Pandora

I can't wait any longer.

I've been packing for months. I've hoarded my rations. I know where I'm heading. I just need to find the right moment to go.

They don't want me to leave, I'm sure of that, so I'll be sneaking away in the middle of the night. Tonight. They might guess where I'm going but they won't be able to follow me once I'm gone.

This will be the culmination of years of planning. Decades, even. I have enough food to last me for a week or so and I have all the maps I'll need. I've been gathering supplies over the last year. They haven't suspected anything, I've made sure of that. Who would suspect someone my age to risk everything for sentiment?

Day 0

I waited. It needed to be dark before I left and I needed everyone to have gone to bed. It didn't have to be tonight but the timing couldn't have been better. The moon would give me plenty of light and it wasn't due to rain just yet.

I ran my mind back over everything I had packed. A couple of thin ropes, a couple of tarpaulins, a blanket, four water bottles, a couple of changes of clothes and a hat. I carried a few bandages and I had as much food as I had been able to take which I hoped would last me until the end of the week if I rationed it. I had also found my old passport which had expired decades ago. It probably wouldn't be much use but it couldn't hurt to carry it. I slipped it into my coat pocket.

I had wanted to have a knife but there hadn't been an opportunity to steal one so I would have to do without.

My food situation was rather pitiful: some bread and cheese and some hard boiled eggs that I had managed to steal from the table, and some seeds and nuts from the store. I would have to keep an eye on my food but I wasn't too concerned; I would be able to forage as I walked and I had some wire that I could use as a snare.

And most importantly, I had my sunphone. It was old but I would need it for the journey ahead. A good friend had wired a solar panel to the charging circuits years ago so I hadn't had to worry about power for a long time. It had an app with the maps I would need and it even had a translation dictionary; I would probably need it for the journey ahead.

The battery on my sunphone had died years ago. At best it offered a scant few minutes of charge so I was almost entirely reliant on daylight whenever I used it. I flicked back to the home screen before I turned it off. The cheerful faces of Seth's family greeted me as I did so and I stared at them, feeling the familiar twinge of guilt. The photo was many years old at this point and I hoped I would recognise them when I saw them. Seth, Hettie, Anne and Benjamin.

Thinking back, dinner had been an unusually silent affair and it had left me on edge all evening. Surely someone had noticed something and it had felt like only a matter of time until someone came up to me. To talk to me. To stop me. Part of me wished that they had.

But there hadn't been anything. Joe had wished me good night with his usual "Good night, Tam," and had left for his own hut. And I had been left standing and staring after him, and pretending that nothing was wrong. That this wouldn't be my last glimpse of him.

I sat on my bed and looked around my room for the last time. It was uncharacteristically tidy. The place wasn't much but it had been mine and I would miss it enormously; it had been my home for the last few decades and had been my refuge when the rest of the world had been changing so much around me. It was with a heavy heart that I sat down on the single chair, running my fingers over the blankets. It would be the last comfort that I would know for a long time. I could only hope that the journey would be worth it.

My gaze was drawn to the wooden cow sitting above my bed that Seth had whittled for me many years ago and I smiled. I picked it up. It had always been a good luck charm of sorts and I added it to my bag – it wasn't heavy and it couldn't hurt to have a little extra luck on the journey ahead.

I would be sorry to leave and I wondered what they would say in the morning when they discovered my disappearance. The community had been my home for the past few decades and the people had become my family. Perhaps a mismatched family, but a family nonetheless. We looked out for each other, we took care of each other and we relied on each other. And that was the reason why I hadn't been able to leave any sooner.

It hurt that I couldn't say goodbye to anyone either; they would have been suspicious and would have tried to stop me. After Joe had left, I had said my own goodnights after dinner and disappeared off to my hut for the last time. The children had gone to bed shortly afterwards and most of the adults wouldn't have stayed up much longer. Joe would have done the last patrol of the evening and only a couple of watchmen would still be awake. And they wouldn't be watching for anyone trying to leave. Least of all me.

But I couldn't wait any longer. At 70, I was getting too old. I needed to find Seth before it was too late. Before it was too late for either of us.

It was several hours after sunset before I decided to risk leaving. I knew the places to avoid the dogs and watchmen. I would escape across the fields and take the track that would eventually lead to the roads. It was sure to be uneven underfoot in many places so I would be relying on my eyesight to avoid falling and twisting an ankle. The moon would provide enough light for me.

I had my bag and I was ready. I pushed the door open carefully, trying not to let it creak. I closed it quietly behind me and looked around for the last time. I would miss this place, but I couldn't stay.

It was nighttime but the moonlight illuminated everything with its silvery light. The conditions were as good as I was going to get. Keeping my footsteps as light as I could, I made my way along the path, and then I headed to where the hole in the hedge was. There had once been a gate there but we had removed it years ago for better access. I took one last glance behind me at the community, the place that had been my home for so long, and then I turned away, refusing to let myself dwell on it. I needed to look forwards and I would need as much of a head start as I could get.

I walked for a couple of hours. My bag was heavier than I would have liked but it was nothing that I couldn't handle. I knew I needed to head south and I knew that my maps would be fairly useless away from the main routes so I stuck to the road. The ground was soft underfoot due to the recent rain so I would be leaving footprints, but it couldn't be helped and I would be far away by the time anyone started to look for me. It would have to be enough.

The moon was nearly full and I had enough light to avoid falling down any of the large potholes in the road. I laughed to myself wondering what people from decades ago would have said if they could have seen the state of the roads these days. Living this far from any city, these roads would have been among the first for any council to have given up on. When money was scarce, it wasn't sensible to spend it to the benefit of only a few, and maintaining the main routes in and out of the cities would have been of much higher priority.

What remained of the road ahead of me meandered its way up the hill. I made my way slowly up it, pausing for breath every few metres, grateful that my body was used to exercise, even if I was not used to the weight of the bag which was already digging uncomfortably into my shoulders. By the time I reached the top, I was ready for a break.

Turning around, I looked back the way I had come. I could see the valley behind me illuminated by the moonlight. It wasn't the first time I had been up to the top of this hill, but this would be the last. I could see the forest on the far side of the valley where we collected wood. The sea glittered to the west and I could just make out where the community lay, although I was sure I was imagining the light from the lantern by the entrance to the hall. I could picture it, swinging gently in the breeze, lighting the way to food for us weary workers. In the old days, it would have been an LED light but these days the community tended to use fuel. Olive oil, beeswax and animal fat had all been used in recent years, collected ourselves or traded for food, seeds, wood and shelter from travellers passing nearby. There would be no such luxuries on the road ahead.

Although I didn't expect anyone to be following me, I stopped every now and then to see if I could hear anything. But I needn't have worried. Aside from my own breathing, I couldn't hear any evidence of another human being. Animals, on the other hand...

I jumped when a barn owl flew overhead, its almost soundless flight a stark contrast to its snowy white feathers illuminated by the moonlight. I watched it swoop sharply downwards and disappear from sight into the long grass before reappearing and flying off again. I liked to imagine that it caught a rat; that would be one pest that wouldn't try to steal food from the barn this year.

It was dark along the road, the moonlight blocked out by overgrown and unkempt hedges. But I couldn't be found here in the morning. I took a last glance behind me before heading over the top of the ridge and down into the next valley. If I could walk for another hour or so, I would be able to make my way into the forest at the foot of the valley and could set up camp there and get a few hours of sleep.

The stretch along the top of the ridge had been considerably easier than the path down into the next valley. The vegetation along the ridge was fairly sparse due to the winds; the valley tended to be considerably more sheltered. The terrain was steep and the surface was poor so I had to watch my footing. It wouldn't do to twist an ankle in the darkness, especially not on my first night. Fortunately, the road was clearly marked and the moon was high in the sky so I could see my way well enough. My bag was heavy and I stumbled a few times but was able to follow the old road without much trouble.

The community used the fields on either side of the road in this valley too. We had ploughed them a few weeks back and the first crops had already been planted. These fields would soon be filled with a selection of vegetables including potatoes and carrots, in addition to staples such as corn. We always worried about the diversity of the crops so moved them around the fields from year to year. Chemical pesticides and fungicides were no longer readily available so we did what we could to prevent disease and damage to our main source of food. We were lucky that so many vegetables had been genetically modified to make them more resistant to pests and the weather before the energy supplies dried up. I didn't like to think what our yields would have looked like if that hadn't been the case.

It had been a long day for me and I was exhausted by the time I reached the forest. I walked a little way inside so that the trees would hide me from sight, as well as offering some protection from any rain. I didn't want to be found in the morning. Of course, this shelter came at cost; it was dark and I could no longer see my way.

I felt for the rope in my bag and considered setting up my tent, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I was still too close to the community and wanted to be on my way at first light. I pulled out the tarpaulin and blanket instead. I laid the tarpaulin on the ground and, after removing my shoes, I wrapped myself in the blanket. It would do.

Day 1

It felt far too early when I opened my eyes the next morning but the sun was already higher in the sky than I would have liked. I sat up slowly, feeling my bones creak as I did so. The ground was still damp from the rain but the tarpaulin had kept me dry. I staggered to my feet with a groan and stretched, then reached inside my bag for breakfast.

I was carrying as much as possible but I couldn't carry enough food to get me all the way to the south and unfortunately a lot of my food wouldn't keep more than a couple of weeks. I was going to have to beg or trade for food further down south. Today's breakfast would be bread and goat's cheese, stolen from the stores only yesterday. I was ravenous after last night's walk and I sat on my bag while I ate, pulling out my sunphone as I did so.

Surprisingly there was enough light to power it under the forest canopy and I waited impatiently while it booted. The smiling faces of Seth's family greeted me when the background image finally appeared and for once I didn't feel quite so guilty. I was on my way at last.

I loaded the maps app, half-hoping that it would know my position. But of course it didn't. The location functionality hadn't worked for years. Still, I had access to my decades-old maps, which was something. I wasn't sure how much use they would be on the journey ahead but they would be better than nothing. I took a guess at my location while I finished off my breakfast and worked out where I needed to go next. It wouldn't matter if I wasn't heading along the shortest route; most paths probably weren't around anymore. As long as I kept heading south I would be alright.

When I had eaten, I stood up and stretched. I couldn't delay any longer so I set off, heading deeper into the forest.

It was astonishing how quickly nature had taken over. A lot of this forest would have been planted in the first half of the century. That's not when people first realised the dangers of climate change but when they realised that it would affect them. So they panicked and started planting as many trees as they could to absorb as much of the carbon from the atmosphere as possible. Of course, many trees were then chopped down less than a decade later when fuel became scarce and undid much of the effort. Still, nature always found a way to survive, and this forest had probably been left largely untouched due to its isolation.

The forest was quiet. Aside from the roots underfoot trying to trip me up, the going was fairly easy. There wasn't much vegetation under the canopy as there wasn't enough light for plants to grow well. This meant that there weren't many brambles, for which I was grateful. In many ways, this journey would be a race against time and I didn't want to waste a morning stuck in a thicket of brambles if I could avoid it. I planned to stay in the forest for as long as possible. It would give me shelter from the sun as well as from the sight of other people. I wanted to remain alone for as long as I could. Plus, if the terrain stayed like this then I could make better time than along the old roads.

It was more difficult to navigate from under the trees but I could still work out which way was south. The sun rises in the east, after all. I looked at my sunphone occasionally, checking that it was still alive.

I heard the river long before I saw it, the sound of rushing of water unmistakable in the quiet forest. I followed the sound and headed downhill until I reached it, a fast-moving mass of water still swollen from the recent rains. I followed it upstream for several miles, looking for a good place to cross. It looked deep and I didn't want to have to swim. I was sure I was taking a large detour but slowing down was better than getting everything wet. The ground was much rockier and more uneven by the river and I was afraid of slipping and twisting my ankle. Still, it was peaceful here and I enjoyed listening to the sounds of the forest as I walked.

Everyone in the community would have been awake hours ago and I wondered what was happening. They would have noticed me missing hours ago. Was Joe angry? Were Ollie and Mia upset? More importantly, would they send a search party out after me? What I was doing was incredibly selfish. I had helped myself to the community's food and was leaving them a person short. And not just any person but one of the most experienced and knowledgeable. Part of me wanted to justify it by having lived there for so many years, surely I was entitled to be a little selfish?

Joe was right about the journey. He was usually right when it came to the community's welfare and I was letting everyone down by leaving and risking everyone's survival. And maybe I could never return. But I knew that I didn't have that many years left in me and I wanted - no, I needed - to see Seth again. The guilt felt uncomfortable. I tried to put it out of my head. I would find Seth.

It must have been late morning when I found the fallen tree across the river. I approached it cautiously. It had been old and tall but it looked like it would support my weight without any difficulties. Unfortunately the recent rain and the lack of sunlight on the forest floor meant that it was slippery. Poor footing and a heavy bag was not a good combination.

I glanced upstream, hoping that there would be another crossing point, but given that I had been walking for miles without finding anything better, this was probably the best I could hope for. I heaved the bag on top of the trunk and climbed up after it, groaning as I did so. I decided that it would be safer to crawl along the tree, even if it was much less dignified. It would spread my weight much better in case the trunk were to crack and my centre of mass would be lower so I would be more stable.

It wasn't far but I still breathed a sigh of relief when I made it to the other side. My stomach had been rumbling for some time so I pulled a bag of nuts out of my bag to eat as I walked. It would do as a snack.

It was only an hour or so later when the trees started to thin out and I could see the edge of the forest, and judging by the direction of the light, I was still heading approximately south which was good. With every step, the sunlight grew brighter, which would only help my sunphone. But it also meant that there were more plants on the forest floor, no longer having to compete with the trees for the sun's energy. It wasn't long before I was getting caught by brambles and I felt my coat rip as I forced my way through.

I was covered in scratches by the time I reached the edge of the forest and I took a moment to examine my coat. There was a large tear down the back. This was not a good start to my journey.

Walking towards the daylight, I found myself in a meadow filled with tall grass and wildflowers. The sun's light was dazzling after having spent the morning in the shade and I shielded my eyes as I looked around. I spotted what looked like an opening in the hedge opposite and started towards it.

Making my way through grass that came up to my shoulders was exhausting. The sun was beating down on me and I was sweating heavily before I was even halfway across. I had a short break while I drank from one of my water bottles and pulled out my hat from my bag; it would keep the sun off me. At least the sun would dry out the ground which would make walking easier.

By the time I reached the hole in the hedge I realised that I was going to have a problem. It was only spring but it was a hot day and I wasn't sure how long my water supply would last. I estimated that I would be fine for the day but I would need to keep my eyes open for any water source nearby. I had had about two litres of water when I set off, but I would need to stay hydrated and those two litres wouldn't last long. I didn't want to have to go back through the field to the river I crossed yesterday so I would do my best to ration my supplies.

The hole in the hedge opened up into another field with grass just as tall as in the last. I quickly decided that I needed to find my way to a road to make better progress, even if that came at the cost of a chance of meeting other people. I pulled out my sunphone. At least there was no chance of it dying in this sunlight. I wasn't completely sure of my location but the maps app suggested that if I headed west then I should come across a road heading south-east. Unfortunately that meant crossing the fields.

To cut a long story short, I found the road. It wasn't much of a road, but it would be far easier travelling along it than through the fields. I was exhausted by this time and it wasn't even midday. I took the opportunity to go to the toilet behind the hedge just before I reached the road. The ground was soft and digging a hole was easy here.

The journey along the road was pretty uneventful after having spent most of the morning fighting with grass. I sang to myself as I walked, enjoying the shade from the hedges along the sides of the road. I avoided the potholes and managed to not twist my ankle as the road surface crumbled away underfoot. I was pretty sure I knew where this road was going. There was a town marked on the map near the forest and, while there were likely to be other people around, it would probably be to my advantage to visit. I hoped that I could refill my water bottles and replenish my food supplies. There was no-one in sight but I wasn't alone. There was a blackbird singing loudly in the hedgerow alongside the road and I paused to look for it; it reminded me of home.

I arrived a few miles later. I passed a metal sign welcoming visitors to the town where the paint had started peeling off long ago. There had been a few cottages along the road as I approached then the hedges had started to thin out only to be replaced by houses and flats.

It was eerie. That was the only way I could describe it. Most of the houses were dilapidated and had gardens that had long overgrown. Paint was peeling off walls, windows had shattered, some roofs had fallen in. There was a neglected air to the place, it had clearly been abandoned for some time. I remembered living in a house like many of these had once been like not so long ago. They had been different times.

There was a strange silence. I was used to the sounds of the birds in the fields and the rustle of trees in the forests. Here, there was nothing. I wandered towards what would have been the town centre, keeping my eyes open for any sign of movement. My maps app would have been useful here but I didn't want to pull my sunphone out where there was a chance that other people might see it. It was too valuable for me to risk having it stolen.

A little further along and I came across what must have once been the high street, the shops looking as derelict as the rest of the town. This place must have been a supermarket, and its barn-like roof had probably only caved in recently. And that one looked like it had been a cafe or a restaurant; I could make out the chairs and tables inside. And another was clearly a church. Others were harder to guess. Perhaps a clothes shop? And that one might have been a butcher's.

I had an idea. I walked over to the one that might have once been a butcher's shop and pushed my shoulder against the door frame. I was a little surprised that it gave way so easily; the wood must have rotted.

It was dark inside and smelled damp and musty, with cobwebs and mould covering much of the window. No-one had been inside for years.

I pulled off my bag and walked behind the counter where there were several knives hanging up on the wall. They didn't look clean but they looked sharp and might be useful for the journey ahead. I examined them and chose a handful with short blades and one with a much longer blade. They would be useful for trading, or defending myself if absolutely necessary. Now I had to find a way to carry them without damaging my bag. Or myself if I were to trip. I ended up wrapping them in some mouldy cloths I found on the floor.

And then there was my water problem. There was a sink at the back of the room and I turned on the tap eagerly. But there was nothing. The water system probably hadn't been working for a long time and the water in the pipes must have evaporated long ago.

There was a faded and water-damaged photo of a man on the wall, grinning as he held up a string of sausages. I wondered who he was and what had happened to him. Perhaps he used to be the owner. It must have been a long time since he had been here.

I did my best to close the door as I left.

This was a rare opportunity for me and I wondered if there was anything else that might be useful to trade on the journey ahead. I also wondered why this town looked as if it had been left in a hurry.

I still hadn't caught sight of another person. This town would have been good for a small group to set up a community in. Although many of the houses were dilapidated, it wouldn't be too difficult to repair several for shelter. And presumably lots of other shops had useful wares too, if the butcher's shop was anything to judge by.

As I started to head out of the town, I caught sight of an overgrown vegetable patch in one of the gardens. The tomato plants looked dead but I still couldn't see any evidence of people so I didn't feel bad about helping myself to some of the carrots. I did my best to brush off most of the soil and ate them as they were. I couldn't afford to waste my water washing them and I'd probably eaten worse. I also picked a few onions to carry with me. I put them in my bag around the knives for extra padding.

An hour later and I was several miles away from the town before I risked pulling out my sunphone again. I was heading southwards and was wondering where I would pass through next. I could see I was heading towards some hills and the maps app told me that there would be another wood on the other side. More importantly, it looked like there was a river beyond the wood. I continued on my way.

I hadn't seen another person since leaving the community, which I was rather surprised by. It was very different from the journey to the community a few decades back. This journey would be fairly easy if it stayed like this.

It was evening by the time I reached the wood. I left the road and walked until I was hidden from sight before setting up camp. I found the rope inside the bag and tied it between two trees just above knee height. I placed one of my tarpaulins on the ground under the rope and threw the other one over it. It didn't take me long to find some wood and rocks that I could use as weights and I used them to anchor the tarpaulins into a triangular tunnel. It wasn't a great tent but it would do.

It had been a successful day, I decided, and I had a go at making a couple of rabbit snares with the wire I had brought with me. After all, I had knives now and could prepare meat. I didn't have any way of cooking the rabbit but the skins might be useful for trading.

Darkness fell and my sunphone died before I could finish writing up the day's events. I slept with a knife in my hand that night and felt much safer for doing so.

Day 2

Rain. I woke up early to a steady pitter-patter on the tarpaulin. My tent didn't do well at keeping the wind out but at least it kept out the worst of the rain and I was relieved to find that my blanket wasn't too wet.

On the whole, it was probably good that it was raining. Yesterday had been warm and I had drunk my way through about half my supplies. Rain would be safer for drinking than river water.

I split the water between all four bottles and left them open to the sky. They wouldn't fill up by much but every drop would help.

I ate a couple of hard-boiled eggs for breakfast as I planned out my route for the day. I hadn't tried turning my sunphone on, partly because there was no point as it was dark under the trees and partly because I expected there to be other people nearby. Yesterday's plan hadn't changed - I would follow the road and head down to the river. And I would keep heading south. The cloudy sky meant that I would find it difficult to navigate by the sun so I would have to pay attention to where I was going.

After packing up the tent I checked my snares. I hadn't been optimistic but I was still disappointed to find them empty. Still, I could try again tonight.

I left my campsite as I had found it and headed back the way I had travelled last night. By the time I had reached the road I was already cold and wet and I shivered as I pulled my coat tighter around me. It was tempting to stay in the forest. Aside from being slippery, the ground was clear underfoot so I could make good progress and the trees would shield me from observers. However, the forest hadn't looked very large on the map and I couldn't risk being stuck in another meadow which would probably be even more impassable than the last one due to the rain.

The low clouds gave me poor visibility and I couldn't see more than a couple of hundred metres ahead of me. The wind whistled gently in the trees and made me feel like I was being watched, despite the fact that I hadn't seen another person for days.

I was surprised at how few people there were around here. This could be a good, green, plentiful area if carefully managed, and which could sustain many people. I wondered again what had happened to the residents of the town I had passed through the previous day and why there were no others living around here.

The community wasn't the only place left to live in the country. Traders passed by from time to time, and we would exchange stories with them. They told of other places like ours, of towns and of cities. Wild, lawless places where only the strong survived. Ollie and Mia had loved those stories and would beg for more, to which Joe would tell them that they had heard quite enough. Even Seth had left with traders only a few decades back. I suddenly felt quite isolated. What had the world been up to since I arrived at the community?

The road was starting to curve downhill. The overgrown hedges and the low cloud made it hard to get my bearings but I kept going; it wasn't as if I had other options. The surface was more sandy here than the tarmac I preferred. It made a satisfying crunching sound at every step. I stopped abruptly. There was something moving on the other side of the hedge and whatever it was, it was big. I strained my ears trying to work out if it was a threat.

