The Zombie Reunion

He had felt his heart slow, his chest hair thickening, and his scalp feeling cooler each morning. One day he ran his hands over the fluff that remained at the back of his skull thinking, I miss my thick black hair.

When he moved his stiffened fingers with swollen knuckles over his changing face it felt as if old, creased leather had been stretched over a huge bony drum that couldn’t be his skull. Despite his increased enjoyment in the smell of human blood, he felt a deep revulsion that wouldn’t let him chase or tear at other humans. There was an ability to eat raw venison and scaly fish which surprised him even as he tore at the flesh of those creatures: murdered with his own bare hands, consumed for the energy to endure chilly mountain passes. So, the voice of survival reasoned.

One day he heard a dreadful sound as he watched a large but young raven attempt to fly but fall clumsily from its’ nest to land head thrust forward, against the ground. It sat back on its’ rump and looked around as if confused. The sound made him think of a donkey vomiting and ended in a growl. It was coming from himself. He felt liquid ease out of the corner of his left eye and roll down to drip into his ear.

Yuck!

The sound reminded him of something he knew he’d lost, but his memories of bipeds like him sitting around tables in rectangular homes made of masonry and tile were vague . Sometimes when he was using his two pointy, yellow-nailed hands to try and catch a fish, a vague memory of his hairless body surrounded by water and propelled by his overarm strokes came to him. The first time it happened he let go of the fish in surprise and it escaped. It took an hour to catch another.

One day after he caught a young deer, and was tearing at an oozy, chewy piece of rump, he sat for a while by the water in the open , a pleasant but risky thing to do, and thought about his hands experienced the water. He thought about the silvery scales of the fish lit by sunlight which glittered and danced over the rippling water. Another image of his hairless body as his arms stroked in rhythm drawing him through calm but pungent water came to him, and with this image words that he heard himself growling aloud. They felt weird in his mouth but familiar. “With an outward stroke of power intense your mighty arm goes forth; Cleaving its way through waters that rise and roll, ever a ceaseless vigil keeping ; Over the treasures beneath .” The buoyant effortless motion that he saw in his mind’s eye was not one he could do now. His bent legs and elongated arms though functional felt awkward despite his fast reflexes and keen eyesight. His metamorphosis felt like a heavy cloak his true self wore.

He had hidden by the cave mouth in a stand of scrub and watched the pack hunters whose heads were bare and enlarged , not unlike his, hunting the natives: wiry, dark-skinned men and women with a regal stride that gave the pack a difficult hard run. But the pack was relentless. He could not imagine their energy despite his strength being adequate for survival. Once he saw one of the pack hunters up close, and piercing cold shivers went down his spine, as he saw that the body was entirely hairless and the skin like old parchment stretched over this one female’s emaciated frame. There was muscle, but it was smaller, more elongated than he remembered. Her large teeth had blood and tiny bits of flesh clinging to them. She turned in his direction giving a kind of sneer as she sniffed the breeze.

Grateful that she’d just eaten he pulled back from the shadow of the rock and went into the depths of the cave, hiding in a crevice next to a rock wall running with water and hung with moss. After what seemed like a long time he heard the faint scrabble of shifting stones, getting fainter and he reasoned she had headed back down the scrabble path that was the most efficient way to access his chosen abode.

The next day he gathered pungent herbs growing near the water, and branches of a fragrant shrub and made a wide belt that hung down from his hairy torso. It was the best way he could think of to disguise his smell. The pack hunters were so named because they came in packs to this place, just after dawn, and just before dusk, thus he avoided those times of day. It made getting meals harder and his frame thinner, but by changing the herbs daily he lowered the danger of being scented and hunted.

Will I change and want to join them?

He didn’t know why he’d first avoided them like the enemy, for he had done it by instinct even before he could understand the physical danger of approaching them.

