Tears of Blood

by Rachel Martin

  “I, er, I don’t understand.” My knees go weak, I bend and sit down on one of the train tracks.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t have an affair with your Mother, they chose me as a donor. You don’t have to take me on faith, I have proof.”

  “Ssssh, don’t say anything else.”

  I put my head in my hands. This is all too much to compute. I am completely immobile. This can’t be true, can it? What if it is? What if he is my Dad? What if, what if, what if. I hear Olly and the man walking up the train line, they sit on the other track. They chat with each other like they have known each other forever. I watch them for a moment, how they interact, how they look, oh my God they do have the same features, or do they? Am I imagining it? They finally notice me watching them and fall silent.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  He smiles then says, “Stephen.”

  I look down at the ground.

  “I think I saw you on the bus, and the street near my house, were you watching me?”

  “Watching you sounds so sinister. I was just curious. I wanted to know how you were, I wanted to know what you looked like and if you were healthy.”

  I feel sick. I stare back at the ground. I have an intense hollow guilt eating into me. My real Father is dead. He is not here. He is not here to help me. He is who I want, not this Stephen. I don’t know what to do.

  “I had been keeping an eye on you, on you both.” He stands up and tentatively steps towards me. Olly follows him. “I wanted to protect you. I want to protect you now. This world is becoming more dangerous. You don’t understand.”

  “Right,” I nod and almost whisper to myself. “I know it’s dangerous.”

  “Can we go now Izzy,” Olly says, he takes hold of Stephen’s hand.

  “Come on Isabel, please trust me,” Stephen says stepping closer to me. “Think about it, if I wanted to hurt you I could have done it back at the coffee shop.”

  I stare up at him. I see him. He and Olly have the same intense green eyes. They both smile as I realise this. They have the same smile. A strange wave passes through me. I almost see Olly as a grown man. Maybe it is Olly as a man. Perhaps time has twisted, I am so confused. I never imagined that my Father wasn’t my biological Father, but on seeing Stephen now, the truth is evident. I start to cry. I know the truth, like it is some deep longing within me that I hadn’t recognised until this moment. Stephen extends his hand to me. I stare at his fingers. I think about taking it. I hesitate.

  “We need to go. There are others leaving the city.”

  I want to trust him. I am desperate to trust him. Looking after Olly alone is going to be hard. I believe I can trust him. I do trust him. I extend my hand up to his. He takes it and pulls me up and onto my feet. I feel a connection flow through us. I relax as the feeling takes root. We are safe with him. I just know it. We continue walking up the train line together in subdued silence.

  seventeen

  Shit, fuck, balls. Stephen was right. I twist the lens of the binoculars and focus. I try not to fall out of the tree in the process. Oh, God.

  “How many do you think there are?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, a hundred, a hundred and fifty perhaps.”

  This is not good. This is not good at all. I had been so caught up in my feelings about Stephen that I had forgotten how precarious our situation is. This is a wakeup call. I stare through the binoculars at a large group of survivors. Some of them are wearing army gear and carry guns. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and try to get a better look. They all seem fit and healthy, and they are following us up the train line, our train line. What else can go wrong?

  “Shit,” I whisper to myself.

  “I told you not to come up here, but you would insist, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, what do you expect? I had to know what you were worried about.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not, we’re going to be fine, besides it’s probably for the best that you know anyway,” he says. “You alright down there Olly?”

  We both look down the branches. Olly’s little face is staring up at us from the ground.

  “Can you come down now?” he whines.

  “OK. Two minutes,” Stephen calls. “Now you know,” he says quietly to me.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask

  “I don’t know. They’re still quite a way off at the moment. I doubt they know we’re here yet. But we’re going to have to do something pretty soon.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, “we are.”

  “Come on then, let’s go.”

  Stephen takes the binoculars off of me and climbs back down. I perch for a moment on my branch. What are we going to do now? This route was perfect. I had no plan B. I am not mentally prepared for this. As I climb back down, all I can concentrate on are the men. There are so many of them. What would they do to us if they found us? They are the military, and they are also immune. Does that mean some of them are so much more too? My foot slips. I almost fall. I grab the branches. I laugh nervously.

  “Be careful,” Stephen calls.

  I force myself to look at what I am doing. I place my feet carefully and hold on tight until I reach the last branch. I hang then let go.

  “Are you ready to go on now?” Stephen asks.

  I nod. We keep on walking up the train line in the same direction. I have this vice-like constriction wrapping around my chest. I feel sick. It is crushing me. This is not good at all. Now I know why he was becoming so agitated. We are grossly outnumbered. What the fuck are we going to do?

  We walk deeper into the evening than ever before, and Stephen waits until it is almost entirely dark before making a small fire under the trees. We eat, then put Olly to sleep. Stephen and I sit across from each other, the fire between us. He is absentmindedly poking a stick into the flames. He glances at me.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this before, but I feel like I need to.”

  “What?”

  “That group.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I know the man leading it.”

  I just stare at him, while he stares into the flames.

  “Who is he?”

