Page 1 of Hunt Me
Chapter One
??
Fauna
It's been a few streets since I first noticed the Skull who is now walking ahead of me. Luckily he hasn’t seen me.
If he had I’d be dead by now.
The stories everyone has told us about The Skulls should have put me off. But I couldn’t find it in me to walk away, turning in the opposite direction felt like accepting defeat in a battle I hadn’t yet entered. And I guess I’m feeling a little desperate. It’s like my skin is itching for a confrontation, that adrenaline rush I’ve grown too accustomed to.
It’s well known that The Skulls are one of Scotland's worst groups, acting like they reign over Glasgow. They show no mercy and wouldn’t stop to think for a second before ripping you to shreds. Stories of their brutality are told all over the country, spoken like a cautionary tale to not enter the city.
Or at least that’s what mad Jane was rambling about when she bumped into us on our way to the border.
The Skulls have such a big reputation but they can’t tell when someone is following them.
We didn’t and still don’t have the luxury of running away from an area. Times are as hard as ever after the virus that killed the majority of the population seven years ago, spreading across the land like the biblical angel of death did in Egypt in the book of Exodus. Except he didn’t just get the first-born sons this time, he was a lot more indiscriminate. Then it up and left us to deal with the shitty consequences of it’s actions. The only clear evidence was the pile of bodies that it left in its wake. Since then, my life has had no purpose but to keep my group alive. Fuck GSCE’s, apprenticeships, bills and all the mundane stuff. Now it’s making sure I don’t get my head chopped off by a psycho or eaten by a cannibal. All whilst leading a group of eight girls — we can probably be considered women now we’re in our early twenties — North, to somewhere better than the corrupt South that we were each taken to when the virus destroyed our lives.
Now I’m holed up in an old primary school with the eight of us, all starving our arses off. Literally. To put icing on the cake Isla went and got pregnant — fucked a stranger that she refuses to talk about.
So here I am, following the enemy in hopes that he’ll lead me to a stash of supplies I can bring back to the girls.
Much to my chagrin, I can see why The Skulls have such a notorious reputation. This is only one; and yet he screams danger. An air of threat prickles around him and my skin tingles with it. My skin tingles with it and I hate myself for loving it.
Something about it drives me wild with excitement.
Call me crazy because well, I am. Who isn’t at this point.
It’s been a while since I've encountered any drama, and life was getting a little boring for a second there. Hence, my decision to follow this idiot.
I can hear Amelia’s scornful voice in my head,‘you can’t be running off like that. The world is too dangerous. People are too crazy out there.’
She always talks about how I’m a magnet for trouble and that if I wasn’t constantly making sure they were all taken care of she would accuse me of wishing for trouble to find me.
Maybe I do. Perhaps that is what I’m doing right now, but despite wanting that for myself, I’ll never take the risk. I can’t put the others in danger like that, so I stick to the shadows and out of sight.
I saw The Skull’s mask when he first turned around a couple of streets back. And of course, it was a skull. How ironic that they wear masks to represent their little group. I’m not sure what I was expecting, really, but it was something a little more impressive than your bog-standard cosplay mask.
The cogs of my brain churn trying to remember what mad Jane was speaking about. I’m sure she’d mentioned something about a mask, but my mind has been blank since I tried to remember. Fuck knows what they did to her but she refused to keep walking with us once we mentioned that we were going to pass through Glasgow. She wasn’t much of a miss, new company is sometimes nice, but most of us girls have been roaming together for years, so meeting someone for a couple of days, you don’t get that attached.
One rule I gave myself as soon as the world went to shit was not to get attached to anyone. Then I gained seven sisters in place of my family that the virus took out.
The hole in my heart still hurts every time I think of them, the family I lost.
I was at school when it began, and when I came home, I waited and waited for someone else to do the same, but no one did. Eventually I got swept up by the army and spent time moving from camp to camp with them and a bunch of other kids. It was alright, learned how to steal and stay out of sight from the creeps that lived there alongside us. But eventually everything falls to madness at some point, and once the riots started up I dragged the others with me. Back then, it was just Isla, Luna, Elizabeth, and me, but when travelling, we’d gained the others: Amelia, Eloise, Clover, and Isabella.
The rubble crunches softly under my black lace up Dr Martens, now the soft kind that are thoroughly worn in. They have a little character with the duct tape I’ve used to seal off the cracks from the elements. It’s hardly noticeable thanks to Amelia’s black sharpie and colouring in skills.
Blisters are not pretty, especially when you spend most of your time walking from the bottom of the country to the top. Took us eight days to get here from Dumfries with all the defrosting crazies out there. That was the first day the sun shone through the winter months.
Once the monsters started to show their face again, we knew it was time to move.
We’ve avoided cities for years, so Glasgow is pretty bleak compared to other places we’ve moved through. The man I’m currently following is part of the reason.
When we came through the outskirts of the city people were hanging from their necks, their arms purposefully extended overhead with ropes wrapped around their bony wrists. Some were skeletons picked clean by birds — others seemed morerecent, they were rotting still but certainly fresher than their neighbours. These must be theharbingers of doomthat mad Jane told us that the Skulls put up or whatever bullshit she had spouted to us.
Just a typical sight to be seen in the apocalypse.
