The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

I’ve been riding a bike for so long that I feel stuck in that shape now. My legs are stiff and my back crunches when I straighten it. My whole body has been juddered into pieces from the roughness of the ride.

That first night, we left Haven behind us and kept going until dawn seeped over the horizon to stain us blood-red. The bikes rattled off the side of the road and pulled up in front of a diner in a cloud of heavy dust. I’m not sure why we pulled off the road – it’s not like there was any traffic to get away from.

The pause lasted long enough for us to catch our breaths and take stock. We had lost one of the cutouts at the gates – I don’t know his name, just that it was the one sitting behind Dale. A bullet from the sentries got him, we think. Iona and another of the cutouts had been hit too – those on the backs of the bikes had been most vulnerable, protecting the drivers with their bodies. The drivers all had scratched and scraped faces from the explosion and debris.

We patched up the badly injured as best we could, and repacked some of the supplies where bullets had punctured them. We didn’t talk much. There wasn’t anything to say. The cutouts were tight-lipped and didn’t look at anyone – I think they were feeling the loss of their friend. I couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze, knowing that if I did, I’d see my father’s face as he said goodbye. He was a gape in the group for me, a palpable absence that sucked like the hole in an ice-cold mint. I couldn’t look into the abyss at that moment; we needed to move on, put as much distance between us and Haven as possible before the rain hit. We didn’t see any signs of pursuit but we weren’t going to waste time; it would only take them a few hours to fix the engines the boys had sabotaged. We had to make the most of our headstart while it lasted; we would be able to collapse later.

We topped up the fuel tanks, then hit the road again. We headed northeast from Haven, heading obliquely towards the University. If we were going to be followed, we didn’t want to lead the General’s men straight there. We hadn’t told our tagalong cutouts where we were going, or why, and they hadn’t asked. We just kept riding, weaving around abandoned vehicles, and then weaving from exhaustion as the afternoon wore on. It was a relief when the clouds cluttered up in the sky and forced us to find somewhere to shelter from the rain.

We broke into an apartment block and hauled the bikes into the foyer. It was strange, being in a place like that again, surrounded by the debris of shattered lives and a long-ago Christmas. The doors had all been busted open ahead of us; we weren’t the only looters to rake this place, but we were the only ones using it that night.

The quiet time was eerie. We settled down in apartments, on couches and borrowed beds, and ate our food cold. We looked at each other and checked our hurts. I had a cut on my cheek I hadn’t even felt, probably from shrapnel when the gates blew, and my hands had been scoured by the dirt and dust of our ride. Few had thought to wear gloves. My hair was so tangled form the wind that I couldn’t bear to think about brushing it out.

But there were familiar faces around me again. There were friends that I hadn’t seen in too long and people settling into well-known patterns. Jersey made a nest for herself on an overstuffed chair, hunching up in a way only she found comfortable. Thorpe and Dale bedded down near each other but not together – if they reached out, their hands might touch. And for the first time since it wasn’t about body heat or lies, Matt curled up with me for the night to sleep. I used his shoulder for a pillow and cried into it for a little while, before I was too exhausted to do anything other than fall into an aching slumber.

I forgot about the thing that Dad gave me until the second time we stopped for the rain. The boys went up to the roof of the building to look around – I was about to follow, but I put my hand in my pocket and felt the little object. Missing him was a sudden pain in my chest and I went into a side room to see what he had slipped into my pocket before we parted.

It was a small scrap of paper folded into an envelope, the creases hurried and off-kilter. I was touched that Dad had bothered to make it even though he’d clearly had no time. If he had mused over it, it would have been crisply folded and grubby with being rubbed by oil-stained fingers over and over. I looked at it for a long moment before I picked one of the sides open and shook the contents onto my palm.

My heart wanted to stop. Give up and stop right there. Sitting on my palm, bright and worn, was a simple gold ring. My dad’s wedding ring, the one he’d worn for thirty-odd years. The one he’d continued to wear even after my mother walked out on us. He’d kept it on and held onto that hope that one day, she’d be back and we’d be a family again. Even though we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t want to show that pale, naked stripe on his finger to the world, never wanted to say that he was single again. He wasn’t available – he was and always would be taken. It wasn’t just about her: he was part of a family and that was who he was.

And he’d given it up. He had passed it to me, the way he should have when he died.

The wrongness of the timing – the fact that he wasn’t dead when I saw him last – was what broke me down in the end. He wasn’t expecting to see me again. He walked away, knowing he might be killed for what he was about to do for us. For me. He had said goodbye to me for the last time and I hadn’t even known it.

I could feel all the words I should have said to him queueing behind my teeth and backing up down my throat, throttling me. I slid off the chair I was sitting on so that I could feel the cold solidity of the floor underneath me as I curled up. I had promised to go back for him but he didn’t think he’d be there if I did. He was gone. I’m never going to see him again.

I was huddled and sobbing when someone found me. Legs hugged up and the heels of my hands pressing into my eyes. I couldn’t hear anything; there was a vague awareness of footsteps leaving and another set coming in. I wasn’t even sure who it was when arms slid around me and pulled me sideways into a steady chest. It was Matt – of course it was – come to comfort me. He held onto me and rocked me until I had sobbed myself raw. Then I had to explain to him what was wrong. I showed him the ring and managed to say whose it was, and then I broke all over again.

I don’t know how long I was there. The rain came and went, the sun went down, and I still couldn’t make sense of what it meant. Matt stayed with me, holding me and stroking my hair, listening when I managed to stumble words out. The rest of the group left us alone, giving me space until it was time to move on. I was grateful to them for that.

The ring doesn’t fit me. It’s too big for my fingers – I have to wear it on my thumb. Now it’s a bright reminder that catches my eye when I ride and tugs painfully in my chest. As the days pass, I’m getting used to it, though the hurt isn’t lessening yet.

We’ve been pushing on as long as our energy would allow. We have taken to sleeping while it rains and driving through the dark hours, after the puddles have dried. It’s warm enough now that the surface water is mostly gone an hour or two before dawn. We’ve had to scrape for fuel enough to keep going, but the further we get from Haven, the more untapped supplies we find.

