The Carriers

I stand at the gate to the forgotten world. I look out. In that spot, near the border where the tall grass grows - that’s where they leave the newborns.

And the small hands of the Children reach out and take them in.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he says.

“I can’t live here anymore without knowing,” I say. My voice tremors.

“On your head be it,” he says.

“And also on yours.”

The steel gate lets out a sharp whine as it opens. I step out into the border of stone grit that runs around the camp, separating the wild from the manicured. I walk down towards the bush and the rolling hills all covered in green beyond. The low morning light casts deep shadows on the land.

“There are wolves out there,” he calls from the gate.

I pull my facemask over my mouth and tighten my hair. I feel at my chest - as I always do before leaving a room, as I always do when I wake and as I fall asleep - for the heart-shaped locket broken in two.

I wade into the tall grasses in my overalls and boots. The grass is waist-high, and as my feet cut into the bush it seems to breathe, and there is a susurrus as the wave of my presence vibrates outwards. A thousand insects spring into the air in front of me, and at my feet I sense the patter of small animals scattering away. Their little hearts pounding.

I hear the gate behind me shut with a screech, and I can feel him turn and leave.

...

Our camp is situated on a hill. The first time we arrived, we walked up the slope, the three of us, starving and tired and wet, our shoes raw and our feet hard. He was bleeding from a knife wound. A raider party caught us on the road.

It was autumn and the light was fading on the hill. You could see only faint silhouettes in the low light.

“Who’s there?” shouts the guard at the gate.

“Three travellers,” he said.

“What brings you here, friend?”

“This is my wife and my daughter, we ran out of food, abandoned our home in search of a settlement - we heard there was something to the south.”

“This is the place,” said the man. I could see his white teeth shine as he smiled. “You are welcome - but not the Carrier.”

He nodded at the girl whose hand was in mine. Her hair was tousled and mousy, and her face was smeared with muddy hands.

“She isn’t a Carrier.”

“All of them are.”

...

I shake the memory from my head and walk on, through the ferns and thistles; and borage, cornflower and dandelions. There are pine trees in the distance to the east, the sun sits above them like a beacon.

I see a patch of spent dandelions, their nubbed heads naked of those soft bristles that float on the wind. I pick one and touch a forgotten bristle to my hand.

...

Dandelions were her nemesis. She would not touch them, would not venture near them. I remember when we crossed that meadow in the summer before everything happened, in the halcyon days when we never could have known how lucky we were to walk outside. In the dandelion meadow.

She stopped on the tarmac path in shock, looking out at the field of white with the floating seeds rising up like froth on the sea.

“Will you carry me?” she asked.

“No,” I said with tears in my eyes. “You can’t come with us.”

“But what will I do?”

“I don’t know - but you have to stay here.”

“Come on,” he said, looking down at me with eyes like steel. “We’ll die out here.”

“And so will she,” I hissed.

“She’ll be okay. No one will touch them.”

So I turned my back on her, standing as she was with her fist tightly clenched around the other half of our heart-shaped necklace.

...

I walk towards the trees in the distance with my hand resting on my chest. She’s out here, somewhere.

Then to my left, I hear the lowing of an animal. A cow. And I see its great square shape lumber along the horizon, coming down from a mountain.

...

I remember when we were still together - how we rationed every morsel. The Collapse had levelled everything, there was no food, no production. We couldn’t leave. We couldn’t stay.

But on that last night, he took a packet from the cooler with a small nubbin inside it. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a piece of cheese covered in white mold. He set to work slicing as much of the stuff from it without losing the precious, golden, creamy substance.

He cut three pieces and placed them delicately on some old crackers. The crackers were damp and soft with age, and the cheese tasted like the first and last thing we would ever eat.

...

I can see the smoke curling up from the trees.

And as I walk closer I see the signs of life. The tiny bootprints on the land. The abandoned pieces of sour apples. The broken branches and messy, mucky remains of human life.

And as I near the trees I smell the smoke. And I can hear the faint sound of small voices chanting and hands beating out-of-time on drums and trees and bellies and knees.

I stumble on the ground and fall into the weeds. My hands dig into a thistle and the sting vibrates along my palm.

“Get up,” I murmur under my breath. The hypnotic noise in the distance fills my head.

She is out here somewhere.

I stumble into the forest, careful to hide behind the trees, to move from cover to cover. The sound of the chanting is loud now. There are no words, only a sharp and persistent hum and the drums beating a slow rhythm.

I can see the light of the fire through the branches. There is a circle of bodies standing in a clearing.

“Stop!” a voice calls out.

The din dies.

“It is time!” the small voice calls.

I move forward slowly, drawing closer to the clearing.

In the middle of the circle there is a child wearing a headdress made from branches. The twigs stand up straight, wrapped around his crown.

“Bring her forward.”

The children around the boy wear bits of the forest on their bodies, leaves and mud and wood. From among them steps a girl. She has her back to me, but I can see the messy, mousy hair floating in the low wind.

The boy projects his voice. “You have reached the age of Old.”

The children murmur in agreement.

I can see the girl shiver.

“What will I do?” she asks.

“You will be cast out to join the Olders.”

“They will not take me in - they call us Carriers.”

“If you stay here, you will become sick. You are old now - you cannot carry it as we do, if you carry it you will die.”

I watch on from behind the tree as the children surround the girl and grab her arms. It’s her, my child. The one I abandoned. Before I can stop myself I have run into the clearing.

“No!”

They stop and turn, and a childish shock rests on the group. But the boy with the headdress looks calm, as if he has been expecting this.

“Why are you here, Older?”

“Jenna?” I call out. I run around the group to face the girl with mousy hair.

A foreign face looks out at me from underneath her messy crown.

“Jenna?” I say again, pleading.

The girl looks up at me with dark eyes. “I am not her, Older.”

The children are silent. They crowd around me, an abandoned litter, and I stand among them like a giant.

“Have you seen her?” I ask.

The children say nothing.

“Please, I need to know.”

“You don’t need anything,” snaps the boy with the headdress. “We are the ones who need. We are the ones who suffer.”

I look down at the boy. His face is sinister.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

The group of children around me shuffle pathetically, like a scalded group of school kids.

“It has always been the way,” says the boy. “When we are old, we can become sick. We are the ‘Carriers’, as you call us, we make the Olders sick.”

The children stamp their feet on the muddy ground to signal agreement.

The boy points at the girl with mousy hair. “We do not want her to die in our camp. There is no death here.”

I touch the heart-shaped necklace on my chest.

“I have seen that necklace before,” says the boy. “But she is gone.”

My heart sinks. The boy looks more intensely at me than before.

“Things have changed and they cannot go back.”

The children step towards me and the girl who is not my daughter, shooing us with a soundless motion.

They follow us to the edge of the forest, the girl and I, and we walk back out into the forgotten world.