*
The old man awoke in the dirt, shuddering. His vision was blurred, and his arm lay stretched out before him. What had once been his hand was now only a misshapen mass of flesh. He tried to breathe, but his chest only fluttered, delivering a dribble of air to his burning lungs.
Behind him, somewhere in the woodland, voices chattered. Slumped against the silt of the streambed, he could only lie still and listen. Each breath was sacred now, as satisfying as water in a desert.
“Idiots!” said a new voice—a sighing, sibilant hiss that struck a chord deep behind the old man’s eyes, sending his heart pounding and his balls shrinking. A moment’s pause followed. “I think I’m a reasonable man. I’ve a fair heart, I do. So I’ll give you a chance to explain yourselves… What did you think you were doing?”
The female voice—the one that had spoken before—stuttered, “We were just looking for some food, is all. We’ve been watching that fucking city for days, and we haven’t heard a peep out of anybody else. How were we supposed to know when we’d get supplies?” She grew bolder, “They was alone, nobody else around. Easy pickings, we thought. But they went and tried to fight, didn't they?”
The woman’s voice gave way to a metallic clatter. Her short scream was cut short by a solid thump.
The first voice had grown quieter, but still the old man’s gut squirmed at the sound of it. He’d travelled far and fought hard in his time to make a life after the End, and he’d met enough maniacs along the way to know one when he heard one. “Well, there wasn’t any food, now, was there? Not a grain. And you could’ve ruined everything before we’ve even got started. You risked it all… You risked His plan.”
The woman’s voice, wet and snivelling, “Please, Jason…”
“Shut up! Stupid bitch.” A pair of footsteps and a change in tone. The old man guessed he was addressing the others, “Where’ve his friends gone?”
A third voice, wavering, said, “They ran a while ago. We can’t find them.”
“You pathetic piss stains!” A tense pause. “Where’s your weapons? Give them to me, you’re not worthy to carry them.”
Even from the ground, the old man sensed the uncomfortable silence. The woman spoke again, slurred—perhaps by a mouthful of blood—and hesitant. “We don’t have any.” A moment later she cried out again—a cry that quickly became a choked whine.
“So what you’ve done is run off in the middle of the night—no lights, no weapons—and raid a troop of fucking bumblers for breadcrumbs? And then you let them get away!”
“We weren't looking for trouble. We just come across them, like.” A pause. “We was hungry.”
“So you thought you’d try risking it all?” A dark laugh echoed beneath the forest canopy. “Pathetic. You couldn’t even slit an old man’s throat.”
The third voice, still quivering, “What’s the problem? We kill people all the time, right next to you.”
“It’s not the killing, you dopey shit. It’s you being stupid is what’s wrong. You know how careful we have to be right now. What if they were from the city?”
“They weren’t, we were sure,” the woman wheezed. “I swear.” She whimpered at the sound of a pistol hammer being cocked.
“I should kill you,” the sibilant voice whispered. “Only reason I’m not going to is because I don’t want your mangy fur all over my shoes. But if you slip up again, I’ll eat your brains for breakfast. That goes for all of you. You hear?”
“Y-Y—”
“Do you hear?”
“Yes!”
Another silence, the sound of the pistol’s hammer being relaxed, and then, “Get up.”
The old man, with great effort, turned onto his back just in time to see a slight figure scramble to its feet, surrounded by almost half a dozen others. Apart from them was the maniac, there was no mistaking that; his outline was just as feral as his voice.
Once he’d moved, the strangers paused, considering him afresh, and then began to approach. It was as though blood had been dropped into shark-infested waters.
The maniacal, sighing voice cut through the air once more, “What happened to this one?”
“Pushed us down the bloody hill, didn’t he?” the woman said venomously.
“A little tumble wouldn’t do that to someone.”
“We might’ve helped him along a bit.” Now that she no longer had a gun to her head, she sounded amused. An unstable giggle as unsettling as the man’s voice escaped her lips. “Looks miserable, don’t he? Making me feel a bit sick, just looking at him.”
The old man, sensing the end, peered through the silver haze of moonlight to the rocky outcrop high above. Where Don and Billy had been, there was only the bare lip of the hill.
Shuddering and breathless, he managed a bloodied smile. He was sure that most of his teeth were missing, but to smile up at them felt like enough. Felt like a victory.
The approaching footsteps gradually wiped it from his face, until finally a shadow fell across the length of his body. The sibilant-voiced man was crouching beside him.
