The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

Posting isn’t easy at the moment. I don’t dare let anyone know about the laptop – I’m afraid that it’ll end up ‘requisitioned’ and that’ll be the last I see of it. So I have to wait until I can squeeze myself into somewhere private to do this.

I still need to, though. There’s so much going on and I’m still trying to unravel it all. I’m afraid that if I don’t write it all down, I’m going to miss something important. There are a lot of changes happening to me and to the Seekers, to our lives, and right now it’s hard to see where it’s all going to end up.

I have a sneaking feeling that when I look back on these posts, they’re going to make a pattern I won’t like. Recording them seems important.

So I guess I’d better get on with it. Where did I get to yesterday, before I was interrupted? Oh yes, the General and his little chat.

He drew me away from the others to talk. He asked how I was, if I was feeling better. I didn’t like the flavour of his concern and told him that I’d feel a lot better if his men hadn’t smacked me in the head and I could see my friends whenever I wanted to.

He explained that he had a delicate operation set up here – they had rules, necessary for the good of everyone. Rules like the segregation. I still wanted to see my friends.

“And our gear?” I asked him. The theft of our supplies still rankled. “That justifies taking everything we had?”

“Yes,” he told me. “We have to use everything we can, so that everyone survives.”

Greater good. It’s one of those really annoying arguments that’s hard to counter. It’s just not fair.

“What if we want to leave?”

He spread his hands. “You’re not prisoners here. You can leave any time you want to.”

“Really?” I looked at him sideways. I couldn’t quite believe it was that easy.

“But you came here for a reason, didn’t you? You were looking for something – hope, survival, a new home. Are you really so ready to turn around and leave it behind?”

“I never said that. I just like to know my options. And your men haven’t exactly been welcoming.”

“These aren’t safe times. We have to keep our guard up, or we risk losing everything we’ve built.”

“We weren’t armed.”

“Even so.”

I wasn’t happy with his answer. I wasn’t happy with any of it – how we were brought here, the way we’ve been split up. I know he was trying to explain but it didn’t seem good enough. Maybe it was the niggle of the headache at the back of my skull, tainting everything the way the clouds turned the bright sun ruddy. I wanted to give him a fair chance, I really did. I wanted this to be what we hoped it was.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked, watching the bustle of the place. Just watching it made me feel tired.

“Starting to rebuild,” the General said with a smile. “We’ve got supplies and we’re reinforcing the structures. There’s a school in one of the outbuildings – we don’t have many children right now, but we hope to have more. You met our medic, Simon – he’s training up more medical personnel. We have some engineers working on a water recycling system.” He gave me a look that was both proud and bashful, as if he was warring with his own modesty. “There’s lots to do, Faith. We need all the help we can get.”

It bothered me that he knew my name – I had never told him. But it sounded wonderful. It sounded exactly what we were looking for. After the struggle of the past eight months, it seemed too good to be true.

I couldn’t bring myself to tarnish his picture by putting my feelings into words, not to his face. I needed time to process it and figure out what this all really is. It feels too big for me, as if my hands are too small or my skull too tight to wrap around it.

Instead, I let the General hand me off to the girls’ dorm, where a portly, middle-aged woman directed me to a bunk. Halfway there, Tia jumped on me, so excited that she almost knocked me over. She asked if I’d seen her brother, then eagerly showed me where everything was.

I’m still getting used to it. Waking up in a bed on my own, in a room full of other beds. Not daring to leave certain things out of my sight for fear of someone else stealing them. Regular meals.

There’s a lot to figure out. I guess there’s no rush for now, right? We have time to work out what we want to do. For the first time, we have time.

I’d better go. They’ll wonder where I am.

Everyone works here. No exceptions, I was told in no uncertain terms. As if I might refuse. I had to make an effort not to be offended.

Stella, the matronly lady who oversees the girls’ dorms, collared me this morning. I was lost when everyone else filtered off to do whatever it is they normally do after breakfast, but she wasn’t going to leave me feeling that way for long. She started to quiz me on what I could do – what use I might be, is the way she put it – and I tried to answer her questions honestly.

It came down to two things – fixing cars and first aid. The only skilled things I could do passably Before and have been forced to learn in a lot more detail in the time After. Somehow, I didn’t think my deftness with a cash register or a love of books would be of any help here.

“We have enough mechanics,” Stella told me with a grunt and a roll of her eyes. I guess the army must have its fair share, and from what she was saying, the boys outnumber the girls five or six to one here. There’s bound to be plenty of grease-monkeys among that number. “We’ll have to check if the infirmary needs any more hands. Go help out in the kitchens for now.”

