by Liam Brown
Of course in retrospect – and with a clear mind – it’s obvious we were all equal partners in adversity. In the months since the summer, we’d all grown visibly thinner, the meat slipping from our bones with every passing day, until our ribs protruded alarmingly through our wet shirts and we were forced to tie our trousers with ever-tightening nooses of rope.
We suffered in other ways too. Things not so easy to see. I was tired all the time, and prone to dizzy spells. I couldn’t get warm and I stopped going to the toilet. My thinking was muddled. Several times I caught myself mumbling strange, broken phrases, or else repeating my own name, over and over again, a subliminal reminder to the world that I was still there, that I still existed.
‘Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam…’
Still, I was by no means the worst off. Zebee, for instance, seemed especially ill. As the eldest in the group, he’d taken the decline in conditions the hardest. His brown skin grew eerily pale, taking on a translucent quality. He developed a persistent hacking cough that announced his arrival long before he came limping into view. After the first few weeks, Rusty excused him from patrols altogether. On night shifts I would hear his wheezes echoing through the camp. Privately I wondered how long it would be before we woke one morning to find his tent had fallen permanently silent.
Much to my pleasure, Butcher had also taken ill, having succumbed to some violent gastrointestinal disorder. In fact, his sickness was one of the few common talking points among the men, especially once a rumour – originating with Fingers – went round that Butcher had fallen sick after finding and eating a dead rat. (‘Greedy bastard kept the whole thing for himself too!’ Fingers was quick to point out.)
Whether or not it was true I never found out. Still, the sound of Butcher’s cries as he crashed through the trees in the direction of Squit Creek never failed to raise a bitter smile.
The only other topic of conversation was Sneed. Despite the hardships we faced, the murder of Tyrus seemed to have silenced for good any reservations we had about Marshall’s leadership. Instead our vitriol was reserved solely for the coward who had caused our comfortable world to disintegrate before our eyes. Not content with simply telling and retelling the stories of his many heinous crimes, we shamelessly revised history in order to accommodate his sheer wickedness. By this point, for example, I’d been entirely written out of the story of the swan. The way it was now framed, Sneed had been alone when he’d killed ‘our sacred bird’, our eating of which had also been conveniently forgotten. It was Sneed who had built the effigy of Marshall and sneaked it onto the bonfire. Not only had he murdered our chickens and poisoned poor Tyrus – that noble and universally adored saint of a mutt – but there were now half a dozen men who would willingly swear they had witnessed him do so. It was Sneed’s fault that the fruit had rotted on the branches. It was down to him that the farm had fallen into disrepair. He was held responsible for the stink of our breath and the rumble in our bellies, the ache of our backs and the blisters on our feet. Even the rain was deemed to be his doing.
Once or twice I asked around, trying to establish what had happened the previous autumn, or the one before. Were things always this desperate? Was starvation an annual event? The answers I received in return were as blunt as they were unlikely.
‘We had more food than we knew what to do with.’
‘It was five-course dinners, three times a day.’
‘We had rabbit and pheasant.’
‘Duck and deer.’
‘Every year we had blazing sun until December.’
‘Indian summers.’
‘We all got along quite happily. Until he came.’
Yes, the one thing everybody agreed on was that Sneed was the source of all our misery and if only we could find him, then all our trouble would be over. Food would grow. The sun would shine. Marshall would return to lead us again.
And so we kept going, day after day, swallowing down our hunger as we searched the woods and the fields for signs of life, with only our hatred keeping us upright, only our anger keeping us marching on.
*
One afternoon I was standing near the old boating lake. I’d half hoped I might be able to catch a fish, but after an hour or so of poking around with a stick there was no sign of any life there. Now, I stood staring out over the water.
To my surprise, I’d woken that morning to find it had finally stopped raining. Over the weeks I’d grown accustomed to the steady static crackle of rain falling on wet leaves, and its sudden absence left the world feeling out of balance, like the whine of tinnitus following a loud concert. Still, it was a pleasant novelty to dispense of my poncho for once. And, while it was by no means warm, the thin bars of blue sky that fractured the gloom gave rise to an unfamiliar optimism in me. Perhaps that Indian Summer was on its way after all. One last hurrah of sunshine that would burn away the dark clouds that had gathered around our little tribe ever since that fateful Midsummer night.