Up close, he was lean-faced and unshaven, with china-doll eyes and a lupine maw. From his direction came a disgusting aroma, one that made the old man suspect that he hadn’t washed in his entire life. Held in his hands was a long, curved knife, which he twirled in his grip with frightening dexterity. He observed the old man almost curiously, with his head tilted to the side. Behind the childlike stare, however, there was not a man, nor a soul, but a monster. “What’s your name?” he said.
The old man was quiet. Under their cold stares, he continued to stare at the moon, again smiling despite the agony growing steadily in his bowels. Even if they walked away into the woods right now, he didn’t have long.
“I won’t waste any more of your time.” The man beside him was smiling, revealing a set of putrid, pus-yellow teeth. “I know a strong man when I see one.” He touched the old man’s shoulder, a gesture that, instead of bringing comfort, sent a wave of nausea coursing through his chest. “My apologies for my associates’…error.” Then he stood. “Get rid of him, quietly if you can. Here, think you can handle one of these without another fuck-up?”
The woman, out of sight, giggled—yet her voice was laced with fear. “I knew you couldn’t stay mad at me.”
“Just get it done.”
The old man shuddered when the sensation of a cold ring—unmistakably the profile of a gun barrel—was pressed against the nape of his neck. He closed his eyes and waited for darkness.
The woman muttered above him, “Tough luck, mate—”
“Who's there?” yelled a distant voice.
Despite only being privy to a view of the sky, the old man sensed the strangers start and drop lower to the ground. A palpable tension condensed from the ether. The half-dozen shadows melted into the forest. He couldn’t even hear them breathing.
From somewhere nearby—though he had no idea which direction—the woman’s voice whispered, “What was that?”
The monster’s hiss answered, no more than a sigh on the wind, “Shut up.”
For a moment all was still.
Then the old man frowned. Something light and crinkled had alighted on the back of his hand. The unmistakable texture of paper kissed his skin.
Had they dropped something in their haste? A note? Something important?
The forest’s shadows flickered, its silver tint having been infected by a streak of pale orange. Through the distant trees, a sphere of fire bobbed: lantern light. Accompanying it was a new voice. “Who goes? Show yourselves!”
Without knowing why, driven only by the vague goal of in some way striking back at his attackers, the old man hauled his hand towards his trousers, clutching at the unseen scrap of paper. Shaking and gasping, he had just managed to poke it into the ragged remains of his pocket when the silence broke.
“We can't be seen!” the woman hissed. “What do we do?”
The sibilant voice, “Let's go.”
“It
’s that gorilla from the mill. He’s always alone. We can take him.”
“Later.”
A pause.
“What about the old goat?”
The old man felt cold steel against his neck once more.
“Leave him.”
“What?”
“He’s finished either way. Let's go. Now.”
As the old man began to tremble from the effort of drawing the merest of breaths, the strangers fled into the woods. Defeated, he could only listen to their retreating footsteps, and then to those of the lone newcomer as he made his way through the forest.
“Who goes?” he would roar occasionally.
The old man tried to answer, but all that he could manage was a feeble whisper. As his lungs gave out and drawing breath became too much, the moon seemed to grow dimmer. After a while he could hear nothing but a dull mumble.
The night continued to blur until only the stars remained, and somewhere beyond the shadow of the newcomer—who now stood over him, shouting something inaudible—he thought of Donald and Billy. While he stared up at the heavens, he choked out the words of a lullaby he had sung into both their cribs, once upon a time:
“Then the traveller in the dark,
thanks you for your tiny spark,
he could not see which way to go,
if you did not twinkle so.”
X
“Forty years.”
Alexander's reverberating voice thrummed in every crevice beneath the cathedral’s roof. White stone scintillated and shadows danced, bathed in the amber glow of a thousand candles. Carvings of every kind stood sentinel in the gloom, and the sound of whispering trickled in myriad forgotten corners.
Canterbury Cathedral, though long stripped of its ancient treasures, had lost none of its glory. The walls were bare and pallid, its deeper recesses were sheathed in cobwebs, and the transept floors were carpeted with over an inch of dust—yet the eight hundred people gathered beneath the nave’s great pillars never ceased to gawp in wonder.
Save for the occasional appreciative murmur and the whining of small children, there was absolute silence. Every head was turned towards Alexander, raised above them in the wood-carved pulpit. He could feel the pressure of each pair of eyes pressing against his skin.
He took a deep breath. “Forty years of struggle, hard work, and loss.”
The silence deepened until it bore down on his shoulders with physical force. Yet, amongst the crowd, not a gaze flickered, not a single brow creased.
