WebWorld (2.7)

Pitch black.

There was a hollow in the hillside, just off the road, and in this spot, it was pitch black. I couldn’t see Zara, not even the outline of her, I couldn’t see my own hand. I couldn’t hear my own breathing, and I remembered that that was because my breath was held.

They’d come after us as I we’d fled. They’d rolled right over the guy I shot in the face. They didn’t try not to. I remembered that the first truck had been a little bit slower than us, and I hoped the other two would be too. But then, we had one more body, and our car had been hit in the guts by our pursuers. I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason as to why they wouldn’t catch up with us, and why they wouldn’t force us off the road and hack us all to death. Zara had the gun in hand, constantly looking backwards and forwards. I wondered if there was a chance we could shoot our way out of this. How many guns did these thugs have left?

But then we were making distance; not a lot of it, but enough. They weren’t closing in on us, and when we got to an intersection, we took a random turn, then another, then a turn off onto a gravel road where there were winding hills and sufficient darkness for us to slide over into that the lee of that hill and wait, unlit, unbreathing, until it seemed like there was no pursuit.

Zara lay the gun down on her lap. She looked at me.

I let out a breath. “I don’t think they’re coming.”

“Yeah. Yeah, they’re not.”

We both looked into the back seat where the girl was lying, silent, crumpled. I held my breath for a moment to be able to hear hers.

“Who is she?” Zara asked softly.

“She could be anyone.”

“One… one of theirs?”

“I don’t think so. I think she just got run down like we did.”

“Then that man…” the one with half a face “that means he was probably…”

I tiptoed out of the car and opened the back door. She unresponsive at first as I lifted her out and lay her on the grass. I pulled her skirt up over her hips. It didn’t seem right not to, and I tilted her head back gently. She made a sort of murmuring sound as I did, which I chose to find encouraging. She might have been dying. I didn’t know. I lifted the corner of a bloodied shirt to see a wound in her left side. It looked far enough to the side that I could tell myself it hadn’t pierced any vital organs. There was a mess of sticky, half-congealed blood that I didn’t dare touch without fear of making her bleed again. We had bandages, but cleaning the wound felt risky.

“When we get to Camp Foggerty,” I decided.

“And what if they came from there?”

“Fuck that.”

“No. Think about it. It’s such a great place to survive, so why should we be the only ones who know about it, the only ones who thought of it? Why should we be? So, what if those guys got there first?”

I shook my head, “I don’t know. We keep going I guess.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Me, you and her.”

“Yeah.”

“This plan just gets better and better.”

“We’re alive, though.” I just threw that in because at least it was something. At least it was better than not being alive. Right?

Zara cleaned some blood off the girl’s head so she could look at an injury there. “It’s probably not that bad,” she suggested, as if either of us might know. She cupped the girl’s cheek in her wet hand, “Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

The girl lay still. She seemed intermittently almost conscious, her eyes would blink a bit, or there’d be a murmuring or whimpering, but she didn’t wake properly.

“I’m Zara, and this is Nate. If you can hear any of this, we’re your friends. We’re not thugs, and we won’t do anything to hurt you. We’re just looking for a safe place, same as everyone. We might have one. So, you can come with us. You can camp out with us, see what happens. Okay? You’re safe right now.” She scrubbed a tear with the back of her wrist, looking back at me, “She’s just a kid.’

“Yeah, I know.”

“I don’t know what we can do with her.”

“Keep her alive. Keep us alive.”

Zara pushed herself to her feet. She looked as tired as I think I’d ever seen her. “When does that part of this end?”

“Maybe tonight.”

“Or not. Fuck this. We have to get going.” Her tone said something along the lines of if we don’t, we won’t, ever, we’ll just huddle here and stop moving.

We restacked the car so the girl would have space to lie on the back seat, Zara covered her with a blanket, and tilted her head to ensure she could breathe. We strapped her in as best we could manage, dancing around the stab wound that might or might not bleed if we looked at it funny.

“Okay,” I said, “We’ve come this far.”

#

And we drove into Camp Foggerty under the break of dawn, ushered in by a muddy pink sunrise. There was a blessed silence about the place, and a stillness. In the grey half-light there appeared to be little evidence of gum. This was a scene from the old world, the forgotten one of just a few months ago. There were a handful of camp buildings, there were green trees, a bunch of unbroken glass windows.

“Home sweet home,” I murmured.

“Fuck, I hope so. I don’t suppose you have a key.”

“Nope. We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

The sound of breaking glass was ridiculously loud. I felt as if it could be heard for miles around, and that it would certainly attract a thousand hungry wolves, or a wild bloom of gum, or the revving engines of human monsters. The sound seemed to echo around the walls, it seemed to multiply and expand.

I reached for a light switch and watched in near astonishment as the lights actually came on. I saw the first smile I’d seen on Zara’s face – the first really true one – in some time. We must have looked like a sorry little bunch of adventurers staggering over that threshold, the girl sagging in my arms, a dead weight; us with our shoulders sagging, crying out for some sleep.

But still, home.

This place actually felt like it. I thought to myself: we’re going to stand a chance after all, aren’t we? Against all odds, I think we made it.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work