I wanted to argue, but really, what was the point? It rankles that the kitchen is full of girls, but everyone has to help somehow and the General was firm in defending his segregation policy. For our own good, he said. I feel like those words have been said a lot in history and I don’t particularly want to know what else they have been used to excuse.

I just know that I’m going to bounce off the walls if I have to work in the kitchens for too long. When there’s no water to clean anything, knowing what goes on before the food hits the plate is sometimes way too much. By the time lunch came around, I really didn’t feel like eating.

Tia and Jersey are both on kitchen detail, too. Seems they’re about as much use as me in other departments. Tia is very much in her element; she’s falling in with the other women easily and already making friends. The security and stability of the place have lifted a weight off her. Sometimes when I look at her, I’m jealous; I wish I could relax here so quickly.

Jersey is a little more like me. She hates the kitchens with a vicious tongue and spent most of the day grumbling. When I heard her mutter that she should have pretended she was a boy again, I grinned. I couldn’t help it and I didn’t blame her at all. At lunch, she sat and sighed at her plate, poking at the indeterminate contents with a fork.

Just a few days ago, we were starving. Now we’re considering turning food down. It’s startling when I stop and think about it. Jersey stared at me when I pointed that out, then we both ate our portions. It’s no worse than anything else we’ve forced ourselves to put in our mouths, if we don’t think about it too hard.

I miss the boys. This schedule is strange and the beds are hard to sleep on. I keep coming awake, missing the sound of Thorpe’s barely-there snoring or a familiar sleepy murmur. I lie there listening for the breathing patterns I’ve grown so used to, but they’re all gone. Even Jersey and Tia are lost in the wheezing of this room.

We’ve stopped but my legs haven’t caught up; they still want to be on the road. I don’t think they can quite believe that we might have reached the end of our journey. Neither can the rest of me.

I think the weirdest thing about being here is the normality. The food is terrible and there’s no water to wash with, but other than that, everything feels very… ordinary. Ordinary for the time Before, as if all the strangeness of the bomb and its aftereffects is a distant story.

It rains here too. There’s a claxon that goes off when it’s getting close and everyone rushes indoors, closing the place up for the night. The generators groan and spit out sparse lights that shine like eyes in the wet dark.

I heard a couple of the fellas talking about shamblers at the gates, but it was an off-hand thing. They laughed about it and then wondered what the lumps in the stew were. Even the acid and its productions have become part of the routine here, incorporated into the normality of the place.

Sometimes I think about all the struggling we had to do, everyone we lost, and I get so angry at this place. Safe in its cocoon of wire and guns, blithely oblivious of the pain burning just a short way from the gates. Sending out a message like an afterthought, riding on radiowaves that barely any of those fighting for their lives can hear.

I think part of it is that I’m not in charge any more. It’s not that I ever really wanted to be, but I got used to being one who made decisions. I got used to having all the information the group had, being ‘in the know’. I got used to being the one that people turned to, listened to. I had a place that was mine.

Here, I’m no-one. I feel like a silly kid again. I’m another face in the crowd, another pair of hands, one more bunk in a long row. I don’t like taking orders without knowing why they’re being issued and I don’t like not talking about what’s going on. I’m forced to follow someone else’s lead blindly, and I don’t even know who that person is. Not really. It chafes, like sand in my shoes.

I managed to see the boys today. Just briefly.

I was helping serve up dinner on their rotation through the dining hall. There are too many people to fit into the hall and we have to eat in shifts. I was spooning out the slop when all of a sudden there was Dale, grinning at me. Thorpe was next to him – of course – and Matt trailed behind them. Terry and Dan were a little further down. We asked how we all were and chattered away. I could feel one of the supervisors burning holes in my back with her eyes and I ignored her thoroughly. I didn’t care that we were holding up the line; these are my friends.

It was only a few seconds, but it was enough to lift my whole day. I’m not sure what they’re doing or where, but that doesn’t matter so much right now. They’re still here, they’re doing all right, and they’re together. That makes a difference. I know they’ll look after each other. I’d rather be helping with that; like so many personal preferences, that one has slipped away. But they’re okay. It’s something to hold onto.

I suppose that’s one more way I’m not a leader any more. I don’t need to look after anyone – or everyone. I don’t need to make sure people are okay.

Is it power-hungry of me to want that back? I feel so small now. I got to be more than just a bookstore assistant or the girl who helped out with Dad’s paperwork, and now that’s all gone. Is it selfish to want more than this? We’re safe, we have enough to eat and beds to sleep in. They’re keeping the shamblers away from the doors. This is much better than being out on the road. This is what we were looking for.

Why, then, haven’t I told them about the University? Why do I hope that no-one else has either?

Why doesn’t it feel like enough?

