Nameless, p.16
Nameless, page 16
That external silence filled with internal torment made me move when I might have just lain there and died. That, and one other thing. A truck on the road at the top of the ridge.
Practicalities to focus on and take me away from the world in my head that had grown impossibly darker than the one outside.
I imagined I was invisible. Huddled in my dark woollen blanket within my cubby house of sticks at the bottom of a debris-strewn gully. But I was still sick with terror. That truck served as a reminder that despite my wallowing despair others were still going about their business. And that business was killing. Or not killing. There were worse fates than death. Eldest, thousands of other women, men, children, had discovered that.
I had life. I had life.
You might find it strange I say that: of course I had life. You wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be Teller if I lay dead in a ditch.
But I had to keep reminding myself. Because I didn’t feel very alive. I was one of the ghosts, wandering the places Teller might have known if she hadn’t died too soon. A ghost whose only companions were the other ghosts that wandered with her and tormented her as if she had joined them in hell.
But I felt the cold and shuddered at its touch. Felt the churning in my stomach. The racing of my heart.
I’m not sure ghosts feel any of those things. Or fear. Because the sound of that engine made me afraid.
The need to move had brought with it new emotions that weren’t the apathy of lying down to die. But I wasn’t sure I wanted them. Because they were reality and with reality around it was harder to deny the truth of what had gone before.
But I suppose reality has its place. Like fear. Both force us to act to protect ourselves from a fate worse than death.
I waited until it was silent. Until the vehicle had passed. Then crawled out of my makeshift hut and jogged on the spot like a wooden puppet in unskilled hands. All of me shuddered. My folded limbs could barely unfold, my joints iced as if taken from a freezer. For a second time I wished for fire. I had tea in my pack that I could brew over the flames and sip to warm me inside and out. But I couldn’t. Just as I couldn’t have the hot bath I wanted. I closed my eyes and imagined the water on my skin and the steam in my nostrils. Then opened them again to cold.
No fire. No tea. No bath. No warmth. Nostrils breathing only frigid air.
All I could do was stoke the momentum to move. To keep on moving. That would warm me. But I ate something first even though I felt nauseous, some sweet biscuits that tasted like chaff. To give me energy. To give myself something to vomit other than bile.
It was hard to tell what time of day it was because the clouds were still a low ceiling over the forest. But I thought it was probably early morning. What day I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. What did days of the week mean anymore?
To the birds’ sporadic refrain I trudged along the gully. It was a harder walk than further up the ridge and the snow had joined with mud to soak my feet that hadn’t yet dried from the lake. But it was safer. The mud stopped the debris crackling under my plodding and the Pack wouldn’t see me in my pit. I gave frostbite a fleeting thought. Leaving my toes behind in my socks.
‘You have to live long enough first,’ I muttered.
The lethargy crept back as I walked until I put one foot in front of the other without even thinking. Dragged it from the mud to step. Dragged the other to step again. Breathed. Kept repeating. On and on. I forgot about being careful or taking note of my surroundings or the direction I was heading because I’d become a robot whose only task was to do what some higher power had deemed necessary. To obey the instinct to flee from danger.
Gradually the ground flattened out. The sides of the ridge crept lower until almost level with the top. Some awareness returned. I climbed a last hill and the ground flowed away to ice-crusted fields that stretched for miles into the distance.
I stopped. Blinking as if just woken from a deep sleep.
Then felt the tingling rush of adrenaline as a woman’s scream shattered the air. Then another an another. Gunfire.
Rata-tat-tat. Rata-tat-tat. Rata-tat-tat.
The screaming stopped dead.
I dropped to a crouch and shuffled with silent whimpers of terror to the trunk of a large tree, head swivelling on my neck, looking, looking, desperately afraid. Took a breath to quiet the roaring in my ears so I could work out where the sounds had come from. Another breath until I could hear the silence. It seemed too loud in gunfire’s aftermath. So silent that I wondered if I might hear the passing footsteps of the dead as they journeyed to the next life, their whispered goodbyes to loved ones, relief at suffering ended.
