by Jess Ballard
“That settles it: we are going on a hunting trip when the weather improves. First day of spring, I will shoot a deer.”
Freddie snorted. “Sounds plausible.”
“I’m going to have to prove you wrong now, young Freddie.” He got up and stretched, his shirt lifting an inch to expose his still red scar, the sleeves of his grey tweed jacket falling back to reveal his slim wrists. In his smart clothes, he always looked like a character from a book, a farmer’s boy having an adventure in the woods, rather than a man exiled from a world where no one was safe. “Right, I’m off to bed. You don’t mind doing the fire do you?”
“It’s fine,” Freddie said. “I’m going to sit up a bit longer anyway.” He looked at me, though didn’t hold eye contact for more than a few seconds. “You can go too.”
“Do you want a blanket or something?” Peter asked him as I rose from my seat.
“I’ll be fine. Thanks, Peter.” Peter placed his hands on the younger boy’s shoulders.
“No problem, Freddie. Wake me if you need anything, yeah?”
“Yeah.” We left him absentmindedly poking the fire, his blond hair and sharp features lit by the firelight, making him look almost elfin. Peter didn’t say anything more to me, but by the light of the dying flames I could see a small, sad smile play across his lips.
CHAPTER 4
As I had moved straight from the camp to Peter and Freddie’s home in the forest, two very isolated places, I had never properly seen an A. Of course, I had seen remains of As, and I had gotten a brief look on the night when we were chased out of town by the group of As, and I knew what they sounded like, the groans and moans of someone desperately trying to remember how to use their tongue. But never had I looked one in the eyes or had time to study one.
In the camp, at the beginning, there had been lots of talk, mostly emanating from the younger inhabitants who didn’t truly understand the nature of our situation, about the As they had fought off, how they had done it and how many they had conquered, with wildly exaggerated retellings. These started to peter out when the real veterans of the war joined us, ex-soldiers who had lost limbs to As or just regular citizens with disfigurements resulting from fights with infected family members or random attacks whilst travelling from one safe place to another. The kids had always been sketchy with details regarding the appearance of their vanquished As, and the survivors never wanted to talk about anything, let alone As, so I never felt as though I could hold the true image of an infected person in my mind.
This may seem like a strange thing to be considering. I should have been thankful that, so far, I had never been put in a situation where there would be need to observe an A at close proximity, but the fact I didn’t really know what the enemy looked like bothered me.
Therefore, I was more surprised and curious than scared when, the next morning, I looked up to see one staring hungrily at me from across the fire.
It had black eyes, all pupil like an alert animal, and they were wide open as if it were trying to see all around, but in fact it was focused only on me. Its skin was a light grey colour, tinged by its infected blood, which had turned dark, almost black. In spite of its shredded clothes that were barely intact enough to stay on its body, it had no evidence of wounds or cuts. Sure, it was dirty and streaked with mud, but its skin was whole, a barrier to keep in the diseased blood, the infections way of trapping itself in the body of the A.
“Oh,” I said, then “Peter!”
Luckily, Freddie was more prepared than me and yelled “Jen!” before Peter could answer. I turned to him, and he threw over a large stick that I somehow managed to catch. When I turned back to the A, it was advancing towards me with slow, lumbering steps. I quickly tied to take hold of the situation by landing a solid hit across its chest. All the while the lessons Freddie and Peter had given me were flashing through my head: don’t let it get a hold of you, decapitate or burn, don’t turn your back.
The A looked slightly inconvenienced by the whack it had received, and countered it by lunging through the fire at me, arms outstretched. The fire was not by any means raging, but the A hardly registered the fact that it had just placed its feet in red hot embers. Needless to say, this was quite unnerving for me to watch.
I swung again with the stick, and heard a crunch as it collided with a few of the A’s ribs. I didn’t wait for a reaction this time and brought the stick round again to hit it clean in the face. Black blood blossomed from its crushed nose. The A stumbled to the side, giving me a second to breathe and readjust my grip, so that when in turned back to me I plunged the stick deep into its stomach. Unfortunately, that was as far as my skill got me, as I let go of the stick without thinking, then ran backwards a few paces as the A fell to its knees and began crawling towards me, groaning in a rasping, frantic way, not giving up yet, despite the blood that was now seeping from the wound.
“Freddie!” I yelled out in my panic, but Freddie was, once again, one step ahead of me. He was already leant over the A, knife in hand, and with practised ease, slashed at its neck, not entirely removing it from its body, but severing it enough that the A collapsed and gave up on the chase.
“Thanks,” I said a little breathlessly as Freddie swiftly found part of the fire that was still burning after being stamped on by the A, and threw a burning piece of wood onto it, which immediately set the rags it was wearing alight. Then, Freddie calmly built up the fuel with some dry leaves and spare firewood.
We watched it burn uninterrupted until Peter came crashing through the undergrowth from the direction of the stream.
“You called! What’s all the smoke for?” he said, and when he saw, added “What the fuck?”
“Just a stray,” Freddie answered nonchalantly, as if he were talking about a cat.
