Archive of Our Own

They had left KEGS as students, eager and naïve, excited for their school trip to the deserts of the Felsted Front, where they would assist Médecins Sans Frontières. Under their guidance, they were to learn about medicine, aid in humanitarian efforts, and perhaps, make a difference. They had expected hardship. They were not prepared for war.

The clinic where they worked was no haven - it was a war zone. They stitched up soldiers and civilians alike, dressed burn wounds, and held dying children in their arms. They learned to tell when a man would live or die just by looking at him.

He arrived in the dead of night - small, frail, missing an arm and face half melted by fire. His family begged them. His father was close to tears as he knelt on the ground. His sibling was in tears. The war was unforgiving to all.

And the doctors fought for his life. They worked for hours, rationing their precious morphine, stabilising his bleeding, fighting for his every breath. When he finally opened his blistered eyelids, his burns scarred but grafted, they cheered. The medicine students were relieved. Their help was merely on the sidelines of the surgery but to see the boy live was a miracle unparalleled.

Two days later, they found what was left of him - a crater in the road, shreds of fabric and bone. Some had died at the impact. He had walked into their camp, innocently. Nobody questioned it. Nobody could have known what had been on his mind, death approaching. His people were cruel and life was crueller.

"We saved him.."
"We should have let him die."
"Don't say that.."
"We should have let him die! "

The war was unforgiving to all.

The flight home was silent. No one spoke about what they had seen. No one dared. All were relieved to finally be home, the last strands of their sanity kept together by the promise of a better place where they belonged.

But as their train pulled into Chelmsford Station, something felt wrong.

KEGS stood before them. But it had seemed that, suddenly one day, it had all changed.

The short wall that ran around the length of the grounds had increased in height. The fences were tipped with barbed wire. Chains hung around the school gate, with no padlock to open or close them.

The site team stood guard at the entrance to the reception. Not that there was a need for such a place. No visitors were welcome here. And the returned students were much the same.

Ms Friel trembles, nearly sobbing. But Mr Seed’s decree was absolute. Their fault was none. Ms Friel had helped organise the biochemistry students on a field trip to broaden their experiences. Universities demanded their students be among the very best. Students were a cheap commodity to medical schools. Ms Friel begged, but to them, the doors were shut. Their names were no longer on the register. They were not students here. KEGS had changed.

They begged. They screamed. But no one even looked. They banged on the doors and howled, but only had one choice. To go.

They drifted to the outskirts of Chelmsford. At first, they believed it was temporary. A mistake. They were KEGS students. They would be let back into the ancient halls.

But days passed. And then a week.

The hunger set in.
The cold set in.
And finally, the realisation set in.

They made their camps along the outskirts of civilisation. The fields and trees rustled. Bedford Bog was a wasteland. Left to rot by KEGS, travellers came and went, their communities growing and then disappearing days later. The lonely marshes swayed, the wind whistled through the reeds.

It was tough surviving in the wastes of Bedford Bog. The waters, indistinguishable from walkable ground, could be anywhere from knee deep to 3 body lengths deep. And if something fell in, it was gone forever. When a student disappeared into the murky depths, nothing floated to the top, not even the stench of their slowly decaying body.

The bog stretched out before them - an expanse of swaying reeds, dead trees jutted out from the blackened mud, its roots like skeletal fingers. The mist never quite lifted, even when the sun burned overhead. The waters simmered with an oily sheen. The surface occasionally broke with the sluggish ripple of something unseen. Scattered among the filth, violent bursts of life, were the Violet flowers, twisted creeping vines that wrapped through the reeds and curled around rotting logs.

Richard Carter was the first to act, his spirit reminiscent of his ancestry in his prime. “we can't just sit here. The students weren't unfamiliar with fending for themselves after their trip, but to fully provide for themselves would provide a new challenge. He explored the thorned bushes, drawing blood as he crawled through the dense foliage. In the aftermath of their arrival, when hunger gnawed at the stomachs of the survivors and panic threatened to turn into chaos, he took it upon himself to seek out food. He wasn’t an outdoorsman and soon enough he returned with a multitude of unknown fruits. He organised the lost students. Loose sticks, logs and branches were turned into the beginnings of crude shelters. A full roof was created. Ishmam, dextrous with a needle during the trip, weaved reeds together into a canopy.

The students gathered around Richard Carter. He wasn't even a medicine student, only coming along the medicine trip because the world challenge trip was full. However he was tall and was the first to take initiative. Eventually the tired students, lost in the fields and forests of Bedford Bog followed him. He split the students into groups, workers, explorers, scavengers. They built small canopys and shelters, propped up by trees and covered in ishmams “leaf blankets”. Richard laughed a little. It was all so natural. He felt warm. Finally, after so much hardship, things were beginning to work again. His fathers blood flowed through his body. He was almost shining.

However, it did not take long for Richard to worry. It was getting dark and many had yet to return. Of those that had, they spoke of large beasts in the woods, people disappearing or of food proven to be inedible.

The first night was not easy. The cold air clutched at the students. Animals unseen called across the vast wilderness. It was hard to keep hope when it was sapped from your bones. The students slept hungry, but alive. Richard turned in his sleep, burdened by the combined weight of the time on the frontlines and the loss of hope at the gates of KEGS. He slapped away a mosquito. The stars above twinkled, making for a light night. Nobody slept that night.

In the morning, the teachers returned. After fruitless meetings with the new headteacher, they could not convince him to allow the once students to return. While they were still employed, they were still, by law, required to watch over the students as stated in the contract for the trip. Ms Friel’s face was tear stricken. Mr Ager just looked tired. The Kegs-Bedford shuttle bus had just left, the schools crest mocking them on the side of the bus, after dropping off the supplies the teachers had brought. It seems that KEGS was still supplying the teachers who were still under employment.

“You came back” Richard Carter spoke first

Ms Friel hesitated, glancing at Mr Ager, who simply shouldered a bag and sighed.

"Of course. We couldn’t leave you completely on your own." She tried to smile, but faltered. "We’ve brought supplies."

There was a flicker of relief, until they saw what she meant.
The supplies were high quality, but scarce. Instant meals and canned food, water purifiers, a first aid kit. A person could live in the wild for weeks in relative comfort. Indeed. A small group. It wasn’t enough, not even close to enough for all the students. It was clear that this was never meant for them.

Murmurs ran through the students. Sam even started stepping forward, trying to peer into the bags. Ishmam, always careful, nudged Richard slightly. "If we share equally, it won’t be enough."

“We’ll try to share equally what we can,” Ms Friel started “you are our responsibility after all.” Richard was lost in thought. Eventually he spoke up, his eyebrows furrowed, “It will be important to source our own supplies where possible.” He looked up.

The teachers and Richard broke off from the crowd to a quieter spot. The teachers had noticed the leader inside Richard from the time on the trip and he naturally spoke for the students.

They discussed many more long term ideas. Since they had no choice but to live here, they would need to locate better areas to build shelters and to explore the area for food sources and materials. A teacher’s quarters would need to be constructed and the supplies kept under watch. A watch should be established to keep a lookout for threats after the rumours of the beasts and the hidden bogs marked out and fenced off.

***

Paarth Bansal was running for his life.

A large shadow chased after him. He had broken off from the group a while ago while investigating a promising food source and had simply gotten lost. It was getting dark and he was getting afraid when he was spooked by a loud noise. He jumped and narrowly dodged a large beast that had ambushed him. Next thing he knew, he was running. Not anywhere, but away.

His breath hurt. His chest ached and his fatigue was rapidly outweighing his fear. He was close to tearing and with eyes shut he tripped. Head over heels, he rolled down the hill, hitting trees and crashing through shrubbery with speed. He was scratched and torn before he had even registered his weightlessness. Each bump into a tree knocked the air out of him. Then he woke up.

The sun was shining and he was lying on his back. He bolted straight up, but his hurting muscles stopped him. A tree swayed above him and all was quiet. An open field laid before him. He put his head back.

Many hours later he woke again. His muscles still hurt but now he had the energy to resist. He leaned against the tree and looked around. An open field stretched before him. He relaxed with relief. He may be safe here.

Paarth exhaled, his breath shaky but steadying. The vast expanse of long grass swayed in the wind as they yellowed in the distance. The sky above was clear, painted with soft blue hues. Black shapes in the distance dotted the fields far away. He put his hand to block the sun overhead, feeling against the dried blood on his forehead.

As he sat there, catching his breath, he instinctively reached for his compass. The metal felt cool in his palm, a reminder of direction, of his purpose. He flicked it open. The needle spun wildly for a moment before snapping to the north. He wasn’t lost. He wouldn’t lose his way. He had survived and he won’t let go of his determination.

He began to walk. Limping through the bruises and muscle ache he had endured, he travelled north. There was nothing else to do. His phone had no signal, not in the wastes of Bedford Bog. He stopped for a moment and considered. Is this place even Bedford? He laughed to himself. This wasn’t the good place. It wouldn't hurt so much.

He had walked a while and the black shapes grew closer. They appeared to be plants of sorts. Dark silhouettes, motionless against the pale grass, scattered like forgotten statues. Some were tall, hunched figures, their outlines resembling twisted men frozen in place. Others lay low to the ground, tangled into the earth like melted roots. They did not sway with the wind. They did not move at all.

He didn’t trust the stillness.

When he first passed too close, he saw it - a flicker of motion. The nearest shape twitched, its surface unfolded slightly, revealing jagged tendrils lined with serrated edges. Not quite plant. Not quite flesh. It wanted something. But it would not waste energy unless provoked.

Paarth stood still. There were small animals here. But they walked silently among the dark tendrils without worry. His eyes rolled to the top left of his vision as one does while thinking. He moved slowly, taking a huge risk. Nothing happened. He waved his arms slowly, daring the plant things as he sped up. A large fly noisily buzzed by flitting between the plants. So suddenly he hadn’t registered it, black roots shot out from the plants, encapsulating the fly without a sound. Paarth crouched down in shock, in a controlled manner to avoid making sound. His breath was held, so that his grunts of pain from his aches wouldn’t leak out. Carefully, he walked past.

***

Richard ran over to the medical tent. Over the past few days, they had distributed supplies and built multiple shelters that helped keep the worst of the wind and rain out. He had organised search parties for the missing and those exploring always went in teams. Times were hard though. With their current population they would run out of food within a week. Thankfully water was less of an issue thanks to the water purifier the teachers had brought. With these thoughts on his mind, Richard greeted Ishmam at the medical tent. While all of them were medicine students, none of them had any real experience with actually treating ailments or injuries outside of the school trip. For this reason, only a few medicine students still even practiced medicine. It was a strange irony that still caused disagreements on treatment and they were far from perfect. Lying on the blankets, students were feverish. Richard stood next to Othniel, who coughed and spluttered with a cold fever. Ishmam turned to Kingshuk, one of the other “doctors” for now. All they could do was try and keep them warm best they could. They had long ran out of paracetamol treating students with serious injuries and were scraping the bottom of the barrel, prescribing travel sickness medicine out of desperation.
“Any luck?” Richard asked, this being his fourth visit.
“We’ve had a few recover but honestly, I have no idea why. And even if I did, we don’t have the means to treat everyone. It’s ridiculous.” Ishmam was at the end of his tether. Years of medical studies and work placements and his Imperial college offer made useless through no fault of his own, all useless in the field too. That morning alone had seen a few people dumped into the bog.

Richard walked out, not wanting to rub in the futility of their efforts. It could be anything. The symptoms were so generic that it was anyone's guess and their survival would rely purely on the patient's own resilience. He watched teams of students putting up a large wall made up of bound logs to deter beasts. Yaseenyelled at the teams, keeping the construction working as a system. The day before yesterday, a family of wild boars had charged through their camps, causing panic throughout the students.

The teachers had claimed an old building built before the students' arrival. After removing the tools and groundskeeping equipment, they turned the 2 storey building into a base of sorts. It wasn’t really fair to the students but considering the limited space it offered for the many students as compared to just a few teachers, Richard was willing to brush it off as “in exchange for the supplies.”

***

Paarth was lost. More so than before. His compass guided him ahead but every step forward he seemed to take seemed to veer east or west randomly in the mist.

It rolled in thick, damp waves, clinging to his skin like wet cloth. The air smelled of damp earth and something faintly metallic, like rusted iron left to rot in the rain. The world around him no longer existed, only a swirling, pale void.

Paarth turned. And again. No landmarks. No points of reference to work with.

He kept moving. He refused to let panic overtake him. Paarth gritted his teeth and focussed on the nearest thing he could see. Always moving forwards. Time seemed to stretch out but his watch had broke on the trip before in the desert. Trees passed him by and the ground moved under his feet but he began to doubt he was making any progress. What if he had passed that bush before?

His determination carried him far but eventually, his body was far too tired anyhow. He chose the next nearest tree and leaned against it, sliding down its side until he sat in a squatting position. He rolled over, his signature move and fell listlessly into a deep sleep. He felt a presence watching him but could not, would not address it.

Paarth drifted.

He was standing in a corridor - endless, with walls that breathed. Paarth felt hot and his mind was confused because it all made perfect sense. The floor shifted with each step, the wood soft like flesh. He heard a buzzing, somewhere in the distance. The white fog tumbled through the corridor, choking him.

He turned a corner. Suddenly before him was Richard. He was filled with emotion. He longed to be back with the others. As a group, everything would be fine. He closed his hands around his compass, pulling from his pocket he realised instead, a knife. Paarth looks, confused, until he is pushed away by Richard. He isn’t needed here. There are too many mouths to feed and he hasn't helped the survival of the group. Richard screams, “Don’t be so selfish! Do you really think we can afford to share with a turncoat like you. You haven’t helped at all yet you still come begging for food like a leech!” Richard is turning red, his face nearly touching Paarth’s. The pressure is building inside of Paarth’s head. “Besides,” He sneers, “you look like you could stand to starve a little.” The heat is becoming unbearable and Paarth shudders. He drops to his knees and braces. Gasping for air. It boils. His head aches, right behind his eyes, until it shatters like some year 8 pottery.

