How does that quote go again? Humans make plans and God laughs? Something like that. 

Well, that's exactly how I feel with all of the nonsense we have to deal with nowadays. It’s what I get for trying to establish control in a world with no structure. But even then, our current predicaments are much more of a shitshow than they should realistically be. 

I remember when I used to look forward to the future. I remember when I used to have great hope for what’s to come, when I used to be sure that everything would turn good and golden. And can you blame me? From a young age, I was told so. Isabelle Bonaventura - Child prodigy. A young girl who was made for greatness. A young girl who could take on the world. But look at what’s happened to the world now. I’d be hard pressed to find any greatness in a society that can’t stay together without people killing each other. But at least I’m still alive. My parents though, my poor parents. All of their hard work has completely gone to waste. All those years they spent taking me to recitals, to science and maths competitions, to internships. All the effort put into making sure I honed my gifts and what did all that add up to? Them two dead in the ground and me forced to do insane things to survive at the end of the world. What a cruel and ironic twist of fate. 

I lay in the backseat of the car, unable to sleep as I lay to my side. Grace lies down next to me, her head resting on my shoulder as she snores incessantly. Anyone else and I would’ve pushed them off me, but for her I’ll allow it, for a moment at least. Khalil and Lysandra sleep in the front and passenger seat respectively. They seem to have grown quite fond of eachother. Well isn’t that cute? No.  That girl is going to get us killed. I can already see it. But as usual I’m treated as unreasonable and callous for trying to protect us. Fair enough, I probably shouldn’t have said it to her face, but my point still stands. The lives of us, an established group of people who have survived with each other for months, outweighs the life of one rich girl. We were almost shot down by Declan and burnt down by rioters trying to save her. But at least we’re okay now, that’s all that matters, really. 

I open the car door and wander outside. I see Cameron sleep by the car, wrapped up in leaves like he said he would. You have to admire him in a way. Despite his faults he does try his hardest to be of use. He’s a good kid, or a good young man should I say.  I continue to walk around, listening to the faint sounds of horror that course through The Land at night. What a terrible world we live in. 

I go towards the trunk of the car and open it. Someone has to double check on our supplies. All of our rations are intact, good, I don’t plan on starving anytime soon. Water will be an issue though, the purifier I made from scratch got damaged during the escape from our first house. It’s not like I can manufacture another one. Well maybe I could, but charcoal is hard to come by, but I’m resourceful, I’m sure I’ll find another way. Another item we’ll have to consider is petrol. We’ve travelled a lot today, it's not long until we run out of fuel. But where can we find more? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it I guess. That’s the main problem with life during dystopia, it’s way too hectic. Due to the unpredictability of each and every day I can’t properly plan ahead like I would under normal everyday circumstances. We just have to go with the motions. Improvise. But look where improvisation has gotten us - homeless in the forest. Not ideal. 

I hear the door to the car open. Someone else must be awake. Out of the car comes Grace, she stretches and yawns in the most intentionally irritating manner possible, then waltzes her way over towards me. 

“What’s the matter, Izzy-Bon?” she asks. “Can’t sleep?”

Grace knows how much I hate being referred to as ‘Izzy-Bon’, she knows good and well I dislike how endearingly childish it sounds. But she continues to say it despite the various times I have corrected her, so now I try to ignore it. 

“Yeah, can’t sleep.” I respond. 

“Shame.” Grace says as she sits on the bonnet of the car. She leans over it and plays with the hair of a sleeping Cameron. 

How does she remain so nonchalant all of the time? Surely it’s an act. Her only other family just died for Christ’s sake. I’m contemplating whether I should console her, seeing as I failed to before. No. I can’t bring myself to it. Talking about feelings has never been one of my strong suits. If Grace really wants to talk about it she'll mention it herself, and then I’ll console her. Though a part of me hopes she never does. 

“What are you thinking about?” asks Grace. 

“What do you mean?”

