My clan calls going outside, ‘One foot on the ground and one in the grave," and I never truly understood how accurate this was, until it was my turn to run.
My brigade waited quietly in the outer chamber. We all watched as the door guard meticulously finished wrapping his arms and face in midnight bandages. Nothing of him would be visible, even if a fairy light was shone directly on him.
He was a large, beefy man, muscle on muscle, built over time by hauling the heavy concrete bunker door open and closed. And yet, here was the thought that sent an icy cold shiver down my spine; before he even thought about moving the slab a mere crack, he completely hid his existence in the bandages.
Fear washed over my heart as I looked down at my own clothing. Nothing was dyed with midnight. I did my best and traded just about everything I owned for black clothing, but that was as good as it got. Nobody wanted to waste their heirloom midnight clothes on a first-time runner.
The skinny kid next to me with soot-stained features leaned over and whispered, “Follow the rats.”
I nodded but had no intentions of doing what everyone else planned.
Like a snake’s strike, the door guard slapped his face, sending the kid’s eyes rolling about in his head.
I suppose I should have felt sorry for him, but I didn’t. This close to the surface, you said nothing because we all knew the elves, or their spies, heard and saw everything.
Don’t talk about your clan or the number of people in your fire camp. And if you really want to play it safe, lie and say you belong to a different clan as far away from your own as possible.
No one needed to remind me with a slap. My head was already spinning from watching the deaf boy from Castle Keep, the only survivor from last month’s massacre. This little five-year-old had been assigned to my mother’s campfire, and I’d watch as she scooped him up every night, screaming at the real monsters in his dreams.
We had all believed Castle Keep to be impenetrable. A bastion of our old above-ground ways. We all used to envy them. Everyone there wore midnight clothing, everyone was rich, and everyone was blessed by spending their days in the sun and their nights locked safely away behind their keep’s thick walls and iron-clad doors.
Yet, they still never ventured outside their castles’ heavily guarded walls during the day. They still only ventured outside during the heart of the night to gather supplies from the old, abandoned cities. They’d fought off so many attacks with so little loss of life, every clan leader dreamed of building more forts, so we could live back under the sun and begin to fight back the Fae.
Now… we were content in staying underground and slowly dying.
Castle Keep was lost. The Fae had come creeping out of the shadows and over the castle walls like four-legged spiders, singing their awful din. The devil had walked freely throughout the keep and smiled at the slaughter.
Our clan leader, Thomas, said it was because Keep Boy was deaf that the Fae songs hadn’t stupefied him.
He might be deaf, but the boy still knew how to scream out aloud.
The door guard stood waiting for the right time. And as I watched his back rise and fall under calm breathing, I kept thinking about our class training this week.
“Don’t think twice, just run.” The brigade had remained silent, their terrified minds drinking deeply from Sergeant Colt’s advice. “If one of you fall… get the hell back up and keep running. Don’t expect anyone to stop and help you, and for sure as hell, don’t stop to help anyone who can’t keep up. They’re dead on the foot.”
Colt looked at our young faces before him. I tried to pick who among us would be coming back. It was a macabre game to play because, in the end, it depended on how lucky and desperate the individual was to stay alive.
You knew by his gaze that Colt believed we, the higher-level kids, didn’t stand much of a chance. He looked at our worn-out hand-me-down clothing, blackened with soot or boiled with Iris roots, knowing nothing could take the place of the expensive midnight dye.
A couple of the boys had whispered around our campfire that if we ran after one of the rich rats, whose parents had decked their precious children out from head to toe in midnight clothes, we could wait for one of them to fall and then rip their prized possessions right off their corpse.
“No one is your friend.” Colt’s voice echoed in the schoolroom, which was nothing more than a hollowed-out cave with plank seats, his desk, and an old board painted white so that his charcoal writing stood out on it.
“Use anything and everything to keep yourself alive.” Colt must have been a high-level kid; he knew what we were whispering because he’d probably whispered it too. “If someone’s dead… take what they’ve got, they won’t need it.”
He caught my gaze as I looked at the rats who sat on the other side of the great divide, or in the classroom situation, the aisle. It might as well have been a chasm that divided us, the poor and the rich, the muck and the rats.
This is what the Fae have done to us. They turned humans into monsters… just like them.
We all assess each other as an opportunity to be used. What do they have they I need? How do I get it? Are they weaker than me?
My father said, ‘Forget your high and mighty morals when you're outside, girl, ‘cause you’ll be killing soon enough to survive. Just accept the fact and move on. You’ll let out your monster as soon as you step under moonlight.’
