Page 66 of Hunt Me
She surprises me by embracing me with a warm hug, the slight swell of her bump pressing into me as we hold each other.
‘You’re clean,’Elizabeth observes as she drops down from her perch in the tree.
‘And your hair is all nice,’Isla notes.
‘Erm yeh, I managed to get a shower.’
‘How did you do that?’Elizabeth asks, just as Isla demands to know where.
The further along her pregnancy, the more uncomfortable Isla has been getting with certain things. One is how badly we all smell.
‘I don’t know where it was,’feeling guilty that there was no way I would take them there even if I could remember exactly where it was.‘I’ve spent all night trying to figure my way back here.’
Isla nods,‘let’s get inside.’
Elizabeth doesn’t follow us, and I feel her suspicious gaze stay on my back as I walk inside with Isla.
‘Liz is pissed with me.’
‘Liz is always pissed. It’s part of her dark and stormy personality. Anyway, you should be flattered that’s the mostshe’s spoken since you left. The others haven’t heard a peep out of her.’
Another layer of guilt wraps around me. I’d found Elizabeth in the army camp years ago. She was terrified, with bruises covering her body and refused to speak a word to anyone. As time passed and we got away from the camp, she started to say odd bits here and there, but there was nothing close to the conversations the rest of us had. Something in me knows that she’d known pain way before the rest of us were handed it by the virus, but over the years it’s seemed like, despite her past, she’s still stuck there longing for someone she left behind.
Now, she just exists. Much like the rest of us.
We have been surviving on autopilot for so long now, and Ruaridh blew that out of the water. It ruined my acceptance of how we were working and our plans to find somewhere up North and settle down in our group.
That thought used to make me happy would fill me with relief to finally be somewhere we could each call home again. But after these past few days the thought leaves me feeling hollow and full of dread.
‘Look who’s finally back,’Isla announces as we walk down the hallway to what was a teacher’s lounge area.
‘Fauna,’Amelia shouts, skipping towards me, knitting needles abandoned in her rush to make it to me.
‘Hey Mills,’I tuck a tendril of black hair back from her face, noticing how her hooded eyes are watery with emotion.
I look around the room seeing no hostility in their expressions, just relief. I also knew better than to mistake Elizabeth’s stormy greeting as anything but relief as well. And any mystery I felt before is wrapped with a blanket of love that I feel forthese women. Their beauty shines from the inside just as much as it does on the outside. They have always made me feel appreciated. And I appreciate them just as much. Every one of them is my family.
‘What happened for you to be away longer?’Amelia asks.
Internally, I sigh, making sure that my outward expression is still light and happy. Not giving anything away that would cause them concern.
How much can I tell them? Or, more importantly, how much should I tell them?
‘I fell down the sewers, got chased by some psychos – don’t worry, none of them touched me,’I send a cocky grin out to them, hoping to ease any nerves with the mention of being attacked.‘Then I found an old safe zone. It still had a working shower, hence the cleanliness and different clothes.’
‘Why two nights?’Isla pushes, not satisfied by my story.‘And where did that come from?’she motions to the axe I’d forgotten about.
I wince at the memory, unable to keep that part of me cornered off from them. We each have our preferred weapons and as weird as it may seem, we are each attached to them for different reasons. But whenever we think about it, it makes perfect sense. Like how your trauma bonds to a person, it can cause you to form all sorts of connections, just like the connections we have with our weapons. They have saved us and protected us repeatedly, so we trust them even though we are the ones wielding them.
How little I thought about my bat when I was with Ruaridh surprises me. When I think about it I hardly needed to reach for her at all.
Grief churns my stomach, it now sinking in that not only have I lost my contentment to be alone, but I have also lost the only thing that made me happy in that loneliness.
And it is all Ruaridh’s fault.
I hate that man.
‘Some assholes.’