Paarth lay motionless. The grey fog was back and he lay back next to the tree where he first fell. He could feel the dampness in his clothes, the ache in his bones. What was the point? What was the point of getting up, of walking in this hell of a place that seemed to swallow every step? So painful. This was no way to live. It wasn’t fair. Even if he went back, what if he wasn’t welcome back and he walks all this distance just to be pushed away? What if he has outlived all of his friends and they died because he did not help them? He began to hear a buzzing noise through all this fog. Paarth ruminated on what ifs and could bes. He did not get up from the damp grass.

That irritating noise got louder. But a stench of decay wafted through Paarths sensitive nose and he recoiled on the floor, rolling onto his back and he saw them watching him.

Well, well, well.. The persistent wanderer lies on his back like rotting carrion? How noble. What perseverance.

Paarth turned his head slightly. A pig’s head sat on the tip of a stake, like a scarecrow, standing at the edge of his vision, shifting and flickering like a dying flame. Aside from the pig’s head, it had no distinct features, just a hollow mass of buzzing flies. Paarth looked on, refusing to participate with this new nightmare. He already had more than his fair share of scares in the dream now.

You’re so very far from home, boy. Are you even trying to find the others?

Paarth said nothing. His hand felt for his compass, his only solid truth in this strange land.

Do you blindly trust your compass then?

His hand twitched. The small metal disc felt cold in his hand. Suddenly, this conversation was serious.

What will you do when you realise its too late? You know how easy it is to turn on your fellow man. After all, you’ve already turned your back on them.

A shiver ran down his spine. Paarth squeezed his eyes shut. “No.”

Will you still hold your compass then?

Paarth’s breath was ragged. His fingers dug into the cold, damp earth.

He opened his eyes. His motivation had drained from him with every step he had taken in this forsaken place. He lies down, looking up at the blank sky without a thought in his head. His compass was lax, not pointing anywhere really.

***

The hunting party moved through the trees like ghosts, their makeshift spears clutched tight in their hands, tied to a spool of rope they had each. The forest pressed in from all sides, a labyrinth of twisted branches. They moved low to the ground to avoid brushing the dense branches and to check the ground for crunchy leaves or sticks that would betray their presence, not just to any would-be prey.

Kingshuk had been finding success in tracking animals now as well. Richard had assigned shifting job assignments once he realised that people would not naturally find their talents by just doing what they thought they preferred. Kingshuk stopped, puzzled. He looked around after the tracks had stopped. A hardened patch of ground had failed to produce tracks and he was at a loss. Charles shifted next to him, eyes vigilant. Only he held something different. A crossbow, like times of old, building weaponry from wooden forks and knives from the canteen, only now from the materials provided and by repurposing old bag straps and kit from their trip. Kingshuk looked at the others, crossing his hands, then shrugging his shoulders. The cow could be nearby however, as the prints were fresh.

Kingshuk frowned at the hardened patch of ground. It was outrageous that their efforts would be such in vain. The trail had simply... vanished. He exhaled, glancing at Charles, who gripped his large makeshift crossbow, eyes scanning the trees. Around them, the rest of the hunting party shifted uneasily. Losing a trail meant wasting precious time and energy. In the distance, birds cried out.

Charles knelt, running his fingers through the dirt. "Look at this." He pointed up, towards some shrubbery.
The hunting party gathered round, hopeful for some clue to their lost quarry.

The hardened ground hadn't left tracks, but the surrounding foliage had. Broken branches, displaced stones, and subtle streaks of mud indicated something heavy had passed through.

Charles crouched, pointing. “Here. See how these ferns are bent outward? Something big brushed past.” He trend sideways, going through the gap that the cow had left. The gap was not small by any means but nobody wished to touch the edges of the broken branches and leaves for all the phlegm that covered it.

The disgusting cow wasn’t exactly a healthy creature. Its body was bloated, rotting in places, and flies swarmed its open wounds. It was sick, barely holding itself together. The hunters kept quiet, not just to remain undetected but their ears strained to listen for its laboured breathing.

Between the rustling of leaves and the distant cry of some unseen bird -

huhhhhrrrrkkkgh…

A wet, phlegmy sound, like a clogged drain gurgling. Kingshuk’s eyes lit up. He raised a fist, signaling for them to slow their pace. “There,” he murmured. “It’s close.”

Moving carefully, they crept forward, pushing through the undergrowth. The air grew heavier, the foul odor nearly overwhelming.

A low shape stood in a clearing ahead, heaving, swarmed with flies.

The Disgusting Cow.

Charles silently cocked his crossbow. The others gripped their spears. Kingshuk exhaled, adjusting his stance.

***

Ishmam stood carefully a few meters away from where he guessed the water’s edge was. Having not been here himself yet, he could only guess as to where it actually lay. The crag laid behind him, named the Heathcliff after the violet flowers that covered it. Ishmam hmphed. He had hoped it would be ok to wash the sheets directly in the river but he couldn't even laugh at this. The supposed “river” was indeed more water than mud as said by other students but the sheets would probably get more dirty than clean like this. Ishmam turned in the direction of the teachers’ camp.

His request for water was simple. Ishmam sent one of the younger students who dared cross the invisible threshold that separated the students’ half-ruined shelters from the neat fencing of the teachers’ camp. However the response was unusual to Ishmam. This should have been a simple acceptance. However, Miss Friels dismissive response irked him a little.

“The pump is not to be used for generic hygiene. It is a critical equipment and needs to be handled carefully so that it doesn’t break before we have a replacement for it. As they say, there is no need to flush your toilet with drinking water”

Ishmam didn’t react outwardly. But inside, he was affronted. Ms Friel seemed to think that cleaning the medical tent and the sheets for the patients was the same as simply showering or cleaning a work surface. Ms Friel was not a doctor, or even related to the field through biology or chemistry. The medical tents had seen an outbreak of something unidentifiable - a fever that came and went, leaving sores and trembling. The sheets needed to be even boiled, scrubbed, sanitised, not muddied and dried in the bog.

The water pump was a shared resource by name only. Housed in the centre of the teachers' fortified encampment - it was guarded more fiercely than the food. Mr Ager had explained, during a “town hall” meeting that it was fragile. Rough use could crack the ceramic filters. That even though it could last years, one crack, one poor use, and they’d be left with nothing but river sludge. “We’ll all be drinking mud,” he had said, in his usual grim tone, “if it breaks. Do you want that?”

Still, to the students the line had been drawn: the teachers had water, clean clothes, easy access to drinking water while the students often had dirty and creased bedding and drank rationed water at mealtimes only. The cracking dirt scratched against their bare backs and the students exchanged rotten glances when they saw the teachers brewing tea through the windows of the “base”.

***

The Disgusting Cow had led them deep into the forest - further than any of the students had dared to go before. It’s stench had made them gag as they tracked it but it was one of the only sources of meat they’d seen in days. Even now, hidden behind low brambles and thick mossy trees, the air was thick with the stink of decay - like something already dead, walking. Until now, birds had been entirely out of reach and the small rats had provided no real sustenance proportional to the bother of catching them. At the base, Charles had been designing small mousetraps but these were still a work in progress. Freddie gagged.

They spotted the cow in a clearing. It stood lop-sided, its legs bent, broken yet still standing. It’s eyes were milky white and nostrils crusted with rot. The cow moaned, a ragged low sound. Its skin twitched with flies.

Kingshuk and the other hunters fanned out. Dharan fiddled with the rope at the end of his spear. They only had one chance. The cow was a huge beast and its strong back legs could crush bone with just a kick. Adrenaline pumped through their veins as they laid eyes upon their quarry. Charles readied his crossbow, resting it on a large wooden frame that supported the siege weapon. Having sacrificed all mobility, he was free to make the structure as large and powerful as he wanted. A locking system and winch was required to draw back the drawstring. This first shot would serve to immobilise the beast and as the signal for the hunters to attack. He didn't have another shot.

He lined up the shot. His sights were slightly inaccurate at this distance so he aimed to the left of the cow. With such ragged weather there was no point in erudite calculations. Fear crept into his mind. If the bolt missed at this distance, it would definitely scare off the cow. He would let down the team. Charles released the bolt. He had no mind to spare on these fearful consequences or contrived rituals. The outcome happens as it does. There is nothing more for him to do.

The bolt ripples through the air, smashing straight through the thigh of the cows back leg. LOW?! That was the problem?! Charles was shocked. But the signal was given. The hunters jump out of cover charging at the cow. The long bolt had pierced through the thigh of the cow and should cripple the cow’s movement. Even if it ran, it could not get far. Dharan faced the cow and thrusted his spear into the cow’s underbelly. The cow snorts, spittle and snot bursting into Dharan’s face. He was blinded and began to pick away at the snot covering his face. A crushing blow to the hip sent him to the ground and he was trampled. Hooves pummel his body. His bones are crushed. His ribcage is broken around where the hooves hit. His thigh and shin bend worryingly. Dharans mind is filled nothing but blind pain. Kingshuk dodges around Dharan and his spear unknowingly blocks one of the cow’s flying feet, swirling around broken joints. The cow didn’t so much run so much as stumble at a terrifying speed - its half useless legs flailing in unpredictable arcs, hooves slamming into the dirt, throwing up clumps of wet earth and fungus. “Hold it down!” Kingshuk shouted. The cow had thundered past him and Kinghuk needed to reposition quickly before they were wiped out. Already a man down, he was afraid of the worst possible scenario.

Jonathan threw his spear. The barb caught on the cow’s hardened skin, a layer of dead flesh that turned to a sort of leather much thicker than usual. He held desperately onto the rope tied to the end of the spear. The cow frenzied with newfound energy. Flung around, he dragged his feet along the ground to slow it. Kingshuk goes to throw his spear too but finds it broken between his hands. Kingshuk yelled as he speared forward with the broken shaft. His weapon sunk into its ribs, and he pushed with everything he had, grimacing as the putrid hot smell of the thing rolled over him. The wet slime enveloped his shoulder as he carved deep into the beast.

The others lunged, spears whipping into its flesh but the beast twisted, flinging them off like rag dolls. It turned again, towards Charles’ position. It charged.

Charles had been in a daze since the fight started. He was too far away to do anything but watch and was in a trance ever since Dharan fell. He had been with this group for a while and although he knew that they all had people that they knew who were missing, it was always something else to see it for yourself. Caught in that surreal moment, it took him a moment to fumble for a bolt. He hurriedly began winding the drawstring back, spinning the handle with his whole body. The cow seemed so close already. He jumped back from the winch, halfway wound up and blindly fired the crossbow in the direction of the beast.

It sunk dead into the beasts skull, a perfect shot, as it burst through layers of thick bone in a shower of flesh and cracks of bone. But the beast continued to charge forward, its momentum carrying it forward. Charles dived out of the way as Jonathon pulled. But Jonathan was not heavy enough to make a difference. “Everybody pull! Pull it back!” Kingshuk yelled. Freddie wrapped his arms around Jonathon and the rope and heaved. Kingshuk threw his rope at the cow’s feet, wrapping around it like Indiana Jones, pulling hard. It stumbled, fell onto its knees, but didn’t stop - it crawled, thrashed, dragged itself forward, desperate and in pain as if refusing to die. They pulled, feeling themselves get yanked forward with each thrash. The cow fell on its side and unable to get up, it thrashed uselessly.

Kingshuk fell to the ground. Jonathan stumbled back, panting. He held his hands and his sides. Scraped, bruised, maybe broken. The cow was shuddering. Once. Then twice. Nobody dared to get near the cow no longer.

It slumped with a sickening wetness, exhaling one final moan that sounded almost human.

Silence fell. The flies buzzed around them. Blood soaked into the dirt. The smell was unbearable, but no one turned away. Not this time.

They stood around the carcass in uneasy silence, the forest strangely quiet save for the occasional low whine of wind through the trees and the persistent buzz of flies. The Disgusting Cow lay limp in the dirt, its twisted limbs sprawled at unnatural angles, bloated and ruptured in places. It hadn’t been a clean kill. Nothing about it was clean.

“Can we even eat that..?”

Kingshuk was the first to speak.

“Get the tarp,” he said, voice hoarse. “We’re not butchering it like this on the dirt.”

Dharan, was laid upon another tarp as Jonathon organised their impromptu camp while the others stared at the corpse with both hunger and dread. When he returned, they rolled the carcass onto it with effort, the body making squelching, popping sounds as rot-slack flesh shifted, releasing trapped pockets of gas and fluid. The smell worsened. Charles gagged but didn’t back away.

Kingshuk knelt first, knife in hand. He sliced through the hide, and immediately a wave of pale yellow pus and greenish snot-like sludge spilled out from the under-layer, soaking the tarp and sending a few students looking a little pale. The skin was cracked, the fat beneath it gelatinous and discoloured. Kingshuk worked carefully, methodically, his face hard.

“You have to scrape it, not cut it all away,” he muttered ot the others. “There is meat under here… it’s just… buried.”

They followed his lead. The top layers of meat were slimy, infected. Boils and abscesses had to be lanced, and there were worms, but deeper in, past the pus and infection, they found it: fibrous, dark-red muscle that still looked…..somewhat alright. They worked in shifts, scraping off the filth, carving hunks of meat into cleaned buckets, trying not to get too much mucus into the pile.

One of them vomited. All felt ill. Still they worked.

By the end of it, compared to the hulking beast before, there was a lot less left, however, there was still so much left that they had to carry it between multiple hunters. Dharan was carried in the tarp by Charles and Jonathon like a stretcher. Dharan groaned painfully, gracefully only half conscious as his broken bones grinded together.

It would be a long trip home.

***

The medical tent was quiet, save for the pitter patter of rain against the tent tarpaulin and the distant rustle of leaves as the trees swayed. A single lamp swung gently from a hook above, casting a pool of amber over the surgical table. The bitter stench of antiseptic and rapt concentration hung in the air.

Ishmam stood still, his hands gloved but trembling, the scalpel poised just above the unconscious patients thigh. Lakshya, his friend lay upon the operating table but he couldn't even begin to pierce his skin. His eyes flicked between the pus-filled wound and the patients serene face.