For a brief moment there was silence, then a loud snort came from the hedge followed by heavy breathing. I approached it cautiously and tried to peer through the tangle of branches.

There was a big black eye staring back at me. A cow. I quickly moved away from the hedge. I certainly didn't want to enter that field. More importantly, cows meant that there would be people around. Heifers couldn't survive long on their own without being milked so there was a very good chance that there were people nearby.

I started walking again. I would have to hope that there wouldn't be many people out in the rain.

As it was, my luck held and I reached the river without seeing anyone. It was fast-moving but there was a bridge which I crossed without hesitating. If there were people nearby then they must have used it frequently so I had no reason to worry about it collapsing. I left my bag on the bank and retrieved my water bottles. The rain hadn't contributed much to the water levels this morning and I would be desperate for water after another hot day. I would have to take the opportunities that I could.

When we arrived at the community all those years ago, we quickly learnt that river water could be bad. It was much safer to drink fresh rain water as there was less chance of contamination. Several of us were sick after drinking from the river one year but fortunately no-one had died. Joe had reckoned that there was probably a dead animal upstream. That or sewage pollution. So we always boiled river water after that, no matter how thirsty we were.

But boiling water wouldn't be an option for me here. I didn't have a stove and I didn't want to make a fire so close to other people in case they found me. I wasn't even sure that I could make a fire here; everything was so wet. So I did what I could.

I emptied all the water I could into the first bottle and drank as much as I could from the others; I knew that the water I had in the bottles was safe. I took the remaining bottles down to the river bank and took out my hat from the day before. The hat wasn't waterproof but I could use it as a filter to keep out some of the larger debris from the river. It wouldn't stop pollution but it would be better than nothing. I placed the hat over the mouth of the bottle, then I leant over the river as far as I could until I could place the bottle in the fastest part of the flow. Fast-moving water meant that there was less chance of something living in it.

I would drink from the first bottle for as long as I could, and only then would I risk the river water.

It continued raining for the rest of the morning but I kept following the road. Each time I came to a turning, I guessed where south was and headed in that direction. I was cold and utterly miserable, longing for my little hut back in the community. I hoped that the others were staying warm and dry.

I hated myself for not going with Seth all those years ago, but there was no doubt that I did a lot of good in the community by staying. From helping raise Ollie and Mia to providing an extra pair of hands at harvest time, I pulled my weight without complaining. My knowledge had helped the community no end and I'd managed to impart as much of it as I could to the younger generations. I had always regretted not going with Seth but I couldn't bring myself to regret staying there.

I found a tree offering some shelter by the side of the road so I had my lunch under it. I wasn't eating as much as I should have been with all the exercise I was doing but I couldn't be sure where my next meal would be coming from so I was rationing my supplies as much as I could.

By mid-afternoon the weather had started to clear up and I found myself walking up another hill. I discovered I was heading far further east than I should have been but couldn't find a route southwards without either backtracking or leaving the road, neither of which I was keen to do. I kept going. I'd eventually find another road leading south.

By the time I reached the top, the clouds had mostly cleared and I was able to get an idea of my surroundings. I could just about make out the river I had crossed earlier in the day and there was a city to the east. The grey buildings sprawled over the land, a stark contrast to my much greener surroundings. I supposed that nature would have taken over the city in many places but I could imagine what it had looked like a few decades back. At least there wouldn't be cars around. These days the air was undoubtedly much cleaner without cars on the road burning up the precious petrol.

I laughed to myself, remembering. The governments had started raising taxes on petrol, trying to encourage people to switch to electric cars. This had been a good idea on paper but so much electricity was still produced from non-renewable sources that all this did was shift the pollution elsewhere.

And naturally, the taxes backfired. Protests were held. People couldn't afford to buy electric cars. There wasn't a second-hand market with cheap vehicles as electric cars weren't widely used, and realistically there weren't enough brand new cars around to supply the increased demand.

Nor was there the infrastructure. While every town had a petrol station or three, the only places to recharge electric cars were homes. And with so many people living in high-rise flats, lots of people didn't have the ability to recharge their vehicles.

So what did the governments do? They dropped the taxes and people went back to their fossil fuel-hungry cars. And they tried building the infrastructure. This took a couple of decades. A couple more decades where irreparable damage was done to the atmosphere.

Meanwhile the world had moved on. Protests weren't about cars at that point.

I squinted at the city. There was something moving there. Something big and shiny, judging by the way that the light was reflected. A car? Surely not. I stood up. I had delayed long enough. I needed to keep going.

I was heading south again. I had passed a roundabout and the road I was on was heading in the right direction. I had also turned on my sunphone and thought I had worked out where I was. My detour eastwards hadn't been too out of the way and I could keep going along this road.

I trudged onwards for another few miles. I wasn't drying off and the wind had started to pick up but at least it had stopped raining. I hoped that my bag had managed to stay dry; sleeping in wet clothes wouldn't be good and I couldn't afford to get pneumonia.

It was getting dark when I noticed smoke to the west and against my better judgement I turned towards it. I was wet and not looking forward to spending a night in my tent. Perhaps there would be people there who could offer shelter, or at least advise on somewhere to stay. We often did that in the community.

Shivering, I left the main road and headed towards the smoke. I considered hiding my bag under a tree in case I was going to be robbed but decided that a lack of a bag would be too difficult to explain. I walked onwards and it wasn't long before I heard a voice.

"Halt! State your name and intentions."

I couldn't see anyone but it wouldn't have surprised me if there had been a shotgun levelled at me. I turned in the direction of the voice and raised my hands above my head. I was shivering from the cold but I tried to appear unafraid.

"My name is Tam. I saw the smoke from your fire and I'm looking for shelter. I am cold and hungry."

There was a long silence. I wondered if I should walk away.

"Where are you from?"

I considered the question. The community had never had a name. It was always just the community. We were a group of individuals who had joined together to support each other and live together. We were stronger together than alone. I decided on the truth.

"A small village a couple of days' walk from here." I hoped that would be enough information for the voice but vague enough that they wouldn't be able to find it.

"Wait here."

So I did. I pulled off my bag and sat on it, pulling my coat around me for warmth and trying not to shiver. I heard footsteps retreating towards the fire and it grew colder and darker and I was left alone with only my thoughts for company.

I pictured my home. I imagined Joe on his last patrol of the evening and I hoped that he was doing well. It was dark now so most people would have been in bed now; just him and whoever was on duty tonight would still be up.

At long last I heard footsteps approaching and I could make out the silhouette of a man and a woman coming towards me. They stopped a few metres away and I was startled by a torch being flashed in my face.

"What do you want?" the woman asked. I squinted against the light.

"Shelter, mainly. I was caught in the rain and I'm so cold." My teeth were chattering at this point.

"Brid tells me that you've been walking for a couple of days. Where are you heading?"

"It's a long story. I'm trying to find my family." Family. In recent years, family had become synonymous with the community. But family also meant Seth and those Seth loved.

"Where's that?"

"The last I heard, they were on the south coast. I haven't been able to make contact for the last few years." No need to say how many years.

She nodded to Brid who threw something soft at me. A blanket. I wrapped it gratefully around myself.

"There's a grove half a mile away where travellers stay. I'm sure you'll understand why we aren't too fond of visitors." She waited for me to nod before continuing. "How long do you plan to be here?"

"I'll be leaving in the morning. I'd be grateful for any guidance in this area. These are unfamiliar roads."

She turned to Brid and shot him a questioning look. He nodded at her and she walked off the way she had come. I was taken aback by her abrupt departure.

Brid carried a torch too, a wind-up one if I were to guess, and he gestured that I should follow him.

"Two days is a long time to be alone," he told me. I hadn't realised how tall he was. Without the light in my face, I could see him more clearly. He looked younger than me by at least a couple of decades and I wondered what his life had been like.

I considered that. "It's not so bad but I wasn't prepared for this much rain. Do you have anything I can make a fire with to dry my clothes out?"

"You're travelling and you can't make a fire?" He shook his head. "I can get you going tonight and I'll see if I can find something for you."

"Thank you." I was grateful.

"What's it like in your settlement? How many of you are there?"

Was this a probing question or just a friendly one? I couldn't tell.

"It varies but there are about twenty of us at any one time. The land isn't good but we get by. What's it like here?" I tried to keep the conversation going in both directions. I didn't want this to be an interrogation.

"It's much the same. We lost a few to illness this winter. We can't risk travellers bringing anything with them."

"I understand. I'm sorry." There was something unspoken here that I understood well. It was probably the same all over the country.

I must have been one of the last generations to have been vaccinated. As food shortages became more common, spending was prioritised on short-term survival over anything longer-term. Money wasn't being spent on researching diseases and developing and producing vaccines but instead went into procuring and preserving food. This prevented a great many deaths in the first few years but it wasn't long before diseases that had once been rare and preventable started coming back. Herd immunity could only do so much.

People started dying from these diseases. As society started to break down, it became more difficult to administer vaccines and once-rare diseases began to spread throughout the population with no immediate way of being stopped. The sad part was that it was only the children who would die as the adults had already been protected. It was difficult to make new vaccines when labs had been shut down and the scientists, like so many others, had left the cities to try to survive elsewhere.

Isolation was the obvious solution. People lived in small groups and tried to avoid interacting with others to prevent the spread of disease. It was why we had so many rules for travellers back in the community. It was also the reason why I could probably never return.

Brid broke the silence. "How many are you looking for?"

I gave a half-smile that he probably couldn't see in the darkness. "My brother, mainly. He married a few years back and went to live with his wife's family. Last time we spoke they had had a couple of children. I need to find him before it's too late." Too late to say sorry. "Do you have family too?"

"Some. I have a brother and a sister. I lost my parents to diphtheria a while back." He gave a sad chuckle. "The rest of us were lucky to survive."

"I'm sorry." There wasn't much else I could say. But he shook his head.

"We're all lucky to be here. It could be much worse." He led me through a hole in the hedge.

"What's it like around here?"

"It's generally a pretty decent place. We haven't had anything life-threatening for a while. We get raiders every few years but most of our visitors are like you and are just passing through."

Raiders. That was a word that would fill anyone in the community with fear. But the part about visitors was interesting. Visitors rarely came to the community. "Do you have many visitors?"

"A few a month. There's a dump a few miles away."

We reached a small wooded area and Brid pointed out a stream where I could get water. He told me to put up my tent and busied himself with assembling a small campfire for me. The wood was wet so it took a while to catch but there was a cheerful flame going by the time he left. I kept my distance throughout but thanked him profusely.

He just shook his head. "It's been nice to meet you, Tam." He threw his lighter at my feet and walked off.

Day 3

My first experience with people outside the community had been surprisingly positive. I had changed into dry clothes after Brid had left and my wet ones had mostly dried by the fire. I had slept well and decided to see if I could find the dump that Brid had mentioned. It sounded like it would come at the risk of meeting more people but Brid hadn't said anything to indicate that this area was particularly dangerous. I hoped that it wasn't back up north.

I turned my sunphone on. It had survived the rain, although I wasn't too surprised. Kevin had done a wonderful job at making it durable, although even he would have been surprised that it was still alive after all this time. Come to think of it, the manufacturer would have been too; devices like this were normally replaced after a couple of years, and this one was still going decades later.

Seth's family greeted me as I opened up the maps app to work out my route for the day and it didn't take me long to find the city and roundabout that I had passed yesterday. I started to zoom out, looking for any terrain that looked artificial.

There was a large patch of ground which looked like mostly dirt about ten miles south of the city. A rough track was leading up to it and I zoomed in as far as the app would let me. I could just about make out several, much smaller tracks that branched from it, outwards into the dirt. There was a good chance that it could have been a landfill site, the dump that Brid mentioned. I spent a few minutes more looking for anything else that looked promising, then made a mental note of the route I would have to take. I wouldn't be using my sunphone when other people might be nearby.

Soon it was time for me to packed up my tent and I left the campsite shortly afterwards. I was incredibly grateful to Brid for the lighter and it meant that I would be able to start a fire to boil water which would reduce my chances of getting ill if I needed to fill up from a stream again.

It was cloudy and damp but fairly warm out. I hummed as I walked, avoiding the potholes on this stretch of road. It looked like this had once been a dual-carriageway and I pictured cars tearing down it at speeds that I had long forgotten about. It had been a very different world. I ate onions with the last of my bread as I walked today. Perhaps not the most conventional meal, but it would suffice. I'd need to find some way of obtaining carbohydrates after today.

As I walked, I looked for anything edible growing in the hedgerows.

It had passed midday when I finally arrived and the place looked very little how I had imagined it. Old photos had led me to believe that there would be a tall mound of rubbish with seagulls circling overhead. But there wasn't. The site was large, I had known that from my maps app, but half of it was covered by tall, green grass interspersed with wildflowers. I hadn't been expecting that. Nature really could survive anywhere.

The other half looked more like my expectations. The site was being excavated; there was no other way to describe it. People were walking back and forth, some holding shovels, some bending over deep holes that had been dug into the surface. Every now and then, someone would give a triumphant shout and others would race towards them. There would be a loud cheer and more digging would commence. A few decades back I would have been horrified that there were so many children around a place like this. These days it was normal for them to help out as soon as they could.

I'd come this far and I was curious about what was going on. There was a roughly-built hut at the entrance of the site. I hesitated but made my way towards it; I didn't think I was the first visitor they had had but I wouldn't risk leaving my bag unattended around here. I peered in through the doorway.

There was a group of men around a table poring over something that I couldn't make out. They caught sight of me and froze.

"Hello." I gave them a bright smile. It sometimes worked on the traders visiting the community.

"Who are you?"

"I'm travelling south. Do you have any water?" It was a good enough reason.

One of the men stood up. It was dark so I couldn't see him clearly but even in silhouette he looked much bigger and stronger than me.

"What do you want?"

"Water, please." It couldn't be an unusual request, the people working in the dump needed access to water too.

"There's a river a couple of miles west. Anything here is for the workers."

That sounded reasonable. People looked out for their own.

"All right. Thank you."

I walked out of the hut wondering why I'd even come here. Had it been mere curiosity? Was I hoping that I'd be able to find things to trade further down south? I watched the people dig as I headed over to the site entrance. I'd wasted long enough; it was time to get back on the road.

I was stopped by a shout.

"Hey!" I turned to see one of the men from the hut running towards me. "You got anything you want to trade?" He caught up to me, looking out of breath.

"Not really. I'll head westwards and find that river."

He smirked. "We could give you water here for the right price."

"No, it's fine. But thank you for your offer." I turned back towards the road. This man was persistent and was the epitome of everyone I wanted to avoid on this journey.

"Don't be like that. Everyone has something they want to trade. And you won't get far without water." He grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back towards him.

I was becoming alarmed. "I said no, thank you." I wondered if any of the workers would be likely to come to my aid if I were to shout, or whether they lived in fear of this man. His grip tightened on my shoulder and he pushed his face into mine. I was a little taller than him but only just; I could smell alcohol.

He didn't have any time to say anything before I punched him. He certainly hadn't been expecting that, being hit in the face by a wizened 70-year-old. It wasn't very powerful but it made him let go of me. He took a step back, shocked, then gave a mocking grin and made a fist. "You really shouldn't have done that."

I was still undecided. Should I shout for help and hope someone could hear me or run away and hope he wouldn't follow? His face twisted into a leer as he caught my indecision.

I ran. Or rather, I walked off as fast as I could. My bag was heavy but I couldn't leave it behind.

He laughed from somewhere behind me. "You can't run far."

I ignored him and focused on the road. I couldn't afford to twist an ankle in a pothole now. I felt for the knife in my pocket. It was there. Good. And my sunphone was in a different pocket and not in my bag. Even better. I would drop the bag if I absolutely had to.

He stayed behind me. I could hear his footfalls and they weren't getting further away. I was scared and alone. My heart was thumping in my chest and I could feel the adrenaline running through me. Fight or flight? What did he want?

I managed a half-run. I heard him laugh. He kept pace with me easily.

"And now we're all alone." I swore. I'd done what he wanted. I should have run back to the site.

He caught me by surprise with a tackle from behind and I landed flat on my front. My bag weighed me down and I couldn't get back up. Then there was incredible pain as his foot made contact with my head. I rolled into a ball and tried to protect myself with my hands. I felt the bag being pulled off me.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed when I came to but it must have only been minutes. Someone was rolling me over. Gently. And a bottle of water was lifted to my mouth. I stared upwards uncomprehendingly, dazed.

"Can you walk?"

A pair of hands helped me to my feet. I looked up at my rescuer. Rescuers. There were three of them. And a young girl.

There was a horse-drawn wagon nearby, filled with what could only be described as junk. My rescuer led me to it and helped me sit down on the steps. I caught sight of my attacker nearby on the ground, blood running from several cuts on his face and a young man and a woman standing over him.

"How do you feel?" Concern radiated from his dark eyes.

"Sore." My voice had gone. I was croaking. "What happened?"

"We found him going through your bag. We guessed he attacked you."

I nodded. Even that hurt.

"Thank you." I just wanted to rest.

"Is anything broken?"

I tried moving. Everything hurt but it felt like everything was still on one piece. I shook my head.

The girl dragged my bag over to my rescuer and he lifted it into the wagon next to me.

"I think it's all there."

I nodded again. "Thank you."

There was an argument followed by some shouting from behind my rescuer. I tried to look around him but his body blocked my view. I heard a loud thunk followed by a groan.

"You came from the dump, right? We recognised him. We're heading there and then we'll be going south. We can take you somewhere to recover. That alright with you?"

I nodded again and my rescuer smiled. He threw me a blanket.

"Wrap yourself in that and get some rest." So I did. Unconsciousness welcomed me, and I, it.

It was getting dark when I awoke to the sound of hooves plodding along the bumpy road and a hushed conversation somewhere nearby. I reached up and found a bandage around my head. I lay still for a moment wondering where I was and then struggled to sit up. It hurt.

The conversation stopped and the younger man made his way towards me, picking his way carefully between the pieces of junk. His face came into focus and I tried to concentrate on it to stop the world from spinning.

"How are you doing?"

"Not well," I admitted. I was sitting upright with my back against the side of the wagon by this time and had no desire to move again. He knelt down in front of me and reached for the bandage around my head. I tried not to wince as he gently unwound it.

"You took quite a beating," he told me.

I tried not to stare at his scar as he did so but it was hard to miss, reaching from under his left eye and disappearing into his thick beard. I didn't want to ask about it.

I drew in a sharp breath as the bandage pulled against my wound.

The woman joined us and handed him another roll of bandages. I turned my attention to her as the bandages were reapplied but it was hard to make much out in the darkness beyond the fact that she had long hair.

"It looks worse than it is," she told me, handing me a bottle of water. "You were lucky."

I had a big headache and it hurt to breathe. I didn't feel lucky.

My rescuers introduced themselves. Jonathan was the man driving the wagon that I remembered from earlier and Amy and Jake were the couple. The girl was called Sue.

"I'm Tam."

They were traders. They bought junk from the dump, took it to other people in nearby towns to find parts to make repairs, and then sold it on. A lot of what they exchanged wasn't for monetary purposes but for food and clothes too.

They asked where I was headed. I told them what I could about Seth and what I knew about his family and where he lived. And I told them why he had left and why I had to find him. I felt I owed my rescuers that much.

Sue kept me company for the rest of the evening. She talked non-stop about how the dump had worked. I remembered learning about it at school decades ago but it was interesting to see how the world had changed since I had joined the community.

People had thrown out anything and everything when they no longer had use for it, and it inevitably ended up in a landfill site. These were big holes in the ground, perhaps old quarries, which had been modified to prevent contamination of the surrounding area. And then the waste would be added.

Food, machines, wrappers, old clothes, batteries... if people didn't want it, it would be binned and would end up in one of these dumps which were fast becoming full due to an ever-growing population. It was only in the early part of the century when recycling started to take off that the amount of waste started to become manageable.

But landfill had problems. After the sites became full, they were sealed off and efforts were made to make them look presentable, by putting soil over the top and growing grass to cover up what lay beneath. Simple but effective, at least until the contents started to break down. Microbes turned anything organic into waste, so food scraps, excrement, anything that came from a plant or an animal would decompose, producing gases such as methane. And methane was a very nasty greenhouse gas.

So the people had the idea of capturing the gas and using it for fuel instead. It was better than risking an explosion inside the landfill. Except burning methane also released carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, albeit one not quite so nasty.

Jonathan explained that people stopped using landfill sites in the first half of the century. Waste incineration became more popular, partly because people ran out of space to put landfill sites and partly because energy could be recaptured from the heat. Of course, incineration had its own problems with waste material.

My rescuers helped me set up my tent that evening. They spent the night in a tent of their own pitched next to the wagon. I was relieved that I still had my bag and thanked them again profusely. I was reluctant to eat their food but they insisted. I was overwhelmed by their kindness.

I found myself comparing my rescuers to the community. Jonathan was clearly the Joe of the group. He was the leader and made the decisions. He seemed tough but had a kind heart. And Sue, with her naivety, optimism and innocence was clearly another version of Mia. Amy and Jake were a little harder to place but the way they interacted reminded me very much of Seth when he first met Hettie. Despite their tough exterior, it was clear that they cared very much for each other, and very little for the rest of the world. I couldn't begrudge them that. And I wished I had understood Seth better all those years ago.

Day 4

When I woke up the following morning, I wished I hadn't. My body hurt all over after the beating it had taken yesterday and it hurt to move. I tried to stand up. I struggled to my feet, wincing as I did so. This wasn't good; it would be a long time before I was fully recovered and I still had a long way to go.

I leaned against the tree, my eyes closed and taking shallow breaths, wondering what I could have done differently. The obvious answer was to have avoided the dump. It would have saved me several miles of walking and all my injuries. But something told me that if it hadn't happened at the dump then it would only have been a matter of time before I was attacked elsewhere. My next question was what could I do to prevent it happening again.

I wouldn't be able to run like this. I could barely walk. I was in no state to fend off another attack. My best chances were with Jonathan's group, but that wouldn't be my decision. I was worse than useless like this; they didn't need someone like me tagging along and getting in the way.

Jake caught sight of me. The others were already packing up their tent.

"How are you feeling?"

"It hurts." I was feeling rather sorry for myself. Jake gave a lopsided smile.

