But what can I confess to have done that has made a difference somehow?
Nothing. I’m useless to this group, in this new world, and I know it too. Maybe the others know it—they see me for the fraud I am, the once-pampered ‘princess’ with wealth and connections to a world long lost.
None of that matters anymore. I’d say what’s kept me alive so far is my complete ambivalence to life. That, and the languages I have under my belt. I can communicate with most of those in the group, since I’m fluent in English, French and Spanish. I know a little Italian—and that skill alone earned me a free tin of mac and cheese a few months back.
The memory of that cold, gloopy pasta floods my mouth with saliva. Deep in my belly, growls start to rise up. I press my hand to my tummy and press tight.
Lost all my food back in the grocer’s shop when the earthquake hit. I’ve got nothing. Just to be sure, I swing my shoulder bag around to rest on my lap. It’s fairly small, so everything I’ve crammed in there needs to be removed piece by piece—no space for rummaging around.
I keep the handgun out, since I’ll be on watch soon.
And as I expected, nothing to eat can be found in my bag. No chocolate bars, lone sweets, or even crumbs.
I pack everything back into it carefully (though I do light a slim cigarette) then slump back against the wall.
Just as I get comfortable, a flicker of movement catches my focus and I look over at the door. Spike has pushed up from the floor where he was resting, and he’s wandering over to me.
I almost snarl him away, but then I spot what’s clenched in his right fist. A nougat bar, coated in chocolate. A type that’s tough to get on this side of France.
I watch him as I exhale a cloud of smoke.
For some reason, he sits on the table so close to me that our hips are almost touching, then he decides to do the classic man-spread, stretching out his thighs and pushing way too far into my personal space.
My eyes roll back before I scoot away a bit. Normally, I would have man-spreaded right back at him. But since we’re all about to die very soon—and he has a nougat bar for me—I don’t much see the point. But I am careful to flick some ash onto his leg. He doesn’t notice.
He hands me the snack.
I don’t bother with a thanks before I tear off the plastic wrapper, then let it flitter to the floor.
I stamp out my cigarette on the table.
“Do we even know where they are anymore?” Spike asks after a while. He scratches the pimpled-stubble on his pointy chin.
I shoot him a perplexed look, mouth full of nougat, my faintly freckled cheeks bulging. My voice is muffled by chocolate as I ask, “E-r hoo iv?”
Somehow, he still seems to understand me. “The dark fae, the ones separated from their group. We’ve been pushed out of their path, maybe pushed towards the rest of their army.”
I shrug, my mind answering where my full mouth cannot, ‘Then we will take on the army.’
Death will come much swifter that way.
But though it is unspoken, it’s obvious what our next move will be. It’s the only way to do it: When we’re certain it’s clear, and the lone warriors have had enough time to catch up with us, we’ll double back to the main street.
First, we need to make sure the bomb is ready. Without it, there will be little purpose to what we’re planning on doing other than simply walking into our deaths. If that’s all we wanted to do, we would form a suicide pact here in the flat and just shoot each other.
No, it’s more than just a craving for the finale, a longing to end the suffering and tedium. It’s the vindictive victory in taking a few of them out with us. Bringing them down as far as we can.
Who knows, maybe by taking out these few warriors, we might be saving other lives out there? If there are many left to save, that is. Which I doubt.
Earlier days saw more survivors. Now, starvation, infection, the dark and its dangers, wild animals—it all has led to a complete dwindle of our numbers. The dark fae really are here to wipe us out completely—an extinction.
But then, that doesn’t explain what I saw in the army; the group of humans with them. Their prisoners.
“Did you see them?” I ask Spike once I’ve finished off the bar. I suck chocolate and nougat residue from my teeth. “The curries or whatever you called them.”
“Koo-rees,” he corrects me, his voice muffled by past pains. He looks down at his hands threaded together between his spread legs. “Kuris. Yeah, I saw them.”
Spike has had a lot to say about these ‘kuris’. Before I spotted the human prisoners in the army, I must admit, I didn’t believe his stories. Most of us just brushed him off.
Before we came across him a couple of months ago, he claimed to have been kidnapped by a band of dark fae. A smaller army, but one packed with warriors all the same. They had slaughtered his fellow survivors before they searched his body—apparently stripped him clean—and found a crooked line of three freckles on his back. That, he said, is what saved him. The freckles.
I can’t say why or even pretend to know, but those freckles apparently mean something to the dark fae. And it’s what spared Spike’s life. He was taken into the army to join the group of twenty-odd other humans (all with the same markings somewhere on their bodies) and they were forced into … well, slave labour.
According to Spike, they were called the ‘kuris’ by the dark fae, and they were made to wash their armour and cook their food and pitch their tents and start their fires.
He doesn’t go into his time with the dark fae army any more than that. And before I saw a group of humans with the dark fae, I didn’t believe him at all. I didn’t believe that they would keep humans alive because of some freckles, and I certainly didn’t believe that he managed to escape when another human survivor group started shooting at their camp one night.
As it went, turns out he wasn’t lying. At least not about everything. Now I know for certain, they do keep humans with them—likely for slavery for their journey. What freckles have to do with it beyond meaning the difference between life and death, I can’t even guess.
“Let me see them,” I say and rub my hands clean of chocolate stains. “Your freckles.”
He shifts around and, craning his arm back, lifts his blue t-shirt. The three freckles are crooked, I notice. They dot down his spine, the last one curving off-line. Reminds me somewhat of the stars in the lost-sky, Orion’s Belt. Those were always my favourite stars back in the day—those and Sirius, of course.
He drops his top. It falls back into place, crumpled at the waistline of his blue jeans, and he shifts back around, angled towards me.
He tells me, “If this all fails—” he throws his hand around the room, gesturing to us, gesturing to the plan “—then I’ll show them my freckles.”
I arch a blonde, microbladed brow (I’ve had some dermal fillers too, but that wears off eventually). “You think it will save your life a second time?”
“Can’t hurt,” he says with a shrug. Then he turns his gaze up at me, his head bowed, and there’s something sheepish in the way he regards me. “You could show yours too.”
I blink, stunned. “What?”
“Your freckles. They might save you, too.”