The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Kostoya today.

Caroline went missing. The shell-shocked runner has been wandering around in a daze since we picked her up. She went out with the foragers yesterday and was more hindrance than help, they told me. They gave her things to carry and had someone keep an eye on her the whole time. She definitely came back to the chemistry building with them last night before the sleet started.

There was no sign of her this morning. Those on watch didn’t see her wander off and her cluster of blankets is still all ruffled up from when she got out of them. We’re sure she didn’t disappear while it was still raining, so we’re searching the building in case she just found somewhere else to curl up for the night. It was cold last night, but not enough to kill her on its own.

The search of the building proved fruitless, but we had more luck when we widened the net. We found her in a maintenance shed, lying amid defunct machines that haven’t moved in six months, covered in dust and a faint sheen of ice.

No-one said anything. There wasn’t much to say. I felt my mind ticking through the details, clinking coldly as I tried to make sense of it. She didn’t freeze to death: her neck and a few other body-parts looked like they had been chewed on. She was a sad, broken collection of meat turning blue, staring blankly at the ceiling. Next to her, there were a couple of dead rats, also torn up.

Someone threw up – I think it was Conroy. Thorpe kept most of the others away so they wouldn’t see her. Dale asked if she would get up again and the general consensus was no; she didn’t die of the Sickness, and that was how it worked, right?

So what killed her? It could have been shamblers, though by all accounts, there’d be nothing left of her if they were responsible. They tend to tear people up, not take bite-sized chunks out of them. And there was so little blood; usually there’s a lot more blood than this. It terrifies me that I know that.

It could have been an animal – canine, feline, there are some running around. It could even have been a pack of hunters. None of us heard anything last night, but the shed is outside on the far side of the building: too far for us to hear most things. Even screams, though I don’t know if Caroline got much of a chance for that.

We covered her with a piece of old tarp and dragged her outside so that the rain will take her. None of us wanted to leave her body in the shed, partly because of the animals and partly in case she did rise and come after us with empty hunger. It might be unlikely but fear doesn’t always listen to reason.

There’s no sign of what did it. There wasn’t much doubt that it was probably what stole Norman from us, too. We all agreed to be more vigilant and to go nowhere alone. There wasn’t a lot else for us to do and that was the worst part of it. We had just started to unravel one threat and another one reared its head, faceless, nameless, hovering in the shadows to claw us down in our weak moments.

Matt walked back to the building with me and asked if I was all right. I said no and he put his arm around me, hugged me lightly.

“Me neither,” he said. We leaned on each other all the way back to the teaching room.

Ben was there, scowling as I went over to him and explained what we’d found. He didn’t ask me about Caroline or the beast that killed her; he asked me about Matt. I snapped at him that we were just friends and he made it clear that he didn’t believe me. The look on his face said everything. I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove it to him when he doesn’t respond to my attempts at intimacy.

I won’t give up my best friend. We all need to keep each other close these days. I wish that Ben understood that.

We should sing for Caroline tonight. None of us knew her very well but it feels important to do it anyway. For us.

Today, there wasn’t any rain. It didn’t even fall as sleet. Instead, the foragers ran back under a light drift of white flakes.

I hadn’t seen snow before today. It’s oddly beautiful, deceptively gentle dancing, settling into thick blankets. When the foragers got inside, they threw their hats and umbrellas aside. Within seconds, the melting snow had dissolved all of them. It was a duality that sent an uncomfortable tingle up my spine.

Even with that stark reminder, the kids thought the snow was amazing. They wanted to go out and run in it, but they were too used to this time After to ask so they sat at the windows and watched it instead.

It never gets this cold around here – or, it never used to, anyway. I guess all those rules have changed. Now I’m wondering just how must colder it’s going to get. I’m wondering if the ice will ever recede, or if it’ll just keep creeping over us.

I wonder if the orange sky will lighten enough to let some warmth through.

I went up to the lab today and spoke with Dr Kostoya. I asked him about the rainwater and the effect it might have on an unborn child.

He was flustered, but he answered the question in his roundabout way. He said that it could have any number of effects, most of them killing or mutating the baby. It didn’t sound safe for the mother, either. The short answer was that he didn’t know what it might do.

