When all was used up, Alexandre found a dead stag in the woods. It must have starved to death; its ribs were poking through scraggy fur. But there was still enough meat on it to feed the village and delay death a few days more. And that was enough for spring to arrive. Snow began to melt, the first birdsong was heard, and we knew that the soil would sprout new life. Twenty-eight people died that winter. Babies not counted.
I’m warm when I wake up. Shit! Wasn’t there something about hypothermia? One feels warm when one is actually freezing to death? My heart beats a panicky rumble, my eyes snap open, and a dreadful future presents itself: Runner sits before me. He sports a black eye.
‘Breakfast?’ he asks.
I notice the sleeping bag. He must have spread it over me quite a while ago because I feel really hot now. Might also be from the shock of seeing him.
I sit up and rub my eyes. ‘No need to be polite.’
‘Hmm. I’m certainly having some. I thought you might be hungry.’ He doesn’t even look up from the delicacies he’s spreading on his sandwich.
‘You know, I’m too tired for pleasantries. Just get it over with. Say your thing and go back home.’
‘You believe you’ve failed,’ he says.
There might be something resembling a smile. At least his mouth twitches and there is a funny glint to his eyes. It could also be a sneer.
‘It’s obvious,’ I point out.
‘Is it?’ He spreads butter on a second slice of bread. My mouth waters. I might actually be drooling soon.
‘You said one week. It’s now day three.’ Why do I sound as if I want to protest?
‘No.’
‘No what?’
‘It’s day four.’
‘Oh.’ Right. I stare at the sandwich he holds in his outstretched hand. My stomach somersaults in anticipation. ‘Thanks,’ I say and more or less inhale the offered food.
‘This is not about reaching a randomly set goal, Micka. It’s about showing the spirit. You did your best using the resources you had available. With the weather conditions and the lack of provisions, equipment, and warm clothing, you never had a chance to get through a whole week. I’m quite surprised you’re still here.’
What’s that supposed to mean? ‘So why…’
‘I wanted to see how easily you give up, and it seems you didn’t even consider it. I’m not here to torture you, and I’m not here to play the smart ass, if I may be so blunt. Humans don’t live all by themselves. We are social animals. We help one another, and that is how we survive. You and I will be in the woods for a week. You haven’t been alone these four days, and you won’t be alone the next three days. Here, have more bread and cheese.’
So, he saw me pooping and vomiting all over the forest floor. Brilliant. To say I’m mortified would be an understatement. ‘I don’t understand your test,’ I mumble and snatch a slice of bread and a hefty chunk of cheese.
‘I need to know what kind of person you are. That means I’ll occasionally push you over your limits. At the same time, I want you to question everything. Total obedience doesn’t show me who you are, it only shows that you can pretend to be a machine.’
His words remind me of my ten-year-old self. I had no clue what I could do once I came of age. I settled on nomadic prostitute, because I discovered my second talent next to turbine fixing: being able to pretend I’m all right, no matter how deep the shit is I’m wading through.
‘In the following six months — or less, depending on the outcome — I want you to question everything I say or do. I don’t want to create a copy of myself. Forget what you’ve learned at school. Perhaps most of what you’ve learned in life, as well.’ That last sentence is a bare whisper.
I squint at him, nonplussed. ‘What do you know about me?’
‘I know very little. My predecessor gave me his impression of you, but I’ll not repeat what he said. I might tell you when you are an apprentice. I also know that your grades are dismal, because you rarely do what the teachers tell you, and if you do it, you do it your way.’ He sees me gape and adds, ‘The dean told me.’
‘Adults,’ I mutter. They always stick their heads together and exclude anyone too young and, hence, insignificant.
‘You are an adult now,’ he points out.
‘Maybe I should have said “old people,”’ I grumble, although he doesn’t look old in the greying sense. He’s probably thirty or forty.
‘So, you don’t want any of this?’ he asks and begins packing away the breakfast.
