Healey was resting his old bones in the sunny patch on the watchtower's southern edge when Boz called the alarm. "Boss man, flares!" He struggled to his feet and padded over to the tower's edge to stare at the two flares blossoming slowly over the rich multi-hued green tapestry of the forest crown. It was a wonder the flares had made it through the dense canopy, a wonder in fact that they had fired at all. It had been years since one had been used, and nobody left alive knew how to check the fuses.
"'Zat green?" Shell, furtive and quiet, what they would have called child-sized back before the Quickening, was the third person on watch this morning. She pointed with one skinny hand at the clouds of smoke as they dispersed in the persistent winds, drifting inland in spirals and whorls of red and some other color that, Healey had to agree, looked like it might be green. The quizzical tone in Shell's light, soft voice reflected Healey's own doubt at the possibility. Their flares were coded, red for help needed, yellow for ravagers incoming, black for a horde, and green for a survivor. Green had not been fired for a decade, not since the old Doctor had stumbled out of the wilderness, starved and half-mad and fully blessed. It was easy to imagine that the green dye had faded in that time, to whatever strange shade hung over the forest now.
"Yella maybe?" Boz grunted, he and Shell communicating in the short, emotionally-drained patois of the first generation, the children of the survivors who old people like Healey referred to as wildlings. Just as he voiced his doubts the large summer cumulus that had been covering the whole area broke apart, and in the sudden bright radiance of the full summer sun the smoke's color became clearer, more vivid. Definitely green.
They both looked to Healey, suddenly uncertain in the face of this alarm from out of history. "You know the drill," he told them, speaking terse and fast. "We've got survivors and scouts in need of help. Shell, get on the bike and get word to the Battle Wall, bring a team." He squinted back to the smoke where it drifted over the forest, spread so thin now it was almost invisible. "Survivors are serious," he muttered to himself, adding, "Boz, go get her in the veil and bring her here. I'll keep watch." He looked to both of them, Shell with just seventeen summers all within the Battle Wall, who had never been to the forest, and Boz just two summers older, one trip outside that nearly went wrong, eager to prove himself again, small and scrappy with bright dark eyes under an unruly mop of chestnut-coloured hair, braided and dreaded and threaded with pieces of shell and sea-smoothed glass. This was no time for him to test his bravery again, but at least he could show his maturity. "You know the rules, you know the drills, let's do it."
#
There had been talk of relaxing on the drills and wariness that had kept their community alive for two decades, now that the ravagers were so quiescent. Sure we should keep the watch on the Wall of Silence, some people had said, but do we really need to keep the guardian teams at the Battle Wall? Those are good young people who could be ploughing or sewing or repairing or fishing, just idling down at the base of the Battle Wall waiting for a threat that no longer came. We always have time now, they'd say, what with the ravagers getting lost in the Field of Songs, we can rustle up a team more leisurely now, they'd say, and what's the rush? Some even suggested dropping the entry protocols, because nobody could cross all that open land now and reach the Wall of Silence without visibly quickening on the way. Now, standing at the south gate with the Wall of Silence towering behind him, watching everyone gathering precise and fast at Shell's alarm, Healey was glad he had argued against those voices, he and the other elders. Let this be a reminder, he hoped, to all those who doubted. Ravager trouble, a survivor, all the reasons they needed to keep their guard up.
It had only been a few minutes but Shell was already back, the messenger bike leaned up against the foot of the tower she had scaled like a monkey to resume watching. The team of guardians was hustling up the hill from the only gate in the Battle Wall and Boz was walking towards him along the Wall of Silence, keeping a respectful distance from the woman who accompanied him. Healey's heart skipped a little as it always did when he saw her, tall and solid and unhurried, striding along the rough path at the base of the Wall of Silence with shoulders back and head high, shrouded in black. Her hut was nearby, between the south gate and the Beast Pens that they, mercifully, had not had to use in the last year, and in the rush of the alarm she was still adjusting her veil, the tiny bells that adorned it tinkling slightly as she fussed at it with black-gloved hands. He caught a glimpse of the strange, dark pools of her eyes as she adjusted it, and then she was all business, just the outline of her face beneath the fine obscuring muslin of the veil.
"Healey," she greeted him, voice firm and calm. "Boz says we have survivors?" She stood back from him at the prescribed distance that they sometimes broke when they were just the two of them in the shadow of the Wall, when no one was looking and they could stand close enough to see more than outlines beneath that accursed veil.