After the ice and snow had melted from the long hunger-inducing winter season, he felt drawn to go down the mountain. His long, gnarly toed feet had carried him to the base of the first pass when he realised his route went past the pack hunters’ homes. He went up and circled around, gathering rocks that he used to create areas that looked as if travellers had disturbed them, diverting attention away from his chosen path.

He also carried some rocks on his person in case he needed to pelt a hunter with these missiles in order to escape. After he had travelled far enough east to see the water from the highest vantage point, he travelled north and then south, then north- easterly to bring him back to the point on the edge of the wide bay he had spied from higher ground.

He was within an hour of his destination when he smelled smoke and in the smoke the scent of roasting flesh.

That savoury smell drew him. He had made a fire one night and put two long plump, brown-speckled fish wrapped in mats made of scraped bark into the coals while there were still flares of red flame. The smell grew more enticing, and his jaws slackened and dripped with saliva. The first stars were glowing, and the night birds called, when he sat enjoying the delicious flesh. Even the head of the fish was palatable. While he ate , he maintained vigilance for any little sound that might indicate the movement of nearby strangers or hunters. What struck him was the lack of sounds: no birds chirping, no scrabbling sounds in the scrub indicating small furry creatures, no twig-snapping hooves of deer.

He stopped again. He inhaled the smell of charred wood, cooked flesh, and the faint odour of pine needles. He found himself stroking his jaw. His pointy nails felt harsh even against his leathery skin. The sweat gathering in his chest hairs made his skin itch. The sound of the wind whistling through the tall pines on the water’s edge was eerie. Up in the mountains he heard the wind whining through gaps in rocks and whooshing down the passes, but he had not heard a swaying tree in a long time. A loud splash made him startle.

Was that a large creature in the water?

Checking again for sounds that indicated a hostile presence he jogged towards the water and that smell. He rounded the dunes and found a fine-graveled beach, a combination of sand and tiny pebbles. In front of him was the bay, a wide expanse of navy chilly-looking water. A whale breeched, the flipper roll and back wash making him gape.

Was this the creature he heard earlier?

He thought it a rhetorical question.

Looking to his left, a sense of emptiness, and a choking in his throat made his eyes water. The remains of houses and humans were scattered in a blackened mass of debris. A collection of small clouds of white smoke hovered over the scene. The wind rose, and the whale swam around a rocky outcrop.

Near him he could see the staring eyes and charred neck of a fat reddish creature with one pointed ear visible and cloven hoofs. It was one of the strange pink creatures kept by the Kingly people as if posed like it had fallen as it tried to run. He surmised it had been trapped halfway through the fence. Could he bring himself to?

It smelled so good, but its’ still intact eyes were staring at him. That’s why he avoided the pack hunters. They ran and ran for the joy of falling upon the Kingly at their weakest, staring into their eyes even as they teared at them.

Shouldn’t you avoid the eyes of another creature you took for food? Nothing was right with the pack hunters, he thought. Had they done this?

His saliva had dried up and now he shivered. Jogging along the water line, sniffing the wind, looking for a hiding place in case there were several pack hunters about. He saw a piece of silvery driftwood. It had one long narrow end at which it had splintered away from a large piece of timber, before being tossed about by the sea, which widened out into a rounded weighty club-like end. Picking it up and turning it over he decided to take it. It was light enough and would be helpful when wielded as a weapon. As he bent to grasp it, there was a moment of stillness, the wind and the toss of the waves quietened. In that moment he would have sworn someone was watching him. He saw some tracks that made his bowels spasm, but he left the devastation and found a cave about 10 minutes jog away. He crouched holding vigil, in the shadows, with his senses expanded like a net, until he could no longer feel his feet. No sounds but the lapping of water. A strange whistling as the wind rushes through a crevice somewhere above me. He would be cold but safe until morning.

He woke stiff all over, and his hip was numb where it had rested against an uneven patch of stone. He stretched and again the memory of a woman’s voice with a sing-song rhythm was in his head, the voice starting when he was half awake. He felt a longing for the soft and warm place the sound represented , but the impression remained subtle. The damp of the cave, the drip, drip, dripping, and ravenous hunger overwhelmed the impression. This morning he knew where to find food. The wind had died down and whatever hole it had been whistling through now served to let in light. He was a few metres from where he entered and had settled in the back of the first cavern.