I was released from kitchen duty today. I can’t say that I’m sorry to be out of there. Maybe I’ll be able to face meals with a braver stomach now.

A pair of army cutouts appeared just as the dorm was pulling itself out of bed and towards morning duties. Stella growled at them, but it’s still cold enough that we’re all sleeping fully-dressed, so I’m not sure what the fuss was about. Those women who noticed them gasped and started to think about being shocked, while I rolled my eyes and went to see what was going on.

They had come to take me to see the General; I had been summoned. He has an office up in one of the admin buildings, looking exactly as it did in the time Before. Polished wood desk, maps on the walls, books on the shelves, and a carpet that looked like it had been cleaned recently. He hasn’t let the bomb or its fallout touch him here. He stood up, smooth as you like, and shook my hand over the desk. I felt like I was there for a job interview.

We sat down and he started off with pleasantries. How was I feeling, how was I settling in. How was I finding everything. It felt so weird that I had no idea what to do with myself for a second.

Suddenly, I wondered if my little chat with the other Seekers at dinner had upset things. Was I in trouble? Over that? It was ridiculous; we’re not in high school. Once upon a time, the idea of being in that kind of trouble would have put snakes in my belly, but not any more. His mouth kept moving and I was bracing myself for a reprimand and a sharp comeback. I would never have dared to think about that Before. Everything’s fine, I told him, and the trouble never came.

Finally, he came around to his reason for calling me into his office. Nothing to do with last night’s dinner: he wanted to ask me about our radio. His men have been going through the equipment they requisitioned from us (I bristled both at the mention of our lost gear and his euphemism for it) and they had questions about the radio. What we used it for, if we heard anything other than their signal.

I expected them to ask these kinds of questions when they picked us up, but they didn’t. Perhaps it’s just that I was unconscious for that; did they ask the others about it? Are they filtering us in here one by one and comparing our answers? Or is my pricked paranoia just spinning tales?

We scanned the air waves as often as we had elevation and power, I told him. That’s how we found the signal that brought us here.

“You didn’t picked up any other transmissions?”

I had to make a decision then. To lie or not to lie. To trust or to protect. I looked him in the eye and thought about the ones we’d left behind. Kostoya with his amazing discoveries and waterworks. Fix-it Conroy. Little Nugget and Estebar. Pregnant Sally with her dangerous baby and fierce doctor. Some of them would be better off here. Here would be better off with some of them. And some would be damaged by such a meeting.

“Yours was the only one we found,” I told him.

I went with my instinct. I don’t know enough about this place. I don’t know what they’d do to Sally or her baby. I don’t know how safe the children would be or if they’d be separated from those who are caring for them. I don’t know if Tom would be taken away from Janice. And with all they’ve taken, I’m not inclined to give them anything yet.

I can only hope that they can’t hear the University from here. If our friends are transmitting, trying to find us, they’ll reveal themselves. They’ll reveal my lie. It hasn’t happened yet, so I guess all I can do is hope the General stays in the dark about it.

Oblivious, Haven’s head went on to ask about the ground we’d covered and I went to the map on his wall to point out our route. I skipped by the University but there didn’t seem to be any reason in lying about the rest. It’s not like we’ve discovered much of value along the way, apart from each other.

Looked at on the wall like that, it was a torturous route, with bad turns and double-backs and wild detours. That was our journey. We always got where we were going in the end. I guess that’s all that matters, and now I wonder if we really have stopped. Our journey doesn’t feel over, not yet.

I didn’t tell him that part, just where we’ve been. He seemed surprised, so I smiled at him and said, “That’s why they called us Seekers.”

He looked over the places I had pointed out once more, then said that I should report to the infirmary. Report. Like I’m one of his army cutouts, without a will or a mind of my own. I didn’t argue, though I wanted to; it just didn’t seem worth it.

At least I might be able to make a difference in the infirmary. Simon the medic could use an experienced hand there, he said. It’s startling and a little bit frightening that I qualify as ‘experienced’. I don’t feel experienced; sometimes, I barely feel competent.

That’s where I spent the afternoon. Being shown where things are and what they’re all for. I haven’t seen this much medical equipment since we left the hospital, all those months ago. We’ve come around in a big circle but the view is different this time. Not all of this stuff works, partly because there’s no-one left who knows how to use it, but there’s hope here.

Not many patients right now, but hope.

The infirmary is an odd part of the compound. It was never meant to be a hospital but, like so much in this time After, it has been used for whatever has been needed.

There are stains on the floor that no-one has been able to get off; again, the lack of water tells. Simon the medic tells me that they wash what they need in bleach, but even that has to be used sparingly. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. The floor is not a priority. At least we agree on that.