Or maybe screaming. Like the ghosts.
But only voices murmured into that silence, along the ridge on whose shallow crest I hid. My gaze stumbled to a halt at movement among the trees. My heart raced and I felt sick and I pressed hard against the knobbly tree trunk.
There was a group of soldiers. About half a mile away. Wearing the uniforms of the Pack. In my inattention I’d nearly walked right into them. A gift on a plate.
They were in a circle and at their feet were figures and I didn’t have to try very hard to guess that these were the women who’d been screaming. Screaming as the soldiers shot them. And now those animals stood over their bodies having a conversation. One laughed. Another joined in. A lighter chinked metallically and cigarette smoke drifted on the air.
Bastards, bastards, bastards.
The soldiers laughed and smoked as if they’d just shot bottles on a barrel. But they weren’t bottles, they were women.
Who does that?
What sort of fucking person is able to murder people then calmly talk and smoke and laugh?
Pressed against the tree that had become my only haven in a precarious world, I watched. There was nowhere I could go without them seeing or hearing me and then I’d be shot as carelessly as the lives at their feet and hear their laughter as my spirit left the forest.
It would scream. It wouldn’t go easily. I knew that without doubt.
Eventually the soldiers ground their cigarettes and dragged the bodies along the ridge away from me. They stopped again but too far to make out what they were doing. Whatever it was didn’t take long. Then an engine fired, revved. The truck I’d heard earlier, parked on the road, barely visible through the trees. A truck holding women who had been transported here to be killed. So there must be a town nearby and I tried to think what it was because I hadn’t travelled much further than the forest around the city for many years. But there were many towns on the lake, some large, with jetties and harbours for boats and expensive boutique shops with windows that were gazed at but doors never opened by people like me.
Boat Hire and Ice Creams for a coin. Coats for two hundred.
It could be any of the towns. Or the prisoners might be from the city, brought to the forest to be discarded because they were no further use.
The truck moved away, gravel crunching beneath its wheels, north rather than south. When the last sound faded, I picked careful steps to where they had taken the women. I should have run the other way. That’s what my gut told me.
When I reached the place, I wished I’d listened to it. Wished it with all my heart.
There was a pit the size of a small swimming pool. And in it were bodies. Hundreds of bodies. Shot and burned and bloated and dismembered and withered like corn husks left in the field.
This was a killing ground. A refuse station. A graveyard.
I recoiled and my feet stumbled backwards. I tripped on a fallen branch and landed on my knees then leaned over and vomited so hard and so long my throat was raw and my chest ached. The smell should have told me what this place was. It should have told me and I would have stayed far away because my mind already held countless pictures of the dead without adding this grotesque reality.
But as I sat with my head between my knees, clammy hands gripping my thighs, breaths deep and ragged, I felt the breeze. Moving over me to touch the pit then gambol on to the fields below. That breeze carried death’s rancid scent away to drift into the nostrils of others.
Unless you sat next to the pit.
Unless you stood there throwing in women carelessly slaughtered by monsters. Worse.
There was no word in any language to describe their evil.
I stood and began to stagger away then paused. Turned. Closed my eyes. Opened them and stepped to the edge of the pit. My brain recoiled as much as my stomach but I had to do it. I had to look on these people because they were my people, my family, as much as those I’d already buried. As much as those I could not.
I don’t know where the strength came from. The thought of Husband and Eldest and Son and Youngest. Of Rescuer and his kindness.
I would give these people honour like he gave my family honour. I would offer prayers for them as I had for Daughter. I didn’t know their names and I couldn’t cover their bodies or send their spirits in flames and smoke and ash to the sky. But I could pray. The Invader, the Pack, they’d taken so much from us. Our homes. Our lives. But like love, our prayers were beyond their reach. No doubt, beyond their understanding.
Futile prayers. But all I had.
