Chapter 2: A Good Sized One

“Do you have your blade?” said Zell, instinctively checking her belt for her blade.

“Yes,” said Squirt, gripping the hilt of her blade.

Zell now had sixteen notches and had been hunting since she was thirteen. Each had a bow made from scraps of fibreglass and carbon fibre and a quiver of arrows made from rigid strips of high-density PVC, fletched with pigeon feathers.

Squirt was now twelve notches, and soon, she would be expected to venture out by herself to hunt meat for the Clan. Zell was training Squirt for her first solo hunt. They were at the end of the tube, and beyond them was the outside.

Squirt looked down the gloomy tube to the end of the tunnel, where rain was falling and dripping. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating a world that, until recently, she had never seen before. At that moment, the young girl saw a desolate expanse of crumbling buildings swallowed by creeping weeds. Scattered bricks and rubble blanketed the ground—this was all that remained of our world.

“Stay close…move quickly,” commanded Zell, moving out of the tube.

They hurried across the wet wasteland, stopping beneath an overhang of crumbling concrete.

It was early morning, but the thick, low-hanging dark clouds filtered out most of the light. The world existed in two states: gloom and darkness, with the ever-present rain. There were no trees; the only plants that grew were creeping weeds that weaved and tangled around everything that didn’t move and towering hemp, dandelions, and hogweeds.

“Never use the same tube twice,” whispered Zell. “If they see you come out, they will watch the tube and wait for you to come back.”

“Who will…?” said Squirt, her voice trying to sound brave but not succeeding.

“Bandits…” said Zell blankly. “We will go to the arch. Do you see it?”

Squirt nodded, her eyes nervously glancing around, trying to seem confident and not at all scared.

Squirt had been told about the surface, but nothing had prepared her for what she saw when she emerged from the underground tubes and tunnels. She had never experienced rain, seen lightning, heard the low rumble of thunder, or seen the decaying buildings. She had been told about the bandits, but until now, none of it had seemed real.

“Move fast. They sometimes watch the tube and wait for us,” cautioned Zell, and they moved off again, hurrying across the exposed, open space.

When they reached the arch, they were panting and crouched in the rubble. Zell took a block of chalk from her pouch and drew a line on the wall.

“Remember to mark the way you come,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder to see if they were being followed. “In an emergency, it will save your life.”

“What happens if the bandits see us?” asked Squirt meekly.

Her sister turned to her. “If they see us, and we don’t see them… we die.”

Zell took her sister by the arm, pulling her into the gloom of the building.

The two sisters made their way through the darkness of the ruined buildings. The only sounds were the dripping water from cracks and fissures, the muted rumble of thunder, and the soft splashing of their feet in lagoon-like puddles.

Zell froze. “Did you hear that?”

They stood in silence as the faint, distressed moan of some animal could be heard coming from somewhere.

Zell smiled. “A cat!”

The sisters hurried forward, finding one of the traps Zell had set the day before. Inside was a wet, unhappy-looking cat that hissed as they approached.

“We have to kill it quick, or it will make too much noise,” instructed Zell, taking two arrows from her quiver. She handed one to Squirt. “I will pin it down, and you kill it.”

Squirt took the arrow and watched wide-eyed while her sister pushed the other through the bars of the trap, made from scrap wire and metal, and pinned the cat’s neck to the floor. The cat growled and snarled and made a terrible racket.

“Quickly!” insisted Zell.

“What do I do?” said Squirt, panicked.

“Through the back of the skull…”

Squirt, her eyes wide and her hands fumbling, pushed the arrow’s head through the bars and positioned it behind the cat's skull. The animal's eyes were wild and fierce and scared, clawing and fighting at the bars and the arrow pinning it down.

“DO IT!” hissed Zell.

Squirt pushed the arrow down, silently gasping. The cat went rigid and then relaxed and was dead.

“You have to move quicker…” said Zell as she pulled the cat from the trap and examined it.

Squirt watched the blood drip from the first cat she had killed as her sister studied it, and she felt proud.

“Scrawny, but the pelt is good enough,” Zell said dismissively.

She put the carcass in the pouch she wore over her shoulder, re-baited the trap, marked the wall, and they moved on.

“You must be quicker,” whispered Zell as they moved forward. “Cats make noise when they are killed, and you have to be quiet. Noise brings bandits!”

They checked the rest of the traps, but all were empty. Zell refilled the bait—rancid scraps of guts—and they moved on.

“Who are the bandits?” asked Squirt quietly as they moved through the shadows of the destroyed city.

Zell shrugged. “Killers and man-eaters.”

After five hours, the sisters stopped and ate from their meagre rations. Each had a bundle that contained strips of tough, rat meat jerky. They ate in silence until Zell spoke.

“You are doing well,” she said, and she looked at her sister, smiling. Squirt smiled back, her face blushed with pride.

“Remember to move quickly, mark your route, don’t go the same way twice, listen to what you hear, use your eyes, and always go back with meat, or don’t go back… and always be ready to kill.”

They continued to eat in silence.

Squirt stared out of a gaping crack in the wall. In the distance, she could see a black tower reaching from the ground, pushing through the dark clouds, and disappearing from view.

“What is that?” she said.

Zell turned and looked through the crack and shrugged.

