Chapter 20 #2
Cat caught it without seeming to take her eyes off mine. The edge of her mouth twitched in that way she had, always trying to swallow a smile rather than let it out into the world.
You’re not soft, she said quietly.
I know, I said.
And you’re not stupid, she said.
I know, I said.
You’re just you, she said, punching me softly on the arm. And that’s enough for me.
So when I saw the bear and the traveller who wore it, the dogs were already locked in the bunker at the other end of the airstrip.
It was the next day which was a windy one, with the gusts racketing in the trees behind the tank and blowing across the old M-way in front of it.
I had got a bad attack of the get-me-outs – what Cat called claustrophobia –through being shut in with everyone and their grudges and moods, and had gone to the tank to be alone as much as keep an eye out for any dangerous strangers.
I didn’t actually believe there were any strangers about any more, if there had been any in the first place.
I thought that the fire we’d seen on the horizon had definitely been sparked by a lightning strike.
So I wasn’t keeping watch at all. I was reading a book about a gifted girl who was a zombie but also kind and if I hadn’t just got to the end of a chapter at the very moment the stranger walked past, I’d likely have missed them entirely, and this story would have a very different ending to the one it does.
I looked up and caught movement with the tail of my eye.
I froze, feeling icy inside and not moving at all.
Even though I hadn’t actually been keeping watch, the obvious approach to us that I hadn’t been keeping watch on was the old M-way.
That was the easiest path through the countryside.
There was something quite comforting in that, because you could, due to the position of the tank, see a long way down the old road in both directions.
So when I glanced up from time to time, I could confirm my opinion and see that no one was coming for quite a distance, which made going back to reading all the easier because I could forget keeping watch for a good ten or twenty minutes or so at a time.
So when I saw the hooded stranger walk up onto the old road from the direction of the Russian’s grave, it was a double shock; once because it was another new person in the world, twice because I had no chance of preparing myself.
The figure just pushed through the wall of willowherb on the far side of the M-way and stepped up onto the road.
Because it had suddenly appeared from the direction of the dead Russian and was wearing a hood up, just like he had been doing, I immediately decided there must be a connection.
The quick story my fear invented for me was that they had found the body and were now looking for the people who put it there, and by people I really meant person, and by person I meant me.
And in the short flash of fear that it took me to put this all together, my mouth went dry and my heart started knocking so loudly that I was sure they would be able to hear it outside the tank.
Then I remembered what I had once read in the book with the sand-worms about fear being the mind-killer, so I made myself breathe and tried to push the hot-cold flush of terror aside and think straight so I’d really see what I was looking at, not what the fear had invented for me.
This is what I saw. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman or a girl or a boy, not at first. They were on foot, alone, and walking with a bow not unlike mine slung over their shoulder.
The head was down, and I couldn’t see their face.
There was a kind of exhausted defeat in their posture, and they were wearing the hood of their sweatshirt up.
I could see the sweatshirt had a bear in a hat looking straight at me on the front of it, with some letters below that I couldn’t read fully because the sweatshirt was under a coat and so I couldn’t see the whole phrase at first. The coat itself was a patched together thing, well-worn into a waxy look that reminded me uncomfortably of the coat the Russian had been wearing, and that put me on my guard again, although in truth Cat and I had waterproofs that looked similar enough too.
I couldn’t help remembering the greasy feel of it grasped in my fingertips as Cat and I dragged the deadweight of the body across the field to its shallow scrape of a grave in the root hole of the fallen pine.
I found I had lifted myself out of the creaking seat and was now hovering in a half squat, one hand supporting me by hanging off the inner handle of the tank hatch, the other putting my book to one side and reaching for my knife.
I did all that without thinking, my eyes busy, locked on the approaching figure, trying to keep track through the viewing slits.
Some lookout I was, some great hunter. I had been crept up on, and there was now no time for me to get out of the tank and warn Cat and the others.
As I watched the hooded figure trudge up the slope from the M-way I put the knife away and used both hands to dog the hatch shut, not all the way as I had done when I was little and got stuck inside, but just enough so a thin tongue of metal held the hatch tight to the rim.
Then I managed to turn myself awkwardly around until I had my bow drawn and an arrow nocked.
It was a really unnatural position, but I felt better knowing that I could at least get a first shot at them through the viewing slit if I needed to.
Though at first it didn’t look like I would; the stranger stopped and looked at the tank but not close enough for me to see the face, just the body.
The bear in a hat stared right at me though.
It was brown. The hooded shirt was grey.
There were three green pine trees on each side of the bear’s head and white snow-capped mountain peaks spread behind it.
I don’t remember those exact details from then.
I remember them from later. Much later when I saw it up close in very different circumstances.
What I do know I noticed then was the writing: I could see the hat had words on it too.
It said SMOKEY. The words below the bear’s head asked IF NOT YOU, WHO?
I didn’t understand the question. It only made sense to me later, and when it did it became a mantra, which is something old that monks like the ones in the Tintin book with the Abominable Snowman used to say to help them concentrate.
I didn’t have time to think about it then, because the stranger’s body shifted and I heard them go:
Huh.
It was hard to hear clearly, what with the wind and everything, but they didn’t sound that impressed or even interested by the tank.
They sounded very flat and tired and then they turned away and walked towards the old restaurant at the base of the Tower.
I craned around and watched through a viewing port on the side of the turret as they stood in front of it and peered into the entrails of the ruined building.
I remember feeling relieved that they not only moved away from me in the tank but had done so in a direction that took them away from the Bunker and from Cat.
I watched them stoop and sit on one of the old concrete benches like they were suddenly felled by exhaustion.
As soon as they hit the seat all the energy went from their body and they sat slumped over, hands on knees, staring at their shoes for a long, long time.
I eased my bowstring and watched until they straightened up and, in a movement that strangely reminded me of Digger, shook themselves as if they were snapping out of something and pushed their hood back allowing me my first glimpse of their head and face.
The hair was dark brown, but sort of rusty, maybe because sun had bleached the ends.
It was cut tight round the sides and back but left longer on top.
My first thought was that they were a girl, but then I decided they were a young man, and then as I watched them reach into the bottom of their pack and pull out something wrapped in a square of cloth and begin to eat what looked like berries from it, I decided they could be either and I just couldn’t quite tell at that distance, especially with the limitations I had on my viewing point through the slit.
That meant I had to bend really low to see more than just their body and legs.
And it didn’t much matter whether they were man or woman, not if they were Russian: I remembered Storm telling us how the female Russians had attacked their mother.