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THE GIRL WHO RUNS

After the Apocalypse

By Carol Anne ShawPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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Photo credit: James Kriha

The girl should know better, but it's October, her favourite month. The others are sleeping, but she'll be back before sunrise; before they're awake.

When she steps outside, the brown dog follows her. The air is sharp. Polished. Her pulse quickens; her quadriceps twitch. Instinctively, she breathes more deeply.

She looks at the tree line in the distance, and for a moment, she hesitates. So many days punctuated by fear and second-guesses; so many restless nights.

But the moment passes.

The girl ties and then reties her laces, her fingers all thumbs. When she straightens and reaches her arms high over her head, first one way and then the other, the knots of tension in her back loosen and let go. She is awake.

Her body comes back to her, and seconds later she is over the fence and across the field where the moon throws fingers of diffused light across long-forgotten hay.

The dog runs beside her as though nothing has changed.

The girl eases into a steady, practised stride. Her ragged breathing evens out. She finds her pace, smiles, runs a little faster. The cold air whistles past her ears, a sound she had almost forgotten, and despite the hunger in her belly, her body is lean and strong and quick. Soon her mind empties, and for the girl, this is the best part.

The field ends where a gravel road starts—one that leads to the forest, but the girl keeps going anyway. She runs toward the tall, dark shapes at the end of the road—the Douglas Firs and flaming big leaf maples.

There is a surge of adrenaline when she finds the familiar trail - when she feels the damp, spongy earth beneath her feet. She runs over thick moss. Breathes wet cedar. Can almost taste spruce and leaf rot. Somewhere in the distance, a raven calls. She runs faster, goes deeper into the dark. She should stop. Turn around. Go back. Not yet, she thinks. Not yet.

When she does stop, it's to stand near a patch of wild mushrooms growing by a felled fir. She marvels at the way the moonlight dances off the luminous white caps and feels a deep ache in her chest that such a quiet and fragile beauty still remains.

She loops back and finds the road, running silently past faded houses, their paint peeling, their porches sagging. When she reaches the crossroads, a squirrel appears on the fence, and the brown dog barks: once, and then again, louder. Too loud.

The girl lunges for its collar and misses. The squirrel bolts and the dog gives chase, back toward the dark forest – toward the place where the trees have already begun to tremble and shift. And the girl falls to her knees because she knows she won't see the brown dog again. She knows how this ends.

***

Common sense isn't that common around here. If it were, there would still be good batteries in the toolbox, right next to the jar of salvaged nails, right where they oughta be. But last night on rounds, all I found were some useless triple-A's. As for the double A's? Gone.

When I ask about it, nobody says anything, but they all look at Ryder, just like I knew they would. Later, Will tells me Ryder doesn't ever take a piss in the dark, even though it's safer that way. Fucking Ryder. It's just one more thing.

"Quinn!" Arden's voice cuts through my rage.

She's in the front room, standing to one side of the big window even though you can't see through it anymore. There's a sliver of light getting through anyway – enough for me to see her tuck her hair behind her ears and nod toward the window.

I squint. "What?"

"Out there. See?"

I push aside the curtain. "No."

"Look harder!"

I look again, waiting. I don't like waiting at the best of times. And now, at the worst of times, I like it even less.

Arden's eyes—two black circles in the middle of all that pale skin—keep watching. Her nose used to be straight, but now there's a bump in the middle, from last month, when it broke. It's the most beautiful thing about her, although I'm not sure why. Maybe because she got through that day when everyone else thought she wouldn't. Or maybe it's because looking at that nose gives me hope. Because she's here, and really, she's just Arden: the girl who used to run.

Before everything, I used to watch her run laps on the track. Sometimes I'd see her up the mountain, too, running with a scruffy brown dog. I never really talked to her much; we didn't hang with the same people, although now and then we'd be at some of the same parties. She was the sort of girl who would make you tea after you puked, or touch your arm and laugh at something you said, even if you were invisible to everyone else.

"There's nothing out there, Arden." I can just make out the dark shapes of the barn and the outbuildings across the field, and what's left of the old Ford pick-up that Ryder totalled. That's it. I don't see anything else.

But then I do – a sweeping shape that moves from the barn to the truck in one fluid movement.

"There!" Arden hisses.

"Shit," I say. "That I saw." I cross the room in the dark. The gun is sitting on top of the bookcase by the stairs, just like always.

Whatever is out there moves again, this time higher up off the ground. From truck back to a fence post where it stops and is still.

"It's okay," I lie. I lean the gun against the wall, but my hand stays on it. "I think it's just an owl." But Arden isn't stupid. We both know it's too big to be an owl.

"What if it's—

"Too fast."

"But... it could be. Some are fast."

"They don't jump, Arden." Which is true, at least none that I've seen. She's scared though, and I get that. Anything out there is fair game.

Arden allows her back to slide down the wall until she's sitting on the edge of the Persian rug, her legs stuck straight out in front of her like a little kid. The bootlaces on one of her Docs are undone. There's a nasty cut on her knee that I don't remember seeing yesterday.

"I hate this," she says quietly.

"What?"

"This!" She picks up the edge of her dress and smoothes it down over her knees. The fabric is blue with small yellow daisies on it. It's her favourite; she wears it all the time. Even now. "All of this," she hisses. "The dark. The crap food! The no sleeping! The way my chest hurts all the time. I hate it!"

I move toward the window, think better of it and step back again. You don't take chances, not even with a dirty window in the dark.

"I know, Ard," I say. "I hate it, too." The words sound trite, even though they're true.

"I want to go home. I want to go home and run up the mountain again. With Ziggy." Her voice catches then, and her shoulders tremble. "Jesus," she says. "Is it wrong that I miss Ziggy the most?" She leans a little to the right and absentmindedly runs her hand over the newspaper article still tacked to the wall; the last one anyone ever read. It's the one that reminds me most of Mom, all its talk of the Rapture and God's will...man, all that bullshit before anyone knew. But even still, not one of us can take it down. Not even me.

"Quinn?" Arden whispers.

"Yeah?"

"Is it always going to be this way now?"

It's not really a question. It's more Arden thinking out loud. But it's the kind of thing we all want to ask, but don't. Not anymore, anyway.

I sit down beside her and find her fingers in the dark. Her hand is cool, and I run my thumb over the tiny signet ring on her pinky—a gift from her dad when she was nine.

I want to pull her closer and tell her not to worry – that it's going to be okay. I want to tell her that one day we'll look back and remember sitting together here in this piece of shit house, beside this dirty window; that this moment is the darkest one—the last one before it will start to get light.

I want to tell her that one day soon she'll be The Girl who Runs again.

fiction
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About the Creator

Carol Anne Shaw

I live on Vancouver Island in beautiful BC. I am the author of seven books for young adults, and when I'm not writing, I work as an audiobook narrator, bringing other people's stories to life. www.carolanneshaw.com

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