Page 26

Claire

T he next few days were hell as my illness made its way through our party.

All of us ran fevers, and we had no choice but to stay at our camp for the next several days to recover.

We slept in our usual pairs in the tent, rotating every few hours while the other two slept under a hastily built lean-to by the campfire.

Constant hunger made the sickness even more miserable.

As John and I lay by the fire, our bodies wracked with chills from fever, I wondered seriously for the first time if this was it for us.

If we’d die out here in the cold, in the middle of nowhere, and never be found, except perhaps by the crows coming to pick at our bones.

The spider that had once been at the edge of the web of our survival seemed closer than ever before, and we flies barely had anything left to fight her off with.

John was asleep beside me, his face pale and still like death, and that thought frightened me more than anything ever had. I wiped the sweat from his brow and kissed the tip of his nose. He stirred, groaning softly, and mumbled, “Thanks, Granny. ”

I stilled, watching him dream of some time and place far more pleasant than this one. After a moment, his eyelids fluttered.

“Claire?” he murmured, somewhere between sleeping and waking.

“Shh, darling,” I soothed, stroking his hot, clammy forehead with my thumb. “You were dreaming.”

He closed his eyes again. “Dreamt that my grandmother was here.”

“Mmm. What was she doing?”

“Taking care of me,” he croaked. “Like when I was sick as a kid.”

My heart.

“What would she do?” I asked softly.

“Make me hot food. Hold me. Sing songs, sometimes.”

His tone was wistful and sad, and I couldn’t bear his pain—not when he was already sick and suffering, out here in the cold. With a lump in my throat, I took his face in my hands and lay his head against my breast.

My mother had never held me when I was sick.

She’d certainly never sung to me. They weren’t things that would have ever occurred to her to do.

My father would have when I was little, but as I got older, he was around less and less—busy with his high-level military job in charge of compound security, and burying himself in work to avoid my mother’s wrath.

I had not known the kind of love that John had often described within his close-knit family.

Mine had been broken beyond repair long before I was ever even a thought, and now…

well, I had little hope for a joyful family reunion.

So I didn’t know how, exactly, to comfort someone I loved.

It was the sort of thing that John was better at.

But as he settled against me, I held him in my arms and sang a lullaby, soft and warm as the morning sun.

My voice was hoarse, my lips cracked, but he sighed heavily and relaxed against me.

The song was about coming home after a long day, the warmth of the hearth and the soft, sweet words of a lover.

As it ended, I pressed gentle kisses on John’s face, easing him back to sleep.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “I need you.”

I rested my head against his, a tear escaping down my cheek as the cold claws of winter continued to ravage our bodies and minds.

That night, my fever broke, and mercifully, over the next day or two, everyone else’s did, too. The awful sickness passed, and though we’d had to stop for nearly a week, our spirits briefly lifted as we recovered.

Of course, it didn’t last long. Trudging through winter storms with perpetually empty stomachs will eventually break down almost anyone, and maintaining constant vigilance was exhausting.

Soon enough, it felt like we were at each other’s throats again, which meant that a number of our days were silent other than the whistle of a lonely winter wind.

By Kimmy’s rough count, we’d spent well over a month on the road, and eventually, it all blended together. I felt like I was sleepwalking through life, tethered to the world only by the knowledge that my friends and my love needed me to keep going.

One afternoon, we were trudging through the snow-covered forest, mostly in silence, when I noticed something in my peripheral vision.

Partially obscured by an evergreen tree, there was a wooden pole stuck in the ground, with something mounted on top.

I couldn’t tell what it was; it was covered by snow.

But the pole looked deliberate and manmade—it stuck out in the dense wilderness I’d become accustomed to.

“John,” I called. He was several paces ahead of me, walking with Kimmy, while I hung back with Asha. “What’s that?”

He looked where I was pointing and stopped dead. Shooting Kimmy a look of concern, he made his way over to the pole, picked up a fallen branch, and used it to clear away the snow.

What he uncovered made me feel ill: a shrunken, dried human head, skewered on a pike, its empty eye sockets staring at nothing.

John immediately turned and ran back to me, grabbing my wrist.

