Chapter 19 Salted Wounds
SALTED WOUNDS
One morning, I woke up and realised that the approaching autumn had become perceptible in the atmosphere.
As we made our tenuous progress, the air around us smelled of school desks, new textbooks, chalk, and blackboards, now things of the past. The sun was losing its strength, its glow softer than in the preceding weeks, falling on us tentatively through the spiky conifer branches.
As we trudged through forested areas redolent of resin, last year’s jettisoned needles and leaves crunched under our feet.
Advancing further south, we got accustomed to long days of crossing the mountains, resilient in the face of the dramatically changing altitudes.
My body was growing thinner and firmer, the curves of my waist and hips more pronounced, the muscles in my thighs rounding visibly with strength.
I felt younger and vigorously healthy; my appetite improved, and I slept well, waking up at sunrise, feeling refreshed and eager for the day ahead.
It was impossible to think that not even a year before, my life used to revolve around daily injections and ultrasound checks three times a week. The world of fertility clinics seemed but a distant nightmare.
I still yearned for a baby, but it helped that, as opposed to being a disadvantaged outlier in the world of the past, I was at the centre of the new one, better equipped for it than most. Female ego doesn’t have as bad a reputation as the male one, but my narcissistic pride at the shift into a position of advantage shows that perhaps it should.
Harm a man’s ego and he will burn the world.
Harm a woman’s and she will burn herself.
The destructiveness is the same; the only difference is its target.
Hotel Castel was a building of uncharacteristically innovative architecture.
It consisted of a central rust-red trapezoid with adjacent pale-yellow rectangles on each side, boasting balconies with wooden railings.
We descended towards it through a densely forested valley that we had reached after crossing an enchanting region where the earth under our feet was tinged with red and the peaks above our heads were lined with boulders like balls of yarn, dropped at random in a sea of rust-coloured ferns and diminutive pine trees.
Still mesmerised by all the natural beauty we had seen that day, I would have walked straight into their line of view had Dave beside me not muttered: “Fuck, and now what?”
There were dozens of infected pressed into the large glass entrance to the hotel. They pushed hard, the ones in the front clawing into the glass, the ones more at the back pooling to the sides, pacing manically in a senseless rage. Like lions behind a barrier separating them from their feed.
We stood dumbstruck, concealed in a copse of tall, umbrella-shaped pines with broad crowns. A whispered murmur rippled through our group.
“Over a hundred,” I muttered to Einar. “Too many for us to take on.”
He frowned, gaze fixed solidly towards the mob.
“You managed half as many on your own,” he pointed out in an unyielding tone of voice, his expression severe.
“Yes, but because they were scattered through that little forest and came out in twos and threes. These will rush us all at once as soon as they spot us,” I explained with muted urgency, willing him to understand with my eyes.
“Humph.” His jaw was hard-set, and displeasure laced his sharp cheekbones with soft lines. “And here I was thinking that you’d have more gumption than to give up so easily.”
“Einar, please, be reasonable.”
“She’s right, mate,” Dave interjected, eliciting a very nasty look from Einar. “This is madness.”
A vein pulsated at the side of Einar’s temple, a sure sign of his agitation.
Despite his best intentions, Dave probably only made the situation worse.
Einar may have conceded to abandon the furies to their fate had only I suggested it.
But he would not want to give in to Dave’s wholly unsolicited opinion.
“Too bad for the people inside.” Einar nodded towards the hotel with a cold smile.
He knew he had me then. With my heart rate accelerating, I scanned the scene again, focusing on the windows. And sure enough, there were faces there. Sane, uninfected, terrified faces. Close to forty of them.
“Oh no ...” I moaned.
Finlay, Russ, and Albert approached us, the disquiet in their faces varying by degrees, but neither’s energy matching Einar’s blithe eagerness.
“What do we do?” Russ asked in a very low voice.
Finlay whispered something I had no chance of understanding when spoken so quietly in his distinct Scottish burr.
“Up to you, princess. Do you want to save them? Or do we not bother?”
Einar’s expression was nothing short of sadistic when he turned to me, dipping his head to force me to meet his unrelenting gaze. He said nothing else, and only the vein that continued pulsating on the side of his forehead belied his seeming calm.