Had any other creature entered the cave while he was asleep?

He stood up, pushing against the hard wet stone to help his stiff legs come to standing. The glow of dawn filled the entrance, and he walked towards it. The cry of seabirds was loud , no doubt a flock descending on the carnage outside. The view from the entrance was ruggedly beautiful. The green and foamy sea slapped against and washed over the dark pock-marked rocks. The silvery fins of a school of dolphins appeared beyond the breakers.

He could hear the seabirds all squawking at once. Standing in the mouth of the cave, grasping his driftwood club, he saw a flock wheeling away from the beach, flapping over the water. He picked his way down a slope that was part scree and between straggly bushes to a vantage point over the beach. A group of what he recognized as the Kingly people were gathered. He blinked and looked again.

Yes, it was them.

They were dressed in an unusual way. He crouched behind an outcrop which, he thought, was screened from the beach by low scrub. The people wore head dresses made of long vulture and sea eagle feathers sown together. They wore cloaks, trousers, or both. Some of the clothes were made of animal skin and some from a woven material he couldn’t name. They stood in a V formation, their backs to the sea while they faced the destruction. Three figures were crouched amongst the carnage and lifted some remains onto a type of stretcher formed by an animal skin attached by leather strips to two long poles. They stood, dragged, and lifted the stretcher and walked towards the group. The low rumble of a drum began. A piercing yell sent shivers down his spine. A fourth person , female, joined the men, and they shared the burden of the stretcher though it couldn’t be especially heavy judging by the disfigurement of what remained. They walked in front of the man at the front of the V who had his hands raised out towards the sea.

His legs were cramping due to his crouching. His feet were numb. He decided to shift his position for a second, and his head must have protruded from behind the bush. In that moment, a keen-eyed warrior who stood closest to him spotted the movement. He turned to the one behind him who lifted a bow and began to fit an arrow to it. In his horror, he froze. His eyes had been on the four with the stretcher, watching them place it into a long floating platform with sides. He felt he may have seen one before, but his thoughts weren’t clear. They began to pull the long vessel into the sea, on a trajectory that avoided a nearby dolphin pod. The sky was turning pink and mauve, the seabirds were forming a white cloud, and here he was fearing for his life. It had been foolishness to think they’d be distracted by the ceremony; of course, they would be alert for pack hunters. The first warrior now put his hand on the arm of the one with the drawn bow and shook his head. He dropped behind the bush, his hands shaking, still expecting to hear the whizz of an arrow or the sound of the men approaching. Instead, all he could hear was the drum and a low wailing. He looked again and the figures of the Kingly people and the vessel being towed could be seen like puzzle pieces in the gaps between the branches in front of him.

His rumbling stomach sounded loud, and he wanted to grab a branch of the bush and gnaw at it, but he knew from previous experience the bark would taste foul. The lure of food down on the shore couldn’t be denied. As he began to move along the slope choosing a spot to climb down towards the beach, he heard snuffling and growling. He rushed forward ; now he was out in the open with no shelter within leaping distance. He heard another growl, and his heart pounded with fear.

He still couldn’t see the creature, but shivers coursed through his body.

Should he have hunkered down amongst the rocks?

Behind him he heard the displacement of scree, the musty rank smell, and the amount of body heat exuded by a large creature. He leaped to his right, aiming for a place where a rock shelf jutted out over a deep hole into which water dripped.

Out of the corner of his eye a sighting. Wishing he was dreaming didn’t stop instinctual terror from making his bowels loose. One oval fluffy ear, and the side of its’ hairy snout and bulbous nose above him. BEAR. I must get out of reach of its’ long, jagged claws.

Terror made his sight blur.

He heard shouting. A hand pulled him, two hands pulled him down, over the edge.

What’s happening? Is this a good thing?

