Chapter Text
A cold wind was blowing across the lake towards the little huddle of tents and shelters. Allie turned her face into the wind, averting her gaze from her watch area, and felt the sting of the early winter air on her face. Tears sprang to her eyes but she forced herself to keep them open. Only when she couldn’t stand it anymore, when the stinging in her eyes forced her to blink, did she wipe the tears away and look back to the expanse of grass that she was responsible for.
She let her gaze drift over the patch of their new world that was illuminated by the solar powered lanterns they’d set up around the perimeter of the camp. The area that she was monitoring that night was the expanse of grass that faced New Ham, the recently ploughed earth of their crop zone stretching halfway to the dark abyss of the tree line.
She was sitting on a rickety raised platform, built like a kid’s tree house, with a lantern at her side and a blanket thrown over her shoulders to protect her from the cold. Not that it did much. She felt the cold to her bones even when she was sitting a foot from the campfire. She hadn’t been able to get warm since they fled New Ham. Maybe she’d never be warm again. Even so, she pulled the blanket further around her shoulders and stared glumly at the swaying tree tops, lit by the almost full moon overhead.
She could hear a few people still up in the camp but most had retreated to their tents. There was a soft murmur of voices from near the central campfire as Bean and Gordy cleared up the remnants of their dinner: a kind of fish and wild greens soup. The fishing team had pulled out three large fish from the lake that morning and Gwen had discovered a patch of wild asparagus several days ago that they’d combined with some chickweed and wood sorrel leaves. Thank goodness for Gordy’s insistence on packing all those books in their escape kit, without them they’d probably all have been poisoned by some toxic leaf by now.
Allie shifted to ease the ache in her back from the uncomfortable position. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt comfortable. Everyone in the camp acted like they’d aged fifty years now, groaning each time they stood up from the campfire, cracking their back and rolling their shoulders to ease the pain of a long day of hard labour. Whether they were digging out the vegetable garden to the north of the camp, or the crop land to the south, or chopping wood or walking for miles in the forest searching for edible plants or animals to hunt, they were all aching and exhausted by the end of every day.
But they were alive. Somehow. Thirty three of them, plus one infant, surviving on the banks of the lake with only what they had managed to gather from New Ham before it burned.
At the thought, Allie saw again the flames reaching into the night sky, the acrid smoke clogging her throat, the shouts and screams around her as the town descended into panic. It was hard to believe that had been four months ago. She still dreamed about it every night.
“Hey.”
The voice from the darkness jolted her from her memories and she startled, her hand flying to the gun that was sitting on the rough deck beside her. She never touched it. The person on watch before her always knew to leave it on the deck, never hand it to her, and she left it there her entire shift, sitting like a menacing black phantom beside her, filled with deadly potential.
She pulled her hand back from it when she made out Will’s head emerging from the ladder. He eyed her fingers still hovering in the direction of the weapon and then looked to her, his eyes black in the shadows.
“Sorry, I thought you would have heard me coming.”
She shook her head mutely, pulling her hand back into the blanket, pulling it even tighter around her as she shuffled over slightly on the deck, making room for him. He heaved himself over the edge with the sigh of an old man and settled down beside her.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” she said into the uncomfortable silence between them. She could feel his eyes on her as she kept hers firmly on the dark horizon.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he replied shortly, finally pulling his gaze from her and looking out over the grass.
It wasn’t uncommon for any of them to rise in the early hours of the morning and find half a dozen other’s sitting on the logs around the smouldering campfire, talking quietly over cups of hot tea, taking some comfort in the sleepnessless of others. She never joined them, though she’d lie awake and listen to their soft voices.