"Lily," he returned the greeting, trying to maintain the same formal distance with her, in voice as well as deed. "Aye, it seems that way. And a ravager warning. Given the seriousness, I'd appreciate your help."
She inclined her head slightly, the tiny bells on her veil whispering their small sounds. "Always, Healey, always."
The team rushed in then, and the clamour of greetings and instructions began. There were four of them, wearing the best leathers the settlement could spare, helmets already on and precious chainmail neckbands in place, three of them carrying spears and one with a crossbow at the ready. That was Triss, known for her sharp aim and miraculous for being born during the Quickening itself, when babies were abandoned and only the ruthless survived. They talked briefly, everyone greeted Lily warily, and then it was time.
#
They took the small door out of the south gate, Boz barring it securely behind them and Shell yelling confirmation to Healey from up above on the tower. From there they hustled through a golden patch of summer wheat into the Field of Songs, where wind chimes on poles sung a ceaseless, atonal song and pennants of ragged plastic and cloth fluttered in the constant sea breeze, a grid of constant sound and movement stretching as far as they could see around the curve of the hill. They jogged along the path, the little sounds of the bells on Lilith's veil lost beneath the ringing of their bigger sisters on the poles all around them, their tiny tinkling sounds only becoming clear again when they had passed the stumps and brush on the outer limits of the forest and penetrated into its dark, still depths. Into ravager territory.
This forest stretched across all of England now, from this place that Healey had once known as Cornwall all the way to the tip of the furthest part of Scotland-that-was, maybe torn apart here or there by a wall or some ancient construction from before the Quickening, but essentially unbroken all the way. Perhaps some huge amalgam of steel and concrete and glass from before the Quickening had resisted the relentless pressure of the forest and still held some ground of its own, and perhaps here and there a community had managed to survive, even carve a little farmland out of the great forest, but Healey wouldn't know, because except for these little incursions he had not left the safety of Tintagel in two decades. As far as he cared this whole island now was one single uninterrupted stretch of forest, peaceful and beautiful and wild and deadly with its once-human denizens.
The ravagers were fewer now, and slower than in the first terrifying years after the Quickening, dispersed and lonely rather than forming huge predatory hordes, and knowing this they could make haste along the path in the direction of the flares. His community gathered wood here and had cut back the path on both sides to plant berry bushes and potatoes or apple trees, tending to them on every journey along the road, and at least at this distance from the Wall of Silence they could move relatively quickly, if warily. He walked in the middle, Lily behind him, flanked to left and right and rear by a spearman and Triss at the front, crossbow ready. The trees whispered gently in the wind, though nothing moved among the bushes and fallen branches that thronged the gaps between the trees.
In that silence the sudden burst of gunfire was clear and unmistakable. Gunfire was so unfamiliar to all of them that it startled them, the young spearman called Job who shuffled along next to Healey yelping in surprise and dropping into a half-crouch. The rest of them followed his example, and they paused, crouched in the middle of the road with spears set, Triss with her crossbow to her shoulder. It was a rapid burst of fire, not a single rifle or shotgun shot. Healey had not thought it was possible to preserve ammunition for decades, had believed such weapons to be lost relics. At Tintagel they had ceremoniously dumped their few remaining bullets a few years ago after a misfire destroyed one of their few remaining rifles, but he supposed if someone had stored their ammunition more cautiously they might still have a few working bullets. But rapid fire like that? Did the survivor have military weapons with them? Or was the survivor the threat?
"Healey," Lily interrupted his train of thought from behind. "Ravagers ahead, and approaching from the right." Her voice was tense and low, little more than a whisper, but they all heard her. Lily's senses were never wrong. They started moving again, almost at a jog now, making distance towards the gunfire. Everyone knew how gangs of ravagers worked, not smart but cruel with a hunter's instincts, fanning out as they approached the sound of their prey so that as it ran from the point of contact it would stumble into the trailing edge of any incoming gangs. If they moved they could hit that trailing edge before the survivor was cut off.