“I see you pacing your way around the house like that at night whenever you’ve got something knocking about in that big brain of yours.” she explains. “Come on, what are you thinking about? Tell me, tell me, Tell me!”

Now she’s trying to see if I’m okay. Oh how the tables have turned. 

“I’m trying to think of plans to get more rations and more fuel.” I tell her. “We’re running dangerously low on both which could result in a shitshow considering our current situation”

Grace lets on a toothy-grin chuckle as she turns herself over on the car bonnet to face me. 

“You’re always so stressed, Izzy-Bon.”

“Someone has to think ahead. You know, plan for the future instead of just running in guns blazing like we usually do.”

“Was leaving the princess over there to die part of your vision Mrs. Future planner?'' mocks Grace as she points to a snoozing Lysandra in the passenger's seat. 

“Hilarious.” I retort sardonically. “So what do you want me to do? Adopt your naive optimistic impulsive manner of thinking?” 

“Yeah.” she responds bluntly. Touche. 

Grace lies down on her back and looks up at the stars. Maybe she’s right. Maybe a naively optimistic way of thinking is key when all your  hope  that’s grounded in realism has been squandered. 

“Grace.” I call.

“Yes?”

“Do you think we’ll live to see a future where the world is normal again?”

Grace sits up to face me once more. A warm smile comes across her face. 

“Of course.” she puts simply.

I hope she’s right. No, not hope. I know she’s right. I walk up to Cameron and pick his half-asleep body off of the floor. I place him in the car, in the spot where I was previously sleeping. Cameron murmurs some incomprehensible half-asleep nonsense. I know he wanted to take one for the team and sleep outside out of guilt, but he doesn’t have to do that. Plus I can’t sleep anyway, it’d be illogical for me to take up that space in the car.

“Aw, would you look at that.” snides Grace. “Isabelle does have a heart.” 

I swing a swift middle finger in Grace’s direction. She finds this to be very amusing, apparently. She shakes her head and goes back into the car. I take up Grace’s previous spot on the bonnet and look up at the beautiful night sky. I need to get rid of these doubts in my mind, they’re doing me no good. I will live to see the world in a better place. I will not waste the life my parents had built for me. This mist will not be the end of us all. I’m going to personally make sure of it. 

I wake up hours later to bright and beaming sunlight. I pick myself up from the side of the car to find that everyone else is awake and staring at the sky. 

"What's going on?" I ask. 

I'm met with no verbal response, just Khalil ominously pointing towards the sky. 

A red coloured firework goes off in the sky. My eyes narrow as I look towards it. I'm filled with mixed feelings of dread and  excitement. Not because of the firework, but because of what comes with it. This could either be good news or bad news. 

“Only one person in the land not only has access to fireworks but an actual reason to use them.” says Khalil. 

“Dubois?” I query. Khalil confirms my suspicions with a slow nod. 

Later, Khalil parks the car a short mile away from where people from all areas of The Land are congregating - approximately where the fireworks were set off. They all seem to be moving towards a black truck which is being protected by a dozen big burly bodyguards holding grenade launchers and high-powered rifles. This is serious. We leave the car and watch on, a good distance away from the crowd of gathering on-lookers. 

“Pardon me for asking,” says Lysandra. “But who is Dubois?”

This girl really didn’t leave her manor in the past year or so, did she? You’d struggle to find someone in the Land who hasn’t at least heard his name being uttered yet. 

“An eerily calm and well dressed tyrant whose gang controls most of the county, if he shows up to this part of the land with such a big crowd, then something is definitely wrong.” I explain. 

“Oh wow” says Lysandra, taking it all in.,

Oh wow indeed. Dubois was a rich man, who unlike most other rich men wasn’t either old enough to be killed off nor was he targeted and destroyed for his livelihood à la the Devons, putting him in a very good position. I’ve heard rumours about him being an explorer or an adventurer, a tomb raider if you will. All anyone really knows about Dubois’ past, is that he was one of the few people capable of keeping most of their resources post-mist, making him very very very powerful.

