In the flatbed of an abandoned truck, I wake to a crushing dark and a rich hot pain in my leg like a welding torch. My face in contact with the air is cold, but the heat from my leg pushes through me till it fills my head and I think my skull is going to break apart. I lean over the side of the truck and vomit up the meagre contents of my stomach. It comes up thin and stinking.
I roll away and try to sleep again.
Dawn comes shyly. I get up as soon as it is light enough to see.
My leg is infected. The flesh is purple and huge, and the bite-marks themselves have turned deep red, ringed with yellow. Something thick and white oozes from them. With my last dribble of water, I wash them gently with the tips of two fingers, and the pain shoots up to my head and I have to force myself not to be sick again. I think of all the cuts and grazes I have given myself over the years, how liberally I rubbed in antiseptic. I eat another digestive biscuit and pack my things back into my bag. Somewhere, waiting for me to discover it, there is food. I tell myself there must be food.
*
I walk for three days. I try not to count them, but they tally themselves up on the wall of my brain and I cannot help myself. I measure distances in days now, each one shakier and smaller than the last. I am three days away from the abandoned truck, four days from the room my parents died in. Four days away from the dog pack. Surely that is enough?
I walk along narrow country lanes, their unkempt verges nodding towards one another and almost meeting in the middle. I skirt the edge of a blasted town, a charred maze of half-toppled walls and unnecessary possessions. A few hours later, I start to climb. The rise is steady at first, then gradually steeper, till I’m hauling myself up the slope and my pack is a dead weight trying to tug me back down. I do not know where I am going any more, but as I climb, the air becomes purer, brisker. I suppose this is a sort of ascension.
I fill my bottles whenever I find water: tannin-dark streams chattering downhill, a rain barrel, the clear top half of a silted animal trough. Once, when my reserves are low, I manage to squeeze a few precious drops from the moss clinging to an old wall. The drops are cloudy and bitter-tasting, and I am not sure if the effort is worth it. I toe the scattered green clumps into a pile then continue walking.
I can feel my steps growing scanter as my body grows lighter. I find no food, except the flat tan discs of mushrooms growing from the black bark of a tree. I stare at them for a long time.
I break a segment off one. The inside is white and fresh and smells of earth, and I touch my cracked lips to it. But I know nothing about which fungi might be safe to eat, so I drop it. For good measure, I kick them. They offer no resistance to my boots, so I kick the mushrooms over and over, till big flakes of their flesh litter the grass. Then I turn my back on them.
*
I am not sure in which direction I have been walking. I am not sure if I have been walking in just one direction, or in many. My stomach has stopped making noises. Now it is only a pain like a clenched fist, and a ceaseless searching.
*
Night is approaching. I can feel it coming on the way animals can sense a storm.
I’ve walked too far again today. My stomach is light with lack of food. Somehow, my pack feels heavier.
My pace has slowed to a funeral march along the rocky path. The pain in my leg is sharper. The throbbing is up to my thigh now, and what I need is medicine. My water bottles are both empty. My throat is dry and my tongue feels too big for my mouth. Already I am finding it hard to swallow.
The grass and heather are thick on either side and the moorland stretches away into nothingness in all directions. The sky up here is endless – a great grey dome, too pale for rain, too impenetrable for sun. Somewhere beyond it all, night is falling. As the grey dome darkens, the sky feels as though it’s contracting, squeezing everything beneath it into a tighter, blacker space, till even the air feels thick and heavy. Still the only sounds are my laboured footsteps, my own irregular breathing.
The straps of my backpack feel as if they’re branding my shoulders. My feet grow and swell till they are too heavy to lift. I sit down in the middle of the path. There is nowhere to go. I take off my boots and dig extra socks out of my pack. In this treeless landscape, there is no chance of a fire. I climb into my sleeping bag and try to sleep.
My stomach grumbles. It is two days since I ran out of food, and the few houses I have found since then have been empty. I keep telling myself there must be something soon.
The hollow feeling deepens. It spreads up into my ribcage.
I curl myself as small as I can. I press my fists into my stomach to trick myself into feeling full. After what feels like a long time, I start to drift.
*
I wake in the dark. A faint glow where the moon is hidden behind a thick layer of cloud. Otherwise, only blackness, the moor stretching away unseen.
My body is heavy and cold. My toes ache with it. My bones are made of ice. I will never be warm again. Still my leg burns.
I feel for my pack beside me on the path. My fingers are so numb that I can barely unzip it, but I force myself to get up. As quickly as my clumsy hands will allow, I dress in all my layers and climb back into my sleeping bag. The cold is still inside me, not quite tamed. I wrap my arms around my chest and tuck my hands under my armpits. Somewhere close, a fox screams. I strain my eyes but there’s nothing – only the dark. The fox screams again. I lie awake and listen.
*
I drift between fog and oblivion. I open my eyes to uncertain white, then close them again. In this small circle of existence, I sleep. It is all there is.
*
My mother in my student flat, the War already on home soil – on all soil, everywhere. The three Warhammer geeks I live with have already scuttled home. I spread myself through their empty rooms. I am enormous. I am bigger than the city.
My mother saying: ‘Come home – it isn’t safe – come home—’
Her face is blotchy, no make-up, turned up towards me like a leaf desperate for sun – and running with tears. But here in this city I can be somebody, so I say no.
My mother saying: ‘Who do you have here?’ My mother saying: ‘You have nobody – come home—’
And I say, ‘Myself—’
‘Please—’
I say, ‘I have myself.’
*
I am chasing something. Someone. The lane leads to my parents’ village. It’s night and my bag is heavy – I call out to it wait – come back—
I round the bend but there’s no one, just a dog – a snarling dog with long teats, its hackles raised, mouth dripping. It lunges, its hot breath and rough tongue on my face—
And its mouth is a hand – my mother’s hand, her palm on my forehead. She is singing.
I’m too old to be sung to.
She brushes the hair from my face.
‘Wait—’