His face was in the face of the warrior he had spotted earlier. The one who shook his head. The one who stopped him being shot. Shot with an arrow. His thoughts diverged. Even as he was being pulled down, he saw himself running to a pothole beneath the rock shelf. He thrashed about, slamming the warrior who had unbalanced him. Entangled they rolled into a hollow together, heads too close. Bash. Pain. Scratches. Grunts. The whoosh of exhale.

Stupid.

They untangled. He felt himself from his bald head down to his bent toes. His thoughts slowed. Limbs OK. Face bloody.

His eyes fixed on the warrior that had saved his life again. The warrior pointed to the opposite edge of the hollow they had fallen into. After helping him up to that edge, the warrior gestured back. From his vantage point he could see the top half of the huge Grizzly , side on but further away looking towards its’ back. Behind and before it stood four Kingly warrior heads. One disappeared from before its’ mighty claws with a scream .

One warrior wounded.

An arrow had lodged in the upper right back of the bear. The roaring of the bear and the higher pitched sounds coming from a cub, whose head he could see made his spine feel like jelly. Another taller warrior in a head dress had joined the group behind the huge Mumma, thumping the ground and shouting. The standing warrior in front took the opportunity to drag away his wounded comrade, pulling him into the hollow under the rock shelf, the same spot from which he and his rescuer had fallen. He could feel heat and drops of sweat on his face. Blood was oozing from gravel rash and thorn scratches on his left arm.

There wasn’t a lot of pain from his arm. Yet.

The warrior gestured for them to go towards the bear.

Why am I following? he thought. Am I crazy? But he’s just saved my life, twice?

They crouched beside another warrior and his wounded comrade. His rescuer was now helping the wounded man, tying leather strips around the upper arm of that warrior whose hand was in shreds. The gravely injured man’s companion had a deep scratch from left shoulder to right waist, but it was just oozing like his own left arm.

From above there was another great commotion. Shouting, pounding of clubs on the ground, growling.

What was happening?

His rescuer pointed in horror. Visible from the peripheral vision of his right eye, and from behind its’ huge hairy Mumma, he saw a cub become airborne briefly.

A painful clumsy landing. Upright. Lumbering.

His thoughts anxious. Not toward us. Go away. Away.

He exhaled.

It’s definitely going away.

He breathed deep.

His breath rushed from him. He and his rescuer smiled with relief at each other. The cub was wounded in the right hind leg. Its’ cries eerie with pain and fear. Compassion and terror warred in him as he watched the cub traveling away from them, down a worn path between stands of cypress.

Despite the shout from behind him, he felt the need to move. He climbed to look across the broad cliff top with its’ path. Another two warriors were down but yelling with life. More warriors had come so there were still four men against the Grizzly, which was lashing out, now from the far edge where the steepest drop was. The bear had been hit with four arrows now, her enraged growls were echoing off the cliff above. The mad courage of the warriors as together they matched the aggression of the Grizzly amazed him.

Admiration. Horror.

He felt as if he couldn’t look away.

The tall one was within a hair’s breadth of the bear tearing him with its’ claws.

How courageous!

He seemed to take the shape of a lightning bolt framed against the Grizzly’s might. In that moment, the beast’s balance relied on its’ right haunch as it strove to wound him.

Horrifying.

Mad with vengeance.

Driven to the very edge, the bear’s right foot landed on a loose round stone. The bear’s own weight took it backwards, and the warriors on its’ right jumped away. The mighty creature free fell for 5 seconds, landing with a snapping of branches and bones.

There was a long silence.

The sobbing of the man beneath him as he mourned his hand reached him. He climbed down and put his right hand on the man’s good shoulder.

More growls were heard above them.

What now? he thought. It was the second cub, attempting to imitate its’ mother, but it wasn’t as savage. With a volley of shouts, the now safe warriors drove the second cub away.