“What? I mean, are you okay?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” I said, “I managed to fight it off pretty well, I thought. Though, Freddie was the one who killed it in the end.”
“You fought it?”
“Yes,” Freddie replied, “Jenna did quite well, actually. I almost didn’t have to step in.”
“Wait a second, Freds,” Peter said, “do you mean to say you watched as Jen, an inexperienced fighter, was being attacked by that thing? You didn’t help her?”
“Peter,” I scoffed, “it wasn’t like that...”
“It was a little bit,” Freddie interrupted, his voice emotionless, “more of a test, I would have said. Your first real life A. You did well.”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been?” Peter exploded, shoving Freddie on the shoulder to punctuate what he was saying. “This isn’t a game! What if she had failed your test, huh? What if it had grabbed her before you could help, what then? For fuck’s sake, Freddie, I never thought you’d be so stupid!” he shouted right in Freddie’s face.
“Peter!” I cried, “Stop it. It’s fine! We fought it off.”
“What do you want me to do? Apologise?” Freddie’s voice was still level.
“No! Damn it, I don’t know, Freddie!”
“Where were you?”
“At the stream... I didn’t...”
“Didn’t hear the strangled cries of a dying A? Didn’t hear Jenna screaming out for you? Convenient.” It was now Freddie’s turn to be unrelenting.
“Freddie...”
“What if this had happened before Jenna was here, and I had been too slow, what then?” This time, Peter didn’t even pretend to have an answer. He nodded, and put a hand on Freddie’s shoulder in a silent apology. Freddie lifted his own hand to cover Peter’s and they stood for a while. Then, Peter turned back to me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, Peter. We made a good team.”
“Good,” he said, “well, I guess that counts as practice for today.” He regarded me for a second, then ran off to finish collecting the water.
Freddie nodded at me, but didn’t say anything, and carried on with his chores around the camp,
checking everything was in order. By default, I took charge of controlling the foul smelling fire that was engulfing the A.
As I watched it blacken, feeling slightly removed from the gore in a bubble of delayed shock, I didn’t feel any empathy. I was watching a human, whom I had played a part in killing, burn, its mouth still twitching, and all I could think was ‘good’. It was a reaction that took me by surprise.
CHAPTER 5
We watched as the snow fell through the gnarled fingers of the twisted trees, covering the forest floor in a light, sugar like sprinkling of snow. It was falling finely and sticking the frozen ground, the kind of snow you only see when it’s really cold.
“I hope Freddie hasn’t frozen. Wouldn’t that be horrific if he’d turned into an ice statue?”
“I don’t think that could actually happen.”
“Yeah... but imagine if it did...”Peter had that look on his face that meant I couldn’t quite tell if he was being serious.
We were sitting under the tarpaulin of the bedroom, our sleeping bags pulled up round our legs. Peter was wearing his flat cap, his attire smart even in the cold spell, and he had leant me his other jacket, which I had on over my single jumper. We had draped a blanket over our shoulders, and in the past hour since Freddie had gone to check the traps (he had lost at rock paper scissors) we had only moved to throw a few more logs onto our measly fire.
I had taken the opportunity to ask Peter something that had been playing on my mind for a while, something I often did when Freddie wasn’t around. The atmosphere felt perfect, as if the cold had managed to close its long fingers around time, and in fact, we had only been sitting there, side by side for a few minutes.
“Peter?”
“Yup.”
“When this whole thing first started...were you not tempted to fight?” I asked tentatively.
“What, like, in the army?” I nodded.
“At first, I would have to say yes.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “I was angry and bitter and I think a little part of me wouldn’t have minded dying at the hands of an A if it meant it could all be over. But I realised two things pretty quickly: 1. Freddie needed me with him and 2. I didn’t want to kill. I kept thinking ‘what if I come across Simon and I have to shoot him? Could I do that?’ And the answer was, or is, probably not.”
“Even though he wouldn’t have been himself? You said to me when we first met there was something otherworldly in his eyes. Could you not look past that, even to save everyone who was left, everyone who could be saved?”
“Really, Jen? I don’t know. Can you know how you’d react unless you were there, in the moment?”
“I would shoot every time.” He turned over to face me.
“You can’t know that.” I faced him as well.
“I do,” I asserted. He sighed and looked back out at the snow covered camp. “I was going to look for the army, or what’s left of it, when I met you in the supermarket.”
“Seriously? But... you didn’t know anything about survival when we picked you up.”
“I know.”
“May I ask why?”
“I was... I suppose I was also angry about my situation. I was tired of sitting around.”
“Okay, my turn for the difficult hypothetical situations. Would you have left if you knew for certain that you would have lived through this whole thing if you stayed in the camp? As in, you might survive on the outside, but equally you might die; however, you would definitely survive if you stayed in the camp, but then you’d have to stay locked up for however long it lasted.”
I thought about it for a while, then said, “so what you’re asking is would I give up my freedom, or freedom of movement if it meant I would live? Would the threat of death be enough to stop me leaving somewhere that I hated?”
“Yes, basically.”
“I think me being here is your answer,” I said, “I couldn’t wait there, doing nothing. It’s not going to be over unless I do something.”