I knelt. Felt the breeze soft on my skin. A bird sang tentatively, warning its mates to beware, for death stalked through this forest and spat it into pits of defilement.
I chanted my prayers aloud as Crow had done. Many faiths have prayers but I said the ones she said, for they were the ones my daughter had said and in a land deserted by God they seemed the only thing left. Then I took the fruit from my pack and placed it on the edge of the pit. So that any dead who passed could take it to sustain them on their journey to the next life.
Then I stood.
I looked on the faces of those people who looked up at me. Dwelling on each just for a moment.
Remembering them.
Hoping none of those empty eyes that met mine were my daughter and relieved when they were not yet sorrowing still for the other daughters, sons, mothers, fathers lost.
Be at peace. You are free now. They can’t hurt you anymore. You are free like I am not and I should be grateful.
But I am not.
27
I WALKED. I hid. I walked. I hid.
With no destination I kept on, knowing it was my only choice.
At night I huddled in silent places and tried to sleep but mostly fought the ghosts in my head. The cold of my reality. As dangerous and murdering as the men who took our lives without thought.
Burned towns. Bodies in streets. Deserted homes where I might have taken refuge but their desertion was only by the living while the dead still lay rotting on their floors. I took food. Cans of vegetables. Sugary biscuits. Energy and life I still wasn’t sure I wanted but I held onto it because I’d looked on the faces of those who wished they’d also escaped. To give up seemed like dishonouring them.
There were other people like me. I hid from them even though I desperately wanted some company. But maybe they’d betray me for a chance at life. A chance to do away with fear. Currying favour.
Who could blame them?
The third day. Another town. Small and away from the lakeshore so no jetties or boats or expensive boutiques or restaurants. Just farmland surrounds and streets with practical shops that sold tools and groceries and tea and cigarettes. The town had been burned like the others. A victim of the Pack. Reave and destroy and rape and burn. There were more bodies, but I’d grown so used to the dead now I just walked past them without a glance because there were too many to bury and too many to honour. Too many faces to look on. Hopes. Dreams.
Shattered.
I kept to the footpaths, close to blackened walls, careful of being seen. But the town was still. Plundered. Left. Empty of anything living.
Except for two.
Near the edge of the town was a fountain whose water still trickled from a lion’s fierce-toothed mouth. Around the fountain were wooden benches and around the wooden benches green grass and from it a circle of trees.
Plum trees.
Blooming pink. Beauty amid devastation.
My eyes rested on them and I drew a breath as if I could take their beauty inside me to heal what could never be healed. But was I wrong? Because seeing them face down the destruction of the town tinged my heart with light. Until I saw what was beneath them.
On one of the benches was an old man. Beside him, a dog.
I approached cautiously. The dog watched my approach with calm eyes, sitting so still at the man’s side it might have been a statue. Its tail moved. Giving me permission. A dog has no guile, but did it lure me in to be attacked by its master?
When I drew close, though, I knew the old man was no danger.
Are you sick of it yet? The horror of invasion and subjugation? The violence?
I am. So, so sick of it and sick of telling you about it. Sick of thinking about it. Sick of seeing it.
Because this was another horror crafted by the Pack and I steeled myself for its blow, maybe the final blow that drove me down so far I would never ever, ever get up again.
Despite the plum blossom.
But it wasn’t horror. At first, yes, but then it became something else. You’ll see.
The Pack had gouged out the old man’s eyes. They’d cut off his hands. Two stumps of bloody cloth resting on thin arthritic knees doused in their spillage.
An old man whose tears were blood weeping from beneath padded bandages.
‘Hello?’
His face had lifted at my footsteps. His body tensed. One bandage-encased stump moved to the dog’s back as if reassuring himself it was a friend who approached and not the Pack come to take more from him. More of him.
‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
The old man smiled. ‘I know that. Friend tells me if I’m in danger.’
