by Luke Kondor
“Fletch?” he mouthed, dropping his speed against Whisper’s wishes. “What the…?”
The heel of his boot slipped forward, pushing him backwards onto his ass. The cold wet puddle of mud seeping instantly into his shorts and the bottom of his t-shirt. Fletcher disappeared. Whisper yanked him onwards a little further, pulling him deeper into the puddle.
“Whisper!” he called. “Halt, Whisper!”
It took the dog a second to register what had happened. She turned around and looked at Colin, her head tilting to the side as if to question the human’s foolery.
“Colin?” a voice called. He turned to see a familiar freckled face. The same one he’d been trying to avoid since that first night in Hope. Joanna approached at a jog. It seemed she had been given some fresh clothes, too. No longer standing in those camouflage pants and dark military vest top, but in a mustard-coloured raincoat with a checkered scarf tied around her neck. Her strawberry-blonde hair had been washed. It hung over her shoulders in thick waves and she half-smiled at him, unsure what to do or say or how to be.
“Joanna,” Colin said, wiping the mud off his hands, noticing as Sunny stepped outwards from behind her, holding onto her hand. The same robotic facial expressions.
“Are you okay?” Joanna asked, face wrinkling with concern. “Here, let me help you.”
“I don’t need help, thanks.” He glared at Sunny, whose glazed-over eyes seemed not to register his disdain. “Not from those who choose not to help me.”
“Colin, it’s not like that. You know that, surely? He’s just a kid. It’s okay—”
“No, it isn’t, Joanna. It’s not okay at all.”
Colin climbed to his feet, and hesitated a moment. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. An apology? He couldn’t help it, Colin wanted to grab Sunny there and then and shake him like a Magic 8-ball until all the answers spilled out and he could know once and for all what was hiding in that head of his. Despite living on the outskirts of town, even Colin had heard tell of the new kid who walked around all day as if in a dream. Lips practically sewn shut since the night of their arrival.
Instead, he pulled on the lead to get Whisper moving again. They returned up the hill, back towards the kennels, Colin keeping his mouth shut as best he could, willing himself not to say what he truly wanted to say.
As they set back, Colin could feel Sunny’s piercing green eyes watching him fade into the distance. Even as he rounded a corner and shrouded himself with trees, he somehow felt as though the boy were watching.
“What the fucks happened to you?” Anton said, standing in the doorway to the kennels with a tin cup, steam spilling out over the top.
Colin wheezed.
“One foot after the other, right?” Byron said, standing out in the cold with his bare legs and arms on show.
“I know, I know,” Colin said.
He stopped, rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Byron patted him on the shoulder.
“Good show,” Byron said. “Tomorrow we do the real thing.”
~ 3 ~
Joanna and Sunny watched Colin retreat up the path, treading deep footprints in the mud as he went.
“It’s okay,” Joanna said as she bent down and zipped up Sunny’s navy winter jacket. “Don’t you worry. It’ll be okay.”
I hope.
The words weren’t for Sunny. They were for herself. A woman struggling with the idea that the person who had saved her life, the person who had been there with her through it all at Ditton, had now turned into nothing more than a shell, no, a ghost of who she thought he was, living in some other plane of reality.
It wasn’t as though Joanna and Colin had ever been, what some might consider, ‘friends’ (after all, they’d only known each other a week or so now), but she’d be lying if she were to say that she didn’t feel something of a connection. The same as she did with all those people who’d been at Ditton. The night Sunny disturbed the spore-cluster and birthed the spores which had taken the lives of two Hopefuls. The Dutchman, Ria, Colin, and Sunny. They’d been on their own little excursion through hell at the Ditton factory, and, if anything, that should count for something.
Right?
Joanna bent down, careful not to drop her knee into the damp ground beneath them. She placed her head in the boy’s line of sight, his eyes lazily crossing his face, searching for who-knew-what. She peered into those deep greens of his and brushed his fine fringe out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear.
