Survivors

It was two days after they saw the last trace of the Aliens moving around the camp around and four days after it had been attacked before they felt it was safe enough, or they even felt able to go back. The devastation they found was almost total. All the shacks were splintered into piles of matchwood, the tents were shredded, and everywhere pages from Darius’s precious books flapped sluggishly around in the light breeze. They looked like a giant shoal of shining dying fish. They steeled themselves to do what had to be done and picked their way through the remains of everyone’s possessions. They needed food, warm clothes, camping gear, fishing kit, and a whole load of other things to keep themselves alive. Even if they had been in a happy state of mind, hiding for four days in a wood with no shelter, food or water would have been a wretched experience. As they were already on the depressed side of miserable those days in the woods had been like being in their own private hell. Guilt, recriminations, boredom and thirst are not pleasant dinner companions, especially when there is nothing for dinner.

A lot of the time when they weren’t sitting in silence they tried to remember everything they’d known about Jacob. Even this didn’t keep their minds occupied for very long as they pretty soon realised they didn’t know very much. So to sum it up, all they collectively knew about Jacob was;

His full name was Jacob Farley,

He’d joined the camp about six months ago

He was a small weak looking little man

He kept himself very much to himself

He’d never come to any of the “Sessions” with Darius

He was good at singing sad songs .....

... and that was pretty much it. None of them could remember having a particularly long conversation with him. They all agreed that he had been a little bit creepy. He had “lurked” around the camp and he had always seemed to be listening-in on conversations that were nothing to do with him. He’d never really fitted in and it was only Darius who seemed to have any time for him.

After they had been over this same conversation a few times they couldn’t really tell if they were now making him more mysterious and sinister than he had really been because they now knew he’d shot the Dane. Each time they told one of their little stories about Jacob it got a little bigger and a little more colourful, in other words it grew just the way a fisherman’s latest catch grows from a tiddler to a monster with each recounting of the tale.

It was Holly who probably said the most intelligent and insightful thing about Jacob, which was “You know I always felt that everyone else in the camp wanted to be there. They liked Darius and what his camp was like. But it always felt like Jacob “needed” to be there. None of the other Survivor groups would have accepted or tolerated him would they. I mean he couldn’t scavenge very well, he couldn’t cook, he wasn’t aggressive or clever, he didn’t add anything. If Darius hadn’t taken him in, where would have gone?”

So Jacob had been an outsider, but it still didn’t explain what he’d been doing that night or why he’d shot the Dane and what the Dane had been trying to stop him doing. Having said that they’d all come up with the same theory about what must have happened. They had all decided that Jacob must have been in league with the Aliens and he had somehow directed the attack against the camp. This theory wasn’t provable and they had no evidence but it was a good thought to hang on to as it gave them someone and something else to blame for what had gone wrong other than themselves.

As they picked around the tattered remnants of the camp they came across a few piles of tell tale ash. These they knew from bitter experience would have been the only remains of some of their friends that had been caught in a blast from one of the Aliens lasers. That was the bad news. The good news (if it was good news) was that there weren’t too many of these piles of dust which meant that most of the camp people were still alive. They were probably now slave labour in a Alien camp, but still alive. They tried not to think too much about who was dust and who was now being forced to do whatever it was that people were forced to do in the Alien camps. In a way what difference did it make to them, as far as they were concerned they would never see any of their friends again, so they might just as well have been dead.

Luke had been silent and morose for much of the time, but it was him that came up with their only plan. He proposed that that they make their way to the hills in the north. Joe and Holly didn’t have any objections, or any other ideas so that was what they decided to do. Darius had said he had heard of some larger survivor settlements in the hills so it seemed the most sensible thing to do.

That visit to the old camp was now almost a week ago. Since then they had trudged northwards along dirt tracks, along disused roads and through dark tangled woods and still they plodded on. Every now and then they came across an abandoned village. They carefully scanned these for any signs of life, and only when they were absolutely sure that they were empty did they dare to go in. Every time they hoped to find something worth scavenging for their journey. But everywhere they went had been picked meticulously clean of anything useful, though it was still good to sleep inside for a night rather than out in the open. Cities they avoided completely as they were just too dangerous.

It was on the eighth day of their trek that the weather and the landscape began to change. The ground was now constantly rising and the temperature was constantly dropping. Big flat leafed trees gave way to pines, and still they went up. Higher and colder, colder and higher, and not one trace of any people did they see. Nothing, zip, zero. It was getting way past miserable. Hours and hours went past as they trudged up and up. None of them spoke for hours at a time and a real sense of hopelessness settled over them. Things had got so bad that even Luke and Joe seemed to be losing the will to argue!

Their packs were getting lighter which was good, but they were getting lighter because they were running out of food. Water wasn’t a problem as they’d got a little purifying hand pump that could be used in any stream they came across, but food was becoming a big issue.

If the lack of food hadn’t been an issue, and Joe hadn’t been fantasising about a bit of rabbit meat to add to their diet. And if the rabbit he saw had been a little less alert. And if Joe hadn’t run head long after it. And if the rain hadn’t made the ground just a little bit too slippy to run on. And if Joe’s boots had had just a little more tread on them, then Joe probably wouldn’t have skidded down the slope and into the shaft. If he hadn’t fallen into the access shaft they would never have found the tunnel. And if they hadn’t found the tunnel then rest of their lives would have been completely different.