We’re not doing so well on food and water. Most buildings have been broken into, their cupboards pillaged, and we’re almost out of supplies now. We stop more and more frequently to check behind any unbroken doors we come across, just in case. It hasn’t yielded much – most of them are businesses and offices, and might have a water cooler with a half-full bottle but nothing in the way of edibles.

We’re making do. We’re falling back into our old patterns, remembering how to be Seekers again. It’s hard and hungry, but the only time we look back is to check for someone chasing us.

We haven’t seen any signs of pursuit from Haven for a few days now. Some of us are daring to believe they’ve stopped coming.

In that first long run, after the bullets ran out of legs to chase us, we didn’t see a whisper of a cutout or a military vehicle grinding down the miles. The sabotage on their vehicles gave us a good headstart. The boys removed all the distributor caps and hid them – or something like that.

After that first day of fleeing, we climbed to the roof of an apartment tower under clouds thickening with rain. We peered towards Haven and saw nothing but empty streets, broken cars and abandoned lives. No sparks of life showed themselves – not a whisper of movement or a flicker of light. Just the still and the quiet, stretching out from our feet to the horizon. It felt like Haven ceased to exist the moment it fell away from our rearview mirrors.

Haven and everyone else. The streets were bereft of bodies; even the hurried slink of stray cats was missing. After the bustle of the army base, the world feels like a gaping wound, empty and unable to heal.

It took me a while to realise what else was missing. No signs of life is one thing, but there weren’t any signs of unlife either. Not a shuffle or a lurch, or a hungry groan floating across the city. Where did all the shamblers go? They can’t all have followed us to Haven and thrown themselves on the bullets and bats of the cutouts. They hide from the rain, so the acid probably didn’t get them, unless they tried to trek across open land. They’re stupid enough to do that.

It was the third day when we saw it. High up on another rooftop, desperately searching the landscape for a whisper of movement, we found what we were looking for: a cloud of dust billowing up between buildings, moving with the kind of steady purpose that only vehicles can produce. It had to be them: the soldiers, the Generals men, cutouts instructed to find us and… what? Kill us? Bring us back? What did they hope to gain from finding us?

None of us wanted to find out. We hurried back inside and barricaded the building, trying to make it look like no-one was home. There was no fire or flashlight for us after dark fell, just softly murmured words and the comfort of warm bodies together.

We got up earlier than usual the next morning and set out in the deep dark. The streets were still damp and we had to ride spread out so that we didn’t accidentally spray each other with acid from our tyres. We pushed on through the whole day, stopping only to refuel body and bike, until the last minute before the rain. We dove into the first building with an open door, did a quick headcount, and counted ourselves lucky. All day, I wondered when the prickle of bullets would come, or the roar of engines overtaking us. What would we do if they caught up? Scatter, flee? Turn and fight? How much would we have left to lose by then?

The next morning, we moved on again without delay, despite the lack of signs of pursuit. We stopped to climb a particularly tall apartment tower to see where our pursuers might be, but once again, there was no sign of them. Not a single shadow moved. We looked at each other, wondering what it might mean, and lingered to stare at the ruinscape for a little longer. We left when the strangeness started to get to us – it prickled at my skin all the way to the bikes and I was glad of the roar in my ears and the wind tearing my eyes. We felt like the only ones left alive in the whole city.

We’ve been taking a snaking route, trying to make it harder for anyone to follow us. That’s why it was taking us so long to get to the coast. Straight lines are predictable, the others said. Be unpredictable. Don’t lead them to where you’re going. Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was one of the cutouts who said that. Jonah wouldn’t give us bad advice, but I don’t know about his friends.

Our path took us through familiar haunts. I recognised a street corner near the mall we had found the Rats in. I had no desire to look them up – the last time we had been there, most of the kids were dying of the Sickness. I didn’t want to look into the empty spaces where they used to be. I said nothing and we turned away from the mall, heading eastwards again. Other ruins assumed familiarity as we passed them. I knew I’d only remember things we’d lost and decided not to dwell on them. We were trying to move on – the past was dead and had to stay there. Memories were too heavy and sharp-edged.

I had agreed to our course without truly realising what it meant. Northeast, butting right up against the coast. It took us towards the district where my home had been, the place I had grown up, where I had lived with my dad. If we had turned north, we would have passed right by it.

I didn’t want to go there. I’ve been back once already. I’d found its clues and taken what I had wanted of my old life. I had followed the path it offered me to a reunion, and now that was gone too. I couldn’t look at it, at the mockery of my childhood, the stripped place I used to call home. I would have begged the others not to turn north if I had to.

This morning, we had to make that choice, staring through salty air at the rush of seawater against rocks. North to lead the cutouts astray, or south towards the friends we left behind so many weeks ago.

The cutouts haven’t caught up with us. We haven’t seen any sign of them since that one glimpse of shapes in a dust storm. No more clouds, no sounds of distant engines, no clicking of cocking guns over us while we slept. Our demons fell behind and we didn’t encourage them to catch up. We ducked and wove, unsure if we were deluding them or ourselves.

We’re not even sure they saw us at all. All of this could have been for nothing. Experience and survival make us paranoid – the hardest thing is to take that first, brave step in the direction that might hold a known danger. But at the same time, running scared from shadows and figments is foolish. We needed to stop and reassess things.

I pushed to go south. I know the location was pressing on me, and from the glances he gave me, Matt knew it, too. There wasn’t a lot of resistance – I wasn’t the only one looking forward to friendly faces and a familiar roof over our heads. A chance to stop moving and get our breath back.

Seekers wouldn’t be Seekers if we didn’t argue about it, though. The lack of food around here makes tempers short but it’s nothing worse than we’ve had before. We had a good go-around over it, tossing reasons at each other, and finally decided to take a chance. Turn south. Hope that Haven had given up on us and weren’t going to search for us any more. Hope we weren’t bringing the army to the friends we had tried so hard to keep safe.

It’s a relief for me – it’s selfish, I know. We put a good distance under our tyres today, weaving back on ourselves to head for the University. It feels like space I can breathe in. It feels like real progress, heading to something rather than away from it.

We’re on our way, and we’re leaving our shadows behind us.

Another day, riding on. It’s just us: the old Seekers and our new additions. We feel smaller and stranger than we did before, even though our numbers are greater than when we reached Haven.