I don’t know how long I stood there by the lake. Everything remained motionless. A photograph. A still-life painting. Suddenly a sound rang out, echoing across the water. Birds took to the skies in fright. A breeze blew. The park was awake.
I was slow to react at first. My head felt as waterlogged as the earth, hearing muffled, my vision blurred. The noise came again. This time I heard it more clearly. It sounded like a cry. It sounded human. I began walking towards it.
I didn’t bother keeping to the bushes. They were too sparse to conceal me anyway, their leaves having long ago withered and turned to mulch. If Sneed wanted to kill me, let him try. At least it would be over, one way or another. The cry came again. I staggered onwards, dragging my spear behind me.
I was a few metres from the play park when I spotted her, standing with her back to me. The scuffed school blazer, the brown hair. It could only be one person. She tipped back her head and called out again.
‘Da-ddy!’
The word rang out bright and true. It vibrated inside my head and around my gut. It diffused through my bloodstream and breached my cell walls. This was not ‘Dad’, you understand, that throwaway, monosyllabic grunt of begrudging familiarity. No, it was ‘Daddy’. Deliberate, babyish. Even Flynn hardly used it anymore. It must have been over a decade since I’d last heard it fall from Olivia’s lips. And yet here she was, standing in the park with her hands cupped to her mouth, calling for her daddy. Without another thought, I let the spear fall to the floor and ran to her.
I was fifteen feet away when she finally turned to face me. I had meant to hug her, to smother her in kisses, but something in her face stopped me in my tracks. Fear, maybe. Or pity. I dropped my arms, flinching under the scorch of her gaze.
‘Ollie?’
‘Oh, Dad,’ she said, the second syllable conspicuous by its absence, the spell broken now that she was faced by this filthy, malnourished imposter. I knew what the missing ‘y’ meant. I was not the man she’d been calling for. I felt embarrassed for us both.
‘You look…’ She stopped, forcing herself to meet my eyes. ‘How have you been?’ Her tone shifted as she battled to maintain her composure. The wall had gone up again. She was making conversation with a stranger now, choosing her words carefully. I was a door-to-door salesman, a pensioner at the bus stop. Despite her efforts, at distance her eyes still gave her away. They sparkled in the fading light; a kohl-blackened dam that might breach at any moment.
‘You know. Not too bad,’ I mumbled, keen to move things along as her bottom lip gave an involuntary tremble. ‘How’s Flynn getting on? And your mum?’
Her face flashed sourly, the polite young woman instantly replaced by a surly teenager. ‘You know,’ she said, parroting me. ‘Not too bad.’
A spiky silence rattled between us as I struggled for something to fill the void. I’d spent so much time alone recently that the words wouldn’t come, my thoughts muddled and unwieldy. I realised it would take practice if I was going to learn how to be a person again.
‘Listen
, Ollie…’ I said, stalling for time.
‘I brought something for you,’ she said blankly, holding up a small white carrier bag, the handles coiled around her skinny wrist.
I reached out, not taking my eyes from her. She had changed yet again, her timid movements transforming her back into a little girl. She seemed stuck between two places, one foot firmly planted in her childhood, the other tentatively toeing the future. I envied the options still open to her.
‘Thanks,’ I said as I took the bag. Before I could open it, however, there was a crash from somewhere nearby. A bird maybe? Or something far, far worse?
Though Olivia didn’t seem to notice, my whole body froze as I strained to listen. The fog in my brain temporarily parted, Butcher’s threats rushing back to choke me.
They’ll be nothing left of her by the time we’ve finished.
The crash came again, closer this time. There was no mistaking it. Somebody was coming.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I said gruffly. ‘You need to leave.’
Olivia’s face flushed with confusion, the dam creaking. A single tear escaped, trailing silently along the curve of her nose. ‘What? But I thought…’
The crash came again. Whoever was coming would be here in less than a minute. There was no time for my heart to break. ‘I said GO!’
