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AFTER AN UNEVENTFUL night, we depart the manor house in a much better state than we arrived.
We’re well rested. The circles beneath Kane’s eyes have lightened. We have two flasks of drinking water, two long-bladed knives, a small pot, a roll of fishing line and a leather satchel full of apples. Gabe has a bow hanging over his shoulder with three arrows strung to the frame.
We survived the night of the hunt.
The bloodsuckers are sensitive to light, they prefer the night, and we have hours of daylight to put more distance between us and them.
That becomes my new mantra of hope as we cross the river and trek through the hills, heading farther and farther west. We used the bridge this time, but Kane has warned we should be prepared to swim the next crossing to help cover our tracks and mask our scent.
I’m not entirely convinced anyone, hunter or otherwise, will ever be able to track us down in this wilderness of hills and trees and bush. But just like I’m clinging to hope and eternal optimism, I won’t be complacent. I’m determined to survive and, eventually, find my way home to Ironcross. Which is my bigger concern as the burn sets into my muscles with the miles covered.
When we take a break in a clearing beside a trickling stream, I plant myself on a fallen log near Kane. “Ironcross is way up north of the state, right? Near the Canadian border?”
Kane gives a nod that tilts his head to me. “That’s right.”
“Are there any markers I could...say, use to ever find it again? If I had a map?”
He looks at me a long while before he speaks. “I know this is difficult, Senna. I’m doing the best I can to keep us alive.”
“I’m not planning to run off in the dead of night.” I pin him with a look that encompasses every ounce of determination within me. “But at some point in the future, months or years from now, whatever, I will go home, and I’d like to know how to find my way.”
He digests the impact of my words, of that look, his gaze flitting off into the trees. Is he deciding whether to believe me or not? Whether to trust me with his knowledge?
“Kane, please...”
He sighs. “Ironcross lies roughly three miles north of Cranberry Lake. If you ever find that map, you can’t miss it.”
Cranberry Lake. Three miles north. I repeat the information over and over again to cement it in my brain.
A brush of movement beyond the line of trees in our clearing catches my eye. My heart slams into my chest as I jump to my feet, pointing. “I saw something.”
Kane stands, puts a finger to his mouth as he looks across all of us, then he treads a light path to where I pointed. He slides around a tree, out of view. A moment later he slides back into view and beckons us over. There’s a smile cracked into his granite jaw and, even more surprising, feeding a glint of warmth into his eyes.
I tiptoe closer, my pulse still racing from the fright. Gabe is a step behind me and Georga approaches from another angle. As I peer around Kane, my breath subsides on a cloud of wonderment. There amongst the ferns and dappled shade of the hardwoods, a pair of fallow deer does are nibbling from a hanging branch. A mother and her young, their fawn coats spotted with white patches.
A twig cracks as Gabe steps into place beside me. The deer startle and take off, springing through the foliage and out of sight.
“Sorry,” Gabe murmurs.
I turn a smiling look on him. “That’s possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He smiles in agreement.
We continue walking. Our pace is steady rather than fast. Every hour or so, we stop for a few minutes to catch our breath and/or munch on an apple. We skip across any number of sparkling, bubbling streams that Gabe reckons is okay to sip from rather than deplete our precious store of water.
When we hit a road that seems to be spearing in the direction we’re headed, Kane suggests we follow it. The asphalt is cracked with weeds growing through, it’s not much better than walking on the forest bed, but the pathway is clear of the trees that pack us on both sides.
I wonder if he thinks the patchy bits of pavement will further hide our tracks, although I don’t ask. I’m saving my breaths for the hissing pain as the blisters on my feet scrub rawer and rawer. I’m not sure what to do about it, no one does, and I’m not the only one limping along on blistered feet. The ground is too thorny and rocky to go barefoot.
We come across a faded green road sign entangled in long grass along the side of the road. We can just make out the partial words FORT and IVE CAREF, which doesn’t tell us much. The road goes on and on and on in a relatively straight line, the sun blazing down as it travels overhead towards its decent in front of us.