There’s Thorpe, as stoic as always. His affection is a hand clapped on your shoulder and a gruff word. Dale has easier smiles and a casually-slung arm around someone, though not so much with Thorpe. I think he knows his boundaries there. They’re still a constant pair, though, always sitting together when we stop to eat.

Matt is Matt. More relaxed now we’re away from the cutouts, and quicker to slip his arms around me when we’re not riding the bikes. His leg isn’t getting much better with all the riding, but he’s managing with it. I’ll be glad when we can switch the bikes for more practical vehicles, or get to the University and can rest. Whichever comes first, so he can let it heal.

Jersey is grumpy and coarse, the first one to burp at a meal. She pokes at Iona every now and then, watching out for the girl the only way she knows how. Her affection is rough around the edges and pretends to be more hard-earned than it actually is. I think Iona relies on her more than Jersey realises, even though she meets the snappy attitude with a vague smile and an offer to fix her hair. She diffuses Jersey in a way that I catch myself smiling at sometimes. Luckily, the ex-Wolverine hasn’t noticed me doing that yet. I have to be careful not to let that change.

Iona does as she’s told, which makes it easier to keep this pack moving. Her bullet-wound isn’t too serious but I know the pain must pull at her. She never complains, not even when she’s pale and quiet with it. We’re keeping it clean as best we can and there’s no sign of infection yet. She’s like a white flower with a bruised petal – somehow, the damage doesn’t detract from her purity though it is a great shame. She’ll come right again, I’m sure.

Jonah often bears a dark expression, I think for the one we lost. I’ve tried to talk to him a couple of times but he hasn’t been interested in sharing. He seems to be the spokesperson for our cutouts, keeping a close eye on them and their condition. He makes requests on their behalf and tries to ensure they have everything they need. We haven’t been skimping with them, giving them a fair share of the food and water. What would be the point in starving them? They’re with us now, and maybe they’ll become a real part of the group, given time.

We don’t know them very well yet. There are long silences in the group as we all adjust to the distance from Haven, physical and emotional. The cutouts don’t speak much at all, except for the perfunctory please and thank you. At least they’re polite.

The one who rides behind me on the bike is Bobby, though I think I’ve heard him referred to as Rascal or Radical by the other soldiers. A dark-skinned fella, maybe twenty-one, with a cheeky streak in him. He’s keeping his head down, but sometimes I wonder about the way he hangs onto me on the bike. I’m not sure why, but we have kept to our original pairings when we travel – maybe it’s intertia, or maybe it’s just another issue that we don’t want to deal with yet.

The other cutout, the one with the bullet in his back, is Warren. He’s about the same age as Jonah – roughly thirty – and much more disgruntled. I can’t tell if that’s just how he is, or if it’s the pain he’s having to deal with right now. We’re tending him as best we can, but we don’t dare to dig the bullet out. Hopefully Masterson will be able to sort that out when we get to him.

So that’s our little band right now. We’re still not comfortable with each other; we’ve talked in general terms about where we’re going and why, but no-one has been eager to share the details with the newcomers. I’m not the only one who wonders if we will wake up to find a couple of the bikes missing one pre-dawn hour, especially now that the supplies are getting low and everyone is feeling the gnaw of hunger in the belly.

I should try to get Jonah on his own and talk to him. Try to find out what they were hoping for in leaving Haven, what they’re looking for out here on the lonely roads. If they want to stay with us, or go their own way. No-one would begrudge them that, though there might be blows over what supplies they got to take with them. We still haven’t given them their weapons back, so we feel like we have the upper hand. I’m afraid of what might happen if a confrontation did occur – trained soldiers against us, who have only known the scraps and scrapes out here in the After.

In the meantime, it’s time to go and find our old friends. It’s time to link up and look for something new. There are intelligent people there; they’re bound to have thought of options by now.

I just hope they’re still there waiting for us, even though we’ve been gone for weeks without news. Sally and Masterson, Kostoya and Conroy, and little Nugget. So many others – it’s hard to think about all the ones we left behind there. I wish I remembered what their faces looked like. I wish we had better news to bring them.

I just hope they’re all right.

Yesterday, I was missing the sight of people outside of this little group. Today, I have a bit more perspective on the subject.

I never thought I’d be relieved to see shamblers. There was something especially eerie about their absence – it was easy to believe that living people might be hiding or have escaped elsewhere. But shamblers are stupid. They fumble about for food and batter their way in straight lines towards their targets. They’re smart enough to get in out of the rain, but that’s it.

The notion that something had wiped them out was terrifying. What could do that? Who could do that? And a lack of shamblers suggested a lack of people around to become them – new ones are always being made by the Sickness. So where are all the acid-splashed victims?

I don’t know about that last question. We still haven’t seen any other living people, distant or otherwise.

The pod of shamblers we found were stumbling listlessly in a street, their heads lifting and wavering as they searched for scents. Their skin was blackened and cracked from exposure to the sunlight, their hands ruined from grabbing heedlessly at food and obstacle alike. Their faces were slack and vacant, with mouths torn from trying to chew their way to their prey.

They didn’t notice us at first. They didn’t hear the noise of our arrival, engines rumbling up the street and slithering to a stop as we rounded the corner. Then the wind shifted direction slightly and carried the aroma of long-unwashed bodies over to them. Fresh meat, full of the right chemical to sate the imbalance in their broken bodies. More than one of them groaned in hollow hunger as they turned laboriously to lurch towards us.

I thought, briefly, of little Debbie. Of her pale skin burnt by a sun she was suddenly allergic to, with blood and bone tainting her pretty nightdress.

Then we were spinning the bikes around and heading back the way we’d come. Dale left black streaks on the tarmac as he made the rear wheel spin in a perfect donut. My own turn was more cumbersome but more than fast enough to take us away from the shamblers’ already-reaching hands.

On motorbikes, it wasn’t hard to leave the shambling dead in our dust. We turned purposefully downwind, to make it harder for them to track us, but I still wonder if they’re still doggedly walking on our path. Determinedly following the only scrap of meal they’ve seen in a while with the focus of a body that knows nothing else any more.

The shamblers changed something in the group, making us huddle closer together and loosening something at the same time. Bobby was confident enough to grumble over dinner while we listened to the rain from inside what was once a hardware store.

“We should’ve taken them out,” he said. It’s possibly the longest sentence I’ve heard from a cutout since we left Haven.

