Initially, we were hoping to find an uninfected settlement along the coast. Walking the whole day, we cautiously approached three more campsites, one village, and one small town, only to be forced to retreat by the same sounds of doom.
It was then that we decided to turn towards the mountain ranges looming in the east, reasoning that there would likely be fewer infected in these more remote areas.
On the first day, we climbed steadily up a dusty track, surrounded by heat-tolerant trees and shrubs. We came across two villages, both as overrun as the coastal ones. On the second day, climbing higher and delving deeper into the mountain ranges, we entered a rocky area where the air was notably cooler and fresher, and the hiking became scrambling on all fours while holding onto the rocks’ jagged edges for dear life. That day, we only encountered a few lone furies, but no villages or campsites. We were growing steadily more disheartened. Our limbs ached, our muscles complained, and our food supplies were beginning to thin out.
On the morning of the third day, we finally came upon a small campsite that people still controlled. Our exultation quickly turned sour, though. The settlement consisted of one wooden cabin perched near the edge of a cliff with dozens of tents scattered around it. And whilst the place did offer a spectacular view, it lacked sorely in terms of security. There were no fences, nothing keeping cannibals out but sheer luck. And come wintertime, snow would descend, and there would be no shelter against the cold.
The campsite’s inhabitants eyed us warily, and it was mainly their vigilance that made me briefly consider pointing my bow at them and demanding they give us their food supplies. But the notion dashed out of my thoughts as quickly as it had first invaded them. Morals aside, I had no way of being certain that they themselves were unarmed. We weren’t desperate enough to do something so reckless. Yet.
The next day dampened our spirits even further—quite literally—as it was pouring down. We regained altitude, re-entering the bare rocky terrain, grey like the heavy clouds above us and slippery when wet. The air smelled of moist dirt.
Just as we were about to run out of food, we came across a lone, abandoned cabin made of wooden planks and stone. It was locked, but we broke a window to get inside. The pantry wasn’t well stocked, but there was enough food to feed us a supper and a breakfast the next morning. The water supply hadn’t been cut off yet, and even though it was teeth-chatteringly cold, we all took turns in the shower before catching up on our sleep.
We started the fifth day feeling somewhat refreshed but still fatigued, hungry and discouraged. The weather had cleared overnight, and the skies were powder blue and cloudless. We tackled a steep pass over a saw-toothed mountain top in the morning, followed by a short descent into a forested valley before another more gradual ascent, the sneaky kind that leaves one more tired than the obviously hard climbs.
“Whose stupid bloody idea was this?!” Kevin asked, red in the face and panting as his feet slipped on the steep scree path. “Why go up the mountains? Just why?”
He struggled more than the rest of us with the unforgiving trek.
“Because it’s safer!” Joshua replied irritably; being the fittest of us, he had the least patience for Kevin’s hiking ineptitude. “When was the last time you saw a damn fury up here?”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do us if we can’t find a place to stay,” Kevin countered. “Just what do you propose we do for food if we don’t find one soon?”
I kept to myself my tentative plan to return to the refuge campsite to rob them in case we didn’t come across anything better by nightfall. I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Not because I thought I couldn’t go through with it, but precisely because I knew I could. Something had changed inside of me that was very hard to describe. It was as if I had lived behind a transparent barrier my whole life, believing myself to be trapped, and then decided to try and cross it, only to discover it was never there to begin with.
We reached yet another summit and looked down into a sparsely forested valley bordered by sharp mountain ranges. The scenery would have been breathtaking were we still in the headspace to be impressed by such things, but we most certainly were not.
There was a large clearing at the side of the valley closer to us. It took me a while to fully register what I saw there: a spacious,fencedresort comprising three large mountain huts and several smaller ones.
“That’sperfect,” I exhaled incredulously.
“It is unless they’ve all turned,” Dave pointed out.
“They haven’t. Look! Cannibals don’t walk like that!” I indicated the people moving in between the buildings, and my voice shook with relieved excitement. “This is it! Let’s go!”
As if afraid that the settlement was but a chimaera that would disappear, we took off running down the hill, along a scree path lined occasionally by a stumpy tree or a bush. Nearing the bottom, I heard a thud and a pained yelp behind me. I stopped and turned around to find Kevin on the ground, clutching his left ankle. The rest of our group surrounded him.
“Shit,” Kevin swore under his breath, his usually pasty face pink and his features sharpened by a grimace of pain.
Dave promptly took off Kevin’s shoe and wrapped the ankle tightly with a bandage, his hands practised and sure. Watching uselessly, I felt a sharp stab of remorse for our blithe rush and cursed myself for my impatience.
Dave helped Kevin stand up.
“Can you walk, honey?” he asked him in a concerned voice, his brow creased with worry.
He could, but was limping badly, and so we made our way down very slowly.
The shortest way to the settlement led alongside an evergreen copse. But tell-tale snarling carried from it towards us on the wind, and so we were obliged to veer to the left, taking a longer route. Although supported by David and Josh, Kevin was panting and swearing profusely under his breath.
Unfortunately for him, we had to scale a small grassy hill, which temporarily obscured our view of the resort and the clearing in front of it until we reached its top. I looked down from the pinnacle, taking a deep, steadying breath, trying not to think too hard about what would happen if we were not as welcome in the settlement as I hoped we would be.
As I turned to go, my blood ran cold at the sight below. And then it began to boil, excitement coursing through my veins like danger.
There were five uninfected men on the clearing below us. One of them was carrying lifeless hares. He and the other three stood in place, an amused detachment evident from their postures, as they watched the fifth man wrestle a fury single-handedly.
The fighter was tall and bulky, with broad, muscular shoulders and a crown of rich hair the colour of ash and gold. Obviously possessing not only alarming strength but also a potent talent for violence, he matched his opponent’s aggression with ease I would have thought impossible. He deflected the fury’s advances effortlessly with shoves and punches that knocked the infected backwards a few paces each time, the dumbly enraged face growing more distorted and bloody with each blow.
There was something methodical and almost reverent in his movements. Wholly deliberate, deft and nearly erotic. Secretly seductive.
