No matter what we do, how long and often we do it, it’s a constant fight against the darkness.
I push aside my torch and dig my hand deeper into the leather backpack. Down the bottom, I fish out a pencil and my small book—barely much bigger than my hand. It’s meant for note-taking, jotting down ideas. Not for sketching. Not like I do much of that anymore, though.
Coming out of the shadows, Tiffany sits beside me. I know it’s her form the pungent stench of rich perfume in the air. She’s the only one in the end of days who worries about those things. Smelling good, lip gloss, fake lashes. No joke, she has a stash of those spider-leg things in her bag.
But she’s nice enough, so I don’t wish her away.
“Hey, Vale,” she says. I turn my head to look at her. “You got strawberries?” she asks me. In her hands, I can faintly make out a labelled tin, though I can’t read it well enough in the poor light. “Jacob said there were tinned strawberries down one of the aisles.”
Strawberries…
A girl can dream. The last of those tasty fruits left in the world are stuffed in metal cans, drenched in too-thick syrup. Preserved.
I shake my head. “I was one of the last in,” I tell her. “Didn’t get a chance to stock up on anything.”
Even the pads and tampons have been wiped clean of the shelves. Since we’re mostly women (eight of us all up, four guys—one of them old enough to need a cane), menstrual products can ignite an all-out war between us.
Back when the group was hefty, I watched in the faint lantern light as one woman sank a knife into another woman’s back over one tampon. One. Not a box, just a single stick. Needless to say, the woman died. Not immediately, it was the infection that got her. We banished the stabber. She’s probably dead by now.
Tiffany sighs, and I realise I was her last resort for a chance at those tasty fruits we all miss. She peels open the lid of the tin in her hands, and the scent of tomatoes hits me hard, like a punch to the face. Skinless, peeled, and not the most appetising or filling of loots.
She stays parked beside me, eating in silence. At least the lantern she brought over offers some white glow over the pages of my book.
“It’s nights like these I miss Mike,” she says softly.
I frown.
Mike was around our age, in his twenties. Guess he and Tiffany were close. Maybe closer than I realised. But he died some weeks ago. It’s hard to track the days, but I mark off time in my book (It has a calendar at the back). It’s about a month ago now that Mike died.
We were arriving in a village near the sea, walking up the main street. All of us were drained, exhausted, and hungry. The sun might have been gone, but the heat still had its clutches on the world, and it was one of those hot days that clung hair to your temple and made your clothes all sticky.
Those of us flanking the tribe held up weak lanterns and studied the doors to the buildings all around us. We looked for the best place to hide out for a few days. We didn’t make it halfway up the street before the sound came.
It was heavy, so heavy that it rattled the ground, shook the windows in their frames, and shivered doors. In the dark, we couldn’t tell what the sound was or where it was coming from, only that it was coming.
I was far from the lanterns. I could barely make out my hand in front of my face. I felt around my belt for the kitchen knife tucked there, my fingers trembling. Silence would have been thick around us if it wasn’t for the pounding headed straight for us, growing louder and louder by the second. Then, one word sent ropes of cold, icy fear unravelling down my spine.
“Run!”
I didn’t know who screamed for us to flee, but I didn’t care. I abandoned post and bolted away from the fading lanterns. It became everyone for themselves. Scattered, like mice chased by cats.
The shatter of glass exploded in the air. A lantern, dropped, left behind. The light faded as I slammed into something hard and metal. A car, left on the side of the road. My heart quickened as I dropped to the ground and rolled under it. My bag got caught on the edge, I had to rip it free.
Then the noise was booming. It was all around us, everywhere. Pounding the ground like a hammer—no, like a thousand hammers, all at once.
In the distance, a guttural cry ripped the air in half. A man’s scream, I was sure of it. But no one cried back to him, no one shouted to aid him. We all stayed still and silent, hoping that whatever it was would pass, hoping that we weren’t just marched upon by an army of fierce fae warriors.