It used to be full in here, he said. When the Sickness tore through the compound, it was all he could do to keep up with them all. That’s where they lost most of the medical staff – those who weren’t killed by the rain or accidents, were taken by the Sickness. The Sickness, or the shamblers that rose up from it.

He tried everything he could to get even one of them to survive, but he lost all of them. Even the experienced doctors said they’d never seen anything like it while they coughed up the last of their own lives.

After that, the infirmary was full of all of those attacked by the recently-Sick. I remember the horror of that. I remember seeing friends turn on friends in hollow hunger. I remember the ones we lost that way. None of us could stop it happening, not even to the ones we loved.

I nodded and told him I understood. We’ve all seen the same thing happen. We’ve all struggled to make a difference and failed. Even Ben, the one who did make it through the Sickness, didn’t really come out okay. I didn’t tell the medic about Ben. I didn’t know where to start and I knew I didn’t want to get to the end. And something tells me that the whole subject is more than Simon could take; he doesn’t need any more burdens right now.

He looks so worn out. There’s a qualified nurse on staff too – Peter – but the pair of them have been stretched thin for a while now. They sometimes have one or two of the women helping out but none of them are trained. Not everyone had a real doctor to learn from like I did. Not many have the stomach for this kind of thing, they struggle for time to train new hands, and there’s so many other things that need to be done. I told them that I don’t know how much use I’ll be but I guess we all do what we can.

At least it’s quiet at the moment. There’s a middle-aged woman lying in one of the back rooms with the Sickness – she has a couple of days left at most, they said. I should find out her name, see if anyone knows her story, before she’s gone and mindless. They keep their own records here but it’s not the same. It’s facts and dates, not stories. Not lives. And I’m not ready to give up this blog yet.

Apart from the Sickness, they get mostly accidental or conflict-related injuries. Like me. They get a lot of scuffles in the compound, Simon told me, and eventually everyone ends up in here. I guess people are people, wherever you put them and whatever uniforms they wear. I wish that was a comfort.

In my explorations, I found the room I had woken up in after my head injury. I’m still sore about that, partly because I haven’t finished healing and partly because it seems so normal here. It doesn’t help me feel safe or secure, and it doesn’t ease my worries about my friends.

There’s barely a bruise left on me now and the bed looks like no-one has ever slept in it. Even so, it feels more like mine than the dormitory does. The view from the window is familiar and I can still see Matt asleep in the chair, bundled up in a blanket. He stayed here with me like he was chained to that chair, so determined that I shouldn’t be alone. That none of us should be on our own. Now look at us.

I miss him. I miss all of them, but him the most. There are so many faces here and I barely have time to hear one name before the next one is pressing at me. Just another one in the crowd, a pawn to move around. I want my family back.

I thought back to how I got here, and one thing keeps niggling at me. The reason I passed out, the reason I ended up in the infirmary that first time: the person I saw across the courtyard. I can’t remember who it was. I can’t even picture the body I caught sight of, heading away from us as if we weren’t even there. I don’t think whoever it was saw us or heard me shout. I was so sure I knew who it was but the darkness took that all away. Now I can’t remember what got me so wound up. Or who.

I wish there was more to do. The infirmary is so quiet; there’s little to occupy ourselves with other than going over dry medical procedures and trying to remember which cupboard has the bandages in, for when it becomes critical. I should be glad of the chance to catch my breath and pleased that there’s so little pain here. Just one woman dying in a back room.

It gives me too much time to think. I’m much better when I’m doing something. I never have dealt well with inaction, because it makes me feel so helpless. Here, in this place waiting for patients, it feels like there’s a storm about to hit. I would brace for it, but I don’t know what direction it’ll come at me from.

I’m rambling now. I should go relieve Simon – I think he’s sitting vigil over the Sick woman. I wish I knew what was eating at him. He should get some sleep before he wastes away. I don’t think I’ll get any tonight, so I might as well do something useful.

I shouldn’t have gone out last night. I was restless and itchy for something – anything – but it wound up being a frustrating exercise.

It was tricky because the rain had stopped only shortly before I set off and there was a stretch of open courtyard I had to cross to get to the infirmary. Our flashlights were in the gear that the cutouts took from us, so I had nothing to show me the way except the glisten of a few lights off the rainwater and the hope that none of the really wet sections were puddles. I stood in the doorway for several long minutes to let my eyes adjust to the dark before I dared step out there.

It was painful going, with lots of hopping and a last-minute dodge around the dripping corner of a tarp. By the time I was done, my heart was beating so hard my head ached and I had to stop for breath. I stamped my feet and dissolved a bit of the mat, but my poor old boots are still strong enough to keep the acid away from my feet. Sometimes I watch them steam and my feet want to shrink away from the insides, or I imagine the burning seeping through my skin until it itches.