“Don’t hesitate.” Mr Ager’s voice was low and even, like a whisper behind him. He stood in the doorway.

“I need to be sure that I cut correctly.” Ishmam murmured through pursed lips, “If I go too deep -”

“You won’t.” Mr Ager said. “Trust the scalpel. Trust your hands. Don’t worry about the blade, it’s one of mine after all.”

He stepped forward from the shadows of the tent, his long coat brushing softly against the canvas wall. He stood beside Ishmam and slowly reached out, his own weathered fingers hovering over the younger one’s.

“May I?” he asked.

Ishmam nodded.

Gently, Mr Ager placed his hand over Ishmam’s, guiding the scalpel forward with slow, deliberate motion. Their hands moved together, an old rhythm meeting new, like music remembered in the bones. As the blade made its incision, clean and sure, a quiet tension lifted from Ishmam’s chest. Mr Ager’s hands were cold.

“That’s it. No need to saw. No need to push. If you treat the scalpel violently it will cut violently too.”

Ishmam exhaled. “How do you make it feel so… natural?”

“It’s not natural,” Mr Ager said, still guiding his hands. “It’s repetition. It’s failure. It’s knowing where to cut, and where to stop, even if your heart breaks as you do it.”

Ishmam glanced at him, but Mr Ager’s eyes remained fixed on cutting out the infected wound, unreadable and distant - like he was looking at something long past.

“You know, I started down the path of medicine due to my parent’s decision but it feels now, that finally, for the first time, I understand why I am on this road. What my purpose is.” Ishmam said. “I want to save them, but sometimes I think I’m not enough.”

“You are enough,” Ager replied. “You’ll become what this place needs. And they’ll remember.”

They stood there in silence as the procedure went on, the student absorbing each movement, each decision. Mr Ager didn’t speak again until the wound was sutured and the patient stabilised.

“Although if you think that this will help improve your reference then you have another thing coming” Mr Ager joked. “I’ve already done all that I can with your reference. You can only pray now.”

“You’re still doing everybody’s references? But what will the universities think? We’re no longer Kegs students?..” Ishmam asked, puzzled.

Mr Ager paused at the washbasin “No.” He looked back. “Just yours.”

Ishmam stopped, in stunned silence he looked at Mr Ager, no words to speak.

“It won’t be easy but I will make it happen.”

Ishmam didn’t see the flicker of sorrow cross Mr Ager’s face. Nor did he see the faint outline of stitches along Mr Ager’s own arms, hidden beneath his sleeves.

“Thank you,” Ishmam said, voice soft.

Mr Ager nodded, but did not look at him.

“One day, Ishmam,” he said finally, “you’ll have to make harder choices than this. And when you do… I hope you won’t have to feel the sorrow. As I have.” he looked solemnly down at his student.

***

The hunters were deep in the dark forest. Freddie and Kinghuk were now carrying Dharan in the tarp. They had been taking turns, for he was much heavier and less wieldy than the cow’s carcass. At least he didn’t smell quite as bad, however he was a sight to behold.

The Disgusting Cow slung between them, bound tightly with ropes woven from backpack straps and vines. Though the worst of the smell had been scraped away, the meat still steamed with a faint sickly sweetness, like boiled plastic, though Kingshuk felt that the water pump could wash the rest of it away. It was food, it would be their first full meal in a week. It was also a magnet.

They didn’t stop for breaks. The carcass was too heavy and too valuable to leave behind, but it seemed to drag in the dark, attracting attention. A shadow passed overhead at one point, and even Charles looked rattled.

Deeper still, the forest began to shimmer with reflections that didn’t make sense. Orbs of faint greenish light appeared between branches -not fireflies, not eyes, but something in between. The ground was hard and the trees were low but clustered to block out the sun above that they used to track their way home.

Suddenly it burst from the trees. A boar or something similar, charged through the undergrowth. Enormous. Hulking. Its skin hung from its body like burlap soaked and dried in blood, its legs thick and coiled with muscle, kicking up dirt and leaves.

But it had no head. Where its neck should be was a jagged, gory stump as if the body did not know it was dead yet. And yet there were no flies, as if the insects refused to acknowledge this thing.

This information was useless to Jonathan, who was directly in its path, frozen like deer in headlights.

“MOVE!” Charles screamed but his voice was drowned out by the beasts roarless gallop.

Just as it was upon him, kingshuk lunged. His rope, a tangle of vines and cord, whipped out with newly found confidence.

He snagged the beast’s legs, looping around its thick hind limb with a yank. Kingshuk was ripped from the ground like a ragdoll. The boar wasn’t even fazed and its charge did not falter as Kingshuk held on, the cord tied to his wrist, his boots trailing leaves and bark as he was dragged behind the charging monster. He slammed into a tree, hard enough to hear the air explode from his lungs. His body was flung through the undergrowth. And just as quickly as it had come, it left ,taking Kingshuk with it.

Silence.

Only broken branches, disturbed earth and Kinshuks spear, still split in half, remained behind.

The rest of them stood in stunned stillness.
Nobody spoke.

Even Charles, who always had an answer and occasionally his snide certainty, had nothing to say. His hands trembled. Johnathon stood, pale, staring into the dark where Kingshuk had vanished. It was too sudden.

“We.. we should go after him,” Freddie whispered.

No one answered.
They couldn’t. Not because they didn’t want to.

But because somewhere behind the trees, the ground rumbled again. The underbrush crackled like fire as the noise came. It wasn’t the boar.

“Run!” someone breathed . Maybe Charles, maybe Jonathon, but it didn’t matter. They scattered. Branches tore at their clothes and faces as they desperately scrambled through the short dense trees.

Jonathon and Freddie ran behind the others, dragging Dharan between them. Freddie cursed with each step as they fled. They tried to keep up with the others. By splitting off, they hoped they may not be targeted despite being slower.

A shadow burst through the trees. Jonathan disappeared from view right in front of Freddie’s eyes. A shape too fast to see clearly. He was thrown sideways into the dark with a crack of bone against tree bark. His cry ended before it began as he stumbled.

Freddie nearly tripped as Dharan dropped, but he kept running. Dharan cried out. With only one person to carry the tarp, Dharan was being dragged against the ground. Freddie tried to speed up, to somehow outpace the thing. Dharan swore as his consciousness returned the pain to him. The bandages made from torn clothing leaked blood as they rubbed against his skin loosely. He held his breath, as if it would stop the pain from his ribs. He looked up at Freddie who desperately stumbled. “We’re not going to make it” he wheezed through a pained breath. Freddie whined. He was an alright runner but dragging Dharan along with him had tired him out.

“Leave me behind..” Dharan whispered.

“Haahh..?” Freddie looked behind him as he hauled Dharan over a small ditch and gave him a funny look, but the exasperation on his face was apparent. “What did you say?”

“Leave me behin….Oh what the hell, I don’t want to die Freddie!” Dharan sobbed. “What the hell are we doing here?!”

Freddie doubled over and held his eyes. His head was bursting and his chest hurt. “I…let’s go.” He lurched. Dharan tried to get up but regretted it immediately. His body, numb to adrenaline, failed him.

“We need to go…...We have to live.. So hold on.”

Freddie dragged Dharan with him through the trees. His ears rung so loud, he couldn’t hear his own footsteps.

Jonathan clambered up the hill. Of the hunters, not many remained. The roaring and heaving of something heavy galloping behind them kept them running. Charles spun, shouted something incoherent, and loosed a crossbow bolt into the black. Just mist, trees and the thudding of something large running behind them. The rest of the group ran blindly, terrified, hearts pounding like drums. Charles’ lungs burned. His leg throbbed. He had run through an underbrush of thorns at some point and they had latched onto his legs and torn it apart. Strips of bloodied skin now clung to his trousers. But he did not stop until the roar was so far behind him that his mind could catch up to him.

He nearly collapsed. Just dropping to his knees, clutching the frame that was his crossbow, the wood sweaty in his grip.

Jonathan stumbled up beside him. His arms were scraped, his face was swollen and his back was a nasty shade of black and purple from the creature's tackle. He eyed Charles. They hadn’t spoken a word since they fled, only survival on their minds. They stood there knelt over in silence as they panted like dogs, lungs heaving.

“Your brother?” Jonathon asked after a long while, voice barely above a whisper.

Charles didn’t answer.

“Dharan?”

Still no answer. Only the creaking of trees, the brush of wind.

“What was that?..Good grief.” Charles started, his voice still breathless with shock. “It came out of nowhere. Just one after another. Can’t catch a break out here.”

“We have to go back. We need to find Freddie and the others.” Jonathan said, although he didn’t move.

Charles held a bolt in his hands. He looked grave. “We’re not going back.”

“But Freddie was - ”

“We shouldn’t go back.” Charles said quickly. Then slowly, more quietly, “It’s only logical.” unconvincingly. “We need to keep going - we’ll meet up along the way, right.” He tried hard to convince himself.

Jonathon sank down beside a moss-covered log, pressing his forehead to the bark. For a second, the only sound was the rush of their breathing. The forest pressed in around them again. Too quiet. It was always too quiet after the screaming stopped.

The sun was high in the sky earlier but now it was more around 5 o’clock. They moved again. Without a choice, they trudged through the boggy trees. A mist had settled in the cold still winds. They wandered, directionless without a leader. Through twisted tree roots and mud, they wandered off-path. The sun ,if it was still up, did not reach them.

As hours bled into more hours, they saw a shape moving through the dark green ahead. Both immediately lowered to the ground, raising their weapons, Charles with his crossbow, Jonathon with a splintered spear.

But it wasn’t a monster.

It was Kingshuk.

He looked worse than they did. Soaked, eyes bloodshot, his shirt half torn at the bottom, smeared with dry muck and blood. His two arms dangled uselessly by his sides. He froze when he saw them, eyes wide.

“You’re alive” Charles said, blinking in disbelief.

“Barely,” Kingshuk muttered. “Where’s the rest?”

Charles didn’t answer. Jonathan shook his head, then shrugged his shoulders. “Here's to hoping they’re just as lost as you were.”

Kingshuk swallowed. His mouth worked as if he had something to say, then stopped.

“They might catch up,” Charles offered after a while. It sounded hollow. Like he said it for Jonathon’s sake. Perhaps his own.

Kingshuk nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the empty trees behind them.
“They might,” he repeated.

…

“Say..King, you do realise your arms aren’t broken right?” Charles suddenly changed the subject as he observed. “They’re just dislocated.”

Kingshuk wanted to facepalm.

***

Paarth Bansal had not moved in days.
His body had become part of the earth, it seemed, sinking ever so slightly into the moist ground beneath him, his limbs heavy with resignation, hunger’s whisper slowly growing into a scream. The compass, once his unwavering guide, now lay still in his hand, the needle limp and deadened. The mist had never left, and he had begun to wonder if it ever would. It clung to his eyelashes, his lips, his thoughts. Time lost all meaning. He hadn’t seen the sun in what could’ve been a week. Or a month.
It was only when his breath began to shallow and his vision flickered, that a dull panic sparked within him. He blinked, eyes dry and gritty. He tried to lift his arm. It moved. He rolled over. A slow crawl began.
Paarth’s stomach twisted, cramping with hollowness. He reached down and clutched at the grass - soft, wet, and bitter. He chewed it slowly, gagging, but swallowing it down with a kind of animal resolve. Again. Again. The blades were coarse and offered no real sustenance, but it was something. To fill his stomach. To trick his brain into thinking he was not as hungry as he was. He couldn't even throw up.
He staggered up, one hand on a tree for support, the other clutching the useless compass. His feet shuffled through the fog down long slopes, his mind snapshots of hanging vines and winding paths, claw marks on tree trunks and patches of bloodied fur.
His mind drifted. He saw flickers of old memories: someone’s laugh, the warmth of a meal, the sound of rain on windows. His knees buckled once, twice. He began to weep silently as he walked.
The mist did not lift as he walked. He was immersed in a prison of wisps. He staggered past as his stomach panged.
Then…he saw it.
At first, it was just a line in the grey. Then the outline of walls. Steel. Brick. Structure.
A building. A real building.
He hobbled toward it with a mix of hope and disbelief, almost tripping over the metal shuttered door. It was rusted, and shrieked as he forced it up. His strength had waned and the rusted shutter did not move easily. Inside was an old darkness, darker than the mist, but he stepped in anyway.
It was a hallway, cutting perpendicular to him, with four rooms divided evenly between each side. Each room bore the faded sigils - old colours, barely legible, but familiar. He passed them slowly. This place was ancient and bore marks of a past time.
At the end of the corridor was a stairwell. His body screamed with every step, but he climbed.
Upstairs, behind a thin door, was a kitchenette. And there - there - was food.
Old, dusty tins. Crackers in a half-crushed plastic container. Powdered yellow soup. Rusted cans of beans. Ancient, but untouched. He didn’t think. He devoured them. Shaking hands tearing at packets. He drank from a cracked plastic bottle filled with some soured old energy drink and felt tears roll down his cheeks. Hunger gave them a deep flavour.
The mist began to recede from his eyes.
His heart slowed. Then stopped as he looked around the room.
Table tennis tables surrounded him.
A banner still barely hung from the rafters, tattered and yellowed. A sign etched into the wall in old blue letters:

“NO BOOTS PAST THIS POINT”
Paarth turned slowly. He knew this place.
He walked in a trance now. Past broken benches. Past forgotten trophies and dust-caked locker rooms. Past peeling posters of rugby rules and “House Competitions 2016”.
He wandered back downstairs. And then -
As he explored, he saw it.
A fifth changing room. One with no label. One he had never seen before.
Paarth leaned against the door, and it creaked open.
Inside - piles of old uniforms. Mismatched shoes. Discarded PE kits. Forgotten socks. A blazer with a purple house colour. In the corner, partially buried beneath the cloth -
A bicycle.
Paarth stared at it.
He didn’t know if the tires held air, if the chain would catch, or if the pedals would hold - but he pulled it out with shaking hands, still chewing on a cracker.
He climbed onto the seat.
And then, with no ceremony, he began to pedal.

***

They didn't stop for breaks. The carcass was too valuable to leave behind. Shadows moved in the dark and Charles held the grip on his torch carefully, scanning the treeline to scare off what would come.