“Waste of ammunition,” Thorpe said in his usual argument-flattening tone.

“It’s not like we have a store any more,” Dale added, ever more diplomatic. It gave Bobby something to think about; they’re not used to having such limited supplies. Just like they’re not used to the tiny meals we’re rationing out at the moment.

Things fell quiet for the rest of the meal. It wasn’t until later that the subject came up again, in private while we were bedding down. I must have been quieter than usual, because Dale stopped by the patch of floor where I was putting down blankets.

“I’m sure he’s all right, y’know,” he said. He seemed to assume that I was preoccupied by something specific, but I couldn’t make the connection.

“Who?”

“Your dad. He knew what he was doing.”

My stomach clenched uncomfortably around the dregs of dinner. I nodded, and then frowned as I wondered why he would think I was worrying about Dad at that moment. It could be because I’ve been moping over leaving him behind since we left Haven, but that didn’t feel true in this case.

“What’s that got to do with the shamblers?”

Dale had been about to move on and stopped again, looking at me quizzically. “You don’t know?” Clearly I didn’t. “That was the distraction he went to create.”

I stared at him, horror seeping down to my toes. I would have thrown up if I thought we could spare the food. Dad released the shamblers in the basement to keep the cutouts busy while we escaped. How did he get close enough to do that without getting hurt? They’d tear him apart before he could touch the chains that bound them. Thinking about it, all I could see was hungry mouths and bodies with familiar faces breaking against a chainlink harness.

Dale put his hand on my shoulder to make me look at him. “I’m sure he’s fine. He got the shamblers out. He’s a smart guy; knows how to look after himself.”

I tried to make it make sense and wound up just nodding dumbly. My throat wouldn’t work; it was having a hard enough time just letting me breathe, never mind forming words. He gave me a squeeze and went on his way, leaving me to my thoughts.

Dale was right – the shamblers had been set free. I remembered the alarms going off, the hurried scramble to action in the compound. Something awful had definitely happened there.

I couldn’t shake the image of Dad being their first meal, left bitten and bloody in the basement while they sought other prey. Even if he survived, what would the General do to him? Freeing the lurching dead is yet another transgression, earning even more punishment on his head. It’s why he gave me his ring. It’s why he didn’t think he’d ever see me again.

We shouldn’t have left him there. I should have made him come. I want to go back for him. I need to see his face again, hear him tell me to stop being silly.

I’m so sorry, Dad. One day, I’m gonna go back to Haven and take you out of there. I promise.

We’re almost to the University. So close, and yet struggling to make headway. A mechanical fault delayed us this morning, with painful results and stretching out our travelling time yet again. A bullet had wormed its way into an engine during our escape and leaked fuel all over it. How it didn’t catch fire before now, I don’t know. We never noticed it using more fuel than the other bikes, and no-one smelt the fumes coming off it. I guess we were just too busy to notice before it was too late.

It was Thorpe’s bike. He swung on and kicked it started, and there was a strange ‘whoomph’ sound. The next thing I knew, there was a flare of light, he was rolling on the ground and people were shouting. Someone called for a blanket; I was rolling up my bedding when it happened and ran to the bikes to throw it on him. Between a couple of us, we put him out. He wasn’t hurt badly, thank goodness; only his hands were exposed, and they’ve been cleaned and bound carefully. His jeans are toast, though, and his boots didn’t survive well either. I don’t think the burns are too bad, though it’s always hard to tell with him.

The bike was harder to put out. A couple of the boys sprinted off to look for a fire extinguisher. The rest of us could do nothing other than watch as it burned, trying not to think too hard about what was strapped to the back of it. They were supplies we couldn’t afford to lose but the heat was too high for anyone to try to save them. The fuel cans strapped to it ruptured, sending a gout of flame up and spilling the mess into a puddle. We all skittered further away from it, shying from the pool of light and shoving our untouched gear along with us. I noticed Dale quietly holding the blankets around Thorpe, asking him for the sixth time if he was okay.

The first extinguisher brought back to us was just water, useless on an oil-based fire; it would only have spread the problem into a wider area. The second one promised it would work, though, and Thorpe gave the boys instructions on how best to use it. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that he used to be a fireman until something like this happened. I get the feelnig that if he hadn’t been hurt, he would have had the blaze out long before the others managed it. After much fighting and shouting, we were left with a foamy, blackened bike and a dispersing pillar of dirty smoke.

If anyone was still looking for us, that was a big pointer over our location. I saw Jonah exchange glances with the other cutouts and asked him what was wrong – he’s the one who pointed that out to me. I told him that we couldn’t worry about that just then – we had more important things to be doing.

It was a while before the bike was cool enough to touch. We salvaged what little we could from the bike, but there wasn’t much left. The perishable parts of it had melted and the dials were cracked. The packs on the back were a twisted mess, their contents spilt and ruined. So that was it: a burned bike listing to one side in a charred puddle, smoking slightly.

There are too many of us to fit on four bikes. We were back to looking for other vehicles, breaking into cars and offroaders, looking for one that we can get going. We had been reluctant to spend that kind of time before, not with Haven’s pressure driving us forward. It took most of the day, but we wound up with a station wagon that runs just fine and is big enough to take most of our gear.

It forced us to reshuffle the pack. Thorpe, Matt and Warren rode in the car with their various hurts and Iona in the back. Jersey, Dale, Bobby and Jonah drove the bikes, and I took a break to ride pillion. I wound up behind Jonah, my old escort. Thorpe gets all frowny when someone else rides with Dale, Jersey is prickly, and Jonah is familiar.

We didn’t get far but I felt like we made progress. The injured were more comfortable and the cutouts got a bit more freedom, as if perhaps we might trust them. We couldn’t move as fast, as we had to find paths through the abandoned vehicles for the car to get through. We’re getting there slowly, one step at a time, days trickling under our tyres.

It’s strange how quickly we fell back into our old, familiar patterns. Today, we felt like Seekers again.

We don’t scrape ourselves out of bed before dawn any more. None of us can be bothered to stir up the fire so we can see what we’re doing, and we don’t have flashlight batteries to waste. Too many cracked shins and bruised elbows have punctuated our mornings, and with no signs of pursuit, we’re allowing ourselves to relax a little. Just until dawn oozes over the horizon, sending ruddy light stumbling into wherever we’re holing up.

