by Sarah Govett
‘Come to me. Now!’ It was a command. It had weight. His legs started to move.
I forced my feet to stay glued to the floor. I had to stay there until he was in range. This time I couldn’t afford to fail.
Ten metres became five metres became four became three. It’s not easy to stay still when you’ve got a six-foot-tall, lip-licking freak charging at you. But I did – I had to trust that if I timed this just right, it could work. Another step, and I was on him.
I used the momentum of his approach to hook an arm round his chest and then swing myself round and onto his back. I drew up my left arm around his throat, hooking my hand into the bend of my right arm, just like we’d practised. Then I squeezed. His thick neck sandwiched between my skinny arms.
At first he treated it like I was some kind of joke. Mocking me and telling me what he was going to do to me when I stopped playing round. But I wasn’t going to stop. Not as long as I was breathing. I continued to squeeze.
The first thing I noticed was his voice. He was trying to act like I was still just an inconvenience, but underneath his words I could sense something changing – his voice was cracking, straining for breath. He clawed at my arm, but he couldn’t get his fingers behind it. I could feel his filthy nails digging into my skin, scratching off anything he could get a purchase on, but I continued to squeeze.
Seconds later, he was gasping and choking and writhing, trying to throw me, but I managed to stay in position. I could hear his splutters, his last few breaths before he’d be unconscious, then his hands abandoned my arm and he reached over his shoulder, clawing at my face. He caught my ear and there was a ripping sound by my lobe. A scream tore out of me and I nearly let go. Nearly, but I didn’t. I adjusted my weight and kept on squeezing.
Seconds later, the fight was gone from him. I carried on squeezing until he finally keeled over, crushing my arms. Even then I wouldn’t release my grip. He was never going to hurt anyone again. Only when his chest stopped rising did I finally let go.
‘Raf?’ I knelt beside him and spoke into his ear, trying not to think of the sound his skull had made hitting the floor, trying to block out words like, ‘brain damage’ and ‘vegetable’. The truly unthinkable – the d-word – wasn’t coming anywhere near me.
He didn’t respond. His eyes remained shut – not even a flicker.
‘Raf?’ I tried again, my voice coaxing as if all he needed to wake up was a little bit of persuasion. His nose was a congealed mess of blood so I couldn’t tell if he was breathing through it or not. I put my cheek just in front of his mouth and waited to see if I could feel any breath, however faint. Nothing. I felt irrational anger at not having a mirror on me. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Hold up a small mirror and see if it steams over as their breath condenses. Well who the hell carries a mirror with them! I adjusted my position and felt again, my cheek now almost brushing his lips. On the verge of giving up, there it was, this fragile movement of air.
Raf was alive.
A tidal wave of relief crashed over me. What now? I didn’t want to move him as everyone knows that’s supposed to be the worst thing ever if there’s any chance of spinal injury or something. So I curled up next to him, whispering into his ear all the soppy things I’d find too cringeworthy to say if he was awake, and hoping all the time he’d just open his eyes and speak – even if it was just to take the piss out of me. I’d give anything, anything at all to see his beautifully mismatched eyes or glimpse a wolf smile right now.
Megan would know what to do. Or Lee. I had to find them. Then it came back to me. The fight. Oh God! In all the stress I’d managed to block out the whole super important fight against the evil Raiders thing. I had to return to them. Much as it killed me, Raf would have to wait a moment.
‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ A quiet voice followed by a sob took me out of my head and back into the room.
Turning round, I saw the huddle of girls I’d forgotten about in my rush to be with Raf.
The girl at the front, the speaker was probably not much over ten, pale skin, white blonde hair.
‘He said he’d hurt me if I didn’t undo the belts. I … I didn’t want him to hurt me.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Nell. No – look at me. In my eyes. This is not your fault.’ An older girl this time. Blonde hair but straw blonde instead of white. So they hadn’t just taken Cells. A voice of comfort and courage. A familiar voice. No, it couldn’t be, could it?
