She led them on. Seulgi not saying a word lest this strange band turn on her and cast them out or worse. She held a hand out to Wendy and Yeri and they stayed close. In the bleak night there was nothing for them to see. Bone trees and rotten earth. A skeletal shell of some past existence. Sad. They were silent. The man with the bow tailing them and others countless in the trees. They came and went like spectres in the fog. This woman leading them and where they knew not. Seulgi still had the satchel. She took them down long snowswept slopes and beyond another long dirt track and they came to a field of dead sedge topped with ash and over the horizon a great figure obscured in silhouetted black.

‘Come on,’ the woman said. They waded through the field and the ash was waste deep and Seulgi could no longer feel her feet. Was this to be it? To be their demise. She thought maybe not and it was reassuring and she took solace in that and held it. Meagre sums but what else? If hope is not to be longed for then there is no hope and all is lost. When they came to the other side of the field Seulgi saw that it was an old school. Disused. In disrepair. Rustflecked steel girders and ash heavy over the rooftops. Black ivy like some porous cancer from the old stone. Windows of translucent tarpaulin and they rippled in the wind. Atop the roof a dark figure like some ancient weatherwithered gargoyle eyeing them. The blackhaired woman stopped and unfastened her bag and brought out a long firelighter and held it aloft and lit it. The flame tiny and indistinct in the grim. On the roof another light came back in delayed reflection and she put away the lighter and they went on. They came to a long iron fence. The tops cold and serrated. She took them to a descent in the sedge and there was a hole dug under the fence and she crawled through and motioned for them to follow her and they did. They stood by a playground. Ancient runic relics of an ancient time. She imagined there the children on the swings and the plastic slides. Now never to be put back again. Senselessness.

They went in through a hole fit for double doors. Long hallways straight ahead and then right. Classrooms and science labs. All empty. All ruined. Rubble strewn across the tiled flooring. Weeds on the windowsills and grime on the blackboards and everywhere the smell of faint chalk and of rubber. She took them down a corridor going right. Glass windows punched out and left to be holes. Wendy and Yeri following. The others gone somewhere. Just the four of them. They went down another corridor. Up some stairs that were cracked. The smell of smoke. Dank air. Brittle linoleum to watch their steps. She took them to a big hall. An old assembly room. Woodsplintered columns and stonepainted pillars and a great open space and here and there a handful of blue plastic chairs and in the middle a logpit smouldering quietly. There were three men around it and they were three of the men that had come through fog and snow in the forest. The man from the roof came from across the hall and looked from Seulgi to the others and back. Untraceable face. Unreadable. Sallow skin and sunken eyes and dirtblack teeth. A visage of death not dead but close.

‘Who are they?’ he said. The woman nodded.

‘We found them in the woods.’

‘I can see that. Who are they, Irene?’

‘Relax. They’re okay. They were unarmed. Said they were lost.’

‘So you took them in?’

‘I took them in.’

‘Why?’

‘We can feed them.’

‘We can feed them.’

‘We can.’

‘And what then?’

‘They can help. I’m sure they can help.’ She turned to Seulgi. ‘Do you know how to hunt?’ she said. Seulgi nodded. She turned back to the man but his eyes never left Seulgi nor Wendy nor Yeri. ‘See,’ Irene said. ‘They can hunt. They can cook. By the looks of them they can fend for themselves. Anyone out here knows how to fend for themselves.’

‘You sure about this?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You best be.’

‘I am.’

He looked again from Seulgi to the others. As if judging them. As if weighing up their value and posing it against their countervalue. Their cosmic balance. Their arrival’s worth and its detractions and all it amounted to. He seemed content or perhaps just cautious. He turned to Irene. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’ He went away and the woman called Irene turned to them. From Yeri and Wendy to Seulgi in front.

‘Are you all together?’ she said. ‘Do you know each other?’

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi. ‘We know each other.’

‘Okay then. Come on.’

She led them down to the open pit and they sat around the fire and it offered them some small warmth but it was meagre and the cold was all about. In the walls and in the floors and in their bones. In Yeri’s heart. Such malevolence as to perhaps never be washed of. Tainted slate incapable of being wiped clean. These hands, these hands that guide us. These mortal instruments. See them washed of sin and cleansed. See them brought anew and see her lifted again. Oh, broken soul. Do you mourn for better times? You should.

