Paul Kane: Arrowhead

If he was going to make his move, it had to be right now. Robert rose, breaking cover: the leaves, twigs, and branches he'd used to camouflage himself falling from his body. Though he'd been hunkered down low, unmoving all this time, his legs were far from stiff and his muscles held him steady. Simultaneously, he raised his bow, which could easily have been mistaken for another branch, another piece of camouflage, were it not for the taut twine attached to its length. Robert and the stag exchanged a glance, the merest of heartbeats and yet lasting forever.

Hunter and prey.

It was only during this time that he felt something akin to being alive again, felt a surge of energy that reminded him he wasn't just a shadow, simply a ghost of his former self.

But in this animal, he also recognised a kindred spirit; a once proud creature reduced to a victim by circumstance.

Robert lowered the bow, nodding to himself and to the stag. The animal stood there stunned for a second or two, not understanding how it could still be alive – the hunter had him in his sights. But it didn't question this for long, running off back into the woods; vanishing from sight.

Robert watched it go, knowing that another kill had never really been the purpose of this exercise. He didn't need any more meat, and didn't hunt just for sport – Robert didn't have a trophy room in the lean-to. They'd shared something in that one brief moment, the stag and him. Both knew what it was like to be on the run, what it was like to escape.

Above all else, both Robert and the stag knew that he could have taken that life, but chose not to.

All of which meant that the hunter, the hooded man, was still the victor.

And so it was his turn to disappear back into the trees.

How had this happened? How had they gone from being the hunters to the prey?

One minute, they'd been the top dogs around here, now they were facing a serious ultimatum. Granger still couldn't quite believe it, back to being pushed around again, just like when he was growing up. Back to following orders.

In the past it had been his mother's boyfriends issuing them, a succession of no-hopers who seemed to view him as their personal slave half the time. His mother said nothing to them, mainly because she did the same: fetch me this, fetch me that, make us something to eat, get us something to drink. And if he didn't comply immediately, he was looking at being beaten around the living room of their tiny council flat in Finchley. Granger might have blamed it on growing up without a father, except that particular 'role model' would probably have made things worse from what little he'd heard. That's if he could have stayed out of jail long enough.

None of the boyfriends had lasted, not once they'd got what they wanted out of Granger's mum: somewhere to stay rent free for a while and someone who wouldn't complain in the bedroom when they forced her to do the most depraved things. He could hear them at night, no matter how much he pulled the pillows up around his ears – the moans and the screams, and, sometimes, the crying afterwards. That was when he wanted to go to her, when he felt what you were supposed to feel for a mother. The last boyfriend, Jez, had been the worst of the lot. He'd even been dealing from their flat. And, once, when they were alone in the place together, Granger had said something back to Jez so he'd pulled a handgun on him, one of those customised replica imports from abroad.

"You're a smart kid, aren't you? Got a smart mouth… How smart are you now, eh? Eh?" he'd said, turning it on him. Granger closed his eyes, fully expecting the man to shoot. Luckily, his mother had come home at that moment, and Jez had tucked the gun quickly back away in his jeans.

It wasn't even as if school was an escape from what was going on. His teachers barked at him because he hadn't done his homework – especially his old French teacher, Mr Dodds. When did he ever have time? Where was he supposed to work? As for the other kids, he never fitted in with them either. They all had their little gangs and they made it abundantly clear he wasn't welcome in any of them, pounding it into him when he didn't get the message. As for girls, well, who would look at him twice?

When he'd left home at sixteen, bailing as soon as he could to move into a shared digs only one step up from a squat – his mother's cries of "You ungrateful little sod!" still ringing in his ears – it had been the people down the dole office who'd lorded it over him. They sent him to interviews for jobs he so obviously wasn't qualified to do. Until, eventually, he'd been taken pity on. Hired as a labourer: paid peanuts for the privilege of being a dogsbody to the other workers on the building site.

"Hey, streaky bacon," a site manager called Mick always used to call across, in reference to Granger's gangly teenaged frame, "we're parched over here – fetch us another round of tea, will you. Come on, move your skinny arse!" Then, when he brought the tray across, they'd make fun of him again, getting him to pick up tools from the floor, then kicking him over. It was just a bit of fun, they said. That's all.

Granger used to wish they would drop dead; wished every last one of them would just drop dead, in fact.

He'd never expected his wish to come true.

People hacked and coughed in the streets, spraying blood over pavements, falling where they stood in some cases.

And while everyone else got sick from the disease they were calling the AB Virus, Granger finally got a break. Instead of coughing up blood, his actually saved him. Against his better judgement, he'd called round to see his mother while she was still alive… just. Even when she was dying, she'd ordered him to fetch her stuff; bring pills so she could get better.

"There isn't anything that can do that," he'd told her.

"You… ack… you fetch me something right now you… ack… you fucking-"

"You ain't going to get better, Mum!" he said, finally losing his temper. "There isn't a medicine on this planet that can cure you. How d'you feel about that?"

She coughed and spat blood in his face, though whether it was intentional or not Granger didn't know.

"I'll be seeing you," he told her as he began walking out, knowing full well that he never would again. Then he'd gone to the bathroom and washed his face, drying it on the towel. It was as he was doing so that he noticed a shape behind the shower curtain. Granger jumped, but the thing didn't move. Slowly, he reached out and pulled back the plastic curtain. Jez was lying there in the bath, a needle sticking out of his arm and sticky redness dribbling from his mouth. He'd OD'd rather than face the final stages of the virus. Granger had seen plenty of dead bodies lately, but not up close like this. He shook his head, remembering what a bastard this man had been. Bending down, he cocked his head and whispered, "Who's the smart one now?" Then he lifted the body, checking the back of the man's jeans for the pistol he always kept about his person. Taking it, Granger had turned his back on Jez, his mother, and the place where he'd grown up.

To Granger's mind, he was at last reaping the rewards of years of misery. During The Culling Year, when those in charge had attempted to stop the spread of the plague, there had been rich pickings for the likes of him. Rumours flew around of soldiers trying to take control, even of something big taking place on Salisbury Plain, but it hadn't affected Granger's plans. He'd moved relatively freely from place to place, taking whatever he liked from the shops, stuffing his pockets with money (it never occurred to him at the time that this would be useless later on) and generally having the time of his life… while everyone else was losing theirs.