Ruan was hacking at a tree with her saber in a quiet corner of the commune when Geldof found her. The first she knew of his presence was when she swung the sword back for another swipe, prompting a yelp of fear. She spun round to see a lock of ginger hair float from his fringe to the ground.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Geldof said, although the look of abject terror on his face suggested otherwise. “I needed a haircut anyway.”
She grunted in response and buried the edge of her blade in the tree trunk. She left it quivering there and rolled her shoulder, which was aching from half an hour of brutalizing the vegetation.
“I thought you were a tree hugger, not a tree stabber,” he said, looking at the raw wound in the bark.
“It’ll live. Maybe.”
They’d been thrown together again the previous day when Fanny assigned Geldof to help Ruan with her chores. She suspected an obvious attempt to get them together, but she hadn’t really minded. Despite his shaky start, he displayed a level of maturity she hadn’t encountered in boys of his age. Even the obvious effort he expended in not looking at her breasts seemed born from a desire to respect her boundaries rather than from the fear of being caught like a startled rabbit in the dazzling glare of her headlamps. Or perhaps she was being too kind. Still, there was something different about Geldof. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was at first. After all, he looked very much like a boy: the hair follicles on his face were still in hibernation, his cheeks were as rosy as Rory’s, and there wasn’t so much as the rumor of a wrinkle on his smooth face. Admittedly, his body wasn’t the typically lanky and awkward frame of a boy with years of growing still to go. She knew a swimmer when she saw one; he had that characteristic triangular shape that spoke of long hours pulling his upper body through the water. It was only when he closed his eyes for several seconds that she got it. With his lids down, he looked barely fourteen, never mind sixteen. When he opened them again, the years piled back on. His eyes were those of somebody twice his age.
It struck her again how much her world had changed. All of her experience with boys her age came before the virus, when the worst thing they had to worry about was exam grades or whether the risqué pictures they’d texted to their girlfriends were going to be circulated around the school. Geldof had been through so much more. When she asked him to tell her what had happened after the virus, he just started talking matter-of-factly. The more he talked, not even flinching when he described his father dying, the more she felt a desire to open up herself. It would be good to tell somebody who could understand what she’d been through. But when he finished and looked at her with an unspoken question between them, she hesitated. Sensing her reluctance, he’d moved on the conversation—another sign that he was unusually in tune for a boy of his age.
“I know you’re upset,” Geldof said. “We all are. But we’ll find a way. If Lesley’s story doesn’t stop them, I’ll make sure the mercenaries get you out. You’re immune. They’re bound to take you in to France or wherever.”
“Yeah, so they can stick needles in me and poke about in my brain to find out why I don’t get it? No, thanks. I’d rather just be anonymous.”
“Then I’ll get them to take you somewhere quiet, where nobody knows who you are.”
“It isn’t about me,” she said, dropping to sit on a log.
“Then what is it about?”
“My parents.”
“It’s hard to lose people you love.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
Geldof sat beside her, keeping a respectful distance. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Looking at the poor tree that had borne the brunt of her frustration, Ruan once again felt the need to share. It was either that or she would end up deforesting half of Scotland. She began to talk, and, once the cork was out of the bottle, she couldn’t stop.
* * *
Ruan only stopped when she reached the point where her parents had chased her down the stairs, too emotionally exhausted to continue. At some point in her narrative, Geldof had taken her hand. She’d let him, grateful of the contact. Now she realized she’d been gripping it tightly and that he wore an expression of patient discomfort. She let go.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, shaking out the injured hand. “That’s horrible.”
“It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have gone back, shouldn’t have listened to the stupid voice in my head that told me they would be fine.”
“You had a fever.”
“No, I’m just stubborn.”
“Must be why you like my mum so much.”
They fell silent for a moment. Even thought it had been painful to recall what happened she felt lighter for having unburdened herself.
“What did you do then?”
“I tried to get the virus.”
Geldof’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I’d only seen the infected in the camp, so at first I didn’t know they only took a proper maddie when there was somebody around to infect. When I realized that I thought that if I got myself infected we could be together again.”
“You’re immune though.”
“I know. But I was lonely and desperate. I figured if I got attacked enough times, maybe it would stick. So I went out of the city, looking for somebody to infect me. I came across this skinny little woman on her own out in a field. I let her bite and scratch me, but she just wouldn’t stop.”
“Because the virus wouldn’t cross over.” Ruan nodded. “How did you get away?”
This was something else Ruan didn’t want to remember, but she’d come this far and needed to get the poison out. She swallowed hard. “I killed her. I didn’t mean to. I just started fighting back, hard. She fell over and hit her head on a rock. It was easy while she was still attacking me: she had that look the infected all have, like she wasn’t human. When she died, though, her face relaxed and she was just this fragile farmer again.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“No.”
“Then I hope you never have to. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How did you make it through all of that time without going insane?”
“Mental discipline. I’m very good at pretending things aren’t happening.”
“And you plan to do that for the rest of your life?”
“What else can I do?” Ruan said, her voice small.
Tentatively, Geldof reached out again and took her hand. It felt good to be able to relax and touch another human without still clinging to a faint worry about the possible consequences, as she did any time she was close to Fanny’s crew.
“So,” Geldof said, “what’s upsetting you now?”
“When I came here, it gave me hope. I thought Fanny and her people could teach my parents to control it. Then I began to realize they hadn’t even tried to resist the virus. They just tried to kill me.”
“And what do you think that means?”
“I think it means they didn’t really love me.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh? You don’t know what it’s like to have it.”
“Your mum managed to stop herself from attacking you.”
“Yes, but my mum hates the mainstream and couldn’t possibly have allowed herself to go with the flow. If everybody was controlling it, I guarantee you she’d set up a movement calling for everybody to start killing each other. As willful as she is, you saw how much she had to struggle. Maybe they’ll learn to control it. You could see them again.”
“No, I won’t. I’ve spent the last few days trying to pretend they were dead. It was easier to deal with than imagining they couldn’t even stop themselves from attacking me. The problem is, now they’re really going to be dead.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe Lesley’s story will stop the attack.”
“Do you really think so?”
She could see the doubt in his eyes, but still he tried to reassure her. “There’s a chance. Look, I’m not telling you to forgive them just yet. It was a horrible thing to go through. I just want you to understand this was the virus, not them. How could they not love you?”
This time Ruan squeezed his hand. “Thanks for trying.”
His cheeks bloomed red and he looked away. “Come on. It’s almost lunchtime. You must be starving after giving that tree such a hard time.”
He got to his feet and hauled her up. She reached over to grab the sword, still holding on to his hand, and together they walked out into the camp. No sooner had they emerged from the bushes than Eva came running over. “There you are. Come on, we’d better get you locked away in the hangar.”
“Why?”
“The BBC is here.”
“More arrivals?”
“We do appear to have been quite popular recently. Anyway, they want to make a video about the resistance.”
“I’ve not been on the telly in ages,” Geldof said. “Can we be in it?”
“They’re infected.”
“In that case, we’d better hide.”
They hurried to the hangar, where Lesley and the mercenaries were hovering outside. Just before they went in, Ruan caught sight of Rory. He was staring at their joined hands, his face grim. She let go hurriedly, feeling a pang at the loss of contact, and went inside.