The turbaned kid had a stout branch in his hands, his fingers digging into the rough bark. It was the best weapon and, unless his little blunt knife counted, the only weapon that they could muster.
She didn’t want to lose face. Neither did she want to carry on any further. She could have gone down towards the river, but hadn’t. Instead, she was in the middle of a forest with a stick-wielding kid in a blue turban and a ridiculous beard.
‘Fuck.’
‘Look. Stanislav’s right: you can do what you want, but it’d be stupid to just wander off after all we’ve been through.’
‘What if there’s someone just over the hill who can help us, and we’ll never know unless we go there.’
‘And there might be someone◦– or something◦– just over the hill that might eat us. We don’t know that either. So being together is always going to be better, right?’
Who was she going to be? Was she going to be the one who came through the fire and survived, or was she the one who was too fucking arsey to be with and eventually abandoned? Because that wasn’t a pattern that had repeated itself throughout her entire life, was it?
Into the forest? Back to the river?
She looked one way, then the other.
‘Fuck it.’
She turned on her heel and stamped back to the tree line, and the turbaned kid trailed after her, still carrying his stick.
‘I’m Dalip,’ he said.
‘Congratulations.’
‘Your—’
‘I’m what? You don’t get to say what I am.’ She whipped around, and he was proffering her discarded bandanna.
‘Bandanna,’ and he held it out to her. ‘You dropped it earlier.’
She could take it, she could snatch it. She stopped and thought about what to do. Then she reached out and held out her hand, palm up. He dropped the cloth, and she caught it.
‘Thanks. Dalip.’
‘That’s okay…’
‘Mary.’
She carried on walking ahead of him, and through the place at the edge of the forest where the fire was. It wasn’t like anything had happened in the last few minutes to make her stay there, so she kept on, out into the sunlight. She went down by the river, to wash her bandanna, and her face.
The river had reversed its flow, and the fish had gone. The water was fresh, and she self-consciously filled her hands with it and tried to pour some into her mouth. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever done that before; judging by the amount that disappeared cold and clear down her neck, she was, at the very least, out of practice.
The sun was going down, sinking behind the ridge of rock that had formed the backdrop to their arrival. The sky was now a deep blue, still with the white, ragged clouds blowing in from the sea, and the seagulls wheeled and cried.
Their cries were answered by a long, high-pitched wail that echoed across the open landscape. She’d never heard anything like it before, but she reacted instantly; she stood bolt upright and scanned the tree line, the river, the grasses, for movement of any kind. Mama and the Chinese woman did the same, a little way off.
Time stretched out, and her beating heart slowed enough to allow her to breathe again. As the sound faded into the wind and the memory, Mama shook her head and knelt at the water’s edge again.
Mary wasn’t so ready to let her guard down. The initial sounds of disaster had been nothing more than distant thunder above ground, a booming growl under it. Yet they’d all ended up running for their lives, and most of them had lost the race. She waited and watched.
And it came again. It sounded like it could have come from a musical instrument, a trumpet or a horn. Except it didn’t quite, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as they rose. There was no way of telling which direction the sound was coming from: out to sea, from the forest, from the hills, or further away towards the mountains. It just seemed to be.
She tied her damp bandanna around her hair, and went to see Mama, who was gathering up the gutted fish by hooking her fingers through the open gills. Grace did the same, and still there were fish left over.
‘Mary, pick up the rest.’
Mary screwed her face up. ‘They’re dead.’
‘They’re dinner, girl. ’Less you want to go hungry.’
She didn’t, but neither did she want to touch the cold, slimy things with dark, unblinking eyes. She changed the subject. ‘What was that noise just now?’
‘Some kind of animal? I don’t know.’ She looked down at the remaining fish at the river’s edge. ‘I do know that those aren’t going to carry themselves.’
‘But what sort of animal? I mean: there was that big snake in the sea. What if there are more on land?’
‘Dinosaurs,’ said Grace. ‘The boy with the turban was worried about dinosaurs.’
‘So what does a dinosaur sound like?’
‘No one knows. They’ve been dead for millions of years.’ She too stared pointedly at the fish. ‘We don’t need to worry about dinosaurs. Just those.’
Defeated, Mary forced her painted nails one by one into the gills, until she had three heavy fish hanging from each hand. She held them away from her body, as far as she could, disgusted by the touch and the weight.
The animal sound cut through the air again. Mary’s stomach tightened, and she could feel her legs get ready to run. She forced herself to walk, all the way up to the tree line.
‘Seriously,’ she said, as she laid the fish out on the ground and wondered where she was supposed to wipe her fingers. ‘What the fuck is that noise?’
‘Wolves,’ said Stanislav and Dalip at the same time. They shrugged at each other, and Stanislav continued. ‘A wolf. There will be more.’
‘There aren’t any wolves in England,’ she said.
‘Then we are no longer in England,’ Stanislav said. ‘There are wolves in Europe. Perhaps we are there instead.’
‘There are plenty in North America too,’ said Dalip. ‘Though I don’t suppose that’s helpful.’
Mary drew her lips in, and on cue, the wolf◦– if that was what it was◦– howled. It was the scariest thing she’d ever heard, and she’d run in riots with the roar of voices, the barking of fighting dogs and the wail of sirens.
‘Are they dangerous? I mean, they’re wild, right?’
‘They sometimes attack people. The small, the weak, the injured.’ Stanislav crouched down and picked up a long springy twig from a pile he’d made. He poked it through both gills of a fish, and held it up. ‘We need a frame to hold these above the fire.’
Dalip nodded, and started to sort through the wood pile for suitable lumber.
‘Can we keep on talking about the wolves?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, what are we going to do about them?’
‘It depends,’ he said, ‘on what they want to do about us. They will stay away from us, and our fire, or they will not. Those are their choices. If they attack us, we will defend ourselves as a group, or they will pick us off one by one. Those are our choices. If we climbed trees, the wolves would still be there when we came down. But it is unlikely that we will have to fight. They are, as you say, wild, and they will either be afraid of us, or they will not see us as food. These fish, however, will bring them to us, and are better off inside us than not.’
He carried on threading them, one after another, on to sticks, while Dalip began to construct a short tripod next to the fire. Stanislav glanced over to check his design, then carried on with his own task.
Mary didn’t know what else to say. There were wolves in the forest, and no one seemed to care.
‘Do not go for a walk,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Night is falling, and we do not know how long it will last.’
She didn’t like being told what to do, but she only went as far as just beyond the tree line, and stood with her hands in her pockets, balling her fists. The sky was darkening, and the sun was now below the ridge behind her, casting a long, dark shadow across the river valley. In the far distance, the light still caught the tops of the mountain range and they glowed like rosy lights in the sky.