved the most.
I turned to my other side, and noticing the patch of daisies, set to work on making a chain. I ignored the part of me that said it was childish. It was too hard to find beautiful things in a world
that had been blown apart. It was nice to see that it was still possible. I wanted to take that possibility with me.
"It doesn't look like they've ever bombed this far out. At least not heavily," Rae muttered, looking out into the distance before plonking himself down next to me. He started gathering the daisies that were out of my reach, forming a pile between us. Traces of a smile fluttered over my face.
"No, they wouldn't have. We've reached the last section of suburbs. There's a stretch of fields not far from here, along with a lake and forest. This would have been one of the first places they attacked before they started driving us inwards. According to what Rosa was told by OTF they didn't start with bombs. The Xiets used to roam through the streets with guns, forcing our people to move. It was a while before we were given warnings and the chance to run for ourselves." Gabby had a frown on her face as she studied the map, lost in thought.
We'd been travelling for a long time in the same direction. It hurt to see how far in we'd been trapped.
"Didn't you have to travel longer than this before Nathaniel found you? You were still in the suburbs then." I nodded in response, not looking up from where my fingers were weaving the stems of the delicate weeds together.
"It makes sense that they wouldn't make us perfectly centred in the suburbs. It probably would have been too hard to do that anyway. Bombs aren't always the most accurate things. And Pallara was apparently a really weird shape. We were almost equal distances from all of Pallara's borders. This side just had more farmland originally." The sound of Gabby folding the map followed her words.
I stabbed another flower through the one in my hand.
"Maybe they just didn't want to hurt the nature," I pondered, thinking about the trees I'd seen rising in the distance. I could feel both sets of eyes on me, assessing whether or not I was being serious.
"Rosa, these people are terrorists. They don't care about plants." But how could she know that for sure? We didn't know anything about the faceless enemy who sent balls of fire to plague us.
We didn't know what they looked like, or sounded like.
What language they spoke.
We didn't know what they believed in, or why we thought it was so bad in the beginning.
Most of us didn't even know the truth behind how this whole thing started.
They might have a high respect for the gifts of the earth: the trees, the flowers, the mountains, the grass, the water, the waves. As we once had, when we could afford to believe in such things.
I looked back down at the bright green stems intertwined by my fingers, noting the length my daisy chain had reached. Were there children doing the same thing in Tikorania? Funnily enough I'd never thought about Xiets having children.
After everything that had happened with OTF I wouldn't have been surprised to find we were still considered the bad guys in all of this. There had to have been a reason why less people were willing to help us. Why helping us allowed them to kill and injure us. We weren't important enough to warrant a real rescue, and we were expendable.
But I knew better than to argue back.
"Either way that forest will provide us with some cover from the sun, and hopefully more opportunities to hunt and gather. And there's supposed to be a stream," Rae said, trying to divert the conversation from where it was headed. Tensions were high and this was the last place we wanted to be if we were going to fight with each other.
"Don't forget it offers cover for the enemy too." I stayed silent. While she had a point, I didn't like how militarised Gabby had become. A couple of months ago this conversation would have been reversed.
It was amazing to see how war changed people. Amazing, but frightening.
I lay back into the swell of grass beneath me. The feeling of groundedness zapped into my bones.
I was sick of fighting. I was sick of running. But I wasn't going to stop. No, I owed it to my family to at least try.
So instead of lying there and giving up, I lay there and watched the clouds. The chain of flowers in my hands was forgotten as I gazed at the white puffy blobs gently travelling the sky. I couldn't make out any shapes, as I would have once been able to. It used to be Dad's favourite game. Back before the skies were littered with a sense of foreboding.
Despite how far we'd travelled we could still hear the faint booming noise as the odd explosion went off. Were they still targeting Palla? Were more people being flattened, squashed, ripped into a thousand pieces? Were there even any people left to destroy?
The thought of it made my stomach lurch. But I couldn't afford to lose any food. So I couldn't afford to react. I couldn't afford to listen.
I closed my ears to the sound of the dying.
✽✽✽
There was a clear difference between trying to survive in the exposed plains of the country's remains and the lively forest that bordered it. I wasn't sure which was harder.
