But… he hadn’t seemed like the type of man to do that.
He even seemed sweet. Well, as sweet as a masked man in the apocalypse can be.
Ugh! I shouldn’t be thinking about him; it’s not good for me, and it’s certainly not good for the baby. But being in this city, knowing who it belongs to makes that night a constant, screaming echo in my mind. It certainly has me agreeing with Fauna’s assertion that I was safer on the sidelines despite my guilt.
The Skulls are Glasgow’s most violent group. Their reputation is insane and according to the stories we have been told, everyone is scared of them — anyone sane that is. They get off on torturing people, mutilating them until they are unrecognisable. It’s as if they’ve made it into a sport the way they have bodies hanging around the city, a sight that made my stomach churn and my mind spiral with possibilities of what it would mean to come across them. To come across him. And the worst bit? I don’t know if I’d recognise him if I did see him again.
The Skulls wear masks, each one slightly different but the message behind them is the same. No one knows their faces, just like I don’t know the father of my child's.
God, why did I have to be so stupid and think with my vagina rather than my head?
‘She’ll be back,’ Liz nudges me out of my spiralling thoughts. ‘She might look innocent, but we all know her appearance is as deceiving as her name.’
I laugh.
Fauna is not such a sweet, innocent Faun like we all call her. She’s like a wolf in sheep’s clothing and she is mainly to thank for us all still being alive and here
With nothing much to do but wait on our unappointed leaders' return, I take a walk around the school, slowly scoping out each classroom and the memories of the old world we left behind.
It’s dark again and Fauna is still not back.
She should be back by now.
And deep down, I know something is wrong.
Something is always wrong. It’s like trouble is obsessed with making my life a misery. First, it was my anxiety as a kid; it's next hit was the virus that murdered my parents, then the fire that tore me apart from the remainder of my loved ones — my brother and our childhood friend. I was taken by those soldiers and forced into that camp where I was humiliated. Now it’s thrown pregnancy at men and this… It’s too much, I’m near breaking point. I can’t take another strike
I need Fauna to come back. She and Liz are my rocks, and I need them both more than I have ever needed anything. I need help because as much as I’m trying to hide it from the others, I am terrified of the future.
As a young girl, you're always taught that when you have a family it will be built on the foundations of love and happiness. A healthy relationship where trust and comfort are in abundance and you will all live happily ever after skipping through fields of daisies.
That was a load of shite back then and it's an even bigger one now.
How exactly do you even form a relationship like that when all anyone is bothered about is the body's basic carnal urges? Eat, sleep, drink, fuck.
I haven’t trusted someone new in years. Sometimes I even question the trust I have with the girls as it is — something I feel immense guilt for.
With how I was betrayed by Stephanie at the army camp, how I’d blindly trusted her, desperate to fill the aching hole that being abandoned in this world left me with, I’d allowed my trust in her to be obliterated and it's no wonder that from time to time I can’t stop myself from spiralling into paranoia.
I hadn’t truly loved Steph — I don’t think. It was something different, like infatuation. I’d felt so alone in the world, and she had seen that. She took advantage of me, of my alienation. She used me to satisfy her need for companionship and I, like a fool, let her. I gladly gave her every piece of myself, and we had fun, until we didn’t. Turns out I was insignificant.
The masked man made me feel alive like I did with her, maybe that’s what drew me to him. He made me laugh right from the get-go and any anxiety fizzled away. I allowed myself to live in that moment with him and it was glorious.
One thing the apocalypse has taught me is that happiness cannot last forever. This world consumes it, plucking it savagely from our lives like a bird does a worm from the soil. I just need to make sure this world does not take my child's happiness the way it has taken mine.
With my thoughts as dark and gloomy as the abyss of night around me, I decide that I’ve wallowed enough in self-pity. If I’m not going to sleep, I might as well do something useful like go keep Liz company on watch.
Elizabeth isn’t impressed with Fauna’s disappearance either, not that she’s said as much. Liz doesn’t talk, at least not very often. So, I’ve had to learn her expressions. It's a skill I’ve slowly refined. At first, it was harder to understand her inner thoughts when she literally never spoke. Trying to ascertain what went on behind her blank expressions was like flipping a coin for Fauna and me. A total gamble. But then she started opening up to us, Fauna first, then eventually me.
Now, it's slightly easier to figure out what she's thinking.
Today though, when Fauna still didn’t turn up, not even when the sun began to set and night time fell once again Liz’s expression was blatantly obvious. She was furious with worry.
And so was I.
So am I.
But worry isn’t anything new to us and it’s not the first time any of us have faced times like this. We’re not the only survivors out there, which means sometimes we get into trouble. After all, trouble loves to find us, or maybe we find it. Fauna’s particularly good at that.