She backed away then, doubling the distance between us. ‘You don’t even know what day it is, do you?’
Nearby, footsteps pounded the mud. ‘Please, Olivia,’ I begged. ‘Please just go. Now.’
Finally, she seemed to make a decision. Though still crying, her expression hardened into something like contempt. ‘Yeah. Well. I don’t know what I expected from a loser like you,’ she said, her nostrils flaring in anger. ‘Happy birthday, Adam.’
And with that she turned and stormed away.
Later on, while I lay shivering in my tent, I would replay this scene over and over again, her words, and the look that accompanied them, like a serrated blade to my gut. I would wonder why I didn’t simply go with her, why I let that lone spark of warmth and generosity slip so carelessly from my grasp. Right then, however, I was too relieved to have her out of harm’s way for the words to really sink in.
As I watched her go, I gradually became aware of the carrier bag she’d given me, still gripped tightly in my hand. I opened it a fraction and peaked inside to see a handmade card, a large box of chocolates and – Olivia’s idea of a joke – a stick of deodorant. I closed the bag and stuffed it into the folds of my jacket. No sooner had I finished stashing it away, did I hear somebody clear their throat directly behind me.
I spun around to find not Butcher, but Ox. He didn’t move, eyeing me like a starving cat might watch a caged canary. The hungry days and weeks had done little to diminish his stature. He towered above me, looking down. I wondered how long he’d been standing there.
‘Hey, Ox,’ I said, doing my best to keep it light. ‘How’s it going?’
Still the big man didn’t answer. His eyes flickered past me. It took all of my willpower not to turn to check Olivia was safely out of view. Finally, he looked back at me and let out a long sigh. ‘Boss wants to see you,’ he said.
‘Me?’ I said, already a guilty sweat prickling at my neck. ‘Why? What have I done?’
Ox stared at me quizzically for a moment, some unknown calculations grinding behind those big empty eyes. ‘Not you,’ he said eventually. ‘All of us. He has an announcement. Something big.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, come on then,’ I said. I started back towards the camp, eager to put as much distance between us and Olivia as possible.
‘So what does Rusty want then?’ I asked as we lumbered through the trees.
‘Not Rusty,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Marshall.’
‘Marshall’s back?’
Ox nodded, his lips parting to reveal a set of horrible yellow teeth. I realised he was smiling. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They’re saying he’s caught Sneed.’
TWENTY-ONE
I followed Ox to the old marl pit. Despite the drizzle, the faint orange glow of a fire was visible between the branches. As we descended the bank I caught the acrid scent of petrol on the breeze. Sure enough, as we reached the bottom I saw Marshall hunched over a small campfire, a green jerry can at his feet. The others were clustered around him in an excited semicircle, waiting for the show to begin.
This was the first time I’d returned to the pit since the disaster of the Midsummer Feast. In the wet months that had passed, the ground had transformed into a bog. As we splashed our way through the darkness towards the small circle of light, nobody turned to look at us. I took my place silently between Hopper and Al Pacino, scanning the rapt faces of the men who surrounded me. To my surprise, everyone was there, even Zebee. In the weeks since I’d last seen him, he’d grown even frailer, the flickering firelight carving dark shadows in his sunken cheeks.
It wasn’t just Zebee. The months of depravation had taken its toll on all of us. Fingers – who after all this time still wore shorts, having not found a replacement for the trousers we’d burned – looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, his eyes bruised black. Al Pacino, meanwhile, was as dishevelled as I’d ever seen him, his ordinarily immaculate clothes torn and filthy, his hair wild, his beard matted. Hopper appeared little better off, the gap between his trouser and boot revealing the warped plastic and rusting joints of his disintegrating prosthetic foot. Butcher, I noted with satisfaction, looked perhaps worse than anyone else, having apparently befallen some sort of accident. A nasty scratch ran from the bottom of his ear to the corner of his mouth, giving him a permanent, lopsided grin. It looked like he might have lost a couple of teeth too, though I couldn’t be certain in the poor light. Even Rusty seemed to have lost weight, though it was difficult to tell beneath his mane of hair, which by now engulfed his entire upper body, as thick and tangled as Bruno’s tail.