"That was probably a stupid question." He handed me a cup of hot liquid. "Here, drink this."

I wrapped my hands gratefully around the warm cup and sniffed suspiciously. It smelled familiar. I glanced at him questioningly and he nodded.

"It's willow bark tea. It might help a little."

No painkillers in convenient tablet form these days. But willow bark tea had some similar properties to aspirin. It might help. I drank it down without questioning.

"What's happening today?" I asked. I sensed that they wouldn't just leave me here but that they wouldn't hesitate to do if necessary.

"We're going to head along to some of the nearby towns and trade yesterday's spoils. You're welcome to come as far as we're going."

"I don't know if I can ever repay you."

He gave another lopsided smile. "We're not asking you to."

He helped me pack up my tent and Jonathan insisted that I travel in the wagon again. The rest of them walked, although Sue would often jump in and sit next to me.

"Tell me another story, Tam!"

Amy had told me to tell her if Sue was being troublesome but I found I enjoyed her company and she reminded me of the children back in the community. She was very similar to some of the children there, especially Mia. That said, I was running out of child-friendly stories to tell from my own experiences. I wasn't sure what she had been exposed to but at the very least she would have seen me being attacked and her family stopping my attacker the day before and wasn't sure what her parents would approve of. I also wasn't sure what still existed in the world outside the community and what she would be familiar with. I reverted to some from my childhood instead. It had been a much quieter and safer world back then.

"When I was about your age, I lived near one of the big cities." I told her about the tall skyscrapers and the busy markets that had been nearby and where the best place to buy pastries had been. I told her about the motorways and railways criss-crossing the country and how my family would travel to the seaside every summer where we would spend a week playing on the beach. And I told her about the time I had flown in a plane when I was about her age and what the planet looked like from above the clouds. Sue was a good listener and only asked questions when I had finished.

We stopped by a river mid-morning and Jake and Amy filled up some large containers of water. "We'll be boiling them tonight," Amy told me, "It wouldn't do to get sick."

I caught sight of my reflection in the water and had to stifle a gasp. My grizzled hair looked long and matted, but that was to be expected after so many days on the road. It was my face that frightened me; I could barely recognise myself. Swollen in places, I was covered in cuts and had a black eye. I didn't like to think about what was under the bandages either. I swallowed and stepped back from the water's edge.

I did what I could to help out but I was still too sore and bruised to be able to lift much. Jake told me to sit back in the wagon.

We arrived in a small town in the early afternoon. This place was much like I had imagined towns to be outside the community. It wasn't exactly bustling with activity as it might have been a few decades back, but it looked in much better condition than the town I had passed through at the start of my journey.

Wind turbines sat on most of the roofs. A few were the sleek things I remembered from my youth, but most were rusty, rattling ones like we had back in the community. They could have very easily been put together from scrap metal over the years. A few roofs also housed what I recognised as solar water heaters.

As we travelled through, it was clear that a lot of repair work had taken place over the years, judging by the mismatched tiles on many of the buildings. The town probably would have housed a few thousand people a few decades back. I asked Jonathan what the population of the town was. He shrugged.

"These days it varies. Right now, probably a few hundred."

The population really had been decimated. I'd always thought that the traders had been exaggerating. It was one thing to hear about it but another to see its effects for myself.

I hadn't noticed before but the roads had been well-maintained around the town. The surface wasn't smooth tarmac but any holes had been filled in with dirt or gravel. It made the journey much more comfortable. I supposed that the town was busy enough to make the effort worthwhile.

"Where does this town get its money from?" I asked. The corner of Jonathan's mouth twitched.

"It's a trading town. Lots of people pass through here and the dump isn't far away so there's always good business." "Business for what?"

"All sorts. There are people here who specialise in tech from the old world. Every trading town will have people like that. Others are good at turning waste materials into usable ones. And then there's the livestock trading, although most of that is further down south."

"Where does the food come from? How do all these people eat? And drink?" I hadn't recalled passing any farmland on the way in.

"Again, more trading. The land further south is much more plentiful so lots of food gets grown down there and is brought back up here." He pre-empted my next question. "Most of it gets dried first. That makes it lighter and easier to carry, and it lasts for a lot longer." That made sense.

"And water?"

"Wells, mainly. Lots of these wind turbines will be able to pump it out of the ground. This place is small enough to sustain that way. And there's that river we passed if more water is needed for anything."

"But what about the dump? Doesn't anything get into the water from there?"

Jonathan shrugged. "It shouldn't do, but who can say? This place is pretty luxurious compared to a lot of the country and people won't complain if the water tastes a bit odd after having lived in far worse places."

I dropped the subject but resolved to avoid drinking water until we were much further away from the dump.

We passed other traders in the town. Most of them waved at Jonathan and asked how he was doing; they clearly recognised him. I stayed in the wagon. It had been a long time since I had seen so many other people and it made me nervous.

We stopped outside several places as we passed through and I watched as Jake disappeared inside laden with bags from the wagon before coming out empty-handed but looking rather cheerful and patting his pockets.

Finally we stopped outside what had once been a school. Jake offered to stay with the wagon while Jonathan passed several bags to Amy on the ground. Sue sat next to Jake. I hovered, unsure of what to do but Amy noticed my hesitation.

"Come inside and have a look," she invited. So I joined them on the ground and Jonathan passed me a bag. We headed in.

It was certainly no longer a school. What had once been the playground had been pulled up and replaced by rows upon rows of allotments. Some potato plants were already growing happily in the middle, along with what looked like runner beans up the side of one of the buildings. I could see carrots and tomatoes along with something that I didn't recognise but which looked like some kind of berry. I stopped to examine it.

In the community we always worried about food theft. It was another reason why we didn't like visitors. These crops would be very easy to steal at harvest time.

"How do they stop people taking the food?"

"Honesty, mostly." Amy had joined me. "And a bit of self-preservation. If someone steals then people won't trade with them. This place is busy enough that the townsfolk can survive without one or two traders."

"And people tend to carry weapons around too." Jonathan had walked over. "We have to. Too many raiders around." These days the very mention of raiders was enough to fill anyone in the community with terror. I wondered what it was like to meet them on the road without people around to help.

"Do you see raiders often?"

"A few. That's why we carry weapons." Jonathan's face had darkened and he turned away. I didn't ask any more questions. Amy shot me a look that I couldn't read and I followed them into the building.

It was dark inside but Jonathan led us through a set of doors that opened into a large, much brighter room. The furniture could very easily have been from when this place was still a school, with plastic chairs and folding tables laid out neatly. Men and women were working quietly, the tables covered in piles of electronics and pieces of plastic. Jonathan's gaze swept the room before landing on a woman sitting at a table at the back of the room who was watching us with beady eyes. Jonathan waved and we walked towards her.

She looked about my age with silver hair, liver-spotted skin and astonishingly piercing brown eyes. She was wearing a plain shawl and a scruffy shirt like so many of the others were.

"Welcome back, Jonathan." Her voice was thin and reedy but carried across the room. I didn't doubt that everyone had heard, although no-one paid us much attention. "You have a new companion. Who might this be?"

I held out my hand. "I'm Tam."

She shook it. "Lucy. You look like you've been in the wars."

"That's George's work," Jonathan broke in. "By the dump. He did it again."

George? Jonathan knew my attacker?

"My, that look nasty." She eyed me again. "Do you need anything?"

I wasn't sure how to respond. I certainly wasn't a medical professional but I'd hoped I'd be alright after a few weeks to recover.

"We did what we could. If there's a doctor around though..." Amy broke in.

Lucy nodded and beckoned to the woman on the table next to her. They had a brief but hushed exchange of words and the woman disappeared into one of the back rooms. Lucy shifted her attention back to Jonathan with an eager smile.

"And what have you brought me today?" She shifted some of her circuit boards to the side and looked at him expectantly.

The corners of Jonathan's mouth twitched. He lifted one of the bags onto the table and pulled it open. Lucy reached inside and lifted out an old smartphone from a few decades back.

"Very nice," she told him, "But these were very common in the old world."

"There are more in the bag."

Lucy pulled out several more phones, all of different makes, shapes and sizes. At the tenth one I stifled a gasp. It looked like the same model as my sunphone, albeit without all of Kevin's modifications.

Lucy missed nothing, of course. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"I had one of those," I offered lamely. I wasn't going to mentioned that it was still in my possession and still in fully working order.

"I see." She said no more but started examining the phones, prying off the covers and peering inside with a magnifying glass. "You might as well take a seat," she added.

We watched her disassemble the phones one by one, make notes in a notebook, and then put them back together again. Periodically she would call one of the other people over, rip out a page from her notebook and pass it to them.

After about half an hour, a young man joined us. He walked towards us.

Lucy didn't look up. "Tam, this is the doctor. You can use the room next door."

The man held out a hand and offered a half-smile. Amy gently pushed me towards him.

"We'll wait here."

I shook the proffered hand and followed him out of the room.

The room next door was much darker but the doctor flicked the switch as he entered. I was amazed when the light came on; I hadn't seen such a thing for decades.

The doctor had seen my expression.

"You must be from out in the countryside?" he asked. "We have our own electric grid here using the energy from the wind turbines."

"It's been a long time since I've seen anything like this," I told him. "I've been living a rather isolated existence for the past few decades."

"Until recently, it seems. Do you mind if I have a look?" He gestured to my bandages.

"Go ahead."

He started to unwind them. "I should mention that I'm not officially a doctor. That's just what I get called around here."

"I guessed as much." With food shortages, disease and people fleeing cities, education had been less important than survival. In the community we had done what we could to educate the children, but it wasn't the same as the education I had received. I guessed that this doctor had had a similar set of teachers.

He winced sympathetically as the bandages were removed. "That looks nasty. Have you broken anything?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"The cuts don't look too deep. I have some ointment that you can put on them but there's not much more that I can do. I'll replace the bandages too."

I sat still while he finished.

"How did you become a doctor?" I wondered.

"I always liked helping people. I grew up in a small farming community where one of the other residents had been a doctor and she taught me everything I know. A lot of medicine from the old world can't be used. I don't have access to the drugs that she had had but we've been able to find alternatives for some of them. It's not the same but we do what we can."

It sounded like a similar situation to what we had in the community. We knew about keeping clean and had learnt about herbs to use through memory and trial and error. Disease was best prevented as cures became increasingly harder to obtain.

I thanked him when he had finished and he led me back to the others. I sat down next to Amy and watched Lucy work.

She glanced at me once or twice, always with an unreadable expression. At last she stood up and handed Jonathan a piece of paper. He took it without looking at it and put it in his pocket.

"It's always nice doing business with you." He held his hand out to her. She took it in her much smaller ones and clasped it.

"I hope I'll see you again soon, Jonathan. You always bring me such interesting things."

Amy and I got to out feet too. We followed Jonathan outside and joined up with Jake and Sue. Jonathan pulled the paper out of his pocket. He blinked at it.

"Well, that's a surprise."

Jake peered over his shoulder. "That's far more than I was expecting. What did you do?"

Amy was looking at the paper too. She laughed. "I think we have Tam to thank for this."

"What did I do?"

"Lucy prices everything based on its condition and how common it used to be in the old world. That's why she's the expert here: she was there while most of it was being made. Most of the good stuff was around long before we were born so we can't argue with her, but I bet she looked at you and decided to play it safe. She doesn't want to lose her reputation around here."

Jonathan cracked a smile and slapped me on the back. I managed to not flinch.

"Good work, Tam. We need to keep you around."

We stopped at a couple more places before Jonathan announced that we would be spending the night in the town. There was an inn on the outskirts that we would be staying in.

It was warm inside and there were electric lights. The innkeeper provided us with food. I wasn't sure what was in it, but I didn't care. We were occasionally greeted by people who knew Jonathan but we ate in silence for the most part. There was something I needed to ask, however.

"Who's George?"

The atmosphere around the table instantly changed. Jake glanced at Jonathan and then turned to me.

"He's my uncle."

"And my brother," Jonathan added. "He didn't always used to be like that."

I was confused. "You seem very different," I ventured. I didn't want to be rude.

"We chose different paths. We used to be partners and it was many years before he started working at the dump. It's once reason why we get such good deals there. Unfortunately he turned to drink. The hard stuff is difficult to get hold of but if he thinks that someone might have some and is any easy target he'll do what he can for alcohol or anything that can be traded for it." Jonathan looked dour. "He's pretty strong and as stubborn as anything. You were unfortunate."

"He's done that before."

"Yes." He didn't elaborate.

"But why hasn't anyone stopped him?"

"He's strong and well-connected. People are scared. Even I'm scared when he's in the wrong mood. But he's never done anything to me."

"And he doesn't like being bested," Amy added sombrely. "I'd try to avoid him in future."

I had a room to myself and was told that Jonathan would wake us up in the morning if we weren't already up by then.

The inn had power sockets but I wasn't sure if they would work. Still, I could run my sunphone from the electric light. It had been a few days since I had turned it on.

I spent some time updating my journal with the events from the last few days. And I worked out where I was on the map. I still had a long way to go.

Day 5

I woke up to the sound of rain on the glass and lay still. It was only just starting to get light so we wouldn't be leaving for another hour or so. I stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the luxury of lying in a bed again. It was far more comfortable than the ground and it helped my injuries.

I had taken a shower the previous night to help my aches and I couldn't remember the last time I had stood under clean, warm, running water. We had usually bathed in the river back in the community. Downstream from where we drank from, of course. And in winter we would heat water over the fire. We used energy from the wind to pump water out of the river, but that mostly went on the crops. It was far easier to take ourselves to the river rather than moving the river to us. The community would benefit no end from the technology in this town, I was sure of that. I wondered how we had managed to stay so isolated after all this time. Not that isolation was bad.

Moving was still painful. I turned to watch the world outside the window, ignoring the ache in my neck as I did so. It was quieter at this hour than in the community. There was much less birdsong here. I found I missed it.

The dreary grey of dawn began to turn into gold. I rolled out of bed, wincing as I did so; I was still a long way from recovered after George's attack. I dressed slowly, wondering what to make of him. How did he and Jonathan end up so different? I worried for my companions' safety next time they visited the dump.

I met the others downstairs for breakfast. Sue still looked half asleep as she slowly ate a hard-boiled egg. The others were drinking some kind of tea. I helped myself to an egg and some bread.

"We'll be travelling through the next few towns today and tomorrow," Jake announced. "We have more to sell."

Breakfast was plain but filling. We ate in silence for the most part, with Jonathan telling stories of the old world to Sue to keep her distracted. The old world. The world I had grown up in.

And all too soon it was time to get back to the road. The innkeeper approached Jonathan to exchange a few words as we were leaving and I watched as Jonathan pulled out the piece of paper from Lucy and handed it over. I was surprised when the innkeeper pulled out an old phone from his pocket. It looked as clunky as mine but without the solar panel and I wondered where he had got it from. After looking over the piece of paper, the innkeeper entered something on the phone and passed Jonathan a small bag.

"That's our payment from Lucy," Jake told me.

"Minus the food and the accommodation," Jonathan added.

I watched Jake and Amy harness the horse to the wagon. They had refused all offers of help and I could guess why; they worked together like a well-oiled machine, as we used to say. Or maybe it was just out of politeness.

And then we were back on the road. I watched the houses become dirtier and more dilapidated as we began to move out of centre of the town, until at last we were alone on the roads again. The road surface also became noticeably rougher the further we travelled.

I took the opportunity to ask about the innkeeper's phone. Were phones common these days?

"Not exactly common, but many people do have them. They're not really used as phones these days though," Amy said.

Satellite usage had become expensive decades ago, I knew that. Money had become scarce and was being spent on food production. This meant that satellite maintenance had become underfunded and last I had heard, fewer satellites were being launched to replace older ones, although my knowledge was a few decades out of date. This meant that the remaining satellites had to deal with more traffic.

"What do people use phones for these days?"

"All sorts. There are still powerful computers inside those phones. There's the net, and they're good as organisers and calculators."

"The net?"

"It's an internet of sorts which people can connect to."

"There's still the internet?" I was surprised. I hadn't been able to connect to the internet for decades.

"Oh yes. It's not like it was when I was younger though. It's more like a series of small networks around towns with the occasional larger jump between towns. It's slow over large distances and not terribly reliable as the cables often break."

I was stunned. I'd tried contacting Seth periodically over the last few decades but hadn't been able to get any connection. And now Jonathan was saying that it might have been possible after all. I felt like I should have tried harder.

"Do you have a phone?" I was curious. After all, it seemed that Jonathan often dealt with them.

"Not anymore. I used to. It lasted a long time but I do without these days. I don't need one."

I entertained Sue with more stories as we travelled. She sat on Amy's lap today, asking questions as I told her about my childhood. She seemed fascinated with my experiences of school. I found it sad that Sue would never have the same opportunities that I had had. Would she spend the rest of her life on the road as a trader?

And I wondered what sort of childhood Seth's children had had. Would Seth have passed on everything he knew to them?

There would be a lot of travelling that day and we had a lot of ground to cover. I wasn't complaining; a longer journey would bring me closer to Seth. The wagon passed fields and forests and we met other travellers who would often exchange a few words with us. The sun was warm and it was a glorious day.

It was mid-morning by the time we arrived at the next town. This one didn't seem to be in such a good state of repair but had the same wind generators installed on as many roofs as possible.

"Will this place have electricity too?"

Amy gave me a strange look. "Of course." I wondered what she would have made of the community.

Like yesterday, we stopped off outside various buildings. Jake would disappear inside while we waited, and then we would continue.

"He's enquiring about prices and gauging demand," Amy told me. I hadn't asked but she must have seen my curiosity. "We don't have to sell here and we have our favourite merchants."

"What's inside these places?" I asked.

"Repairers, mostly. They turn what we bring into useful items."

While we waited, we spotted some children playing by the side of the road outside what might have been an old post office. Sue jumped off the wagon and ran over to join them. I imagined that life was especially lonely for Sue, always travelling and unable to make any meaningful friendships with people her own age.

Jake came back looking grim.

"Raiders," he announced. "A couple of days ahead of us. They've been this way."

"What did they do?" Amy had turned pale.

Jake waved his hand in the direction we were heading.

"Apparently it's bad through there. There was a lot of violence this time and several were badly injured." He kicked the side of the wagon.

"What do we do?" I asked. Jake looked at me.

"This changes nothing for us. We're fine as long as we stay behind them." He gave a lopsided grin. "We might even do better business than normal. The raiders will have taken as much as they could carry." His face returned to anger immediately afterwards.

Sue wanted to keep playing with her new friends so Amy stayed behind to watch her, agreeing upon a place to meet up with us later. We travelled towards the centre of the town.

It wasn't long before we saw the damage. Several houses had burnt down, their charred remains still smoking. Other places nearby had had their windows smashed.

"It's horrific," Jake said. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to himself.

"What were they after?" I asked.

Jake didn't answer immediately, he kept his eyes on the road.

"The usual, I expect," he replied eventually. "Food, water, clothes, electronics, building materials... They don't care about the rest of us. They take what they want and let everyone suffer. And the few who get in the way or stand up to them get hurt." He glanced at Jonathan who was sitting in the back of the wagon and who had, now I thought about it, been uncharacteristically quiet. "Are you alright back there?"

Jonathan grunted.

There was noticeable unease in the atmosphere so I offered to go with Jake the next time we stopped. We ended up in a dingy room lit by a yellow, flickering bulb with several women sewing nearby. I kept quiet while he offered sympathies for the town's loss and asked if anyone was in the market for replacements. There didn't seem to be a spokesperson in the room and the women took it in turns to give short, hushed answers to his questions.

Jake gave a rundown of what we were carrying in the wagon and asked if anyone knew who might be willing to buy. Several ears had pricked up at the mention of an old sewing machine and we were given directions to another part of town. We left after more pleasantries.

"We don't sell to them directly," Jake explained as we left. "It's not how most of these places work. We sell to the merchants - people who know what they're buying and who sell it on."

"That system seems open to abuse," I remarked.

"Sure it is. There's a lot of good stuff still around and a lot more bad stuff that passes as the good stuff. I'm sure it was different back in your day, in the old world, but that's how it is now. Most people don't have a lot of education so anyone with a bit of knowledge can make a good living. It's sad but true."

"How can anyone think that's fair though?"

"On the whole, it works out well for us traders. We have to sell at good prices. And the people buying don't have to buy from the same merchant so if they get cheated then they'll go elsewhere. And the merchant takes a cut."

I processed this.

"How did it work with Lucy? She set the price and the innkeeper paid you."

Jake laughed. "We know Lucy well. We've been trading with her for years. She gets us better prices than anywhere else around here when it comes to electronics. And the innkeeper is her son. We've known the family for a long time, that's how they do business."

"I see." That made some kind of sense. It was completely different from how the community worked but I'd been away from the world for too long to be able to judge.

Jake stopped just inside the door. "There's something you should know. My mother was killed in a raid and my father never really got over it. He's probably not going to be the best company for the next few towns."

I felt my eyes widen. "I'm so sorry."

Jake turned away. "Don't be. It's not your fault. And I was too young to remember her well."

Jonathan looked sullen as we rejoined him but he brightened up when Jake told him about a potential buyer for a sewing machine. Jake drove the wagon onwards.

I accompanied Jake during the sale. He had insisted and I was more than willing to follow him. As well as the sewing machine, he had also brought in a cracked breadmaker along with a kettle, heaters, and other appliances. The merchant hadn't recognised the breadmaker but seemed especially interested when I explained what it was, and insisted upon a closer inspection.

I wasn't sure that any of the appliances would work but Jake had sounded sure that they could all be repaired easily. All in all, we left considerably richer and Jake looked rather smug.

"Tam did an excellent job in there," he told Jonathan as we were leaving. "That merchant had no idea what that box was. Turns out that it was a breadmaker." Jonathan cracked a smile at that.

We met up with Amy and Sue a few streets later. Sue had fallen over and cut herself on something sharp.

"We'd better wash that," Jake told her. Sue had clearly been crying but she let Jake pick her up and sit her on the wagon steps. He took out some of the drinking water and carefully washed her knee making sure that there was no dirt left in the wound and then he bandaged it carefully, joking about it the whole time. Sue was soon laughing, any pain of falling over soon forgotten.

"Jake loves her so much, he'd do anything for her," Jonathan remarked wryly.

"We all would," Amy told him. Jonathan didn't deny it.

We spent most of the afternoon driving from building to building around the town, Jake lifting off bags and crates only for Amy and Jonathan to replace them with new ones. I helped out as much as my injuries and my companions would allow.