“Move,” he said to Kimmy, whose eyes were wide.

He strode away, pulling me along with him, while the other two followed.

“What was that thing?” I asked, fear creeping into my voice.

“It’s a totem,” John replied, not slowing for a minute. “Maneaters—cannibals—use them to mark their territory.”

My stomach dropped, and the memory of the last time I’d encountered bloodthirsty cannibals surfaced. The stench of rotting human flesh. The pit full of discarded human bones. The teeth they wore like jewellery, and the feral way they spoke and moved.

Just as soon as I had the thought, a horrible, ear-piercing shriek split the air .

John cursed and pulled me in front of him. “Run. Now. I’ll follow.”

He gave me a little push, and I broke into a sprint, dashing between the trees, trying to avoid tripping over rocks and tree roots. I heard the others just behind me as we ran for our lives. More shrieks echoed through the woods, growing closer and closer. They were calling more of their brethren.

Terrified, I felt like my lungs would burst from exertion.

I was weaker than I’d once been, and my endurance was shot.

What little muscle I had left was screaming at me in protest, but the shrieks were multiplying and getting louder by the second.

Footfalls pursued us, and it wouldn’t take long for them to catch up.

My eardrums split at the boom of a rifle shot, then another.

John was some way behind us and had started firing toward the cannibals.

I ran until I felt on the brink of collapse, bursting out of the dense brush to find myself at the edge of a small frozen lake.

I skidded to a halt, gasping for breath. There was nowhere else to go.

Asha and Kimmy joined me a half-second later, followed by John.

“There’s too many,” Kimmy said, and to my dismay, she sounded afraid.

John looked out onto the ice, his brow creased in a frown.

“No choice,” he said, clipped. “We have to cross. The ice will slow them down enough that they may give up. I’ll cover us from the rear.”

“That’s insane!” Asha burst out.

“If you got a better idea, Ice Queen, I’m all ears,” he replied sharply, and Kimmy gave Asha a reproachful look.

“I’ll cover the front,” Kimmy added with a short nod.

John rapidly uncoiled the climbing rope and handed one end to Kimmy, who coiled it around her wrist. He did the same with the opposite end.

“Run ahead,” he said to her, and she took off running onto the ice, skidding as she went but managing to remain upright. Asha spared me a single glance before jogging after her.

John turned to me. “Stay in the middle. The rope will keep you stable. Move as fast as you can.”

I nodded and grabbed the rope before making my way onto the ice. Despite having the rope, I struggled on the slippery surface, only managing a light jog. John followed, walking backward with his rifle out .

“Here they come!”

Subhuman sounds filled the air—uncanny snarls that chilled my blood. I dared to look back towards the treeline, and my mouth fell open.

A dozen cannibals spilled out, gathering at the edge of the lake. I couldn’t count how many. They roared as they saw us, clearly enraged that their prey had slipped away from them. My stomach dropped.

A sizable chunk broke away from the screaming crowd at the lakeside, pursuing us onto the ice. They were only about 40 feet behind us and would gain ground quickly if they ran at full speed.

John raised the scope of his rifle to his eye and fired. A toothless, dirty-looking man fell onto the ice, bleeding from his head. The thump of his body hitting the ice nearly made me jump out of my skin. The enraged, subhuman screams of cannibals filled the air.

“Keep going,” he called to me.

I kept moving, but there were more of them pouring onto the ice, giving chase. John shot the two closest to us, keeping them at bay, but on his own, he’d struggle to keep it that way.

Clutching the rope to maintain my balance, I pulled the rabbit gun into my arms and hastened back towards John. The cannibals had scattered in response to the shots, making it harder for John to target all of them. They approached from all directions, trying to close in.

I reached John’s side. He made a sound of protest at my presence, but I ignored him. Instead, I put the scope to my eye, and fired at a big, wild-eyed man brandishing a bow, managing to fell him before he had the chance to fire an arrow.

“Good shot,” John muttered.

I turned my sights on the rest of them, one by one. I was no John, but my aim, though imperfect, wasn’t bad. Together, we managed to clear enough of them that the ones left retreated, sensing that as prey went, chasing us was more trouble than it was worth.