A/N: Please note that this chapter contains references to non-consensual sex.
Okay, *deep breath*, I'm a little nervous about this chapter. We're approaching the end-game here, and I think the doubt is starting to kick in. So I'd especially love to hear your thoughts.
As always, thanks for reading.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Old Sins, Long Shadows
It isn't possible.
Faye lifts her ski mask. "I don't understand, she says, staring at Simon. Only that's not true, because she'd known, hadn't she? Ever since she saw the bear, butchered in the snow.
In her heart, she'd known.
"Could we have come the wrong way?" Simon asks.
She shakes her head. She recognises an outcrop of rock to her right, a stark obelisk of granite that she'd tied the dinghy to. And the dinghy's gone as well. In the back of her throat she makes a strangled sob, and she sinks to her knees in the snow. She's got them both killed, with her stupid reckless idiot optimism. If they'd stayed at Northern Light they could have held out a little longer, but now? Without the boat? Without shelter?
They have to go back. The realisation chokes her with despair. But they don't have any choice. They can't stay here.
She'd known she hadn't killed that bear. Even though she lied to herself as well as to Simon, told herself she had to be remembering wrong. The alternative was so frightening she'd let the doubt creep in. Let herself think that maybe she was just losing her mind.
But now she knows she wasn't. Because she knows exactly who killed the bear, and who took the boat. She doesn't know how it can be possible, or how he's managed to survive – she'd been so sure he was dead – but Lars is one of the toughest people she's ever known. He has the Arctic in his marrow. If anyone can survive out here, it's him.
She has to tell Simon. Only as she looks at him she can't find the words. He doesn't even look angry, only grave.
"So what do we do now?" he asks, and he sounds so calm it makes her feel worse. She almost wishes he would shout and rail at her instead.
My fault, she thinks, but right now she needs to hold it together.
She closes her eyes, trying to think. "There's a research centre north of here." She can't remember how far – too far – but right now it's their only chance. "It's where I would have gone next if I hadn't been too scared to make the journey inland on my own." If she hadn't been on the verge of giving up. "But we should go back."
"No."
She flinches at the vehemence in his voice. "Northern Light is closer–"
"And it's a ruin." He turns to the sled, hunts through the packs for the tablet and the solar panel. "I'm not going back there, Faye."
He sits on the sled, trying to balance the tablet on his knees. Faye pushes herself up, takes the solar panel from him and tilts it to catch the light.
"I'm sorry," she says, unable to look at him. "I'm so sorry. I've got us both killed."
"And I almost got us blown up in a thermonuclear explosion. I think we're even."
She laughs without humour. The tablet blinks to life. He tugs his mitten off with his teeth, rubs some life back into his fingers. And even though his hand must be half-frozen and the tablet screen is cracked, he pulls up a satellite image. In a few swipes, he's honed in on their GPS co-ordinates. He works in silence, swiping and dragging, until finally she hears a sharp intake of breath. "This it?"
She peers over his shoulder. "I'm not sure."
"It has to be."
"How far?" she asks. He doesn't answer straight away and she thinks: too far. "Simon?"
"Maybe 120 miles," he says finally, and Faye's shoulders slump.
We haven't got a prayer. "No," she says, shaking her head. "No, absolutely not. It's too far. We can't..."
He sets the tablet down and stands up, taking hold of her shoulders. "I don't think we have a choice, Faye. I... I don't want to go back. If you do then... okay, maybe, but if there's the slightest chance we can make it, then I think we should go on." She starts to shake her head and he moves closer, cupping her cheeks. "Is there a chance, Faye?"
She closes her eyes, presses her lips tight together. I'm going to get us both killed. "Maybe," she whispers. "It's a long way, but... Yes, there's a chance we could make it. A very slim chance."
He smiles, a stupid brave smile that fills her with a jumbled rush of exasperation and affection. "Then I think we should do it."
She exhales. "You mad bastard." She glances out at the bay, wondering where the boat is now, trying to remember how much fuel was left on board. It feels like a lifetime ago. "Okay," she says. "Let's fucking do this."
He kisses her forehead. "That's my girl."
But now, with the disappointment of the missing boat, it's harder going. They haul the sleds over the rubble in silence, no longer taking the time to stop and watch the lights or trying to contact Operation Bitemark, because they don't have time.