There’s resistance to the movement towards complacency. Haven looms large in our rearview minds, sending out posses of Scouts to track us down and bring us back. Or just shoot us in the street, like they did to those people asking them for help. No-one wants to risk being caught.

It doesn’t seem like they’re coming. Not after so long – it’s been over a week now. They know we’re no threat to them – at least, I can’t imagine what we could do out here that would make any difference to them. We might send more people their way, but they’re equipped to deal with that. Shamblers don’t take directions. So what do they lose by letting us go free? Other than what we’ve already taken? What would they gain? Some retribution, perhaps? Is that worth the fuel they would have to spend to get to us now?

I was determined to talk to Jonah today. He was packing up with the other two cutouts this morning, and I noticed that they are still segregated from the rest of us. They’re getting closer to us a little at a time, but they still keep themselves separate.

I shouldn’t call them ‘cutouts’ any more. That’s not what they are – they turned their back on that when they asked to come along when we left. They have names now: Jonah and Bobby and Warren. They’re starting to have personalities beyond military stiffness and duty, though we don’t know them yet. They don’t talk to us much but we’re growing used to them anyway.

Before today, I hadn’t noticed the erosion in their uniforms. In Haven, they were always very proper in their dress, identical shirts, t-shirts, and combat trousers, tucked in just so, with neat creases and the belt’s shiny buckle fastened just right in between. Since the escape, that has been slipping away. We’ve all been appropriating clothes from the homes we use at night and they’re no exception.

Jonah’s belt was used to lash packs to a bike when one of the ropes snapped. He has a leather one now, old and scarred. Warren’s t-shirt was thoroughly bloodstained after he got shot, so he’s wearing a new one, covered in very un-military slogans. He wears his shirt unbuttoned over the t-shirt, mostly because of his injured shoulder. Somehow, Iona ended up with Bobby’s shirt and wears it like a jacket, with the cuffs covering her hands and the tails reaching almost to her knees. Bobby has a denim jacket now and thinks himself very cool.

Their belts and hands haven’t borne weapons since we left Haven – we don’t trust them that far yet. They haven’t asked for their guns back either, which is good. It’s a battle no-one wants to have.

They’re all crumpled, and a couple of them bear streaks of ash after yesterday’s adventure with fuel and fire. Their military lines are blurring and I like that. They seem more like people. They feel closer to being future Seekers, but this morning I stopped and looked at them, and wondered. Is that even what they want now?

So I went to Jonah and asked him. I picked a moment when his friends were off packing their vehicles; for some reason, I feel uncomfortably outnumbered when they’re all together. I’m familiar with Jonah. I feel like we have some kind of connection. And now that my debt to him has been paid – by allowing him and his friends to escape with us – we’re on a more even footing.

“What are you guys looking for out here?” I asked him. Everyone was busy, so I lent a hand while he tied a pack to the back of his bike. It was sadly empty.

“Same as you,” he said. He barely looked at me, but when he did, there was curiosity.

“Are you looking to join us? Permanently?”

“Maybe. Depends what that means.”

He seemed to be looking for terms, but it’s not like we have a contract all drawn up and ready. We make this stuff up as we go. I had to stop and think about that.

“It’s what you see. We look after each other. We share everything.”

“Everything?”

I caught the twist in his tone and clarified. “Supplies.”

“Right.”

“Everyone’s equal.”

“Except you.”

“It doesn’t work like that. You haven’t seen us argue yet.”

“So we get a say?”

“If everyone agrees you can stay, yes.”

“And the weapons?”

I suppressed a sigh. Of course he had to ask. I hate that they’re so important. “We don’t know you guys, Jonah. We don’t know if we can trust you or not. Who’s to say you won’t call Haven down on us? Or decide to take everything we have?”

“We say.”

“And we’re taking you on your word. But we’re not stupid enough to let you be armed until we’re sure.”

He scowled, not liking that at all. It occurred to me that we had continued with these guys for far too long – this conversation should have been had days ago. Tomorrow, we’ll reach the University, and we’ve talked about what we’re hoping to find there, right in front of the cutouts. If they were going to leave, we should have kept quiet on all of that. We’ve led them right to our friends. The cat is not only out of the bag – it’s had time to screw the tomcat, get fat and have kittens.

I looked at Jonah and then laid a hand on his forearm to make him look at me. “We’ll talk about it all tonight. All of us. Okay?”

“You think that’ll make a difference?”

I shrugged and pulled my hand back. “I hope so. We can get stuff out into the open. You too.”

Jonah didn’t look too happy about that and I was abruptly frustrated with him. I was trying! What more did he want?

“It would help if you guys said something. About why you left. Right now, we don’t know anything about you or your motives. Why don’t you help everyone out and say something for a change?”

“I thought you liked it when I kept my mouth shut,” he said, words like a slap.

“This isn’t Haven. We do things differently.”

That’s when I walked away, before words I’d regret fell out of my mouth. Ten minutes later, we pushed the car started and climbed onto the bikes, and were on our way. True to form, the cutouts – ex-Havenites? Ex-soldiers? I need to think of a better name for them – have continued to keep their own council. Soon, it’ll be time for dinner and the Talk about them.

Here’s hoping that something better comes of that.

I managed to get everyone together last night, and keep them together long enough to talk. It wasn’t easy – we were all tired and yearning for our beds, as hard and uncomfortable as they might be.

When I gathered my courage to start, the flutter in my chest knew it wasn’t destined to go smoothly. Maybe I should have listened to it, but I think I’m glad that we went ahead with it anyway. It needed to be done.

After dinner was the best time – everyone was grouped together anyway and relatively comfortable. I stood up and they all looked at me in that way they always used to – the Seekers to listen and the cutouts with their impatience and wariness. I’m not sure which of those expressions was the hardest to face.

I explained why we needed to talk: we had to decide whether the three soldiers were going to stay with us or not. I turned to Jonah first and asked him whether they wanted to stay – that was the first hurdle we all had to get over. There was no point in us all arguing about it unless the men actually wanted to become Seekers in the first place.

Jonah looked at his friends, then stood up.