Did I say something that pissed him off? I grab another piece of bread, hurry the butter on it, and stuff it in my mouth before it disappears into his rucksack. ‘What’s next?’ I manage to say through the food in my mouth.
‘We’ll see,’ he answers and leans back, arms crossed behind his head.
His casual behaviour rubs me the wrong way, and he seems to have noticed. ‘If you believe I have a secret book with a list of things you have to accomplish, I must disappoint you,’ he says.
I bite down on my cheeks and he catches the nervous gesture. ‘If it makes you feel better.’ He points to the book. ‘What did you learn, Micka?’
My neck tingles, because his words remind me of my father’s “What did you learn, Micka?” and the humiliations that always follows. But Runner doesn’t look aggressive. He looks relaxed.
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper, ashamed.
‘Why?’
‘Because… Because all this…’ I wave at the book. ‘…gives me more questions than answers.’
‘What questions?’ Still relaxed, still no sneer.
‘What I’ve been told at school and what everyone else knows about the Great Pandemic is very different to what’s in your book. And I wonder why that is. There are only two possible explanations. Either the book is wrong, or everybody else is.’
‘The book is a summary of what we Sequencers know about the causes of the pandemics. Some of it might be wrong, but I doubt it,’ he says.
‘That would mean everyone else is misinformed, or deliberately misinforming others. But I have no guarantee that what is written in your book has anything to do with reality.’
‘Make a guess,’ he says and looks up at the foliage, chewing on a blade of grass.
I don’t want to guess; it feels like gambling with ten billion corpses.
After a long moment of silence, he says, ‘Imagine there is a threat so big no one can do anything about it. What lie would I have to tell you to stop you from panicking?’
‘One that says, “Shut up, I do the thinking?”’
He laughs at that. ‘More or less. I would tell you a lie that you’ll find easy to believe. One you’d want to believe.’
‘Which is?’
‘First, I would let you believe what you believed for years: that the Great Pandemic was caused by an unhappy coincidence, bad karma, or a deity with a strange sense of humour. To give you something to look forward to, something that keeps you calm, I would tell you the lowlands will be safe in a few years, that you can soon go where the grass is green and the winters aren’t so harsh, where we can live together and not in settlements so small and so far apart from one another that it’s barely possible for people to survive with the little they have. And everyone would believe these lies easily, because sixty-eight years ago, humanity was wiped out almost completely and this collective trauma is hard to digest. Most people want to forget about it. No one wants to be terrified, no one wants to know it can happen again. No one wants to know that, next time, no one will be left alive.’
I try to swallow, my throat hurts, and I’m left with a croaky voice. ‘Why were bone samples examined for injuries?’
‘What do you think?’
Rarely does anyone ask me what I think, and Runner does it so often, my head is spinning. I think of Grandfather and what he told me about the Great Pandemic. Then I comprehend how little information he’d shared. Not once did he mention how Grandmother died. I’ve always believed it was cho
lera that killed her. I believed a lot and didn’t dare ask, because I knew it hurt him. Whenever we touched the topic of death, he spoke of God and Grandmother being in heaven.
I look at Runner. The grass blade scoots from the left corner of his mouth to the right. A bird calls in a tree above me. And there it is, the one word that makes more sense than all others dropping from my mouth. ‘Violence.’
‘Yes.’
‘How many people died of disease?’
‘Three billion, maybe less.’
I stick that information in a corner of my brain that knows little emotion. ‘Seven billion people killed one another,’ I whisper. ‘The ones who survived are murderers.’ I’m nodding at myself. My father’s behaviour seems to make sense now.
Runner’s face darkens. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’
I bend a little closer, ears and eyes wide with attention.
‘I’ll tell you once you’re an apprentice,’ he says.
My shoulders sag and I inspect the dirt under my fingernails. ‘What are Sequencers really doing?’
‘Trying to keep humanity alive, but it gets harder every year.’