It only felt like a couple of hours later when we finished. I was surprised to find that it was getting dark and I wondered where the day had gone. We had planned to get to the next town before stopping for the night but with raiders nearby we didn't want to risk travelling in the dark. We stopped at another inn instead.

Amy had asked the innkeeper which direction the raiders had headed in. The news was greeted with grim faces; it looked like we would be following them again. The innkeeper had told us that the raiders had brought the net down during the raid but that the town had managed to get it back up again. A message had gone out warning the nearby towns about the raiders.

"At least they'll get more notice than we had."

As far as the innkeeper knew, the injured were still exactly that: injured but not dead. It was some reassurance.

Day 6

I woke up to rain again. I lay listening to the sound of the raindrops drumming on the window while I enjoyed the luxury of once again lying in a large, clean bed. I was glad that I wouldn't be travelling alone on a day like today.

As I dressed, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My black eye was no longer a dark red but was starting to return to its normal colour although some parts were turning an interesting shade of yellow. At least it was well on the way to healing. I still ached in many places but two nights of sleeping in a bed had certainly helped. I did wonder if I would have been able to get up if I had been sleeping in my tent.

I wasn't sure if it was due to the journey, but I found I missed the community badly and I wished that I had said goodbye after all. I felt especially sad when I thought of the children. Who would be teaching them now?

With hindsight it had been our isolation and luck that had kept the raiders away. We were further from other settlements, and perhaps that had protected us far more than I had ever guessed. We had little of value to steal compared to these towns with their thriving markets and industries.

We had managed to get a lot of things right in the community. We knew and trusted and supported each other. We had everything we needed. But life in these towns was so different. The infrastructure bore little resemblance to that from the old world but these towns ran off the wind and had luxuries that we had never had in the community. Even if most of them seemed to have come from the dump and were the waste products of a life I had once known.

There was something that felt odd about this place but I couldn't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the way that these towns were so much bigger than I was used to. People couldn't know each other half as well as we did in the community. It felt lonely here, despite the larger number of people.

I was one of the first downstairs this morning and I was joined by the innkeeper while I ate. He was an older man, maybe only a decade or so younger than me, and seemed so weary. I tried talking to him but he wasn't interested in conversation so I spent some time getting to know some of the other traders who had also stayed the night.

Judging by their enthusiasm, it seemed that this was a popular place to stay. I commented as much to one of them. She shrugged in response.

"Sure. It's cheap and the food's not bad. There's not much to complain about here."

"Except the raiders," broke in another, to general agreement.

"Forget the raiders. They've gone and it will be weeks before they're back."

I frowned. "Isn't there anything that can be done about them?" This was met with general laughter.

"Done about them?" one woman snorted, "Of course not. They'll kill you before you even think about it. And someone of your years ought not to go anywhere near them." There was more laughter.

This stung. I was fit and healthy after years of hard labour, not counting my recent encounter with George. So I did what any older person might have done in my situation and retreated into a dignified silence. The conversation eventually returned to more mundane matters, such as the price of chickens.

Jake, Amy and Sue had joined me by this point and were helping themselves to food.

"Jonathan won't be joining us just yet," Amy announced by way of a greeting. "We'll meet him at the wagon."

"Is he alright?"

"Yeah. This happens whenever we cross paths with raiders. He'll be back to normal as soon as we've lost them."

I helped Sue pour herself a glass of milk. She smiled at me.

"Why do they do this?"

Amy raised an eyebrow. "Raiders? Because they can. And because they have to. They don't know any other way of life and they'll starve without stealing from others. They probably enjoy it too."

"I'm guessing you don't have police anymore?"

Jake shook his head. "Nothing organised. You'll get some places with self-appointed enforcers. Other places just swallow their losses."

"Like here."

"Like here," he agreed.

"In the world I grew up in, we liked to think of ourselves as enlightened beings, far too educated to think about fighting each other. We weren't, of course. There was a lot of violence, especially in the big cities and the violence spread throughout the Great Riots. But stealing from each other as a way of life was almost unheard of."

"It's a different world," Amy said simply.

"It was unsustainable," I added. "We were living the way that our parents had lived, like their parents had lived, back through generations. We were using up resources faster than we could replace them. We didn't realise the problem at the time, and when we did we were too slow fixing it. We paid the price. The world now seems much less wasteful in that sense."

I considered. Maybe it was no better now. The coal mines must still exist. Maybe there were people digging black gold out of the ground even now so that they would have fuel. Without any rules or authorities to restrict such activities, the situation from decades ago wouldn't have a chance to recover. And arguably, who could blame such people? Everyone did what they could to survive. And with the world like this, knowledge was being lost as the older generations passed on. And the cycle would start again.

I suddenly didn't feel quite so hungry anymore.

We met Jonathan at the wagon. His mood was as bleak as the weather and he scowled at us as we greeted him. Jake passed him half a loaf of bread which he took without saying anything. We set off into the pouring rain, huddled under blankets in the shelter of the canopy.

"Where are we heading now?" I asked.

Jake looked back at me from the driver's seat.

"There's a small village a little further up. We've got some generator bits that we think they could make use of."

"What kind of generator?"

"Wind. It's not completely reliable but wind is free. Their generator broke when we were last passing through so we should be able to see these parts go, unless someone else got there first."

We continued in silence for an hour or so, just watching the world go by. Sue fell asleep against me and started snoring gently. I was surprised at how quickly she had accepted me as part of the group.

We passed a wind turbine as we travelled over the crest of a hill. This wasn't one of the small ones on a roof but one of the big ones that must have been at least a hundred metres from the ground to the top of the blade.

Up close, it was nowhere near as noisy as I might have been expecting. There was a bit of a swoosh as the blades passed by, and that was all. It was rather awe-inspiring to be in the presence of something so large.

"It generates enough power for the two nearest towns," Jake told me. "They keep it in good condition."

Sue had woken up and didn't look happy. She had buried her face in her mother's side and Amy had placed a protective arm around her. Amy noticed my concern and laughed.

"Sue doesn't like it. It's too big for her."

Sue whimpered and squirmed closer to Amy. I blinked.

"That's alright, Sue. I used to be scared of street lamps. They were too tall for me."

She emerged from under Amy's arm.

"Street lamps aren't scary."

"I know. It took me a long time to realise that though."

"Wind turbines are good," Jake broke in. "They give us energy." It sounded like he'd told her that many times before.

"I know. But they're still scary." Sue disappeared under Amy's arm again.

It had gone midday before we approached the village. Jonathan cautioned me to stay in the wagon.

"They don't like visitors," he warned.

The wagon trundled down a narrow lane for a couple of miles before widening into a clearing. I peered out. The track continued further into a forest, wide enough for the wagon, so I was surprised when we stopped and Jonathan and Jake climbed out. I followed them. Fortunately the rain had slowed to a drizzle.

"They'll have heard us by now," Jonathan murmured. "This wagon isn't the quietest way to travel."

I looked around. Sure enough, there was a group of people starting to emerge from the forest. My eyesight wasn't as good as it used to be but I was fairly sure a couple of them had crossbows levelled at us.

"Don't worry," Jonathan added quietly. "This is normal. No sudden movements." He raised his hands in the air. Jake and I copied him.

One person stepped forward from the group and walked towards us. She stopped about twenty metres away.

"Jonathan and Jake! It's good to see you again. And a newcomer too." Her voice wasn't loud but it carried through the clearing and we could hear her well enough.

"It's good to see you too, Marnie. It's been a while."

"Are you all well?"

"As well as can be expected. We've heard there are raiders around. Have they given you any trouble?"

Marnie shook her head. "We haven't seen any raiders for a while. Were you attacked?"

"Not us. But they're a couple of days ahead of us and caused some damage a few miles back."

As Jonathan and Marnie spoke, one of the group caught my attention. He was a young child, probably about the age of Sue, peering out from between the legs of the adults in the group. One of them bent down and spoke to him but he shook his head. Probably telling him to go back to wherever the rest of their community was.

"This is Tam," Jonathan's voice caught my attention.

"Pleased to meet you," I called to Marnie. She nodded graciously.

"I apologise for not coming any closer, Tam. We prefer to remain isolated here."

"I understand." And I did. This place was like the community I had come from. We had rules like these for a reason and we took what precautions we could to protect ourselves. We had never had crossbows, however. I wondered if they had ever been used.

As Jonathan negotiated a price for the generator pieces, I helped Jake carry them out of the wagon and over to one side of the clearing. Jonathan stopped Jake as he was carrying over a particular piece and held it up in the air, turning it around so that Marnie could see it from a distance. She nodded.

Afterwards one of the villagers placed a small sack on the other side of the clearing before retreating back to the group. Jake collected it.

"Nice doing business with you, Marnie. Is there anything else you'd like us to keep our eyes open for?"

"Solar panels," she called, laughing. "Any kind."

Jake pushed me towards the wagon. I climbed in as Jonathan bade the villagers farewell. He joined us shortly afterwards. I stayed silent as the wagon turned around and we headed back the way we had come, down the narrow lane.

"Well?" I looked up at Amy. "What did you make of that? That must have been an odd experience."

"It was similar to what we do at the community. Traders don't often visit but we have to take precautions similar to here. There's no direct contact with the visitor so there's less risk of catching something."

"I see."

"Do you go there often?" I wondered.

"Usually whenever we pass by. They make good honey." Jake nodded towards the sack that he had brought in. Sue turned towards it eagerly. "Later, Sue. Not now."

"Do you have any idea how many live there?" I asked. "Is it a big village?"

"Probably around thirty or so," Jonathan called from the front of the wagon. "But we've never been any closer than that clearing so it's hard to tell."

Despite our eagerness to reach the next town, we set up camp in a field instead. We would have arrived long after dark and we weren't sure where the raiders were so we decided to play it safe. I was sure I would be rather sore the next morning after having slept on beds the previous two nights but at least I wouldn't have to feel guilty about living off money that wasn't mine.

We made a campfire and cooked stew. We kept it small in case the raiders were nearby; we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves easily out here. After we had eaten, it was still light enough to power my sunphone for a while. I estimated our location and managed a description of about half the day for the journal before the light became too dim to continue.

Day 7

We left at dawn. I hadn't slept well after having spent the previous night in a comfortable bed at an inn. I still ached everywhere and I had struggled to stand up. Jonathan had looked concerned and helped me to the wagon while he packed up my tent himself. He wouldn't accept an apology. "It's not your fault," he told me. I was glad he was so accepting but somehow that made me feel worse. Age seemed to be catching up to me these days.

We were sitting under blankets in the wagon again. It wasn't raining this morning but the air was chilly.

"Why do we have dragon breath this morning?" Sue asked me.

Dragon breath?

"She's wondering why we can see our breath," Jake translated.

Oh.

"It's because it's really cold this morning," I told her. "The air outside is colder than we are so the water in our breath is turning back into liquid water."

"But why?"

"You know how water can turn into ice when it's cold? And you know how when you boil water, it evaporates?" Sue nodded. "You've got lots of water inside you. When you breathe in, the air goes inside you and warms up. And because there's water inside you, when you breathe out again, some of the water ends up in your breath."

"But why do we breathe like dragons?"

"Have you seen condensation on windows?" Sue nodded again. "It's like that. The air we breathe out has lots of water in it and when it meets the air outside it cools down. So the water vapour in the air stops being in the air and starts becoming liquid water again. If it's cold enough outside, it might even become ice."

"Can we do that today?"

"What do you think? Is it cold enough for ice today?"

Sue considered and then shook her head. "I don't think so."

Jake laughed quietly.

Sue asked me lots of questions after that. She wanted to know the highest number I could count to and then gave me some (rather easy) maths questions. Apparently being about to add ten to a million made me a genius. But she was especially interested in the science of the world around us. She wanted to know why birds could fly and why snakes didn't have feet. She asked me why rain fell downwards but why the moon could always stay up in the sky. And she wanted to know how fast the fastest human being had ever gone.

I'll admit that I wasn't too sure about the last one. I guessed that it was either on board an aeroplane or a rocket. Sue didn't seem to mind.

"I'm going to go faster than that when I grow up," she told us proudly while I tried not to compare the speed of our horse-drawn wagon against the speed of a car on a motorway. Life moved at a very different pace here compared to my childhood.

It was only a little while later that Jonathan brought the wagon to a sudden stop and we all peered out. He pointed at the ground where the muddy surface was covered in fresh horseshoe prints.

"Look at that," he said.

"Raiders?" I asked.

"We don't know for certain," Jake added cautiously.

"We'd be crazy to follow them so closely," Jonathan told him.

Jake considered. "There's a turning in about half a mile. Whichever way they went, we can go the other." Jonathan opened his mouth. "What's the alternative?"

"We backtrack and find another route."

Jake shook his head. "We haven't passed another one for miles. It will be a long detour."

"Safety is more important than time." They glared at each other.

Meanwhile, Amy was bending down to examine the prints.

"They're full of water and it hasn't rained since last night, so the prints must be at least half a day old. I reckon we're safe to keep going."

"We don't know if the raiders have stopped," Jonathan snapped. "We're far too close to them."

She shrugged. "What do you think, Tam?"

I shook my head. "Sorry. You're more familiar with them and the area than I am."

"Let's go on," Jake told Jonathan gently. "It's only half a mile." Jonathan shook his head wearily and handed Jake the reins. He climbed into the back of the wagon and sat down without a word.

We travelled cautiously, listening for the sound of horses or anything that might have suggested the presence of raiders. Jonathan had his eyes closed and looked rather ill. I didn't know what to say.

At last Jake brought the wagon to a halt and stepped out. "We're at the turning."

Jonathan and I joined him on the ground.

"Which way did they go?" I asked.

It was just our luck that the road surface here was still in reasonable condition after having travelled over some very rough stretches. It made tracking much more difficult.

"The nearest town is that way," Jonathan told us, gesturing to the left. "But there's a river this way that would have been good to spend the night nearby."

"They'll have gone to the town," Jake decided. "It's what they do."

"They don't need to pillage every town," Jonathan chided him, but he climbed back into the wagon and let Jake take the reins without complaint.

I joined Jonathan in the wagon. He had his eyes closed.

"Are you alright?"

He opened an eye to look at me and then shut it again. "I hate raiders."

We stopped by the river for a break. Amy had been concerned that because we weren't heading towards the town, we wouldn't be able to sell some of the junk. Jonathan hadn't looked too worried.

"We'll find somewhere else. We always do."

The day had warmed up considerably and Sue had gone down to the river to go paddling. It wasn't too deep or fast-moving so we watched her from the bank.

"It's peaceful here," I decided.

"Tell us about Seth," Jake said. "What were you two like as children?"

I laughed at that.

"We fought a lot when we were young. He was much older than me and I was small and kept getting in his way. But we became much closer after our parents died. We ran a farm by ourselves for a few years and grew everything we needed. It wasn't easy but it brought us together."

"You ran a farm by yourselves? How old were you?"

"Thirteen. It's not as bad as it sounds. We didn't have enough fuel to run any heavy machinery so we weren't in any danger." Except Jake would have had little access to any kind of farming machinery, let alone fuel, during his life. He wouldn't have been able to appreciate how convenient machines could be, and yet how dangerous they were.

He whistled. "That's young." I knew he was thinking of Sue.

"It's not something my parents would have had to have done," I agreed. "But it was necessary, and we learned a lot of useful skills."

Sue returned. I hadn't noticed.

"Look what I found!" She was holding something in her hands.

"What is it?" Amy turned to her.

Sue showed us.

"It's a bee and it's ill."

It wasn't a bee.

"Let's put it on the ground, Sue." Jake told her calmly. Sue did as he told her and looked at him expectantly.

"Can you make it better?"

"That's not a bee, Sue. That's a hornet. They're not very nice."

"But it's yellow and black and it went buzz."

"So do wasps. Hornets are big wasps and they're not very nice."

While Jake talked to Sue I pulled Jonathan to the side. "Do you get many of those around here?"

"A few. They're common in the south."

"Those aren't native. I didn't realise it had become so bad."

"Tam?"

"I'll explain later." Sue was looking at us.

It was after we had set off that I did my best to explain about the hornets to Sue. They originated from much warmer climates and it used to be too cold for them to survive in this country. As temperatures started to rise, they slowly migrated northwards, feeding on the local wildlife and decimating bee populations.

"Bees are good, aren't they?" Sue interjected.

"Very," I told her. "They pollinate the flowers so that we can eat fruit and vegetables." I was surprised that we hadn't seen any hornets in the community. Maybe we hadn't been looking carefully enough.

I hadn't truly appreciated how much warmer the world had become.

We ended up travelling for most of the day again. We passed through a deserted town. This one hadn't been preserved in the same way that the first town I had passed through had been. Raiders had been this way a long time ago. Or maybe looters.

Windows had been smashed, houses had been burnt down, doors had been pulled off their hinges. It was terrible to see. Nature had probably been taking over for decades at this point but the violence in this town's past was still evident. We were quiet.

"We've been this way before," Jonathan broke the silence. "It never fails to have this effect on me."

We walked onwards. It was quiet here. Too quiet, almost. These had once been homes that had housed families but now just held remnants of long-forgotten times.

There was a scuffling sound behind us. I stopped and turned sharply. The others did the same. It took me a few seconds to locate the source of the movement.

A dog stood in the doorway of one of the houses, its eyes glinting in the light. A long time ago I would have thought it was cute, but we were here on its territory and were a potential source of food for it. And where there was one dog, there were probably many more nearby.

Sure enough, several of its companions emerged from the doorway behind it as it stalked towards us. I held my breath.

They didn't have glossy coats like the ones we had had in the community, but nor did they look starving or rabid. I hoped that they were merely curious and would pass up the opportunity for a snack.

Jake leaned towards Sue.

"I want you to be very quiet, Sue. It's very important that we don't scare these dogs."

She reached towards him and hugged his leg, burying her face against his side. Jake put a hand on her shoulder.

Amy nudged me. "Don't stare at them," she hissed. "It's a sign of aggression."

I hadn't realised I was staring. I quickly dropped my gaze.

Jake picked Sue up in his arms, keeping himself between her and the dogs and making sure his body blocked them from her sight.

We didn't move.

The dogs approached us. They sniffed us curiously. Then they dropped back, seeming to lose interest.

The horse chose that moment to whinny. It had caught sight of the animals and looked decidedly nervous. The dogs' attention instantly shifted towards it, and they growled, baring their teeth. The horse stamped its hooves nervously on the ground.

"Get Sue in the wagon," Jonathan told Jake sharply. "Tam too."

Jake had already started moving. I shook my head. We would be more intimidating as a group.

"What's the plan?" I asked. "We can't outrun them."

One of the dogs barked.

"We're not going to do that. We're going to stand our ground and hope that the dogs get bored and then back away when we have a chance."

I spotted another dog standing underneath an old car. It started slinking towards us.

"And if they don't?"

We watched as more dogs started to appear from doorways and behind hedges. They were a rather scrawny pack but generally looked healthy.

"We'll fight if we have to." Jake returned carrying several long metal poles. He handed one to Jonathan and passed a second one to Amy. He held one out to me. I took it.

"We can't lose the horse," Jonathan decided. We moved between the pack and the wagon, ready to defend the horse and Sue. "Amy, take the reins. We're going to walk off very slowly when we can. We can't scare them."

Amy climbed up to the front of the wagon, placing the pole at her feet.

"Will Sue be alright? Won't she be scared?" I asked.

Jake was watching the pack. It was still growing.

"She's tough. She'll be quiet."

Amy had calmed the horse with some soothing words and patted it on the neck. She encouraged it forwards slowly. We followed facing the pack with our backs to the wagon.

The dogs didn't seem to like it. One seemed to be the leader, the alpha; he stepped forward, teeth bared.

Jake didn't hesitate. He swung the pole towards the dog, narrowly missing it. The alpha stepped back, still growling.

"A little faster, Amy," he called. We continued backing away from the pack.

We hadn't gone far before a large proportion of the pack lost interest. They disappeared back into the houses as quickly and as silently as they had come.

The rest of the pack continued to follow us.

But the further we travelled, the less they seemed inclined to attack. We moved through the town at walking pace until we reached the town boundary. The pack didn't seem to want to follow us beyond.

It was with a sigh that I climbed back into the wagon, Jake and Jonathan behind me. I caught sight of Sue sitting under a blanket. She looked unperturbed by the excitement. Jake ruffled her hair, which made her laugh. All was well again.

Our detour had taken far longer than we had planned, but it meant that the raiders were likely to be much further ahead so we couldn't complain.

In a moment of quiet, I asked Jonathan about something I had been meaning to ask about for a while: maps. I was disappointed when Jonathan shook his head.

"You'll get the older ones from the old world. You'll find lots in good condition and they can reprint them if you know where to go. New ones though? I haven't seen any. I guess people had better things to worry about than remapping the place."

My sunphone's maps were decades out of date and, although I hadn't been optimistic, I had hoped to get hold of something more recent for when I would be travelling alone again.

"I might be wrong, though," Jonathan continued. "We can ask at the next place."

The next place turned out to be a cheerful-looking village with flowers adorning every door and window. Amy was thrilled.

"It's their springtime festival! This is wonderful timing."

We made our way through the streets an inn to spend the evening, passing by some truly spectacular flower displays.

"What are they celebrating?"

"Just spring. It's all about new life and a new start now that winter is over."

"Lots of the towns do this," Jake added.

We walked through the streets, admiring the flowers planted outside the houses. The place had a rundown air but felt lived in. The houses were shabby but the people were cheerful and had clearly gone to great lengths to keep their village alive.

We arrived at the inn and Jonathan lost no time in stabling the horse. The innkeeper provided a surprisingly filling meal, although I didn't feel like asking what was in it. Jonathan also asked the innkeeper about maps for me, but with no better luck.

"Most of us don't travel much," he apologised, "And those that do already know the way." He had nodded towards Jonathan at this. Jake had given one of his lopsided grins.

Electric light was a luxury that I couldn't afford to waste. I spent several hours bringing my journal up to date, making sure I noted the discovery of the hornet and Jonathan's statement about them being common in the south. I also spent some time writing about the dogs.

Upon reflection, I shouldn't have been surprised by the behaviour of the dogs. I had always been fond of them as a child and saw them as cute and fluffy pets, and then there had been trustworthy working dogs at the community. I hadn't ever seen them as a threat before, and I should have. I would be aware next time, and hopefully better prepared.

