Chapter 19 Salted Wounds #2
“Don’t shoot!” I ordered the archers, my vocal cords grinding painfully in my throat with the attempted volume.
The furies were too close. Even I didn’t trust my aim.
“Here, come here! Hey!”
Not minding my surroundings anymore, I darted towards the struggle, trying in vain to attract the infected.
“No, you stay here! And be ready!”
Unmistakeably powerful hands grabbed my shoulders from behind, halting me forcefully in my tracks. Their grip hurt me more than their owner likely intended, and I yelped.
But Einar had already passed me by, reaching Josh and his adversaries in a heartbeat. Three of them were piled up on top of Josh.
Einar grabbed one of them savagely by her dyed hair with long, grown-out roots, turned her to face him with a brutish jerk, and shoved a knife through her eye socket.
In the meantime, the rotund male fury I had hit before staggered closer to the group, and I shot him in the head. He collapsed, twitching.
Einar pulled the other female fury off Josh.
Hands gripping her firmly by the shoulder and the crotch, he lifted her above his head and then tossed her to the side as if she were nothing but a doll.
He then did the same with the Asian male before tackling the remaining fury, a male much closer to his own size.
He tore him off Josh by grabbing the matted dark hair and frayed T-shirt collar. He then drove the cannibal’s face hard against his readied knee with a nasty crunch. Blood spurted out of the sorry remains of the fury’s nose.
Meanwhile, the female and the Asian got back up. I shot the female, but the Asian rushed Einar, and the latter fought both the infected single-handedly. Josh lay on the ground nearby, horribly still.
Einar managed to climb on top of the Asian male and held him in place by kneeling on his neck.
But he struggled with the bigger cannibal, barely managing to keep him at bay.
Several times he tried to reach for the knife fastened to his belt but failed to do so because the infected always managed to take advantage of Einar’s slacking hold on him, his voracious mouth instantly reaching towards Einar’s neck, teeth brandished.
“Hold him still!” I shouted to Einar, marching closer.
Einar had one hand around the infected’s neck and the other on his shoulder, pushing him to the ground. All the while, the Asian thrashed violently under his knee, face turning purple. I didn’t dare aim for the larger male fury’s head because he jerked constantly and was too close to Einar.
Instead, I circled around so that I faced his back, the knots of his spine outlined by the close-fitting, dirty shirt. I fired several shots into the vertebral column, and the creature collapsed, legs buckling underneath him.
As soon as his head gained some distance from Einar, I put an arrow through it, and he finally lay still.
Einar then brandished his already bloodied knife and, holding the Asian to the ground, he slashed his throat with expeditious brutality.
The head nearly came off, blood pooled around, and all was quiet.
My knees gave out and I crashed to the ground, shaking, my breath coming in sobs.
Einar’s own breathing was ragged, and he swore profusely in what I assumed was the Icelandic language.
There were multiple scratches on his chest and shoulders, and his tee was torn.
He looked at me as if noticing for the first time that I was there and reached me in a few strides.
I flinched instinctively, the memory of his savagery a little too fresh in my mind.
He knelt close enough for me to be able to discern the acidic smell of terror on him.
But he didn’t touch me, ever mindful of the risk of infection he was himself exempt from.
Instead, he spoke to me softly with an uncharacteristically gentle look in his eyes.
But my brain was too wrung out to attribute his words any meaning whatsoever.
He may as well have continued talking in Icelandic.
“Josh!”
It was Dave’s voice that finally made my mind snap out of its dysfunctional overdrive and rush towards the motionless figure. Others, including Dave, were already kneeling by it.
Josh was alive. His chest rose and fell rapidly, his breathing the sound of a handsaw cutting through wood. We all pretended not to notice that he had wet himself.
“Are you alright, man?” Einar asked. “Are you bitten anywhere? Scratched?”
“No ... no ...” Josh sat up tentatively, then stood up, his legs wobbly but reliable.
He let us examine him thoroughly, lifting the fabric of his sweatshirt and stretching the various folds of his trousers to demonstrate that there were no punctures. Miraculously, there were indeed no signs of injury on him. I let out a choked sob that I had no awareness of holding.
As if in response, Josh himself started crying, the tears rapidly forming trails in the dirt particles on the smooth, dark skin of his face. Dave hugged him.
“Einar.” He looked him squarely in the face over Joshua’s trembling shoulder. “Thanks for saving his life, yeah?”
Einar nodded imperceptibly, looking almost confused, as if wanting to ask, “Well, what else was I supposed to have done?”
I chased limp pasta shapes around a bowl of watery tomato soup, the meal provided to us that night by the hotel’s inhabitants.
The meagreness of the dinner and their willingness to share it with us only emphasised the level of their gratitude.