“Not meat.”

There was more silence.

“Amos is going to say the hard goodbye,” said Zell.

They sat in silence.

“What happens after the hard goodbye?”

“They go it alone… up here.”

“And what happens to them?” asked Squirt.

A low rumble of thunder reverberated through the ruins. Zell ripped off a mouthful of jerky, ignoring her sister’s query.

“We will look for treasure,” announced Zell after finishing her mouthful.

The pair dug through the dirt and rubble with their blades until Zell found something. She held it up and admired a corroded bottle cap. She wiped the dirt from it on her furs and smiled, proud of finding buried treasure.

Squirt dug and stopped. She admired a yellow blossom growing from a dandelion. She cut the flower that she sniffed, smiled, and slipped it into her pouch.

“If you can, try to find some treasure to take back as an offering for Chagga, to prove your faith to The Riders,” she said.

“Do you think Major Tom will pick up?” asked Squirt.

Zell considered this as she studied the bottle cap and slipped it into her pouch.

“They have to… there has to be more than this,” she said wearily. “Come, we have to keep going. We still have the other traps to check, and we are short.”

They continued onward and found the other traps, but there were no cats. The bait was gone, but there were no cats. Zell held her mouth under a stream of water gushing from a crack in the concrete above her, swilling it around in her mouth and spitting it out.

“Someone has taken the catch,” she said as she stared at the empty cage.

“Who?” said Squirt, her voice weak and tense.

“We have to hunt,” said Zell, ignoring the question, her tone grim.

“Where?” said Squirt.

Zell marked the wall and thought.

“I caught a dog three cycles ago, in the ruins further down…there is an open area…but…”

“But what…?”

“We are not supposed to hunt the same place twice…too soon.”

Zell drank more. She rinsed her mouth again, and they left.

The sisters crouched in the shadows, looking out across what was once a city park, surrounded by a mangled mess of rusting steel, concrete, and brick. The sky was dark and stormy, and rain continued to fall. Out amongst the tall weeds and ferns, something was moving.

“You see it…” whispered Zell, her eyes fixed on the movement.

Squirt crouched beside her sister, silent and still.

Very slowly and very gently, Zell pulled an arrow from her quiver and notched it.

“What is it?” whispered Squirt.

“Dog…a good-sized one, maybe…” replied Zell, tightening her grip on the bow, her eyes now dancing around, looking. “I caught one here before… Take my pouch.”

Whatever it was in the grass was still moving, and then it appeared. It was indeed a dog, a sable one, and good-sized. A faint smile appeared on Zell’s face as she raised her bow, pulled back the string, and stood. Squirt held her breath, and as she did, lightning flashed across the dark sky above, filling the park with light, and they saw it.

The dog had a rope around its neck. Zell’s eyes darted to her right, where a bandit, his face painted white, fired an arrow that shot through her temple and jutted out from the back of her skull, and she fell to the ground. Squirt sat, her face shocked and confused, trying to work out what had just happened. Zell’s dead eyes stared at her, as blood trickled from the corner of her eye as raindrops fell on her cheeks, and at that moment, it looked as though she was crying blood. A real tear rolled down Squirt’s face.

“There’s another one!” she heard a man shout, and she snapped out of her horrified trance.

She heard other men shouting and a dog barking. She scrambled to her feet and fled back through the ruins.

Squirt saw the mark Zell had made and followed it. Behind her, she heard shouting, and she sucked in her breath as her lungs burned, trying to focus on getting away and not the horror she was escaping. She heard the barking of a dog getting closer.

She stopped by a pillar, notched an arrow in her bow, stepped back into the shadows, calming her breathing, and waited.

The dog was soon upon her. It raced, snarling through the shadows and pools of gloomy light, and leapt toward her. An arrow landed in its chest, and it yelped and fell. Squirt stared at its corpse, wanting to take it, but she heard the men shouting and fled again.

Zell taught me to shoot an arrow, she thought as she ran, tears streaming down her cheeks. Zell, my sister, taught me to shoot an arrow and to kill a good-sized dog.

She followed the markings her sister had made, running and scampering through the ruins, tears running down her face as she thought about her.

She made it to the arch and crouched in the shadows, regaining her breath. She looked out across the wasteland, the rain falling in the gloom, and saw the tube they had come out of.

“Never use the same tube twice…” she heard Zell saying. “If they see you come out, they will watch the tube and wait for you to come back.”

She heard the shouting behind her grow louder. Her panicked face looked back toward the tube and darted toward the concrete overhang.

She stopped in the shadows again, now even closer to the tube from which they had emerged.

Her scared eyes glanced around. Three men dressed in furs emerged from the arch behind her. She looked back from the shadows as lightning flashed and saw a large man; his head was bald, and his face was painted white. He wore a necklace of human ears around his neck, and in one hand, he gripped Zell’s titanium blade, and in the other, a freshly cut-off ear.

She ran toward the tube. An arrow flew from her right and another from behind her. She fell forward, splashing down in the mud. Another arrow landed by her head, and she scrambled up just as an arrow hit the ground where she had lain.

She made it to the tube, pulled herself up, and crawled into the darkness. After crawling for what seemed an eternity, she collapsed and cried and cried and cried.