Day 8

At the innkeeper's insistence, we stayed around to enjoy the festival. The village had been decked out with flags and banners and flowers had been planted outside all the houses. There was a cheerful atmosphere and people were laughing and dancing to the sound of a guitar. The smell of cooked meat reached us and I felt suddenly hungry. In many ways it reminded me of the winter celebrations back in the community but with more flowers. For the first time I felt homesick and I wondered again how everyone was doing.

Jonathan disappeared to talk to the innkeeper while we ate. They returned together.

"I've been told that the raiders are further down south. We should be fine to keep going today."

The innkeeper looked rather disappointed at that.

"Won't you stay for the festival? It's only once a year."

Jonathan shook his head. "We're traders."

The innkeeper sighed. "You may not have as much luck today as you might expect with the festival on."

"Then we'll go on to the next town."

"Very well. I wish you a safe journey."

Sue looked rather disappointed at not being able to visit the festival but she didn't say anything.

As the innkeeper walked off, I asked Jonathan about how the landlord had known that the raiders were down south.

"The net, of course. It's invaluable for passing information like this around. There's a town about a day's travel away which was attacked last night. We should be perfectly safe today."

I once would have felt guilty for feeling relieved at this news. It wouldn't have felt right to celebrate my safety knowing that it had cost someone else theirs. But it was a different story these days; the past had taught us that we had to do whatever we could to survive.

Jake looked smug. "I said that the raiders wouldn't get us."

I was struck by a thought. "Can we get on the net? Are there maps that could be downloaded?"

Jake shook his head. "It's the same problem. The maps will be out of date."

"But there might be satellite imagery taken more recently."

The whole table looked at me.

"It's true," Jonathan said thoughtfully. "I don't know what's left of the satellites these days but it might be worth a try."

"It will depend on which terminals are up," Jake added. Jonathan nodded.

"What do you mean?"

"It's not the same internet that you would have grown up with, Tam. You don't have access to the world's information anymore. Just whatever information is available on whichever systems are connected."

My heart sank.

"Alright."

"But we could ask the innkeeper. There's a terminal here."

"It wouldn't hurt to try," Amy added.

The innkeeper showed us the terminal in the back room. It looked like a mid-range PC from the first half of the century. Tall and black, it whirred noisily in the corner. It had a monitor sitting on top of it, an old OLED screen with a few broken pixels, and was connected to a filthy-looking mouse and keyboard.

The innkeeper noticed me looking.

"It's works," he said with a shrug. "Got it cheaply a few years back."

"Refurbished?" Jonathan asked.

"Refurbished. What else?"

I watched as the system started to connect. It was horribly slow. Sue started to fidget so Amy picked her up.

At last the screen changed from a rotating globe to display a list of the terminals available. Ten.

"Is ten a good number?" I asked.

"Fewer than it has been," the innkeeper said. He scanned the list.

"It's probably the raiders," Jonathan told me. "They sometimes cut the power."

The innkeeper turned towards me. "You're not from around here?"

"No, I'm from further up north. Much further up north."

"And you don't have raiders?"

"Oh, we do. They've caused considerable damage to the community over the years." The innkeeper looked puzzled but turned back to the screen, clearly not wishing to pry. I guessed the source of his confusion. "We're rather isolated. We don't have much in the way of electricity. That was one thing that we didn't lose after the raiders attacked us."

The innkeeper looked at the information available on the network. There wasn't much available that was of use to me. Books, a few photos, a lot of scientific literature, a few maps that looked far older than mine.

"No films," Jonathan said. "They take up far too much space."

The internet had gone down mid-century, they told me. People had saved whatever they could onto their devices before it disappeared completely, but there wasn't much space on the average machine so a lot of information became lost or unreachable.

The net was a localised attempt to restart the internet. Information was no longer available by connecting to a machine on the other side of the world but by sharing information across a small network of different computers. It was a much slower system and the information, where it existed, depended on the computers available and the person at the other end. Information which humanity had had at their fingertips for decades vanished in a matter of weeks and people had to learn how to live without it.

To complicate matters further, production had slowed enormously by this point due to a lack of workers so when machines broke they could no longer be replaced. Repair using parts from old machines became necessary, but information was lost for good if data was not recoverable.

Almost overnight, humanity realised how dependent it had become on information that was no longer attainable.

"There's a message board too," Jonathan explained. "We can stay in contact with nearby towns and keep them up to date if anything happens."

"Births, deaths, weather," the innkeeper broke in. "It's useful to know these things."

"News of raiders too," Jonathan added darkly.

While we were connected to the net, I was struck by an idea and asked if there were any photos of the planet from space. After some searching, the innkeeper had managed to find one on a server a few towns away. We waited while it loaded.

"That's where we live, Sue." I turned to see her peering curiously at the screen from Amy's arms, eyes wide. "That's what our world looks like from above."

"Where are we?"

I pointed as best as I could. "Somewhere around here."

"That's tiny!"

We parted ways with the landlord. I thanked him profusely for looking. He shrugged.

"That's what the net is for. Sharing information."

"Thank you for keeping it going."

Despite the festival, we managed to sell several appliances. Jonathan was in a very good mood and we left the town late afternoon. Sue had been thoughtful all day.

"Is that really what the world looks like?" she asked me at one point. "How did they take the picture?"

I explained to her about satellites, how they were used for communications, broadcasting, observations and for positioning. After I had finished, Amy added that my knowledge was decades out of date. I listened curiously.

None of Amy's information was surprising. There were still satellites up in space but far fewer of them as it became more difficult and expensive to maintain them and many weren't replaced when they became obsolete. She didn't know how many were left up in orbit and wasn't sure how many of those left were still usable.

"We also have radio for long-distance communications," she told me, "But radio tends to use a lot of power." And the electricity supply wasn't always reliable.

We decided to stop in a forest for the night. I was concerned about the possibility of encroaching on the territory of the wild dogs that we had passed the day before but Jonathan didn't think it would be dangerous.

"It's night and they have plenty of shelter in that town," he said. "Don't worry."

The forest looked surprisingly bare as we approached. It took me a while to work out what was wrong.

"Why have so many trees been cut down?" There were big clearings where I would have expected dense foliage on either side of the wagon.

Jake looked out and grunted.

"Fuel, most likely."

"They get replanted, don't they?" I asked. There was no response. "Don't they?"

"Maybe."

This wasn't good.

"Trees are really important."

"It's a big forest, Tam. There's plenty of wood in there."

I took a moment to consider my argument.

"I know that people need the wood for fuel, but trees are far more important than being just fuel. They absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and it's the carbon dioxide that has caused our planet to heat up." That was why we had so many invasive species here. They were able to travel to and live in places that they wouldn't have been able to a few decades ago. It had resulted in the populations of native species becoming decimated. And our crops had suffered ever since.

"It gets cold in winter," Sue told me.

I shook my head. "It was a lot colder when I was your age. The summers were warm and the winters were cold. But everything has become far more extreme. Our summers are hot now – lots of people die of heatstroke every summer. And the winters are either bitterly cold or far too warm to feel like winter."

"See, it still gets cold."

"Here, maybe. But not everywhere. The average temperature is increasing. If you think summers are hot now, think about how much worse it will be when you're my age."

"What would you do, Tam?" Jonathan had been listening. "People need fuel."

"Live sustainably. Everything that gets used needs to be replaced."

"It's not the same world you grew up in. There's no unlimited supply of fossil fuels here. We don't have the same infrastructure or education that you did. We do what we can to survive." He didn't sound angry. Just exasperated.

I was frightened now. Frightened of offending the people I was travelling with. Frightened of what the future held for humanity.

"That wasn't the world I grew up in." I told him quietly. "My grandparents, yes. Maybe my parents too. But the damage was done long before I was born. I lived with the consequences of their actions, through the Great Riots and the famines and plagues. I don't want the next generation to go through the same experience. I want there to still be a world when Sue is as old as me."

We didn't speak much more after that. I set up my tent on my own that night, hating my companions' ignorance, hating the world, hating myself.

Day 9

At the first chance I had, I apologised. I apologised not for my intentions but for my words; I had been inconsiderate and I was their guest. I didn't mean to imply that people weren't doing anything, but there was far more that could and should be done. We passed the survival phase years ago, humanity needed to look at thriving in the longer term.

Jonathan had shaken his head and said nothing. He was younger than me, perhaps he had been born in the middle of the plague. He hadn't known the world of my childhood, just like I hadn't known about the years of plenty that my grandparents and great-grandparents had known. His childhood had undoubtedly been worse than mine, perhaps this was the most bountiful time he had ever known.

Jake had nodded and offered his lopsided smile. "I understand," he had said, but hadn't added anything else.

Amy and Sue were nowhere to be seen. Jake had nodded to the wagon.

"They're inside. Sue's not feeling very well."

"Is she alright?"

Jake shrugged. "I hope so but we'll find a doctor in the next town. We can't take any risks on the road."

I hesitated before entering the wagon. I didn't want to catch whatever Sue might have. But it might already be too late and perhaps I could help.

Sue was wrapped in a blanket lying on the floor of the wagon. Her face was pale with red cheeks, with a damp cloth covering her forehead.

"How is she doing?" I whispered to Amy.

"She's got a temperature. Is there anything you can do?"

I shook my head. "I'm no doctor. It looks like you're doing the right thing though. Is she asleep?"

"Yes. She didn't sleep well last night so I'm glad she's able to get some rest now." She smiled fondly at her daughter.

"Has she had anything to drink?"

"A little this morning. She mustn't be dehydrated."

I considered. "Is there any of that willow bark tea left?"

"There's some. Maybe when she wakes up." Amy looked exhausted but her eyes never strayed from Sue.

Jake took that moment to join us.

"How is she doing?"

"She's much the same," Amy told him.

Jake was silent for a moment. "We're ready to leave. We'll find a doctor in the next town." He disappeared outside and I heard the murmur of voices as he spoke to Jonathan.

"Please tell me if I'm intruding," I asked Amy.

She shook her head and turned to look at me. "You're not, don't worry." She turned back, removing a strand of hair from Sue's mouth.

Jake joined us. I stood up to offer him my seat next to Sue and he took it with a nod of thanks. I sat further down inside the wagon. Jonathan's voice drifted in from outside and the wagon started moving.

Sue stirred a little and moaned but never opened her eyes. Amy stroked her head and Sue fell silent, her breathing soon starting to even out as she fell into a restless sleep.

It was less than an hour later when we passed the other traders. I heard Jonathan greet them from the front of the wagon.

I wasn't expecting us to stop so I was surprised when the wagon ground to a halt. I saw the look of concern on Jake's face and we quickly joined Jonathan outside.

He was speaking in hushed tones to the driver of a wagon of a similar size to ours. He glanced behind him and when he caught sight of us, beckoned us over. He looked grim.

The driver of the other wagon spoke. She looked about Jonathan's age with long, brown hair which hung loosely around her shoulders.

"Raiders. They're nearby."

We froze. That wasn't good.

"How far?"

"Less than a couple of hours. They're heading this way."

Jonathan swore.

"I'm trying to stay ahead of them. I'll find somewhere to turn off and hide. You're going to head straight towards them."

"Thank you for telling us."

She shrugged. "Travellers look out for each other. You'd do the same for us." She pulled on her reins and her horse started trotting forwards. "Best of luck with them."

Jake wasted no time. "We can either turn around or keep going and find a turning off."

Jonathan grunted. "We don't know this area well. We're much further west than we normally go. We could run into them anywhere."

"We need to decide quickly if they're only a couple of hours away." Jake glanced back at the wagon and I knew he was thinking of Sue.

And I had an idea, one that might cause my companions to ask questions, but it was the best I had and all I could offer. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my sunphone. I turned it on.

"I have a map."

They turned towards me and saw what I was holding. Jonathan opened his mouth.

"I'll explain later," I told him.

We waited in silence while the sunphone booted and I heard a snort from Jonathan as he caught sight of my background photo. I loaded the maps app.

"The location services stopped working decades ago," I told them. "We'll need to work out where we are."

The screen was frustratingly small for three people to look at but it didn't take us long to find the road we were on. We couldn't be completely sure of how far we were along it so we had to guess.

"There's a forest a couple of miles away," Jake said at last. "We can make it."

"These maps are decades out of date," I warned him, "But it might be our best chance." I looked at Jonathan. "It's your call."

He didn't hesitate and spun on his heel.

"We'll do it. Get in, Tam."

I climbed back into the wagon as quickly as I could. Jake didn't follow me.

"I'll run alongside you," he told us. "Makes the wagon lighter." That was something I was far too old to even consider doing.

Jonathan nodded and coaxed the horse into a walk. It wasn't much quicker than our normal speed but there would be a much higher risk of damage to the wagon travelling along roads as poor as these at anything faster.

Amy had overheard the conversation so I didn't need to tell her anything. She looked worried.

"How is Sue doing?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"She's no better." I joined Amy by Sue's side. Even accounting for the motion of the wagon, Sue was restless in her sleep.

"That's not good." I watched with some concern as Amy changed the cloth on Sue's forehead for a new, cooler one.

"We need to get to a doctor," she told me bluntly.

We sat in silence as the wagon trundled along. I tried to check the maps app again only to find that the sunphone had run out of power inside the darkness of the wagon. I moved closer to the doorway and turned it back on.

While it booted, I caught sight of Jake outside. He was walking at a fast pace towards the front of the wagon, keeping up with no difficulties. I wished I was his age again.

Jonathan's voice called from the front of the wagon.

"The forest's up ahead." It looked like I didn't need the map after all. "Are there any trails on the map, Tam?" Or maybe I did.

"One moment."

I scanned the map, looking for any paths that would take us off the main road. There were a few. With an apologetic glance at Amy, I made my way to the front of the wagon.

"Here. There are a few to choose from." I sat down next to Jonathan and handed him my sunphone. He took it and passed me the reins.

"I can't..."

"Just hold them."

He spent some time looking at the screen, looking deep in thought. I ventured to ask a question.

"Do the raiders have a base?"

He looked up at me briefly. "Almost certainly. They don't travel all the time."

"Would a forest make a good base?"

Jonathan swore again.

"We'll just have to keep our eyes open," Jake told us from the ground.

"There's a river passing through the forest," I said, peering at the screen. "We might be able to hide there."

"It depends on what the terrain is like," Jonathan grunted, "We won't know until we get inside." He handed the sunphone back to me.

We travelled in silence.

The forest was eerily quiet as we entered it. It was much like any other forest I had passed through: dark and surprisingly spacious under the canopy. I decided we wouldn't have much trouble with the wagon off the road.

There was a turning up ahead. Jonathan stopped the wagon while Jake looked around.

"How far to the next turning, Tam?" he asked.

"Half a mile or so," I told him, peering at the screen.

"We'll keep going, in that case." His voice allowed no arguments.

When we reached it we turned off the main road onto a track. Jake hadn't seen any evidence of horses heading in this direction so we hoped that this didn't lead to a base. I joined Jake on the ground and we did out best to cover the wagon's tracks near the turning. We were able to relax as we moved further away from the road.

Jonathan followed the track as far as he could and then let the horse keep going over the uneven terrain. The ground underfoot wasn't bad for the wagon so we were still able to make reasonable progress. It had been a long time since we had seen the road so we hoped that we were as hidden as we could be. Just to be safe, I helped Jonathan attempt to camouflage the wagon with some fallen branches that were nearby.

"And now we wait," Jake announced.

Jonathan decided to keep a lookout while Jake went to check on Amy. I decided to join Jonathan.

He was holding one of the long, metal poles and didn't say anything as I approached.

We listened out for horses. The two hour estimate had long passed and we didn't want to risk travelling until they had gone unless it was absolutely necessary.

Sue wasn't improving. She was sweating heavily but shivering. Amy was doing her best to make her drink something and Jake had joined us.

At one point Jonathan broke the silence.

"How long have you had that?" he nodded towards the pocket where I was keeping my sunphone.

I considered. There wasn't much point at keeping it hidden when they had already seen it. I brought it out.

"Decades," I told him. "A friend gave it to me and fixed it up so that it runs on solar." I turned it over so that they could see the solar panel. "The battery's no good these days. It's much bulkier than it used to be and doesn't work at night anymore but it's pretty good considering its age."

"Can it still make calls?"

I shook my head. "Probably not. I stopped trying years ago. It's just data storage these days."

"Storing what?"

I hesitated but it would be a way of passing the time. They had never given me a reason to not trust them, in any case.

"My life, mainly. I've kept a journal of sorts on here since I was a teenager and the world started going mad. And I'm hoping I've got enough on here to get me to Seth."

"The maps?"

"Downloaded from the internet decades ago," I told them, "And there's a dictionary too, so that I can speak the local language. I've been planning this journey for a long time. But I couldn't put it off any longer. I'm getting too old."

I let them look over it. "Please don't break it," I begged. "I need it to get to Seth." I trusted them but was still relieved when it was returned in working order.

We sat in silence for a while longer, listening to Sue's breathing.

"Do you have any good photos on there?"

I thought about it. "Maybe. I've deleted lots of them over the years to free up space. It's mostly just ones of Seth and his family on here these days." And one of Kevin too.

"Do you have any of your village?"

"No. I never told them about it. They would have encouraged me to trade it away for supplies and I couldn't do that."

"You kept it hidden?"

"Yes. But I kept a journal. Perhaps that will be worth more in the long run."

It was less than an hour later when we heard the horses. We were silent, listening as they passed us on the main road. It was hard to judge exactly how many there were in the group but my estimates were somewhere around thirty.

"No wonder they need to pillage to feed that many," Jake breathed. "And no wonder they've been able to cause such destruction."

Amy poked her head out of the wagon looking terrified. Jake instantly went to her side, disappearing inside the wagon.

We listened as the sound of the horses died away. "Small communities can't defend against that many," Jonathan agreed sombrely.

Jake reappeared looking grim.

"We need to leave now."

Jonathan looked torn. "We shouldn't leave yet. There might be others."

"Sue's getting worse. She's shaking now. She tenses up and struggles to breathe and swallow." Jake looked panicked.

"Ten more minutes," Jonathan decided.

Those ten minutes passed slowly with Sue becoming noticeably worse in that time. We waited as long as we dared, then set off back to the main road as fast as we could. We needed to get Sue to a doctor.

As we travelled, Jonathan asked me what my plans were.

"This town is as far south as we're going to go. We'll be heading back up north after this."

I thought about it for a moment.

"I need to keep going. It's been too long since I've seen him and every day that passes makes it less likely."

Jonathan nodded. "Then this is where we'll part. Stay the night here and set off in the early morning, Tam. There's no point travelling in the dark."

"Alright. Thank you for everything, Jonathan."

Jonathan smiled. It was the lopsided smile that I was more used to seeing Jake wearing but I welcomed it nonetheless.

"Thank you too, Tam. I wish you luck with your journey."

Night had fallen when we reached the town but we found someone to ask directions for the nearest doctor and inn. Jonathan handed the reins to Jake and said that he would meet us at the inn.

We had just managed to get Sue settled when we were interrupted by a knock on the door. Jake opened it only to be greeted by a furious innkeeper.

"You never mentioned that you had a sick kid."

"She's only had it since this morning," Jake tried to placate him. "It's only a cold."

"It looks worse than a cold," he snapped. "I want you gone. I can't have other people coming down sick here."

"We'll be gone in the morning," Jake told him.

Jonathan chose that moment to return with the doctor. There was a furious but hushed argument followed by the innkeeper turning around and stomping down the stairs.

"What happened?" Amy asked as Jonathan entered.

"We're leaving in the morning," he told her shortly.

The doctor examined Sue. I guessed that, like the last doctor I had met, this one hadn't had any certified medical training either but whatever his expertise, it was undoubtedly more than mine.

He asked Jake and Amy to follow him outside the room. Jonathan followed and shut the door behind him. I was left alone with Sue.

It was painful listening to her whimpering and even more painful seeing her arch her back. She seemed to be in a lot of discomfort. I changed the cloth on her forehead and spoke to her as soothingly as I could.

The door opened and I watched the others enter. Amy and Jake looked close to tears. Jonathan and the doctor looked serious.

"I'm sorry, Tam," Jake said, "Would you mind giving us some privacy?"

"No problem." I was intruding here. "I'll be in my room. Please let me know if I can help."

Jake nodded and I left the room.

I spent the rest of the evening working out my route for the following day. I'd keep heading south on foot but would see if I could hitch a lift with another trader. It was much easier to travel with people who knew the area.

For once, my last thoughts before I fell asleep that night were not of Seth but Sue.

Day 10

I had managed to sleep well and arrived early for breakfast having already packed and decided on my route for the day. I had even asked the innkeeper if he knew of any traders who would be heading down south and who might be willing to give me a lift. He had shaken his head but assured me that there would almost certainly be someone.

I had just finished my egg when Jonathan joined me. He didn't look like he had slept well. He didn't respond, grasping a mug of hot tea, when I asked how Sue was doing. My heart sank.

"It's not good, is it?"

He shook his head. "The doctor says that it's not contagious. That's the only reason we're allowed to still be here." His eyes were wild and he looked utterly exhausted. He fell silent again.

"I'm so sorry." I didn't know what to say. "Is there anything I can..."

"No. Leave, Tam. Go and find your brother." He didn't look at me.

"What will you do?"

"We're discussing that now. Amy and Sue will probably stay here. It wouldn't be good for Sue to keep moving. Jake and I will keep going." The family would be splitting up, no matter how temporarily. My heart went out to them. "Don't look like that. It's the best option. We should be able to keep in contact via the net."

"And the raiders?"

"They've gone back up north. We'll stay behind them the whole way."

I nodded. "Thank you for everything, Jonathan. And please pass along my best to the others. I'll be thinking of all of you."

I had an idea and opened up my pack. I rummaged around until I found what I was looking for: the wooden cow that Seth had whittled for me all those years ago. "Give this to Sue. Seth made it for me when we were still children, but I think she'd like it more."

Jonathan took it, turning it over in his hands.

"This isn't bad craftsmanship at all. She'll like it, and she'll like having something to remember you by. Thank you." He hesitated. "Tam, we'll remember what you said about the longer term and living sustainably. We'll do what we can and pass on what we can to others. It's Sue's world, after all."

Apparently neither of us were good at showing our feelings. Perhaps that was best, given Sue's condition. We shook hands, exchanged farewells, and then I headed out of the door and on towards Seth.