“And he’s fucking gorgeous.” adds Grace. The rest of us look towards her with bewildered scepticism in relation to her sanity. But as ridiculous of a comment that was to make, she’s not entirely wrong. 

We look back towards the crowd gathering around the van. Out comes Dubois. Here he is.  He exits the vehicle and proceeds to climb on top of it. He looks over the crowd, captivating everyone without saying a word. His bodyguards form a protective circle around the vehicle and grip their explosive weapons, ready to let out on the crowd if Dubois just gave them the word. Dubois adjusts his perfectly trimmed brown hair and then clears his throat to speak.

“Good morning everyone...or at least it seems to be, in comparison to the horrors of last night… the world we live in is dark, disease-ridden and it will only worsen following the second mist”, monologues Dubois. The public was already engrossed in his calm and measured manner of speech. 

“But...I have a solution.”

The crowds bustle with great excitement, as do I. Solution? Does he really have a solution? If there’s anyone who could come up with a solution it would be Olivier Dubois. 

“I have decided to use my privilege of being one of the few capable of travelling internationally to good use and on one of my many ventures I have managed to obtain…” continues Dubois as the crowd looks on in intrigue. He reaches into the pockets of his jeans and shows the crowd a container, four inches in both height and width.  

 “...a cure.” he finishes. 

The crowds become uncontrollably excitable, especially the five of us. This better not be some kind of sick and twisted joke. That better be a real legitimate cure and there better be more where it came from. It’ll be so good if there is more where it came from. It’s exactly what we need! Society can finally heal! 

“It’s only a small sample, but it’s very potent.” continues Dubois. “Trust me.”

“Bullshit!” interrupts a disgruntled man in the crowd. 

Everyone in the area looks towards the man, shocked at what was practically a display of  insubordination. Dubois does not look pleased. 

“Excuse me?” he asks.

“Oh, so you just happened to find a cure?” retorts the man. “Bull-fucking-shit!”

Dubois chuckles to himself for a short while. 

“I knew there would be some scepticism.” he comments. “Which is why I’ve brought him.”

Dubois points towards the back of the van. His bodyguards open it up and help a short frail old man out. What. the. fuck. Who is that? How is he still alive? I’m aware that some people do live well into their mid-years such as Grace’s uncle, but this should be impossible. That man doesn’t look a day under ninety. I look around to see that everyone else is as astonished as I am. This is something new. Dubois adjusts his posture and paces around the top of the van, preparing for another long speech. 

“What do we know about the mist and its effects on one's body and mind? We know it increases violent tendencies. But we also know it is deadly to those with weaker immune systems. To those with no inner youth to revitalise. It’s to  the point where finding an individual over the age of fifty nowadays is rarer than finding pure gold...and yet my grandfather, Gabriel Dubois, stands in front of you, alive and well? Gabriel if you do not mind, can you show the people how you were able to survive against all the odds?”

The old man,  Gabriel, slowly reaches into his pocket and retrieves a small valve with the same blue liquid Dubois possesses. A smug smirk comes across Dubois’ face. No way. It’s real. The cure is real. 

The hoard of people gathered in this area show to be completely incapable of containing their excitement. They begin to swarm Dubois’ vehicle. Their disobedience sends a tranquil fury throughout Dubois. Dubois’ bodyguards silence the crowd into submission, threatening to blow us to pieces with their high grade weapons. Dubois calms down, retaining his eerily smug demeanour. 

“Due to the events of last night I have broken this news earlier to you all than I initially anticipated. Do not, take this for granted. Understand that the cure is incredibly scarce, only a few people can have it and there is a way I shall decide who that will be.” lectures Dubois.

Khalil slaps an unfocused Cameron on the head, gesturing at him and the rest of the group to pay attention. He doesn’t have to tell me. You’d have to sever my ears off to stop me from listening to this. 