“Go get your boots from the Uniform General. Ensure you bind your ankles so that if you break one, you can keep running. You’re out the door in 20 minutes.” Colt stopped at last, casting one last glance over us all. “May the dark embrace you.”
As the noise of the other stupid and excited children washed over his shoulders, Colt seemed to slump a little as he turned and busied himself at this pathetic desk, tidying what little papers he had.
Maybe, I thought, the act of watching the living dead walk out of the room was something he’d grown tired of.
“Sergeant?”
He didn’t bother to turn and face me. “Runner.”
“I just wanted to ask you.”
He spun quickly and gave me the once-over look. “I’ve already said there’s no exemptions, we’re desperate.” Anyone could see he hated it when asked if there was any way they could avoid being sent outside. Hell, if the rumours were true, Colt couldn’t be bribed even though the rich rat parents always tried to.
“Go away, girl, you’ve got nothing I’m interested in.” Colt grabbed the small pile of documents and turned to leave.
“No… I’m not offering or trying to get out of anything. I want to know, can I take this with me?”
I held out a blade so dark it was difficult even for the Sergeant to see it in the dim candlelight of our class. “Who gave you that?” His eyes widened.
Pulling the knife out of his reach, I held it in a two-handed firm grip and slid it back into its Elf skin sheath. “My Dad always said when I was called, I should take it with me, but my mother said to make sure I showed you first.”
Colt sized me up. “Your Dad, Samuel Lightfoot?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, you’ve got his roo dog build. That’ll be a benefit to you.” He sighed and looked down at his feet. “Your Mum still alive then?”
"Yes," I said, now only realising why my mother might have asked me to show him the knife.
With a deep sigh, Colt looked over to the group of high-levels and rats getting their shoes. “Take the bloody knife and use it well. Hide it in ya boot and tell no one.” He took one last look at me with almost a red-hot coal of anger glowing in his eyes. “Tell ya mother I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. But if I were you, kid, I’d run behind that rich fat rat over there.”
I followed the nod of his grey head to an overfed, dark-haired rat who stood at the edges of the rat pack. I watched as he laughed nervously at some stupid joke, trying hard to fit in. It was apparent that money had bought him the clothes and built his blubber, but popularity was beyond his parents’ purse. He wouldn’t make it past the first marker.
Colt whispered quietly enough for only me to hear, “When that one falls, end him before the folk get him, it will be a kindness. Take his cloak as quickly as you can. Put it over your clothes as you run. Don’t stop. Don’t stand there and get all pretty. Just keep running.”
I looked hard into the Sergeant’s face, searching for some form of guilt; there was none, and so I would feel none when I slit the pig’s throat.
Dad always talked about his surface adventures, the friends he made on the run. And then I watched as his nightmares woke him in a frantic fever, bellowing and screaming like a terrified dog into Mama’s face as she tried to hold him down.
This was the price of the run. He always said, ‘Don’t fuss. ’ Ultimately, I guess the price became too high.
Nodding to Colt, I walked to the back of the shoe line, leaving the Sergeant to watch me eye off the overweight rat. I didn’t feel bad about it at all. The rats had it easy. Too easy.
“Size?”
“Nine.”
Shoes were handed over unceremoniously. The fact that these were the first new shoes I’d ever worn was not lost on me, nor were the complaints about lack of comfort from the rats.
As I sat on a plank seat and wrapped the ankle bandages tightly over my black boots and up my legs, it was so tempting to leave my ankles unbound and use the fabric in some other way. But the need to hide my knife was more important. It was quickly slipped out of my pocket onto my calf, then under the bandages and out of view.
“You look like you know what you’re doing.”
The fat rat had wandered over to me and spoken jovially.
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you do. I mean, look at me, I wouldn’t have a clue.” The rat laughed while his other rich friends looked on in disdain. “Could you show me how you do that?”
“Joshua, just wrap it around your damn ankles; you don’t need any help from muck.” The tallest rat had spoken, the one who was always at the centre of the pack.
It was tempting to let fat rat do his bandages wrong; it wouldn’t be long before they unravelled and tripped him up, but no one calls me muck. “Come here, and I’ll show you how; otherwise, you won’t make it to the first marker without them coming undone and tripping you up.”
It didn’t matter; they’d be mine soon enough. No need to get them dirty beforehand, though.
“Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. I’m Joshua, your Sam, aren’t you!”
The wooden bench groaned slightly under his weight as he sat and watched me complete my wrapping.
