Dekker

Something of a departure for me.  'In class' we are looking at endings - I wrote this as a piece of homework thinking of it as the end of a post-apocalyptic novel.. but now it's done I think it probably doesn't need the novel in front.  It's a bit darker than usual. 

The gnawing hunger stirred him.

He had closed his eyes waiting for the whoops and war-cries to recede.  Then fatigue and the warm morning sun filtering through the brambles above him lulled him into a drowse.  He dreamed himself walking down this very track and coming upon his own decomposing body under this blackberry bush – a skeleton with his hair, wearing his clothes.

No.  He would not end here.

He disengaged himself from the bramble vines, licking at the backs of his hands as the thorns grabbed him.  Blood.  Iron on his tongue, further provoking the desire to eat.  Something.  Anything.  He started back along the track away from the village to which he knew the ballistas were heading.  If he could avoid another confrontation with them he would.  Only quick wits and a well-aimed rock had allowed him to escape last time.  He sensed he would not be so lucky again.

Around the bend he came upon the body of Palmer hanging from a low branch.  His eyes were bulging and there was much blood around his mouth.  Something bloody on the ground beneath him too.  Dekker turned the object with his foot.  It was a moment before he recognised a human tongue.  That it was the work of the ballistas there was little doubt.

Dekker cut Palmer down and lay him in the undergrowth at the side of the track.  He considered covering him with the tarp but so far it had proved too useful to sacrifice it thus.  Desperate times.  He had liked Palmer but he had known that his episodes, growing in frequency and intensity, would lead him into a reckless situation.  The ballistas were not noted for their tolerance of difference or outspokenness and Palmer’s rants would have challenged the mildest soul.

Dekker was just wiping his hands on the grass when he heard it.  Faint.  Distant.

A single plucked note.  Then another.  A short pause and then a spaced run of three notes climbing a cautious scale.  To call it a tune would have been to endow it with a greater sense of meaning than it warranted but there was intention behind it, Dekker could tell, and this intention piqued his curiosity.

He set off somewhat stealthily into the woods quietly cursing his tired clumsy, twig-cracking feet.  But he realised his anxiety was lifting a little as another string of notes, descending this time, floated towards him.  He quickened his pace paying less regard to his footsteps.  Then a way in front of him he spotted a small figure with its back toward him sat hunched on a fallen tree.  A child perhaps.  Yes – a boy.  A noise behind him and Dekker glanced back towards the track.  A shabby blackbird was stabbing at the ground, hunting in the dry leaf litter.  Then when he looked for the boy again he was gone.

a source I never expected to visit...

Dekker could not understand how he could disappear so quickly.  So completely.  He walked up to the log where the boy had been sitting.  Just beyond were the remains of a small fire still smouldering.  Next to it lay a stick with the impaled, smoky remnants of what must have been a squirrel.  But of the boy himself, no sign.  Dekker picked up the stick and pulled a tag of flesh from the skewered animal.  He placed it on his tongue, allowing it to rest there a moment as he savoured the acrid flavour before chewing it and swallowing.  Pangs of hunger woke in his belly again, and he pulled shred after shred from the carcass, chewing briefly then swallowing them down.

He was lost to the food.

Suddenly, he looked up, aware of a presence.  The boy stood in front of him, a cloth-wrapped club in his hand and a defiant expression.  Maybe twelve years old, thought Dekker, but old enough to believe he had the strength to face down an adult man, albeit one as frail as Dekker now was.  He looked well-fed.  He was coping.  Resourceful.  Anyone who had learned to disappear so efficiently would have no difficulty evading the crazed, bullish ballistas as they rampaged through the landscape.

Dekker held out the squirrel.  He was enjoying this unfamiliar feeling of respect for another human being.  The boy took it, and sensing no imminent danger from Dekker,  lowered his club.  He reached into a pocket in his shorts and pulled out a plastic carrier bag in which he wrapped the squirrel.  Yes, resourceful.

Dekker looked at the club and could see, protruding from the cloth wrapping, what looked like wooden tuning pegs.  A violin maybe.  The boy saw him looking.  He had  relaxed further from his bravado and was prepared to open to this man for a while.  He picked up the club.  Unwrapped it.  A small guitar shaped body, a fretted neck, four strings – the whole thing only half a yard long.  He lifted the instrument to his chest and started to pluck with his right hand, placing the fingertips of his left carefully on to the fret board.  There was no fluency in the movement, no skill or artistry but, as the boy played, Dekker became engrossed in the strange, inchoate melody.

The boy was engrossed too, lost in the structuring of each note, in the placement of each finger, intent on the production of each new sound as he released the string and sent a small jewel into the cloudless air.