We had found a small stream — thank god — not long after we'd entered the lining of trees and bushes that marked the edge of Pallara. Rae filled our empty bottles to the brim and added a few drops of the iodine tincture in his medic bag to purify it. We had no idea what might've been in this water and we couldn't afford to be affected by it. Rae's bag of wonders could only do so much for us. If we were to get sick it would bring us down. We'd come too far to let something as simple as that get us now.
With water taken care of, if only for the time being, we turned to our next major issue: food. And it seemed that the wildlife here was smarter than we'd originally anticipated. We hadn't had much luck in the hunting aspect of hunting and gathering. More than a few times I'd heard Gabby muttering something about how much she wanted a gun. But she didn’t have one, and wouldn't. At least not while we were here.
The gathering was going better. We'd discovered a berry patch that Rae swore he recognised from one of the books he'd studied at Dr. Fisher's. It had been a book about curing victims of toxic or poisonous plants, but he assured me that they were safe. We were so hungry that I wasn't going to argue.
They tasted sweet, slightly tart. Far more flavoursome than anything I'd ever had the pleasure of eating. Fresh produce was an impossibility at home. Even growing it was too hard. Unless you wanted it to be fertilised with the ashes of your neighbours, or stolen. And the dirt in Palla was of such poor quality that it usually failed to grow in the first place, even for the Maloney's. It was out of the question in more recent years anyway. Any seeds we'd had were long gone.
We picked dozens of these berries and didn't bother trying to save them for later. They wouldn't keep, unlike the other food we carried. So we ate while we walked. And ate when we stopped for the night. And when we woke the next day it was to a berry breakfast. It was a bitter moment when we finally ran out.
We'd managed to fuel our selves for almost two whole days on the fruit, and were feeling a lot more alive as a result. But for now it was back to rationing our supplies.
As I looked at the people I cared about most in the world I couldn't help but notice the way their bones stuck out at each joint. The way their skin seemed tighter on their faces.
I had vivid flashbacks of Liam's beaten down body, my mother's thin, dangling corpse.
We were surviving. But only barely.
It was difficult to navigate through the woods. We weren't sure which direction we were heading after the first few days. It all looked the same and we couldn't see through to either side. In the end we packed away the map and decided to continue on in one direction.
It seemed our best idea was to just keep walking. Keep moving. After all there was nothing in these woods more dangerous than what we would find outside of them.
The most threatening thing so far, other than the constant reality of starvation and dehydration, was the amount of bugs we kept stumbling upon. You'd have thought that having almost died multiple times, and seeing the carnage of an entire city decimated, would have put the disturbing proportions of a bug into perspective.
But no.
>
The childish fear clung to me even now. The creepy, slimy, fury bodies, and too many eyes continued to send a shot of panic to my stomach. I made myself walk through it. I tried not to think about them.
There was a lot I tried not to think about, insects being the least of my problems.
The bodies.
The death.
The reasons.
The people.
The heat.
The cold.
The resources, or lack thereof.
Most of all I tried not to think about where we were taking ourselves. Whose hands we were about to be placing our lives in. Would they crush us in their palms? Turn us away? Would they be glad we'd managed to find them? I didn't want to think about either outcome. One had the ability to destroy any hope we had left, the driving force that kept us moving. The other could build it up so high that we'd undoubtedly be disappointed when we got there.
So I didn't think about the future. I tried not to think about the past. And I worked to keep my mind off the present.
So instead I thought about Gabby. And Rae. I spent an awful lot of time thinking about Rae.
The one place I would let my thoughts drift to was what I imagined we'd be doing had we been given a chance at a normal life. Would he still have picked me?
Out of all the girls who I'd seen eyeing him up around Palla, I knew I wasn't the prettiest, nor the most interesting. I'd long put the thought of anything happening between us out of my head, not willing to ruin the one friendship I'd managed to keep hold of over the years.
The one piece of goodness I held onto was the overwhelming giddy feeling that filled me at the idea of him liking me too.
We weren't exactly in the best place to be starting that kind of relationship, but every now and then he'd do something sweet and thoughtful, and everything would seem just a little bit brighter. I was unbelievably thankful that he was here with me, making this journey somewhat manageable.
With me so lost in thought it was no surprise when I tripped over a root of some kind and went crashing to the ground. Thankfully I wasn't carrying anything at the time, but I wouldn't soon forget that I could have cost us a good portion of our supplies if I had been.
Bright Cold Day Page 21