“I don’t know why you’re all coming to me about this,” he told me. “Didn’t your friend talk to you about it?”

“Someone else asked you about this?”

“Dr Masterson came up earlier.” He eyed me closely. “It’s not for you, is it?”

“No! No, it’s not.”

“But it’s someone, isn’t it?”

I looked at him and didn’t want to lie. He seemed so harmless. “Yeah.”

He frowned at me, churning over the thoughts. “She’ll need help.”

I couldn’t argue with him. I sighed and shrugged, and thanked him for his help.

I was surprised that Masterson would go to the trouble of talking to Kostoya about this. But I’m pleased. I don’t have to be the one to worry about all this, and he is trying to look out for her. At least, I hope that’s why he was asking.

I can’t imagine how Sally is feeling right now. Masterson has been sticking close to her and she was in tears again earlier. I think I’ll go talk to her when I get the chance. All I can do is let her know that she’s not alone in this.

Maybe she won’t turn me away like Ben does.

I managed to talk to Sally last night while Masterson had gone to fetch them some dinner.

She’s more scared than she’s showing. She’s hardly eating and her nails are gnawed down to nubs. She looked at me warily as if I might turn on her at any moment, and said that she didn’t want to tell the others about the baby.

Especially not now. Who knows what they might do if they know she was poisoned and might be growing a mutant baby. I can see Conroy bleakly lining up the movie references, and a few of the others fetching weapons to drive her away. I don’t think anyone would attack her – not directly – but desperate people do crazy things. And Masterson’s mouth would only make things worse for everyone.

I told her we’d work this out. We’d do what we could to fix things. She knows as well as I do that there’s little we can do, but I hope she believed me when I said that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. She nodded stiffly and suddenly I could see she was a hair away from crying. So I hugged her, knowing it would break that last bit of self-control but hoping the release would make her feel better. It’s all right to lean on me, it’s all right.

“I don’t know what to do, Faith,” she said into my shoulder. She was shaking and I could barely make out the words. “How’m I going to get out of this?”

She’s too far along to abort safely, so the simpler, bloodier option was gone. She has to bear the baby, and the threat of the Sickness is still swinging over her.

“We’ll figure it out,” I told her. “You’re not alone.”

I seem to be saying those three words so often these days. They feel empty and overused on my tongue, like a candy sucked to a thin shell. All we have is each other here; it’s the one thing that we don’t have to fight and scrape and search for. And I don’t want to let anyone go, not even the strangers among us, the ones we’re just starting to know.

This isn’t a case of keeping your enemies closest: it’s keeping the strangers close, your friends closer, and your enemies at arm’s reach so you can swing a bat at their head.

I left Sally when she was feeling better and Masterson came back. He scowled at me and snapped something about me sticking my nose in again. It hurt more than I like to admit.

“I’m just being a friend to her,” I said. “I want to–”

“Help, yeah, we know.” The derision in his voice twisted in my chest. “We don’t need your ‘help’.”

I stared at him, stung into silence. I’m used to his sharp tongue but not in that way. I don’t know what might have prompted him to slash at me that way. I managed, “What–” before he cut me off again.

“Look at your own house before you go fixing up other people’s.” And then he walked away.

All things considered, I would have preferred a punch in the face. Now Sally is miserable and Masterson is as angry-faced as ever, and I have no idea why I’m suddenly to blame for everything. Maybe it’s because I’m in charge, the one that everyone follows. Maybe it’s something closer to home. I get the feeling that he was talking about Ben when he mentioned ‘my own house’. Unless he’s under the impression that there really was something between me and Matt and this is his way of disapproving. If that’s true, he’s a horrible hypocrite: I remember the way we found him at the hospital.

I feel heavy today. Leaden and useless. I stayed behind when the foragers went out; watching the kids bat Dillon’s soccer-ball around almost managed to cheer me up. His leg is still too sore to kick a ball (or take his weight), but he’s getting better at whacking it with his crutches.

I’m starting to feel stuck here. We’re learning a lot, unravelling mysteries, but we’re treading water. We have to strike out for somewhere soon or we’ll get pulled under and end up cold and hungry.