‘Why does it get harder?’ I ask.
‘You’ll know once you are an apprentice.’
‘The time…the ten or fifteen years for the lowlands to be safe again, is that…’
‘The time we have left, yes.’
———
Runner is lying at the base of a beech tree, half rolled up in his sleeping bag. I sit close by, reading and picking the soft innards out of the loaf of bread he’s brought, but I’m barely able to contain my hunger for knowledge. I can’t believe that I actually want to read more books. He told me to be patient, but I’ve never been more impatient than today.
Before he dozed off, he asked me how I can sleep on the forest floor all by myself while that lynx is in the area. I’ve never heard of a lynx here, but Runner is certain he’s seen footprints.
He had little sleep in the past four days while keeping an eye on me. I felt ashamed when he told me this, but what choice did I have? I don’t own a fancy tent like the one he has, one that can be hung between trees, far enough from anything that wants to take a bite off me. He calls the thing a hammock and it has room for two. He also says we’ll share it whenever we’re travelling together.
Since then, goosebumps scuttle up and down my back. I’m thinking of the Old Geezer who died a few months ago, but not because people lynched him. He simply fell down dead. Probably drank too much. Everybody knew what he did to little boys. Or maybe they suspected it and it was too horrible to ask questions or point fingers. Instead, it was better to say nothing. In third grade, Marreesh often had problems sitting on his bum. No one talked about it. I didn’t either. I had no clue what I could say. “Are you okay?” would be stupid. “Did someone stick something in your arse?” would be outright…impossible. So I settled on “Hey.” Later, because Marreesh flinched every time I approached him, I stopped trying. Everybody stopped talking to him. A wall of silence. There are a lot of people on this side of the wall. On the other side, you are alone.
I watch Runner snore softly. I know nothing about this stranger and I’m supposed to travel with him, sleep in a small tent with him, share food with him, and even my thoughts. I need a weapon, something more useful than this pathetic pocket knife of mine. And I need to be better prepared for our next trip, should there ever be one.
I’ve never thought about a Sequencer’s life. Cacho appeared and disappeared, leaving behind a whiff of magic. Some people gaped when he marched along the main street into our village. Everyone believes Sequencers are wealthy, but Runner claims that all he owns is in his backpack. The silvery machine, the clothes he wears — plus four more sets packed — his ground pad and his sleeping bag, a pot, a water canteen, two knives, a rifle, the hammock tent, and three books. I haven’t seen it all yet, but there can’t be that much more. He has to have a place where he lives, where his family lives, and where he stores stuff like winter clothes. Cacho didn’t show up in summer clothes at minus twenty degrees Celsius, either.
When the sun begins to set, Runner cracks open an eye. ‘What time is it?’
‘Dinner time.’
His “short nap” was several hours long, and he doesn’t look particularly fresh. Yet he jumps up, compresses the sleeping bag into a small roll, and quickly stuffs it into his backpack. ‘Come,’ he says and walks ahead.
We hike to the reservoir, and on the way he points out traces of wild animals and explains their meaning. Feathers of a bird — plucked, not moulted — droppings and pellets of an owl that show where the nest is, scratches on the bark of trees, brushed-off rain droplets.
When we reach the reservoir, he says that he needs to wash.
That reminds me — my damp clothes must smell like Alfons Lampit’s goat cheese. I pull off one shoe and hold my socked foot close to my nose. Yuck!
Sitting on the turbine housing, I hug my knees. My back is turned to Runner and my front faces the sunset. About twenty minutes later, he walks up to me, his hair still dripping. ‘Your turn. Wash your clothes. They reek. I have a dry set you can use.’
I wonder how he does his command thing without ever raising his voice. He rummages in his backpack, extracts a pair of brown cotton pants and a white shirt, all too big for me.
No underwear, though.