  There is a pause. Stephen tears his eyes away from the fire and looks at me. The flames are being reflected in his eyes.

  “His name is Archie. We were part of the same regiment out in Afghanistan. We were part of a group which got separated in the desert after an I.E.D.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bomb.”

  “Oh… right.”

  “Anyway, he’s really not a nice guy, and he is, er… well... very determined. We need to keep our distance. We may need to alter our route soon.”

  “Very determined to do what?”

  “Let’s just say we have some unfinished business and leave it at that.”

  “Oh, OK.”

  We sit in silence. As I sit here in the dark, I still can’t quite believe that he is my biological father. I know so little about him. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that, not only has the world collapsed around me, but my history has collapsed too. I feel like I am floating away from myself. It is a strange sensation. I know that what he says is true too. I can see him in Olly, I can even see him in me. I was right too, my mind was not playing tricks on me, I really did see him in the past, way before all of this began, but at that time he was just another face in the swarm. I can’t believe my parents managed to keep such a secret from me. I understand though. It makes sense to hide it. Why tell me? What difference would it have made? They are my parents still. That will never ever change. They loved me. My Dad loved me. He will always be my Dad. Stephen is more like an older brother, and that is how I will see him. My parents didn’t know any of this would happen. I am at ease with it now. I am glad I have some more living family, if I can call Stephen that.

  A loud crackle from a log in the fire jolts me back to the moment. I stare into the flames. I sud
denly have visions of all the bodies burning in London. What else is going to go wrong? How can I prepare for it? I look up at Stephen. I want to ask him more questions about Archie, about everything, about my biological grandparents, about what the army meant by so much more, but I can tell by the way he is acting that he is far too preoccupied now. He is disturbed.

  “You should sleep, we’re getting up very early tomorrow,” he says.

  eighteen

  Now I know that we are being followed by such a large group, things are getting worse. We carry on up the train line for now, but how long can we go this way? No one knows. All I really know for sure is that we have to move faster. But the more we try and create a distance between us and them, the more they gain. Every day they edge just a little bit closer, even though there are so many of them and only three of us. Every day we feel a little less secure. I can almost feel their breath on my neck. I can almost feel their hands around my throat. All I want is for Olly to be safe. All I want is for me to be safe. But, unfortunately, we are everything but safe. When the wind blows in the right direction we can hear their voices. They sound ghostly, inhuman. Sometimes we can hear gunshots. Sometimes we can hear screaming and shouting. We cringe at the sounds and wonder what to do next. Olly is not fazed though. He seems to know we will be safe. His confidence soothes me. He hums the tunes of the forest. He is connecting. But sometimes I am so lost in fear I cannot concentrate on the beauty all around me, despite the fact I want to lose myself in it.

  As night descends, we see an office block in the distance.

  “Right, we’re staying there tonight,” Stephen says pointing up to the top floor.

  Olly and I stare up at it. Anywhere is better than another uncomfortable night under the trees. We climb up the banks and jump over the fence. Stephen kicks in the double doors to the building. Olly laughs. He feels so naughty doing stuff like that. His laugher infiltrates me, soon we are both laughing our heads off. Even Stephen sees the funny side.

  “We’re like robbers on the telly,” Olly says.

  “Yeah, we should get some masks shouldn’t we,” I say.

  “Oh, can we?”

  I nod, “next time we’re in a big shop, we’ll try and find some, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  We climb to the top floor. The first thing we do is rush to the window to check where the following group are. Stephen looks, sighs then passes me the binoculars. They are making camp for the night. They are so close now, only a few fields over.

  “We have to go a different way tomorrow. We can’t keep walking in the same direction as them,” Stephen says.

  I scan over the camp. I find Archie. I watch him slap one of the men around the head. The man falls to his knees in front of him. Archie pulls out a gun from his belt and points it in the man’s face. Other men crowd around. Archie smacks the man around the head with the gun. He falls to the ground. The men jump around like they are cheering. I let the binoculars drop down to my side. I look up at Stephen.

  “Yeah I think you’re right,” I say, devoid of emotion.

  We are both thinking the same thing. We’re screwed if we don’t.

  “I know the train track is the best way but, well, we don’t have a choice.”

  “I agree.” I hand him back the binoculars. “I’ll check the map for another route.”

  It’s still dark when Stephen wakes us up the next morning. I lift my hands to my face and rub my eyes.

  “Already?” I say, I want to tell him to ‘go away,’ but somehow I resist the temptation. I sense his urgency.

  “Come on,” he says again. “We have to get moving.”

  He passes me a bottle of water. The cool liquid wakes me more. My eyelids feel a little less like sandpaper. I can see that night is on the cusp of turning to grey.

  “We have to go. Now,” Stephen says.

  I wake Olly, and we get up. I clip the sleeping bag onto my rucksack and step over to the window where Stephen is standing and staring through the binoculars. He passes them to me. The group are already up and packed. They are ready to start marching.

  “Shit,” I say.