‘Ella?’
My mouth was an oval of shock. Good shock, no great shock that here before me was Ella, my amazingly lovely cousin that I never ever thought I’d see again. That combined with bad shock, horrific shock that Ella was a captive here, victim of stuff that I couldn’t even imagine. That I never wanted to imagine.
‘Ella!’ I couldn’t stop saying her name. As if the repetition itself would make my brain accept the truth of it.
‘Noa?’
She turned to face me. Her face a crumbling chain of emotions. Shock – pleasure – then something else – shame. No! It cut my heart. There were so many emotions open to her – hate, fear, anger, upset – but shame, no, never shame.
‘What…’ I started to speak, I had so much to ask, that I wanted to say, but Ella cut me off.
‘Where are the other Raiders? We need to get out of here before they come back.’
‘They’re busy. There’s a fight. I’ll explain all later but I need to get back to it.’
‘We’ll help,’ there was steel creeping into Ella’s voice. Anger replacing shame.
I took the knife from my belt. The leather cuffs at the end of the chains were tough but they finally gave way under the blade of my knife and eventually all the girls – eight Cells and three non-Cells, blondes like Ella – were free and nursing bruised wrists.
The younger ones stayed put, a cherubic host watching over Raf, but the older ones, Ella included, came with me to help fight. They had no weapons in the conventional sense but armed themselves with planks of wood and pieces of metal ripped from buildings on the way. And the fire that burned in their eyes, the heat of revenge, that was probably ammunition enough.
We burst into the square, one of the girls giving this scream, this horrible war cry that chilled my blood.
But it wasn’t necessary. The weapons, the war cry, any of it. It was all over.
The square was strewn with bodies, the survivors a standing group in the centre. I made out Jack, Lee, Amy and Pete and a huddled figure that looked like Megan.
I bounded over, eyes averted from the carnage. ‘Jack! Lee! Oh thank God you’re alright.’
Their eyes were a blaze of anger. They’d thought Raf and me had deserted them. Run off when it had got too much.
But I explained everything, pointing at the girls behind me as proof.
And then all my words and emotions started getting jumbled.
‘I found Ella. Ella’s here, Jack!’ Laughing. ‘You need to come and help Raf. He’s unconscious and he won’t wake up.’ Crying. ‘Megan, oh, Megan – I did the chokehold thing, perfectly, I did it.’ Proud. I needed to get myself together. This was not a good time to have some sort of nervous breakdown.
Megan hadn’t said a word the whole time. ‘Megan?’ I repeated, crouching down to her level. Her eyes were glazed and, her face was drenched in sweat and she was shaking.
I turned to Jack. ‘What happened? Is she badly hurt?’
Jack shook his head and tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Jack was hurting and it hurt me to see him suffering like this.
‘She’s been bitten,’ Lee filled in the gaps. Oh my God! I spluttered. The barbarians. Wasn’t it enough to cut and burn, they now have to bite too!
‘No, mosquitoes,’ Lee clarified. ‘A few days ago. She didn’t tell anyone, didn’t want anyone to worry, but it looks like she’s been infected, badly. She fought like a devil but the fever’s just kicked in and she’s burning up.’
; ‘Oh, Megan,’ I whispered, hugging her. She’d known last night by the fire. Known she was infected but didn’t want anyone to know. She’d fought until the end and I’d doubted her. Thought she was the selfish one.
Her face was blank, eyes bloodshot.
‘She’s not recognising anyone,’ Jack said, his voice unsteady.
And I wrapped my arms around him and tears ran down our faces.
We’ve temporarily moved into the Raiders’ houses. We’d exhausted our supplies and needed a base with water and food while we looked after Raf and Megan. Nursed them back to health.
With Megan delirious, Jack standing vigil by her bedside and Raf unconscious, it was up to me and Lee to sort everything. It was also a good distraction. A mental shield.