Friend’s tail thumped now and he clambered from the bench to come to me and push his cold nose into my hand. I stroked him, murmured words of greeting, feeling a softening in my chest that nearly brought me to tears. It seemed so long since I’d experienced anything even approaching kindness.
Then I moved closer to the man. ‘Did the Pack do this to you?’
The man nodded. ‘They thought it was a great joke. Simply because I invited them into my home and offered them tea. They drank my tea then raped my wife and daughter then killed them. Then they put out my eyes and cut off my hands. To give me something to remember the Invader by. A gift, they said.’ His lips twisted. ‘As if I could ever forget.’
Horror. As it goes, it’s up there with the worst. Yet it sounded so familiar I barely flinched. Inside, though, inside it thickened the darkness and for a moment I teetered on its edge. But didn’t fall in. Yet.
‘Friend attacked them,’ the man went on, ‘but I told him to run and he did. So I still have him at least.’
I sat beside the man, and Friend returned to his master’s side. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘The Pack came through over two weeks ago. They went from house to house, killing. Mine was the last and I thought I would be polite rather than scared, because what do we become if our customs and civilisation are lost?’
‘We become like them,’ I whispered. ‘It’s what they want. Why they destroy our history and our temples.’
The man shook his head. ‘I won’t allow that of myself…won’t become like them. So I thought I’d appeal to them as men, because surely they are still that. Surely they love their wives and cherish their children and drink tea with friends and family. And despite what they did to me, I don’t think I’m wrong. I just think…think that war changes men for a brief time. It turns them from human to animal. Worse,’ his stump again moved to Friend’s back, ‘for an animal would not do what they do. An animal is not so cruel. It takes humanity to create such cruelty. Imagination. A need to win no matter the cost. But they didn’t win.’
His words surprised me. They’d destroyed his town and murdered his family and mutilated his body. They had won. ‘But you have nothing left.’
The man smiled. ‘I have Friend. I have memories. I have life. I can still breathe.’ He did so. Deeply. In, out, the air catching briefly in his chest.
‘Have you ever noticed how the air smells after snow?’ he said. ‘How it tastes? And the blossom…can you smell it? I’d never taken much notice until I had no sight. Then I realised that I was blind long before the Pack did this to me because I’d never smelt it… never noticed so much. Close your eyes and you will see what I mean. Close your eyes.’
I closed my eyes and sat in silence with the man and Friend. Trusting him in a way I hadn’t trusted anyone else even though I didn’t know him. Because he was peaceful. Calm. Not in need like others as they crept from house to house and street to street, just as I was in need. This man had lost as much. More. He should be like us or worse. But he wasn’t.
And I wanted to know why.
I breathed deeply. Smoke. Death. That was all. But as the minutes drew out I noticed it.
Grass. Earth. Damp. Wood. Snow. Snow. I hadn’t realised it had a scent. And finally, a hint of blossom. Honey sweetness and growth and life.
Life.
The man’s voice murmured.
‘I thought my fingers were the only way to feel but again I was wrong. Close your hands and tell me what you feel.’
I did. ‘Cold.’
‘What else?’
‘The wind. It…it’s lifting the hairs on my face. It’s damp, filled with ice. Where my feet touch the ground is colder than the air; the wood of the bench under my thighs is too. I can feel your breathing. It’s warm.’
‘What else? What else?’
I concentrated. Shook my head. Said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, there is. The pulse of blood beneath your skin. Your heart beating. Take our eyes and our hands and we can truly feel our life.’
The breeze grew stronger for a moment. Discarded leaves rustled gently past and I felt the tap of them against my boots, reminding me that the wind had given them life too, even though they’d withered and died and fallen from their mother. Petals left their companions on the trees and drifted over us. One grazed my cheek with its velvet softness. I opened my eyes and watched as it touched the man then came to rest on Friend’s nose. A nose that twitched. Friend shook his head with a splutter and the petal floated to the ground and he leapt from the bench in pursuit of his cheeky foe. And I laughed.
