Chapter 40 #2
I think in my heart I’d always known I’d left it too late to follow them.
They would have been far ahead of us and even if they’d taken a couple of months to find a good enough boat to make seaworthy, they were long gone.
And likely enough they’d found a boat somewhere much further south and had moved on even faster.
And I knew I had to press on. I just felt so tired by the thought of it.
More than tired, I was spent and blown, both physically and in my mind.
I was so worn out by worry and being responsible that I sleep-walked through most days so far beyond second wind that I wasn’t even sure the longest rest in the world would get me back to feeling energised ever again.
In truth I wanted Cat to take the weight for a bit.
Will you be strong enough to go north? I said. I mean, if we do go?
If we go, Cat said.
I mean, if we don’t wait until spring, I said.
Staying here might be the sensible thing.
There’s enough food to forage and put by for the winter.
Up in the north I don’t think there’ll be such good opportunities.
It’s not just us. It’s the goats and the horse.
I think it’s all heather up there. I don’t think there’s good winter food for them either.
So we stay, she said, as we reached the middle of the bridge and turned to look at the sunset already pinking the distant hills beyond the city. I was so busy watching the sky that I might have missed it if Digger hadn’t reared up on the railing and barked excitedly.
I looked down and there they were.
Right below us, on the edge of the river, looking back into my shocked face, tying their small sailing boat to the side just below the bridge behind us on the north side.
We’d walked over them too busy admiring the reflections on the rosy mirrored surface of the water to notice them.
Two of them. People I’d never seen before.
They were as surprised as me, but one had the presence of mind to raise a hesitant hand and wave.
Hey there! he shouted, with an encouraging smile, then shouted something else that got lost in the wind. He beckoned me, clearly wanted me to come across and lean over so they could talk to me. But my feet wouldn’t move because my mouth was too dry and my heart felt like it had stopped.
Strangers, I said.
From the sea, said Cat.
And then she said, Save us, Mouse.
And because she had never asked me that, because she was right, because she had always been right, I didn’t run the cart across the bridge to speak with them.
I just ran over them, heading north, head bowed as if that would keep me out of their sightline when they cleared the bridge, running furtive and scared, ignoring the complaining wails of the twins as I jolted them in the cart as I fled, powering up the slope of the M-way, heading for home and safety.
Maybe I wouldn’t have sprinted away if I’d been more rested or thinking straighter, but those three words had haunted me my whole life, and now here they were, made flesh, maybe to end it.
Strangers from the sea. The worst of the worst, the real bogeymen, the death of all hope.
I didn’t decide to break into a run, I just started moving fast without thought, but then I did think to duck and keep low, and that let the fear catch up and work into my head like a wedge, and then the running broke me instead.
Every pounding footstep smacked that wedge deeper and deeper as I raced lopsidedly uphill on the old M-way towards the library, forcing the crack in my mind wider and wider with each pace until it was so wide that nothing was there to hold the pieces together and my lungs ached and my heart felt like it was going to explode and then my brain just split apart and stopped working.
It stopped sifting what was real from what was imaginary, stopped me making good decisions I should have been making and worst of all, stopped me changing bad decisions I’d already made.
It was everything that betrayed me in the end.
It was loss and pain and fear and exhaustion and probably not eating right, or enough, and it was all the not-knowing – not knowing if I’d done the wrong thing bringing us to this place so far north, so unknown, so close to the sea, so foolish, so reckless to do it on the strength of one overheard conversation round a strangers’ fire, risking everything on the stupid conviction that Bear Shirt was a good person.
A person I’d liked at first sight. More than liked.
Been attracted to, because I was lonely and even Cat my only-one wasn’t enough to make me feel not-alone in the way I wanted.
Which was a betrayal. Mine not hers. But that betrayal was what put that crack in me, and without that crack and the wedge of terror at death from the sea maybe I wouldn’t have broken, not then anyway.
But I did break, and it felt like bits of me were shaling off as I ran, my mind shattering all around me until I could only hold onto one idea, an idea that pounded along with me matching the lopsided rhythm of the cart and squeaky wheel I was trying to force up the hill ahead of me.