The sun was still in the east so finding south was straightforward. The innkeeper had insisted on filling up my water bottles and giving me a loaf of bread and some cheese as I was leaving so I didn't need to worry about food for the day. Still, I would need to keep an eye open for anything I might be able to eat; I certainly didn't have enough food to get to Seth.

I walked along the road out of town. The houses became more and more dilapidated the further I walked until at last I was on my own again, surrounded by countryside. I found that I was still sore in places from George's attack but had improved sufficiently over the last few days that I didn't think I would have any problems going forward. I was back on the road and heading towards Seth.

After having spent the last week with Jonathan's family, it was rather disconcerting finding myself alone again and having to fend for myself in unfamiliar territory. I consoled myself with the possibility of finding some other travelling companions along the next stretch of road. The last week had taught me that my age could be a useful bargaining point if I needed to persuade traders to let me hitch a lift. Was I still wary of other people? Certainly. But it appeared that I was better off with people who were familiar with the area than being on my own.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day; warm but not too warm, breezy but not too breezy. The roads were in much better condition than the roads near the community. I would be able to make good progress.

On the whole, the day was uneventful. I walked for several miles, checking my maps app against my surroundings as I went. I was fairly confident with my location and where I needed to go and aside from some aches from the incident at the dump, I had never felt better. I thought of Sue frequently and hoped, no matter what the doctor had said, that Sue would pull through. She didn't deserve to die.

I had only been passed by one traveller that day. It had been a wagon looking similar to Jonathan's, driven by a younger man who I guessed was a trader too. Perhaps he didn't hear me shout and perhaps he did, for he drove onwards paying me little attention. The roads were too narrow for my liking and he passed uncomfortably close, forcing me to step backwards into the hedge. I watched until he was out of sight, feeling rather lonely.

I passed through what would have once been hamlets. The houses were far from habitable now. Roofs had fallen in and windows and doors were missing. I tried to imagine the people who had once lived in them and where they were now. Although they were probably dead. The inhabitants had probably moved on decades ago.

Wherever there was a garden, I stopped to see if there was anything I could take. It was clear that no-one lived around here so I didn't have to feel guilty about stealing food. There wasn't much but I considered myself very lucky to have found some carrots. I ate most of them as I walked.

I set up camp in a meadow that evening, my tent secured between a tree and a particularly thick branch in the hedge. I had walked further than I had expected and needed to decide where I would be going next. If I continued due south, the map told me that I would pass through a city, which I was keen to avoid. It would take me longer to walk around the city but it might be safer. I decided to sleep on it and spent the rest of the evening bringing my journal up to date and resting my aching feet. I had clearly grown used to travelling by wagon.

Day 11

I was woken up by the sound of horses and yelling coming from the road. I emerged from my tent to see what was happening. The yelling hadn't sounded threatening. Perhaps even friendly. And already moving away from me.

The hedge was too tall and too thick to see anything. I was torn between going after the voices and staying with my tent. I decided to stay with my belongings; I wouldn't be able to replace them if someone took them. And the voices probably belonged to passing traders; there would undoubtedly be more following at a later date.

I finished off the bread and cheese for breakfast and repacked my bag, taking inventory of the food I had left as I did so. There were still several onions left, rather bruised but still edible. And I had some hard-boiled eggs left that I had forgotten about. I made a note to have them for lunch; they wouldn't last much longer. Beyond that, I had some seeds and nuts and a couple of carrots from the day before. That would keep me going for a couple of days but not much more. I needed to find more food. I checked my water too; I had plenty left.

I continued along the road. There was no sign of any of the travellers from earlier but I was sure that there would be others. It was a beautiful cloudless morning and it felt like it would be a good day for travelling.

I passed several of what would once have been farm houses. Judging by the state of the surrounding fields, I suspected that there was a community like mine nearby. I didn't have a reason to visit them so I stayed on the road. They would undoubtedly have preferred to be left well alone.

A little further up, there was a field full of sheep. It was early in the year but there were already lambs. I paused by the gate, watching the lambs gambol around happily. They were young and carefree, enjoying life without worrying about where their next meal would be coming from. It wouldn't be long before they would be earning their living through producing wool or being slaughtered for meat, but for now they were able to enjoy life.

I was a little surprised that no-one had stolen the sheep, living this close to a town. There were sure to be unsavoury characters there.

The morning was uneventful. I found myself walking alongside a brook at one point. The water was shallow and looked stagnant so I wouldn't have risked drinking from it unless I had really needed to. A little further along I came across what the maps app told me had once been an airfield. There wasn't much to see, it was just another overgrown field and there was probably still some sort of security fence in place if I went much closer. I didn't want to risk stepping on a piece of rusty barbed wire and getting tetanus.

Eventually the road became wider. I considered this to be positive. A wider road was more likely to lead to a town and would have other travellers. And sure enough, it wasn't long before I spotted a convoy of horses and carts heading towards me.

The lead horse stopped when we drew level and I squinted up at the driver.

"Are you alright?" he shouted. "Where are you heading?"

"South," I called back, "What's the road like ahead?"

"It's good at this time of year. Do you have far to go?"

"I'm heading to the coast."

The driver behind him whistled. "That's a long way".

"Is there any chance I could get a lift with someone in the next town?"

"Probably," the first driver told me. "You'll need to ask around."

"Don't go into the city," added the second driver, "There's not much there. Keep heading south and you'll get to the next town along. It's only a mile or so." One of the horses whinnied somewhere behind him.

I thanked them and asked where they were heading. I wasn't familiar with any of the town names around here but their destination hadn't sounded like any of the places I had passed through.

"Have a safe journey," they told me and I watched as they trotted off. They hadn't seemed like traders so I wondered what had been in their carts.

It was a couple of miles later that I arrived at the town. Nothing was signposted but I found my way around easily enough by looking at the state of the roads. They seemed much better maintained here than any I had seen so far and I was able to find my way to the town centre without any trouble.

I decided that my first stop would be the local tavern or wherever looked busiest and ask for directions. I could try my hand at identifying appliances like Lucy had. Maybe I could earn some money that way.

As it turned out, I didn't need to go to the tarvern. I found what seemed to be loading area for carts and I watched as heavy-looking sacks were loaded by hand and secured with ropes before being covered with a sheet.

It was a wide, open area and I guessed it had been a car park several decades ago. The surface had been well looked after. It looked rather worn in places but cracks looked like they had been taken care of as they appeared so that plants hadn't had an opportunity to grow through.

There was a large building reminiscent of a warehouse at the back of the car park and several people were coming and going, taking sacks out of the building and bringing them to the carts. Some people used trolleys, others carried the sacks on their backs. I wondered if the health and safety laws that I had grown up with still applied.

"Oi, you look lost," one of the workers shouted to me.

"I'm looking for a lift," I called back. "Is anyone going down south?"

"Ask in there," he replied, gesturing to the warehouse. I headed towards it, conscious of him watching me.

It was dark inside. After having spent the morning outside in glorious sunshine, the darkness came as a shock and I waited for my eyes to adjust. There were some filthy windows along the side of the building which did little to let light in.

As my eyes began to get used to the lighting, I could make out an office-like area to one side. There was a desk in front of several shelves storing reams and reams of loose-leaf papers. The desk itself was covered by books and papers and a computer (a terminal?) sat to one side. I wondered how it was powered; I hadn't seen any wind turbines outside.

There was a woman sitting behind the desk and she appeared to be in the middle of an argument with a much younger woman. For lack of anyone better to approach, I headed over to them. They fell silent when they caught sight of me.

"Can I help?" the older woman asked. She was wearing the smartest clothes I had seen for a long time: a grey buttoned shirt and dark trousers. I wondered how hard it was to find clothes like that these days.

"I'm hoping to get a lift down south. Are any of your carts heading that way?" I was realising my ignorance of life outside the community. That would put me at a disadvantage in any negotiations.

She raised her eyebrows. "We rarely give lifts to travellers. Where are you from and where are you heading?"

"I'm from a village up north. I'm heading to the coast to meet family."

"South, eh?" she turned to the computer. "You wouldn't happen to have been passing an old dump a week ago by any chance?"

"Why do you ask?"

"There's a message on the net asking for news."

That must have been Jonathan. I thought of Sue again. Would I be able to stay in touch with them?

"That sounds like me. Could I leave a reply?"

"I'll let them know that you're here and heading southwards." Her tone turned businesslike again. "How much can you pay for the transport?"

I wasn't carrying anything that was recognisable as money. "Not much. I have some things that I can trade and I'm willing to work." But I knew before I finished that it wasn't going to be any good. She was already shaking her head.

"We don't give lifts for free. Come back when you can pay your way."

"Alright. Thank you for your time."

I headed towards the door. I would go to the centre of town and offer to help traders in exchange for a portion of the profits. Or I might be able to get a lift from someone else.

I squinted as I stepped outside again and shielded my eyes against the brilliant sunshine. I asked one of the workers where I would find the traders. He looked at me doubtfully.

"You could try the old town hall, I guess. It's down the road." He pointed the way I had come.

I was disappointed but not altogether surprised. I didn't have money and I couldn't expect people to give anything for free. I was fortunate to have come so far with Jonathan's generosity, although I'd got the impression that I had been able to earn my keep too. I added money to my list of things that I needed and headed back to the road.

I hadn't gone far before I heard the sound of hooves behind me. The road was wide but I moved to the side to give the horse some space. The horse drew level with me and stopped. I turned around.

"You're not going to attack me or anything, are you?" It was the younger woman from inside the warehouse.

I shook my head. "Why would I do that?"

"Get up here. I'm heading southwards. Quickly."

It took a second for her words to sink in, and then I was climbing onto the cart.

"Throw your bag in the back. You won't break anything." The cart was already starting to move again. I did as she said.

We sat in silence as she steered the cart out of the town. My heart was hammering in my chest so I took some deep breaths to try to slow it down.

"Are you alright there?" she sounded concerned.

"Just my heart. I'm not as young as I used to be."

She snorted. "Time catches up to everyone."

"Thanks for the lift. How far are you going?"

"Not as far as the south coast, I'll tell you that! There's a distribution centre a day or so away. I'll drop you off there and see if we can find someone else to take you further. I'm Fern, by the way."

"I'm Tam." I held out my hand to her. She looked at it dubiously before shaking it, her face breaking into a grin as she did so.

"I haven't seen anyone shake hands for years."

"Does no-one do it these days?"

Fern shook her head. She was the complete opposite of the woman in the warehouse. She had long, brown hair which was tied back in a ponytail with a piece of leather and was wearing what I considered to be a rather ugly but hard-wearing and very sensible pair of trousers along with a short-sleeved shirt. I wondered how old she was; she couldn't have been in more than her mid-twenties.

"Why are you helping me?" I wondered if there was any connection between the argument I had overheard and the conversation at the warehouse.

"Because Eve's an incredibly infuriating person and she wouldn't let me change my route to be with my family. So I figured I might as well get something out of it."

"Eve is the person back at the warehouse?"

"Yeah. I wanted to be travelling up north today so I could be with my little sister for her birthday tomorrow. She told me it wouldn't be a problem but changed her mind today. That's why we were arguing." She slapped the seat. "I'm dead if she finds out that I've given you a lift but if I'm heading down south anyway, someone other than her might as well benefit."

"Won't she think it's suspicious that you agreed?"

Fern groaned. "Probably. I'll worry about that next time."

We were moving much faster than I had been able to on my own or with Jonathan. The road surfaces were in far better condition here than anything I had seen for years and we were speeding along. This must have been a bypass at one time. I could make out the odd village and town nearby but we never passed through any of them.

"Where are you from? You said you were from ‘up north'." She attempted my accent.

"That's right. I lived in a small community up there but we mostly kept to ourselves. It's been a bit of a shock meeting the outside world again."

"To meet your family?"

"Yes."

"Did someone die?" I found I appreciated Fern's bluntness. She was very different from the person I had been at her age.

"I hope not. I want to see my brother again before it's too late."

"When did you last see him?" She seemed interested.

"Several decades ago. It's a rather long story. He married and moved away. We lost touch a while ago."

"Sorry to hear that." She sounded genuinely sad.

"It was a long time ago. I'm taking the opportunity to fix things while I still can."

"Fix?" She hadn't missed that word.

"We parted on bad terms. We both apologised afterwards and we've exchanged messages but I haven't seen him since then."

She looked at me. For once there was no trace of amusement on her face. "Good luck."

I asked her about her life.

"Nothing exciting. My mother repairs old appliances. My sister usually stays with her. She can learn the trade and make a living. And my father works in the fields. It's tough work but they get by."

"And yourself?"

"I transport food. The work's not difficult but the pay is pretty bad." I must have looked confused as she continued. "Food is grown in the south. Most of it gets dried so that it lasts longer and weighs less. And then we carry it everywhere. I'm only heading south now because there's a bigger distribution centre. And there are better roads too. It's so much faster on the well-looked after ones. You can really feel the difference."

"What gets exchanged for food?"

"Money, usually. Sometimes services. Things like road and building repair. Your community must have been really isolated. Has it felt like you travelled through time since you left?"

I laughed. "Frequently! So who grows the food?"

"They're not really farms. They're too big for that. Labour is cheap and fuel is expensive so people are employed to grow food and tend animals. They get room and board and usually something of a wage."

"That doesn't sound entirely fair. It sounds like corporations are running everything down here."

"Oh yes. The big businesses own people's lives. It's not slavery as such, but they set the prices and make it difficult for competing businesses to grow."

"That's not right." Competition was always important in business. Customers needed to be able to change to a competing firm if they didn't like the business. It was one reason why we had remained so dependent on oil and gas in the early part of the century; not just due to the developing technology but also because it was difficult for newer companies to start up and compete.

"No, it isn't."

Fern told me about her sister as we travelled. Emily, she was called, and it was clear that Fern adored her. We swapped stories of siblings as the afternoon drew to a close.

At last we left the road and reached our destination. It seemed to be an old farmhouse. I could hear horses nickering and I guessed that there were other carts nearby. It was getting late and I missed the street lamps that would have once lined the roadside. Fern suddenly looked rather apologetic.

"I'll be staying in here but I don't think I can bring you inside."

"That's alright. I have a tent."

She brightened.

"Where shall I meet you in the morning?"

"I'm afraid I don't know this place. Where do you suggest?"

"We'll be going back to the main road tomorrow. Could you camp in one of the fields that we've passed?"

"That sounds fine. What sort of time will I see you?"

Her face screwed up. "I'd say dawn but I'm not much of an early riser. How about an hour after sunrise?"

"That will be fine for me." I climbed down from the cart. "I'll see you at the turning in the morning."

"Don't be late!"

It was far too dark to see to put up my tent, let alone use my sunphone. I made my way to a field and rolled myself in a blanket and the tarpaulin. It felt like I had made good progress that day and I counted myself very fortunate to have met Fern.

Day 12

I woke up with the sun so took my time packing up. I finished off the carrots for breakfast. They wouldn't keep me going for long but they wouldn't last much longer anyway. I decided to wait in the field rather than going to the turning. There was a thick hedge so people wouldn't see me and ask questions.

There were some sheep in the field. Several lambs had approached me shortly after sunrise and had been watching me curiously before deciding that I was uninteresting. I watched them run back to their mothers, bleating to one another as they did so.

I spent the time trying to work out where I was on my maps app. For once I wasn't sure. I knew that we had been travelling almost due south the previous day and I could guess which road we were on but I couldn't tell how far along the road we had travelled. My good fortune and the conditions meant that I was moving much faster than I expected but I had no way of telling exactly how fast. The location functionality on my sunphone would have been really useful to have had working.

At last I decided it was time to make my way to the turning. Fern would be along shortly and I didn't want to make her wait, or worse, for her to drive off without me. It wasn't far to the turning so I sat on my bag and waited.

And waited.

Several carts trundled past me, one or two at a time. I must have looked odd, sitting by the side of the road and scrutinising all the carts that passed. Most of them greeted me and I waved back, all the while looking out for Fern.

She still hadn't appeared after a couple of hours. I was trying to decide between looking for her and continuing alone when her cart appeared. I turned to greet her but the words died in my throat.

Her eyes looked red and puffy and there was a bruise across her left cheek. Compared to yesterday, her eyes seemed dull and lifeless. It wasn't that warm out yet but she was shivering a little, despite wearing a thick jumper.

"What happened?" I was horrified.

She climbed down from the cart to give me a hand with my bag.

"Nothing. One of the other drivers tried to get too close. I'm fine." She helped me place my bag on the cart. I noticed her wince as she sat back down.

"You don't look fine. I've got a first aid kit in my bag. Do you need anything?"

"I said I'm fine," she snapped. "I don't want to talk about it."

I fell silent. Fern steered the cart back to the main road. The sun was on our left as we travelled and I welcomed its warmth. Fern broke the silence.

"Are you hungry? We're fed at the house but I wasn't sure if you had anything to eat."

"I am running low on supplies," I admitted, "But I've had something to eat this morning already."

She snorted at that and fumbled in the cart behind her. "I always help myself to something for lunch. I took a bit extra today. Help yourself." She brought out a basket covered by a cloth. I pulled the cloth aside and peered into the basket. Bread.

"I can't. This is yours."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Just eat it. You need it."

It was still warm. I pulled a chunk from the loaf and ate it slowly, savouring it.

"This is good. Thank you."

She shrugged. "You're welcome. It's not like it cost me anything." She seemed in better spirits now.

"What's the plan for today?" I ventured.

"Head south and get to the distribution centre. We'll be there early afternoon if all goes well. Then find you another ride while I head back up north."

Fern was as good as her word. We arrived at the distribution centre a couple of hours after noon. She told me to wait by the entrance while she sorted out the paperwork.

"Please don't tell them that I gave you a lift," she begged.

"I won't," I promised.

It was warm today. As she walked away, I realised that Fern was still wearing her jumper. I wondered if she was covering up something on her arms from being attacked last night. I was angry on her behalf. She didn't deserve to be treated like that.

It wasn't long before Fern returned. There was another young woman with her.

"Tam, meet Helen. Helen, this is Tam." We shook hands. "Helen's heading back down south. She's agreed to give you a ride."

"Thank you. Both of you."

"I'll be back with the cart in a few minutes," Helen told me. Fern and I watched her walk away.

"Helen's a good person," Fern told me quietly. "She'll look after you."

"Thank you for everything. You don't know how much you've done for me."

Fern smiled. "Have a safe journey, Tam."

"Will you be alright?"

"Yes. It takes more than that to stop me." She gave a wry grin. "I'll be heading back up north shortly. With any luck I'll be able to see my sister before the end of the week."

"I'll be thinking of you. Take care, Fern."

Fern waved as she walked away. I didn't see her again.

I didn't have any time to worry about Fern as Helen chose that moment to reappear. She didn't stop but waved for me to follow her. I picked up my bag and tried to keep pace with the cart. Like Fern, Helen drove quickly.

She stopped the cart at last, a couple of hundred metres down the road. Helen jumped down and helped me lift my bag into the cart which was surprisingly empty.

"That's heavy," she exclaimed. "Have you come far?"

"I've been travelling for the last couple of weeks," I told her.

"All by yourself?" She seemed surprised.

"Partly. I've been lucky enough to have been offered lifts by a few people."

"But that's dangerous. Especially..." she broke off.

"Especially?"

"At your age. How do you protect yourself?" She looked apologetic.

"I've been lucky. I've only been attacked once." I instantly wished that I hadn't said that. Helen looked horrified.

"Are you alright?"

I considered. "I've pretty much recovered now."

"It can be dangerous out there. Really dangerous. Poor Fern."

"Did she say what happened?"

Helen bobbed her head. I couldn't tell if she was nodding or shaking it. "I can't believe people do things like that. She didn't deserve it."

"Does that happen often around here?"

"Unfortunately, yes. It's one reason why we're told to not offer rides to hitch-hikers. But Fern says that you're alright." She looked at me rather apprehensively.

Helen was quieter than Fern. We compared our backgrounds and I told her about trying to find Seth. She wished me luck with my search.

"Unfortunately I'm not going all the way to the sea. I'll drop you off as close as I can but it will still be a couple of days' walk from there. Walking will probably be easier and faster than trying to get you another ride."

"That's not a problem."

I asked Helen why her cart was so much emptier than Fern's had been.

"I'm on my way back now. I've been transporting grain which will make its way up north. There isn't much to be brought south at this time of year. Especially not these days," she added darkly.

"I see."

"Can I ask why you're being talked about on the net?"

"I am?" I thought back to yesterday. The woman, Eve, had asked me if I had been from the dump. "I was travelling with a family of traders until recently. Their daughter was taken ill so they stopped to look after her but I needed to keep going. They left a message on the net."

Helen was already shaking her head. "I hadn't seen that. There was a message describing someone who looked like you which explained that someone was attacked up north by a dump and offering a reward for information."

I froze. "I was attacked."

"The message didn't say that." She was watching me closely. "There were some other messages from other people with locations." She recited a list of towns. "Have you been through any of those?"

I swore quietly. "Someone wants to get hold of me?"

"And they've got a pretty good idea of the route you took. If you've been telling everyone that you're heading south, it will be fairly easy to find you." I swore again. "Are you on the run from something?"

"Not that I'm aware of. This whole journey was about finding my brother." I put my head in my hands, trying to think. "Do you know who this person is or what they want?"

Helen shook her head. "It's easy to be anonymous on the net but it sounded like they want you brought to justice for the attack."

Except I hadn't attacked anyone. George had attacked me up by the dump. Had he spun a tale to make me sound like the aggressor?

"What are the police like these days?" But I knew before I had finished speaking that it was no good. Helen was already shaking her head.

"Nothing like they were in the old world. Towns tend to have their own rules and their own ways of enforcing them."

"So I shouldn't turn myself in to explain the situation?"

"No. Keep to yourself. Don't trust anyone unless you have to." She was serious.

I nodded. "Thanks for the advice."

We parted ways before it was dark. The cart drew to a stop along the side of a road. It was much narrower here than the other roads we had been travelling along but this still felt like the countryside with fields sitting either side of the road.

"I've come further than I should have done. I can't go any further." Helen reached into the back of the cart and pulled out a map. It was roughly drawn and badly damaged in places but still legible. She pointed to it.

"That's where we are now. And I'm heading back up here." She pointed to another part of the map. It looked like she still had a long way to go. "South is in this direction but there's a city between you and the coast. I'd really recommend not going through the city even if it would be faster than going around it." She traced out a route around the outskirts of the city.