He saw three more Kingly tribespeople appear from the beach and tend to the wounded. He was offered water from a skin bottle. The whole group he had first seen on the beach were gathered now, close to the spot where he first heard the great bear’s growl. He began to shiver. His hands wobbled like leaves in the wind. They shook so hard that the warrior with the headdress removed his cloak and placed it over him. He looked into the Zombie man’s eyes and said, “I am Memon.” And from somewhere deep in his brain and heart was an image of someone speaking his name with love, and he replied, “I am Nick.”

The party surrounding the four walking-wounded and the two laid out on stretchers wound its’ way down the cliff in single file, and onto the beach. There the party arranged itself with Memon in front and Nick’s rescuer who was called Cranon, bringing up the rear with his zealous archer friend, Marchon.

Memon raised his arms and pronounced words over the last of the remains of animals and men partly consumed by the fire. There was a hasty meal of animal flesh, and then the group moved in a north by north-easterly direction. Memon set a pace that was close to the maximum that any in the party could manage. Nick couldn’t communicate properly with the Kingly warriors, so he presumed it was to get to safety before dark and before any encounters with other creatures.

After two hours of slow jogging, Nick noticed a change in the flora. They had begun travelling along a path that followed the bay as its’ waters were visible through the low shrubs. Now they were in tall stands of timber around which heavy rope-like green vines grew. In places huge trees had fallen, and the vines had snaked over them, and climbed close to the top of the next tall timber. He had grown used to the crisp air of the mountains, and the faint tang of brine when he ventured to the bay. Now the air felt heavy, and the smell was a pungent version of the scent smelled when he was digging for roots around trees. A small creature with heart-shaped wings flew right in front of his face, and was joined by another, and another fluttering in a flight that was both vertical and horizontal by turns. Their wings were the colour of the bay, and there were white spots defining the uneven edges of their wings. A memory of similar creatures hovering over a trickle of water in short green grass came to him, but he could not name the delicate fluttering things.

He wanted to both go back up the mountain and continue with his rescuers. He was leaving the world in which he had been comfortable for many seasons. They climbed a rise, and the going was slower. He had to help carry the stretchers’ occupants. The warrior with the mangled hand looked very pale, and his companion was dripping water into his mouth. The companion stopped to pull out a pouch of lilac coloured powder from a skin satchel he wore and taking the large sack from off his back tilted it downward putting more water into a small skin bottle. He removed a cup attached to the large sack, and in it mixed the powder with some of the water from the skin bottle. Two of the men and an older woman propped up the injured man and encouraged him to drink from the cup. He heard the word Julon a number of times and decided it must be the man’s name.

They travelled further until they were at the edge of a cliff with no trees in front of them. The vegetation had been thinning out for some distance and they had been walking in full view of the expansive waters of the bay. They stood before the amazing colours of the sunset as they viewed a distant promontory of land over the navy water. The horizon was the colour of salmon flesh, fresh blood, and light bronze. The clarity and intensity of it stunned him. Up in the mountains he could see the sun drop between two peaks in a golden cloud, but he couldn’t remember seeing a sunset over water without a haze . The whole party was quiet for some minutes. A flock of seabirds became one shadow over the water as they flew into what looked like a blazing furnace.

The silence was broken by the sobbing of the old woman.

“ Julon! Julon, Julon.”

They looked down and back at the man suspended in mid-air, his face half-turned to the setting sun. A warrior standing at the head of the stretcher, held a polished metal disc over Julon’s nose and mouth. He held aloft a lighted lantern over it, and its’ polished surface gleamed, unmarred by the mist of breath. He hung his head and put his arm around the woman. Memon touched Nick’s arm and brought him to the head of the group where he gestured for him to join him in sitting on a rock. There was chanting and dancing around the corpse of Julon before the lamplit procession proceeded down the cliff to another beach on the bay.

