Chapter 3 TESNI
THREE
TESNI
Ramona’s question hums in the air like static, but the only answer she gets is silence.
No one speaks—because no one knows what happened.
No one except me.
Slowly, I peel myself off the ground. My limbs are heavy and aching from the fall, my legs are numb and tingly from being folded over too long, and I’m pretty sure I chipped my kneecap on landing.
A strange sense of detachment is what keeps me calm, like my soul and mind have been tugged out of my body.
Even my own voice sounds far away to my own ears: “The radio.”
Gazes swerve to me, silent, expectant.
Louise arches a tinted eyebrow, once black, now middle-of-your-period-red, and asks, “What?”
“The radio,” I parrot the word, as if to myself, then turn on my heels—and run.
My run is hobbled and sore, a limp that slows me down, but I push through it.
Urgency ripples over the others. Dirt is kicked up, crushed under turning boots, and the girls are quick to follow.
The rapid pummel of footsteps hitting hard, dried earth chases me through the sea of litter, dropped belongings, bodies.
I don’t look at the faces of the dead.
Not even as I reach the one who moaned, who twitched, who choked on his own blood, and who reached out for me.
His gurgles and whimpers and flinching hands are no more.
Now, it’s just a pair of vacant eyes staring up at the clear sky, and from his lips is a stagnant trail of blood.
I jump over him, hearing the yelps and squeals behind me, the girls just now seeing the bodies of those caught in the stampede.
Louise gives a guttural sound, a sickly groan, before Bee shouts, “Leave them! Just go!”
I charge for the hood of the truck, and as my middle smacks into it, and a grunt punches through me, I hear a cry behind me.
I throw a wild look over my shoulder.
Ruby stands just an arm’s reach from the guy I was making out with earlier. Her hands are firm on her face, hiding her mouth, muffling the rest of her cry.
The huff I release is something like relief.
I don’t know if I expected the cry to mean something else, like another stampede headed our way, or even to be one of hope, like to glare of ambulance lights are emerging from the horizon.
But it’s just the dead guy.
Mangled to all hell, he’s a fucking pretzel in denim.
I forgot his name already.
Did I even ask his name?
I throw it from my mind and snatch the radio. It’s only now that the radio is rattling in my grip that I even realise how violently I’m shaking.
Bee staggers into the hood.
Her hands flatten on the bonnet for a beat before she winces and, as if burned, steals her hands back to herself.
Maybe she was burned.
It’s fucking hot. Roasting, like this whole place is a sauna, only drier somehow.
The distant reminder to put on more sunscreen is noted.
But radio first.
Bee watches the quiver of my fingers as I fiddle with the dials. I find a murmur, then crank up the volume. The crackle of the radio clears.
‘…the source of the pollution is still being investigated. It is spreading rapidly and causing outages, network, satellite, technical—and even mechanical. Please do not operate heavy machinery at this time.
‘We have lost communication with Britain—it is confirmed that they are in darkness…’
I throw a pointed look over at the others.
Louise has joined us at the truck, but like Ruby, Ramona hangs back.
The urgency sheaths my tone, “That’s what it said earlier—I was listening to it…” And my gaze lands on Bee, on the filmy sheen of her grey eyes. My chin jerks, a general gesture to the dirt field, the stampede that pummelled us. “Before…”
Before the birds.
Before the bats.
Before the stampede.
Before the corpses.
“Darkness?” The word trembles from Bee’s lips. “The radio said… darkness?”
“Yeah, like it’s in the dark—with tech,” Ramona grumbles from behind. “It’s a tech blackout.”
“Then they would say that,” Bee snaps, firm. “But they said darkness.”
Ramona scoffs before her murmured response comes, too low, too quiet, “Who fucking cares?”
My mouth twists in concentration, and I turn the tuning dial. The tremors have travelled from my fingers up my arm and spread through my whole body. “No, it was—pollution, they said pollution earlier.”
I find another station.
‘Britain and Northern parts of Europe are in blackouts. Officials are doing everything to stop the spread of the dark cloud, currently moving its way to sea…’
Ramona draws closer. Her steps are hesitant, the stench of shit wafting from her. “Dark cloud?”
Ruby’s whispery voice lures in frowned looks, “Where is everyone?”