I think there’s a part of me that wants to run away, too. There’s too much being uncovered, like Caroline’s corpse in the shed. Don’t look, don’t look, stay back, get away.

Now I wonder: have we been running away from the truth all this time?

Last month, our radio caught the whisper of a voice in the air. We couldn’t make it out but it was definitely there. We’ve been searching for that signal ever since.

Today, we went up to the roof to try our luck again, hoping that elevation might help. Maybe the crisper air was a good thing too. We wrapped our aerial wire around the big metal fork stapled to the roof and started to scan, searching for a breath of something. Anything.

I was up there with Scott and Conroy and glad to be out in the open air. We had to be careful about sweeping the snow away from our feet in case it ate through our boots, but it was still better than being stuck downstairs. I could have gone out with the foragers, but they know what they’re doing and I’m more use here.

Besides, the view from up there was amazing. With the snow’s frosting, the scorched, denuded earth was less obvious. It reflected back the orange glow of the sky, tinting like a lens that wasn’t quite screwed on properly. Buildings stood out in sharp relief, hard lines under the snow’s softer wrap. There were no trees with crazy branches or hidden lumps of bushes. Just the poke of manmade structure above the roll and swell of the land, unadorned except for its frosted fur coat.

The strangest thing was that there was no movement at all. Not a flutter or a stumble, not even in the distance. I stood there for a long time, just looking, searching for a sign of life out there in this strange, pristine, tainted world.

The sign came from behind me. A screech and a crackle, and Conroy’s fiddling finally came across a gap in the static. Sound slipped all over the radio’s speakers until he tuned it more finely. Then there it was: a male voice, speaking calmly and steadily, passing words out across the tide-swelling air to us.

“…for survivors. We’re gathered… …mount. We have supplies. If you can… …message, come to the Greenberry J… …hope you are out there. Good….”

The signal stopped, drifting back into the empty waves. Conroy scrabbled with the controls of the radio and stuttered out a reply to let them know that we’re here, we’re survivors, we hear them. Scott and I bounced on our toes, straining to hear a reply come through. He spoke and waited and spoke again, and then looked at me.

“Am I doing it right?”

I was standing beside the radio and shrugged; he looked like he was doing it the right way to me. There was no response, though.

When Conroy gave up, Scott picked up the handset and tried his luck, though he soon stopped too. The Wolverine and I tried to work out what the message had said, what it meant and where these senders are. At least there shouldn’t be many Greenberrys on the map and they had to be relatively close for the signal to reach us at all.

Then we heard it again. Scott blinked and rocked back from the radio in surprise, turning to look at us.

“I didn’t touch it,” he said, then hushed to listen.

It was the same voice, the same calm tone, the same words riding the radiowaves. Exactly the same. I felt my stomach roil itself into a tight knot.

“It’s on a loop,” Conroy said, confirming what I suspected but didn’t have the technical terminology for. It was a recording; we weren’t listening to a real person at all.

I have no idea if the person we heard is alive or dead now. Is it the same message that we caught a whisper of last month? Anything could have happened in that time. What about the supplies it mentioned? What if they’ve run out by now? How long has the message been running for?

I think of all that has changed in the last few weeks alone and shiver. The message could be no help to us at all.

“Someone has to be there. Otherwise there wouldn’t be power to send it any more,” Conroy pointed out.

That helped. That loosened the knot in my gut and let me hope a little. Someone was keeping that message going. Power meant people, so someone had to be there. That was worth smiling about, and I did.

The boys ran downstairs to spread the news, telling the story of the message in loud, excited voices. They repeated the performance when the foragers returned ahead of the daily snowfall. There were smiles all around, belated and tentative in places, but present. A couple of backs were slapped and Conroy and Scott beamed like the best puppies in the world.

We got out our map and searched for Greenberry. There’s a Greenberry Junction out west a way – no short distance from here but no further than anywhere we’ve been before. We have added a dot to it, another marker on our list of places to go.

Looking at the map, at all the ground we have yet to cover, my heart lifted. South to the Emergency Coordination Centre, to Dillon’s family, and now west to Greenberry. The Seekers still have a long way to go and I’m not the only one ready to move on.

It feels good to have something to strive for and look forward to.