“Money. I understand it is a scarce resource nowadays, but . I set the valuation at approximately five-thousand pounds. Simple as that. The first person or group to collect five-thousand pounds and grant it to me will obtain full rights to the cure.” 

The general area shakes with enough excitement and anticipation that you can physically feel it in the air. five-thousand pounds? Is he fucking serious? Five-thousand nowadays might as well be a hundred and five-thousand. And why does he even need the money? This seems like such a bizarre exchange. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re the group who gets the cure. Then my vision can come true. A better rebuilt world we can all thrive in can come to be.

 “Good luck everyone.” finishes Dubois, a malevolent twinkle in his delicate eyes.Dubois is escorted off of the top of his van and into the vehicle by his bodyguards. 

Within a moment's notice Dubois left and the crowds disperses. This is the sheer influence of Dubois. In no other part of the county would a group of people this big not get into a dangerous conflict of some sort. Yet here everyone is immediately dispersing without any trouble. Everyone’s on a mission now. 

Khalil turns to the rest of us with an aggressively determined look on his face. 

“No one is getting that cure but us.”

Now that’s a side of Khalil I can definitely get behind. I feel very confident in our ability to get the money before anyone else. We’re a resourceful group of people, despite some of our faults and liabilities. We’re also one of the only groups to have a solid arsenal of weaponry. The perks of having former street urchins in our midst - thank you Khalil and Grace. So we can force other groups to give us their money if need be. I don’t care how dark it gets, we don’t have any excuse to not succeed here. 

We regroup around the car to plan, with Khalil laying out orders, as per usual. 

“I've heard there are a lot of unguarded houses there, you should try and loot, we need to collect as much spare cash laying around in abandoned houses as we can.” dictates Khalil. “Isabelle, can you and the girls go there whilst Cameron and I-”

“No.” I interrupt.“I have a better idea of where we can get a large source of money from one area.”

Khalil's eyebrows furrow slightly. His eyes widen with realisation. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

“Are you sure you’re ready to go back there?” he asks me. 

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m ready or not.” I insist. “We need to go there before it’s too late.”

“Back to Izzy’s old place.” comments Grace. 

“Are you sure it’s even habitable anymore?” asks Cameron. 

“Why wouldn’t it be habitable?” inquires Lysandra. 

“Because it’s located in a forest filled with cannibals.” I answer. Lysandra blinks slowly, working her hardest to process what I just told her. 

“Sorry, what?” she asks, even more confused than before. 

I roll my eyes at her and enter the car. The last thing we need to do is explain each and every facet of this new society to a pampered princess, she’ll learn as she goes on. Time’s wasting. 

After a long drive, we pull up to the outside of the forest in which my old house is located. Some of the trees are scorched and graffitied with markings in blood. You can hear the faint sounds of screams and the violent tearing of flesh, even from all the way out here. This used to be such a lovely spot. My Dad had the house built on the other side of the forest many years back. He wanted a nice secluded place for us to be as a family. He wasn’t a fan of main towns in the county, and if I’m to be brutally honest, neither was I. It used to be just me, him, mother and the tiny woodland creatures, all enjoying a relaxing fruitful life. Now instead of woodland creatures, this forest is infested with something entirely different. Trust them to have chosen here of all places to be their ‘holy grounds’. 

The five of us slowly venture throughout the forest. Khalil, Grace and Cameron hold their guns at the ready, whilst I wield my  knife. I’ve never been a fan of guns, and so far this has done me just fine. The forest retains a dull and grey atmosphere, even in broad daylight. The type of atmosphere that will put you on edge. I see something scurry past in the corner of my eye. Was that a cannibal? No it couldn’t have been, they were too quiet. I have had the sneaking suspicion that someone has been following us, but I can’t for the life of me pin who it is. My first assumption was Declan, but he is usually accompanied by a gang. But if not Declan then who could it be? Right, stop. I need to stop thinking this way. Nobodies following us, I’m just being paranoid. Then again, my gut feeling is not usually wrong. 