Despite their bedraggled appearances, all of the men seemed surprisingly upbeat, the firelight picking out a wall of wet lips and gleaming eyes as they turned to Marshall in anticipation. Rusty was positively beaming. I guess it wasn’t hard to see why they were excited. After months of only fleeting views, our leader had become something of a ghost about the camp. He was a myth, a shadow, his earthly wishes communicated to Rusty alone. To have him physically before us once again – no matter how lean he had grown in the intervening months – represented the fulfilling of a promise, a righting of wrongs. His return could only mean one thing: justice was coming.
Marshall stood facing the fire, his head bowed, as if deep in prayer. I could just see the top of his sunglasses, the flames reflected in his lenses. In one hand was the gun. I wondered if he was planning to use it.
Minutes passed in silence as we waited for something to happen. We watched Marshall watching the fire. Still he didn’t move. I began to grow restless, and sensed a similar twitchiness among the other men. Was it really possible that he’d captured the traitor Sneed? Perhaps Ox had got it wrong? I glanced nervously at the bushes around us, unable to see anything but darkness. After months of fruitlessly searching the park, it felt unnecessarily cruel to make us wait any longer. Glancing back over at Rusty, I saw his smile had become stretched, an impatient crease forming between the tufts of his eyebrows.
Finally, as if responding to some unseen signal, Marshall jerked into life. He straightened up and looked around, as if only noticing us for the first time. Then, without a word, he stooped slightly and swapped the gun for the jerry can, unscrewing the cap. Again I was hit by the smell of petrol as he poured out a small measure and flung it towards the dwindling fire. The response was immediate. A bloom of orange and red erupted from the hearth, basking us all in a brief blaze of heat.
‘It’s amazing,’ Marshall said, finally breaking his silence once the flames had settled down. ‘The difference a fire can make to a long night. It doesn’t matter how cold or tired or miserable you are, the moment you see that glow, you know you’re going to be alri
ght. You know you’re home.’
We all nodded in agreement. I had forgotten the unique power of a campfire to bewitch an evening. Suspended in that golden bubble of light, the warmth radiating through my bones, it was easy to forget there was any world beyond this small band of men. And yet waiting in the shadows, possibly only a few feet away, was the man who had sought to destroy us all. I held my breath.
‘Our earliest ancestors understood how important it was to keep the home fires burning,’ Marshall continued. ‘That which illuminates our path. That which feeds and nourishes. That which keeps the wickedness of the world at bay. They knew that without that spark, that light, that heat, they were nothing. It was what separated them from the apes. It made people out of beasts. And knowing that, they did whatever it damn well took to make sure the fire never went out. Day or night, they had somebody stand on post and watch over it. They fed it. They nurtured it. They respected the fire. And in turn, it respected them. Yet somewhere along the way we forgot to do the same. We took it for granted. We got complacent. We forgot, on those balmy summer evenings, just how easily the flames can be stomped out.’
At this point he swung out a boot, scattering a meteor shower of orange ashes in our direction, which sent Bruno yelping away into the darkness. Marshall unscrewed the jerry can and flung another capful. Immediately the fire sprung back into life.
‘There’s no point in pretending, boys. We’ve been lost lately. Cold and hungry and stumbling around in the dark. I hardly need to remind you of the horrors we’ve seen along the way. Our farm destroyed. Our animals dead. We even lost dear Tyrus. Our flame became nothing but a flicker.’
There was a murmur from the crowd, as they sensed Marshall finally hitting his stride. I glanced over at Rusty, who’s grin was now frozen in rictus, his eyes blazing with something like hunger.
‘But tonight, we’re here to put all of that behind us!’ With this, he hurled another capful of petrol toward the fire, so that it roared more fiercely than ever. ‘Tonight we build the fire afresh. And this time we’ll keep it burning! Are you with me?’