This beach was lit by torches approximately one and a half metres high. Two rectangular tents made of pale leather sheets filled a space at the farthest point of the beach. A group of shadowy figures moved around the tents. Tall white cliffs dotted with caves backed the beach, and Memon led him to a cave whose entrance sat about four metres above the sand. Inside was a woman with flame red coloured hair, dressed in a long leather dress. She stood over a fire encircled by a rough stone hearth. A cooking tripod was over the fire from which was suspended a flat skillet. The smell of toasted grain met him.

Memon bowed to the woman, and she bowed in return. She turned her large brown eyes on Nick, and her wariness was obvious. Memon nodded to her and gestured to him. “Nick.” She indicated he should sit on a stone shelf opposite the cooking fire. When he sat down she nodded and said, “Nick,” and gesturing to herself said, “Rayan.” Memon sat with him on what he realised was a seat created by chiselling into the rock. Soon they were eating some flat bread with a substance that tasted like milk with salt in it. Memon dipped his bread in it and took a bite, so Nick imitated him.

After the meal, Memon brought him a stone tablet that was white and polished to a matte finish with a piece of charcoal. He passed it to him. He said, “Tell.”

Nick stared at him for a second wishing he could question Memon about how he knew the word, “Tell.”

He found himself drawing his wife’s face and his son’s, then a picture of a big fire. Then he drew his hands the way he remembered them, and then he drew them like claws. He indicated Memon’s Rayan and drew a picture revealing he once had a thick head of hair and gestured again , “That colour.” Memon seemed to understand. He drew feet like Memon’s , then shaking his head sadly, pointed to his feet now with their high arches, broad fore feet, and his ankles now thick and bulbous. He mimed the shape of his wife and indicated his son on his original drawing. He gestured to Rayan, hoping they would understand that his son had the same colour hair, flame red like his own once was.

Memon looked startled. He spoke rapidly to Rayan, whose eyebrows disappeared into her hairline, while she gestured at him and Nick. Memon said a word that made his heart slow, then start up beating like a drum, it was a well-remembered name “Marian.” And then holding up his hand to indicate Nick should wait, he disappeared out the mouth of the cave and down the path. Rayan dutifully passed him some more warm bread and indicated he sit. Then he realised he had leapt to his feet at the sound of Marian. He sat down and tore the bread into pieces, playing with it.

It was pitch black when one lantern , then two, showed shadows of what looked like four figures coming up the cliff face. When they stepped into the cave, those he now recognized as Cranon and Memon, raised their lanterns. In the light there were the eyes of Marian, her familiar eyebrows in a skeletal face with a body made similar to his, except for two round breasts. Her nakedness apart from a cloth around her abdomen surprised him. Next to her was his red-haired son, who though skeletal still had flame red hair, and human skin, pale and translucent skin, but the skin of memory.

He thought, why after everything should the memory of skin make me cry?

While tears flowed down his face, Marian stepped forward and put her arms around him. Rayan placed a platter of bread and soft cheese on the central stone near the fireplace and went around pressing them all into the stone seats against the wall. She was gathering animal skins, and Nick decided that the stone seats might double as beds. He and Marian married their Zombie left hands while they ate Rayan’s food with their right ones.

Later than night he held her against him until excitement gripped them both. The memories of their happy past returned in a hormonal rush. She felt strange to him, as if an animated doll, and there was no power of human skin contact, until he was in her. There was such a rush of arousal that his and her excitement seemed vocal enough to disturb their hosts. Afterward he lay there in confused wonder thinking, how could it be that he was changed outwardly but not in that way?

Intent on surviving, instinct ruling his hazy imaginations, he had presumed any memories of pleasure exaggerated. He was attuned to a feeling that he was less than before, struggling to comprehend what that could mean, he had presumed all pleasures, and pains, would be changed.

Hadn’t his heart stopped then drummed when he heard her name? Though his world was barely comprehensible, his feelings for Marian were unchanged. The last thought of which he was aware was, Memon’s cave isn’t too different from others I’ve slept in, for the steady dripping of moisture from the tips of stalactites was a familiar sound to fall asleep to.