This morning, Conroy and Scott took the radio back up to the roof to search for the signal again. They were gone for a couple of hours and then bounced down again. After a few revolutions, they had managed to hear all of the message’s pieces. One of the sentences mentions ‘Apollo’s Mount’, which is a hill near the Greenberry Junction we found on the map yesterday. We’re sure about the location of the signal now, and where to look for those who are sending it out.

Their excitement was infectious and I was only too happy to get caught up in it. I cheerfully helped them spread the word, letting the kids and the few others around know. I avoided intruding on Sally and Masterson’s corner. I couldn’t see Ben in our makeshift camping room, so I went looking for him to share.

I never got to tell him the news. I found him in a supply room and all thoughts about the signal fled from my brain.

He was with Bree.

There’s no mistaking the way he was leaning her into the wall. The tilt of his body, the brace of his hand beside her head. The way his head was dipped in close. Her eyes were closed, her face turned to the side.

The first thing I thought was: it had to be Bree.

I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d turned around and cut me open, spilling my guts onto the cold floor. That’s what it felt like.

I must have made a sound, because he looked over his shoulder suddenly. That was all I needed to snap my reverie; I spun on my heel and ran. I couldn’t bear to be there, to have to process them, to see which of them smiled and which looked shameful. I couldn’t handle any of it.

He followed me. I heard the slap of the doors behind me as he burst through them, but I didn’t look back. I just kept running, not seeing anything other than doors and obstacles. I think I headed outside on purpose, knowing that the sun burns him. I pushed on when my feet started slipping, even though I wasn’t dressed for it, through the sharp, cold air and across the snow.

I’m not sure how far I went. A few buildings down the street, I think, before I dove inside and found something solid to lean against. I had no breath left; the air shook in and out of my body without giving me any oxygen. I wound up crumpled in a heap with my head in my hands, unable to see anything.

I don’t understand. I don’t know what I’ve done, or not done. He hasn’t been interested in that stuff since he got back, but I guess that’s just with me. Just with me.

There are so many pieces and I don’t know how to put them back together again. I feel like I’m holding a bloody puzzle in my hands, and I can’t tell where it starts and I end.

Sleet was pouring onto the snow by the time I had calmed down. All I had on me was a candy bar and my laptop bag. It’s getting colder now, and it’s too dark to head back. I can’t find my way. I’m not sure I want to.

Ben found me last night. After the darkness had wrapped up the building I was crouching in, after I had put away the laptop’s glow too save the battery. After I had given up finding any way to keep warm and all I had left was my own misery.

I know it was stupid to run off on my own. I know it was worse to get stuck away from the group when the rain came down. It wasn’t particularly bright to be trapped in the dark either, too scared to fumble around outside in case I fell into a snowdrift and melted away with it. At the time, even as I got colder and colder, I didn’t particularly care.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps in the corridor outside the room I was in and held my breath. I had no idea who it might be. I ducked under a desk, comforted only by the fact that the steps were too quick and controlled to be a shambler.

My heart was beating in my ears when the door swung open. I didn’t want to be found. I didn’t want to know who it was. It could have been anyone – a person from another group, even.

Then he said my name and I knew it was Ben. Of all people that I had hoped it was, he was the last on the list.

“Go away,” I told him.

He crouched in front of me; I heard his jeans creaking. “I brought your coat.”

I felt him putting it around me and snatched it out of his hands. I couldn’t bear him so close and stood up, but I did pull the coat on. I was shivering. I didn’t thank him.

“It’s not what you think, Faith.”

I laughed; it came out twisted. “Never is, is it? Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.” My throat was closing up.

“You can’t stay here.”

“I don’t care! And neither do you! Just leave me alone, go on. Go!”

He said my name and touched my arm, and I struck out at him. I couldn’t see him, not properly, I just wanted to hit him. I wanted to hit something. All of a sudden, I was crying and shouting at him, struggling as he tried to hold me still. How could he? With her, of all people. How could he? After all his shit over Matt? Why would he do this to me? Doesn’t he know how much it hurts?

He kept telling me that it wasn’t what I thought. Over and over, until I finally bit on the bait.

“So what was it, then?” My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out his face, just inches from mine. He was as hard to read as he always is lately, his face closed down like it’s not even a part of him.