"What's the scale here?" I asked.

Helen pointed to a corner of the map. I could just about make it out. I estimated quickly.

"So that's about eight miles if I go through the town and about double that if I go around?"

"Please go around." Her eyes were wide, begging. "We hear lots of stories about people being attacked in the cities. It's not worth the risk. Especially not when you're so close now."

She looked so earnest that I couldn't refuse. I nodded.

"I'll play it safe."

She looked relieved. "Thank you. You seem like a decent person. I hope you find your brother."

I thanked her for the ride and watched as she climbed back into the cart. She picked up the reins and then stopped to rummage around in the back of the cart.

"Here, catch!"

I managed to miss the package that she had thrown towards me. Fortunately the ground was dry. I picked it up and opened it curiously. It was bread.

"Fern said that you were running low on food."

I was overwhelmed. "I can't take this! It's yours!"

She shook her head, smiling slightly. "I'll be given something to eat when I get back. Take it. It's not much."

"Thank you. Thank you for everything."

Helen picked up the reins again. "Have a safe journey."

I waved as she drove off. "You too."

I walked onwards. I hadn't been expecting such generosity, especially from someone I had only known for a short time. It was nice to know that there were still decent people left in the world.

Even though there were still some hours of daylight left, I decided that it would be in my best interests to stop for the evening and work out my route for the following day. If I wasn't going to go into the city, I needed to know where I was heading, and for that I needed my sunphone.

I set up camp in the corner of a field. There weren't any trees nearby so I secured a rope to a thick branch in the hedge and found a root at ground level that I could attach the other end to. I draped the tarpaulin over it and folded it back on itself underneath. I found some reasonably large sticks to anchor the edges of the tent. It would help keep out the wind and rain.

Seth's family greeted me when my sunphone booted. I was almost at the south coast and it had been a long time since I had felt this optimistic about seeing him again. Two more days of travelling, Helen had said. I was nearly there.

I ate some of the bread while I tried to find my location on the map. Helen's map looked nothing like the one I had downloaded decades ago, not just because it was hand drawn. There were several places that I could have been in and I wished again that the location functionality was working. There was no point trying it; it hadn't worked for years and would use up more power than the phone could collect from the sun.

It was difficult to find the route Helen had told me to take. I decided that I would head clockwise around the city. I would head eastwards and would stick to the suburbs. I didn't need to go into the city centre. It wasn't the most direct route but it should be safer.

I spent the rest of the evening looking through photos of Seth's family. He had sent me several over the years and at last I would be able to meet them. I was looking forward to it. I wondered how old his children were these days. They would have been adults by now.

When it became too dark to keep my sunphone alive, I wrapped myself up in a blanket and tried to sleep.

Day 13

I woke up to the sound of rain on the tarpaulin. It was still early but it was light out so I stretched and started packing up my bedding. I ate the remainder of the bread that Helen had given me and supplemented it with some of the onions. They had become rather bruised and the texture was unpleasant but they would keep me going.

Given that I was heading towards the city, I spent a while debating over whether or not to carry one of the knives. I didn't know how to use a knife in a fight and I didn't want to risk provoking anyone; it might be better to be unarmed. I settled for putting the smallest knife in a pocket.

It was a cold and miserable day. I was wearing as much as I could to keep warm and dry by the time I had packed up the tarpaulins and I wasn't looking forward to the day's travels. But I needed to keep going, and standing around wouldn't get me anywhere.

The road had become muddy overnight and it didn't take long before my feet were wet. It was going to be a long, cold day.

The weather had cleared up a little by the time I reached the suburbs. The roads had been neglected over the past few decades and weeds were making their way through cracks in the surface. The roofs were falling in on the houses and the gardens were overgrown. Like the empty towns I had passed through, this place had an eerie atmosphere. I wondered when the last people had lived here. It was silent. Too silent.

Despite being built along a river, I imagined that flooding hadn't had a big effect around here. Some of the other cities around the country had started to struggle with rising sea levels around mid-century when flood barriers built decades beforehand started becoming insufficient to stop the ever-rising high tides. We were far enough above sea level and far enough inland here to not have to worry about that.

As I walked, I kept an eye out for any evidence of dogs. I had been very fortunate last time and I wasn't prepared to risk another such encounter. The place seemed deserted, however.

I looked around with interest as I went. A lot of money had been sunk into improving cities by the middle of the century. Everything had been considered, from putting solar panels on roofs to improving public transport and cycle lanes to dissuade commuters from using cars. Despite this, people had fled from cities at the earliest opportunity when disaster struck. The population density was too high to be able to support itself and, like me, people had fled to the countryside when they ran out of a reliable supply of food and clean water.

There was evidence of some of the mid-century improvements here. People had been encouraged to grow food in their neighbourhoods to reduce food transportation and wider parts of pavements were replaced with areas in which to grow vegetables. I was also pretty sure that these weren't the original roofs on a lot of these houses. Many roofs had been replaced to allow for stronger surfaces where plants could grow without risk of damaging the structure. After the first few years where people had had to do the work and pay for it themselves, such improvements were considered sufficiently important for government to completely subsidise such projects.

The road surface was also much lighter than I might have expected, in an attempt to reflect heat back into space cool down the cities. I wondered if it was made of recycled plastic; I could remember the campaigns run by the local council explaining that recycled plastic roads were the way forward. "Plastic is fantastic", or so the adverts told us.

I couldn't even blame the governments for the whole situation. Not entirely. As the winters became colder and colder, and the summers became hotter and hotter, they did what they could to look after the people, but there was only so much that could be done when the cities were poorly designed and the infrastructure didn't exist. They did their best to tell people to put up with the ever-more-extreme temperatures but there were outcries. So instead of doing what was best for humanity and the environment, the people in power did what they had to do to stay in power. Generators running on fossil fuels were brought back in after so much effort had gone into working with solar and wind. Air conditioning units were installed with great energy cost. In many places the infrastructure wasn't around for renewables so it was back to fossil fuels. And the more fossil fuels we burnt, the more extreme the weather became.

More people were dying with each heatwave and each cold snap; the very young, the elderly. And we sighed, and blamed the weather, and then turned up the air conditioning or the heat. Sure, one or two people alone wouldn't have made much difference, but the whole of civilisation? We made it so much worse for ourselves.

Then there were the food shortages. Harsher climates became less suited to growing food. The opponents of GMOs were quickly silenced after non-GMO food became scarce, but even genetic modification wasn't enough. The richer governments introduced rationing. Not just of food but of carbon: fuel and electricity. And this upset a great many people.

No longer could most of us afford to fly abroad for holidays. No longer could most of us adjust the temperature when we became uncomfortable. No longer could most of us afford anything but the local food.

Can you see where this is going? The riots started over the shortages and the unfairness. A great many people were killed. The governments brought themselves some time by relaxing the restrictions but there were protests over the state of the environment; the government couldn't win. Then they were voted out in the next election for upsetting too many people. And the cycle began again.

And while this was going on, the Great Migration began. Countries that couldn't afford to import food and water became devoid of life: those who could afford it moved to more habitable climates and those that stayed behind died. And habitable areas became smaller and smaller until they could no longer support the people living there.

And these refugees weren't received warmly anywhere. The food shortages caused great distrust between man and neighbour, so why should they treat strangers any better? It was easy enough for the governments to pass laws to ban immigration to gain supporters and, while these were often difficult to enforce, there were plenty of vigilantes willing to uphold the laws.

Early on, richer countries helped out poorer countries. There was no point fixing issues caused by ourselves if we would all suffer from the same issues caused by others. It was a lot of work but it all helped to make a difference. The aim was to become carbon neutral and entirely sustainable. Was that achieved? I don't know. But I do know that it helped and that without such actions today's world would be very different.

I had been heading clockwise around the centre of the city, moving from the north to the east. I was about halfway around when I heard them.

I had very little warning. The sound of some footsteps running up behind me was all the notice I had. Then there was a cool blade at my throat.

"Don't move," a voice hissed in my ear. I stayed still. I could feel my heart pounding and I willed it to slow down. I probably wasn't due for a heart attack but I needed to remain calm. I tried to slow my breathing.

I felt someone else pull my bag from my back. I didn't resist but watched out of the corner of my eye as it was dropped on the ground. A couple of teenagers opened it and started to empty it. My tarpaulins, my blanket, the remainder of my food was thrown onto the ground, followed by the knives.

"What do you want?" I gasped.

My captor didn't reply. He spoke to the teenagers.

"Anything good?"

"Yeah, a few knives and some material we can use. Some food too."

I felt my captor nod. "Good job." Still with the knife at my throat, he walked around so I could see him. I felt my pulse quicken. "What's your name?"

It wouldn't do me any good if I resisted. I was entirely at his mercy.

"Tam." My voice came out in a squeak. So much for not showing any fear. My captor smiled.

"Is anyone with you?"

I tried to shake my head but stopped as soon as the blade nicked my skin. I felt warm blood run down my neck. "No."

One of the teenagers started feeling through my coat from behind. I was suddenly grateful that it was so worn and raggedy compared to what my captor was wearing.

"Do you have anything else?"

I felt hands go into the coat pockets. "Not really." I watched as my passport and my snare were handed over.

My captor flicked through the passport, pausing at the page with my photo on.

"Is that everything?" he asked. The question hadn't been directed at me.

"Seems to be," came the reply from behind me.

"You can have this back." My passport was thrust towards me. I took it gingerly. "We'll be keeping the rest." The knife was removed from my throat. I took a step forward.

"My bag?"

"We're keeping it."

I could feel the adrenaline still running through me. They were letting me leave. I bolted without looking back.

I didn't make it far before I was out of breath, but at least there was no-one else in sight. I leaned against a wall and stood there, gasping for breath. I felt my neck gingerly. It was sticky from blood but there didn't seem to be much of it. Unfortunately my bandages were in my bag. I considered my options.

I could go back and try to rescue my bag. I wasn't sure what my odds would be but they probably weren't good. I could also try looking for replacement supplies inside some of these houses. But I didn't want to stay in the area any longer than I had to and a lot of these houses looked derelict and had probably been looted already. Which left the option of leaving the areas as quickly as I could and continuing my journey with everything I had on me.

I was only a couple of days from the coast, probably much less than that now. And I would be able to move much faster without my bag. Even if my diet hadn't been ideal over the last couple of weeks, I could survive a few days without food and if the weather stayed like this, I could last for a while without water.

I headed eastwards. It wasn't south but it was the fastest way out of the city. I was several miles away before I left myself rest.

Amazingly, they hadn't taken my sunphone. It was fortunate that I had kept it in a coat pocket and not in my bag. And I had my knife too. I was right that I wouldn't have been able to use it in a fight but it could still help me stay alive. I went through the rest of my pockets. There wasn't much: some nuts, a piece of old cloth and Brid's lighter. But I could do this.

I took a short break and then started heading south again. It had stopped raining but the sun was hidden behind thick cloud so I was relying on my sense of direction rather than navigating by the sun. I climbed a hill, hoping that the view would be better at the top. At least it was much easier to move without my bag.

And the view was good. The sun appeared from behind the clouds just as I reached the top. Unfortunately I couldn't see the sea, which meant I was still more than three miles away from the coast. I took a moment to rest, looking back at the route I had taken to get here. I could see the city glinting in the distance, the light reflecting off the buildings from the afternoon sun.

Now that the sun had appeared, I could tell which way was south. I held my hand up and estimated how much sunlight I had left. I would probably have about three hours once I was down in the valley.

There was a forest due south ahead of me. I could make it there before dark.

I was tired and hungry when I arrived. I supposed that I could be pleased about not having to put up a tent that evening. I found a tree which looked like it would offer some shelter and sat down under it. The ground was horribly wet but my coat was mostly waterproof.

I had lost my bag. My tent, my food and my water were in it and I was furious that I had been caught like that. Maybe I would have had better luck going through the city centre after all.

But from the stories I had heard of cities, I was probably lucky to be alive. And I still had my sunphone and a knife. And the cold weather in the morning had meant that I was wearing lots of my clothing as layers. I certainly could have come out of it much worse than I had.

It would soon be dark and the new moon would provide no light. As I tried to find a drier patch of ground to spend the night on I caught sight of a hole under one of the nearby trees. A rabbit warren? It was too small to belong to a fox or a badger. If only I'd had my snare.

There was a young sapling near to the hole. I had an idea. I pulled the shoelaces out of one of my boots and fashioned one into a loop for the noose. I found some sticks and used my knife to whittle them into two hook shapes. I buried one into the earth near the entrance and attached the other to the sapling using the other shoelace. It took a while to set the snare as the two hooks were wet and slippery, but at last I managed to lock them against each other. All being well, any movement near the snare would dislodge the sticks and the elasticity of the bent sapling would cause the snare to be pulled tight, hopefully trapping a rabbit as it did so.

I checked that the knots were tight. I needed to be able to collect my shoelaces the following morning.

Day 14

I must have been more exhausted than I had imagined as I slept without waking until well after dawn. The first thing I did was to retrieve my shoelaces. I approached the rabbit warren and, much to my amazement, I saw that there was something caught in my snare.

This wasn't the first rabbit I had snared but it was the first I had caught with shoelaces. It was dead but it was still warm so I could tell it hadn't been there for long. I took my time untying the snare and rethreading my shoes. With a grimace I noted that they were still damp from yesterday's rain. Unfortunately I had no alternative but to put them back on.

The rabbit would keep for a little while and I couldn't prepare it here. It would have made a good stew if I had had a pot to cook it in.

My stomach was rumbling. I reminded myself that I wouldn't die from one day without food but I needed to find something that I could eat. It was time to leave.

It was much drier today and I removed my top layer of clothing and tied it around my waist. I stayed in the shade of the forest for as long as I could in an attempt to stay cool and not become dehydrated. The thick canopy meant that the forest floor was too dark for brambles to grow so I made good time.

When I left the cool of the forest, I could see that the sun was already high in the sky and I was already getting warm. I made a note to look out for a container that I could use to store water. Collecting water wouldn't be difficult but I would need somewhere to store it.

I was exhausted long before midday. My stomach had been rumbling all morning and I had tied my coat tighter around my middle in an attempt to stop it hurting. I was feeling thoroughly miserable so it was a relief when the track I was walking along widened into a road. After a mile or so, houses started to appear, each as dilapidated as the last. Despite its appearance, this place didn't have an air of neglect. The gardens looked well-tended and evidence of recent sowing was apparent. I was reluctant to help myself to anything I might find – someone clearly lived nearby and would be reliant on these vegetables. I kept walking.

The road led me to a town. It wasn't exactly the bustling place that it had probably been in its heyday, but it was enough; I could ask for food and water here. I was exhausted but I kept going. There was a woman ahead of me carrying a heavy-looking sack. I would ask her.

"Excuse me? I've been attacked and had my bag stolen. Where might I find some water?"

She stared at me. I wondered if she hadn't heard me. But as I opened my mouth to repeat myself she pointed further along the road.

"Over there," she said. "The pub's that way."

"Thank you," I said gratefully. I started to walk in the direction she had pointed. I hadn't gone far before I heard a crash and the sound of fast-disappearing footsteps behind me and I spun around. I caught sight of the woman running away. Her sack lay on the ground.

I froze. Was I walking into a trap?

I decided not to head towards the pub but to take one of the side roads. I was so close now, I could smell the sea. I would keep going for now. I could survive a little longer without water.

The shade from the buildings provided some relief. I walked quickly, trying to not draw attention to myself. I draped the rabbit over my shoulders; it probably looked less strange than having it dangling from one hand.

Street after street, step after step. I felt eyes watching me wherever I went. But I was close now.

And then I saw it. The sea stretched out in front of me, a deep blue reflecting the dazzling light from the sun. The waves crashed gently upon the shore and a gull screeched somewhere nearby. I had made it. I had reached the south coast after more than two weeks of travelling through a world I was no longer familiar with.

There was a harbour to the east end of the beach and I could make out some fishing boats waiting on the shore. I headed towards them, trying to find my footing on the pebbles.

That was the easy part over and done with. Now I was going to be entirely reliant on others. I needed to find a boat.

I didn't get far. I heard footsteps behind me and, yet again, I found myself being caught from behind. I swung my fist blindly and there was an audible thud as it made contact with something solid. There was a grunt of pain and I spun around to face my attacker.

Attackers.

There was a group of them, male and female, all of different ages. My hand was smarting from the punch. I slowly raised my hands above my head. I didn't have a chance of winning against so many of them.

"What's this?" I asked. "What's happening?" I didn't get a reply.

I didn't resist as they bound my wrists behind my back. There were cheers from all around me and my heart sank. All I could think about was that I was so close to the sea, to Seth, and yet still so far.

"Fits the description, all right," a woman's voice called from somewhere to my right. "Missing the bag, but there's no doubt about it."

"Walk!" a deeper voice snarled from somewhere behind me, giving me a shove. So I did. Back the way I had come, towards the town. Further from the sea. Further from Seth and his family.

The further we walked, the deeper my heart sank. We were joined by others and I was paraded down what was once the high street, past boarded up shops and a dilapidated clock tower, towards the town hall.

I had no idea what was going on. Any attempt to talk was met with a growl and sometimes a fist from those around me. I stayed silent.

We were heading towards the town hall, I could see it at the end of the street. Memories of another hall from a lifetime ago rose unbidden to mind. But I was on my own here, with no Seth and no Mary to help me, with only my mind and an ageing body against all these people and with no idea what was going on.

Still, I welcomed the cool of the building as we entered.

Most of the crowd stayed outside, and I was grateful. I didn't need any more witnesses to my humiliation than absolutely necessary. I was dragged through a dark entrance hallway and we stopped before a large, ornate door. It slowly swung open and I was pushed inside.

Inside it wasn't the large hall that I had been expecting but a rather plain office with benches along the walls. The shutters were thrown open to let in plenty of light and there was a tall man sitting behind a desk on the other side of the room wearing what probably passed for smart clothing these days. A tarnished plate on the desk read Addams.

The man, who I assumed was Mr Addams, stood up as I entered and gestured to the wooden chair facing the desk.

"Welcome! Make yourself at home."

He looked about Jake's age but his dark hair was already starting to turn grey, and the dark circles under his eyes didn't help his appearance. I found myself feeling a little sorry for him.

My captors frogmarched me over to the chair and I sat down heavily. I wasn't complaining, I needed the rest.

"What's going on?"

Addams didn't reply but watched the benches fill up. It felt like I was on trial. Maybe I was.

And I had no representative.

"Let us begin."

The room fell silent. All eyes were watching the man.

"Eleven days ago, we received a message on the net about an individual matching your description having attacked one of the workers at a landfill site. An alert was issued for the capture and a reward was offered. The message was updated two days later with a statement saying that the individual had been last seen heading south.

"Where have you come from?"

Truth or lie? I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Someone handed me a chipped glass of water. I took it but didn't drink.

I took a deep breath.

"I'm from the north." I ignored the muttering from around the room. "I passed by the landfill site you mentioned where I was attacked by a drunkard. I was kicked in the head and the ribs until I passed out and was rescued by passing traders. My attacker was much younger and stronger than me and I was lucky to have not been seriously injured."

There was more muttering at this.

"You got any proof of that?" a voice croaked from the back of the room. I spun around to face the speaker, an emaciated-looking woman with thin hair.

I didn't need to say anything. I lifted up the hem of my shirt so that they could see my ribs, still mottled with yellowing bruises.

"Does that suffice?" My tone was sour. There was some whispering from behind in response but no-one challenged me.

"But we only have your word for that," Addams told me. "Those could have been caused by another incident. Or self-inflicted."

I snorted. "Which is more likely? That an elderly person attacked a much younger, stronger man, or the other way around?"

"We have no proof that the man was younger and stronger than you."

"Maybe you should find out who the supposed victim is before delivering an innocent person to them?" I snapped. I tried to calm myself down. It wouldn't do to lose my temper in front of this audience, I reminded myself.

"You're right," he nodded slowly. I allowed myself to relax fractionally. I hadn't realised how tense I was. "We'll hold you here and make sure you get a proper trial."

"What?"

"We'll ensure that you're treated fairly. It won't be for long."

With that, I was dragged away through the door, amidst cheers and jeering. I struggled as much as I could but my hands were bound and there were many more of them than me. I was taken away, down a flight of stairs, to another room. They locked me in.

At least they let me keep my snared rabbit.

I was visited shortly afterwards by Addams. He held up a hand before I could say anything. "For what it's worth, I believe your story."

I glared at him.

"Then why am I here?"

"I do apologise. The reward for your capture is substantial and would make a huge difference to the people who live here."

"You're selling me to the person who attacked me?"

At least he had the grace to look guilty.

"You must understand, we struggle here. Every year we move further inland as the sea wears away our defences. I can't pass up this opportunity. We look out for each other here."

"So you're selling an innocent, elderly person so that you can save yourself a walk?" I was disgusted. "I hope your people turn on you."

He blinked. "I was hoping we could come to an arrangement."

I was tired of this. "I'm on my own and everything I had was stolen from me yesterday. I can't offer you anything. Leave me alone and let me have my dignity."

He sighed. "I see." I stared at the floor, hoping he would leave. "Perhaps you would have done the same in my situation. But for what it is worth, I'm sorry."

First, I needed to escape from my binds. The chair I was sitting on was roughly made with a nail sticking out halfway down the back and I wondered if that would be enough to cut through the cord. Still, I didn't have anything to lose by trying. I pulled my wrists as far apart as I could and angled myself so that the cord was lying against the nail. Rubbing the cord against the nail was tiring and my wrists were soon raw but I was rewarded with a broken cord after nearly an hour of hard work.

Now I just needed to wait.

A couple of people came to check on me over the next few hours. I didn't let them see that my hands were free and just stared at the floor, refusing to interact with them in any way. I only needed to be patient and to wait for the right moment.

It was dark in the room but my visitors had brought light with them and I had seen all I needed to of the door. It opened outward and didn't have a particularly complicated lock so I would be able to escape with the help of something long, strong, and thin. And my knife was still in my pocket.

I waited until I thought it would be dark outside, then I waited a little longer. At long last I decided that it was time. I crept over to the door. I didn't know if anyone would be on the other side and it was entirely possible that I only had one chance at escaping so I wasn't going to give anyone a reason to come running.

I felt my way to the door and slid the knife blade between the door handle and the frame. I could feel where the latch lay and pushed the knife blade in as hard as I could and held my breath.