I wasn’t the only one out and about. As I was checking my legs over for splashes, I heard other wet footsteps moving around with that same skipping, darting rhythm mine had. I peeked out to see a handful of fellas heading over towards the other side of the compound. I couldn’t tell if they were heading for the female dorms or not. I almost turned around and went to find out, but there are lots of women in that dorm. Plenty to see off a few men like that if they had to. Just in case, I waited for a long few minutes to see if any trouble started, ready to run back, but all fell quiet again. There was only the dangerous drips and the shimmer of the wet dark.

Finally, I headed into the building and went to find Simon and his sick charge. He was surprised to see me; I wasn’t asked to come and in his mind that meant that I shouldn’t be there.

“But I’m supposed to be helping you out here,” I said, puzzled. “You don’t have to do all this on your own.”

He stared at me as if I had spontaneously grown another head and it was waving at him. I told him that I knew how to take care of someone with the Sickness – trying not to think about the previous times that I’ve had to do that – and that he should get some rest while he can. He said he had other work to do anyway, but when I asked him what there was other than the single patient in the infirmary, he just shook his head.

There are secrets here. Now I’m starting to think that Simon’s weariness isn’t caused by his work at all; it’s the burden of the other things that is weighing him down so badly. He can’t be much older than me but he seems tainted by more than the years he bears. Of course, I want to know what’s going on, but he doesn’t trust me enough to let me in. Like most of us, he has learned the value of trust the hard way over the past few months.

He said I could watch over Sylvia, the patient, tonight instead and insisted I leave him to his duties. I went back to the dorm and checked for those fellas I had seen earlier on the way. There was no sign of them; nothing except footprints across the wet courtyard. At least I hadn’t imagined them.

My good intentions were in tatters but at least I felt like I learned something. Not a good thing, but confirmation that everything here isn’t as ordered and neat as the General would have us believe. There’s relief in that; this place kept trying to look too good to be true, and now I know there’s something wrong it feels more real.

The question now is how much of it is facade and how much hides something else.

I’m not sure that working in the infirmary all night is a good idea any more.

For starters, I know they’re hiding things in there. Simon answers questions evasively out of habit, as if he thinks I’m trying to catch him out, and there are clearly things he’s not telling me. I even know what some of them are now.

Also, it’s as creepy as hell. We have enough power for a few lights, but they’re kept to a minimum and turned off after a few hours to save on diesel. The generators only run as long as they absolutely must. After about ten o’clock, everyone else is supposed to be asleep and the whole place is pitched into darkness.

In the back room where Sylvia is lying, I had a candle to burn so that I wasn’t completely without illumination. I nearly set fire to my hair twice when I leaned over to check on her. And honestly, candles are not great for lighting a room – their shadows are constantly shifting and they are nowhere near as powerful as TV and movies would have us believe. Dad used to call the ones on-screen ‘100-watt candles’.

Sylvia is not doing well. She’s wasted thin, her skin gone slack and grey the way it does when someone has lost a great deal of weight and is close to death. Her breath struggles in her throat. I don’t think she’s got long left. She has been unconscious for the past few days, Simon told me, and he doesn’t expect her to wake again. Not to real consciousness, anyway.

I nodded off at one point in the early hours, only to come awake convinced that she had moved. In the wavering candlelight, I was so sure that her arm flexed and that she was about to sit up. I jumped to my feet and stared at her, my heart hammering. Hands flexed, wishing for a weapon, and I squinted as I watched her, ready for that hungry yawn.

Breath rattled against the sides of her throat and her chest rose and fell, but that was all. She didn’t open her eyes; she didn’t sit up. She was still clinging to the last dregs of life. It was a long, heart-racing minute before I dared to step forward and touch her long enough to check her pulse. It fluttered under my fingertips like a moth shedding its own dust.

That was the perfect time for the thumping to start. I nearly leapt out of my skin; it certainly felt like a part of me was left behind, deflating and floating to the floor.

It wasn’t Sylvia; it wasn’t even in the room. It was distant, muffled by walls and space. The sort of sound that is only audible in the quiet depths of night. Daytime masks it with voices and footsteps, blends it into the background noise that we all filter out of our awareness.

But in the darkness, when the shape of the atmosphere changes and voices are stilled into the susurrus of sleep, it rises to find us. Like the pulse that drives us, unheard until it’s suddenly beating us around the ears.

It called to me. I wasn’t the only one awake in the building. I had to find out what it was.

I hear someone coming. I have to finish this – I have to get it out of my head, that sound, that thing I found. But I have to go. I’ll finish this soon.