We soon stumble upon something that should actually make me paranoid. Khalil gestures at us to stop moving. He silently points towards another area of the forest, a few metres away from where we are. A group of cannibals has congregated around a dampened campfire. They are dressed in their usual attire, tattered and torn long white shirts. In the middle of them is a cold spitroast, though instead of a pig, it’s a dead teenage boy. They pray over their ‘meal’, eyes shut tightly and hands clamped together like an African Aunty at dinner time.

“Let us thank the Gods for our daily meal.” says their leader. “And with its consumption we grow one step closer to ridding ourselves of the horrible affliction the mists have plagued us with.”

The cannibals start to peel flesh off of the spitroast, shoving it into their rotten mouths. Revolting. 

“What on god’s green Earth are they doing?” asks Lysandra. 

“Praying before they eat.” remarks Cameron, already looking queasy. “God, I’m going to be sick.” 

He leans over himself, holding his stomach as he tries not to throw up 

“Why are they cannibals?” asks Lysandra. “Do they think it’ll cure them?”

“Why did you ask a question you already figured out the answer to?” I snap at her. 

“Why do you insist on being incredibly rude to me every step of the way?” she snaps back. 

“You’ll know when I’m really being rude.” I assure her. 

“Well if this is how you behave when you’re not trying to be rude, it’s a wonder as to why anyone even bothers with you.”she retorts. 

I turn towards her, equipped with an icy glare. Lysandra tries her best to boldly confront me with a glare back, but no one’s buying it. Grace giggles as she nudges Khalil in the arm. 

“Cat fight” she snides. Hilarious. Khalil steps in between the two of us. 

“Right, let’s get to Isabelle’s house and recover the cash before they notice us.” says Khalil. Lysandra nods in agreement, adjusting herself to the side of Khalil as if to make sure he’s blocking me from hurting her. She doesn’t even have to say anything, that damsel in distress act alone is enough to boil my blood. 

Within a moment's notice, we pass through the forest and arrive at my old home. Aside from some cobwebs and a litany of collected dust, it’s almost as intact as I last left it. 

“It’s still in decent shape.” comments Cameron. “I’m surprised none of the cannibals have tried to occupy this place.”

“They live off the Earth” Khalil says, accompanied with condescending air quotation marks. “But still, keep an eye out for them, some might be crawling around here anyway.”

“And if they find out we’re here they’ll  break in and make us their next meal.” I add. “There should be lots of spare cash in and around different compartments of the house. I’ll go get my secret hidden stash.”

“Secret hidden stash?” asks Cameron. 

“Yes Cameron, secret hidden stash. Now go search!” I demand.

The group disperses throughout many areas of my house. I head upstairs and into my bedroom. The bed and the carpets are also still properly intact, however mould has grown across my walls. The dust that collects throughout the house is ever so  present here, especially in my trophy cabinets. 

“There it is, the achievements wall.” I whisper to myself proudly.

I stand by it and engross myself in a world of past prestige. I see the awards I won for achieving the highest grade in the entire school for Maths, English, Biology, Law and Business Studies. Good times. I see the award I got for being the best piano player in the county. Better times.  And I see my framed letter of early acceptance into the University of Manus. The sky was the limit back then.

Enough reminiscing, time to find that stash. Where did I put it again? That’s right, I had a system. I walk towards my personal drawer and open it. The drawer seems absolutely empty, or would to the untrained eye. I use my knife to carefully wedge open the false bottom of the drawer and am met with another bottom. I peel off a layer of concealing film that's the same colour as my drawer bottom to reveal the coordinates in the room that I scratched into the bottom of it. ‘19, 32, 43’. I follow said coordinates towards a random spot next to the carpet. I sink my knife into the carpet. I peel off a tiny part of the carpet and pick out a wad of a hundred pound bills rolled up as tight as possible. There it is. God I was unnecessarily thorough. I really didn’t want anyone else to find this, didn’t I?