“While we may never know what happened to our world, where our friends and families have gone, or whether the terrible event that shaped all our lives will strike again, we have done our best to rebuild. With what little was left to us, we have made this place as close as possible to a real home—our home.”
There was a short chorus of cheering, accompanied by a few roars of approval. Alex felt a swell of pride in his chest at the sight of brimming eyes and pumping fists. He raised his hand and waited for quiet before continuing, “For a long time this day just marked another year gone by, full of nothing but despair, fighting. They were desperate times, times that most of us lived through, grew up with, and have tried to forget. But in recent years we have finally found some peace, and can now recognise this day for what it should be. This day, in part, defines us. It has shaped our way of life, and the fate of the entire world. To this day we owe our thanks…thanks for being given a second chance.”
At this, there was a strained, deeper silence, punctuated by only the rumblings of empty stomachs.
“We continue to bring children into the world, children who ask questions we can never answer. But the fact is that people have forever been plagued by those very same questions.”
He planted his hands abreast the pulpit banister and leaned over the rail. “Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here?
“I admit that the list of questions has some…new additions. But we face the same problems as our forebears, we make the same daily struggle, we fight the same fight.”
He paused to pick out Norman and Lucian from the crowd. They sat with the elders up front—the thickness of their hair and the colour in their cheeks set them in sharp contrast to the shrivelled relics of the Old World around them, but nobody questioned their presence there.
Only Norman looked uncomfortable.
Alex suppressed a pang of annoyance. The Anniversary was no time for stage fright or self-doubt. But no matter. Norman would find his feet, in time. Alex was certain of it. He pressed on, “This year, we’ve fought for more than just ideals or politics. This year, without doubt, we have struggled with every breath merely to feed ourselves. Even now, we are yet to leave the darkness behind, and the harvest has only served to remind us of just how far we have to go.”
The crowd shifted restlessly, but Alex kept his hand raised until they settled, determined to finish. “The road ahead looks daunting, even for those of us who built this place. But remembering why we’re here, and what we’re trying to do, is more important than ever.
“Leadership is…difficult. It’s not a duty that any of us envy. But we have to face the fact that our elders are,” he allowed himself a wry smile, “getting old. Soon, our children will have to fight our fight without us. They’ll be carrying the torch for a world they’ve never seen with their own eyes.” He raised a finger. “But there is hope. There are those among us whom I believe in—whom we can all believe in. Now, before I bore the lot of you into the dirt—”
A ripple of laughter trickled through the cathedral.
“—if I may, I’d like to call a toast.” Alexander stopped pacing and faced Norman. “To our champion,” he said, and raised a glass of precious cider.
The room gave a single, raucous cheer. Norman’s shoulders constricted, but nobody seemed to notice, and his grimace went unnoticed by the crowd. Alexander nodded to him, flashed his most encouraging smile, and addressed the crowd a final time, “If this is our second chance, we can’t wallow in mourning for what we’ve lost, we have to celebrate what we have. Now eat up!”
A last cheer filled the nave with an echoing rumble. The smell of food was thick in the air, and every face twisted with hunger. The congregation fragmented as Alex backed away from the railing, and the droves about-faced with ravenous eyes.
Piles of steaming food lay at the rear of the room: venison, pork and chicken; a mountain of roast potatoes; eggs and loaves of bread—which were even free of sawdust; a pile of ancient pre-End food tins; mushrooms and seeds of every kind; fruit and vegetables; bowls of stuffing; a table of heaving pies; and, most sacred of all, several barrels of golden cider.
Plates and chairs enough for everyone were laid out across the nave. Before each seat was the best china and crystal the ruins of England had to offer. The crowd blustered past the rich appointments in passing, oblivious to the luxury. The promise of the first full meal they’d eaten in almost a year occupied the entirety of their attention. They each swept up a plate and hurried off towards the food. Some were close to breaking into a run.
Alex blinked in surprise when he saw that a few had remained sitting beneath the pulpit, their eyes still fixed on him. Among them were the same founding elders who lingered every year—Lucian and vacant-eyed Agatha at their heart—but this year youth peppered their ranks.
Norman, John DeGray, Richard Maxwell, Robert Strong, Sarah Clarke and even Allison Rutherford stood together in the aisle. They watched and waited beside one another, without impatience or any sense of grudging duty.
Alexander felt his chest flutter at the sight of their unity. They reminded him of another group of young people, who had stood together and faced a broken world just as they did now, long ago.
Perhaps there wasn’t so far to go after all, he thought.
He walked towards the pulpit steps.