“It wasn’t sex,” he said. “I… can’t.”

It’s not what I expected him to admit – that’s not something I had considered. I thought he was just disinterested, and then interested in someone else, and… well, anything but that. “Because of the Sickness?”

“Yes.”

I frowned and swallowed down a discomfort in my chest, determined not to be distracted. I could still see them, leaning up against the wall like that. “Then what were you doing with her?” My voice broke under the strain.

He hesitated, then said, “I’m not what you think, Faith. Not any more. Things have changed. I’ve changed. The Sickness, it made me… something else.”

“Made you what?” I was starting to get angry with him again, my mood yoyoing between despair, pain, and rage. He was avoiding telling me, I could feel it.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what I am. I thought that going away would help me figure it out, but it didn’t, so I came back. You ever notice that I don’t eat any more?”

“Yeah, I have.” I stopped bringing him food a while ago, because he never ate it. I assumed he was eating elsewhere. He kept avoiding my questions about what was wrong with him, so I stopped asking. Same way I stopped asking about the sunburn, and how he sometimes seemed stronger than he should be. What else was I supposed to do?

“But I’m hungry. I’m hungry all the time. I just can’t eat anything except meat.”

“Meat?” I felt stupid, but I didn’t get it.

“Yes. Fresh meat, particularly.”

He was staring at me. I could barely see him in the dark, even though he was so close, but I could feel him willing me to understand. All of a sudden, I remembered a dead body torn up by human teeth, but not by shamblers. I went cold all over.

“Caroline. You killed Caroline.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You ate Caroline.”

“It was an accident.”

“How do you accidentally eat someone?”

I almost laughed. It felt the same way as it did when we realised what the shamblers were. I still can’t called them ‘zombies’, because it’s just too ridiculous. I keep thinking I’ll laugh, and then cry, and then throw up at the wrongness of it all. Just when I think the world makes sense, it’s all gibberish again. Or maybe it makes me gibber. I can’t tell. I can barely tell up from down any more.

He was trying to explain. There were rats there, he said – a whole nest of them. He’d been eating them. He said he’d been trying not to hurt anyone. But Caroline came along and started screaming, and he tried to shut her up, and then she fell. Fell and stopped. There was fresh blood, fresh meat, and he was very hungry.

I was shaking and struggling, my arms wrapped around myself as I tried to digest all of this. It didn’t make sense and yet it did. A part of me couldn’t deny it and the rest of me wanted to. I still couldn’t get the image of this morning’s discovery out of my head; it taunted me.

“So were you ‘accidentally’ eating Bree, too?”

I felt him hesitate and that made me afraid of what he was going to say. “No. I wasn’t going to kill her.”

I think it would have been easier to handle if he had been trying to kill her. “So what were you doing?” I had lost hope of a straight answer to that question, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Sometimes, blood will do.”

I ran those words around in my head until they had meaning. It took a while. She wasn’t fighting him off; she was giving it to him? She knew. She knew what he was. Tears pricked at my eyes again and thickened my throat. She knew the truth he had refused to tell me. She had a part of him that he had kept secret, something that should have been mine. It wasn’t the part I thought it was – screwing would have been worse – but I still felt betrayed. I’d begged him to tell me something Bree had known, and he had only let me in because I’d caught them.

I slapped him so hard my hand stung. I have no idea how I hit him in the dark, but I did. I don’t think either of us felt any better for it.

“You need to leave now,” I told him. He tried to convince me to come back with him, but I had no wish to let him lead me through the darkness. It was cold there, but I could deal with that kind of chill. I couldn’t deal with having to lean on him. He went away, though I don’t know how far. I tried not to think about it through the rest of the night.

I went back to the Chemistry Department this morning. The foragers had gone out by then, but Matt had stayed behind. He was so worried that he pounced on me as soon as I came through the door. I must have looked terrible: cold, sleepless, red-eyed and hungry. I burst into tears when he hugged me, though I couldn’t tell him why. I’m all right, I told him. I didn’t know how to say any more. He stroked my hair until I was feeling well enough to stand on my own again.