“Come on, Sunny,” she whispered. “It’s time to go.”
If Sunny heard, he made no sign – as usual. She found herself growing frustrated at his catatonia. She knew there was much more to the boy than she could ever understand, but that didn’t make it any easier. What did, was that the boy always seemed flawless. An enigma trapped inside the body of an innocent. His perfect skin was untouched, unlike most everyone else in this world. Even the burn marks on the backs of his hands from the regular bleach tests every citizen of Hope went through to check for signs of the rot seemed to heal over by the next day, where others’ hands were now poxed and scarred.
He was a beautiful creature. A china doll animated and doing its best to resemble life.
“Sunny,” she whispered, a little louder now, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Sándor?” The boy’s deep dark pupils sharpened as they dilated and refocused on her.
Standing up now, Joanna nudged Sunny onwards, scooting him along. If she hadn’t had been so forceful he might’ve never moved. He might’ve taken root. Sunny had a habit of losing himself in his thoughts. He wasn’t even as bad as he used to be. There was a time when, back at the bunker, Sunny would simply freeze up mid-speech. It might’ve been because of the other children like him, feeding into each others’ energies, acting as some sort of reverberation loop, but she couldn’t be sure. How many times had she asked him something, a math problem, a question of his preference for food, or simply a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and he’d go to answer but halt midway through? Like his system had crashed and needed turning off and on again. No matter how much she waved her hand in front of his nose, spoke to him, and even once in a moment of frustration grabbed his shoulders and shook the boy, he wouldn’t come out of it, and all she could do was wait. Take a moment and wait.
She was just glad Sergeant Taft wasn’t still around. He used to take the non-responsiveness as an affront to his leadership, bruise em up until they started to come to. But he never touched Sunny like that, no. He’d never laid a finger on Sunny. It seemed even that bald brute saw something in Sunny, something quietly terrifying. Oh yes, Sunny was an interesting case indeed.
She reached down for his hand again, clutching onto the soft cold fingers and squeezing them within her own, trying to warm him up.
“You see the duckies?” Joanna said, pointing to the mallards splashing amongst the reeds, taking it in turns to dunk their heads. “You see the duckies, Sunny?”
Sunny looked but he didn’t say anything. He scanned the open lake like he was a T100 model in search of enemies.
They passed the fishermen on the jetties. One looked to be in his sixties and the other a decade older than that. How they’d survived this long, she had no idea. Still, the one in the wellington boots doffed his cap to her and the other smiled, his eyes lingering on her own for an uncomfortably long time. The other was peering into a bucket holding the catches of the day, looking frustrated and angry by what he saw. Their long fishing poles reached forwards and arced down into reflection of the clouds above like they were fishing from a body of fluffy cream.
“Afternoon, dear,” the fisherman called, but she didn’t answer. She barely smiled. These people, these Hopefuls, were still all new to her, and even though she’d been introduced to them all in one way or another at the evening dinners, she still didn’t feel as though she’d properly settled. As always, they spoke to her, and not to Sunny.
Next they passed the married couple, the only wedded two in all of Hope. She�
�d been introduced to them as the Martelle’s – Janet and Craig. On her first town dinner in the bowling alley hall, they’d zealously talked her ear off about how it was both of their second marriage.
“The first was a practice run,” Craig Martelle had sung at her with a wink and a nudge to which Janet chuckled in response. They’d married cheaply up at Gretna Green in Scotland – the eloper’s wedding – and had been celebrating their honeymoon in a caravan park in the Pennines when the rot first hit London. After hearing the military’s nationwide call to ‘stay inside, stay safe,’ they’d done as told. They’d been surviving, along with their love, ever since, and had found Hope as they ventured down south in search of some remainder of civilisation.
Craig was wringing clothing over the water when Sunny and Joanna stepped over what was essentially the Martelles’ front garden – a small stoney paved walkway from their cabin to the lake. The water sloshed back into the cold body of the lake as Craig creased his face with effort and squeezed a pair of old jeans.
