In sleep she dreamt of this bizarre world where all that moved seemed to congregate around her immobile axis like some feverpitched horror show. She would roll about and mumble and cry silent tears. Not this. This is not the world I want. Not what I want to return to. But she knew if given the chance she would and it would be better than this. Anything would be better than this.

She woke to screaming. Faint calls out beyond the room. When she rose and looked around it was too dark to see and she put out a hand to feel for Yeri and Wendy. They were still there. She sat and listened. Wolves perhaps. Or a groundfox or other stray. Then it came again. Another scream. Shouting. Heavy sound of footfalls and were they coming closer? She couldn’t tell. There was a loud crash like the sound of something heavy being pushed over. More incoherent shouting. She stood and fumbled around for the satchel and took from it the flashlight. Yeri and Wendy were stirring. They pulled back the blankets and rose to their knees and sat there, ears to the wind like waiting children. Another shout. The sound of more feet running on concrete. Then linoleum.

‘What’s going on?’ Wendy said.

Seulgi put a finger to her lips to quiet them. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like it.’

She stood there deciding what to do. Outside more distant noise. Men shouting. Some of the men they were with. She listened for what felt like an eternity for anything else. More feet tapping. Someone screaming again. The awful scrape of something metal across the floor. A cabinet or an axe maybe or what else but she couldn’t tell, she didn’t know. The flashlight was still in her hand but she wouldn’t dare turn it on.

‘Stay there,’ she said. She crept to the door. Small steps and no sound. Not even from the plastic bags. She bent low with her head just under the plexiglass and waited. More screaming. A crash like cymbals. When it had stopped she rose and peered out through the glass window and looked around. Just darkness. Nothing moving. In the air the faint smell of smoke from some far fire. She held out a hand instinctively to keep Yeri and Wendy back but they were not moving nor would they. She bent again and opened her jacket. Then she took the flashlight and put one cupped palm over the glass bulb casing and turned it on to see how bright it looked in that blind space. Too bright. She knew that immediately. Even through the lining of her clothes it gave a dim glow to the room. She turned it off and put it back in her pocket and listened. There was another long and terrible scream and she flinched. Footfalls again. They were running. Then a great loud crack in the air like the advent of some godly thunderclap come to split the earth. It was so loud she ducked and winced and she heard it repeat back in echo through the empty halls like cannonfire. More shouting. The faintest stink of spent propellant in the air. She turned to the others and shuffled away from the door.

‘Come on,’ she said. She took the satchel and grabbed at their hands and dragged them dazed and trancelike to the storeroom door in the back.

‘What is it?’ Wendy said. Seulgi opened the door and herded them in and stood there panting. It was so dark they could not see each other. Sweat pouring from Seulgi’s brow. Her voice cold and scared. ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t make a sound.’ She went back into the room and grabbed the bedsheets and the food provisions and everything else and brought them to the storeroom and threw them in the far corner near the bathtub. She went out again and bundled up the zippo and the peacoat blanket and brought them too and when she was finished the room was empty and they could hear the footsteps growing louder outside. She pushed them back along the wall and they stood there dumbfounded and terrified.

‘Seulgi,’ said Wendy. ‘Please. What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi said.

‘What are we doing?’

‘Just keep quiet.’

‘Are we okay?’

‘Do as I say and stop talking.’

Wendy did not speak again. They waited in the dark and it was interminable. Waiting for what. Some unwanted arrival or guest and they were scared, so scared. Seulgi stood to the right of the door with her back to the wall. She leaned over and peered with one eye through the plastiglass. Nothing to see. Footsteps louder still. She dropped the satchel at her feet and d around for the buckle and opened it and brought out the bloodstained hatchet. Wendy and Yeri watching her. Blood still dry up her arms and on her shirt and some still on her neck. This murderous apparition. Ghostly dark spirit in waiting. She held the hatchet tight in her right hand and pulled it back and waited. Breath catching in . Heart racing. Footsteps coming closer and then the sound of a door being opened. She waited. Hands trembling. Cold sweat breaking out. Suddenly she felt dizzy but she would not be sick. She waited and waited. Footsteps again. People in the room. Quiet darkness and waiting and waiting. She gripped the hatchet tighter still. Please. Please, don’t let that door open. If there is anything right left for me in this world then let that door stay closed.

It came open all too soon and she went to swing with the hatchet and stopped. It was Irene. Hair damp with sweat. This visage of such beauty as to steal your breath and now beholden in that image none of the same. Pale and jaundiced. Such cold eyes. She looked like some spectral visitation. Behind her there was another girl. Tall and young. Grimeslaked worldly fugitive. She was crying or had been. Seulgi let the hatchet go loose in her grip. Irene stood in the door in dark and in shadow and she was looking from Seulgi to the others with manic quickness unable to focus. Seulgi put down the hatchet. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What the is going on?’

