Crispin's Army

When Josie had recovered her composure a little, Crispin suggested setting up camp for the night. Josie rejected the idea out of hand. She wanted to put some distance between herself and the gorge, she said, at least enough distance to put the river beyond their hearing.

So they walked on, down through the thickly wooded hills, breathing in the scent of resin, holding hands but silent, each trying to blot out the trauma.

The going was easier, the surroundings pleasant, the sunlight flickering through the boughs warm on their faces. But both felt nauseous. They attributed it to the shock of all that had happened.

Josie was the first to succumb to vomiting, kneeling at the foot of a tree, but the sight of her was enough to trigger a similar bout from Crispin.

She looked up at him standing beside her. “You too?” she spluttered.

“Me too,” said Crispin.

“I feel very odd,” said Josie. “I don’t know what it is.” Something was lurking at the back of her mind. A dark, evanescent shadow, a hint of something more sinister than simple shock. “Let’s go on a bit,” she added with enforced brightness.

Crispin helped her to her feet, and they continued walking. An hour later they came to the edge of a stream of crystal clear water. They drank deeply from it, washing away the taste of bile.

On its further bank there was a shady dell. Crispin cut a bed of soft springy ferns, then erected a bower of branches to serve both as protection from the elements and as camouflage, should any Security men venture so far in pursuit of them.

While Josie lay trying to sleep, Crispin went off in search of game. By the time he returned with a brace of rabbits, the sun was sinking in the west.

They lit a fire and cooked the rabbits. Night fell and they slept.

At the break of what promised to be another beautiful summer’s day, they awoke. Both felt queasy, and had little appetite for rabbit.

“It’s just not the same,” said Crispin. “It needs to be properly roasted, or boiled with some herbs, and served up with some good fresh vegetables.”

“I’d say we’re just not hungry,” said Josie. “I feel like just lolling around.”

“Me too,” said Crispin. “I suppose crossing the mountains took more out of us than we realised.”

They struggled against a pervasive lethargy to get up and start a new day. They drank from the stream, and splashed its icy water on their faces to rouse themselves.

Josie opened her hip pouch and pulled out a comb to try and untangle some of the knots in her hair. She pulled the comb once through her hair, and then looked at it. Was there more hair than usual snagged between the teeth? Or was she just imagining it? She worked through her hair skein by skein, plucking at it to disentangle it, but at the same time frightened to pull too hard.

Crispin watched her, delighted as always to observe her at her toilet, admiring her grace and poise. When she had finished, he borrowed the comb, and Josie watched like a hawk as he dragged it over his scalp.

He handed the comb back to her, and she pulled out the loose hair. There was a little, to be sure, but nothing unusual. She put the comb back in her pouch.

As they began walking again, the idea nagged at Josie. The sickness and the lassitude were not a result of either simple fatigue or the shock of the previous day’s events, of that she was sure. And after the rigours of the journey, they should surely be feeling hungry, not disinterested in food as they were. She tried to recall what she had heard or read of radiation sickness. It should have showed itself soon after they had been exposed: why hadn’t it? Had the cold of the mountains had some delaying effect? Whatever the case, only time would tell.

Meanwhile, she had another cause for concern. She was at the end of her supply of contraceptives. She cursed that she had not arranged for an implant as Mina had done. Mina had often talked of how good the implant was, but Josie had always shied away from any unnecessary involvement with hospitals and doctors. As with the radiation sickness, she mused, time would tell, but the outcome was a lot easier to predict. But what if she had been irradiated, and her womb and ovaries had been damaged? Might she be barren? Or might she bear a mutant? The possibilities whirled around in her head.

“You’re very quiet,” said Crispin eventually. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she smiled. “It’s just that so much has happened in the last few days, there’s a lot to think about.”

“Yes,” said Crispin. “There is, isn’t there?”

They relapsed into silence. What should she tell Crispin, and when? She resolved to put things off for the time being, and let them take their course. But she could not keep Crispin ignorant of the fact that any child he might sire could well be deformed.