Near the outskirts of camp they saw something move ahead. A human figure. Gaunt and bent. It didn't move like a person. Its joints bent wrong and its mouth opened but did not close as it shuffled in the dark.

They quickly and quietly backed off into the trees and waited. They held their breath until it wandered away.

By the time they saw the smoke trails of campfire and heard the crackle of voices again, most were shaking from exhaustion and nerves. The carcass had lost weight as they cut it down to essentials. It now resembled some alien creature - not a cow. But it was meat. Protein. Survival.

They were home. Finally.

Richard supervised, dragging a long plastic water pump hose from their supply shack. It was hooked up to a crude water filtration rig they’d rigged from school trip gear and teacher’s equipment. The pump sputtered to life, and streams of water blasted the meat, sluicing away gunk and slime. It didn’t fix the smell, but it helped. A little. George held the long hose as it washed away.

“What do you think?” Charles asked, tired, soaked in rot and pus.

Richard looked down at the cleaned slab of cow shoulder meat, still steaming faintly in the cool air.

“I think,” he said, voice grim, “it’s disgusting mate.”

He paused and turned with an obvious smile on his tired face..

“But I also think it’s dinner.”

***

The fire crackled softly between them, painting Kingshuk’s face in flickering gold and shadow. He sat on a stump, still in his hunting gear - mud-slick boots, rope coiled across one shoulder, hands raw from his spear. His shoulders ached from his encounter with the boar but the relief he felt after Charles relocated them was unparalleled. Above all, he was tired. Across the flames, Ishmam knelt, washing blood from a patient’s blanket, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, wet to the skin. The steam of the heated water mixed with the night air, curling around them like ghosts. An assistant walked past. Erin. Ayaan washed the instruments.

For a while, they didn’t speak. The silence between them wasn’t new, but it was heavier now. Almost sacred.

Kingshuk broke it.

“You shouldn’t be alone with him too much.”

Ishmam glanced over as he rubbed the blanket. “Who?”

“Mr Ager” Kingshuk said, more forcefully than he meant to. “He’s not right. I’ve heard rumours from Verona that there’s more to him than we know. There’s something wrong with his demeanour during class. And what does he do in his free time? Remember Nandan? Remember how he just changed suddenly one day” Kingshuk lowered his voice. “Ish, there seems to be some sort of history that we aren’t being told. We may be sixth formers, but in the context of the school we’re just the latest generation.”
Ishmam stood, letting the wet cloth drip into the bucket.

“I haven’t seen anything, King,” he said coldly. “And even if I had, I’m the only one left here who knows how to keep people alive. If he helps me do that -”

“What do you mean if?” Kinghuk cut in, standing now too. “Since when did you just start blindly trusting people just because it's convenient? Kingshuk’s voice cracked slightly, not out of weakness, but frustration. “I used to look up to you. For your independence. Against your parents and those who hated us. What changed?”

The air shifted. Ishmam narrowed his eyes.

“Maybe I have changed, King. Maybe I don’t have the luxury of running around the woods playing monster hunter anymore. Someone has to stitch up what’s left.”

Kingshuk stepped closer. The anger in him faded, twisted into something quieter. Something raw.

“I’m not playing,” he said. “I see things out there that shouldn’t be. I kill because if I don’t, we die. When we went out, I did not know if I was going to make it back,” Kingshuk’s voice began to catch as he sobbed. “to see you again”

Ishmam flinched. Kingshuk’s voice dropped.

“I’m scared, Ishmam. Every second. But it’s like I’ve never felt alive like this before. And then I see you, dancing with the devil and I - ”
He reached out, fingertips brushing Ishmam’s wrist. “We were best friends. We still are.”

For a heartbeat, Ishmam didn’t move. He looked at Kingshuk’s hand, felt its warmth, the tension in his jaw loosening.

“Don’t,” he whispered, stepping back. “Don’t do this.”

“I miss you Ish,” Kingshuk said quietly. “Not the surgeon. You.”

There was a momentary pause. Ishmams hands cupped Kingshuk’s face. His hand was warm and foamy from the washing.

But then turned away. He picked up the bucket and turned back toward the tents.

But before he left, he paused for a moment.

“Mr Ager..” he murmured, “he did my reference.”

Kingshuk stood there silently, in the growing dark said nothing as the realisation began to settle on him, and his oldest friend disappeared into the half-light of the camp.

***

Coughs filled the nights as the illness spread.

Even before the hunters had left and even now a few days after they returned, it had spread. It started with fatigue. Then the shivering. A dry cough. Then students would develop a burning fever yet their bodies were cold to the touch. They would then suffer a week of these symptoms and sores as their constitution determined. Many students lived through it. But some died. And nothing they could do seemed to help it.

Sam was big and of sturdy constitution. His eyesight helped the gatherers find food sources despite his lacking colour perception and his height had even managed to scare off a lone bear in an amusing incident still talked about around the camp. But now, he was just another silhouette in the cold, hunched and shivering, dragging himself through the brittle grass as he searched for warmth.

Sam wasn’t supposed to be here. But Ishmam, the only student left willing and able to do rounds, had found his fever rising yet his temperature freezing despite herbs and rationed paracetamol. There were no blankets left. The student’s fire had just gone out and some had left to get more firewood. So Sam wandered toward the warmest thing nearby.

Another fire burned. It was one of three fires Richard allowed in the camps after an incident led to the destruction of two shelters. One at the students main area. One for cooking. And this one - reserved for staff.

The teachers’ fire was the only one that burned high and steady, ringed by neatly stacked logs and canvas chairs. The students weren’t allowed past the rope marker, but Sam barely knew where he was. He just collapsed near the warmth, curling up in the dirt, his feverish eyes fixed on the flames.

It wasn’t long before Mrs Jones came out of the tent. She spotted him instantly - a sick, mud-covered student lying at the edge of their base.

“What are you doing here?” she barked “You know you’re not supposed to be here right.”

Ms Friel followed her out. She frowned at Sam.
“He could contaminate the water,” she said. “Get him out of here.”

“But he’s sick,” Pavan tried to explain. He had watched Sam leave the medical tent after his conversation with Ishmam. “He just needs the heat. I think the water will be fine.”
“He’s loitering,” Ms Friel snapped. “And don’t get smart. We said no students in this camp unless called for.”

“He just needs the heat.” Pavan pleaded “Just for the night.”

But there was no discussion. Mr Ager hoisted Sam up by the shoulder and carried him across the dividing line, letting him sink into the cold mud.

Word spread fast.

Not just that Sam had been kicked out, but how quickly, how casually, it had happened. The teachers watched the sickness without remorse. He wasn’t even conscious.

While no serious incidents had occurred, it was growing clear to the students that there was a fundamental difference between the students and the teachers.

***

The camp was quiet. The crackling of the fire was dulled by the dark and stillness. The moon was bright and stretched across the bog, broken only by the occasional gust of wind and the silhouettes of students moving about the camp, getting ready for the night. Jonathan stood watch near the outer perimeter, his breath fogging in the chill. He yawned. The other guard briefly closed their eyes.

Something moved. A shadow flicked near the treeline - slight, hunched.

Jonathan squinted carefully.Holding his grip on his spear, he nudged Archie.

“Richard” Jonathan hissed, “Get Richard. Somethings out there and it's just waiting there, hiding. I’m not sure if we should check on it or not.”

Archie Silverstone, the other guard, scurried away. Richard arrived quickly, his usual calm replaced by a cold focus as he contemplated the problem. He looked into the black of the forest.

Jonathon pointed. “There, near the old log. Moving weird, then just stopped. Doesn’t look like an animal.”

Richard squinted, then called softly over his shoulder. “Hunter squad. Now.”

Within minutes, Kingshuk and Charles also arrived, weapons in hand. Their bruises from the last hunt hadn’t fully faded, and they moved stiffly, but with the quiet sharpness of children forced into adults. They had lost too many.

The shape had stopped moving, half-hidden in the underbrush. It waited.

“Fan out,” Kingshuk whispered. “Don’t engage unless I give the word.”

The three advanced, Charles to the left, Jonathan to the right. They crept forward, supported by each other's presence. Charles’ eyes scanned the area. They could hear its ragged breathing.

As they got closer, the shape became clearer. A white humanoid figu -

Charles’ breath caught. “Wait.. wait. That’s - Freddie.”

His eyebrows relaxed. Freddie survived somehow. Charles and Freddie ran too each other and Charles dropped his weapon as he reached out, lifting the thin, shaking body up in his arms. Freddie’s head lolled against his shoulder. His skin was pale, like wax, and his clothes were torn and soaked in grime. But it was him. It was -

“Freddie... you’re alive,” Charles whispered, holding back a sob. “You made it…”

“Charles, wait up-!” Kingshuk snapped. The other two caught up to Charles.

Charles hoisted his brother up to take him to medical. He was so thin and pale, almost half dead.

Then he felt the bite.

A sharp, firm pressure sank into the flesh of the back of his shoulder. Charles yelled and staggered, dropping his brother.

“What the hell - !” Charles cried, stumbling back, clutching the wound.

Freddie stood, not moving. His eyes rolled loosely in their sockets.

“Charles!” Kingshuk shouted, already moving forward. Jonathon was behind him, spear raised.

“Don’t - wait!” Charles gasped, on his knees. His shock bypassed his usual methodical thinking.

But Freddie lunged. There was no time. Kingshuk reacted on instinct - he thrust the spear forward.

A crack of bone.

The spear went right through Freddie’s chest.

Kingshuk froze, his hands trembling as they gripped the spear. He stared at the boy skewered on his stick - once his friend, one of his companions for campfires and meals, his teammate.

Freddie didn’t bleed.

The thing on the end of the spear didn’t scream or cry. It looked down at the wound, then up at Kingshuk.

And then, in a convulsion of motion, Freddie ripped himself off the spear, falling to all fours.

“Back!” Richard called “Get out of there - now!”

But Freddie was already scampering off, deeper into the woods. Branches snapped as the darkness swallowed him.

Silence fell.

Charles was sobbing, rocking slightly on the forest floor. Jonathan was examining his shoulder. Kingshuk dropped down his spear, staring at the bloodless tip.

None of them said it aloud. But all of them knew it.

Something horrible had happened to Freddie.

***

2 weeks had now passed since they set foot upon Bedford bog .The parachute gently floated above the wide fields of Bedford bog, scattering birds from the treetops. Heads turned as the crate made touchdown at the near end of the bog. Charles held the bars of his cage as he craned to see over the buildings. He had been isolated ever since he got bitten by his brother. They weren't stupid to let him roam free after being bitten by Freddie, although nothing had happened for now.

Those who had spotted the airdrop ran to find Richard. They would need to split the supplies carefully to ensure they would make it through the next week. The parachute drifted across the field as the airdrop reached the ground. Somebody shouted “Fortnite” and something about a golden scar. They then yelled as they were slapped on the back of the head.

Richard sprinted over with the others. He was surrounded by students - builders, fishers, gatherers, hunters. Their eyes gleamed as they wondered what was supplied. The crate was almost as large as a shed. With this many supplies, they could afford to feed everybody for weeks. The students were overjoyed. They excitedly discussed what could be inside. Weeks of food? More infrastructure?

But the teachers were already there.

Mr Cole stood squarely in front of the crate, arms crossed flanked by Ms Friel and Ms Jones as they looked inside. Mr Ager arrived somewhat later, cool and collected but clearly a little excited. “Soon I will be able to replicate my successes” Mr Cole spoke up.

“These supplies” he announced, “will be taken back to the teachers camp and the supplies will be distributed appropriately. Step back.”

“Can we not see what's inside?” Richard asked. Kingshuk’s brows were crossed.

“You’ll get what you’re allocated” Ms Friel cut in sharply “This is not a free for all.”

Their authority quelled the distrust of the students. The students began to return to the camp as the teachers hauled the crate. The shed sized box was huge and could hold many supplies. Richard was hopeful for the future. With these supplies they may be able to tame this wild land.

The students waited. When the supplies were handed out, Aki and Vito carried them to the student facilities. As they unhauled, Richard noted down what they were allocated. Canned food. Tools. A small portable emergency water filter. Nails and screws for constructing sturdier shelters,many construction materials, supporting beams. Richard looked at the students as they quite quickly finished bringing all of the equipment and supplies into the storage room. As he began to ration the food over the days, his forehead creased. He spread the supplies across the floor. The food would last a week between all of the students. The nails. He looked at the pile of supplies. It was alright but he would have liked there to be more.

***

Charles sat slouched in the corner of the wire mesh cage, his hands wrapped around his knees. They had found it poking out of the river and while clean, it was very rusty. The cold from the ground was uncomfortable but his sorrow sapped the warmth from his bones. His shoulder throbbed where his brother - Freddie - had bitten him.

Heavy footsteps approached. A key rattled and the door screeched enough to let one person slip in. Mr Cole entered, bringing an opened can of beans and some water. Charles looked up. He had nothing to do except ruminate and his consciousness had not been kind to him. Mr Ager waited outside, with a clinical detachment. He was not a therapist.

“Charles.” Mr Ager said awkwardly. “I’m glad to see that you are holding up alright.” Mr Cole looked behind him as he set down the food.”I know it must have been frightening.. To see your brother.. In that state”

Charles looked at him. His lips parted but no words came out.

Mr Ager’s voice lowered, almost hypnotic. “Say tell me Charles. When you saw him, could you describe how he was like. How did he move?”

Charles hesitated, his throat dry. “He .. he was wrong, I was blinded by my relief that I didnt notice how he ran. He.. he didnt bleed..when Kingshuk speared him. I can’t get over it.”

Mr Ager looked on in thought. “And when he bit you .. did he seem aware? Angry? Confused?”

Charles frowned, the memory flickering in his mind - his brothers unfocussed eyes, teeth sinking into his shoulder.

“He wasn’t angry.” Charles muttered “He didn’t even look at me. Like he didnt even know what he was doing. Like it wasn’t him.”

Mr Ager smiled, thin and satisfied “You’re very observant. That will help you a lot in life.”