The sky has been threatening bad weather all day, and the storm descends quickly. They unknot the ropes with raw, numb fingers, scrambling to set up camp before the wind whips everything away. Crawl into the tent, shivering with the cold, wincing at the agony in their hands as they warm through. The stabbing pain of pins and needles.
And in the dark of a tent that smells of sweat and ripe, wet husky, he asks her what happened to the boat. His voice is gentle, but insistent, and she knows she can't keep her secret any longer. She has to tell him. He deserves to know. And even so, she is silent for a long time before she can bring herself to speak.
"I don't know. But I think... I think maybe Lars took it," she whispers, and even though she's suspected it was true for a while, saying the words makes it real. Even if it isn't true; even if it's just her terror talking.
"I thought he was dead."
"Yeah, well... So did I." Her voice breaks. She buries her face in his neck, feels his hair brush her forehead. She has to tell him. It fills her with a dizzying vertiginous terror, but she doesn't have any choice. Not when she's brought him out here to die. Still she waits until he asks, because at heart she's still a coward.
He shifts against her. "It's okay," he tells her. "Whatever happened it's okay. No matter what." And she wonders how much he's already guessed, because he might be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.
"I killed him." And then, in the ensuing silence, she continues, "Or rather, I thought I did." Couldn't even get that right.
Beside her, he's still, his arms tight around her. "Did he..." He breaks off.
He can't even bring himself to say the words. Frustration makes her voice harder than she would have liked. She almost sounds cruel. "You mean did he rape me?"
He twists to look at her. His mouth is a flat hard line. There's rage in his eyes, and it takes her aback; in the long months she's known him he's never seen him look like this. Sadness, vulnerability, bitterness, even frustration, but never anger. "Because if he did, I'll find him and I'll fucking kill him."
"It wasn't like that," she says, although she's uncertain whether that is true. She hasn't had the guts to unpick the fear and confusion and pain of those days, to unknot the tangled strands to figure out what happened, exactly what Lars had done to her. "It's not what you think."
"Then what?"
She hesitates, then she tells him about the night on the beach, the embers of a shared cigarette beneath the lights of the Aurora Borealis. And how it had just happened, the kiss, the crushing pressure, the unexpected pain of Lars inside her. Even now she doesn't know if she would have done anything differently if she had the choice again. Because helpless as she was, no matter how much that sensation of no longer being the master of her body terrified her, there was still comfort in it. It was like the numbing haze of an alcohol-stupor; for a while it took the pain away.
So she'd surrendered, and made a choice that was no choice at all, and found herself trapped like a rat in a maze. Because no matter how many twists and turns she took it all ended the same way: Lars's weight in her bunk, slowly crushing her.
"I am gonna fucking kill him," Simon says. His voice is filled with a cold, suppressed rage so intense it frightens her.
"No, you won't," she murmurs. "You're not a killer, Simon."
"The apocalypse changes people."
"Even so."
Outside the tent, the wind is starting to drop. Faye hopes it lasts. If they can't get moving soon, their slim chances of making it to the research centre plummet to zero.
"Oh, Faye." Simon brushes her hair back. "I'm so sorry."
She shakes her head. "Don't be. It's... just something that happened." Or so she keeps telling herself. When she closes her eyes, she's back on the boat, the sloping walls pressing in on her. Her face pressed into the pillow, teeth at her neck. "He'd lost too much," she says, and then she can't help it. She's crying and Simon is pulling her close, kissing tears from her cheeks.
"It's okay," he says. "Don't."
But she has to. Now that she's started she can't stop. The words spill out, as if a dam has burst inside her. She tells him about the burnt-out remains of the abandoned Inuit settlement on the southern edge of the island. How they'd stopped to check for supplies.
"There was a zombie there," she says. "Slow, half-frozen. It wasn't any kind of threat. He kept hitting it with the ice-axe, long after it was dead. Over and over again, until it was a matted clump of gore." She draws in a shuddering breath. "I can't even remember what I did. Maybe I tried to touch his shoulder... Maybe just said his name, but he swung on me with the axe, and–" She breaks off, swallowing hard. Simon stares at her, his face white.