The vegetation doesn’t seem to change much. Skinny trunks growing up from thatches of bushes, branches knotting with each other in the tangle of canopies. We haven’t crossed any more streams since we’ve been on the road, which means we’re rationing our water and, out here without shade, we’re sweating more.
The skies and forest around us teems with birds and insect life, but other than those fallow deer, we don’t see or hear any other animals. I know they’re out there, somewhere. I heard them last night. They’re avoiding us. I wonder if they’re as scared of us as the doe and her young one.
On and on we walk.
We pass a rusted heap of metal stuck on the road, the skeletal remains of a car from the before times. I think of the films screened in the town hall, the cities packed with buildings and people and the roads jammed with traffic. Shouldn’t there be more relics left behind on this road? Wherever we are, wherever we’re going, it feels like maybe it had been deserted long before the world collapsed.
On and on...
We’re truly walking to the end of the earth. I’m starting to hope we fall off the edge before my feet kill me.
Finally we come across signs of centuries past living. The shape of a cottage completely grown over with ivy. A half crumbled wall that doesn’t seem to belong to anything. A long structure that doesn’t look like a residence. A thinner road forks off there and we take the overgrown pathway, following the setting sun back into the denser forest.
Not long after that, we see a house that still faintly resembles a house. Half of the roof is caved in. One corner is crumbled with blackened plastered walls. Nature has reclaimed most of it, long-stemmed weeds growing through the cracked concrete foundation, green tendrils creeping through the wrecked ceiling.
It’s a poor shelter after the manor house, but beggars can’t be choosers and twilight is upon us. My feet thank me as I flop down on a thick root sprouting from an inner wall. Above, bits of beam cross over between me and the gray-tinted sky. I hope it doesn’t rain tonight.
The relief of taking my shoes and socks off is so great, I’m not sure I’ll have the strength to ever pull them on again.
Across from me, Georga does the same, giving a moan of pure ecstasy as she stretches her legs out and wiggles her toes.
When Gabe and Kane suggest scouting the area, we both look at them like they’ve gone mad.
Gabe grins at me. “Why don’t you just stay there and rest your pretty little head and us guys will take care of everything.”
I don’t have the will to take offense. “Take the pot in case you find a stream.”
Kane shrugs the satchel from his shoulder and digs out the pot, sweeping a searching gaze around the wreckage of our temporary home. “We won’t go far.”
As they walk off through a torn out part of wall, I crawl over to the satchel and grab two apples, tossing one to Georga. We’ve eaten our way through more than half the supply. So much for my three day estimate.
Georga’s an extremely pretty girl, she always has been and she still is, but she’s also petite without an ounce of fat to spare. Her cheeks are sunken and there’s a sallow look in her eyes. We’re not eating enough for the amount of exercise we’re doing.
I watch her nibble the core to death and ask, “Do you want another one?”
She shakes her short crop of ash blond hair, tossing the core away with a groan. “I’m starving, but it feels like all the apples I’ve eaten have grown babies and they’re gnawing away at my stomach. Do you have any idea what I’d do right now for a chunk of warm, buttered bread?”
“Don’t...” I groan. “I’d be happy with a crumb of that stale crust they gave us at the mines.”
She laughs. “Oh, my God, just one small crumb, please...!”
Before I know it, I’m laughing, too, laughing so much my eyes begin to water. I think this may be the onset of insanity.
Georga looks around at the encroaching vegetation. “You know, this is all nature, surely there must be something here we can snack on. Insects are supposed to be quite nutritional.”
“I’m not that hungry.”
She grimaces. “Yeah, neither am I.”
Secretly, I’m hoping Gabe has gone a-hunting with that bow and arrow. I don’t say anything, though. I don’t want to get Georga’s expectations up for nothing.
As it turns out, I got my own expectations up for nothing.
Gabe and Kane return with a pot of water and some tuber roots they dug out near a river that appears to have been running parallel to the road we’re travelling. Gabe’s pretty sure it’s wild carrot, he tells us. He performs his trick with bone dry threads of vegetation to start a fire and Kane slices the roots for a broth of wild carrot and river water.
It doesn’t poison us.
There’s about all the praise our supper gets from me.