Mr Cole shifted again, glancing uneasily at Mr Ager and outside, at a commotion near the river but said nothing.

Charles shivered “He’s still out there. Will they be back?....”

“Maybe” Mr Ager said lightly. “There may be more like him. Or maybe he’s gone. The woods are very large Charles. Very dangerous.”

Charles lowered his head. Mr Ager lingered a moment longer, staring out towards the forest. Charles suddenly glared questioningly at Mr Ager. Why had he come? It wasn't to comfort him. That's for sure. As they left, Mr Cole shot Charles a pitying glance. His mouth moved, as if he wanted to say something - but no words came. The silence hung in the air.

***

“What the hell is this?”
Kingshuk held the letter in his hands, eyes wide in disbelief. He looked back at the now empty crate. Within, he had found a receipt tuckedinto the wooden beams of the walls.

Supplies request - KEGS
We have delivered your request for supplies. If there is an issue or change with the supplies required, outline it within the next order.

Baked beans cans - x10
Dried soup powder - yellow - 200kg
Morphine - 300ml
Ibuprofen - 5
First aid package - 3
Bandages - 561cm
Portable water purifier - 1
Nails - 100

Kingshuk read down the list, one by one. However, at the end, he found some strange items.

Mattresses - x4
Pepsi - x1
Coca cola - x3
Cigarettes - 500
Fireworks - 10 rockets, 3 fountains
Solar paneled phone charger - x1
Iphone phone charger cable - x1
50L blood - O

Kingshuk looked afronted.Ifone?! These teachers were misappropriating funds. He ran to find Richard. This was not right.

The students stormed the teacher’s camp. Kingshuk followed Richard. Others hung back. Richard didn’t knock as they tore through the flap of the tarp in the teacher’s camp. Inside, they were met by the warmth of the heater. Ms Jones sat on an armchair on the opposite side of the room.

“What is the meaning of this” both said in unison, referring to different things. Ms Jones had risen out of the chair. Kingshuk pointed to the receipt.

“To think that while we’re out here, hunting monsters, beasts, in the woods, you were living in luxury all along. Is this some sort of holiday to you?” Kingshuk spat, going red.

Ms Jones backpedalled, “It was necessary to preserve the long term of the group, if we can’t get supplies, this whole structure collapses”

“You let Freddie die. We’re starving out here while you’re sleeping on a MATTRESS. We’ve lost so many, Freddie, Dharan, Ramesh, Ajay, so many.” Jonathon said, frustratedly.

“We didn’t know - ” Ms Friel had walked in at the commotion.

“You knew enough!” Kingshuk slammed the table “YOU ordered this. You lied.” The room was silent.

Richard finally spoke. “We need answers. All of us.”

***

Sharp panicked shouts broke through the dreary stillness of the camp. Sam was the first to spot it - something thrashing violently in the sluggish brown water of the boggy river. Limbs, arms flailed as it desperately fought to stay at the surface.

“Someone’s in there” Ishmam yelled. He splashed into the shallows of the river, then hurriedly scrambled out as he realised his error.

More students rushed to the bank. Richard slung a rope over his shoulder.

“I see them” he roared, “hold on!”

Together, dozens of students strained. Mud sloughed off the figure in heavy globs. Ishmam staggered back. It towered over them.

The figure reared up with a spasming lurch, limbs twitching wildly. Ishmam staggered back with a cry. The thing’s sodden arm swung out, cracking against his chest and knocking him flat.

“Oh god..” Sam backed up quickly, slipping on the mud.

“Get back.” Richard shouted bellowed. The constant horrors the bog seemed to bring were wearing him down and the teachers were not helping. He glared to the side as he watched Ms Friel and Ms Jones catch up.

“Help us!” Kingshuk shrieked “Do something!”

They didn’t move. Ms Friel put a hand to her mouth. Ms Jones only adjusted her glasses.
The thing was moving fast now, impossibly fast for something so drenched. Students screamed and scattered as it barreled through the camp, limbs twitching and writhing, eyes rolling blindly. It crashed through the half-finished tents, toppling one entirely.

Jonathan and Kingshuk, already armed, were sprinting to cut it off. If Charles was with them he would have stayed behind, crossbow in hand. Or Freddie. Dharan. Kingshuk grimaced. They worked as a team.

Richard tried to intercept it, stabbing into it with a log of firewood wildly. The thing took the blows without slowing, moving to slam into Richard's chest with the weight of a battering ram.

Sam didn't hesitate. He threw himself at the bog thing, grabbing its arms, trying to wrestle it down. They rolled in the muck, Sam gritting his teeth as the thing thrashed under him, sending up plumes of brown bog-water.

"Try blunt force!" Kingshuk shouted, swinging with his spear to drive the thing back.

The creature twisted beneath Sam with unnatural strength. Sam's boots lost their grip, and his knees began sinking, the mud swallowing them both.

"Help him!" Jonathan shouted desperately.

Kingshuk lunged forward, braving the suction of the bog to grab Sam by the back of his shirt. With a yell, he heaved Sam free as the bog thing screeched - a wet, ragged sound like tearing fabric - and scrabbled upright.

The hunters advanced cautiously, weapons raised, and the bog thing, sensing the danger, turned and bolted into the trees beyond the camp. Silence crashed down in its wake, broken only by the desperate gasps of breath from Sam and Richard.

Sam lay in the muck, breathing hard, his face streaked with grime. Ishmam was by his side, helping him sit up.

“I thought it was one of us,” Sam muttered, dazed. “I thought it was one of us.”

Behind them, students gathered, muddy, bleeding, shaken - but their gazes weren’t on the woods. They were facing the hill.

“What the hell, they just watched the whole time!” someone shouted
“Didn’t even lift a finger!”

A chorus of angry voices rose, fierce and ragged.

“They have a house with heaters and beds with mattresses,” someone yelled. “While we’re fighting these horrid creatures, monsters, barehanded.”

Kingshuk didn’t speak. He stood still, shaking, the dull end of his spear soaked in rot.

Richard sat up slowly. His eyes unfocused, his mind was not on the fight. He looked back to the teachers. He shook his head. These attacks so close in proximity didn't make sense. It was unnatural. Bedford was wild, animalistic. But not necessarily hostile. These last two attacks on the base on the other hand were not born of simple hunger or territory.

He watched Mr Ager and Mr Cole at the top of another hill where Charles was, watching the scene unfold.

“I need to visit Charles” Richard finished hoarsely. Their had been many disappearances now. Vito, Samaksh, Archie..The list went on.
And then, quieter:

“Something’s wrong here.”

***

It happened quickly, like kindling catching.

One student walked to the teacher’s camp and kicked over a water barrel. Another tore open a locked supply chest. The sight of pristine clothes, painkillers, vacuum-sealed food and even fireworks sparked rage.

Sam’s voice rose as he spoke, shouted “They threw me away from the fire. I nearly died. As if they didn’t have heaters of their own in their little cosy home, ALL NICE AND TOASTY”

A tent went down, pulled down by the ropes and by fury.

“Where’s Ms Friel?! Tell her to drink mud for a week!”

The riot erupted. The house’s door was ripped off. Chairs were thrown. Students stormed into the 2 storey building, tossing out hidden crates and furniture. The teachers chased after them in a panic. Ms Friel tried to form a barrier but was pushed aside.

“Stop this! We were trying to manage limited resources!” Ms Jones shouted over the din of shouting and plates crashing.

“Lies! They are managing their resources.” Sam retorted and the crowd burst into cheers “We’re all second class citizens here!”

Richard shoved his way into the crowd, voice strained, trying to calm the frenzy down. He needed time to think. He ran into the chaos, arms raised.
“Stop - STOP! You’re destroying all we have! Please! Without the teachers, there are no more supplies!”
The uproar did not cease as he pushed his way into the centre. Richard looked around at his people. They stared at him with hollow, sunken eyes, Richard realised that leading didn't seem to come so naturally anymore - he was pleading.

***

The reeds whispered beneath the moonlight. The wind whistled as restless spirits stirred in their sleep. The camp had gone quiet now, like a raging bonfire smothered by heavy rain. The riot had broken but the fury hadn’t quite left the air, the embers still present beneath the extinguished tindel, sullen and waiting.

The camp was unrecognisable. The teachers base was in a state, the door ripped off its hinges, chairs flung out, windows smashed inwards. Food littered the floor as students had looted the rooms, escaping in the chaos with food supplies and gear. Radios, fishing rods, anything. The fire pit had been kicked apart, embers cooled off and white. Tools used for daily survival now lay abandoned or broken, some repurposed as weapons during the chaos.

Kingshuk and Jonathon walked up the hill, their boots forcing through the reeds and crunching over cracked twigs. The moon shined overhead, a residual glow that let them see deceptively far, in beautiful contrast to the smouldering wreckage of the teacher’s camp behind them. Neither of them spoke for a while. The silence between them wasn't awkward - it was exhausted, loaded, tense.

The path up to the ridge was slick from earlier rain, and the reeds whispered around them like ghosts. Jonathon wiped the sweat from his brow, still clinging to the aches from the fight with the bog thing. The riot had left its mark in bruises and shaken hearts. They needed to talk to Charles. Kingshuk prayed that the bite wasn’t infectious.

“It’s only been two, maybe three hours” Jonathan said. “We checked on him already before you found the - ”

But he didn’t finish. They both stopped as they reached the top of the hill.

The cage wasn’t there.

The spot at the top of the hill, overlooking the southern edge of the woods, was empty. The trampled grass still bore its imprint, rusted streaks marking where the mesh had dug into the ground, but the cage itself - gone.

Jonathon stepped forward instinctively, half-expecting Charles to somehow be crouched just out of view. “Charles?” he called softly.

No reply. Just the wind.

Kingshuk’s eyes swept the treeline. “This doesn’t make sense. A metal cage like that doesn’t just walk away. It took us three people to get it up here and even that took a whi -”

Behind them, soft footfalls made them both spin.

Sam.

He looked pale, worn thin by sickness but recovering, but there was a fire in his eyes now, the same that had fuelled the riot and the fight against the bog thing. “I saw you coming up,” he said. “Figured you’d want to check on him.”

“The cage is gone,” Jonathon said quickly.

“I know,” Sam replied. He glanced over his shoulder, lowering his voice. “I’ve been thinking about it. About everything. The riot… what Kingshuk said, about the teachers. It’s not just anger anymore. I think it’s real. All of it.”

Kingshuk stepped closer. “What changed your mind?”

Sam hesitated. “During the fight. I saw Ms Jones watching from the treeline. She didn’t move. Didn’t help. Just stood there.” He looked at them both. “They’re hiding something. And it’s not just the supplies. It’s worse.”

Jonathon tensed. “You think they took Charles?”

Sam paused for a moment, lost in thought.

“No,” Sam saidsuddenly. “Look.”

He pointed far toward the trees, over Jonathon’s shoulders.

Down in the shadows, just beyond the edge of the forest, something moved. Slowly. Almost rhythmically. The faint drag of something heavy.

Beside it walked two silhouettes - one tall and thin, moving with eerie precision. The other similarly tall and thin but hunched slightly, arms folded behind his back.

Kingshuk squinted into the distance. He took a step back as his brow uncreased. “You think it’s..”

Without a word Jonathon began to move.

“Wait” Sam whispered. “We can’t just charge in. The woods are dangerous.”

“We’d know” Kingshuk said. “We’re following. Quietly.”

The three of them descended the slope, keeping low, the hill and grass behind them falling into darkness. The forest loomed ahead. The cries of birds had long since ceased. The only sounds were their careful steps, the occasional crack of a twig, and the slow, unnatural creaking of the cage as it was drawn into the woods.

The further in they went, the colder it grew. Kingshuk glanced at the others. No one breathed louder than they had to. Discovery wasn’t the only danger.

They stayed within the brush, careful to remain behind trees and logs. The pathway narrowed ahead. Mr Ager and Mr Cole move briskly, a familiarity borne from countless walks through previously. The forest thinned just slightly ahead, forming a small glade shadowed by the surrounding trees.

There, Mr Ager stopped. Mr Cole stood beside him, expression unreadable.

Then the two men took four steps. Counter-clockwise. Deliberate. Measured.

A tree opened.

A sinkhole, as wide as two cars, rumbled as it formed. The men and the cage began to descend into it. The students crawled forward to the edge of the hole. Steam hissed as the vault door ahead unlocked, the light behind it bright and sterile. When it opened, the whiteness spilled across the clearing, blinding the hidden watchers. Mr Ager looked ahead blankly, waiting expectantly. The white light behind the door travelled further, illuminating more of the procession. Mr Cole looked tired. They saw Charles, limp in the cage, pale and asleep.

The door fully opened. The cage fully illuminated. And beneath, holding up the cage on small stilts. Students they hadn’t seen in weeks. People they knew. Archie, Samaksh, Vito. And hidden behind, carrying the far corner of the cage:

Freddie..

Sam backed up. “What in the promised neverland..”

Kingshuk reached for his spear, but Jonathon grabbed his arm. “No. We don’t win here.”

The puppets’ heads turned suddenly. Kingshuk, Sam and Jonathon ducked low and held their breaths. Fear ran cold in the back of their heads. A sense of weightlessness. Mr Ager turned. Dismissive.

“Go on then. Kill it. We don’t want anyone finding out about this place.” He smirked “Even if it has the memory of a headless goat.” he had no concern for being followed. Any guilt or fear of discovery must have disappeared in the wake of his horrifying successes.

The zombies rushed out of the hole. Kingshuk scrambled up. Jonathan didn't even look at him. Their breaths came in ragged bursts as they sprinted back through the undergrowth, brambles tearing at their faces. Kingshuk snuck a glance back, catching a glimpse of what was probably adya but hurriedly jumped a ditch that would have tripped him. The mechanical rhythm of thuds behind them drove a panic into their minds.

"They’re catching up!" Jonathon hissed.

Kingshuk didn’t answer. He couldn't. His lungs burned. Sam wasn’t with them.

