Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

“I mean, fuck, look at you, ’ann. You don’t just go out on reccies, you fuckin’ lead a few. And you can’t see your arse from your fuckin’ elbow.”

She didn’t answer.

“Arr ey, you can’t, come on like. I’m not bein a fuckin’ dick. It’s a valid fuckin’ point.”

She liked the way his fucks and likes and dicks always sounded like the hissing hot water siphons of the coffee shops that she used to hide in when her sight started getting really bad. It was comforting somehow. She liked the way that he admired her too. Even before she’d proved her worth to everyone else, he’d always been the first to volunteer to sit watch with her. Back when she’d just been the blind girl.

There had been many convoys in those first few months, but none had stopped for her—or if they had, they’d moved on swiftly again without her. This one had initially said yes, she suspected, only because of Robbo. And as convoys went, it only just qualified. One of the vans was his beat-up Ford, still smelling of methylated spirits and paint and hash. The other—the VW—had belonged to a Brethren couple whose names she had already forgotten.

Robbo swore when they both heard sudden movement behind him.

“Grub’s up, ladies.”

“Nice one,” Robbo said, pretending that he hadn’t cursed, that he couldn’t hear Marley’s low chuckle. “Want some scran, ’annah?”

She put out her hands and relished the sudden warmth of the foil tray. “Thanks.”

Marley was big, she could tell. Sometimes—often—she could sense something other than scorn or tightly wound caution in him, especially when they were alone. Once, he had followed her to the shallow pit that they always dug on the periphery of their camp, and as she’d squatted and peed, she’d felt him watching; she’d breathed in the sea smells of him. If it wasn’t for Robbo, she knew that she’d have a lot more to fear from Marley than she already did.

After Marley left them alone again, Robbo attacked his stew with gusto. She suspected that he always ate with his mouth wide open; she found the sound of that oddly comforting too. She ate quietly, mechanically, tasting nothing at all.

“Why won’t this snow fuckin’ stop?” he eventually muttered. “Last thing we fuckin’ need is another fuckin’ whiteout.”

“I’ll be able to hear them,” she said, and he heaved a great sigh, even though it was a lie. It never failed to amaze her how easily that lie had been believed from the very start, as though the immediate consequence of her blindness should be a nearly preternatural sharpening of all her other senses. They did believe it though—all of them—and it was just as well. It made her useful, maybe indispensable. She knew that even Robbo’s surrendered Peter Rabbits remembered the night that the Whites had ambushed them while they’d all been sleeping. She knew that they remembered her warning scream, the dead White at her feet next to the opened VW door, the bloodied crowbar in her hands. When the Brethren couple had staggered out of the van, they’d pulled their coats tight around their bellies, crying and sobbing that God had saved them.

“Oh, aye?” Robbo had said, after discovering the body of a Pakistani man, whose name Hannah had also forgotten, lying by the makeshift entrance to their camp. “What he do to piss Him off then, ay?” The Pakistani had died badly. Even though Robbo had never told her exactly how, she’d been able to smell it; she’d been able to see it through the horrified witness of everyone else.

They’d burned both bodies on the periphery of their camp, and then buried the smoking bonfire under heavy, wet clods of grass.

“They almost look like us,” Robbo had whispered to her later. “When they’re dead at least, like. When they’re not runnin’.”

After that, they stopped sleeping in the vans. After that, not one member of the convoy voiced an objection when she started taking point, same as everyone else. There was always someone ready to hold onto her elbow and take the weight of her pack. A few weeks after the dead White, the Brethren couple didn’t return from an easy supply run. No one volunteered to go looking for them.

“So, what kind of folk are you, Robbo?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, not even close, but she needed to start somewhere. They never talked about anything that was worth something. They never talked about where they’d come from, because none of them believed they’d ever be going back. And they never talked about where they were going, because they weren’t going anywhere. They were just moving. And progress was slow. It was safer to scout routes and camps on foot before bringing up the vans behind. The vans weren’t for travel any more; they were for escape. She’d been on point today, and the two days before that, and Robbo had held her elbow for all of them. That was why tonight of all nights, she needed somewhere to start.

“I’m still here, ay? What’s that tell you?”

She swallowed. For a brief moment, fear swallowed her up, doubt pinched fingers against her windpipe. “Tell me something from home. Tell me something about before, about you before.”

He sighed. It still rattled a bit inside his chest, even though he’d run out of the last of his bifters weeks ago. “Aright, ’annah. Don’t see the fuckin’ point like, but aright.”

She heard him change position, move a little closer. “Anythin’s better than bein’ on your own, ain’t it? That’s just how it is. It’s why we’re all still here, ain’t it? I had this mate, right. We’d been mates since school—not bezzies like cause he was a bit nuts, and you know what kids are, you’re not about to hang out with the soft lad. Anyways, we stayed in touch cause we lived on the same estate, we both worked in the Asda, and went to the same pubs on the weekend. And this guy, ’ann, he was somethin else, man. He was like them abandoned puppies they used to show on ad breaks. He was built like a brick shithouse like, but soft as shite on account of his ma beatin’ him up every time she took a drink when he was a kid, and his da tryin’ to shag him every time she wasn’t lookin’. All he wanted, right, was someone, anyone. You could fuckin’ smell it off him.”

When Robbo coughed, she nearly told him that it was okay, that he could stop if he wanted to. But she didn’t. She shook the snow free of her blanket before pulling it tighter around her shoulders. She blinked her eyes, brushed icy fingers between her eyelashes, offering Robbo at least the illusion that she could see him. “Did he find someone?”

Robbo’s laugh sounded angry, but she knew it wasn’t. “Yer, he did. She likely didn’t know her luck till she didn’t. Folk never know what to do with unconditional love like, d’you know that, ’annah? They think it’s all they want till they get it. It wrecks with your head cause it makes no sense at all. It’s like them pop-up targets at the shows. After a while you just need ’em to stay down, you know?”

She nodded, even though she had no idea at all.

“By the time they’d been seein’ each other six months, she’d shagged half the estate behind his back.”

“Did he find out?”

That angry laugh again. “Yer he did.”

“What happened?”

When he didn’t answer, she stabbed at the fire with a stick, sending up sparks of heat between them. Her heart was still beating far too fast. “Robbo?”

“He walked in on them,” he muttered, and then suddenly he was talking too fast and too hard again; she struggled to keep up. “He whacked her over the ’ead with an ’ammer, and then he took a carvin’ knife to the fella. And then he fronts up to my house, covered in their blood, and asks if he can come in like, if he can borrow a fuckin’ towel. And I say go’ed, lad, no worries, have a shower while you’re at it. And I phone the bizzies the minute he does.”