Run and hide.
Run and hide.
Run and hide.
I nearly made it, jinking up the slip road and finding the library within easy reach, just where it should be, spirits lifting at the sight enough to give me a second wind to ride out the stitch in my side.
But once you’re on a losing streak, everything slips away from you.
It wasn’t just me that broke. That squeaky wheel jolted off the cart as I careered it into the first step up to the library entrance making the cart jerk sideways so it nearly spilled the babies out on to the hard stone, but I flung myself forwards and just caught it by the edge, pushing it against the tilt before they fell and dashed their brains out on the cold granite, at the same time slamming my left side into the sharp right-angled edge of a step, so hard that something serious popped or snapped inside me, but adrenaline rode me through the pain and I just scooped them up and scrambled us to our feet and ran inside the big double doors and slammed them behind me.
Safe.
Heart trying to sledgehammer out of my chest.
Lungs ripped raw, working triple-time, every breath knifing my side as it tries to hack its way in.
Brain broken. Not caught up.
Still in pieces. Too much happening. Too many decisions, not enough me to make them. To hold it together.
Only fragments.
Need to put the babies in the sling. Carry them to safety. Nowhere’s safe. They’re crying. Noise will bring the strangers. Can’t shush them. Need to get my bow, but it’s outside in the cart. Stay hidden. Quiet babies.
Cat, I hissed, keep them quiet, they’ll give us away!
I ran into the book maze.
I’m getting the gun, I say. We might need it.
I don’t have time to serpentine back and forth, so I tumble the walls and bull straight over the book rubble, heading for the room at the centre. The gun is in the bag under the bed.
Babies still crying. But quieter now.
Cat! I shout. Good job, shush them, I’m coming.
I grab the gun, slide it out of the bag and turn to run back.
It fits my hand in the good-bad way it did when I first picked it up back outside the Bunker.
For a second the heft of it is the still point in a world pinwheeling out of control, so solid, so meant for the hand, for my hand that it’s like it’s saying hello. Intimately. Calmly. Steadyingly.
Even the babies stop wailing.
But I’m still on that losing streak and sliding hard, because that’s when it hits me. No dog. Digger’s outside.
Shit, I say. Cat, don’t open the door!
Brain back in fragments at my feet, treacherous as the tumbled books I’m turning and slipping on. But still the one weasel-memory crowbars in. Like it’s just been sitting there, calm as the gun, waiting for its moment.
Freya looking at me with disgust.
You’re soft, she says. That dog will betray you.
The memory fragment shatters and I’m back in the now with a bitter taste of her words in my mouth.
Don’t open the door, I say again. She’ll have brought them right to us. Cat—
My foot skites out from under me as I try to run back to them, the cover detaching from the book I’m treading on and I slam down into the welter of books I crashed through to get the gun.
Good news is I don’t land on the ribs I think must be broken.
Bad news is the impact winds me. Worse news is the gun bounces out of my hand and skitters across the floor towards the others.
I don’t have time to be winded. I claw up off the floor and stumble over. I pick up the babies.
Bring the gun, I say to Cat. We need to get away from here. Deeper.
I turn to run, and then look back. The gun is still on the floor.
Pick it up! I say. Shit, Cat, just pick it up! We’ve got to go!
It’s like she can’t understand the urgency, what I’m saying, why I’m saying it.
Cat! I hiss. Today’s closed! We have to get in the basement!
Digger barks and scratches at the door.
The baby girl squirms in my arm hold and giggles.
Her brother farts. Smiles blissfully.
He’ll need changing.
The gun’s still on the ground.
It’s too much. The fragments. The sliding. Cat not helping.
The unsayable spits out of my mouth, panic powered, stone sharp, meant to hurt.
You’re useless! I say to Cat. Why are you so useless. Why do I have to do everything?! Why won’t you do SOMETHING?
She doesn’t reply.
And that sharp stone, the one meant to hurt, it bounces off her silence and hits me instead.
I’m sorry, I say. I know why, but we have to go NOW.
And then it’s too late.