  Archie is out ahead ordering his troops. Then suddenly he stops dead. They all do. Archie looks straight up at the window, up at me. It is as if he can actually see me, like he knows I’m here. He keeps on staring my way. What the fuck? The way he keeps staring at me with those intense black eyes is making me feel as if he is eating away at my soul. My body grows heavy like I am about to fall through the floors, all the way to the ground. I will be sucked away and disappear. What the Hell is going on? If he wasn’t so far away, I swear he could see me. Can he see me? I start to shake. I gasp and look away.

  “What is it?” Stephen asks.

  “Nothing.”

  I gulp. I need to know. I lift the binoculars back up. Archie is pointing up at the window. The men all around him are glaring this way now. Oh no. No, no. This can’t be happening. Not again. They start running in this direction. My hand drops. I look up at Stephen.

  “We have to go now,” I shout.

  Stephen grabs the binoculars. I run to my rucksack and slip it on. I grab Olly’s hand. Stephen runs and picks Olly up. We race down the spiral staircase and push through the broken double doors and out into the fresh morning air. The first Sun rays of the day have just begun shining over the horizon. I can actually smell the change in the air. We frantically look around. I see an Exit sign.

  “That way,” I yell.

  We scramble towards the sign, through some kind of industrial estate. There are cars, trucks, and vans parked all around and only a few decaying bodies.

  “Can’t we break into one of the cars,” I say.

  “They all need immobilisers, there’s not enough time to break into one.”

  “Immobilizers, immobilisers,” Olly says clinging onto Stephen.

  There is a gunshot in the not-so-far distance. A tingling sensation rises up through me. I ball my fists. We run even faster towards the exit, so fast I feel as if I am about to fall forward at every step. We push on and out of the gates. We are on a main road somewhere. It is rural. Trees line the road in both directions. There are large houses with driveways. There are no cars on the street. Shit, shit, shit. I stop running, dead. So does Stephen. I put my hands on my hips and breathe. Which way was it? I can’t think straight. I can’t recall the map. My mind is jumbled. I look left and right. I scratch my head.

  “Which way?” Stephen yells.

  “Er, to the village in the country, or back towards the town?” I blurt out.

  “The village, which way?”

  Another gunshot. They are gaining. Shit, shit, shit. Stephen puts Olly on his shoulders. Olly’s hand's grip onto Stephen’s forehead. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Calm. I close my eyes and recall the map.

  “This way,” I point to the left.

  We start to run. Something inside me is telling me that this is the right way. The way to safety. It feels right. It feels good. Olly starts laughing. He thinks this is a game, and that’s just as well.

  “Oi!” a man’s voice calls from somewhere in the distance.

  Gunshots echo off the buildings behind us, and all around in the industrial estate. We all glance backwards. The men are on the road chasing us now. They are going to catch us. Oh my God, oh my God. My chest clenches as though my lungs are paralysed. I can’t breathe. A bullet whistles passed us.

  “Run,” Stephen shouts. “Faster.”

  I run with all my might. Stephen grabs my hand and pulls me along at his speed. I can’t do it. My heart is exploding in my chest. My bag is too heavy. Another gunshot. They are closer again. I can hear it.

  “Faster Izzy,” Stephen shouts as he drags me along.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  We keep running, but they are still catching us up. Another gunshot is fired into the air. I can hear them laughing now. I glance over my shoulder. They know they will catch us. I know they wil
l catch us. I am seizing up. I can’t take this. They are only about fifty metres or so behind us. Stephen turns up a gear as the road begins heading out into the countryside. There are trees all around us now, no more houses, not anymore. We turn a corner. There is a crossroads in the forest just ahead. Stephen suddenly stops and sets Olly down on the ground.

  “Hide, behind those bushes. Now.” He shoves his rucksack into my hands.

  “But…” I say.

  “Just do it. Now.”

  Stephen runs off and darts down one of the roads, out of their view. I grab Olly’s hand. I drag him behind the bushes. I put my hand over his mouth. I almost start crying. Olly holds on to my wrist. He is trying to say something. Then the heavy boots grow louder. My heart almost stops. I heat up. I start to sweat. I want to cry. Through the bushes we see the men run passed us. They stop at the crossroads. I am paralysed. I can’t move. I am hyperventilating. They look down all the roads.

  “This one,” one of them shouts.

  They disappear off down the road. The sounds of their boots echoing on the tarmac grow fainter and fainter. My heartbeat begins to slow. My breathing begins to slow. I take my hand off of Olly’s mouth. There is an imprint of my hand on his face. I didn’t realise that I was holding him so tight. I need to be more careful.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I hug him and kiss him.

  “It’s OK. He’s coming back Izzy, don’t worry,” he says with perfect calm. “I promise.”

  I stare into his eyes. He stares back.

  “I know, I think so too.”

  We sit in the undergrowth beneath the trees and wait. Everything seems so quiet now. So peaceful. I hear an acorn fall somewhere in the woods. I have no idea what to do. Should we stay here? Should we start walking? Should we go down a different road? Should we carry onwards? I am sure Stephen will find us no matter what.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  We hear a gunshot. There is some shouting and fighting down the road, in the distance. We listen intently. The shouting stops.