In the setting sun she sat by a window with the light coming in on her. Under her arms a gleaming table coloured brownish red framed a shiny white disc with golden fried fish on it. Behind her a long branch with fluffy spherical flowers tapped the glass leaving yellow pollen stains. Was it his own voice that said, “This is good, Marian.”

He was awake. His body feeling stiff and cold, hearing the sound of dripping, surprised to find a body breathing gently beside him. Startled, he recalled the events of the previous long day, and knew that his existence was improved.

After everyone was awake, Memon and Rayan said they were going to get food. They returned with berries and more of the milky salty cheese. After rinsing the berries with water that flowed down an open earthenware drain that he recognised as skillfully man-made, she placed the food on the table. She made more bread over her glowing coals but this time it was crispy and yellowish. He wasn’t sure he liked it better, but his stomach was gurgling. Marian with his son, whose name he could not recall sat opposite him to eat. Even when Marian called his son Luke, the name did not sound familiar to him. Their voices were changed, and the new sounds were not as likeable.

Breakfast was over, and Memon was explaining the organisation of the tribe, when bone-chilling cries reached them from below.

Rapidly enough to stun Nick, Marian hid Luke at the back of the cave, and ran to crouch at the right-hand side of the entrance. He, Rayan, and Memon scattered like cockroaches from the growing light and the pounding approaching. As one pack hunter appeared, his Marian launched herself sideways into the male’s lower limbs sending him flailing, she grabbed him, ripping his head backward and breaking his neck. Using his dead body as a launching platform, she flipped and seemed to fly straight into the torso of the next one. By this time, she had picked up a stray hot rock from the fire behind her that didn’t harm her, but was an effective glowing missile slammed into the abdomen of the next hunter. Sounds like ravening wolves continued as Nick ran to her side and surprised himself with his strength. Soon they were surrounded by four still and two flailing pack hunters. Rayan appeared armed with a hot pan and spinning like a whirlwind as she attacked two more hunters. Memon fired arrows in between them with an accuracy that made Nick reflect later that he must be Marchon the archer’s mentor. The women and Nick joined arms with two heavy weapons between them, whirling and kicking in a strange dance. Marchon himself appeared sending arrows into the torsos of the pack hunters they knocked out to ensure they were dead.

A stench of blood filled the cave, and Nick found himself beginning to retch, his strength beginning to fail. He turned to Marian, “What about Luke? He can’t see all this!”

As he watched her a strange fire seemed to come into her eyes, and she shook her head. With a cry she leapt forward and ripping an axe that Marchon had in a holster at his side, she took of the heads of four approaching pack hunters. Blood spurted out of the flailing bodies. He felt it spray onto his chest, and her arms dripped with it. He ran to the back of the cave and looked for Luke.

There he was crouched with his hands over his head, his eyes down, his face close to his knees. Nick stopped, arrested by the sight of both his son Luke, and the amount of blood on his own feet. There was silence in the cave except for the heavy breathing of the five live adults, and the ambient drip of water.

There was one thing stunned Nick was certain of now, Luke’s never seen his mother slaughter pack hunters.He turned back into the main room of the cave creeping as quietly as he could. He thought, I won’t disturb Luke. Let his mother call him.

At the edge of Memon’s living area, by the earthenware water course, were Rayan and Marian. Between them was a deep bowl of water from which they sluiced themselves, cleaning off the blood.

Memon and Marchon were dragging pack hunter bodies out the front of the cave, and down to a wide shelf, off the path, equidistant from the cave and the beach. Wearily he followed them as they climbed past the cave mouth to the top of the cliff to cut branches off the lemon-scented scrub. As they returned they could see more tribe members creating a similar pile on the beach. A warrior called up that they had killed forty pack hunters between the dozen warriors on the beach. Nick allowed himself some satisfaction that the five of them had killed thirty.

What a surprise!

Memon announced that the next day at dawn, when the prevailing breeze would be blowing back out to sea, they would light the funeral pyres of their enemies. For today, the warriors would prepare extra torches to discourage the pack hunters tonight. They hated fire and as enraged as the pack hunters would be, these extra torches would be protection. It exhausted them, but they succeeded in surrounding the camp with an extra circle of 100, one and a half meter torches. It would be a long night.

