"~ A message written in blood-red ~"
Around two hours pass in uneventful walking. A soft breeze brushes loose strands of fiery red hair into my face. Our steps are muffled by a damp layer of leaves resting on the ground. An earthy smell reaches my nose and I inhale deeply.
We have been silent the whole time. Ella and I are used to silence. It's always been how we worked, as not to attract unwanted visitors. So we're both startled when James makes an attempt at conversation.
"So... what's your story?" He seems uncomfortable with the quiet. I glance at Ella questionably. Should we tell him our backstory? She looks as unsure as I feel, so I decide to learn more about him before I reveal anything about us. I turn to him, raising my chin and fixing him with the most contemptuous glance I can muster.
"What's yours?" He doesn't seem fazed, but nods silently. His lips are pursed. My eyes hesitate on them a beat longer than necessary.
"How did I know you were going to demand something of the sort?" His mouth quirks in half a smile.
A minute of silence passes. Just as I don't think he's going to actually answer, words begin to spill out of his mouth.
"I come from a big family. All brothers but one." His head is down, his chocolate-brown hair hanging down so I can't see his face. "They were all younger than me but Alec, the oldest. He's, was, twenty-six. Mom and Dad had been together since they met, and mum only had one ex. He watched our family a lot but otherwise stayed to himself. Mom was pretty distant, never really all there. She used to burst out with random Italian spouts of language - most of my extended family's Italian," he explained. I can almost hear the smile on in his voice, the remembrance. "But my siblings and I are all from further South.
"Anyway, Dad was the level-headed one. The family pretty much fell apart entirely when he... When he left. One night, all of us had just gotten home from school. The outbreak had just happened, and we were among the few who still ventured out of our houses during the day. We came through the door, locked it like we were supposed to, and only opened it at five o'clock to let Mom in when she got home from work. Then she locked it up again.
"We all thought that it was kind of strange that Dad wasn't home from work yet. He usually got home around seven, but by eight o'clock there was still no sign of him. We had rigged a special knock, to make sure we weren't letting in just anybody, and it was a really long one. It took me about a full minute to knock. By the time Dad got home from work, it was late. It was around nine, but everyone had stayed up, waiting and worrying. I saw him first, through the window, and ran to open it. It was already dark by then, though, and Mom was paranoid. She wouldn't let me open the door. She insisted we wait for the long knock, but somehow I knew that Dad didn't have enough time for that. Sure enough, I heard a scuffle outside and the next time I looked out the window I saw nothing but the swirling snow." He takes a deep, shuddering breath, craning his neck to look up at the dull grey sky. Clouds are gathering overhead, clumping together in swirls and dark, chaotic shapes. It matches the mood of the story perfectly.
"I was going to be an engineer," he continues, after a brief pause. "I had just figured out what I wanted to be when the outbreak started. When we saw the reporters out in the streets, we all thought it would be over by the end of the month. It was Science class. It was a dark day, a storm was rolling in. That was when the voids broke in." He pauses and I'm not sure if he'll continue.
"How did you get out?" I whisper tentatively, prodding a little. He has his head lowered and his messy, unruly hair falls into his face.
"Not my school..." he trails off, and his voice cracks. "My siblings elementary school. The teachers wouldn't let me go help." He lifts his head a fraction and I realize that there are tears dripping down his cheeks. It's not judgement that makes me surprised, but I haven't been around boys much in the past few years, and the ones I have haven't been anything like him. "Their school is right across from ours. Literally across the road. About five steps to the door of Science class, ten to the exit, another ten across the yard, ten across the road... I could've gotten there in a minute." He turns to me and gives me a wry smile, "I was on all the sports teams, the Cross Country team. It would've been just like the fifty-meter sprint. I could've saved them.
"I tried to get over there but the teachers had the doors barricaded and were holding everyone back. We sat like cowards and listened to the screams." He pauses and looks up, straight ahead. His face is blotchy and stained with tears, yet he still manages to pull off the "handsome" look. His eyelashes are sparkling in the fading evening light. I haven't even realized how much time has passed. "Nobody got out alive." His voice is haunted as fresh wounds re-open. I reach out tentatively and place my hand on his arm, stopping him. I grip his shoulder and steer him to a stop. His fists are clenched, and there's a muscle in his jaw that's tense as well. I can tell that he's grinding his teeth, and that his whole body has been tense from the moment I reached out to touch him, almost as if he's sensed what's coming.
He flinches away from me, but I lay a hand softly on his arm anyways. "I know how you feel, and I'm so, so sorry." I look down. I shuffle my feet in the earthy leaves. I glance up, emerging from pained thoughts, when I realize that James has turned tortured eyes on me.
"Do you? I don't think anybody knows how I feel." His gaze has turned scornful. "You have your sister, and probably others. You have no idea how this feels! How helpless, cowardly I felt! It was my fault, I should have tried harder." His throat hoarse, he turns abruptly and storms ahead of us, but not before I see his face crumple in pain. Leaves fly about his feet as he quickly proceeds. His fleeting figure is hunched, tormented. I'm about to follow him when Ella places a hand on my arm to stop me.
"Let him be Raina," she says softly. I offer her a small smile. She can be so mature.