I’m having to get sneakier in order to be able to post. I think I’ve found somewhere I won’t be disturbed this time. Where did I get to?

Oh, of course. The noise, the thumping drifting to me through the building.

I was torn. I was there to watch over Sylvia. Simon had left me with strict instructions and a set of restraints, should she pass away while I was watching her. That’s really what I was there for: to secure her in case she became part of our After-world nightmare. Hope of recovery had long since died, and she was past any comfort I could give her. She was close to the end and shouldn’t be left unattended.

But there was that thumping. Once I had picked it up I couldn’t put it down; my ears were tuned to it like it was my name across a crowded room. I tried to ignore it but it itched at my consciousness. It started to play tricks, moving away and coming closer, but it was always the same volume. It wasn’t moving at all. I was, though: pacing back and forth while I kept count. My mind kept trying to find patterns in the sound, but there was no regular tempo to track.

I had forgotten to ask for a flashlight. There was just the candle and the dawn a few hours away. It didn’t feel right leaving Sylvia in the dark, but I told myself that she was past knowing or caring about that stuff. I had to know what it was. I had to know what was thumping like that. It might have been just a shutter in the wind but it kept growing into all kinds of awfulness while I wasn’t looking.

As it turned out, it was almost as bad as I had feared.

I was determined not to be reckless. I put the restraints on Sylvia, just in case – the only reason Simon hadn’t put them on her already was respect for the not-yet-dead, along with a last dredge of hope that they wouldn’t be necessary. They weren’t going to hurt her. Then I took the candle and crept the empty corridors towards that sound.

It felt like hours before I finally found it. The sound shifts strangely at night and reflections kept leading me astray. I stumbled on the door to the basement by accident. I didn’t even know that there was a basement here; no-one had shown me that part. Now I know why.

I stared at the flickering shape of the steps and knew it was a bad idea to go down. I’ve seen horror movies; I know that you never go down into one on your own at night, especially when you’ve never been down there before and it’s a big old secret. Especially when there’s a creepy thumping coming from down there and you don’t know what’s causing it. It felt like all of my internal organs were trying to crawl out of my throat and escape, with my heart leading the charge.

Standing there, I wanted to run away. I wanted to pretend I couldn’t hear it down there, thump thump thumping at something solid. But all I could think was that whatever it was would chase me. It would follow me all the way back to wherever I thought was safe. It was a wolf, and you should never run from a canine, imaginary or otherwise.

So I hunkered down and crept down the steps, with the stupid candle failing to show me much of anything. I tried not to over-analyse every little scrap of information and failed – the steps had footprints on them and there was something sticky on one. It smelled awful down there, rotting and rising like fog as I slunk into it. A part of me knew that I was winding myself up and I’d roll my eyes later, but I couldn’t help it.

It was that kind of moment when something small skitters across your foot and you shit yourself, then you realise it’s just a mouse and laugh, telling yourself to stop being stupid. Except there was no skitter – nothing to let me realise and relax. Just that thumping, accompanied by a metallic clink now that I was closer. It rolled around and past me. It called me on, and I had to know. I had to know what it was.

It led me to a door. It wasn’t loud but I knew it was coming from the other side. There was a scraping in the fabric of the sound – metal, wood, and a scratching when the thumps hit. I stared at the door, at the handle, and couldn’t decide if it really was moving or if it was just the shifting candlelight. My internal organs had given up trying to desert me and were attempting to convince the rest of me to leave instead. I almost took them up on the idea.

I really didn’t want to open the door. I looked around and discovered a window cut into the wall beside it. I was relieved and terrified at the same time. There was no glass in it – just an empty hole cut into the panel. Big enough to crawl through. Big enough for anything to crawl through. I edged sideways, trying not to let my hand tremble as the candlelight fell inside and inched across the floor of the room beyond.

In my heart, I think I knew what it was. My eyes needed to see it for themselves before my brain would believe it, though. I had to see the truth to stop my mind from making up all kinds of awful things in its place, swelling a single monster into a flood threatening to burst over us while we slept.

It was just one: a lone shambler in the darkness. The metal clink was the chain harness criss-crossed over its torso, holding it bound in place. It was mindlessly straining against the restraint and the chains bit deep. Shattered ribs stuck out through the torn skin and it had leaked all over itself. When the chains shifted, they ripped pieces of flesh off, showing far too much bone. It didn’t notice.

It had stretched itself against and through the harness enough to reach the door, but only just. It smelled me and shifted its target, reaching out for the empty chunk of wall instead. I staggered back a step, trying not to cry out or throw up – air and dinner fought for space in my throat and for a moment neither of them fit.