At dawn the next day, he and Marian sat arm in arm looking out to sea, well back from the temporary crematorium. Marian had mentioned the first terrible winter after the time that was fire and light, horror and pain which had separated them and killed so many they had known. In that winter, the days were short and freezing and she and Luke had found their way to the edge of this very lake over which she and Nick now looked. Marian was describing, to Nick, the first time the pack hunters had surrounded them, some months after she had been separated from him.

“We had escaped some wolves, as I had climbed a track to a cave where I could dodge behind boulders and keep throwing the biggest rocks down at the howling pack. I was surprised by my accuracy. I found my way through a very narrow cave entrance and crouched at the back holding Nick. He curled himself into a ball, covering his face. I stroked his back. I heard a scrabbling at the entrance. When I saw the head of a pack hunter poke through I decided it must be friendly as it looked the closest thing to human I had seen in this Godforsaken place. Nick wanted to hide between rocks as soon as he heard this other person. I let him, and that was when the pack hunter lunged. She knocked me down, and I crawled to the rock walls.”

“How did you beat her without a weapon?” There were so many more questions in him, but he waited for her to continue.

“I leaped around while throwing stones, moving back toward the cave entrance. I was desperate to make sure that she didn’t see Luke.”

“So, Luke was well down among the rocks?”

“He was well hidden, with the curve of his back camouflaged. But while the pack hunters’ sight is bad their hearing and sixth sense are reasonable. As soon as this pack hunter perceived me as alone, she launched herself at me, with a growling screech that raised the hairs on my neck.”

“Their screeching is enough to raise the dead.”

“Isn’t it though? As the blur of the pack hunter came at me, I jumped to one side, and she fell into the wall, hard. I grabbed a heavy piece of timber I’d brought in for a fire and started to slam it into her back. I’ve since discovered hunter frames are more fragile than mine, but I must always move faster to protect Luke. I dragged the pieces of her body up to the other entrance of the cave, and I swear that night I heard something feasting on it. Wrestling with satisfaction at protecting Luke, and horror at the ease with which I attacked the pack hunter, and relief at our escape, I decided I must continue.”

“This is your fierce mother love. You must match the pack hunters’ violence.”

“Yes,” she reached for his hand, and held it. “Yes.”

They sat a while as the sea grew bright and clear like the day. Seabirds swooped and dived in their morning feeding dance out beyond the breakers.

“Later, like you, I was in a life and death situation and the Kinglies saved me.”

“But yours was pack hunters.”

He could feel her hand trembling in his. “They came through the back of my cave. One was crouched over Luke’s hiding place when I went back to grab him. It launched itself at me. I was screeching with fear, swinging a stone axe I had fashioned. Memon and Marchon had entered the cave following pack hunters who had raided their camp. Two arrows went into that pack hunter right in front of me.”

He squeezed her hand, savouring the sensation. Feeling seemed to be leaving his hand every day, but for today he could feel her leathery digits.

“That’s the only death of a pack hunter Luke’s seen, softened and distracted by Memon and Marchon’s excitement about saving me.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. She knew then, it seemed without judging him, that he had feared her display of aggression. She touched his face.

“I think hiding him from seeing the violence and I hope, the feeling of vengeance has kept him more like, well, more like the people I remember.”

“Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I catch snippets of things in my head that I am convinced must have happened, but they slip away before I can see them clearly .”

“Oh! I feel caught between two worlds. Do you remember when our favourite picnic spot split in two? When the strange purple haze blew in from the sea? When those weird fires started?”

“ No,” he struggled to define picnic and haze in his head. “ All I know is I am so grateful to have found you again. Thank you for caring for Luke.”

She grasped his hand tighter, and they moved their bodies closer to each other.

The smell of burning bodies began to surpass the scent of roasting grain as the tribe began their day.

__The End__