“You all know why we left Haven,” he said. I was afraid that he was going to stop there but, to my relief, he continued. “It didn’t have the future it claimed and it was starting to come apart. I don’t know if any of you saw it, but there was a lot of unrest in the ranks.”

I hadn’t seen that, not until I found out that I was Jonah’s punishment. The soldiers did a good job of being faceless cutouts, homogenous in intention and action. I wondered how many unhappy soldiers hadn’t come with us.

“We’re sick of the ‘accidents’ that kept happening. We’ve all been caught up in it.” He gestured to his friends to clarify his ‘we’. “Or know someone who was hurt by it.”

I looked at the scar on his jaw and wondered if that’s how he got it: some fake accident to hide the fact that the Converter is nothing but a device to keep everyone too busy to notice the end of everything. I wondered if they knew the guys killed in the last Converter ‘accident’. They must have.

“We’re looking for something better. You were leaving anyway, so we thought we’d come along.” Jonah shrugged. “We might find that something better on our own, but we’re far more likely to find it with you. We have a lot to offer the group.”

He didn’t list their abilities; he didn’t need to and we all knew it. Everyone was perfectly aware of what they could do.

He gave me a pointed look and said clearly, “We’d like to be equal members of the group.”

It was a dig at me but I let it go. He said what needed to be said; personal stuff could wait for later. Instead, I looked around at the Seekers, trying to gauge their expressions. They were mixed, showing doubt and distrust, and a hefty share of wariness. Iona was smiling blissfully but that’s nothing unusual.

“We’ve all seen what Haven’s soldiers do outside of its walls,” Jersey said. Trust her to be the first to weigh in with something negative. “How do we know you won’t be like that?”

The soldiers were confused at first – we had to explain the incident by the food depot, the gunning down of innocent people.

“We don’t do that,” I said and gestured to Iona. We had no children with us this time, but she was a good example. “We protect those less able than us.”

She nodded cheerfully and responded by saying something about lambs and lions. I wasn’t really paying attention.

The trio on trial scowled. They said they weren’t keen to do stuff like killing innocents – it wasn’t what they were here for. They didn’t say if they were involved in the food depot incident and I thought it best not to ask. This was about the future. Our future.

“So if we tell you not to attack something, you’ll listen?” That was Thorpe, doubt riding on his words.

“Listen, yes,” Warren said. He’s older, senior to Jonah, I think. He has an indistinguishable age about him and an air of experience.

“And act anyway?”

“When it comes to battle tactics, I really think–”

“We’re not talking about when we’re in battle,” I said. “We’re talking about before then.”

“We don’t want any of that pre-emptive strike crap,” Jersey put in.

The trio closed their mouths and considered it. There was reluctance in their nods. They thought they knew better than all of us when it came to violence, and maybe that’s true, but we’ve fought hard to keep our morals intact. It’s all about when we let ourselves do violence and how far we let it go – that’s what makes the difference between us and the Pride, and even the Wolverines. When we find mirrors, we’re able to look ourselves in the eye. We’re trying not to succumb to the dog-eat-dog nature of the After. We don’t want to be dogs.

Even with all that struggling, I have trouble looking myself in the eye. Even us Seekers do things we hate sometimes, when we’re forced to. When there’s no choice. But we’re not lost yet. We want to stay as free of that burden as we can be, even me, as bloodied as I am.

So we can’t have them shooting up everyone we meet. There’s always that risk of them turning on us, deciding that we’re not worth the supplies and killing us in our sleep. Or maybe siphoning off the weak ones, picking off those who can’t pull as much weight as the rest. We have to believe that the risk of that is small if this is going to work. We all have to make compromises to live in this world – the question was whether this was a compromise that the soldiers were willing to make.

Finally, they agreed to our restrictions. That had to be enough. It wasn’t long before another issue cropped up, and another. Each one came back to the same thing: you’re dangerous and how do we know we can trust you? With our lives, our loves, our futures? Are we safe with you?

It’s strange – none of the Seekers have talked about this before the cutouts. Not in so many words. We’ve never laid out our ethos so thoroughly before, placing words on the ground in the middle of the group as if scratching out a contract. This is what had grown between us over the months. This is the basis of the lives we’ve chosen to live.

I’m more than a little proud of it. Things don’t always go the way we want them to. We try, we slip, and sometimes we fall down. But we keep trying. We look after each other and we try to hold onto the shards of who we were Before. We try to be something better.

In that meeting, we laid out the people we want to be and asked everyone to agree to it. With each round of questions and answers, the Seekers solidified behind the banner of words. Our own manifesto.

What it came down to is that the three soldiers agreed to our terms. They weren’t comfortable with all of it and I don’t think it will go smoothly, but they’ve agreed to try. We have agreed to let them stay and be Seekers.

We’ve given them their rifles back – possibly not the smartest move, but after all the talk about truth and trust, we didn’t have a whole lot of choice. We kept the handguns with various Seekers, so everyone is armed. I haven’t got a gun at all – I don’t want one – but I’m now guardian of the ammunition. For now, it’s working well enough.

Today, we were due to show them one of our secrets: the people we left behind at the University. One of the bikes lost a tyre – almost disastrously for Bobby, but he managed to skid to a stop before bike and rider tumbled into a mess of metal and limbs. We lost time putting more gear into the car and rearranging passengers. Now, we’re three bikes carrying double and the car bearing three injured, stopped only a few blocks away from the University by the rain.

Tomorrow, we’ll reach the others. They don’t know we’re coming and with the cutouts sorted out, I’m starting to get nervous about what we’ll find. Who we’ll find.

I wish it was a better kind of homecoming.

I never imagined the circumstances of our return to the University before. I always knew it would happen one day – of course it would. We didn’t say goodbye forever, just for now, just until we had found that something better we were looking for. We’d be back for them. I had promised.

We thought Haven was our something better. I had dreams of calling them on the radio and telling them to load up and come on over, because we had found everything we needed. A safe place, food, shelter, water. A sustainable future. What we found was a sheet of tissuepaper laid over the problems we faced everywhere else. It was pretty tissuepaper but so easily torn.

We still haven’t found that place to stop, the nirvana the Seekers keep seeking. Not even a scrap of hope to bring back and show them for all the time we’ve been away. All we have is more bodies to tend, more mouths to feed, and bad news.