The underbrush thickened, bursting into dense ferns and thorny bushes that snagged and slowed them. Thorns tore at Kingshuk’s arms. Jonathon cursed as he caught a vine across the neck, wrenching it free. Every second, the creatures behind grew louder - their movement a cacophony of snapping branches and wet, mechanical groans. One let out a gurgling shriek, not human, not animal.

They crested the ridge. The edge of the forest. The moonlight revealed itself to them overhead. They kept running, reduced to a stumble of a jog by the boggy ground. Jonathan waved reeds out of his face. The treeline behind was jagged and dark. Mosquitos swarmed in clouds. The reeds thick and directly at eye level.

"There!" Jonathon pointed ahead, breathless.

A break in the reeds revealed a narrow ford across the river - a somewhat shallower section of the river, slick with moss, barely visible in the moonlight. The bog river was sluggish, brown water reflecting the stars like a void. Kingshuk splashed through the waters, eyes locked onto the nearby camp. Until he locked eyes with her.

Behind them came the crash of something heavy into the reeds. Jonathon followed, breath held as he stepped across, the crag behind him. But he stopped as he saw her too.

There she waited.

Ms Jones.

Her silhouette framed in the soft moonlight, her posture calm, arms crossed. Behind her, the purple flowers rolled like waves across the rocky hill behind them, that mournful field where students had whispered of disappearances within the reeds. Among the heath, her face was synonymous with the atrocities being committed against them.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ms Jones said quietly.

Kingshuk froze.

His eyes were wide. Mud streaked his face. His shirt was torn, his arms bleeding.

“You knew.. This whole time. Didn’t you.” Kingshuk stepped forward, accusing

She smiled. “Why keep up pretenses, when we -”

It was the wrong move. Something inside Kingshuk snapped. “You knew!” he roared. “You watched! All of you! Complicit with Him.” He spat the last word. But he hesitated when she did not rebut.

“You weren’t just watching were you?” He stopped. The pieces fell together. He snarled and charged at Ms Jones.

Steel flashed. Kingshuk yelled. For every missing member of his team. The hunters. He tackled Ms Jones but his fatigue made it feel like punching a wall. They fell to the floor. Kingshuk screamed. “All of you! ALL OF YOU! Why do you hold no.. no value for life.”

Ms Jones spluttered, desperately gripping to the torn rags of his coat. “I just need to hold you here, until he takes care of you.” She gritted her teeth, huffing for air. “I can’t let them know. Can’t let them ruin our way of life. For his vision… Mr.. Seed..”

Kingshuk tried to angle his spear through Ms Jones' tight grip on him but they stumbled, tumbled to the ground, into the wet puddles of the bog river. The spear caught on the ground and ripped out of Kingshuk’s tight grip, slashing across his face. They rolled across the ground. Kingshuk tugged. His body was heavy but his purpose beat through his mind like a hammer.

Revenge.

He sat atop Ms Jones and pummeled with his fists. Blind in his rage and the blood covering his face. Blows striked against her face but her grip never faltered, legs tucked into a fetal position. Kingshuk ripped her off of him and grabbed his spear off the floor nearby. He turned and deftly deflected Ms Jones who charged at him with something in her hand. He knocked her with the end of his spear and she staggered.

He kicked her down and plunged with his spear. That visceral moment. As the adrenaline wore off. As fear left and his mind unclouded. He could still feel the spear in his hands. The texture of piercing not just flesh but his fellow human being. Kingshuk fell to his knees. Jonathan still struggled to get up next to him. Kingshuk and Jonathon lay in the mud with Ms Jones, staring up into the sky.

The reeds parted. The students from the camp had heard the ruckus. Richard charged in, spear in hand. They saw them all on the floor. Blood covered Kingshuk’s face, bleeding from a gashing wound on his face, splitting his eye.

And someone whispered: “What happened?”

Kingshuk turned, blood slick spear in hand, curled around his arm for support. His voice cracked - not with fear but with conviction. The rain masked his tears from his eye that could no longer see. He looked up. To the top of the cliff, where Charles once was.

“We finally know where all our missing..” He sniffled. “..friends went.”

His voice grew. Strengthened.

“She was part of it. They all were. Not just complicit but accomplices.”

Jonathan finally stood up now. “Archie, Samaksh, Vito. They were never missing per se. We saw them. They were like Freddie.”

They both spoke together now.

“And they followed Mr Ager’s orders.”

The crowd stirred. Some with gasps. Some with tears. Some in silence.

Kingshuk lifted his hands. “This isn’t the end. This is the beginning. We were blind - but not anymore. We the students have to live for ourselves now.”

The wind picked up, carrying the scent of blood and bog-water. Reeds swayed in the wind.

Jonathan picked up the syringe that Ms Jones had in her hand. A deadly neurotoxin.

“If we go now, together, there may still be time left. Time left for Charles and Sam.” Kingshuk shouted to the rallying crowd. “We discovered the truth. We must take as much advantage of this as we can.”

Kingshuk stood tall, the spear lowered now, his eyes burning in the night. His hair had been dirtied brown and he clutched at his bleeding eye as it stemmed. He stood among the reeds at the base of the cliff and the moonlight fell onto him differently.

There were whispers among the crowd. Richard looked uncomfortable. Ishmam couldn't look away from the corpse behind him. But among the crowd a chant began. It began as an offhand remark but began to grow as it resonated with the weary students.

“Heathcliff! Heathcliff!”

It grew louder. Dozens joined in, the name echoing off the craggy cliff and the marsh reeds, rising like thunder from the swamp land. A title of anger, named after the site of their first triumph. Of the truth.

“HEATHCLIFF! HEATHCLIFF!”

The teacher was dead.

The forest had turned.

And the students were no longer ignorant.
There was no coming back from this.

***

The air in the lab was thick with a hum that never stopped. Not an electric hum but the more physical hum of a generator or of high power machinery. Sam pressed his back to the cold white walls, just outside the vault chamber. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to run, to scream, to do something. But all he could do was breathe - slow with a tremble. His chest rising and falling as he lulled himself to be calm. Sweat pooled in his brow and trickled down his face as slowly came to - The effort of silence.

He had followed them here. He hadn’t meant to. When he’d slipped on the roots and the others ran on, he thought that was it - that he’d be taken. But the creatures had peeled away, called by some signal, some command he hadn’t heard, hadn’t understood. They hadn’t dragged him back screaming. They’d chased the others, not noticing him.

He’s crawled back to Charles. Down this path. Past the roots. Beneath the tree. Four steps counter-clockwise.

Now he stood inside the belly of Bedford Bog.

The laboratory was too bright. Clean in a way that hurt to look at. The stone walls were fitted with seamless panels of white alloy, blinking lights running in steady pulses.

Charles.

Sam spotted him first, shackled loosely to a metal bed in the far corner, a faint mechanical ticking coming from beneath his shirt. His eyes were closed, and for a moment Sam thought he was gone. But then - his fingers twitched. A single, strained breath left his lungs.

He looked so small.

Sam moved slowly, ducking behind a thick steel tank, heart pounding in his ears. He needed to get closer, needed to do something-when he stopped dead.

Dharan. He was still alive?

Laid out on a steel table with a wooden coffin beneath a harsh surgical light. His leg - healed. Whole. There were stitches in a near-perfect spiral around the thigh, like someone had peeled him open and wound him closed again. Wires trailed from his temples. His eyes were open, but staring. He blinked - just once.

“Dharan?” Sam whispered.

Dharan didn’t move.

Voices. Footsteps echoed in the hallway.

Sam froze. Panic crushed his chest like stone. No time. No way out.

He slipped into the narrow closet beside the main chamber, sliding the door shut just as footsteps entered.

"Careful with the cortical lines," Mr Ager muttered. "He’s already starting to reject the sedation."

"He’ll hold," said Mr Cole.

Mr Ager approached Dharan, his gloved hands picking up tools from the bench without looking. He spun a small metal tube between his fingers.

“It’s wonderful isn’t it. The new design is much simpler to produce and is also much easier to implant into the host too. My years of improving lumbar disc replacement will soon be meaningless.” He trailed off with a kind of admiration.

"And the others," Mr Ager continued. "When this is over, Mr Seed will see the value of our work. Automation of labor. No hunger. No rebellion. A perfect school. His perfect vision. And it starts here, with them."

Sam stifled a gasp. The rumours were no exaggeration of the truth. In fact, the truth was more unbelievable.

“Can you get the old spine model, Mr Cole> I want to do a comparison with this one.” He pointed at Charles.

There was a pause.

Then Mr Cole turned.

Straight toward the closet.

Sam backed away from the door, hands trembling. The handle turned.

He couldn’t breathe.

The door opened.

Mr Cole stood in the doorway, his eyes unreadable. He looked down at Sam, crouched in terror, fists clenched in front of his face.

They stared at each other through his fingers.

Then.. Mr Cole stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

Sam flinched.

But Mr Cole raised a single finger to his lips.

Sam blinked, frozen in place.

"I saw you through the crack in the door. I’ve known for the past ten minutes,” Cole whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“W-what are you doing -” Sam rasped.

“I’m getting you out,” Mr Cole said softly. “I’ve… let this go on too long.”

“But you helped him -”

“I stood by,” Cole said, bitterly. “ The other teachers are actively helping him. There’s a difference. And I don’t know how much longer I can. Mr Seed didn’t come to power overnight. His allies had been planted throughout the school long ago. The rest have simply been dazzled by his…” He sighed, exasperated.

Sam stared at him, uncertain, panting.

Cole knelt to his level. “I’ll open a maintenance shaft near the back. Leads out through the cliffs. You have to run. Don’t come back. And… tell them. Tell them what you saw. All of the teachers are your enemies. You must end this.”

Sam hesitated, then nodded.

Mr Cole reached into his coat and slipped something into Sam’s hand.

A small silver keyfob.

“You’ll need this. For the vault.”

Then he opened the closet, looked both ways, and stepped out, with the old spine replacement models.

“Wait two minutes,” he said, before vanishing into the lab once more.

***

The campfire crackled, casting long shadows on the camp around them. Ishmam sat with Kingshuk. The night is in its second act and the wind smells faintly of smoke and moss. Ishmam looked up as the ground crunched near him, hands tucked in his sleeves, eyes distant.

“You always said we’d change the world together. That we’d burn it down and build something kinder. I believed you wouldn’t hesitate to build it in reality” said Heathcliff. An eyepatch now covered his scarred face. The dried mud only accentuated the sharp angles of his face.

“And I’d always believed you’d still see kindness as still worth building.” Ishmam retorted quietly. He was solemn, staring at the ground.

“Kindness won’t save us. Some people cannot be swayed by convincing arguments and logic. They don't care how softly you speak, how clean your heart is. They see us as less. Their actions are unforgivable. Forgiving them now is not a virtue, Ish.”

“You can’t kill someone just because they’re ‘too far gone’.It’s not right. Violence is the easy way out of these sort of philosophical questions. It’s not a real solution King”

Heathcliff stepped forward “Ishmam, It’s not just ‘too far gone’ though. You know what Mr Ager has done. Hell, you’ve seen Freddie at least. They hollowed out his spine and replaced it with this metal pole. And you still want to talk about the sanctity of life! He’s a thing now and you’re still trying to talk about human values.”

“Yes. Because if I stop believing in life - if I stop believing people can be more than what they’ve become, If I treat people as worthless or too far gone, then I’ve already lost. Then I’m just like them.”

“This is about not becoming them, Ish. This is about surviving them.”

“And then what? You raise your mob, Kingshuk, take their heads, and crown yourself king of the ashes?”

“No.” Heathcliff finished. “We live.”

beat

“You think I don’t ache for change? That I don’t lie awake choking on rage, praying the ground would open under their feet?”

“You’re asking me to become something I couldn't live with Kingshuk. I can’t do that.”

“I’m not asking you to kill. I’m asking you to stand with me. Please, Ishmam. You’re the only light I’ve had in this hell.” Heathcliff spoke softer now, voice nearly breaking.

Ishmam couldn’t look him in his eyes. Because then he would see his eyepatch. The eye he had lost to tell them the truth. That Ms Jones and the other teachers had been playing with them since the beginning. And that he was telling Kingshuk that he would rather do nothing with this information than rise up against their oppressors.

“I love you, Kingshuk. I never stopped. Even now with you as the Heathcliff. But I can’t follow you into the dark. Not like this.” His confession escaped his lips before he could think to stop it.

Heathcliff looked at him for a long moment. Something crumbled quietly behind his eyes.

“Ishmam, I wanted you by my side, so we could live together anew, unbridled by our chains. I can’t wait here forever for you. I cannot sleep, afraid for the teachers, picking us off one by one. I cannot live, with this rage against these injustices against us, First Mr Seed at Kegs and now the teachers who led us too.”

Kingshuk turned away.
“Stay here and let the world chew you up slowly. But don’t expect me to wait while it does.”

Ishmam stays by the fire. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Behind him, Richard speaks softly to a frightened student. But all Ishmam hears is the whisper of leaves as Heathcliff disappears into the forest. The silence he leaves is louder than any scream.

***

They had marched deep into the night. Heathcliff, tall and shadow-wrapped, stands among his feral band. The wild hunt, they called themselves. He stares out across the treeline, breath caught. Smouldering torches glowed, revealing their large numbers to any that would dare attack. This way they did not need to fear the forest. They weren’t messing around anymore. Their goal wasn’t to build a base camp, to gather small fruits and explore. There was only one focus now. Revenge. Pack tactics could not be underestimated here. Every student hela spears, weapons, survival knives, scalpels, anything.

They stopped. Ahead they heard laughing. They braced, spears forward in pike formation in all directions. They couldn't take the forest lightly either.

“Oi, You started the revolution without us.” Sam bounded out from the dark.

Three figures in total stepped into the torchlight. Sam, scratched but smiling. Charles, limping but upright and Dharan, silent but functional again - a man made anew, a ghost of a smile at his lips.

Gasps ripple through the crowd. They were alive. And not as zombies.

Heathcliff freezes. Then..

He runs towards them into their open arms.

“Sam!” he yelled in delight, his voice hoarse.

The hunters were reunited. Sam’s arms were open and Heathcliff crashes into them, laughter breaking through all tension.

