“They almost look like us,” Robbo had whispered to her later. “When they’re dead at least, like. When they’re not runnin’.”
After that, they stopped sleeping in the vans. After that, not one member of the convoy voiced an objection when she started taking point, same as everyone else. There was always someone ready to hold onto her elbow and take the weight of her pack. A few weeks after the dead White, the Brethren couple didn’t return from an easy supply run. No one volunteered to go looking for them.
“So, what kind of folk are you, Robbo?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, not even close, but she needed to start somewhere. They never talked about anything that was worth something. They never talked about where they’d come from, because none of them believed they’d ever be going back. And they never talked about where they were going, because they weren’t going anywhere. They were just moving. And progress was slow. It was safer to scout routes and camps on foot before bringing up the vans behind. The vans weren’t for travel any more; they were for escape. She’d been on point today, and the two days before that, and Robbo had held her elbow for all of them. That was why tonight of all nights, she needed somewhere to start.
“I’m still here, ay? What’s that tell you?”
She swallowed. For a brief moment, fear swallowed her up, doubt pinched fingers against her windpipe. “Tell me something from home. Tell me something about before, about you before.”
He sighed. It still rattled a bit inside his chest, even though he’d run out of the last of his bifters weeks ago. “Aright, ’annah. Don’t see the fuckin’ point like, but aright.”
She heard him change position, move a little closer. “Anythin’s better than bein’ on your own, ain’t it? That’s just how it is. It’s why we’re all still here, ain’t it? I had this mate, right. We’d been mates since school—not bezzies like cause he was a bit nuts, and you know what kids are, you’re not about to hang out with the soft lad. Anyways, we stayed in touch cause we lived on the same estate, we both worked in the Asda, and went to the same pubs on the weekend. And this guy, ’ann, he was somethin else, man. He was like them abandoned puppies they used to show on ad breaks. He was built like a brick shithouse like, but soft as shite on account of his ma beatin’ him up every time she took a drink when he was a kid, and his da tryin’ to shag him every time she wasn’t lookin’. All he wanted, right, was someone, anyone. You could fuckin’ smell it off him.”
When Robbo coughed, she nearly told him that it was okay, that he could stop if he wanted to. But she didn’t. She shook the snow free of her blanket before pulling it tighter around her shoulders. She blinked her eyes, brushed icy fingers between her eyelashes, offering Robbo at least the illusion that she could see him. “Did he find someone?”
Robbo’s laugh sounded angry, but she knew it wasn’t. “Yer, he did. She likely didn’t know her luck till she didn’t. Folk never know what to do with unconditional love like, d’you know that, ’annah? They think it’s all they want till they get it. It wrecks with your head cause it makes no sense at all. It’s like them pop-up targets at the shows. After a while you just need ’em to stay down, you know?”
She nodded, even though she had no idea at all.
“By the time they’d been seein’ each other six months, she’d shagged half the estate behind his back.”
“Did he find out?”
That angry laugh again. “Yer he did.”
“What happened?”
When he didn’t answer, she stabbed at the fire with a stick, sending up sparks of heat between them. Her heart was still beating far too fast. “Robbo?”
“He walked in on them,” he muttered, and then suddenly he was talking too fast and too hard again; she struggled to keep up. “He whacked her over the ’ead with an ’ammer, and then he took a carvin’ knife to the fella. And then he fronts up to my house, covered in their blood, and asks if he can come in like, if he can borrow a fuckin’ towel. And I say go’ed, lad, no worries, have a shower while you’re at it. And I phone the bizzies the minute he does.”
He was breathing too heavily. She could nearly feel the hot, choppy distress of it. “You did the right thing, Robbo. He’d killed people. What else could you have done?”
“Are you for real with this shit or is it just an act? I didn’t call the bizzies cause he’d killed people and it was the right fuckin’ thing to do, ’annah. I called ’em cause I thought he was gonna kill me. And he came to my house cause he knew I’d do it, he knew I’d grass ’im up.”
She opened her mouth to speak, maybe to say sorry, but he hadn’t finished. She could hear his boots scraping against the ground, and she could still hear the agitated puff of his breath.
“And as they’re cartin ’im off, still fuckin’ wet from me fuckin’ shower, he says to me, it’s okay, Robbo, like he fuckin’ means it, and I stay standin’ there on the doorstep in me skivvies and slippers, worryin’ about the fuckin’ neighbors.”
“I used to be a troll.”
He coughed again. “What?”
She gestured at the snow. “Before all this. When I still had my sight and the world still had the internet. I worked nightshift in a petrol station as a cashier, and dayshift in online chat rooms as a troll.”
She could nearly hear him blinking. It made her suddenly want to laugh.
“You mean, like, you were one of them blerts gets people to off ’emselves for shits and giggles?”
“No,” she said quickly, though not for exoneration. “I just did what you said before. I watched and I listened. I worked out people’s weaknesses and used them.”
“You’re pretty fuckin’ good at it like,” he said, with a low, sheepish chuckle, because he was a lot cleverer than everyone else thought he was.
For a while, he said nothing else. She couldn’t hear even the sound of his breathing any more, only the cracks of the firewood, the muffled conversations on the other side of camp, the closing, echoless shroud of settling snow. In her mind’s eye, she could see the clustered pine trees that she’d been able to smell just before they made camp. She imagined them padded with new white shoulders, their cones sparkled with frost, dark trunks in shadow. She imagined the abandoned towns and villages and cities made new, smothered under all that breathless white and quiet. And she imagined all the camps doubtless just like this one: small bastions of fiery resistance, like coastal dun beacons passing along messages of doom.
She started when Robbo made a sudden movement, cleared his throat.
“What the fuck d’you do it for?” He sounded angry, and she could understand that at least. Robbo hadn’t only thought that her blindness meant she could hear and smell better, he’d thought that it meant she was better. Better than anyone else.
And she’d thought about the why a lot too. Most often, she’d posed as a man, a predator, whose misogyny had hidden behind feigned interest and casually cruel charm. “I don’t know. I just did.”
She heard a sound: the cracking of a snow-heavy branch maybe, or a starving wild dog trying to hunt. In an instant she was afraid again, uncertain again. She reached out her numb hands toward the fire. “Do you ever get tired, Robbo?”
“Sure.” That self-conscious chuckle again. “Do I wish I’d just stayed in the house and drunk meself to death instead? Deffo sure.”
Some snow crept between her blanket and skin, cricking her neck. “Do you think we’re both better people now?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.” She smiled, and it hurt her chapped lips. “Is there any more of that nasty rum?”
“There ain’t much left, but you’re welcome to it.”