“Afternoon,” they both said in unison. An odd harmony but almost timed to perfection. Soulmates indeed. “Here’s a thought for the day. Does anyone know how jeans are made? These are my last pair, and I don’t think they can take too much more of a beating.” He laughed as Janet rolled her eyes.
Joanna smiled but passed without a word.
Now walking further on up the lake, passing more of the Hopefuls, she made her way to one of the few brick buildings in the entire site. The last building before the red bridge to the town centre. Fixed to its side was a small garden area in which three children played, kicking a flat football between themselves, laughing and hollering as children tended to do. Their good times untouched by the hardships of the world beyond.
She glanced at Sunny, watching the boy’s eyes fix to the other children. He remained as still and quiet as a mannequin.
A nudge and she pulled him along through the big wooden doors that protested as they opened. The building used to be a crèche of sorts. A kid’s club. A place to drop the children off whilst parents went for a romantic bike ride or a spa day at the massage parlour. But not anymore. Nowadays it was used as a—
“Joanna!”
The woman waiting for her beamed a giant smile her way. Cheeks to the ceiling and arms raised in front as if she were expecting Joanna to run to her for a movie-style slow-motion hug.
“Hi, Veronica,” she said, doing her best to match the energy but failing completely. “How’re things?”
Veronica’s hands slapped down to her sides and she took a step forward, looking down to Sunny. She rolled her eyes theatrically. “The usual. Catherine’s been giving me grief again about her varicose veins – not that she’s doing herself any favours by refusing to take any kind of medication. Benjamin is still refusing to let me look at the marks all over his body.
“Benjamin?”
“Oh sure, right. You’ve not met Ben, have you? The kids – and adults, everyone really – call him, ‘The Scarred Man’. Been here a long time now. One of the originals. Oh…and… oh, I really shouldn’t say…”
“What?” Joanna asked, knowing Veronica would need little convincing.
“Rumour has it – and of course, I mean rumour because I’m the nurse around these parts and I know it to be definitely true – Cynthia and Nolan are expecting!”
“Oh, that’s great news,” Joanna said, suddenly finding herself wrapped up in Veronica’s arms for a hug. She did her best to bring herself up to Veronica’s energy level but failed somewhat spectacularly. Not that it phased Veronica in any way.
“I know. I know. They can hardly believe it themselves,” she beamed. “Which is why they’re keeping zippo for now. I’m sure they’ll announce it at some point soon, once they’ve hit the safe point. You know how rare it is for someone to reach full term these days?”
Joanna caught Veronica pause then, a shadow passing over her face. Since the days of the rot, chances had not been in the favour of people who had fallen pregnant. With the lack of trained doctors and medical facilities, C-sections were all but impossible, and natural childbirths had a vastly decreased rate of both mother and child surviving. Veronica had told Joanna of several failed births in which the mothers had survived, but were vastly put off another attempt at adding to the ever-falling population count.
Veronica shook her head and painted her smile back on her face. “How’s our little Sunny?”
“He still hasn’t spoken since that first night. I’ve tried talking to him but he just looks at me like he’s from a whole different species, like I’m speaking a foreign language.”
“Nonsense,” Veronica said, placing her hands on her knees and addressing Sunny. “You’re just shy, aren’t you? We don’t think of you as a whole new species.”
If only you knew, Joanna thought as flashbacks to the bunker crackled in her mind’s eye.
Veronica whipped her hair up into a ponytail and tied it with a single white ribbon. She tried tickling Sunny’s underarms but nothing happened. She might as well have been telling knock-knock jokes to a shrub. She shrugged off the cold response and looked up to Joanna.
“Has he been sleeping?”
“Yes, I mean I think so. Sometimes I think he’s just closing his eyes to appease me more than anything.”
“Eating and drinking?”