Charles grinned “We still got the path to the glade memorised. Mr Cole helped us escape and there are no other prisoners.”

Heathcliff turns to his wild hunt.

“ Good. Then it ends tonight.”

***

The vault door opened with a hiss. The students stood to either side of the door as they unlocked it with the key fob. Dharan whispered quietly

“We brought gifts.”

He raises a battered bag and unzips it - fireworks from the teachers camp, crude but effective. Moments later, the corridor is filled with bursts of red and silver light, followed by the shriek of alarms and sprinklers. Smoke spills down the hall like ink in water. The Wild Hunt surges forward.

They crept through scorched halls, paint blistered off the walls from the explosions and lights flickering overhead. The silence felt wrong. Too - dense..

“Something’s not right” Sam whispered down. “Where are the teachers. I expected at least a little resistance.”

From a side door - a hand slammed out, then another. The bodies got caught up in one another as they dragged someone inside. The smell hit first - flesh and copper. Then burnt cloth.

Charles stood terrified again, then snarled and stood his ground “Freddie..dear god..” He clutched a firework fountain, lighting it and then slammed the door on the hands before they could leave the room. Wrists and forearms crunched in the doorway but Charles had no remorse. This would be their closure.

More classmates emerged. Puppets. One by one, the wild hunt was ambushed, scoring small hits against dazed opponents. The corridor was ablaze. The students were running in all directions. Smoke filled the air and Heath cliff dropped to the floor. He crawled along the ground until finally crossing into a long room. He stood up.

Columns of coffins greeted him. Lined up in 2 neat rows the end of the room loomed in the distance in a surreal pattern. Most of the coffins were empty but some were occupied with medical equipment next to them.

Heathcliff turned around as he heard more yelling in the distance.

Sam’s voice echoed in the distance. “Everyone form up! We can take them but our objective probably isn't here! Retreat in groups!”

Heathcliff grabbed a coffin to clear the path of smoke and as a shield or ram against his zombie classmates.

From the treeline, a pair of dark figures watch them escape - Mr Cole and Mr Ager, slipping through a back exit, faces unreadable. Mr Ager sighed. “I have no choice. My hands are tied. We will have to begin things a little earlier Mr Cole. Operation Castaway.” The black figures scurried off into the night. “I think it’s time to wake up that old bag.”

The remnants of the Wild Hunt collapse in the underbrush. Heathcliff sinks to his knees, staring back at the facility. His hands shake. Sam sits beside him, silent.

“No more running. No more mercy.”

A distant scream echoes from the facility.

Heathcliff stares into the fire. And then up at the stars.

They aren't beautiful anymore.

***

The sun was a dull shade of orange through the black bark trees. They had walked all morning, afternoon and well into the evening. The marshland stretched out like a bruised land, black, blue and purple in places. The flowers of violet swayed in the winds. Every step squelched into the boggy marsh unevenly. Richard lead the group, cloak wrapped tightly around him, eyes scanning the horizon. It was a unique talent to just turn of your brain and walk but by now, all of them had it. Ishmam walked beside him, limping with a conveniently shaped stick to ease the pain on his sprained ankle. Lakshya, Bridget, Hemanth and a few other students walked tiredly behind them. The orange glow was beautiful, enough to give a new lease on life despite the horrors, pain and stress of the last weeks.

Still though, the wind smelt of moss ans stagnant water. Frogs croaked and mosquitos filled the air.

“If I fall into one more puddle that's actually a 300 metre deep cavern with its own ecosystem and climate I'm going to start counting. The universe needs to pay!”

Bridget looked towards the grumbling Hemanth. “That assumes you’re worth the space you’re occupying.”

Hemanth recoiled, wounded with mock pain, “Bridget, I’m a delicate soul, so frail. This is how trauma is made.” With his antics, he slips and falls into another hole.

Lakshya looked back, “We’ve already done trauma. This is just the afterparty…” He sighed. His pessimism felt redundant in Bedford.

Richard whispered to Ishmam, who was holding the map, folded up in his free hand. They were trying to find the end of the bog. By now they had walked for a long time and needed a place to stop. The map he held was stolen from the teachers camp, supplied by KEGS for the teacher’s use.

“We just need to get past the ridge and through the orchard before we reach the square box on the map.” Ishmam answered Richard without looking.

“Any idea what it is?” Richard asked. “It just says ‘West’ on the map. But the compass is up here” he pointed to the corner. “The square boxes are interesting places right?”

“Are you sure you took geography?” Ishmam turned to him, puzzled “Still though, that's more or less it. I have no idea any more than that. Hopefully it's a good place.”

They walk on, the sounds of insects screeching and buzzing westerflies behind them. Only the soft squelch of boots in mud and the gentle rustle of wind through the reeds and heath kept them company.

***

Twisted trees stood in rows and columns above them. Pale bark peeled in chunks like old paint.

Hemanth is unusually genre savvy “Can we go like around or something? I swear, if a white mist rolls in, I’m going to bolt. Feels like something’s here, waiting.”

“Good. Let it wait. We just need to pass through.” Richard answered firmly. Bridget looked through the trees and reached for an apple, touching it. Hemanth shot her a withering glance and she stopped.

“Oh wait. This is supposed to be the orchard.” Ishmam comically turns the map upside down as if it was held wrong from the beginning. “Which means the box should be there.” He points to the other side of the valley that they were in the midst of.

They climbed the valley hill. Jutting out of the ground were stone piles, cemented together like old roman fortresses. crumbling , moss choked but unmistakably an old historical site. Weathered carvings mark a gate. Ivy claimed the battlements.

“They really built this out here. In good old Bedford bog. I’ve seen it all.” Ishmam stood, astounded.

Lakshya cut in. “It was probably built here before our time. This Bedford guy sure was rich” He looked around “maybe even before it became a marsh?..”

They stepped through the stone archway. Inside the broken walls of the courtyard, the air was drier, calmer. One could look up to see the sky, with shattered columns reaching up.

Richard made it official. They would camp here for the night. They cheered.

***

A fire crackled in a shallow pit. Richard taught each of them how to start fires on their own. With their small numbers, everyone needed to be at least aware of how things worked. Shadows stretched up the stone walls, trying to climb out. The group sits close, wrapped in cloaks and quiet. For the moment, the world is still.

Hemanth spoke dreamily, gazing into the fire. “You think they lived happy here? Whoever built this?”

They all thought. Lakshya answered first. “Maybe. For a while. Until something changed.”

“Thats the thing about peace. It’s always temporary. But that doesnt mean its worthless.” Ishmam spoke softly.

Richard looked up. “Still thinking about him?”

Ishmam nodded. “Heathcliff. We believed the same truth. Just not the same road. We have fundamentally different values I think.”

Ishmam looked into the flames. “I just hope .. when he looks back.. That he’ll still think of me, remember us.”

The silence settled. The fire pops. Somewhere above them, an owl hooted. The wind carries no screams here, just the whisper of leaves and the slow beat of hearts. Wuthering.

***

Mist rolled over the marshes, cliinging to the edges of the crumbled hilltop. As dawn breaks through the pale clouds,m pale light unveils more of the ruins sprawl, swallowed by grass and time. Rings of ancient stone, some stacked like gravestones or pillars in the middle of the courtyard.

Bridget kicks at a moss covered slab, unusually, the first to awaken. She turned back, examining a large stone she slept next to. Strange irregular stone poles rose from the centre of it but ended sharply.

“Dedicated to Lord West and his bountiful crop: Bedford and his other property.” She read. The others were waking up still.

Pause

“A statue? I think we’ve found our John Bedford.” Richard walked up next to her, raising an eyebrow.

Ishmam traced the engraving in the metal plaque on the bench, in thought.

Further along, Lakshya pickerd his way through, over crumbling stones. He stops at what appears to be a sealed depression in the earth. He kicks at it, only slightly wincing in pain from his sutured leg, and to his surprise, it cracks open inwards.

“There’s something here.” he hollered. He scrabbled at the crumbling rocks, widening the crack. Bridget and Hemanth scrambled over, followed later by Ishmam and Richard as the others still slept in the early morning.

Inside the shallow chamber, long sheltered from time, laid a suit of armour - dented, blackened, but still whole. A rusted halberd lies beside it, and a torn cloth tabard, the faded crest of a yellow circle with a white pattern within still visible. A dry bouquet of heath flowers had turned to straw at its feet.

Richard quietly remarked with reverence, “Somebody thought highly of this person.”

“Then I will too” Lakshya stepped forward. The others held their breath.

Carefully. Deliberately. He begins unfastening pieces of the armour, brushing off the moss and ash. The metal is cold but not dead. The breastplate settles onto him, tightened into place with worn straps. The helmet rested in the crook of his arm, the visor etched with scratches like scars.

Richard was impressed. Similarly the others. “You’re doing all the fighting from now on buddy.”

***

Everyone had woken up now and eaten a small breakfast of the rations they still had. Richard walked out towards the river. The stone rings faded behind them as they picked their way through the hummocks and tall grasses around the ruin. Dragonflies flickered over shallow puddles. The sun was now properly up, bathing the mud in a golden shimmer.

Ishmam held out his hands, panning then against the river,imagining in his head.

“This place. It's fertile… If we clear up the brush next to the river with the reeds, it could be something.” he points to a drier patch slightly off from the river. ”That could be a small hut or camp and here. Maybe even a farm. “

Richard tested the soil. “We'd need to dig irrigation channels. It's all marsh water but this area is at least a little better than further down river. It's called paludiculture.” He produced a bag of dried cranberries.

“The ruins - good elevation. That's pretty defensible.“ lakshya added.

Ishmam was close to mock tears. “Urban planning in the post apocalypse. And with my friends too. It's like a dream come true.” His face suddenly fell. ”King..“

Lakshya wandered off, staring at the ruins upon the hill, walking backwards. The water is calm.

The water exploded. A long shark like shape as large as a dining table burst out of the water. Brown leathery skin, stumpy legs, a cross between feet and fins. A large gaping hole of a mouth, a bag flying in the wind. Lakshya was snatched off of the bank. It grabs Lakshya with one bite, swallowing, slithering across the mud-bank, powerful tail muscles and fins trying to inch itself back to the water. Its tongue hung lazily out of its gulping mouth.

Hemanth screamed, pointing to the others. “LAKSHYA!” Hemanth and Ishmam charge at the landshark. Bridget grabs her spear up and follows, sprinting over the muddy ground, feet sinking. Richard turns to call the hunter squad. He catches himself and follows. Some of the other students come down from the hill. Ishmam thrusts the spear into the landshark but it wriggles wildly, his own spear knocking him flat. The landshark breathes wildly, gulping at the air. The other two slam spears into the shark, holding on desperately. Richard rams his spear in too but then lodges it into the ground. The others follow, as the shark writhed, flailing, its wide mouth stretching unnaturally as it attempted to heave back into the river.

They step back from the thrashing creature, trapped in a cage of short spears. Ishmam produces a scalpel, cutting slowly into the resisting sharkskin. Richard shoves him to the side and hacks at the growing wound with a pocket knife, avoiding the spilling blood and ooze.

“Hold it still!” Ishmam now yells. The students continue to hold it down as Richard works at the cut.The wooden spears creak dangerously. The ground turns into a red slurry with blood and thrashing. Suddenly

A gauntleted hand bursts through the flesh.

“HE’S ALIVE!” Hemanth shouts, relieved.

They tear the wound wider, revealing Lakshya, curled like a fetus inside the pulpy stomach. His armor is dented in at the breastplate, deep teeth marks lining the weaker joints - shoulders, thighs, hip. He’s barely conscious, but breathing.

“Good grief. You had me worried there.” Bridget hugs Lakshya as she lifted him out of the landshark.

***

The forest was dark, even in the daylight. Thick boughs from pine trees blotted out the sky. Heathcliff stood at the head of his wild hunt, trudging through the trees and bushes, carving a path through the foliage, carefully examining where Mr Ager and his coterie. He had already found the trace of another meeting up with the two fleeing teachers. Ms Friel must have caught up then. His face was stained with soot and dirt, much like his hair. Behind him, his followers moved with the tension, twitching energy of days of accumulated wear and tear. They could not afford to sleep though. Their eyes gleam. But also with tiredness.

In his hand, he held a map, roughly copied from one found at the teachers camp before they had quickly left. Inked in red, notations, landmarks. Small shacks. Trails. Routes. He looked closer. They were converging on a point, winding through the trees, but with a clear end goal. A larger building within a field.

“It’s this. What could it possibly be. A trap?” He thumbed the paper as he pondered. They move fast. Their boots pounded the moss-covered ground, trampling old roots.

A blur among the trees. Heathcliff’s eyes snapped left. He raised his fist. Hold. Brace yourselves. Suddenly among their ranks, was Nathan. Heatcliff hadn’t seen him since Richard was organising the camp. He raises his spear, hesitating for only a moment. Too late. Othniel’s scream gurgles as blood filled his lungs. Chaos erupts. Heathcliff swings his spear, the words revenge carved into the spearhead, shattering the face worn by someone once called Praveen.
They vanished into the woods, but the fighting only subsided a minute later. Countless casualties. Not of the skinwalkers themselves maybe but also friendly fire. Heathcliff crouched down over a mangled body. His heart wrenched. His coffin bumped against the ground where it was tied to his back.

At nightfall, they took refuge next to a stream, covering a direction of attack. They had made a short trek through a misty field but they just followed the person in front, no matter that they could see not a few meters in front of them.

Aki pumped a drink from the stream. It filtered through the rocks, clear and white. The cold water was relieving to all. Aki felt a tug at his cloak and he fell into the water, pulled in by Vito.

Aki screamed, desperately, seeing Heathcliff in the corner of his eye. “He’s not dead! He’s not -”

Heathcliff didnt hesitate. His spear pierced through Vito’s skull. Bradley gulped. Aki shook the corpse of his lifelong friend, wailing. Shards of skull flowed through the river of red.

The students trudged tiredly. Their numbers had been slowly whittled down, already 30% smaller. Eyes flicked through the trees. Bushes. Even as they rested, eyes would never sit still. Ears wouldn’t zone out. Their mind buzzed at the unseen enemy.