Its hands were ruined. That’s what the scraping was – its hands breaking and wearing down against the door while it thump thump thumped.

It stretched its head towards me, teeth bared in case I might stray close enough for a bite. It didn’t make any noise – with the mess that its chest was in, there was no way it could hold enough air for a moan. Then there was a wet crack and I flinched, spilling hot wax onto my wrist.

That was enough. I had seen too much and turned tail to run. I barely remember the scramble up the stairs or closing the door behind me. I didn’t stop until I was in the back room with the soon-to-be shambler, Sylvia. My hands shook when I put the candle holder down and I peeled the wax off my skin. It was a while before I even felt the burn.

When Simon came to relieve me just after dawn, I didn’t mention what I had found. I had taken the restraints off Sylvia and reported a quiet night. I wasn’t sure I could handle whatever explanation he had to give me. Even in the orange daylight, my skin crawls every time I pause for thought in the infirmary, and I look around for that empty face and ruined, reaching hands.

I have to ask him. I have to confront him. I know I’m not going to like it, but hopefully hard facts will drive away the fear.

Right now, I’m feeling far too much like that candle flame, guttering in the dark.

We lost Sylvia last night.

Perhaps I should be more precise, considering the circumstances: she passed away. We know exactly where she is.

I got the news when I arrived this morning. No need for me to do anything; it was already dealt with. The body had been disposed of – that phrase turned my stomach and I tried not to think about chains and mindless moaning.

I was sent to change the sheets of the bed she had been lying and dying in. They were ripe, somehow more so than when she had been alive. I almost wished I was back in the kitchens, but I didn’t dare think about food in case it came up to say hello. With no water to wash them in, fabric like that is taken outside and stretched under the sun. Once the stains are dry, they’re beaten off.

It’s another of those things that it’s best not to think about too deeply.

After the sheets were stretched out and the bed was made up again, I went to find Simon. He was checking over one of the kids; a little boy had a temperature. It wasn’t dangerous, so the little one was sent back to his dorm and told to stay in bed. I don’t even know where the children’s dorm is. They’re not in with the women and we’re not supposed to stray.

The medic tried to avoid me. I think he knew that I knew what groaned silently in the basement. He’s subtle in the way he sends me off to do something and busies himself so I won’t disturb him, but that only works for so long.

Last night, I dreamt about the shambler in the basement. His face kept changing – one minute it was monstrous and stretched; the next it was Sax with sad eyes. He strained towards me and the chains cut into him, and he was Ben with bared teeth. He pushed and he pushed, tearing himself apart while I scrabbled at the wall behind me, at the door, but I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t run away. I looked back as he started to reach through the hole in the wall. He rasped my name and then the chains cut him into quadrants. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t scream. I was bottled up and choking on the horror of it. I could still hear the wet slap of his parts against the floor when I woke.

Just like I had to go down and see what was in the basement, I had to get an answer from Simon. It was a different kind of challenge but it still made my heart thump uncomfortably in my chest. And once again, I almost turned away from the door to my target. Inside, I sat down so that I could see Simon’s face more clearly and so I couldn’t run away so easily.

“Where was Sylvia’s body taken?” I asked him.

He said something evasive about it being dealt with, using that ‘disposed of’ phrase again.

“Is it in the basement with the other one?”

He looked at me and changed his mind about denying any knowledge of it. We both knew it was true. He sighed and shook his head wearily. “Yes, she is.” He offered nothing; he was going to make me work for my answers.

That was fine by me. I had questions, and a sick feeling in the back of my throat. “Why are you keeping them down there? Why aren’t you killing them?”

“Tests.”

I tried to think about what kinds of tests he could be doing on them. I can’t imagine how he would hope to get close enough to do any tests on a shambler. Also, most of the diagnostic equipment is ruined or lacking someone qualified to use it, even if they would dare to contaminate the medical equipment with poisoned shambler shards.

“The General wants to know how they work. The best way to kill them. How strong they are, how much damage they can take, how long it takes them to starve to death.”

I’m not sure if I felt sick because of the tests they would have to do to get that data, or because I could see why they would need that kind of information. “And what have you found?” I figured I might as well get everything I could while I was there. It’s not like it could make the nightmares any worse.

Simon shrugged and avoided my eyes. “They get more frantic as they get hungrier. I don’t think we’ve ever had one starve to death – they tend to tear themselves to pieces first, trying to get to food. They won’t eat each other, only meat from people who aren’t or haven’t been Sick. Bleeding seems to weaken them eventually, but it takes a long time. I assume you know the best way to kill them.”

I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No-one knows, except me, the General, and a handful of others. So many got sick that we didn’t want anyone else to know.” What happened to their friends.