She sighed deeply. Crispin looked at her. “Am I going too fast?” he said.

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay.” She made an effort to walk more briskly.

They made good progress, and by the end of the day they had made it to the fringe of the forest. They elected to make camp for the night while still sheltered under the forest canopy.

While Josie busied herself gathering fuel for a fire and building a fireplace, Crispin moved about in the undergrowth near the edge of the forest, bent double, searching for something among the briars and the long grass.

He startled Josie by giving a triumphant shout, and held aloft something encrusted in dirt.

Josie approached, curious as to what could engender such enthusiasm. She took the object from his hand and examined it. “It’s a bottle,” she concluded.

“That’s right,” Crispin beamed. “An ale flask. I stopped here, in this very spot, on my way to the city, and had a drink.”

He scurried away to hunt, while Josie cut some branches for a bed. She wandered off a short way, and found blackberry bushes heavy with fruit. Crispin had warned her about the dangers of some wild berries, so she was cautious in tasting one, but the taste was sweet and inviting, so she removed the contents of her hip pouch and filled it with the abundant purple fruit.

In three quarters of an hour Crispin was back, with a young deer slung over his shoulder. He set about skinning it, while Josie popped blackberries into his mouth.

“I would imagine they’re rich in vitamins,” she observed, licking the juice from her fingers. “Something we’ve been sadly lacking since we left the city. And I’m not a meat-eater, remember?”

“That’s right,” said Crispin. “Maybe that’s why you haven’t been feeling so good.” He eased the skin off the deer’s flanks. “I tell you what, though. I’m hungry. Let’s get the fire going, eh?”

Josie realised she was feeling hunger pangs too. She wondered if she had been panicking needlessly. Perhaps the exclusively carnivorous diet they had been living on was causing trouble for her herbivorous digestive system. She played the blaster over the fireplace and quickly had a good fire going.

Crispin cut v-shapes in two branches and set them up in the ground either side of the fire to accomodate a spit on which he proceeded to roast joints of venison.

As he began to turn the spit, Josie settled down comfortably beside him. “Crispin,” she said, in a tone of forced nonchalance.

Crispin was on his guard at once. “Yes?” he replied warily.

“We are almost back to your home village, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Crispin. “We are.”

“Well, didn’t you tell me that when you left to go to the city, they came after you and tried to kill you?”

“Yes,” Crispin agreed, “it’s true.”

“Well, forgive me for asking this,” she smiled, “but is it wise for us to be going back there?”

Crispin winced. “Perhaps it isn’t wise. But I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

“You’re planning to kill the village leader?”

“No,” said Crispin. “I don’t intend to kill him. But I do intend to talk about why he knew about Urbis and kept it a secret.”

“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Josie. “Keeping all the rest of you in ignorance of Urbis, blind to the fact that there was an alternative to your pre-technological dark age society, that’s the basis of his power.”

“Exactly,” said Crispin.

“So you propose to overturn the village way of life that has existed for centuries?”

“Yes,” said Crispin. “Just as the Underground is overturning an unjust system in the city.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Josie conceded. “But what are you going to put in its place?”

“I’m going to show people there’s a choice,” said Crispin, stabbing his knife into the roasting meat to emphasise the point.

“The drudgery they know now, or a new Urbis?” said Josie. “That’s a fairly extraordinary choice!”

“I don’t think it has to be anything so extreme,” said Crispin, with a knowing smile, “and I don’t think you do either. I believe that we might be able to pick out some of the good things Urbis has to offer, and there are certainly many, without embracing all of its evils, of which there are also many.”

“How are people to know which is which? They’ll have to take your word, I suppose?” said Josie.

“Not necessarily. I’ve been thinking it over. In time we might organise a return trip to the city, some time when things have quietened down a bit, and take some village folk to see it for themselves. I think it’s overdue - we’ve all been kept in the dark for far too long.”

“An interesting idea,” Josie agreed. “But speaking of being in the dark, is that thing cooked yet? I’d like to eat while I can still see what it is I’m eating!”