Ayaan sat, with blood on his hands, staring brokenly at the floor.

“It was Erin.., I think that was Erin…”

“It wasn’t. That’s gone. This is all that’s left of what they made. You want to cry for someone? Cry for what they did to him.” Jai had some sage words but he struggled to not let his voice waver.

***

The light had taken on the golden-blue hue of early evening as the settlers searched the area surrounding the ruin hill for food. Lakshya rested, sore in his punctured armour, the only thing that saved him. A wounded knight. Richard and Ishmam packed small gooseberries into a fabric handkerchief. It was time to head up to rest.

Richard shouldered the bag. “Let’s just find Bridget and get moving before dark. We need to establish the watch order for tonight.”

Ishmam nodded. “The orchard’s just past the ridge. She said she was gathering some of those apples.”

They crested a small rise and the orchard came into view. The grid of apple trees.

They find Bridget standing beneath one of the trees, her arms slack at her sides. She pointed to a small stone. In it a message is carved, again dedicated to Lord West. She is laughing.

Hemanth made the simple realisation first. “This is Lord Wests orchard…As in Westfield?..like the west From Westfield. Westfield lake..”

Richard smirked “Lord Westfield of the Westfield Wests, heir to the House of Lake. May the crops be merry!”

They all burst out laughing, the pleasure of a hard days work breaking through the tension of the journey. Ishmam’s shoulders loosen. Hemanth leans on a tree, wheezing with laughter.

Bridget fell to her knees. She stops laughing, holding herself, her face turning red from exertment.

Richard patted her on the back. Bridget is no longer laughing though. “You - don’t see it?”

She stares forward, deeper into the orchard. The others follow her gaze, but see nothing. Just more trees and unripe apples.

She begins to laugh again. But now there are tears running down her cheeks.

“It’s beautif̴u̵l̶…̵ ̸i̶t̷’̸s̷…̸ ̶i̷t̸’̷s̴ ̶i̴n̴ ̵m̶e̴…̶”̵ she laughed softly. Her skin turned red on patches on her limbs. They ballooned - like tumours. Big red boils. Apples. She curls into a fetal position, no longer able to smile, bracing against the pain.

“GET BACK!” Ishmam shouted.

“What’s happening to her!” Lakshya staggered back.

Bridget screamed, an awful sound so human, so pained, then collapses, shaking violently. She feels full of energy. Apples began to erupt from the boils in her skin, forcing themselves out like infected boils. Her arms begin to wither and shrink, blackening into stick thin stems, fingers curling weakly.

One last apple fully erupts from under her chest, ballooning to cover her whole body. Only her head remains inside the apple, all else consumed - A haunting visage barely visible through the fruit’s thin red skin.

“Oh my god.” Hemanth whispered.

Richard turned and ran.

“Good plan.” Ishmam commented and followed.

The apple stood still, watching as they left. The trees whispered in the wind, leaves brushing together, like hushed voices.

***

Paarth’s bicycle broke with a final metallic screech. The chain gives out, jammed beyond repair, and the tire bends into a miserable oval as he crashes through a knot of undergrowth. The fall winds him - hard. His knee scrapes against a root, twisting painfully. He rolls on the ground hissing, limping as he shoves the wrecked bicycle aside.

He crawls through the trees. He can hear. Voices?

Shouting. Torches. The crack of branches. The jangle of metal.

He turns rampantly, searching through the trees. Light.

They’re there. His classmates. A crowd of them moving in ragged lines, torches raised. Mud-streaked, armed, burning with purpose. Paarth’s eyes widened.

“No way.. No way. I finally found them!..”

A rush of faces floods back. Kingshuk, wide-eyed and laughing at Ishmam. Pavan, drawing maps on napkins. George, teaching him how to throw a punch randomly at a lunchtime. Adam, sharing his water bottle in the summer heat on sports day.

He bursts from the trees.

“Guys.. Guys It’s me! I finall -”

He never gets his full sentence out. A spear sailed past his face. He looks back in disbelief.

Shouts rise - not in joy, but alarm.

“Quick! It’s another one!”

“Don't let it get away!”

“That's not one of us! I swear I haven’t seen him since like the first day!”

Paarth’s eyes go wide. He staggers back. Another spear sails through the air. He turns and bolts. Through tangled bushes, low branches whip at his face. Behind him, the hunt breaks off: a squad of students howling after him, sprinting with a thundering rhythm. Yaseen, Adam, Damola.

Paarth scrambles over a slope, tearing his palms as he clambers up a ridge. His leg throbs. He gasps for breath. And then -

A familiar clearing presents itself before him. The soft wet grass. The black shapes in the distance.

“No… no, not here -”

He stumbled forward through the pasture. The compass held tightly in his hand, a habit. The needle spins erratically, warning him, begging him, commanding him, but he is too overwhelmed. He had a horrrible thought. A horrible idea. He hated the plan but no other choice presented itself. His heart ached.

He reaches the black plants, crouching down among them quietly, not making a sound. Hiding.

Yaseen approached, followed by Damola and Adam. They walked slowly now, spears in hand. Laughing. They entered the clearing. They had no chance. Razor-sharp tendrils burst upward, impaling the students with sickening accuracy. Spears drop from their hands. The war chant cuts off in gasps and gurgles.

Damola, caught mid-leap, is snatched midair and pinned like a butterfly.

Yaseen’s body swings, pierced clean through the chest, his mouth frozen in an "O" of surprise.

Paarth trembled.

His friends. His colleagues, his classmates. The friends he dreamed of seeing and rejoining swung lifeless, suspended by a sharp black branch. Adam.

No.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t how it should be.

He stares at them, their faces slack. The smell of blood fills the air. Paarth adjusts his hand over his mouth as he desperately tries not to make a sound.

Flashes again. Damola playing football in the playground behind the maths garden. Yaseen running through the fields after pranking another student.

Tears appear in the corner of his eyes. He tries to steady his breathing but the sorrow is overwhelming. Weeks of no contact had broken him,now reunited, shattered again by his own hands. Despair fills his mind. He drops his compass, useless and unmoving.

He opens his mouth - no sound. Just trembling hands. Then a croak, he screams.

The clearing erupts.

Black spears shoot from the ground, from the sky, from within themselves. They pierce his legs, arms, stomach - violently, silently. Paarth is lifted into the air like a marionette.

His eyes roll back. His scream is cut short. His mouth opens and closes voicelessly.

And below him, the clearing falls silent once again, just trees, wind, and the sound of branches creaking under the weight of the wind.

***

Days have passed. The wild hunt has been whittled down to the size of a single class. All are covered in blood, mud and sweat in places they cannot reach. It is the dawn of the advent. They reached a ridge - beneath it, a wide expanse of field. A building stood lone amongst the flats. Square, concrete, like a bunker. They spread out around the building, surrounding it, keeping within the trees for now.

“He’s in there. M Ager, Mr Cole, Ms Friel. This is where it ends. No more running.”

Jonathan looked firmly, his final destination stood ahead of him. “It is most definitely a trap.”

Heathcliff looked back at him. Back at the wild hunt. “We’re going to burn them down. Burn the whole place alive. It’s our last stand.” he stood back, looking up. ”For hope.”

***

Cries rang out. Heathcliff banged, shoved uselessly against the metal shutter, locked and reinforced by the other side. The Wild hunters threw fire bombs against the walls, driving back and halting the onslaught of zombies. There were so many familiar faces, ones from just days ago.

The building burned. The dry leaves and sunbakes beams of the forgotten sports buildingcaught flame easily, crackling hungrily as smoke billowed in thick plumes in the white night. Torches lit the darkening sky, the wild hunt’s war cries echoing through the trees and shattered windows above them.Beneath the sound of the crackling fire, a worse sound. The last moans and gurgles of the undead - the final efforts of Mr Ager’s puppets throwing themselves against the assaulting hunters.

Deep below, in the catacombs and dark water tunnels that no map would chart, Mr Ager stood over a pristine body. His face was for ounce unclean, streaked with sweat and soot, his coat torn also. He shook with each step as he placed objects of mystical importance around the body. In his hand, a green tuft of a mascot from long before the Struttosaurus. A sunglass wearing onesie with a smile as he placed it into the ritual circle. A yellow minion plush for Mildmay, held reverently in his shaking hand. The tears of a Tindal student, soaked in the trim of a lower school blazer, easily mistaken for a house colour. Ms Friel stepped over, into the circle, slitting her wrist. She had overseen Holland years prior, her responsibility as the teacher overseeing the house. A blue drop of blood splished onto the ground. Mr Ager stood up beginning the ritual. “̷T̵h̵e̴ ̷s̴e̶a̸l̴s̷ ̶t̷h̴a̷t̵ ̴b̵e̸a̸r̸ ̵t̷h̸e̵ ̶w̸e̷i̶g̷h̷t̷ ̶o̶f̵ ̸t̷i̷m̸e̴,̷ ̷o̶n̴l̷y̸ ̷f̸a̷l̵l̸ ̷w̴h̴e̵n̸ ̸i̵t̵s̸ ̸c̴r̶e̵a̸t̵o̷r̶s̷ ̵w̴i̸l̵l̵ ̵i̷t̵ ̶t̵o̵.̴”̸ Time was running out for operation castaway. The founder of the fifth house lay solemnly. Wilson. An ancient power. Sealed long ago by the powers of the other four combined. Through there mystical connection to the objects, Mr Ager felt Joeseph Strutt watching him in cold fear. Nicholas Tindal stood in the corner, disapproving. Philemon Holland wept. Walter Mildmay flew at Mr Ager, but his spirit passed right through him. They were powerless to stop him, they themselves relics of the past, buried on school grounds. “All four of the word come together now.” He addresses each of the objects. Time was passing as the delicate ritual dragged on.

It was the critical moment. Mr Ager beckoned one of the zombies and plunged his arm deep into its stomach. Mr Cole walked in, out of breath, eyes wide at the scene in front of him. Mr Ager rummaged around, blood splashing everywhere until he found it. The small metal cylinder. The zombie dropped, lifeless to the ground. With this final part of the ritual, as Ms Wilson awoke, she would answer to only his commands.

Heathcliff shoved against the door, tired. Spears struck bone. Firebombs burst. Screams both human and fake split the night. The air was full of smoke and even in open air, it was hard to breathe with the heat. Strangely, the shutter began to lift. He staggered backwards, expecting a swarm of zombies but he found only an empty corridor and a hole in the wall leading underground. He walked past the changing rooms, quickly becoming lost in the labyrinthine caverns. Mr Ager suddenly looked up, sensing something off,still continuing his prayer. “̴F̶o̸r̷ ̵w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̷t̶h̷o̶u̶ ̵r̸i̴s̵e̴t̸h̶,̵ ̷b̷o̶w̵ ̵t̷o̵ ̸n̷o̸n̴e̴ ̴b̶u̴t̶ ̵t̴h̵i̷n̴e̵ ̴m̶a̵s̶t̷e̶r̸.̷ ̷F̸o̵r̶ ̶t̸h̶i̵n̸e̷ ̵m̵a̶s̴t̴e̵r̷ ̴i̸s̵ ̶o̸ ̵-̴”̶

Mr Cole struck. He tackled Mr Ager to the ground mid-sentence, tussling, wrestling with the man. The cylinder wernt flying across the room. Mr Ager was taken by surprise, winded.His chanting stopped but the body continued to glow.
Heathcliff burst into the room. The fire had already begun to reach even the deepest catacombs, burning wooden supports and knocking over gas lamps. He watched the two men wrestling at his feet. Mr Cole spared a glance at Heathcliff. “Do it!” He shouted. “Stop this madness, Kingshuk!”Mr Ager screamed with inhuman rage, the betrayal raw and insulting. They knocked over candles, rolling over the hard stone floor. Mr Ager smashed Mr Cole’s head into the ground but Mr Cole held firm. No matter h9ow he strugglked, he could not move. Time was running out! Mr A ger struggled to crane his head. He looked up and deliberately cracked a false tooth in his mouth. Flames erupted from his mouth, scorching the air, smothering Mr Cole.

Heathcliff danced around the mess of arms and legs. The body lay at the altar, glowing. He rushed forward.

He was met by Ms Friel who tackled him to the floor. She pinned him down with superhuman strength, her countenance furious.

“I won’t let you stop the ritual. WE WILL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH!” Ms Friel twisted his arm, painfully around his back. Heathcliff rolled, the world spinning, he reached out with his other arm, looking for something, anything to work with. Something to turn the tables on Ms Friel. He felt so tired. “For his sake. For his school.”

The door slammed open again, a war cry. Charles and Jonathon tackled Ms Friel to the ground. Together, they roughed her off of Heathcliff, picking off her grabbing hands. She tumbled into the crates, writhing, trying to free herself from the debris but it was no use.

Heathcliff stepped forward to the altar. He was so tired, dizzy. The world spun around him and he felt himself slip into unconsciousness for seconds. Smoke and fire clung to him but he knew what to do. He unwrapped the rope, releasing the coffin from his back. He leant on it for support, as a crutch to keep him moving. He reverently lifted Ms Wilson, her incarnation, into the coffin, laying it on the altar. He lowered her gently. She fit perfectly. Her hair fell across her face. The glowing stopped.

The rumbling stopped. Sound seemed to be suppressed. The fire outside seemed to vanish. As if the world itself held its breath. The light died.

Mr Ager sagged, burned black and unmoving, his body still curled around the blackened Mr Cole. The one who didnt give up his love for the students, his empathy. The one who tried to make things right.

Ms Friel lay silent in the rubble, smoke curling from her hair.

Heathcliff fell to his knees. Charles and Jonathon joined him, panting.

The battle was over.

A red blinking light shone faintly next to Mr Ager’s scorched skull.

Heathcliff stared at it. Another shell. A tether.

Somewhere, Mr Ager still lived. In some form he survived, his crime not paid. Mr Seed still reigned. The school still closed to them. The cruelty remained unanswered.

Heathcliff stood, fists clenched. Blood pumped to his head. Eyebrows furrowed.

The battle had ended, but his war was just the start.