Now, I’m glad my body hasn’t changed yet and there’s nothing that makes me look very female. Well, nothing prominent at least. Feeling awkward washing with a stranger not ten metres away, I keep my eyes on his back. Should he move a fraction, I’ll dive. I’m a good swimmer and there’s no way he can drag me to shore. I’ll drown myself before he can even put a finger on me.
But nothing happens. The man sits as still as a statue, his slender silhouette black against an orange backdrop.
While my clothes soak on a bank, I take my time rolling around in the chilly water and swimming to the middle of the reservoir. The exertion helps to clear my mind. I watch the small bump in the distance — Runner still sitting motionless on the turbine housing. I wonder about his motives, because, for an adult, a fifteen-year-old as the only company must be nothing but irritating.
The sun is almost gone when I spread my washed and wrung-out clothes next to the turbine. ‘How old were you when you started your apprenticeship?’ I ask.
‘Fifteen. One of the most basic skills every Sequencer has to learn is survival,’ he says. ‘You have to be able to travel between settlements in harsh weather. In the next three days, I’ll show you how to hunt and fish, how to make a fire without burning down the forest, how to scale trees and put the tent up, and how to find water if you don’t know where the nearest river or lake is, et cetera. I want you to practice these skills when I’m gone. You’ll soon need your own sleeping bag, rifle, and hunting knife.’
That’ll be expensive. My parents won’t be happy. ‘I know how to shoot rabbits,’ I offer. The same goes for fishing and making a fire without burning down the forest. That’s stuff seven-year olds learn. Besides, I seriously doubt he can teach me anything about climbing trees. But I keep my mouth shut. I’m still embarrassed by the recent non-demonstration of my survival skills.
‘Show me.’ He stands and pulls a black rifle from a sheath. It looks much sleeker than the one Father has in his bedroom.
‘An air rifle,’ he explains. ‘Very quiet — a great advantage when hunting in the woods.’
I know air rifles. The ones that need bullets are only for the hunting parties and the council. The propellant is hard to come by. If anyone wants to shoot small game, pellets and air rifles are used.
He breaks the barrel down and takes a small silvery pellet from his pocket. ‘Push the pellet all the way into the breach — like this — then close the barrel. If you need more than two shots to kill your food, you shouldn’t be hunting.’
The barrel latches. He aims at the ground and pulls the trigger. There’s only a soft click. �
��This is an old weapon, but a very robust one. It has excellent aim, no recoil, and it needs little maintenance. But you can’t kill anything bigger than rabbits and fowl. If you need to defend yourself against something large, you can use it as a club, but not much else.’
He holds out the rifle to me. ‘Give it a try.’
Finally, something I know well. I take the weapon from his hand. He fumbles in his pockets, extracts two pellets, and hands them to me.
The rifle is surprisingly light. I load it the way he’s shown me — it’s different from my father’s, which has a lever to compress air. I aim at a tree about seventy or eighty metres away, and shoot. We have to walk up to it to see that bark has chipped off where the pellet hit.
‘Hmm.’ I try to not sound too appreciative about the weapon’s aim and reach. Runner doesn’t comment. Looking down at his shirt I’m wearing, I say, ‘Too white to hunt.’ I fetch my dark rain jacket, pull it over me, and ask him for more pellets.
With a grin, he places only one into my palm. If I need more than two, I shouldn’t be hunting.
———
I sit in a beech at the edge of the forest. Several narrow trails criss-cross through the grass, entering the woods where a mighty tree lies on the ground, covered by moss and a few marten droppings. I can smell them all the way up to my branch.
My feet are bare, pressing against the smooth bark. My back is nestled against the trunk. The rifle is pinned underneath my right arm, my eyes trained into the distance, focussing on nothing in particular. My ears, though, are wide open, mapping locations of the occupants of the woods behind me and in the meadow before me. A pair of tawny owls must be nesting half a kilometre to my right. I see them swooping in and out of the trees, calling their high-pitched song as soon as they settle on a branch.
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