I’m numb now. I see the faces around me, most of them glad to see me back, but I can’t feel anything. I’ve thawed myself by the fire all day, but I still feel cold in a way that all the blankets in the world won’t cure.

I need a new word; I don’t know what to call Ben now. There’s one word for what he is, but I won’t use it. Maybe I’ll just call him cannibal.

I have barely spoken to anyone since I got back. It’s hard to know what to say; it’s not like I can tell them what Ben admitted to me. I can see the pitchforks emerging already. There’s a part of me that still cares about that, and not just for Ben’s sake. We’ll all lose a part of ourselves if we let that happen.

Matt’s worried about me. He has stopped asking what’s wrong – he gets that I can’t tell him – but he’s always near. He didn’t go out with the foragers again today. He knows that Ben’s involved: they’re exchanging scowls now. There’s nothing I can – or want to – say to dissuade him.

Bree has wisely stayed out of sight. I think I’d do something we’d all regret if I saw her right now.

I haven’t known what to say to Ben, either. So many questions, but I don’t want to accept what he’s already told me. It’s hard to know where to start. He has been watching me with eyes that are always assessing me, weighing my expressions and reactions, looking for flickers – of hate, or anger, or sympathy. I have nothing to give him yet.

He killed someone. It was an accident, he says, but that didn’t stop him from chowing down on the remains. I can forgive him for an accident. Death and killing are so much a part of our world now that ethics have shifted, but it’s not like he murdered her. It makes a difference, though I’m not sure how much.

He’s not human any more. It’s not a surprise: I have suspected it for a while now. The way his hands and skin are always so cold, his reaction to sunlight, how he caught the offroader that slipped off its jack and held it up. How he found me in the dark. I had no idea of the scale of it, though; it goes much deeper than that, but I don’t know how deep. What else hasn’t he told me?

He has been so reluctant to let me in that I have no idea where I am any more. I want to go talk to him again, but I’m scared. Scared he won’t tell me any more, and scared that he will. Scared that he has more to tell. How much worse can it get?

It still hurts that Bree knew more about what was going on with him than I did. How long has she known? How did she find out? Did she catch him feeding and he didn’t manage to accidentally kill her? Was it longer than that? She has been avoiding me ever since she tagged onto our group, so I can’t use her evasiveness as a clue. Or did she meet him before he came back to us?

How many times can I be the girlfriend kept in the dark before I stop trusting everyone? Am I that easy to lie to?

I could run around in circles on this forever; it’s been almost a couple of days now and I’m still no closer to any kind of resolution. I can’t put this behind me until I know more and at least some of my questions are answered.

I have to talk to one of them. I don’t want to. Every fibre in my chest clenches when I think about it.

I just remembered what Masterson said to me the other day. He told me to look at my own house. Does he know too? How many people were in on this? How many friends didn’t tell me? How blind was I?

I’m in a group of over twenty people and I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to talk to Bree or Ben today. There was just too much rising in me to do it.

I saw Bree. She’s staying in a side room with her friends: Mira the teenager and Scott the random pickup. She’s pale and that was enough to make me turn around and walk away. Bloodloss. Ben.

Instead, I took hold of my courage and went to speak to someone else. Someone who I hoped would have some answers for me.

I didn’t expect a warm reception and I didn’t get one. At first, I didn’t think he’d talk to me. When I walked up to him, he looked ready to physically toss me out of his way. Luckily for me, he’s a wiry little guy and his mouth is much worse than his hands.

It’s never fun asking Masterson for help. He called me names and spent ten minutes tearing strips off me, until I was nearly in tears all over again. It’s nothing I haven’t said to myself and I was determined not to run away from him.

He said that he had noticed something when Ben was sick. When the Sickness got really bad and we thought he was going to die. After Ben got better, he asked Masterson to check him over. After the doctor noticed a few odd things he couldn’t explain – like low body temperature and elusive pulse – Ben called the whole thing to a stop. Since he returned to the group, Masterson has noticed Ben’s strange behaviour and the sunburn.

I asked him why he didn’t say anything. Masterson shrugged and said it wasn’t up to him to force people to do what they should be doing. It’s not like he doesn’t have enough to do in the group just keeping on top of the injuries. And if Ben didn’t want his help, what did he care?