‘Come on,’ Irene said. ‘We have to go.’

‘Go?’

‘Come on. Take what you can carry.’

She took the tall girl by the arm and nudged her and then they were going and they would not wait. Seulgi took the satchel and motioned for the others. They took their bags and one of the bedsheets and folded it tight and they followed. Irene leading them. Seulgi behind. She still had the hatchet in her hand and she hated the feel of it and hated what dreadful visions it conjured for her but she would not drop it and something told her it was needed. Irene led them out into the corridor. They went left. A long hallway and empty classrooms. Silhouettes in the absolute dark. Stench of woodburning and propellant again. Stale breaths for a stale earth. They passed old rooms and upturned ruins and Irene kept the pace and it was fast. Shouting behind them. Screaming. When they came to the far end Irene took them right and they exited by an old rustworn door and came out into the dark and the cold. There was a wind and it was strong. Seulgi looked about. They were on the edge of the sedge field by the eastern side. Beyond that naught but blackened trees.

‘Come on,’ Irene said. She did not stop. They waded through the sedge with the ash in their plasticwrap shoes and pushed on and refused to turn back. Yeri was crying. They came to the fence and Irene ducked low and began searching for something but whatever it was she did not find it. She dropped to the floor and began scooping out the ash and the earth and tossing it aside. ‘Help me,’ she said. Seulgi and the other girl began clawing out great mounds of dirt and they sat there desperate and exhausted like jackals digging away at the ground. When they had a small hole Irene turned to Yeri.

‘You first,’ she said. ‘You’re the smallest.’

Yeri ducked and crawled through on her stomach. Then Wendy and the other girl and then Seulgi. Irene last. They made for the treeline and kept running. No sign of where. Eastward but beyond that no such signs. Dead trees all about. In the early dawning light it began to snow again. They followed no tracks and struggled through fireburnt brush and ashen creeks and continued on. Mute ill-fated pilgrims. Their fate tethered to them. Tenured as they were to that despicable unwanted land. Yeri trailed them and her pace was slow. Seulgi did not say anything to her. Soon she was almost crying. What of their small fortunes and their paltry happiness. What of that sum. Of their cosmic providence was this to be it? Sepulchred to that misfortune so it may guide them. Walk with them. If there is a God then what of this and what of his mercy to grant us this? Then grant me one thing and I shall take no more. The strength to see them through and none other. Of this I beg.

They kept at pace for most of the morning. In the afternoon they stopped by cover of a tree that had fallen and camped. They were silent. Yeri and the other girl had been crying. They did not eat nor did they build a fire. When they were rested Irene rose and moved away from the others and Seulgi followed her out towards a small clearing.

‘What’s going on?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Irene.

‘Why did we run?’

‘They were there.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. Someone. Others. They came for us. We had to leave. We –‘ She trailed off.

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘Never mind.’

‘Are we being followed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We can’t stop.’

‘No.’

They were silent. What more to say. Seulgi turned to the other three. Filthy and dustworn and ragged. In the afternoon it was so cold they did not stop even for food lest they freeze or worse. They spoke little. Seulgi at the front with Irene. She learnt in short conversations that the other girl’s name was Joy and that she was a mute but Irene would say no more and there was a sadness in her eyes and it would not go away. In the waning hours they came out of the forest onto a vast swale. Mud and rainwater all about. Where there had once been tallgrass now just long shoals of blackened ash like some mutant cauterization of the land. They stood at the head and surveyed all before them. Where the terrain seeped away in the north and to the south beyond more trees. They followed the swale eastward. Trudging along their bags like pack mules. Some fabled chronicle of times less travelled and roads undefiled. By nightfall they came to the other side of the swale. There was more dead woodland and they went on. Nothing to see. Everywhere they looked it was dead. They were tired and hungry and confused and alone.

There was nowhere to rest and it was growing colder. In the forest they followed beaten tracks thick with mud and ash plumage and they emerged black and steaming like lost graven images given corporeality. Wendy coughing. Seulgi listening. In her heart a guilt and a terror yet to grow worse but what to do? What could she do but listen and pray. If you can hear me then let it be so that she recovers. This is all I ask.

They passed upon the bones of an old animal. A deer or maybe cow. By the side of the track they camped in the late hours by a rockface and under it a hollow in the earth that offered them some warmth but it was futile. Seulgi sat and looked about. Black everywhere. Darkness in nights going beyond dark. The snow was still falling around them and they could taste it and knew for all it was worth that it was poison. In the air a faint earthen musk and the stench of smoke. Irene came and sat opposite and they gathered toget