The child shook her head in annoyance but said nothing. She stroked the man’s bandages like he was an injured pet. The weight of their cloth was an anchor to one so weak, and though he moaned from her touch, he struggled to lift his head an inch from the wood. She shifted in closer to his naked bones. His breathing calmed.

‘Where is everyone?’ Ben asked her, leaning in beside Chloe.

The child ignored him. She hummed some low dirge as she caressed the man’s head.

They didn’t have time for this.

‘Fuck you, kid,’ Ben said and turned on his heel.

His legs carried him to the centre of the village, where he rubbed his face in frustration. Ben looked up to the sky like a sailor lost at sea, searching for a star to guide him home. Not long now.

Everywhere he looked the clouds were dull as granite. Everywhere that is, except to the east. In the distance, something bled into the sky, gilding its hem with light, weak and wavering. In the east there was fire.

The hatches should have been locked by now, and the villagers’ food and water divvied out. Conversations would have already ebbed like the sun to whispers of departure. Something wasn’t right. Ben ran back to find Chloe resting against the cottage’s sill, drained, as one who had spent her last drop.

‘There’s something burning on the other side of the village.’

‘What do you mean something burning?’ she asked, cracking her neck from side to side.

‘I don’t know. You can see it in the sky, over towards the church.’

Chloe lowered her head. She stared at her boots sunken into the grey sludge, digging the toes in deeper.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘What’s wrong?’ she echoed. ‘Look at the sky, Ben. It’ll be night soon. We knew when we came here that it was a long shot.’

‘Chloe,’ he said sternly, waiting until her head lifted to look at him. ‘Look around you.’

She glanced at the emptiness on either side and shrugged her shoulders.

‘The villagers should be locking this place down by now,’ Ben explained. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but maybe it’s over.’ Here he reached out to take her hand. ‘We can’t stop now. We’ve come too far. Besides, while there’s still light, there’s still hope. Let’s go see what these bastards are up to.’

The kid watched them from the doorway, hands over her mouth so as to hide her smile.

26

Ben didn’t know what finish line now awaited them. Whether it were a strip of coloured paper or a serrated wire cut just as convincingly, he would charge right through it. The end was the end regardless.