I tried to get the doctor to help me work out what’s going on with Ben. What’s different about him. Masterson didn’t want to play ball, though.

“Go talk to the chemist,” he said, shooing me away. “Deal with your own problems. Ben gives me the creeps.”

Talking to him is like running into a spiked wall. I gave up eventually and left him alone, with only a little more information for my trouble. Ben’s body seems to be running slowly – his heartbeat is low, which is probably part of the reason he’s so cold. It’s not much, but I guess it’s something to go on.

I should take Masterson’s advice and see if Kostoya can help me figure this out.

The thing is, I’m not sure if working out what’s going on physically will help me deal with the other stuff. With Caroline, with Bree, with blood and meat. With not being entirely human any more. Will bald facts really help me work out how I’m supposed to feel about all this?

There’s no manual for this kind of thing. I feel like I’m learning to dance, but there’s no music or footprints painted on the floor. Who turned off the music?

I thought about going to see Dr Kostoya today. I thought about going to ask Bree what she knew. I thought about talking to Thorpe to see what he had noticed about his old friend and crewmate. But even I knew that I was avoiding what I needed to do, so I ignored the distractions.

Ben has done nothing lately except watch me and stay out of my way. He tried to talk to me a couple of times but wound up just sitting next to me. I had no idea what to say to him and I think the feeling was mutual. Today, though, I was determined that we were going to actually communicate.

I waited until the foragers had headed out for the day. They’re doing well at finding us supplies and we’re building up a stock now; there has even been enough to share with Kostoya when he said he was short of food.. They’re going to need to find a store of heavy boots soon – the snow is eating away at our shoes, no matter how careful we are.

It went quiet about mid-morning, once the remains of breakfast were cleaned up and the foragers were long gone. The kids amuse themselves – Dillon is getting good at being in charge of the other two, supervising by waving a crutch around. Some of the others disappeared upstairs to give the chemist a hand with whatever he’s doing lately.

I sat down next to Ben; he was by the window, looking out at the places he couldn’t walk in the tainted orange day. Why is it so hard to start a conversation like this? It’s easier when I don’t have time to prepare myself, when I just react, though I beat myself up afterwards for all the stuff I forgot to say.

Instead, I took his hand and put my fingertips on the inside of his wrist. His skin is chilly but just as soft as it used to be. He knew what I was doing and just sat there, waiting for the bump under his skin to let me know that he still has a heart in there. It took a long time to come – it felt like forever, though it can’t have been more than half a minute. His is a shy heart.

“What else don’t I know?” I asked him.

He shrugged, but not as dismissively as before. “You know most of it now. I can hear better than I used to. And smell, too – I can smell the rain coming sometimes, though less now that it’s freezing.”

“Is that how you found me that night? By scent?”

“Yes.”

I’m not used to getting such straight answers from him. I looked into his face and he seemed sincere. “I smell that bad, huh.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. It’s the closest that any of us have got to a real smile in a long time. The moment didn’t last long, but it was long enough to chip away some of the frost between us.

I sighed and looked down at his hand, still held between mine. It felt warmer than before; either I was warming it up or I was getting used to the cold.

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Ben.”

“I want you to be okay with this,” he said, quickly enough to make me glance up at his face. There was earnestness there. “I’ve got nowhere else to go. No-one else that matters to me.”

My throat was threatening to close up. “I want to be okay with it too.”

“But?”

It was elusive, that ‘but’. It hung between us and I struggled to reach out and grab it. “I don’t know what all this means. Not, not yet.”

He frowned at our hands. “It means I’m not entirely human any more. I’m some halfway thing. Not one of them, not one of you either.”

“You’re not like the shamblers.”

“I’m trying not to be.”

Suddenly, I felt like I was slipping, or he was slipping, and there was nothing to hold onto. His pulse was slow while mine wanted to beat out of my chest. It was all I could do to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“I want to help you.”

“But?”

“You went to her.” It was out before I’d thought about it. It mattered, though. It mattered more than I like. It was raw and I couldn’t let go of it, even if I wanted to.