When we left, I was glad to go. After all that happened with Ben, I wanted to get far away and forget about what he had become and what I had done. I didn’t want to be in the room where the gun went off or to look at the place where the acid finally destroyed him. I wasn’t eager to look into the eyes of people who had seen it happen and haven’t known me since.

But I had missed them, too. I wanted to know how they were, if they were all right, if they had forgotten about us after not hearing from us in so long. I wanted to know how many were left, because the After has a way of erodiing a group.

I had to struggle not to think too hard about the group that left the University with me and the shape of the one returning. I failed and remembered Dillon, so worried about me, so ready to make me smile. They knew what happened to him – they had been told over the radio – so I wouldn’t have to explain all over again, but I knew they’d see his space in our circle. Along with Tia and Terry and Dan. Gone but not forgotten.

And Dad. It was hard not to think about how he was missing from our ranks, too. Those at the University might not miss him, but I did. I twisted his ring on my thumb and tried not to think about what it meant. I had to smile for them; I had to be pleased for the ones still with me.

It looked exactly the same when we pulled up in front of the biochemistry department. Pipes twisted into a metal wreath around it and the windows were all closed. I thought I saw a fllurry of movement up in the building somewhere while we parked the bikes and the car spilt its passengers onto the tarmac. Then we were there, gathered and looking up, wondering who and what might be there for us to find.

We had to stop the cutouts from leading the charge. Don’t go up to the door, we said. They’re not expecting us and the place is booby-trapped. With acid. That was enough to stop them.

We had to shout a couple of times before one of the upper windows opened. A familiar white-haired head popped out – Professor Kostoya is looking more and more like a crazy scientist as the weeks add inches to his tameless mane. He squinted at us and then burst out in a grin. Come in, come in, he said.

When we approached the front door, we could hear the thudding of feet on the other side. The kids beat us there – Nugget and Estebar flung it open and came barrelling out. The little girl went straight for Thorpe – whose face promptly went red while he patted her back – and Estebar hugged the waist of the first person he came to, which happened to be Jersey. She looked nonplussed by the whole thing and covered up her confusion with a frown when he let go.

We made our way inside slowly, stopping to greet those coming down to meet us. Introductions were made between new faces. Janice hugged everyone. Masterson stood by, nodding and clapping shoulders if we strayed close enough. Kostoya got hugs that bewildered him, which made them more irresistable. Conroy was all grins for us. Bree looked pleased to see us, though I kept my distance from her. Things felt far too complicated between us for me to fathom just then. Mira was a good little shadow to my one-time friend and greeted us shyly. The kids hung off everyone, and Nugget rode inside on Iona’s back. It’s the most I’ve seen Iona grin since I’ve known her.

We wound up in one of the larger teaching rooms, where everyone could gather and talk all at once. After the loneliness of the road, it was loud and busy and so full of people that I didn’t know where to look next. But it felt good. It felt right. Better. It was the kind of clustering that Haven should have been.

If was inevitable that the missing pieces in our groups started to be noticed. Someone asked after Tom, and Janice immediately looked strained. Masterson was the one who told us that he’d fallen Sick a month ago. Janice was still grieving for her husband and no-one asked if his shambler was still around.

Other names came up. Old Iris, so sad since her husband Norman went missing, disappeared as well one day. I get the feeling that she might have followed him into the rain. Scott is gone too – a victim of a shambler attack, he’d died defending the building when the acid curtain had failed. Kostoya went quiet when that came up; he obviously believes that was his fault.

I was afraid to ask where Sally was, knowing that she had been acid-burned. The baby must have been due some time ago, too – the baby we all feared would have been twisted and warped by the poison in its mother’s veins. I wasn’t the only one looking for her in the group, though, and it was Bree who picked up on it.

“Sally’s upstairs,” she said. “Resting.”

So she wasn’t dead. That was a relief, though one greeted with reservation considering the circumstances and caveats on her condition. Masterson told us to leave her sleeping, so we decided to bring in the gear and settle in before we bothered her. Everyone helped and there were so many hands and bodies that we wound up getting in each other’s way. No-one minded, though. We laughed and stepped around our obstacles, high on the reunion.

We’re still getting ourselves settled, but it’s good to be back. It’s good to find out friends again.

Part of the relief of being back with the others is having a doctor to treat the injured. Masterson grumbled up a storm but he didn’t waste any time in seeing to the wounded we had carried back to the University yesterday.

I went along to act as a nurse, partly out of habit after my time in Haven’s infirmary, but Masterson wasn’t interested in having my help. He shooed me away and called on Janice. His form of shooing is to tell me to get the hell out of the way, but that’s all right. As long as he sees to them, I can put up with that. I trust him to be a good doctor, even if he’s not a nice person.

Matt’s leg is doing fine – just needs proper exercise and for him not to overdo it. Sitting in a car isn’t good for it: he needs to flex it to retain mobility, but now we’re not travelling, that’ll be easier.

Thorpe’s hands are a worry. The burns aren’t deep but they are easy to get  infected. We’ve been keeping them as clean as we can – a painful process that none of us enjoys – and we’ve been lucky so far. Masterson gave him some salve that he said should help. I saw Dale hovering worriedly, taking in the doctor’s directions, so at least Thorpe has someone to badger him into looking after himself.

Iona’s bullet-wound was a glancing injury and seems to be healing up all right. Masterson gave her some antibiotics – I couldn’t get a straight answer about why, but I think there was something wrong with the colour of the wound. The girl seems happy enough, but she always does. I think she would smile if someone hit her with a brick.

Warren was the most serious problem. We’ve been keeping him as comfortable as possible, but we didn’t dare dig around in his shoulder to get the bullet out. Instead, we washed it out regularly with disinfectant in the hopes of keeping it clean. He has been in a lot of pain and we haven’t had any painkillers to change that. Masterson looked at it and shook his head. Then he closed up the room so that he could cut the wound open and remove the bullet.

We all heard the screaming, but there was nothing any of us could do about it. The bullet had to come out; if it festered, it would kill him. Afterwards, the doctor said that it had lodged in the workings of the shoulder and there might be nerve damage. It was hard to tell what long-term implications it might have.

