Far From Any Road

Dappled sunlight fell through the trees, pale and careworn as the light of a faded bulb. Leaves, curled at the edges, crunched underfoot, and the sky was a miasma of effervescent blue and boundless white, the colour of paper, of smoke, of cotton buds. The air seemed closer under the cover of the canopy, somehow; the kind of closeness that prompted an oppressive sense of heat that clung to skin and clothes and drew sweat from every pore.

Poppy wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and threw a glance over her shoulder. A precaution, and she felt ridiculous for doing it, but she couldn’t help the crawl of paranoia that shuddered down her spine. Even on her own, she was never truly alone, and she’d learnt that the hard way.

She stooped to a crouch by a bush frosted with berries, tiny and scarlet-red. Plucking one from the stem, she rolled it between finger and thumb, studying it as if it would reveal its nature to her under her gaze. Drawing back, she let it slip from her hand and drop to the forest floor. She had no intention of accidentally poisoning herself – or, for that matter, Nora.

Straightening to her feet, Poppy surveyed the canopy above, hands on hips. She’d found nothing to eat, drink or salvage, but she’d been gone long enough. She turned on her heel and set off back the way she’d come, disappointed but surefooted nonetheless. For the first time in her life, her internal compass was finally serving a good use.

The air around her was silent: not even a bird chirped in the trees, and the only snapped twigs were a result of her own feet, but Poppy couldn’t quite bring herself to loosen the grip on her knife. It was the illusion of preparation that sustained her on these trips, trips that inevitably brought back nothing but disappointment. Each time she left it was with hope that dwindled, and she was sure that one day there would be nothing left for her to draw on but the hard core of survival instinct buried at the base of her skull.

It was a fifteen minute walk back to the camp she’d set up – and she almost had to laugh at the term, because it was barely a camp at all. A pile of dried leaves and twigs she’d tried and failed to light; a sheet of mangled blue tarpaulin that served as a blanket; a fast-emptying bag of supplies. Bandages, pills, water, but no food. And Nora, who sat with her knees pulled to her chest and stared at something Poppy couldn’t see, no matter how hard she looked.

Poppy let her hand brush against Nora’s head as she walked by her, but Nora barely even moved. If it weren’t for the rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed, her sister might as well have been a statue, a reproduction of a person. Her thick, dark hair was matted and twisted into thick tats that drooped, lifeless, around her head. Poppy crouched down to her level and tore a hand through her own hair, lips a tight line.

“I’m back,” Poppy said, reaching up to rub at a smear of dirt on Nora’s cheekbone. “I didn’t find anything for us to eat, but we’ve still got the water. We’ll pack up and move on in a few days if I can’t find anything better.”

She sat back, watching her sister for a moment or two. With a spurt of movement that drew Nora’s gaze, Poppy stood and headed over to the bag, rooting around for a bottle of water. It was half full, and beside it there were only two more. Chewing on her lower lip, Poppy allowed herself a moment to consider their situation. No food, no shelter and limited water. The nights weren’t cold, but they were getting cooler, and eventually the tarpaulin wouldn’t be enough to maintain heat. A knife at her hip, and a gun she didn’t trust herself to fire stocked with only two rounds.

And Nora. If Poppy had been alone, maybe she would have been able to last longer, draw the supplies out further. But she wasn’t alone, and leaving Nora was absolutely not an option. She was a dead weight when they moved, and Poppy was forced to walk at half the speed she usually did, just to make sure Nora didn’t wander off.

Poppy took a sip of the water and held it in her mouth a while before swallowing. She needed to find somewhere safer than this, but it would be difficult. Taking Nora with her would slow them both down, and leaving her at the camp meant that Poppy couldn’t go far. Either way, there wasn’t much she could do.

Inching over to her sister, Poppy slipped the bottle into Nora’s hand and watched her raise it to her mouth and take a calculated drink. She felt useless, as if she’d broken some cardinal rule. She couldn’t get through to Nora any more, not like she used to. Not since Routledge.

Poppy didn’t like to dwell on her thoughts, and thinking about the past made her irritable and liable to self-deprecation. She’d always been prone to comparisons, to writing lists of advantages and disadvantages, and after the entire world had gone to hell it was difficult to compartmentalise, to see her world now as something far removed from the world she used to inhabit. An hour alone left her drawing lines, making tables in her head: which did she prefer, freedom or safety? Independence or stability?

Settling herself more comfortably on the tarp, she watched Nora with a wariness she loathed. Since Routledge, it had been almost commonplace to see Nora differently, but that didn’t mean it was any easier. Her sister had been her closest friend, and now, for reasons Poppy still didn’t understand, Nora wouldn’t – or couldn’t – even talk to her.

The turmoil of her thoughts was disturbed by the sound of footsteps crashing through the brush, and Poppy straightened to her feet in a movement that sent a wave of pain snapping through her muscles. Gripping tightly onto her knife, she dropped a hand to Nora’s shoulder and squeezed, once. “Stay here,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

Inching out beyond the meagre excuse for a camp, shoulders tensed, Poppy headed in the direction of the footsteps, careful to make as little noise as possible. Her breaths sounded impossibly loud in her ears, her pulse rocketing with every slight movement. The footsteps stopped abruptly, and she found herself holding her breath almost on instinct, easing her knife out of her belt.

Without warning, a man burst through the bushes, skidding to a halt a foot or two away from her. On impulse she whipped out her knife, holding it at arm’s length in front of her, eyes wide.

He held up his hands, hefting a crossbow. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, lady!” He glanced over his shoulder and then over hers, and his free hand stretched out a little. “Put the knife away and—”

With a flick of her wrist, Poppy loosed her knife over his shoulder, where it tumbled through the air and embedded itself into the skull of the biter that had pushed through the brush after him. They both stared at it as it fell in a crumpled heap on the ground.

The man shifted from one foot to the other, hitching the crossbow up onto his shoulder. He extended a hand. “Name’s Daryl.”

Poppy’s eyes flickered down to his hand and back to his face. It was entirely unreadable. She folded her arms across her chest, attempting an expression as inscrutable as the man’s purely as a self-defence mechanism. “Poppy.”

“You on your own?” he asked, still shifting. He seemed unable to keep still.

Poppy swallowed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No. My sister, she… she’s back there. Are you…” She screwed her eyes shut, breathing solidly for a moment or two. “Do you have a group? Somewhere to… to stay?” She hated the edge of hope that crept into her voice, and hated herself for asking at all, but she had to. For Nora.

He nodded, warily, brows bunched into a frown. Inexplicably, he took a few steps away from her, and she followed, onset with sudden desperation, anticipation coiling its tendrils around her stomach so tightly that it burned.

“My sister, she’s ill. She needs a place to stay. Please. I’ll… I’ve got medicine, water, supplies. Not much, but I’ll give them all to you if you just take us in. For one night, even. Please, I’m—”

But he had started to shake his head – slowly, reluctantly, but it was a shake and not a nod, and the hope that had washed through her dissipated like smoke dispersing into the wind. “Sorry. Can’t afford any more people.”

“The hell you talkin’ about?” another voice said, loud and rasping. Poppy spun on her heel to face the newcomer. Lips stretched into an obscene smile, he drifted over with a rolling walk that sent a crawl of apprehension running down Poppy’s spine. “Sure you can tag along, sugar. Hell, bring your sister too. Make it a real party, huh? Name’s Merle.”