The first ravager emerged from the forest before they had run another hundred yards, heard their shuffling step and their ragged breathing and came to a snarling, huffing halt. It had probably once been a man, naked and emaciated. They could not tell its skin color beneath the layers of dirt, scratches, moss and insects covering its almost skeletal body, and like most of the ravagers from the time of the Quickening its hair had grown into a clagged and matted mess over its neck and shoulders like a shell. One arm was twisted and misshapen from an old injury, and one eye sagged and wept, unblinking and lifeless. It turned to face them as soon as it saw them, stooped shuffling with arms spread wide in the characteristic crouched posture they took when they sensed prey. Usually if a team had Lily with them they would stand still and wait for the thing to pass on, but today there was no time for that, and before it could burst into motion Triss's crossbow bolt took it in the chest, smashing straight through its thin, brittle ribs and exploding outward into the forest with a sickening sound. The thing twitched and fell into the undergrowth, dead before it hit the ground.
More gunfire, closer now, and they could hear the snarling of ravagers in the forest away to their right. Then there was movement on the road ahead, two people running around the bend of the road and into sight amongst the trees. Triss drew a bead on them with her freshly-loaded crossbow, lowered it a little when she recognized the smooth, distinctive movement of the un-quickened. It was Grin and Sophie, two members of their community, Sophie at the rear and Grin waving one arm at them as soon as he saw them. Somehow despite the urgency of their flight they had managed to keep hold of their burden, a dead deer swaying from a pole that they carried on their shoulders. Behind them the third member of their hunting party came into view, shuffling along as fast as he could with an outsider woman leaning against his shoulder, limping along on one leg, heavily burdened with a backpack and a satchel. Behind them another stranger, a giant of a man whose huge body was wrapped about with ammunition cases, water bottles and pouches. Almost as soon as they saw him he turned and fired back into the forest, holding a military-grade automatic rifle as if it were a toy in his huge hands.
Healey waved back to Grin and Sophie and the guardians parted slightly, moving apart on the road to let them through and setting their spears to face the forest. Triss grunted and fired at movement in the woods to their right, called a warning. The big man at the back, running again, fired another couple of shots into the trees where she pointed, shooting off the cuff with the big rifle like it had no recoil, and thankfully nothing emerged to cut him off.
"Three on the road ahead," Lily warned him, her senses working more precisely now they were closer, "Another two in the woods and a lot more further away." She pointed at the big man. "Tell him to stop shooting or we'll be swamped."
Grin and Sophie reached them then, staggering to a halt in a swarm of flies and gasping greetings. Triss was reloading, cranking her crossbow against one foot, and the three spearmen were moving forward to meet the limping stranger and their third party member, who Healey now recognized as the mechanic everyone called Bugs. Not a man they could afford to lose.
"Oi! Big man!" Healey called in his most boss-sounding voice. "Save your ammo! You're just calling more!" He turned to face Bugs as he came staggering up, face flushed and sweating beneath a battered straw hat. The woman he was helping looked at Healey with wide startled brown eyes from a face smeared with mud and grass. He nodded at her, but addressed Bugs. "Who are they?"
"Soldiers," Bugs grunted, "From the mainland."
"What?" Healey snapped, saw from Sophie's nod that it wasn't a lie or a joke. He had no time for more conversation, though, as all five of the ravagers emerged at once from the forest.
Four of them were Originals, skinny and battered, two of them quickened when they were already old, back then, and now decrepit and ruined shells, obviously putting the last of their feeble energies into this pursuit, this desperate chase after fresh human flesh. The remaining one looked like it might have turned just a few years back, one of its feet still booted and a few shreds of jeans still clinging to its hips. It was skinny and drawn like the other four, but its hair still hung partly loose and free, not matted and woven into the network of moss and healed injuries like the Originals. It was faster too, and came hurtling towards them ahead of the other four, threw itself straight onto a spear. Snarling and screaming, it impaled itself on the spear in its desperation to get to the man at the end of it, pushing forward against the pain until it reached the spur and came to a struggling, snarling halt. The spearman shook and twisted his spear, widening the wound until it was too big for the creature to ignore, then with a strong twisting movement of his waist and legs pushed it off the path to die in the forest. The remaining four, weaker and older, staggered forward at a jogging pace, giving Triss time to raise her crossbow and finish one off with a smooth headshot. The spearmen took two more the same way as their colleague had, and Healey stepped in to deal with the other, smashing its skull in with a single swing of the polished wooden club he carried. The forest fell still, quiet again except for the choking sounds of the dying ravagers, the horrible sucking noise of spears being dragged out of struggling bodies, and the gasping sound of Grin and Sophie getting their breath back. Healey looked up at the big man, who stood next to him breathing fast and ragged.
"Welcome to England," he greeted the man. "Welcome to Hell."