She lifts her fringe, shows him the scar at her hairline. He traces it with trembling fingers. "I got lucky. If I'd been standing a few inches to the right, I'd be dead. As it was, I was half out of my mind. I could barely see from the amount of blood streaming down my face, and he was still standing over me with the axe. He didn't look human. He was splattered with blood and fragments of fucking skull and I knew he was going to kill me. Maybe not then, but soon. I found the rifle, and–" She squeezes her eyes shut, because she can't bear the way he's looking at her. "I thought I'd killed him. Only I knew I hadn't hit him in the head, so–"
"That's enough, Faye. No more."
"–So he was going to turn. And I ran. I didn't stop to finish him, didn't even stop to check if he was actually dead. I just ran. Dragged the dinghy into the water, looked back, and he was staggering across the beach. I couldn't hear anything. My ears were ringing from the rifle blast, and I thought he was dead. So..." She trails off, gives a shaky laugh. "Now you know."
"Now I know." He sounds numb.
"I bet you wish you'd never asked."
"No." He strokes her hair. "I wish there was something I could've done to help."
"This is the world now. But plus ça change. It's always been the world for a lot of people, going back longer than the zombie apocalypse."
"Yeah." He sighs. "This damn world. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't just leave it to the Zs."
She nestles into him. Now that it's out, she feels stronger. Safer. "No, you don't."
"You're right. I don't. I hope we can do it better though. If we do get a second chance. Because if not... Shit. Faye, I'm sorry you had to go through that. I can't even imagine–"
"Hey." She rolls over, meets his eyes. "Listen to me, Simon, and really, I mean this. It could have been a lot worse. Compared to the Zs back at Northern Light, that moment when I looked down into the hole and thought you were dead? No contest. So let's not turn it into some hideous trauma, because that's not helping."
"Okay," he says, his voice soothing. "But just so's you know, I am going to kill him."
"Yeah, you said that already."
"I am."
She kisses him, and when, for a few moments, he holds back she feels a rush of fear, because what if this has irrevocably changed things between them? And then the moment passes and he's kissing her back, delicate butterfly kisses that make her shiver with pleasure.
In the tight confines of the sleeping bag she can feel how much he wants her, only...
She breaks away with a groan. "We can't."
He looks stricken. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean–"
"It's not that. Bloody hell, Simon." She sighs, hoping he isn't planning on treating her like a fragile china doll for the rest of her life. "The storm's dropping. We should be able to get moving again tomorrow. Need to conserve our energy."
"Right."
"If it wasn't for that..."
"I know." He wriggles onto his side, his back to her. She spoons against him, her arm wrapped around his chest. Beneath her fingertips, she feels the hollow indentations of his ribs. It frightens her how thin he is, how little protection he has against the biting cold. Panic surges up through her system, making her heart jerk like a marionette on a string. Because what if he dies because of her?
She presses her face between his shoulder blades, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back tears. He takes hold of her hand, and she wonders if he can feel her tears wet against his back. "We're gonna be okay," he says, and she guesses he can't, because there's a new confidence in his voice. "You know that, right?"
"Hell yeah," she says, and she can't keep a trace of his accent from creeping into her voice. "You, me and the dog."
Even though he still sounds sad, humour has already started to creep back into his voice. "You know you just said 'dawg', right?"
"No, I didn't."
"You totally did." He chuckles. "I love it when you talk American. It's adorable."
"'Adorable'?" She smiles through her tears. "Simon, I'm a 32-year old woman. I practically have a doctorate. I have a mortgage. I am not adorable." She pokes him. "You're adorable."
"Hear that, dog? She says I'm adorable."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say adorable? I meant 'aggravating.' Now get some sodding sleep."
"Yes, ma'am." His hand finds hers. "You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," she whispers. "I really am."
Faye closes her eyes, listens as the wind drops. Outside everything is eerie and still. All she can hear are the sounds inside the tent, Simon's steady breathing and the rumbling of the husky,. The drumming of a loose guy line against the nylon tent. That should be all, but there's something else – something she knows she's imagining, but which catches at the edge of her hearing anyway. It fills her with dread
She fights the urge to look up, to check the far end of the tent, where the shadows lurk. There's something there, a shape crouched in the gloom. It watches them with angry, hateful eyes.
There's nothing there.
She closes her eyes, but the hollow, desolate mantra echoes in her head, deadening any hope she might have had.
We're going to die out here.