I walk down the stairs and into the living room in which the rest of the group searches. Khalil presents a bag of miscellaneous bills and coins to me. It's mostly coins. 

"Well,  now we're at the very most twenty pounds closer to our goal," he remarks. I throw him the wad of hundreds.

 "A thousand and twenty" I remark back. 

Khalil's hazel eyes beam with delight. He removes the rubber band rolled around the hundreds. The others surround him as he feverishly counts the cash. 

"Fucking fantastic!" he cheers. 

"Thanks Isabelle!” beams Cameron. 

“Good thing you brought us here Izzy-Bon” congratulates Grace. How nice, I like it when they’re appreciative. 

“Can we get going please?” requests Lysandra. “I think I saw a cannibal wandering  in the backyard.”

For once she’s said something useful. The five of us leave the house, a thousand and twenty pounds richer. We are stopped dead in our tracks as we do so, however. 

A short walk away from us, we see a group of cannibals wandering around the entrance back into the forest. We crouch down and hide by the porch of the house. 

“Shit!” I exclaim. “What are they doing here?”

Khalil picks up his gun and loads it. I place my hand over the weapon to stop him. 

“No, we don’t want to draw them all out” I advise. “I know another place we can leave the forest through.”

I lead the others towards another part of the forest, one thick with tall bushes in between the trees. 

“We’ll have to clear our own path.” I tell them.

“Let’s get to cutting!” says Grace excitedly as she talks a pair of cutlas’ out of the weapon of duffel bags. Since when did we have those? She hands one to Khalil and together the two cut down the bushes in front of us, clearing a path that the rest of us follow. I walk next to Cameron who holds his sniper rifle with a death grip.

“Oh man, this place is just as frightening as when we first came around here.” mentions Cameron. “How did you even cope with living here when they first arrived?”

“I didn’t.” I respond soberly. “I was about to either starve in there or get eaten out here. I’m lucky you guys came.”

It’s true. Me surviving this long was a sheer stroke of luck. It just so happened that Khalil was trying to form a team of survivors he could trust and the exact same time as I was about to end it all right here. If he hadn't remembered me from highschool I would’ve killed myself before these cannibals could get the chance to kill me. 

Cameron nods his head in comprehension. A childish smirk comes across his face. “Yeah we’re lucky to have you.”  How cute. 

As we continue to walk down the path Khalil and Grace clear, I notice some things missing. Lysandra. I turn around to see the back of her blonde ponytail as she progresses through another part of the forest. Where the hell is she going? I trail back and let the others progress on, then follow Lysandra. I see her walking towards a frail young man with scars and bruises all over him. 

“Are you planning on telling us what the hell you’re doing?” I interrogate, firmly placing my hand on her shoulder. Lysandra gasps, startled as she turns around to see me. 

“Oh, Isabelle, it’s you,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing here?”

“This young man…” she laments as she points towards the frail man who crawls on the floor. “He looks to be in bad shape”. 

I look towards the young man. His body shakes with the pain of malnourishment. Now ,that’s hard to look at. 

“That’s very unfortunate. But we haven’t got the time nor energy to be doing this.”

“We can help him! Like you guys helped me!” suggests Lysandra. “Well like Khalil helped me at least.”

I roll my eyes at her inane remark. She walks over to help the whimpering man until I stop her with an arm across her chest. 

“Wait, don't!" I exclaim. "He's a cannibal...."

"How do you know that?" asks Lysandra

"Look at him." I tell her. 

"What do you mean?! He could just be seriously hurt and in need of help!" she protests. 

I groan. This is going nowhere.

I refuse to listen to her and brandish my knife. The sight of the blade scares the young man. He props himself up on all fours, growling as if he was a dog. Christ, he’s absolutely feral. He lunges at me and pins me to the ground, grunting and spitting in my face. Fuck me, he’s really really feral! 

