Coldbrook

smudged the sun into a yellowed pastel shade, and streaks of colour hung low to the horizon like a forgotten sunset. They were beautiful, but disquieting.

On a hillside far across the valley, picked out by diffuse sunlight, she saw more ruins.

Holly squinted and shielded her eyes, her right eye throbbing with pain. She tried to work out exactly what she was seeing. It could have been an exotic rock formation, limestone corroded by wind and rain into elaborate and misleading shapes. But she thought not. There was an intimation of regularity, though some of the higher structures had obviously fallen, the remains of their walls pointing skyward and piles of broken masonry at their bases. It looked like a collection of structures that had been smudged by a giant hand, their sharp edges blurred and order destroyed.

Close to one wall sat the skeleton of what might once have been a car.

Holly wished she could go closer, but the people were heading down from the ridge into the heavily wooded next valley, and soon the ruin was hidden from view. Was that a car? she wanted to ask, because the possibility meant so much. One fallen building with an ‘Exit’ sign was puzzling enough but two fallen buildings, the rusted remains of a vehicle, bows and arrows, and shrivelled people rising from beneath undergrowth. .

She looked at the people, smiling as the short woman who had tended her glanced at her. The woman smiled back distractedly, scanning all around as they walked. The others seemed alert as well, including the two people walking on ahead who had to concentrate on their route. Apart from the four carrying her stretcher, everyone else constantly looked left and right, sometimes turning and walking backwards for a few steps as if expecting to be ambushed at any moment.

Holly didn’t know what this meant, but none of it seemed good.

She was amazed at just how silently they were able to move across the ground, and how quickly. Their feet were clad in leather, tied tight so that no loose flaps struck at the ground. They picked their way instinctively, avoiding loose rocks or fallen branches or twigs, and when they traversed a steep slope there was only the slightest whisper of undergrowth. Birds sang all around them, crickets scratched messages from their hiding places in tall ferns, something whistled low and continuously far away, and once Holly heard the patter of small, fast footsteps as an unseen creature fled the party. It was almost as if the land hardly knew that they were there.

The jacket worn by the man holding the stretcher’s front right handle had some sort of design on the back. It was a rough garment, its edges frayed and its seams held together by heavy stitching. Whatever was drawn on or sewn into the material had blended into it due to grime and time. Holly narrowed her eyes, squinting as a pulse of pain thrummed through her head once more, then looked away. She could not make it out.

The group paused abruptly and lowered the stretcher to the ground. Her carriers each unslung their primitive weapons — a bow and arrow, a crossbow, a short spear, a heavy spiked mace on a chain — and the several others arrayed around them hid behind trees or ducked into the waist-high ferns. The woman looked over her shoulder at Holly and held her hand out flat, pressing it down.

They waited like that for some time, motionless and silent. When Holly started feeling pressure on her bladder she closed her eyes and tried to will it away. She needed to pee but the feeling wouldn’t become urgent for a while.

A bird landed nearby, the size of a blackbird but with a dull orange chest and speckled white wings. One much like this had been killed by the eradicator and stored in the breach containment area, and Holly thought of Melinda and what had become of her. She’d been passionate about her work, and sometimes when they’d shared a drink and a chat together in the common room or each other’s quarters Melinda had been almost unable to contain her excitement about what they were doing.

She held out her hand, hoping that the bird might hop across to her. But it flew away.

One of the two men further ahead stood and ran, crouching, into the forest, disappearing in moments. No one reacted, or moved. The woman looked at Holly again and pressed her fingers to her lips.

Holly nodded, suddenly afraid. I want to be back in Coldbrook, she thought. And then a shape appeared through the trees higher up the hillside and slightly ahead of them. It might have been a ghost, a human figure standing motionless while the breeze made waves of its tattered clothing and hair. The hair was long and clotted with mud and leaves. Holly held her breath, and the moment stretched into a painful stillness.

The pressure on her bladder increased and she shifted position, her clothes scraping across the stretcher’s rough canvas. Her pulse thumped in her head and lit up the pain there again — and then she saw the shape’s head turn, as if sniffing the air. Then it started moving, slowly passing between the trees and swishing through the heavy green ferns, coming right at her.

A whisper in the distance, and then the shape fell with something protruding from its head. The man who had run into the forest minutes before emerged behind the fallen creature. When he reached where it had fallen he pulled a machete from his belt and hacked down once, hard. Then he came back down to them, following the same route that the shambling creature had been taking. When he was closer he held up one thumb — an amazingly human gesture, which produced a shocked gasp of surprise from Holly — and they set off once more.

I want Jonah, Holly thought, shivering even though the day was growing warmer. I want Vic. The pain in her head was growing into the worst headache she could remember, and she wondered whether the blow to her skull had damaged her more than she knew.

They reached the valley floor. It was only sparsely wooded here and they followed a track that ran alongside a stream. It was barely a trickle, though its route was marked by a deep gulley with sheer sides, and Holly guessed it must be prone to flooding. The landscape was terribly familiar, its features like an elusive memory. Beside the track at irregular intervals stood the vertical trunks, thin and grey, of what looked like amputated trees. She thought perhaps they were birch or some similar species, but every one was broken off within a few feet of the ground. She stared at each of them as they passed, and then just as they turned from the track that might once have been a road she realised what they were. Telegraph poles.

‘I know this road,’ she whispered, and the woman glanced back at her. Holly thought she’d be scolded but the woman’s face seemed less severe now, and the rest of the party seemed to be moving more casually. A couple of miles south of Coldbrook, old mountain track, upgraded to cater for the Appalachians’ increasing tourist trade. And now. .

As they approached a small ravine that joined the valley they passed through more ruins. Holly propped herself up and took notice, because that word from the tumbled pile of rubble where these people had found her kept echoing back: Exit. She hoped that the ruins might tell her more. But their plant- clogged windows only prompted endless questions.

Passing into the ravine, Holly looked up at the sloping sides and the segment of sky above. It was darker in here, and she doubted whether the sun’s rays ever penetrated this far. The ground was marshy, and a dozen small waterfalls trickled down the sides. Their sound was soporific, and as she closed her eyes she felt the pain easing slightly. To sleep now. .

But she needed to pee — more urgently now — and to find out where she was. And most of all she had to work out how to get back to Coldbrook.

Something clanked, metal on metal, cutting through her daydream, and it was so loud and sudden that she cried out. Set in the ravine’s side was a metal door, its frame an uneven wall of solid concrete. Layers of rust camouflaged the door, but as it swung open she sensed that it was more solid and secure than it looked.

Several people emerged, and it was the last one to come out who commanded her attention. He was tall and thin, and he carried no weapons. A child stood behind him, a little girl, peering around his legs at Holly, fascinated. The tall man was pale, like an underground thing. Their leader, she thought, and she smiled softly at wherever that idea had come from. The little girl smiled back. Holly was already starting to suspect that she had been wrong in her assessment of these people.

The woman who had been at Holly’s side stepped forward, and she and the man briefly touched hands. He never for an instant took his stare from Holly. He was sizing her up.

‘She came through,’ the woman said, and Holly caught her breath. She could communicate with these people. Her eyes went wide and she could feel tears prickling their corners. She looked around at the others — still silent, watching. Then she stood up slowly from the stretcher, biting her lip against the pain singing through her skull. She smoothed down her clothes and opened her mouth to speak, but thirst had dried her voice.

‘So I see,’ the man said, and there was something about the voice that Holly recognised. This all felt suddenly