It takes me a moment to understand the question, the absolute stupidity of it.
“What, the people from the dance?” I scoff and fiddle with the dial again. “They got the fuck out of here.”
“Sorry, am I hearing that right?” Ramona points her finger at the radio, like it’s an accusation. “No one else is wondering what that means—a dark cloud is moving out to sea? What?”
My fingers still on the radio. “It’s the same as what I heard earlier. Only…”
“Only what?” prompts Louise.
“The broadcast was saying… It was saying that a darkness—like a cloud of black—was pouring of Scotland and Ireland… maybe other places, I don’t know. It was hard to hear over all the noise. But… it said it was pollution, and it was spreading through the sky, and blocking signals.”
“Signals?”
“Like satellite signals,” I say with a shrug. “And Wi-Fi, cell towers… Like, all the places under the pollution cloud went silent—and we can’t contact them there. But…”
Ramona’s voice trembles, “But what?”
“I mean, before the stampede, the radio was just talking about Scotland and Ireland. Now it’s Britain, and it’s out to sea?” My mouth turns down at the corners, and I stare at the radio hard, as though that’ll split it open and spill all the answers over the hood. “I guess it’s on the move.”
I can hear the thick, wet swallow from Ruby behind me. “On the move… or spreading?”
Bee’s whisper chills my spine, “Expanding.”
My gaze snaps to her, to the distance in her grey eyes, flecked with sparkles of green, normally vibrant and full of joy—but right now, they are stones popped into her head, slated with a distance.
Her mind is travelling great distances. Her thoughts are unspooling.
It tugs my brow together—and I almost forget that the others are here, until Ramona takes another step closer, and brings with her a stronger stench of shit.
Ramona asks, “What do we do?”
My mouth tightens.
Bee’s stone eyes have switched to me. The sun beats down on her tanned complexion, lightening strands of the mousy shade of her straggled hair, far too wild around her round face.
She is a mirror. Not of looks. But of that same doubt, fear, grimness that reflects back at me in her steady, silent gaze.
If that radio transmission is accurate, if what the presenter is saying is true…
Bee shudders with an exhale, one singed with the burn of nausea.
Turning her cheek to me, her hand finds her chest, flattens, and she is still for a moment.
My brow knits together.
And I watch as her gaze drops to the radio, hanging onto the murmur of the transmission, more about darkness, a cloud, lost communications, pollution.
The same broadcasts over and over, just articulated differently depending on the station. The content is all the same.
We could stand here and listen to them all for hours and learn nothing more than what we know now.
Louise has her strong arms folded over her chest, her sweaty, shit-smeared brow creased as she scans the area. “I think we should get out of here.”
“Why?” Ruby’s small voice comes from somewhere behind, farther back than the body of that guy—what the fuck is his name?—so I guess she’s put some distance between herself and the radio.
“Yeah, why?” Ramona presses. “Isn’t it better to stay here? Help is coming—isn’t it?”
Ruby asks, a mouse, “Did anyone call for help?”
“We could.” Louise shrugs. “And be out here in the open when that crazy ass shit happens again.”
“Again?” Ruby’s voice is a squeal now. “That stampede could happen again?”
“Who knows? I don’t want to hang around and find out how many animals are about to tear through here. I say we get fuck out of here and get back to the camper.”
Still, Bee stands there, her dazed stare on the radio, her hand pressing into her breastbone.
My gaze is slitted, narrowed, on her.
Ramona’s voice cuts over the transmission, “It’s, what, an hour walk to the campsite? We can get back to the van—and… And, uh…”
Her voice trails off, lost.
Louise finishes for her, “And then we get out of here.”
Ramona’s resolve has dimmed, fallen into doubt. “And go where?”
“Wherever this isn’t,” I say.
My determination is too firm.
My soul has left my body.
Detached.
And maybe that’s for the best, maybe that’s what’s keeping me sane right now. Like, if I was ‘all here’, I would crack and fucking crumble into a fit, a meltdown.
That part of me has switched off, and all that’s left is survival.
I slide the radio out of my clammy grip and let it clatter onto the hood.
“Look,” I start and run my hands down my face. “Our campsite is in the middle of the woods. We’re not safe there if another stampede comes through—and that’s if one hasn’t gone through there already.”