Those here at the University have had as much trouble with supplies as we have of late. Neither group had much, but we put it all together and had something of a feast. We all felt like celebrating: those of us left; those of us who had made it this far. We told stories about what had passed since the Seekers left the University. Then we started to relay the tales of those who didn’t make it to this meeting and the evening descended into a sombre mood.

Matt told everyone about what happened to Dillon; a fuller account than the one passed over the radio waves. I couldn’t form the words – just listening put a lump in my throat that was impossible to speak past.

I didn’t tell them about my dad, either – none of them had known him and it was too fresh. No-one asked, so it wasn’t an issue.

Janice told us about Tom, about when they met when she fell out of her father’s fishing boat and he picked her up. They had struggled to be together and wound up eloping in the middle of the night. They hadn’t looked back since, hadn’t spent a night apart since she climbed out of her window with a suitcase clutched in her hand. She didn’t talk about how he died.

Jonah spoke up and told us about his friend Jason. They had joined the military at the same time, two boys who had gone off the rails and had been sent to sign up before they wound up in prison. They met in boot camp and had been best friends ever since. The bombs and what came in the After had bound all of the unit closer together, and then it had started to unravel. Jonah had been caught up in one of the accidents that damaged the Converter and Jason had been the one who found out the whole thing was a farce.

Jason was the cutout who had been on the bike behind Dale when we busted out of Haven. He had fallen at the gates. None of us had noticed him go down, not even Dale at first. Even we had known about it, we couldn’t have gone back for him. No-one expects him to have survived it.

When the stories were done, an uncomfortable silence fell. We were all thinking about the gaps in our circle, the faces missing from our lives now. We had lost so many along the way that it was hard to keep track of them all.

There was one thing that tied them all together – them and us – and it was me who started it this time around. I just started singing quietly into our silence. One by one, the group picked up the song, lifting the lyrics of Amazing Grace towards the ceiling and beyond. As if they might hear us, wherever we are now. Even Iona and the ex-cutouts joined in, though no-one explained it to them. They got it. We remembered our dead.

I couldn’t help it: I thought about my dad. I didn’t want to sing that song for him – to me, he was still alive somewhere, waiting for me to come back and fetch him. My throat was thick by the time the song finished and I wasn’t the only one with damp eyes. To everyone’s surprise, Iona started singing the next song, some 80s number that I can’t remember the name of and yet everyone seemed to know the words for. At least the chorus.

At some point, someone found a bottle of vodka, or ‘firewater’ as Warren liked to call it. There were no more stories, just songs, whatever scraps we could remember. Dale found a small wooden box somewhere and used it as a drum.

I’m tired, in that good way, and ready to curl up in bed. I hear Matt coming. Just the sound of his boots makes me smile tonight. Time to go.

I finally got to see Sally today. Masterson has had her shut away in a room upstairs, tucked up in a bed and waited on.

She’s huge. Overdue by a week or so, she thinks. Masterson has her on enforced bed rest and is keeping a close eye on her. He doesn’t let many people up to see her – I snuck in on my own when he was getting breakfast. Everyone is worried about her, waiting for the labour to start.

The baby is fine. Masterson and Kostoya have been checking on it, and they’ve said that it seems all right. Everything appears to be normal with the pregnancy, though she had some issues with mineral balances at one point. She started to get faux contractions and random pains, and Masterson responded by confining her to the room and then to the bed. She has pills to take – she’s not sure what they are, but she trusts her doctor and takes them anyway.

She looks so strange, still small and thin apart from the swell of her belly, which dwarfs the rest of her. But she has smiles to give away and is more eager to chat than she used to be. She’s read every magazine in the place, she said, and even started on some of the textbooks out of sheer boredom. She gave up after a few pages when she spent more time sounding out the words than taking the information in and now she has nothing to keep the boredom away. She claims to have expanded her vocabulary and recognises some of the terms the scientists toss around, even if she’s not sure what they actually mean.

The most curious thing is that she hasn’t had the Sickness. It has been months – more than six, I think – since she was burned. That’s more than long enough for the poison to fester inside her and to bring on the dangerous fever. But her body doesn’t seem to have succumbed to it at all, and it’s not trying to fight it off.

“Do they know why?” I asked her.

She shrugged and shifted to sit up a bit straighter, sighing against her pillows. “Not really. They just say that I seem clear of it.”

I wondered if Kostoya had tried to explain a theory to her and she hadn’t understood it, but that was unkind so I didn’t ask.

“David says that if I don’t go into labour soon, he’ll have to try to induce me,” she said.

It took me a minute to realise who ‘David’ was – that’s Masterson’s first name. For some reason, it’s endearing that she calls him by his first name. They’ve been together for a long time now, though neither of them will admit it, and I like to see those little indications of intimacy. I think they both deserve it.

“Well, we’re all here for you,” I told her. “We’ll do what we can.” And we had brought some medical supplies, drugs that the others haven’t seen for a while. Hopefully that would help too.

She put a hand on her belly and smiled at me. “Maybe it was waiting for you to come back.”

She meant all of us, the Seekers, not just me. The idea made me smile back at her. Then she got excited and waggled for my hand, wanting to put it on her swollen abdomen. A couple of seconds passed, and then the baby kicked and we both giggled. Strangest thing I’ve ever felt, that little foot nudging through her to bump my hand.

I stayed and chatted with Sally for a while. Masterson came back and scowled at me, and then left again. I stayed – we might not have been the closest of friends before, but I had missed Sally. I had worried about her and the baby.

It was good to see her. I have so few female friends, and it’s good to talk to a girl for a change. She asked about who I was with – she knew I was with someone last night.

“You have that look about you,” she said.

I blushed and said it was Matt. She was happy for me and encouraged me to tell her all about it. I haven’t put it into words before except here in this blog – relaying my relationship and feelings to another person is different. But Sally was receptive and excited on my behalf. I got to be a girl about it. I’ve missed that more than I realised.

I wound up staying until lunchtime, at which point Masterson finally shooed me out, claiming that the pregnant girl needed to sleep. She did look tired, the poor thing, and I gave her a hug before I left. She’s all baby and bone, so fragile that I barely dared to touch her at all. She seemed to appreciate the contact, though. I promised to come back and see her soon, and that made her perk up.

I’m looking forward to the baby being born. We don’t even know if it’ll be a boy or a girl yet. I just hope that it’s as healthy as everyone seems to think it is.