“What about now?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not doing anything now. You’re almost as cut off from the world here as you were in the camp.”
“I know what you mean; it could be over, for all we know. It’s like we’re living in a bubble. We’re living in a forest in a bubble. Cut off from all the world.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. We’re also cut off from the death and the fear.”
“So you wouldn’t move from here? You’d stay in the bubble rather than find somewhere better?”
“Is there anywhere better?”
“I don’t know. There’s always something better, isn’t there?”
“Not for me, Jen,” he said, putting his arm around me, “I’ve got all I need right here with you and Freddie.”
There was a lull in our conversation, and I heard a fluttering coming from behind us. I thought maybe it was a bird that had got lost on its way south, and was now living all alone in the cold.
“Jen?”
“Mmm?”
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”
“What? No.” I turned to look at him in the eyes, but he was staring ahead, avoiding my gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just… what you were saying about being cut off from everything. All this may be enough for me, but if you’re looking for something else, an adventure or something that will make a difference in the future, this is hardly the best place to start.”
“Peter,” I said, “I started out trying to find something, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t certain that that something was the army and fighting. And I think I found that something here, because this is enough for me, too.” I smiled at him reassuringly. “You two, you and Freddie, are the closest I’ve ever had to a family. And that’s way more important to me than anything else I might have found.” He regarded me, with a sombre, questioning gaze.
“What happened to your parents?”
The question hung in the air. I took a deep breath. “My dad and I were planning to go to the camp together. My mum was a potential, see, so she couldn’t come with us. But they lied to me, and at the last minute, after I’d packed and was ready to leave, they came clean and told me I was going alone. To a strange town, with nobody I knew.”
“That’s disgusting. Why would they do that?” Peter blurted out, then added quickly, “Sorry, thinking out loud, you don’t have to answer that...”
“No, it’s fine, but I still haven’t worked that out yet. Because they loved each other more than they loved me? Because my dad couldn’t bear to leave my mum and she was too selfish to let him go? I don’t know, and I don’t care anymore. He was probably killed when she succumbed to the infection so there’s not much point dwelling on it…”
“Jen, I’m really sorry. It’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t.” And we let that sentiment be carried out into the forest by silence as we continued to wait for Freddie. I tried to smile at Peter, but we were both in the company of too many ghosts to acknowledge each other.
CHAPTER 6
“Wake up, Jen.” I opened my eyes to see Peter’s sleepy smile inches from my face. His breath tickled my nose.
“It’s not even light yet,” I grumbled, pulling my sleeping bag over my face. Peter gently pulled it back again.
“Hunting trip, remember?”
“Oh, of course. How could I forget?” I murmured, propping myself up on my elbows.
“Get up, we need to be off soon.” And with that, he sprung up and moved towards the fire, where Freddie was sitting and packing a rucksack with all the things we would need.
Winter had passed, coming into spring hesitantly, the North wind occasionally bringing us a reminder that the cold had not left entirely. In spite of this, spring was fighting back, pushing bluebells through the forest floor all around our camp, like a flag of defiance in the face of the chill.
I rose slowly, sleep still pulling down on my limbs. Meanwh
ile Peter was still rushing around with unabashed exuberance, though I’m not sure he was doing much in the way of helping, as Freddie seemed to in charge of breakfast as well as packing. I watched the two of them, Peter loud and energetic, Freddie reserved and quietly content, and knew that I was happy. No matter what happened after that, I was definitely happy at that moment. The memory is like a small fire crackling steadily at the back of mind.
Freddie looked up from the rabbit he was cooking, and, catching my eyes, smiled tentatively. I made sure I smiled back before joining him by the fire and took over cooking the meat while he opened a tin of pears. Then we tucked into our modest breakfast.
Peter did not sit down once, chewing his rabbit, occasionally grabbing a slice of pear from the tin, and pacing up and down before us, proclaiming between mouthfuls that he would definitely catch a deer today, and we’d have a proper stew tonight, with wild mushrooms. His enthusiasm was infectious despite the ridiculous hour, and by the time we were ready to go (not soon enough, according to Peter), there was a tangible feeling of optimism and excitement within our group.
We strode off into the forest, Peter leading, followed by Freddie and then myself. As we crashed along, Peter breaking into “morale boosting” songs at regular intervals, I wondered whether we would, realistically, ever be able to sneak up on a mountain, let alone a deer.
***
Peter ran back behind us, then veered off to the right. Freddie and I stayed crouching. My breath was shallow with anticipation as I regarded the lone deer. It was grazing contentedly, its ears flicking back and forth. I wondered if it had once been part of a pack. Maybe they had been killed by As.
Suddenly, it raised its head, eyes wide and searching. Peter’s soft, crunching footsteps stopped. The only sound was the wind blowing furiously through the trees, leaves clinging desperately to the tips of their branches. The deer was so still I began to doubt whether time was still passing.
“He’s not what you think he is.” Freddie spoke so quietly, at first I wasn’t sure that he’d actually spoken. I turned my head to face him and he was looking straight into my eyes.