_________________________
There was a knack to walking in utter silence. Lift your toes gradually from the earth one millimetre at a time; allow them to find a natural route through the grass as they nuzzle each strand of the forest’s hair aside. Let your legs move how they want. They will automatically move in a circular motion, your ankles drawing ovals in the dust that floats on polluted air. Your arms are to move freely by your sides, but be sure not to allow fabric to catch or rustle. As you lower your raised foot to complete the step, place the outer edge of your boot down first — careful to avoid any twigs that could inconsiderately be lying in your wake — and roll your foot in towards the arch. You massage the earth with your foot. Do not smack it; gently push out the knots that burden it. Repeat process.
It had become instinctive to Otto. He didn’t need to think about his method anymore as his muscles had learnt it. They moved without prompt. Obedient to his survival. The six foot two inches man moved with an unexpected grace through the trees. Grass reached halfway up his calfs. It was a muted green, pale like the colours had been mixed with milk to rid it of its vibrancy. The tree canopy was the same. The dull leaves blocked out sunlight apart from the occasional ray that fell across Otto, lighting him up like a piece of scenery.
Ironically, despite the grace he now moved with, he was no object for admiration and awe. He was scruffy looking with smears of mud distorting his silhouette and patches sewed onto his clothing to hold it together. It looked like the gaffer tape that covered his body was his foundations, but that helped him keep silent. Any zips, straps, or buckles were taped to his body or rucksack to stop them from jingling or tapping. His knuckles were covered by woollen fingerless gloves and the lower half of his face was concealed by layers of cloth that stopped him inhaling the worst of the dust and ash as he skipped through the forest.
Forests always took him back to his childhood. Nights spent under canvas with his father. Afternoons spent climbing trees as high as possible before the trunk got too narrow. Mornings spent fishing in a river, ankle deep in rushing flumes. They grew nostalgia for Otto which was one reason he preferred to be in a forest these days. Another was that you had shelter — there was always somewhere to hide.
Otto slowed his pace to scour the area. His hazel eyes glinted as he turned them, occasionally catching them in the light. As he turned his head, he spotted a human shape sat on the forest floor. Without thought he silently moved to take cover behind the trunk of a tree. Peering around, he studied the person. Slight in build, eyes closed, vulnerable. Were they asleep? Were they dead? They looked too poised to be without breath in their lungs.
He knew he had an opportunity here to steal supplies and he momentarily considered it. A shake of his head. He couldn’t steal from a lone traveller. When you walked alone, the only supplies you had were the ones you carried on your back — without it you were dead. The person looked peaceful, separate from the world that surrounded them. He couldn’t take that from them. Sometimes Otto hated that his morals still ruled his actions.
For safety, Otto reached to the metre of metal piping that hung from his rucksack. He gave it a twist and a tug and the quick release knot gave way. He stepped out from the cover of the tree and kicked his foot against the ground to make his presence known. Slow blinking and a stare. “You could have been mince meat,” he said in German, his thick accent padding out the words. Then in a stumble of English from not using it for too long he added, “Walkers aren’t about to be kind.” Otto glanced over his shoulders and then crouched down to be at the same eye level as the stranger.
The man who stepped into the patch of sunlight struck her, for a moment, as something familiar - a ghost borne out of the past and into the present, a memory knocked loose from wherever it still lived inside of her. She’d once seen men like this on the streetcars in Rzeszów: their faces wind-chapped, the skin of their hands cracked like old leather, their clothing patched and threadbare and hanging off them as loose as a scarecrow’s. Their palms, outstretched, hoping for the weight of a few loose coins. Their eyes, seeking out a face that would not immediately turn away, would not quickly drop its gaze to rifle through a purse or scan the Sunday paper or stare out the window, eyes fixed intently on the grey Socialist towers rolling by in the rain.
In that life, Arko would’ve taken him for a beggar. She would have pitied him for his haunted eyes and his taped-up clothes and his palpable air of hunger. But in this life, she was hungry too. Her eyes were ringed with dark crescents, as if day-old bruises had been thumbprinted there, and the sharpness of her cheekbones hinted at gauntness- but it was her eyes that were the hardest aspect of her face. They shone at him like flint.
“Du hättest Hackfleisch sein können.”
She recognized German only by the contours of its sounds, not by its meaning. The only language offerings at school had been Polish and Russian, of course, and a little English, but the teachers had never really put their back into that one. They’d had scarce material to teach it from, and the result had become a clumsy, mangled pseudo-language with English words and Russian grammar, a useless hybrid she’d all but forgotten by now. Even in the days of her distant youth, screaming along to Western hardcore at all those underground punk shows, she’d only ever learned the words phonetically.
She sized him up with a quick up-and-down sweep of the eyes. The gesture made no effort to conceal its purpose. He was bigger than her, sure, but most people were. Her gaze flickered to the pipe in his hand. Not a gun. Not even a long blade with some reach to it, like her own. It was a close-contact, blunt force weapon- to be of any use, he’d have to get closer to her first. And she could be gone between heartbeats, if she needed to be.
He spoke again. The words sounded more like English and less like German this time, though it was hard to tell the difference with his accent. Maybe he’d noticed the band patches on her jacket - MINOR THREAT stitched in black thread on a square of canvas that’d once been white, THE PISTOLS sewn in on her sword arm’s sleeve, a litter of other patches too faded to read - and thought it would be a common tongue between them. Still, Arko blinked at him without any response. But her gaze was not uncomprehending, nor confused.
There’d been one word that she recognized: walkers.
Ever so slightly, her eyes narrowed. When he crouched down, she wasn’t looking at him anymore, but at some indefinite thing beyond his shoulder - at the long, still shadows that fell between the trees, and the faint tremble of branches in the breeze. Her brow creased minutely.
If there were really walkers headed this way, she would hear them from a mile off. Her silence afforded her that certain advantage. And it wasn’t like walkers were the most subtle predators - they stumbled and lurched through the forest like drunks spilling out of the tavern on New Year’s Eve, crashing through the dry undergrowth, emitting their keening moans to replace the birdsong that had once carried through the air. But what they lacked in finesse, they often made up in numbers- Arko had watched them, from her safe perches high in the trees, as they passed through in packs that could be anywhere from fifty to a hundred strong. Maybe more. After all, there was no shortage of human debris scattered throughout the world for the infection to feed on. The war had created an almost infinite supply of bodies.
She heard nothing yet, but the breeze brought with it a faint, cloying smell- something that could’ve been the decomposing stink of a nearby animal, or a warning carried to them by the easterly wind. You could smell a large group of walkers almost before you could hear them. Arko slid her gaze back to the stranger. He was still sitting low on his haunches, eye-to-eye with her. She walked two fingers down the length of her inner arm, and nodded her chin in the direction from where he’d come. The deepening furrow in her brow was as clear a question as she could articulate.
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
prguitarman
janainaart
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
dededos
theartofmadeline
stormborns