A groan lifts through Louse before she shakes her head, rejecting any possibility that our camper and site is completely fucked up from another stampede.
I go on, “What we have to do right now is get our asses back to the camper, pack up, and find another place that’s not surrounded by wildlife that could come crashing outta the fucking woods any minute. Yeah? Can we all agree on that?”
Bee lifts her gaze to me, her mouth thinning and her eyebrows pinching together.
Ruby nods, Ramona too.
It’s Louise who sighs, heavy, then says, “We should rinse off, first.”
I nod, a blank look stealing my face as the image flashes in my mind, of the three of them getting shit all over the campervan. Or worse, getting some shit-contaminated illness and spreading it to me and Bee.
“Are we really going to walk?” Ruby’s eyes are blue oceans burning from a canvas of brown.
I can’t fight the purse of my mouth at the reminder of all the shit covering her.
I would set myself on fire.
But that’s just me.
I drop my gaze to the guy—
Sawyer!
That’s his name!
He did tell me that, when he introduced himself and asked if I wanted a drink.
Forgot. Oops.
The corners of my mouth dig into my cheeks.
I have a really fucked up idea. “Is it grand theft auto if the owner is dead?”
“This is his truck,” Bee agrees, tracking my thoughts. Her hand smacks down on the hood. “He probably has the keys on him.”
“But how…” Louise swerves her frown between us both, but the creases start to fade as she slowly realises. Still, she asks that fucked up question, “How can we drive out of here? There are bodies everywhere.”
“Dead ones,” I say, soft.
Silence sweeps us.
Everyone stills, goes quiet—because everyone turns to listen for any sound of life. The moans have stopped, the whimpers.
Everyone gives themselves that moment to sit with it, the offer of getting out of here quickly, but it comes at the cost of driving over bodies and bones.
Ruby is the first to decide. “No.” She shakes her head, violently. “No, we’re not doing that. That’s fucking crazy.”
Ramona has no opinion.
Actually she does, she just doesn’t want to voice it. So she stares down at the dirt instead, too afraid to admit she prefers my idea to walking the hour out in the open, under the sweltering heat of the sun.
“Alright, so… we move the bodies?” Louise suggests, weak, lame, and even her face is twisted unsurely by her own idea. “Create a path to drive the truck out—”
“Move the bodies?” Ruby shouts, her voice hitching too high, and I cringe against it.
“Are you out of your mind? We can’t touch the bodies, and we shouldn’t be stealing someone’s truck just because he’s dead!
Have you all literally lost your minds or what?
We need to stay here—and wait for help to come… or we walk.”
The quiet that settles over us is thin.
The faint rustle of jeans, the scuff of a boot over dirt, Louise picking at her nails, it all intrudes on the silence.
Then, without a look at anyone, I nod. “Ok. Let’s walk then.”
Ruby mirrors me, echoes my nod, but with pure relief relaxing her breathy reply, “Let’s walk.”
No one else seems overly thrilled about it.
But no one argues it.
Because, yeah, Ruby’s right. That was a really fucked up idea.
Still, no shame touches my cheeks. Not as Bee comes around the side of the hood and steals my hand in hers.
She gives me a reassuring squeeze.
Louise starts, “Alright, we should find some water before we go. Enough to drink—and get some of this shit off us.”
That’s what they do.
Ruby, Louise and Ramona douse themselves in water, wipe off as much of the waste as they can with cloths from the food trucks, then rinse over themselves again with bourbon, then water again.
Spirits are a nice touch. It’s got that kill-bacteria effect someone might need after being covered in human faeces. Not sure it will work, or do much of anything, but it’s better to do it than to not.
I know I feel better around them after they’ve had bourbon showers.
And while they do that, Bee and I splinter off to gather bottled waters and packets of peanuts, stealing whatever we can fit into our flimsy bags.
Then we tackle a gruelling walk under the unfiltered sun. Not once do we hear sirens, not even as we pass through the town, which is apparently where everybody went who fled the dance.
It’s mobbed.
The bars are bursting at the seams, the roads are swarmed with wandering people, droves of them in the small carpark of the sorry excuse for a grocery store.
We don’t stop.
We keep scaling the incline of the highway, following the ascension to the woods.
And still, not a blare of a siren, not a helicopter in the sky—and not a bar of reception on my phone.