I hold his snapping jaws back with one of my hands and maintain my grip on the knife with the other. Lysandra tries to pry the man off of me but she has no luck. I stare into his wild eyes with a piercing look of determination in mine. I'm not letting this thing overpower me. With one swift but powerful movement, I drag my knife across the top of his throat. He lets out a deafening scream of immense pain, spending his last few moments clawing at his neck. 

The blood drips onto my face as his dead body comes crashing onto mine. I push the corpse off of me in disgust. Lysandra looks to me, equally disgusted. 

"Why the fuck did you do that?" shrieks Lysandra. 

From the way she's responding you'd think she was the one who just got cut. 

"He tried to kill me!" I tell her. "Did you miss that part or something?"

"He wouldn't have done anything if you didn't show your knife!"

"He would have tried to eat me, like all cannibals do!"

"He wasn't a cannibal, he was just a poor boy who had been neglected!" insists Lysandra. “You didn’t have to kill him so gruesomely…”

"He had blood around his fucking mouth. Dumbass!" I insult. “He. Was. A cannibal!”

Lysandra opens her mouth to retort but pauses. Her attention is drawn elsewhere to a rustling in the bushes around us. The two of us stand back to back watching on in fear as the rustling grows louder and louder. Oh no. They’re coming. 

A cannibal emerges from the bushes. Then another, and another, and another. Soon a dozen cannibals surround us. The noise of our arguments must have attracted them to this area. 

"Go!" I yell as I grab Lysandra by the hand. The two of us run back on the path that Khalil and Grace had cleared. They've made a considerable amount of progress during our absence.

"Where the hell did you guys go?" asks Khalil as he turns around to see us running. 

We eventually regroup with them. Before we can explain anything the dozen cannibals that chase us quickly turn to two dozen as more emerge from the bushes to create a new group.

"Well that's not good." comments Grace. 

Cameron lets out a frightened womanly shriek. Same Cam, same. We waste no time in making attempts to evacuate the forest. 

Khalil and Grace toss away their cutlasses and equip themselves with pistols. They rain bullets on them as they run backwards. Their efforts seem futile as no matter how many drop dead, the cannibals continue to pursue us as a collective. 

The five of us arrive at the car, the cannibals still hot on our tracks. This time Grace takes the wheel, driving away from the forest with a wild twist of the steering wheel. The cannibals claw at the vehicle with blood-stained fingernails. Grace wastes no time in violently running over any, be they man, woman or child. If the cannibals won’t kill us then perhaps Graces’ reckless driving will. 

She takes us far from the forest and through a part of The Land I’m personally not familiar with. I’d usually be against such an excursion but we arrive at a small neighbourhood that looks to be uninhabited. Perhaps for a reason, it looks to be damp and cold with all the houses being hideous bungalows painted by dirt and blood. A generally uncanny feeling encapsulates the area. But it hardly matters, beggars can’t be choosers and we do need somewhere to stay after all.

“What about here?” asks Grace. 

“As a new house?” guesses Khalil. “I guess it’ll do.”

Grace parks the car and we all pour out. We head towards our new house, tired, dejected but immensely relieved. Khalil picks out the wad of hundreds from his pockets and waves it around. 

“Look alive people” he says in an encouraging way “One thousand down, four to go.”

Cameron and Grace smile at Khalil. I nod at Khalil, sporting a grin of my own. My grin fades once Lysandra is in my eye-line again. I don’t see why she’s irate, she’s just as much at fault for the cannibal swarm as I am, if anything even more. She’s probably still upset at how ‘gruesomely’ I killed that boy.

 Maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn’t a cannibal. Maybe he didn’t deserve to die…

Well that’s too damn bad, he could have posed a threat to us, cannibal or not. Now that obtaining the cure is a possibility we can’t afford to slip up even once. We must assume everyone else is the enemy.

We can’t afford to make such distinctions anymore.