“Sure. Everything as normal. He’s eating like a growing kid, and he drinks a lot of water. He gets through his own rations pretty quickly, and then he’s on to mine. I tend to give him half of my own by the evening.”
“And you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Well then,” Veronica said, sucking her gums as she stood up. “Like I’ve told you before, he’ll come round. Sometimes children don’t take to a change in environments so well. Homeostasis is important to a kid’s wellbeing at Sunny’s age. Changes break their view of control of the world. And the reality of it is that we, none of us, really have that much control anymore. His selective mutism might just be Sunny’s way of putting himself in the driver’s seat.”
Joanna nodded dazedly, scanning the old medical room, lined wall to wall with shelves, boxes of tablets, metallic instruments and note paper. On the trestle table on the side, she noticed several boxes of Truzone Bleach Powder sachets. Some of the white powder with blue specks dusted the wood from previous rot inspections. It was as much a routine to the people of Hope now as it was to brush their teeth. Not that everyone brushed their teeth anymore.
“Don’t worry,” Veronica said, catching her eye. “I had to test one of the oldies for rot but he was fine.”
Joanna nodded.
“Jo, I have to tell you, you don’t seem happy.” Veronica’s bluntness was alarming but expected. “You don’t understand how good you have it here. Henry assigned you as my assistant – that’s the best job in Hope! Important, sure, but easy as anything. A few cuts and bruises here and there, maybe a few routine bleachings, and then back home you go to get ready for dinner. Honestly, its way better than your face seems to think. I know you two are obviously still new and getting used to your surroundings, but it won’t take long before you feel like you’re one of us.” She smiled at them both in turn, lingering on Sunny. “Plus, you get to hang with me. And I’m by far the coolest person in all of Hope.”
“Is that so?” Joanna said, a curl pulling on her lip, forcing a smile.
“Yu-huh. I’m tellin’ yer, I’m a flipping blast.”
“We saw Colin,” Joanna said suddenly, unsure why she would even bring it up.
“Oh yeah?” Veronica said, that cheeky smile returning.
“Yeah, I mean it’s nothing but…”
“You should just tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“You like him, no?”
“Colin?” Joanna hesitated before nodding. “Sure, in a way. He seems… I mean, he seemed nice, but…” She shook her head, feeling silly about this whole thing. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m going on
about this…”
“No, it’s good,” Veronica said, nodding. “This is the kind of thing we like to see in Hope. Normal things like laughter and smiles and, I dunno, a little romance.”
“Normal things?” Joanna asked, suddenly finding Veronica’s grins infectious. She thought of Colin and the time they had exchanged on the journey to Hope. Rolling over bumps and pot holes as Sunny slept beside her. Conversation was easy. Colin was interesting – not that he really let much out about himself. And after settling down to sleep in the same room that first night in Hope, Sunny again wedged between them, maybe Joanna had caught a glimpse of what a normal life could be. Despite her best efforts she couldn’t help but get that night out of her head. Before she had heard Colin angrily instructing Sunny to divulge more information about his dreams.
“They’re only dreams,” she had said to Colin, seeing the betrayed look cross his face. “Nothing more.”
Maybe not necessarily true, but hardly false to say the least.
Since that evening it had been hard to think of Colin. She had found herself looking out into the distance longingly, hoping to catch a glimpse. All week she hadn’t seen him and had found that difficult to deal with. Until today, that was. And she wasn’t sure if seeing his reserved body language, and his inability to even share a moment with them both made it better or made it worse. Either way, her heart beat hard in her chest at the sight of him.
“Normal things,” Veronica continued. “Homeostasis. Happiness. We here in Hope just want a little slice of the good life. That’s all we want. That’s all God would want from us. To live and love.”
To live and love, Joanna pondered, reminded of every love song she had heard at home growing up. Every musician preaching from the same hymn sheet. Could that be all she really wanted? Just some stability with a man who could share this new life? Was that even possible now with Sunny in her care? There to shake every foundation Joanna found?