Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 5:17 pm

Knife

Today has been much less eventful.  Today has been about regrouping and resupplying, and letting the injured rest.  Mostly, that’s Ben and Nugget, though some of the others keep telling me to sit down and take it easy, too.  We had to give Ben some more alcohol so that he could sleep.  Nugget needed no such encouragement.

I keep thinking about the fight yesterday.  I’ve never been in anything like that before; the one we ran away from a few days didn’t get that close.  We weren’t involved; I wasn’t involved.  We just ran and stayed out of it.  Yesterday, it was all so quick.  There was no time to think; just react.  I waded in just like everyone else, and I’m not sure what that says about me.

I keep hearing the wet thuds of Thorpe’s punches, or the hollowness of Sax’s pipe landing.  Or the slick sound of that knife, and the squeal of the dog.  Or the hiss of the acid hitting something soft and soluble.

My arm aches all the time now; I think it got knocked more than once in all of that.  I’m trying to ignore it; I can feel the panic climbing up my throat if I think about it too much.  It’s bound up tightly and that will have to do until we reach the hospital.  But it’s been over a week now — what if it’s knitting already, what if it heals wrong?  What if they can’t put it right?  What if there’s no-one there to help me?

If I think about it too much, I feel like I’m suffocating.

Then I look at Ben and Nugget, and I’m ashamed of myself.  They’re so much worse off.  Ben’s in so much pain, and I don’t know when Nugget last woke up.  I’m afraid to ask.  I shouldn’t be so concerned about my stupid arm, but I can’t help it.

 

The others brought back some weapons from a sports store they found.  There wasn’t much left, they said – all the really good (wicked) stuff had already been taken.  They scavenged what they could from the wreckage the looters had left.

I stood and looked at them for a long time, and then I took one.  I have it on my belt now, under the hem of my shirt: a little hunting knife.  I can feel its uncompromising weight pressing on me there.  Me.  Carrying a knife.  I can’t believe it.  But it feels better.

I’m afraid of everything right now.  Where we’re going, what we’ll find there.  What we’ll find on the way.  If we’ll ever make it.  Who I’m becoming through all of this.

My friends used to know me as Mac, but no-one here calls me that.  I have no idea who Faith is, this girl who carries a knife.

Share