“How long do you think muck’s gonna last in those clothes? Hey? She’ll wait till piggy trips over and then’ll rip the shirt off his back.”
The tall rat laughed and then sneered as I gave him my best cold, blue-eyed stare.
“Oh, look. Hey, Muck,” called out the rat leader, laughing as he stood, “I hear the Old Folk have a real liking for blue eyes.” He turned and gathered sniggering support from his friends. “Yeah, apparently, they taste much better than brown or green ones.”
“Caleb, don’t.” Joshua flushed deep red as he apologised. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe that for one second... I just don’t want to…”
I ran my eyes over the now-named Caleb, “What size are you?”
The room became deathly quiet as the blond-haired rat leader took a step closer. “Are you threatening me?”
Smiling, I stood up and said, “Follow me, Joshua. I’ll make sure we get back.” As we passed the ‘Rat Pack’, I looked down at Caleb’s legs. “Your bandages are loose. Be careful… You don’t wanna trip out there and land on something sharp ‘cause the Fae love blonde hair to weave into the floor mats.”
It felt good to calmly walk out of the room with everyone thinking I was brave. I didn’t feel brave. I felt terrified, but there was no way in hell I’d let a rat get the better of me, even if that meant I’d try and get the fat rat back in one piece.
*
The door guard placed his hands on the massive turning handle and prepared to wind the concrete block back.
I kept repeating the plan in my mind. The outside was to be truly feared, and if I or Joshua made it back, it would be a miracle.
No one spoke or even dared to breathe loudly as the waiting chambers’ candles were blown out, throwing the brigade of twenty young runners into pitch darkness. The soft grinding sound of the bunker’s concrete door forced my eyes to focus on the small sliver of silver moonlight as it broke its way into the waiting chamber and grew to greet us.
None of us had ever seen the moon or the sun, come to think of it.
‘Maybe,’ a dreadful thought crept into my mind, ‘this is a night of firsts and lasts.’
“Run.” It was softly whispered, but it had the effect of a whip. Everyone took off like young colts through the door’s gap. Everyone, except the two of us!
I turned and looked at Joshua as he whispered, “You said to follow you.”
I shoved a firm finger of silence onto his pudgy lips, then turned my attention to the doorway. As hard as the other runners tried, they made noise. Indicating to Joshua to follow, we both quietly left the waiting chamber. Walking slowly and away from everyone else. When we reached the edge of the forest, we stopped and listened for the sounds of our discovery. The bunker door slid shut and disappeared under the overgrowth as a feeling of dread blossomed in my heart.
Every single thing Dad had ever said was now like a mantra in my mind. ‘Don’t run with the pack; they’re noisy as hell. Wait till everyone clears off and then leave the chamber. Stop and listen. Work out where trouble is before you run into it.’
By the look on Joshua’s face, he felt as overwhelmed as I did.
The unfamiliar sensations of space, the multitude of sounds, how fresh air tasted and the never-seen-before light cast upon it all by the moon, swamped my mind. To feel my skin pucker in response to a gentle breeze caressing my face. To touch and lean against a giant pine tree, and feel its dark, rough bark, as we stood slipping on its shed needle leaves, breathing in its living scent. It was all new.
This is what the old folk had robbed us of.
A scream, off in the distance, broke the calm embrace of the world. If it had been just one scream, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but as the victim’s terror built, the screaming went on and on, rising in pitch and desperation for the sweet release of death.
Grabbing Joshua’s shaking hand, we walked further in the opposite direction. At this pace, the first marker would take a while to reach, but at least we’d reach it! Then we’d hide in one of the old, ruined buildings of the forgotten town. I’d see the sun. And then hopefully, we’d see the night again and return to safety.
‘Don’t run, walk. Walk and listen. You won’t hear them if you run.’ I had laughed at Dad when he said that and asked, ‘Surely they’d call you a walker if that was what you’re supposed to do!’ But he had looked into the campfire and sighed, ‘Running’s for later when you find what you're running from!”
Now, it made sense. Now, Dad’s words made terrible, terrible sense. When every fibre in my being wanted to run, to bolt and scramble as quickly as I could to get as far away from those awful, dreadful screams, I forced us both to walk slowly into the shadows of the trees as my father’s ghost whispered, ‘Take it slow, take it low, ‘cause that’s the way the survivor goes.’
This little piece will become a small novel, of approximately five chapters long.
If you’d like to read another of my small novel on fairies:
Post apocalyptic YA survival with nasty elves? Love it!