Page 67 of Hunt Me
‘What asshole?’Isla questions.
‘He still out there?’Luna asks, twirling her knife.‘I can skin him if he is. Use his skin as a nice handle, maybe a new belt to hold it.’
I chuckle as some of the others look in her direction, their expressions written in disgust.
Luna has always been one of the more gruesome of our group, more than happy to do the dirtier jobs. Ones since Kate died, she has been ready to throw herself into, like she needs the violence and feeds on the pain of others to help guide her through her grief.
‘We don’t need to worry about him.’
I’ll never see him again, so I might as well start erasing everything related to Ruaridh, the monster, from my memory. But my body still remembers the way he touched me and held me as we drifted off to sleep. He was gentle and caring compared to how rough I know he can be.
My cheeks begin to heat, and I turn around in my pacing.
Fuck. I need to stop thinking about him.
‘How’s the baby?’I ask Isla.
‘Fine,’she rubs a palm across her bump.
Isla tries to hide her worry, but I’ve known her for too long not to notice the signs. Her vibrant green eyes have been too wide since we looked at the pregnancy test results. She always had a slight scowl on her face, what the girls at school would have called a resting bitch face before the world ended. But now, the scowl is more profound, like she is waiting for something terrible to happen, for someone or something to let her down.
Sometimes, I wonder if she’s purposefully egging the other girls on, almost baiting them into doing something wrong so she has an excuse to dislike them.
Isla’s always had a hard shell to crack. One that I bulldozed myself straight into. She’s always said she got stuck with me, but I can still feel the way she clung to me when she saw the pregnancy test result. Her legs were weak as I held her, and her tears wet the collar of my top.
That was around a month ago.
We don’t have the luxury of calendars anymore. Luna is our timekeeper, though. The irony was not lost on us when she first introduced herself. A beautiful woman named Luna who happens to be obsessed with the moon and keeping track of time. But once she got more comfortable, when the group turned from just a group of women that managed to survive and into a family she’d confessed two winters ago that her name wasn’t Luna. Since the end, she’d wanted to forget the life she had before the outbreak and decided to go by the name her grandmother decided to nickname her.
Others in the group have similar stories of not wanting to remember their lives before. Some because of the abuse that they had suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to be protectors, and others because remembering the happiness they lost is just too painful.
I place my palm flat against Isla’s stomach in the centre of where she cradles her belly, seeing the burn scars across her hands and right wrist. She’s one of the ones who prefer not to speak about her life before. The memory of losing a sibling so close to her is too painful for her to be reminded of.
A sort of pain I am lucky to have never experienced.
‘You hungry?’Amelia asks, breaking the silence.
I shake my head, not even considering taking any food from them when I ate not long ago.‘I got lucky and found something when I was out,’I admit, unable to lie to them about this detail.‘How’s our supply going?’
‘Great,’Amelia answers, a proud smile on her face.‘Liz went out and found some squirrels, so we’ve had plenty for now.’
Relief washes over me.
‘That’s good,’I say more to myself than anyone else.
‘Common, you need rest.’Isla guides me towards the adjoining classroom as I try but fail to suppress a yawn.
Despite her cranky nature, she’s always had a mothering side to her. Isla would be the first to notice when I had gone too long without food and the main one to call me out on my bullshit when I would insist I wasn’t tired, hungry or just generally uncomfortable.
The girls are strong; I know they are. But the majority of them were teenagers when they lost everything. They were too young to have to fend for themselves entirely and definitely too young to be left without any semblance of a family.
I was lucky. I had a happy life and beautifully caring parents before all of this. They were older than most of the kids my age’s parents when I was growing up. Them having adopted me aftersuffering loss when they were younger. Both my parents said that after several miscarriages, they decided the pain was too much. They wanted to focus on their grief and recovery. They’d thrown themselves into their work, making successful careers for themselves before deciding that something was missing. Me.
They passed so many beautiful memories onto me, and all I’ve wanted to do since then is do the same for these girls.
‘Despite being all clean and that, you kind of look like shit,’Isla states as we sit on top of our makeshift beds.
Picking a school to stay in has had its perks. Full mats from the PE area make great beds, and if it’s a primary school, they usually have a selection of blankets and cosy things to create a comfy place to stay.