“It wasn’t… it wasn’t like that, Faith. You know that.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The pressure was building up and abruptly I was trying not to cry. “You didn’t come to me. You chose to go to someone else. To her, of all people.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“But you did. That’s exactly what you did.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Tell me the truth! Tell me what was going on!”

“And the feeding? Would you rather I had fed off you, too?”

“Yes!”

He stood up and pulled his hand out of mine, still staring at me. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right either. I knew it was stupid, but it was how I felt. I remembered what my dad said once, just after I found out about Cody and Bree. “The heart isn’t a rational beast,” he had told me. And then he had hugged me. I would give anything for one of his hugs right now, even for him to scruff my hair up like he always did.

“It’s the truth,” I said to Ben.

He touched my cheek and told me again that he didn’t want to hurt me. He was troubled when he went away, as if he thought I might offer again. As if maybe he’d say yes.

I don’t know what I’d do if he did. I don’t know what’s more important to me right now – that he kept things from me; that he didn’t want to hurt me; that he chose to go to Bree; that he eats people. In my head, it all seems so straightforward, as if the answer is obvious. Then the rest of me gets involved and I don’t know anything.

He said that no-one else matters to him. I want to believe him, though the more I think about it, the more scared that thought makes me.

Today, I decided to stretch my legs and went out with the foragers. Over a dozen of us clomped off across the frosted landscape with a couple of makeshift sleds in tow. The guys have been putting things together while I wasn’t looking.

I wound up pulling one of the sleds while the others ran into buildings and searched for supplies. It was nice to be out in the fresh air, even with the smouldering sky hovering so close overhead and the icy bite on the wind.

For a while, I was able to forget about everything that’s been going on lately. The shamblers, Ben, Bree. Caught up in the search for food and essentials, it was like it was months ago, when things were simpler. It was a chance to be with the others, to get to know the newcomers as more than just names. Like how Janice always looks out for Tom, because he’s got a sore knee and will hurt it if he slips again. Jersey is hanging with Terry a lot now; I suspect they might be bad for each other, reckless behaviour concentrated too much for anyone’s good. Now that his sister is better and he doesn’t have to worry so much, Terry has definitely come out of his shell. Dale is mostly recovered from his injuries and recently started accompanying the foragers too, under Thorpe’s watchful eye, and he seems like a good enough fella.

Matt walked with me for most of the day. It was nice; I’ve missed his company. Between Ben’s frowning and the secrets I’m not supposed to tell, we haven’t really talked much lately.

It’s no accident that going out with the foragers meant that I got time away from Ben. I needed space to think and to not have his eyes on me for a while. Even if he’s not in the room, I know he’s close, like a lean on my peripheral vision.

I asked Matt how he’s doing and he said that he’s all right. He sounded surprised by his own answer. Other than being worried about me, he seems better than he has been for a long while. More like his old self. I guess having a big group has given him a bigger audience; he always did play well to a full house.

He gave me that concerned look that wanted to return the inquiry to me, but he didn’t put it into words. I told him anyway. That things are difficult since Ben got back and we’re trying to work them out. I told him that Bree’s involved, but not in that way. That it’s complicated and painful and I’m not handling it very well. I didn’t tell him the truth about Ben, but I didn’t need to. Matt slung an arm around my shoulders and let me know that he was there for me, whatever I needed. At that moment, that was exactly what I needed.

It was a relief to hear. It was like getting my best friend back, though I never lost him, not really. I leaned on him and he let me, and we talked about other stuff. He let me in on some of the gossip – like his suspicions about Thorpe and Dale. That surprised me for several reasons, not least being Matt’s casual attitude towards it. I remember how I felt when I saw him and Thorpe together; it’s still bright and sharp. It’s still confusing. I changed the subject.

By the time we got back to the Chemistry Department, I felt lighter. I felt more solid at the same time, as if I wasn’t at the mercy of the pounding waves at the changing of the tide, not knowing if it was going out or coming in. I felt better able to handle the buckshot being scattered in my direction.

Ben was hovering and grumpy when we came inside, scowling at me and my friend. I went over and kissed his cold cheek, and spent the evening talking to him about nothing. He thawed after a while and held onto my hand.

It was almost like being a normal couple again. Like being a normal girl. It was nice to remember what that’s like, before I have to dive back into what passes for our regular lives here.