He didn’t say it, but my mind filled that part in for him. I can imagine the chaos that would cause – friends and family being tortured to death in the basement. Though they can’t feel it, though it might be justified, it’s still wrong.

Then my mind tripped over something he had said. It was waving a little flag and I paused to turn it over. “How do you know that they don’t eat people who have the Sicknesss?”

Simon glanced at me for a heartbeat and didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to answer.

My stomach disappeared into the floor between my feet. Tests. I couldn’t sit any more and shot up to pace around the room. “And how do you know what they do eat? Did you test that, too?”

“No!” His denial was quick. I suppose it’s something. “They showed us without needing to be asked. What do you think we are?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

Again, he looked away and I got the feeling there was more he wasn’t telling me. I wanted to press him, but there was a stubborn set to his shoulders. I had got everything he was willing to give, so I left him alone. A fella arrived a short while later with an injured wrist and provided us with enough of a distraction that we found excuses not to talk for the rest of the day.

There’s a monster in the basement and it’s hungry. They’re keeping it hungry to see what it does. Soon, a new one will wake and keep it company, not that either of them will notice.

Simon knows the people those monsters used to be. He nursed them all through their Sickness and then chained them downstairs. He’s a lot stronger than I am; I couldn’t do it. No wonder he looks so terrible all the time.

I think the worst part is that I’m not as horrified by it as I thought I’d be. I can see why they’re doing it. But those monsters used to be people. We’re supposed to bury and honour our dead, or raise a pyre to the heavens for them, not poke them with sticks to see what they do. Not that.

The thing I am most sure about right now is that I don’t want to become like Simon. It’s one of those compromises that I don’t want to make.

I’ll hold onto my horror, for fear of who I’ll be without it.

The Seekers are being slowly pulled apart at the edges.

It seems that none of us are working the kitchens any more. Tia has been moved to a cleaning crew, keeping the dorms livable. Jersey now works in sanitation. I’ve hardly seen either of them, apart from at night when we pile into our bunks. I haven’t seen the boys since that time at dinner.

I caught up with the ex-Wolverine today. She’s more unhappy than I’ve ever seen her. I’d say that she’s close to a dangerous depression, except that she tends to vent her frustrations on everyone else rather than aiming it at herself. She was only too ready to unload on me when I asked her how she was doing.

She’s helping out with the water recycling, which sounds like a good thing until she mentions where they get the water to recycle. The sewage system here has been hooked up to a treatment vat, which then feeds back into everything else. No wonder the water here tastes a little strange – it was one of those things that we never thought to question, too glad that there’s water to drink in the first place.

Of course, my first thought was to wonder why they didn’t allow us to wash anything, if they could recycle the water we used. I guess they have their reasons. I think that was my brain trying to get past the revulsion.

“I spent the whole day breathing in other people’s shit,” Jersey was saying. “Only not the bitching and the whining – the real stuff.” She paused in her methodical stabbing of her food to look at me. “Do I smell of it? I can’t even tell any more.”

I paused and tried to filter the scents in the room. Smell isn’t one of the senses that I pay a lot of attention to any more. I used to be so concerned about it, always wearing perfume and making sure I was clean. Now, everyone is unwashed, stained, soiled. Dirty and grimy and a little bit over-ripe. The latrines positively hum with their burden of scent – some of the ‘sewage system’ is a series of buckets that need to be emptied regularly. I’m so inured to the everyday stink that it’s not easy to pick up other things, and it’s never a good idea to breathe too deep in a room full of people and questionable food. .

“No,” I told her. It seemed like the safest answer.

She grunted and forced down a few mouthfuls. “You know, they usually give out latrine duty as a punishment. So how come I got stuck there? I didn’t do anything. One more day of this shit and I’m going on strike.”

I told her that they probably had a shortage of naughty hands and just needed the help. Neither of us really believed it but who wants to rock the boat? She’s doing as she’s asked under sufferance, but at least she’s doing it. I don’t know what will happen if she refuses to work. Something tells me that they won’t appreciate it. Stick with it, I told her. It won’t be forever. Temporary.

That’s what this place feels like to me – a step to something else. But we’re not going anywhere, not moving towards anything; we’re all working to maintain what we’ve got right here. Maybe that’s why I can’t settle: I can’t resolve the contradiction that underlies Haven. So many promises, so much work to do, but so few real answers until you go down to look in the creepy basement.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t have a place yet. I feel part of nothing, separated from my friends and superfluous. The infirmary doesn’t need me and everyone else is okay. Haven would get along fine without me.

I can’t tell if this is my own selfishness talking, or if this is how Haven wears us down. Today, I looked at Jersey considering rebellion and wondered.