Still, I couldn’t well live on gratitude, and my mind wandered freely in the direction of Einar’s backpack, and specifically to the side pocket which bore veritable treasures in the form of chocolate-coated granola bars.
The erstwhile hotel dining room boasted neat rectangular tables arranged in perfectly regular lines. The dirty striped carpet made my eyes swim and my temples throb with an impending headache.
Einar, Albert, Russ, and Finlay sat at a table not far from my own, engaged in a conversation with Pierre.
He was the settlement’s leader and looked like my mental image of a French poet with his dainty hands and a well-cultivated blond moustache.
If I strained my ears, I occasionally caught titbits of their conversation that drifted towards me above the hubbub of the room.
First, they arranged the recruitment and training of new archers in exchange for weapons.
Then they spoke of the events of the day and finally of the events of the preceding months.
Apparently, the settlement had seen very few infected since the Outbreak. The horde was a fluke.
I was so consumed by their conversation that I barely paid attention to the one taking place at my own table. However, as the meal concluded and the noise in the room increased, I could no longer eavesdrop effectively, and so I engaged more with people sitting close to me.
“It seems an unusual choice for a girl to be an archer, no?” the woman who sat across from me asked.
She was a few years older than I. Her face was rectangular and framed by two plaits of coarse sandy hair.
She wore a red dress, rather an odd choice for a mountain settlement.
She squinted her brown eyes into creased half-moons while she spoke, and her smile revealed rather large, but mostly regular, teeth.
Despite her pleasant manner, or perhaps because of it, I somehow found her rough around the edges.
A woman who I guessed would have a loud, annoying laugh and whose favourite pastime would be gossiping.
“Well, as a sport it’s just as accessible to women,” I told her. “And in this situation especially we need anyone who has talent for it, regardless of gender.”
“Yeah, but still, almost all of your archers are men,” she pointed out, her eyes narrowed.
I took a deep breath, and luckily, Dave beat me to the reply,
“Renata’s the one who taught us all. She’s the best of us by far.”
He squeezed my knee under the table, steadyingly, noting my dislike of her.
“Don’t let Einar see that if you don’t want to lose the hand,” I muttered to him under my breath.
“He knows I’m gay,” Dave remarked, also sotto voce.
“I still wouldn’t risk it if I were you.”
“Oooh, wooow, are you really,” the woman drawled annoyingly and leaned back.
I froze. I may have already registered it on a subconscious level. To be entirely fair, it may have been the root cause of my dislike for her. But only in that moment did I notice how her belly rounded underneath the tight red fabric. And how her hand rested on it protectively.
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes. I’ve only just started showing, too. A week ago, you wouldn’t have been able to tell.”
She rubbed her stomach and grinned smugly.
“You got pregnant after the Outbreak.”
Same as before, I wasn’t asking because as much was obvious. What I really wanted to know was if it was on purpose.
“Oh, yes. Well, my boyfriend and I agreed to come off birth control about eight months ago now. We weren’t trying, but we weren’t preventing either, if you know what I mean.”
Dave’s hand tensed on my knee, its continued presence a testament to his bravery and regard for our friendship. Or else an equivalent of flipping Einar off. Not wise in either case.
“I know alright what you mean,” I assured the woman, not returning her smile. “But didn’t you think to start preventing again after the Outbreak?”
My voice sounded shrill even to my own ears.
“Renny,” Dave may have said softly next to me, but I wasn’t sure.
“No, why? I mean, the world needs more people now, doesn’t it? Even Pierre said so. We need babies. It will be our, women’s, main job to repopulate the world.” Probably noting my expression at last, she added accusingly: “Our most important job. Men can do anything else, can’t they?”
It was all I could do to refrain from throwing the remainder of my soup in her face. I balled my hands into fists to stop their shaking.
Choking on the sizzling coals of hell at the back of my throat.
The merciless grip of impotent rage was all-consuming and all too familiar. All the stronger because I had not had a cause for it in a long time.
“Seems premature,” I pointed out coldly.
“You saw what happened today. If we hadn’t been here, you would have been fury feed.
” It was with shameful pleasure that I watched the colour drain from her face.
“And you may yet be. You do realise how likely it is that you and your baby will contribute to cannibal numbers if not to their supper?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dave’s mouth twitching madly in an effort not to laugh. Unfortunately, the rest of the people around the table, including Kevin and Josh, looked rather appalled.
“What a horrible thing to say,” the woman told me emphatically.
“Horrible it may be. Untrue it is not.”
With that, I got up, grabbed my bow, and marched out. As I passed Einar, I made a rash yet firm decision and shot him a very meaningful look that he was sure to recognise. His lustfully darkened eyes followed me on my way to the door.