“You colour your hair?” Monika asked me in an incredulous whisper, pulling me away from my recollections.
Her eyes were fixated on the top of my head.
“Oh? No, no, I don’t dye it. It just tends to look a bit different in bright light,” I told her, running my fingers through it.
It was far from the first time I had been asked that question. My hair was very thick and naturally wavy, unruly and immune to any grooming attempts. Usually it was chestnut brown, but its warm undertones became more prominent in stronger light.On a bright, sunny day, my hair was almost amber like a cape of flames.
“It is so pretty.” Monika touched it nimbly with the tips of her thin fingers.
We stood frozen to the spot, gripped by an instinctive fear of what hid in the eerie streets. Then we set off without a word. I had been preserving my mobile phone battery ever since the electricity ran out, keeping the device turned off. As a fortunate result, I could navigate our little group through the streets using the offline maps of Italy I had downloaded weeks prior.
After a lengthy discussion the previous night, we had decided to start on foot. The other option was to take the car that the English lads had rented, since its fuel tank was fortunately still full. But a car would make noise and attract furies that could crowd us whenever we got out.
Additionally, there was no way of knowing if the city roads would be passable. They may well have been blocked entirely by other crashed or abandoned vehicles, in which case we would have ended up trapped in place with all the cannibals drawn by the engine noise.
We were going to obtain weapons first. Then, we would choose the most direct route out of the city and try to walk it on foot, checking that way if we could get through in a car. Once we had established that we could, we would gather food supplies and gear and then head for the coast.
We did our best to proceed quietly. As we moved through the empty streets, we were alternately assaulted by the pungent smell of rotting garbage—and something worse, perhaps—and caressed by the gentle gust of air that carried with it the pleasing smell of warm stone and cypresses, exuding their fragrance in the rising heat of the day. A scent that I had always associated with a seaside holiday.
The skin prickled on the back of my neck, as if we were being watched. The sooner we got to the archery shop, the better. With a bow in my hands, this sensation of being silently persecuted would not go away, but I would no longer feel so defenceless against it.
What if it’s empty, I worried,what if other people had already taken everything?
But this shop was small and inconspicuous, and it only sold bows and crossbows, not firearms. How many people knew it was even there? How many would dare to try to reach it?
Still, I berated myself for not making the decision to leave earlier as we cautiously progressed further and further away from safety.
Suddenly, I registered a motion out of the corner of my eye. I turned around in time to see something advance towards me that looked distinctly human, despite its movements being so unlike any person’s.
Petrified gasps echoed from behind me, and I barely managed to stifle my own scream. The cannibal was male. I also noted his bulging, bloodshot eyes, uneven yellow teeth, and the ferocity of his facial expression.
Then I realised in a detached sort of way that my best chance to avoid being devoured by the creature was to start moving.
And astonishingly, I did.
I ran jerkily away from our little group. The fury followed, gaining on me. I changed direction abruptly, swerving sharply to the side. The cannibal did the same, but his much slower reaction allowed me to gain distance from him.
I repeated this manoeuvre several times, successfully avoiding capture. Yet it was very clear that this exercise couldnot go on indefinitely and that I was going to tire of it long before the infected would.
As if in a dream, I noticed cobblestones lying loose at the side of the destroyed pavement. I shot towards them and scooped three of them up. Without thinking, I whipped around and hurled one at the fury. Had someone told me of my plan beforehand, I would have had precious little confidence in its success. Despite my good aim in archery, I had never been very good at ball games.
Amazingly, I hit him squarely in the face.
He stumbled, tripped on another loose cobblestone, fell backwards, and hit his head with a nasty crunch. I vaguely registered that there was something odd about the way he fell. Later on, I would realise that this was due to the absence of any self-preserving movement that a person would normally attempt. At that moment, I lacked the mental calm to ponder it.
For good measure, I threw more cobblestones at the fury’s head, some hitting their target and some missing it. Once I ran out of breath as well as of my make-do ammunition, the whole comic, cartoon-like quality of the little chase dawned on me, and abruptly I doubled down with choked, silent laughter.
“Are you alright, hun?” Dave laid a tentative hand on my shoulder.
I was eternally surprised and not a little touched that he and the others hadn’t run away, benefitting from the fury’s engagement with me.
“Yes, I am, thanks,” I replied, shaky and breathless, but strangely composed.
But I was more than alright. I was exhilarated. I had felt so little desire to live for so very long that when that fury lunged at me and my primal self-preservation instinct drove me to defend myself, it felt as if I had come back from the dead. My heart beatwildly and blood ran through my veins fast and hot, distributing to every cell of my being the message that I was alive, alive, alive!
And I could not, I realised, wait to do it again.
We carried on quieter and more vigilant than before, but without further incident. Occasionally, we would see a movement behind windows framed by the blue shutters characteristic of the area, but it was impossible to tell whether healthy or infected people lurked within.