With a start, I realize I've been crying too. The tears drip off my nose, hitting the front of my thin leather jacket and sliding to the forest floor. I rub quickly at my eyes. How fast James's composure shattered scares me. He has always had a smile on his face since the moment I first saw him... He must really love his family.
"A school, a city, a country," I mutter. "This is wrong. So wrong. Where is the navy? The soldiers? The people who are supposed to be protecting us?"
Ella looks up at me with big sad eyes.
"They're all gone Raina. There's nobody left." She smiles shakily at me before looking back down at her shuffling feet. The heavy silence returns, settling like a thick blanket as we continue to walk deeper into the forest. Every once in a while I hear a crack of a twig from up ahead, or a frustrated mutter from James, but other than that our panting and the twittering on of birds above are about only the sounds of the forest.
On the outskirts of the forest you can't really hear much wildlife. All of the creatures of this woods fled to a safer area. Now, as we reach the deep heart of the forest, we can hear them come to life all around us. Birds flutter playfully in between the branches of tall oaks, singing through the leaves. I crane my neck to look up at the green canopy above us. Sunlight filters in, a slight breeze swaying the treetops. The bright colours of the animals splash the forest around us with vibrant and duller shades of blue, red, orange and other colours. Squirrels and chipmunks chatter excitedly to each other and flashes of their shimmering sunlit fur dart through tree roots. Flowers and shed petals speckle the mossy forest floor, and earthy leaves are scattered among the mushrooms as well, muffling the sound of our footsteps. Ferns thrive in the bright clearings that I can see if I peek close enough, through the tree branches. At one point, I even catch sight of a deer, leaping with long legs over fallen, rotten tree logs with more grace than anything else in the forest. Its spotted hide catches my attention, but I don't have much time to admire its gleam as it tramps past in a blurr.
The setting sun is washing us and our surroundings in an unearthly light, casting pallid rays down to illuminate our way for only a little longer. We'll have to stop soon. As the sun gradually sinks lower in the sky, I become aware of James's lack of noise, him having gone ahead long ago.
We continue to trudge onwards, my ankle throbbing painfully as I begin to notice the forest thinning out, more and more sunlight spilling into the forest floor. I see smoke up ahead and quicken my pace. Ella tags along behind me with a confused expression on her face.
"What is it Raina?" She seems to have noticed my uneasy concern, and become a little wary herself. I raise a shaking finger to point at the black cloud that looms in the distance, just visible over the tips of a few lingering trees. We've already reached the edge of the forest, and I'm vaguely aware of leaving the trees behind as I follow the beacon.
All of the sudden, rough hands grab at my arms and yank me to a halt. I scream and lash out in surprise. My hand connects with something solid and I hear a masculine grunt.
"Wow you have a hard hit." James's voice is hoarse behind me, his breath tickling my neck. I angrily strike out at him again and take a few strides away when he's let go. I don't look back, but I hear him chuckle quietly and start to follow.
"You left us!" I berate him. "We were supposed to be walking together, and you left us! I had no idea where we're going... What if there were looters along the way?" The air seems to grow cold with the evil word. Back when the breakout started, people worried only of voids. Fatal mistake. As food and provisions started to run out, thousands of people starved to death. Me and Ella barely made it when our own food ran out, but we managed to push through. Others weren't so fortunate. We had eaten anything we could come across, and raided stores in the daytime, but the majority of the food had already been stolen from them, too. Eventually, after being consistently unsuccessful, I started a garden to get us by on a few tomatoes a day, maybe a carrot or turnip to act as a side. We were lucky we had a well for water.
Those who were unlucky formed groups and raided anybody they happened to stumble across. They would steal anything the person had and left them to run home, if they even had one, with nothing. As the looters' confidence grew, so did the viciousness of their attacks. They would break into people's homes and steal anything they could carry. They would eat everything, then burn down the house, not bothering about the occupant trapped inside. It was a mark... of a sort. They became so confident when nobody stopped them, some of the groups would kill resort to cannibalism.
Images of looters run through my head and I shiver, pushing them away.
"Raina, I'm fine, you don't have to worry," he tells me in a soft voice, reaching for my hands and encasing them in his own. He is barely holding back laughter as I work out what he just said. When I do, I yank my fingers from his grasp angrily and stalk away. After a few tense moments, I whip around with a scowl on my face and a tongue lashing spilling from my lips.
"I meant us you idiot! Ella and I! All three of us need to stick together instead of throwing hissy fits and running away!" I seethe with anger.
"You mean... like you're doing right now?" James looks at me haughtily and stops in his tracks. I ball my hands into fists, sensing an argument.
"I am not -" I too stop when I see I am in fact throwing a hissy fit and running away. Ella sits patiently by the tree line as we work out our conflict. I start towards James, fully intent on settling this right here and now, but I turn towards her at the last moment and see a dark shadow stalking out of the tree line and advancing towards her.
"Ella!" I cry out in warning, and whirl around in a panic to run over. Her expression turns confused as she cocks her head to the side and looks at me with her round, sky-blue eyes. My katana is already pulled from its scabbard, my muscles tensed. But even as I sprint for her, I know I won't make it in time.
I'm too far away.