“Fine, dammit,” I exhaled in a low growl. “Your death wish is my command. Bring out the speaker, it might come in handy. Dave, I’ll need you.”
A nervous hum arose behind us as my decision was carried on a whisper from one archer to another. I took a few deep, steadying breaths.
“Anything for you, hun.” Dave nodded at me in encouragement.
“Your only job this time will be to make sure I never run out of arrows, no matter what. Take them from someone else’s quiver if needs be. But don’t ever let mine go empty for even a second. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all, hun. You got it.” He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, and Einar speared him with a darkly displeased look.
“I can carry the speaker and bait them,” Josh suggested from next to Dave. “Kind of like I did in Pisa.”
“No, no way!” both Dave and I protested at once, with such vehemence that we almost forgot to speak softly.
But Einar fixed his eyes on Josh in a manner I didn’t like one bit. Like a child seeing a very interesting toy.
“I can outrun them, we know that. And I can kite them around until you pick them off one by one,” Josh spoke fast, and his quiet voice trembled with terror despite his valiant words.
“And if you trip and fall, you sod, then what? How do I explain that to Amit?” Dave rounded on him, but Josh didn’t get a chance to answer.
“You’re a brave man,” Einar told him with unconcealed admiration. “What you’re suggesting might make all the difference. It is a lot less risky than having them rush us all at once, isn’t it? For everyone involved.”
I narrowed my eyes at him to convey my desire for mutiny. But much as I wanted to, there was no way for me to repudiate the reasoning behind what he had said. I had to agree that it was strategically smart to risk Joshua’s life alone, even to a great degree, rather than imperil everyone else.
It didn’t take long to organise ourselves and line up between the trees along the edge of the plain.
Josh stalked towards the horde. Then he fumbled with the speaker, and the shaking of his hands was visible even at a distance. Abruptly, upbeat music filled the air.
The infected stirred, confused. It was like watching a wave ripple through water. Some began tearing off from their group to head towards Josh.
Then loud yells echoed from the windows above,
“Stay here, stay here!”
I exhaled, smiling with relieved gratitude. The building’s occupants couldn’t have come up with a better idea. The horde split almost perfectly in half, those infected closer to the building too distracted by its loud inhabitants to follow Joshua’s bait.
I fired the first arrow, and my archers followed my lead as instructed. About fifteen infected fell from just that one round. I managed three more before the archers reloaded. Josh made a U-turn, leading the crowd of fury parallel with our line of aim.
Our arrows rained down on them, some missing their mark but most true to their dispatchers’ mark.
Josh ran in long, graceful strides, speedier by far than the fastest of the roamers.
There were almost none following him left, and so he made another U-turn, and then ran closer to those still pressed against the glass door to draw them away.
Intuiting his intentions, the people trapped in the building ceased their yelling, allowing him to attract all the remaining cannibals and have them follow him in a clustered line.
Adrenaline coursed violently through my body.
I imagined it was not all that different from performance-enhancing drugs in allowing me to achieve speed and concentration beyond what seemed natural.
The buzz of it in my blood and the high of it suffusing my mind were nothing short of addictive. I loved my new job, no doubt about it.
Only about eight infected were left running, and the plain was littered with bodies.
Bodies that were dead and bodies that still twitched and crawled.
Swerving between them and jumping over them, Josh navigated his way through the carnage with mastery.
The yoke of tension was slowly lifting off my shoulders.
It was nearly done.
But then the unacceptable, the unthinkable, the impermissible happened.
Josh tripped over one of the carcasses and crashed to the ground in a frenzy of limbs.
Time seemed to stand still as I watched it happen, his hands flailing through the air and grasping at nothing, his lean legs crumbling under him, his mouth forming a perfect surprised ‘O’.
“No!” I wailed.
Quickly, I shot one of the infected. Another two fell by someone else’s hand.
Five remained: two females, two large males, and one more slender Asian male. He was the fastest one and tackled Josh to the ground just as he had managed to get back up.
A few arrows were fired but missed their mark. Mine injured one of the males, piercing his throat. This slowed him down significantly, causing him to make nasty gurgling sounds as blood stained the front of his shirt.