The woman spoke again. “Settle down, Frank. Let’s not assume he’s an evil monster until we at least get his name.”
“My name is Christopher,” said Kamiyo quickly. “Chris.”
“Yow dow look much like a Christopher,” said the man who was apparently ‘Frank’.
Kamiyo groaned. “Seriously? My father is Japanese. My mother is English. Or, I suppose, they were. Either way, they named me Chris.”
“Let him go, Frank!” The woman was demanding it now.
“Bloody ‘ell, fine! On yow ‘ed be it, Jackie!” The pressure removed itself from Kamiyo’s back. “Any sudden moves, pal, and I’ll stick yow like a pig.”
Kamiyo kept his hands in the air and turned around to face his captor, imagining some ruffian with a scar across his eyebrow and a broken tooth. Instead, he stared down past a thatch of messy brown hair to see the pudgy face of a little man glaring up at him. ‘Frank’ snarled at him like a bulldog and wielded a large stick. “Um, hello, it’s, um, good to meet you.”
A woman appeared from behind a crumbling outbuilding that was little more than an archway and a single wall. “Sorry about the greeting,” she announced while approaching at a brisk pace. “You’re the first person we’ve seen in, well, forever. We’ve been worried about someone finding us and making trouble.”
Kamiyo glanced around but couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. “I’m sorry for trespassing. I just stumbled upon this place, I swear!”
“No way did yow,” said Frank, shaking his stick like a little caveman. “We’re a mile inside a forest the size of a city. Nobody just stumbles here.”
“Well, I dow know…” Kamiyo cleared his throat and started again. “Well, I don’t understand what you want me to say.”
Frank continued to glower at him. He absolutely did resemble a bulldog; except bulldogs were friendly.
“My name is Jackie,” said the woman, placing her hands on her bony hips. “Before the demons came, I was an overweight office manager. Now I’m an apocalyptic survivor living off the land.” She laughed a little too fraughtly. “I imagine you have a similar story of your own, Chris.”
“I was a doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital in Manchester,” he explained. “Maternity. I’ve been travelling alone for… however long it’s been. Months?”
“Time has certainly lost its significance, hasn’t it? If you’re really a doctor, you couldn’t have come at a better time.”
“He ain’t no doctor,” said Frank, rolling his eyes in dramatic fashion.
Kamiyo sighed, took a moment to study the dumpy man, then decided upon a gambit to earn his trust. “You have PSS, right? Proportional Short Stature? What was it, a thyroid problem? Childhood sickness?”
Frank tried to maintain his glare, but his eyebrows quivered. “I-I had a tumour as a babby. It were on me-”
“Pituitary gland?” Kamiyo queried.
“Yes!” Frank lowered his stick for a second, then realised and thrust it out again. He squinted one eye at Kamiyo. “How could you know that?”
Kamiyo focused on Jackie, the more diplomatic of the two. “You see? I am a doctor. Not saying I’m Gregory House, but I have a medical degree, at least.”
Jackie frowned. “Who’s Gregory House?”
“It doesn’t matter. So, is it just you two here, living at this castle?”
Frank tutted. “I already told yow that no one lives here.”
“Then where?”
Frank grew tight-lipped again, but Jackie seemed happy to give an answer. “Kothal Castle sits on a hill, and at the bottom of that hill is a lake and an activity centre. That’s where we’ve been camping out this whole time.”
Kamiyo frowned. “You keep saying we. There are more people here?”
“Dow tell ‘im, Jackie!”
Jackie gave Kamiyo a wry smile and rolled her eyes. “Follow me, Doctor. Frank, will you kindly go back on guard duty? Eric shall relieve you later.”
Frank mumbled but headed back to the wall surrounding the castle’s front approach. Despite his mildly buffoonish air, the man had done his duty well—Kamiyo had never seen the guy coming—and he certainly took the job seriously.
Jackie led Kamiyo deeper into the courtyard. Against a side-wall stood a wooden snack bar, but instead of being stocked with packets and cans, it was piled with sharp sticks and other weapons.
“Nice bow and arrows,” Kamiyo said as they passed by an old stone well.
“We’ve been trying to learn how to hunt. Some of the kids have gotten rather good at it. We fish, too, of course.”
“Of course…” Kamiyo struggled to understand. The woman talked as though she were part of some medieval settlement, but where was it?
They approached the castle’s rear courtyard, and then veered towards a small rear exit on the furthest wall. A ‘sally port,’ the trivia-loving part of his brain whispered to him. A small door where troops and villagers could come and go without opening the main gate and leaving the castle vulnerable. This sally port comprised a thick oak door with iron hinges. It opened easily when Jackie pulled on it, as if it was brand-new and not some ancient relic.
“Step on through,” she said warmly, waving her arm. “Welcome to our home.”
Kamiyo felt uneasy, wondering what exactly he was heading in to. For the last several weeks, he had faced danger and death at every turn, and other than the odd lonely survivor, he’d encountered no one in weeks. The last time he’d been around a group numbering more than three was back at his apartment building. That was months ago and had ended badly. With no other plan, Kamiyo took a deep breath and stepped through the sally port into a patch of overgrown grass that fell away rapidly into a steep, almost vertical slope.
“It’s a bugger to climb,” said Jackie, “but I suppose that’s the point, to stop marauding armies marching up it. There’s a pathway nearby that’s a little less treacherous, but you might make part of the trip on your bottom.”
Kamiyo’s jaw fell open, and he had to prod himself to get his lungs working again. He crept to the edge of the slope and stared