“Kelly said you didn’t eat any dinner tonight,” he said when she didn’t say anything. His eyes were on her again, making her skin prickle. Allie bit down on her lower lip, suppressing the sudden flare of anger that rose up inside her. She hated that they were monitoring her like she was a child, like she was Baby Eden and they needed to make sure she was eating and sleeping. As if it were any of their business. A part of her knew she wasn’t being fair to them, to Will most of all, but she couldn’t suppress the irritation in her tone when she replied.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
Will sighed, which only irritated her more. She knew he was confused why things had changed. He didn’t understand why the Allie they’d rescued from the cellar as the town burned down around them was a different person to the one he’d been arrested with when Lexie and her army decided to have a coup. He hadn’t been changed by the two weeks they’d been locked up, apart from looking a bit skinnier and more exhausted than ever. And she couldn’t explain to him why she wasn’t the same Allie.
In the darkness, she sensed his movement and felt the lightest touch of his fingertips on her arm through the blanket. She hadn’t let him touch her since they’d arrived here, hadn’t let anyone touch her. And he was hurting. He didn’t understand why she chose to work in the field digging trenches for 10 hours a day when he was collecting firewood in the forest, or why she sat on a solitary rock around the campfire leaving the space beside him on the log painfully obvious, or why she had moved her sleeping bag to the icy flap of their tent rather than sleep in the large room with him and Gordy and Bean.
He pulled his hand away from her after a moment, choosing to pull away before he knew she would. She could almost feel his pain in the air between them and it made her chest ache. She didn’t want to hurt him but he just didn’t understand. She didn’t understand. Nothing made sense anymore.
“I’m going to go see if Gordy and Bean need any help cleaning up,” he said after another long stretch of silence. She only gave a tight nod, keeping her eyes fixed on the trees as if she were the most dedicated guard in history. He hesitated a second longer, maybe hoping she’d look at him just once, and then ducked his head and moved to the ladder.
Only when she heard the soft thump of his feet hitting the ground did she risk a look to where he had been sitting. A tear escaped down her cheek and she swiped at it angrily. She hated that he was hurting and that she was the cause but it felt like there was a chasm between them now and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t figure out how to get across. And he didn’t even seem to realise it was there.
Allie took a deep breath and burrowed down even further into her blanket, wishing that she could just fold it over her head and the whole world would disappear. Perhaps she’d pull it back and find herself sitting on her bed, Cassandra’s music playing from the next room and the sound of her mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs. The image caused a sob to escape from her lips and she clenched her jaw, forcing herself to think of something else.
The distraction came, not from herself, but from the dark shadows of the forest. All thoughts of home vanished as she straightened, her eyes straining to catch another glimpse of the movement which had caught her attention. A shadow – definitely human- slipped around the edge of the circle of light cast by the lanterns. Allie’s insides tightened and she felt suddenly sick. Was this it? Was this Campbell and the others finally rallied after the fire and come to take over their colony? They’d been waiting for it, hence why’d they’d set up guard duty the first night they set up camp beside the lake.
Glancing over her shoulder she wondered whether she should scream, alert everyone in the camp to the coming danger. She looked frantically back at the darkness, trying desperately to catch even the slightest movement. There it was again, a tall figure just disappearing between two trees only twenty feet from her guard tower. She rose to her knees. There was no sign of anyone else. What if it was one of their own people who had gone for a walk? She didn’t want to freak everyone out until she knew, not when everyone was wound tight as a bowstring.
Her heart pounding with uncertainty and her teeth chattering from the cold night air, Allie emerged from her blanket. She stared at the gun beside her for a long moment and then, not giving herself time to think, snatched it up and stuffed it in the pocket of her sweatshirt. It was cold and heavy in her hand. She pushed aside the sudden image of the last time she’d held a gun and lowered herself swiftly and silently down the ladder. Her head was buzzing with adrenalin as she slipped into the trees, skirting the puddle of light of the lantern and plunging into the darkness. She paused a moment against a tree, heart pounding so loudly she was sure it would give her away, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The light of the moon was just enough to make out the swaying trees and forest floor. She crept out from the shelter of her tree and put each foot down softly on the rotting leaves. She jumped when a twig cracked to her right, surely not 10 feet away, and on instinct her arm flew up, gun pointing into the trees.
“Don’t shoot!”
Her hand was shaking as she stood in the small clearing, her finger poised on the trigger and the barrel facing squarely at Harry Bingham’s chest.