First was disposal. The sprawl of dead bodies in the main square was already attracting flies. We chose a wooden building at the edge of the settlement. It was surrounded by iron shacks so pretty self-contained. We piled the bodies of the Raiders in there, the rescued girls helping, and then set it alight. The flames licked their way over the wooden structure before sending out a disturbing, sweet-smelling snow.
Our own we treated differently. Four dead: Laura, Brian, Willow and Kyle. Good, kind people, all of them, from the little I’d known. Fervent believers in the cause. Lee found a spade in one of the sheds and we dug deep graves to bury them, setting a pure white stone on top of each mound.
Then we all just sort of stood around, unsure of what to do next. How to mark their death in some way. In the settlements, the settlement leader would probably say a few words, but with Megan battling fever there was no one who felt sufficiently ‘in charge’.
Lee asked if anyone wanted to say something. No one volunteered and it was getting all tense and awkward so in the end I took a step forward. I cleared my throat and then began to recite a poem called ‘Remember’. I’d learnt it for Gran’s funeral – she’d requested it – super organised even in death. It’s so sad and so beautiful and finishes with these two lines: ‘Better by far you should forget and smile/ than you should remember and be sad’.
And then I felt guilty. It’s a lovely poem to choose for your own funeral but for someone else’s? Can you really just grant yourself permission to forget them?
The job completed, we were all exhausted. It seemed like forever since we’d eaten and my stomach was in danger of digesting itself so we made food our next priority.
It seems that Raiding is a pretty effective way of sourcing stuff. Lee found a lean-to filled with dried meat, desiccated seaweed and mosquito repellent. There was a sealed tub of pure water and tarp-bath purifiers for making more. I guess it was more practical for the Raiders to purify it themselves than to try and lug barrels of water away from other settlements. That wouldn’t exactly make for a speedy get away.
Ella, managing to prise her shadow, Nell, off her for a few minutes, took me to a pen with five chickens for eggs and a cow for milk – aka the mother lode! I recognised the cow immediately – Brian from the Peak. It didn’t seem to recognise me though and did a massive snort as I approached. Cows are pretty scary close up. They also stink. Ella was totally unafraid though. She spoke into Brian’s ear as she stroked it and then took a nearby bucket, squatted beside it and began to milk.
My surprise must have been audible as Ella, without turning to look at me began to speak. It was the first time she’d said anything about her time here so maybe the lack of eye contact was intentional. Made it more like confession or therapy or something.
‘We were allowed out of the … that place … twice a day. In the morning to work on the water purifiers. In the early afternoon to look after the animals and milk the cow. It was the only way to see the sky. I … everyone got good at milking.’
‘How,’ I paused, not sure of how to continue. ‘How did you end up here, Els?’
There was a long silence and I stood there awkwardly, fearing I’d pushed too soon and pushed her away in the process. Then finally, Ella began to speak. She talked quietly and I couldn’t make out some words as she kept chewing her thumb mid sentence. Gnawing it by the knuckle.
‘We, Mum and me, after we … left yours, we headed towards the Arable lands. Remember that guy, the denser, the one who survived there for about a year? Well we figured if he could, we could. We didn’t get that far though. We made it out of the First City. It wasn’t easy. [Big pause, open mouth to give details, close mouth to swallow details, mouth a thin line.] No, it wasn’t easy. We got as far as the Solar Fields. That’s when they found us.’
‘The police?’
‘No. They looked more army or something. They found us sleeping.’
Ella started swallowing rapidly and her eyes were filling with tears. I stood closer and touched her arm. She jerked away and continued.
‘Mum hadn’t wanted to stop there, said it was too close to this building, that something wasn’t right. There were sounds. I thought they were just from the wind vibrating the solar panels or something. Mum wasn’t so sure, but I convinced her. Me. I was just so tired, you see?’
Ella turned to face me, and I nodded my understanding. It seemed really important to her that I understand and somehow absolve her from the misplaced guilt that was gnawing at her insides.