They sat around and Irene watched them. What was there to say? To do. To be thankful of this benevolent spirit? To offer what in return but help. But gratification. None of them spoke. Others came and went. Those very same shadows from the forest with their meatknives and their bows and their bats. Coming for warmth. Some with food, some without. Some in cloaks and tarp sheets and some in big coats and some in long doubledressed tunics. They learnt none of their names. Nameless foul inhabitants of a damned earth but then what were they if not that very same thing? What were they but a lost sick follower and a lawful miscreant with a killer’s hands and a heart the same. And her. What of her. What was she and what had she become. To know would be to be unknown. To be lost herself. Blood still on her hands and up her arms and down her shirt. Blood on her legs and daubed on her neck and blood everywhere, blood that would not run off. So much blood. All these lives and all these wrongdoings. All these sacred sins of hers. Would that she could be free of them.

The woman called Irene across the fire came and sat by them and opened her bag.

‘Are you hungry?’ Irene said. They nodded. She took out a tin of pears and a tin of whitebeans and then a tin of chicken. She kneeled. On the floor there were a number of saucepans various in size and a big cauldron or meltingpot and she took a saucepan. From her bag she produced a tin opener and pushed the bladespun wheel into the lid of the chicken and twisted and waited for the pop. She emptied the chicken and the broth into one of the saucepans and held it out to Seulgi. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take this.’ Seulgi held it out over the fire. Watched it simmer. Bubble. The smell of cooked meat hot in her face. How she longed for more of it than she could afford to part with. Irene took the tin opener and peeled away the lid of the whitebeans and emptied them into another saucepan. She took a bottle from her bag and emptied in a small amount of water and held it over the flame. It spit and bubbled and when it was all cooked through they shared it between their foursome. Good and whole. Real food for artificial living. When they were finished she took the tin of pears and opened it and doled them out and they ate them. Sweet and syrupy and rich in flavour and they savoured them. They washed it all down with some of Seulgi’s water and when they were all done Irene took the saucepans and moved them away and set the tins in a little line in front of the fire and watched it crackle in volute scarlet embers.

‘Where are you from?’ she said.

‘West,’ said Seulgi.

‘How far?’

‘I don’t know.’ But she knew it was a long way. West and then east or south or wherever. Who knows. Irene turned to her. ‘How long have you been travelling?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Seulgi. What of time now? She thought the month was February. Heavy snows. Ash all about. But she could not be sure. Two years, three. Five or six. Time passed inconsequential. Only Yeri and Wendy to measure their progress by. Nominal children born again in this waste.

‘You should stay off the roads,’ Irene said. ‘Stay to the tracks and the forests if you can. You were lucky you ran into us.’

‘We found others too.’

‘Others?’

‘A convoy.’

Irene was quiet. Perhaps there existed a mutual understanding between them that neither would voice. Silent speech. Seulgi opened the satchel and took the comic books. ‘Do you have anything to trade?’ she said. She expected Yeri to protest but there was nothing. ‘For these. Do you have anything you can trade for?’

Irene laughed. Short and sweet. Another product of a better time. Gift as precious as earthen metals now. ‘We don’t do trades here. We share everything we have and everything we find. We’re a community of sorts. We stick together, look out for each other. That sort of thing. And I think that’s all we can hope for anymore. Any of us.’

‘Okay.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Seulgi.’

‘And what about you two?’ She turned to them. Wendy introduced herself. Meek and near mute. Something in . Filthridden sick nightwalker. She turned to Yeri but Yeri would not speak. Her eyes on the fire or focused somewhere entirely elsewhere. ‘Her name is Yeri,’ said Seulgi. She expected protest or perhaps just jest from Irene but she left Yeri alone and said nothing. She understood. We’re not so different. You and I. Maybe nobody is so different anymore. Maybe we’re all the same. All killers and thieves. All doomed members of this abandoned cataclysm. Hearts and minds. One singular purpose.

‘Seulgi. Wendy. Yeri. I’m Irene,’ she said.