‘They took Mum away. One soldier or whatever, he stayed with me. The others took Mum. And … I could hear her, Noa. I could hear her screams.’ Ella was full on body shake sobbing now. ‘Then, then it was over and they took me to a Holding Centre and I was shipped off to be a Fish. The Raiders, they picked me up before I’d even reached a settlement. It was the hair, (hollow laugh), they were on the way back from some raid and thought they’d got themselves a Cell.’
Ella stopped talking and her whole body sagged so I caught her in a bear hug, trying to squeeze away her pain.
I don’t know how long we stood there holding each other, but eventually Ella straightened herself, bones turning from rubber to steel. She bent down to pick up the bucket of steaming milk and we walked back to the central square. The milk tasted warm, sweet and was dotted with clots of cream. Real cream. Like when we were little kids.
Raf came to within a few hours. Lee was there with me. His dad had been a paramedic and Lee had shadowed him in the holidays. It must have been against loads of regulations but Lee’s mum had died when he was a baby and there was no one to leave him with. It became a strange childcare-apprenticeship solution. Lee had been going to become a doctor too. He’d always been good at computers – it was like he could speak to them or something – but they were just going to be a hobby. Medicine was going to be the job. ‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘Become a doctor that is. Why give it all up and hack your school server? Kind of a suicide mission?’
Lee explained that it was his time in the ambulance that had changed everything for him. At first the paramedics used to get called out all the time. They were saving lives. All sorts of lives. Then it started to change. Fewer and fewer things were covered by the Ministry. They went to fewer injured kids and more middle-aged men’s heart attacks. The pivotal movement came when they were speeding past a woman sprawled on the pavement. It wasn’t an authorised stop – no instruction had come through on the radio – but the woman was clearly bleeding out. Lee’s dad patched her together and they took her to hospital. He was suspended without rations for two weeks. The woman’s injuries were a result of her being ‘chastised’ for taking part in an Opposition rally. She wasn’t approved for treatment. The hacking followed soon after. A kind of ‘know your enemy’ thing.
Lee agreed that moving Raf was a bad idea so instead I hovered over and by him, a wasp that wouldn’t leave the jam jar. Then, joy-oh-joy, Raf went with no warning from unconscious to blinking to asking to be helped up. Lee told him to lie still and was asking him all these questions – what’s your name? – tick, where are you? – tick, how old are you? – tick, who’s she (pointing at me) – ‘No idea.’
My heart juddered and my brain cracked – Lee had war
ned me about amnesia, that it’s a common side effect of head injuries but all I could think was, ‘He’s forgotten me. He’s forgotten us. I’m just a stranger to him’. But while I was spiralling into darkness I looked up and caught sight of a wolf grin. The first proper, hungry wolf sign I’d seen in days and I was torn between snogging him and beating him to a pulp.
‘Not funny!’ I managed, trying to stop my mouth from turning up at the corners. Failing. ‘SO not funny!’
I raised my arm to mock hit Raf, but Lee caught my hand and reminded me that we were trying NOT to move him so I lowered it a bit sheepishly.
Lee bent down to inspect Raf’s head, his skull. It was difficult to see clearly under Raf’s now pretty longish hair, but after a tense few minutes Lee declared there was no sign of an open fracture, that’s one where the skin has opened and there’s a high chance of infection and no evidence of a depressed fracture which is when a bit of bone can poke backwards into the brain tissue. So many horrific things I never knew about. I wanted to dance around and let out a couple of whoop whoops but something in Lee’s manner made me wait.
‘So I’m OK, doc?’ Raf smiled, trying to look all cool and not bothered but totally failing to erase the anxiety and relief competing for attention on his face.
He tried to raise himself – I could see the muscles flexing in his jaw from effort but nothing happened. A shadow flitted over Lee’s face. And then, even more scarily, he went into properly professional mode. He spoke slowly and clearly – managing me, trying to prevent a possible freak out. Certain words jumped out at me as if spoken in bold or italics – ‘probably just bruising … possible hairline skull fracture … tests … just to rule out … the patient … significant spinal injury.’