Nothing. The door didn't move. It took a bit of wiggling the knife before I was rewarded with a pop, and the door swung open.

But I wasn't free yet. I closed the door behind me, it might buy me a few seconds if someone were to check on me, and I crept back up the stairs.

I was greeted by a rumbling sound and I froze. A guard dog? But no. There was a man passed out on a bench, snoring loudly. I took a deep breath and willed my heart to slow down. I made my way past him, towards the shuttered window. It opened easily.

The snoring stopped. I froze.

"Hey!"

He clearly hadn't been expecting to see me. I kept still. I couldn't allow him to raise the alarm.

"You don't want to call for help," I told him, keeping my voice low. "You're going to let me go and you're not going to say anything." I was still holding my knife. I raised it so that he couldn't miss it.

He raised his hands. He looked so young, barely out of his teens, and I was confused. He wasn't within reach of my knife and I could be out of the window before he reached me.

"I can't let you leave." He spoke softly, but his eyes were wide. "I'll get into so much trouble."

"I'm not staying," I told him sharply. I wondered what was going through his head.

"Then help me," he begged. "Hit me. Make it look convincing."

"I can't."

"Please!"

I couldn't just leave him.

"They would never believe that I overpowered you," I told him cautiously. "And head wounds can be nasty. I won't risk that."

His gaze flickered to my knife.

"Use that."

"What?" I was horrified. "No."

"They'll do far worse if they think I let you escape." I froze. I felt sick. "Please!"

That was enough for me.

He could do it himself. I slid the knife along the floor to him. I wasn't leaving my position by the window. But he shook his head, eyes wide.

"Make it quick," he begged.

I picked up the knife and made my way towards him. I swallowed. My hands were trembling.

He would probably have the fastest recovery with a side wound. There was less chance of hitting a major blood vessel so far from his heart and lungs and I would be less likely to damage nerves.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded.

The blade slid in sickeningly easily and he groaned loudly, screwing up his face in pain. The wound wasn't deep enough to do any permanent damage and would give him plenty of time to get some medical attention. He wouldn't die, at least.

I wanted to throw up. This was nothing like putting a deer out of its misery.

"Don't take out the knife," I begged, my voice cracking. I passed his coat to him. "Put pressure on the wound."

He nodded, holding it to his side. He already looked pale.

"Thanks," he gasped. "Now go."

We were on the ground floor. It wasn't a large drop from the window.

I was free.

And I felt sick.

Day 15

It was just starting to get light outside but I was only too eager to get away from the town hall. I made my way back along the seafront as quickly and as quietly as I could. I needed to put as much distance between me and this town as possible.

I didn't know where to go or what to do. I could only guess that other people would also be looking out for me. The streets were empty and I kept walking.

It wasn't long before I was at the beach again. I kept off the pebbles as best as I could; it was easier to walk along the road and there was less chance of twisting an ankle on ground that didn't move.

The further I walked, the fewer houses there were around me. These were clearly empty and hadn't been maintained for a while, with doors hanging off hinges and broken windows; clear evidence of looters at some point in the past. Several roofs had fallen in. I kept going.

I crossed the bridge spanning the estuary. It had clearly been patched up many times over the years but it held my weight. There was a harbour ahead, with fishing boats tied up. It looked deserted but it was still early and I needed to be out of the area before everyone awoke. I would cross into the next valley and hope for the best. I considered going around the cliff, but I didn't know the area and I couldn't risk being caught by the tide. According to my sunphone, that left me one option.

The path up the headland was steep and I had to stop, gasping for breath, to rest many times. There was an old track, crumbling away hidden beneath the trees. There were more deserted houses lying along it, with rusty cars lying abandoned in front of them. I wondered what would meet me at the top of the hill.

The ground gradually started to flatten out and the going became much easier. I kept walking; I could see the sea again and it stretched out across my line of sight, a hundred metres or more below me. It was light enough now, and the view was spectacular. It was going to be a beautiful day.

I wasn't sure exactly where I was going but there was a track heading eastwards. I took it.

It was easy enough to forget the previous night as I went. I was alone up here, just me and the wildlife, with no other people in sight. I was thirsty and tired, but I could go on for a little longer. It couldn't be far to the next valley.

There wasn't much vegetation along the top of the cliff and I was able to make good time, however I quickly found out that many of the paths on the map no longer existed. They weren't just overgrown, but large sections of the cliff had collapsed leaving the route impassable in places. It took me a long time to find a route around these areas.

Before long, I was heading down into a forest. I welcomed the shade and took the opportunity to sit against a tree to rest my aching feet. I leaned back and closed my eyes. A bird sang cheerfully somewhere above me and there was the sound of a brook babbling merrily nearby.

That meant water.

I stood up as quickly as I could and made my way towards it. It wasn't much further down and soon I was kneeling along its muddy bank and scooping water greedily into my mouth. I didn't have any way of filtering it, and at that moment, I didn't care. It soothed my parched throat.

There was a distinctive smell that only grew stronger the further into the forest I went and I recognised it as wild garlic. I had never been too fond of the plant but I couldn't be picky here. There were plenty of the plants around, all with their distinctive white flowers, and I fell upon them eagerly, helping myself to a large bunch of them. I was hungry and wild garlic had never tasted so good.

At long last I emerged from the forest, blinking against the brilliant sunlight as I did so. The sea was right there in front of me and there was a harbour a little further along the beach. I headed towards it. I needed to cross the water.

Several boats were tied up alongside it. They weren't the fishing boats that I remembered from photos; short and stocky and painted in blues and whites and the occasional orange. These looked much smaller and sleeker, wooden rather than fibreglass, and, to my surprise, each had a sail. I guessed it was difficult to get hold of diesel these days. A lack of fuel had probably caused huge problems with the fishing supply. Wind was an almost limitless power source so it would have made sense to use a sail, and smaller boats were probably easier to control.

There were some men on a boat a little way along the harbour wall. I guessed that they were preparing for a journey out to sea. I wasn't sure whether I was allowed on the boats or not, so I settled for shouting.

"Can anyone give me a lift?"

They turned towards me. "Why are you crossing?" and "How much can you pay?" were questions that I was expecting to hear. But I wasn't prepared for their reaction.

"You!"

"From the net!"

"You made it!"

"What're you doing here?"

They sounded excited. I took a step backwards.

"I think you might have me confused with someone else," I called back. I couldn't afford to be dragged back to the town hall now.

"You've travelled most of the country trying to find your brother, right? They said you were coming down south."

"We hoped it would be here! Never thought it would be."

They crowded to the edge of the boat. It tilted alarmingly.

"Do you know how I can get across the water?" I asked again. There were three of them. Two young men and a third, much older man, all wearing waders with coloured T-shirts. I nicknamed them Red, White and Blue.

"You won't get many going that far," Blue told me. "There's not much over there for us."

Now I was getting somewhere. "Would I have better luck along a different part of the coast?" But I couldn't be sure that other towns wouldn't be looking for me.

Blue shook his head. "No better than here. It's a long way to travel and can be dangerous. There aren't many who'll risk it for no reason."

"Do you get any visitors from the other side?" I could wait for a few days if absolutely necessary but I was keen to leave as soon as I could.

White laughed. "No more than we visit them. You're out of luck there."

"So it's true then," Blue said. "It is you. From the net."

I didn't like this subject. "I'm not sure what stories you've been hearing."

Blue looked me over. "Come aboard. Let's talk."

"I..." I hesitated, suddenly nervous. The boat wasn't that big and there were already three of them in it.

"Come on, we don't bite." He held out a hand.

I swallowed, then took it, stepping on board a boat for the first time in my life.

We talked. They wanted to know where I was going and why, so I told them about Seth. I told them about my journey and I told them where I had come from. And I told them about George, leaving out the finer details of last night's escape.

White whistled. "That's a long way. You walked that on your own?"

"Not completely. I had help."

"We won't be going out for another hour or so," Blue told me. "The tide's still coming in. What do you say to getting something to eat? You must be hungry."

Food sounded good. "I'd love to," I told him, "But I can't pay you."

He shrugged. "Money isn't everything."

I listened as he exchanged a few words with Red and White. We would be back soon, he told them. I followed Blue down the gangplank and back onto solid ground. I hoped we wouldn't be seen.

He introduced himself as James. Or Jim. And he led me along the street to his home.

"My wife will be preparing something to eat about now. She'll look after you."

His home turned out to be one of a row of terraced houses a couple of streets away. I was surprised by the good condition it was in and I said as much. His eyes crinkled.

"My parents and grandparents kept it like this. It's my turn now to see that it stands for my children."

"Were they sailors too?" I wondered.

"Aye. Fishing isn't what it used to be," he told me. "We're all fine now now, but the overfishing in the middle of the century caused some big problems for my parents."

"How so?"

"There was enough to keep themselves alive but they never had the catches that my grandparents had. Everything got better in the last few decades though. We don't starve here."

It was surprisingly light and airy inside the house. James introduced me to his wife and daughter. Annabel and Esther. They made me feel welcome and told us to sit down while they finished preparing the food.

I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten fish but I was hungry and would have eaten anything. And what a feast it was! There was plenty to go around and then some left over.

I sat next to Annabel who showed me how to cut the fish open and remove any plastic inside. She was as good a cook as Angela had been and I thanked her warmly as we were leaving.

She handed me a bag as I left.

"Because you don't have one," she told me when I asked.

And then we were back on the boat. I was introduced to Red and White properly this time: Bill and Gareth. And then we set off.

This was a normal day for them and they still had fish to catch to feed their families. They found me a seat where I would be out the way of the nets. The churning of the waves made me feel queasy but I didn't think I would be sick.

I took the time to examine the bag that Annabel had given me. I wasn't sure what it was made of; perhaps some kind of leather. It held a couple of bottles of water and some dried food. I took a bite curiously. It was some kind of fish.

"Thanks," I murmured, surprised by her kindness. She hadn't known me but had given me enough food to keep going, hopefully until I reached Seth.

I was exhausted after a long night with little rest. I let my eyes drift shut and the gentle rocking of the boat soon lulled me to sleep.

At last we caught sight of another fishing boat. It looked like a larger, older version of the one we were on and it was painted in shades of red. James shouted to them as we approached and there was an answering reply.

The two boats drew alongside each other. I listened to them exchange a few words but I couldn't make out what they were saying. My heart sank. Of course they wouldn't be speaking English. Despite having done my best to learn from my dictionary over the past few decades, I was quickly discovering that the spoken word sounded very little like the written one.

I ran through several options in my head. I could probably read and write well enough to communicate, but I didn't have any paper or writing implements. I could use my sunphone for that but I couldn't risk it being stolen. I could try to get by with body language but that would only take me so far. I would likely need directions, and probably would need to understand a lot more.

So it was with great surprise that the captain of the other vessel shouted to me in English.

"Come aboard!"

James joined me as I headed over.

"They've agreed to take you to shore once they've finished for the day. Best of luck with your search, Tam."

"Thank you. Thank you for everything." I meant it too. I wouldn't have made it this far without their help.

He shook his head. "Think nothing of it. You've given us all a great story to tell our families. We're rooting for you."

There wasn't much I could say to that. We shook hands and I boarded the other boat.

The boat was called Dolphin and, judging by the dophin-themed livery everywhere on board, the captain must have liked the creatures. The captain greeted me with a nod and directed me to the back; the stern, I remembered. I sat down on the deck and leaned back against the railing. The deckplate was throbbing under me and I peered over the side. It had been decades since I had been in any kind of motorised vehicle and I wasn't sure I liked the sensation. I heard the engine roar as the boat turned and I closed my eyes.

This boat had an engine. I wondered where they had managed to get the fuel from or if they had made it, and how old this boat must be. Maybe it was easier to get hold of fuel on the other side of the water. I wondered what sort of measures they had taken to prevent fuel leakages and to capture the waste carbon.

I watched the fishermen drop their nets over the side and reel them in. They weren't exactly full of fish but the catch would have fed the community for a couple of days. Overfishing had been a big problem at the time of the riots. Food shortages had meant that people were prepared to break the rules to feed themselves and their families and friends. And anyone else who could afford it. As food prices rocketed, growing or catching your own meals was necessary for survival. That was when most left the cities to look for greener pastures. Or in many cases, bluer, wetter ones. From the stories we heard from visitors in the early days of the community, fishing was a difficult livelihood. There were lots of people fishing and not many fish.

It was good to see that the seas were recovering.

Someone was speaking to me. Not the captain but one of the other fishermen. The sun was getting low in the sky and I wondered where the day had gone.

"Look there." I turned in the direction he pointed, squinting against the light. We weren't too far from the shore but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"What am I looking at?"

"There!"

And then I saw it. Dorsal fins were breaking through the waves, less than fifty metres away and heading towards us. From the shape they could only belong to dolphins.

They swam alongside the boat, fully submerged, only occasionally breaching the surface to take another lungful of air. There must have been at least ten of them. I marvelled at their agility and the way that they could glide, seemingly effortlessly, through the water at speeds matching that of the boat.

I stretched a hand out towards the water. I couldn't reach them of course, but this was the closest I had ever been to such creatures. It felt almost magical and I was filled with a sense of serenity.

Yet all too soon the dolphins swam towards the front, the bow, of the boat. Then they turned and swam away, out to sea. I watched them until I could see them no more.

The fisherman was still standing next to me. He smiled kindly. "We go back soon. You have food, yes?"

"Some, yes. Do you need any help with anything?"

"No, we finish. Not long now."

All too soon we were landing on the shore. I waved goodbye to the fishermen and thanked them profusely. I tried a few words in their language, to which they laughed and tried to correct my pronunciation. We parted on good terms and I left, smiling.

I made my way along the beach and through the town. One seaside town appeared to be much like another, aside from the fact that I could no longer read the local signage. The place was deserted and it was getting dark so I turned my attention to finding somewhere to stay for the night. I didn't have a tent or any kind of waterproof material but the sky seemed clear enough so I hoped it wouldn't rain.

I had no idea exactly where I was but at least I was on the right stretch of coastline now. It wouldn't be much further to get to Seth.

I headed south out of the town. The sun was low in the sky so I stopped in the first field I came to. I would hide here for the night. I didn't know how friendly the locals would be so it would be better to stay out of sight for now and leave at daybreak.

I was hungry. Aside from the fact the rabbit was dead, it looked healthy enough. Annabel's dried fish would keep for a few days but the rabbit wouldn't. I started a small fire using Brid's lighter, glad that it hadn't been in my bag. The wood was wet and didn't catch easily so I settled for eating some of it raw.

As I had done the previous night, I wrapped myself in my coat and tried to get some sleep. My last thoughts were of the young man from the town hall on the other side of the water.

Day 16

I woke up to rain. It was cold but fortunately not raining too heavily. I quickly decided against trying to go back to sleep; it was just after dawn and I was already cold and wet. Moving would be better than shivering uncomfortably for another couple of hours.

My feet were freezing. The water had made its way in to my shoes and it had soaked into my socks. I longed for a nice, warm campfire. Seth would surely have some sort of heating – I just needed to make it through the day.

It was overcast and still early but there was sufficient light to power my sunphone. I spent longer than usual staring at Seth's family after it booted. Of course I would recognise him, how could I not, but he would be so much older than in these photos. His children would be adults now, maybe with children of their own. I was surprised to discover how much I was looking forward to that possibility. Anne and Benjamin, my memory supplied. I would recognise them if they looked like their father. Or their mother.

Of course, there was always the possibility that they had moved out of the area. I had maps of the local area so I wouldn't get too lost as long as he was still within a couple of hundred miles. I hoped it wouldn't come to that. And I could always ask for directions. My accent couldn't be too bad.

The maps app finally loaded and I did my best to get my bearings. I had spotted some signage when passing through the town the night before so I was able to make a guess at the stretch of road I was on. It didn't look like I had much further to go.

I didn't have much with me so I was ready to leave within a matter of minutes. My food supply was pitifully low but I hoped to reach Seth today. Hopefully he would be able to give me something to eat. And if not, I would be back to relying on the kindness of others. And maybe a shoelace snare.

I walked. I checked the maps app periodically so that I didn't stray off course. The weather was miserable and I was cold and hungry but the memory of Seth's face kept me going. One foot in front of the other, mile after mile. Occasionally the sun broke through the clouds and I welcomed the warmth, but for the most part the day stayed as it had started: cold and wet. I wrapped my arms around myself, tucking my hands under my armpits to protect them from the wind.

Even though it was still morning, I was surprised at how few people were around. The fields looked far more overgrown than I would have expected, evidence that this was a fairly uninhabited area without a lot of traffic. This was good because I wouldn't have to worry about raiders but it also meant that I would be on my own if anything were to happen. Not that anything would happen. Not now that I was so close.

After a couple of hours, I took a break under a tree on top of a hill. It was still wet but I needed to sit down. The lack of food and the extensive walking were taking their toll on me. I had been in good form from years of toil in the community but the past two weeks were catching up with me; I felt lightheaded from the climb. I ate some of the last of my rations while I rested. They would help.

The valley below was mostly shrouded in the low cloud so I couldn't see much of it, but sometimes it would part and I could make out some of the landscape below.

There was a river winding its way through the valley below me. I could see it on my map so I knew I was in the right area. There was a forest down there too; it looked dark and gloomy down in the valley but, like the forests back home, seemed much bigger than when the maps had been made. I guessed that there had been an extensive tree-planting activity here too several decades ago.

When I had rested, I set off into the valley. I took my time climbing down; it wasn't steep but the mist made it impossible to see more than a few metres ahead of me and the road was almost impassable in places. The surface must have worn off years ago and I couldn't risk falling and twisting an ankle. Not here.

Despite the condition of the road, there was evidence that it had been passed recently. There were footprints deep in the mud which had filled up with rainwater and there were some long, deep channels which, combined with the horseshoe-shaped footprints between them, could only mean that a horse and cart had been this way. Maybe it had been a trader?

It was looking like Seth lived in a community similar to mine. Like the one he had lived in before he left. It certainly didn't look like the road would lead to a highly populated place. I checked my sunphone. The maps app showed a small village about half a mile further on. Seth's village. I tried to not let myself get excited but I could feel my heart lifting. I was nearly there.

The mud was slowing me down. I was sinking into it at every step. I wasn't worried about getting stuck but the cold, muddy water seeping into my boots was unpleasant and I didn't want to fall over.

But a little further along the road started to improve. Mud turned into gravel and it became much easier to walk. A little further up I could see the first evidence of civilisation: a stone wall. The visibility wasn't good but the further I walked, the more I could see. Old stone farmhouses peered out at me through the mist. They looked remarkably well kept and I thought I could see movement behind one of the many unbroken windows.

Had there been someone inside? Could it be Seth? I didn't hesitate. I walked up to the house and knocked loudly on the door. And I held my breath.

There were footsteps on the other side and I could feel my heart racing. I heard a bolt being pushed slowly back. And a second bolt. And a third. And the door creaked open, stopped by a chain.

A rough voice greeted me, and it didn't sound friendly. I strained to make out the words.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand." I held my hands up and tried to look non-threatening. "Do you speak English?"

There was a pause followed by a flood of words. They sounded harsh, but I couldn't understand them.

"I don't understand." I tried using the words I had learnt, desperately hoping that my accent was understandable. There was silence from the other side, and I waited. When there was no response I felt my heart sink. Then there was the sound of the chain being taken off. The door creaked open.

There was a man there, tall and imposing wearing a dark shirt. He looked old, probably older than me, with tousled, white hair framing his face. He said something else that I didn't catch so I repeated my previous sentence. He shook his head and gestured that I should follow him. He looked furious but didn't say anything else.

I followed him along the road, keeping my distance. We stopped by a gate leading to a field. He growled something else at me and held up his hand which I assumed meant that he wanted me to wait. So I did.

This field was clearly where the community gathered. There was a firepit in the centre, dug into the earth and surrounded by stone. There was also an open area with wooden seats and a wooden canopy where some children were playing what looked like a board game. They all looked about the same age, boys and girls maybe around ten years old. Most of them had dark brown or black hair and there was one girl with long blonde hair who stood out.

I watched as he made his way across to a small wooden cabin. He knocked on the door and it opened. I could make out a younger woman in the doorway who greeted him, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, not that I would have been able to understand in any case. He turned and pointed to me. I waved sheepishly and she raised her hand in acknowledgement. They exchanged a few more words and then she disappeared inside, only to reappear wearing a long, brown coat. They made their way back across the field towards me.

"English, yes?" she called as she approached. She had a strong accent but was perfectly understandable.

"Yes," I replied. She was much younger than me, dressed plainly with her long brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She exchanged a few words with the man who nodded and left the field, walking briskly.

"Come. We will go somewhere where we can talk. David will inform the others."

We made our way towards the canopy and the woman spoke to the children. They looked disappointed but quickly packed up their game and ran out of the field.

"You are causing us many problems. We do not like visitors here," she frowned. "We especially do not like visitors who cannot make themselves understood."

I felt bad. I was an outsider and I couldn't imagine that this place was any better with immunisation than the community had been, and who could guess what I might have picked up on my journey over. I was risking the health of everyone around here.

"I understand. I'm sorry. But I've come a long way to find someone."

"To find someone?"

I swallowed. This was the reason I had been travelling for the last two weeks and for the journey I had been planning for so many years. "Seth. Do you know Seth?"

"Seth?"

I made to pull my sunphone out of my pocket. I could show her the photos. "He married someone called Hettie and they lived in this area a few decades ago. They had children. Anne and Benjamin."

"Seth is here," she interrupted me.

I fell silent. My heart was pounding in my chest.

"He is?" My voice was a whisper.

"Yes. Do you want to see him?"

I nodded. I felt dizzy with relief. She looked at me kindly.

"I think we can make an exception to the rules here. We will meet the others later." She stood up and I followed suit.

"The others?"

"Leaders. We have rules here for good reasons. But we will ignore those today."

The rules were probably very similar to the ones we had in the community. I felt so grateful to this woman. She led me out of the gate and back along the road the way I had come. There was a narrow track leading away from the road which we started along.

It was muddy and I slipped several times as we walked along it. My guide seemed to have no such problem and I wished I had her shoes.

"You have travelled far, Tam. It cannot have been an easy journey."

It hadn't been easy. But it could have been so much worse. I was grateful to the many people who had helped me along the way and who had made it possible for me to be here. For me to see Seth again.

"It wasn't." But it was all worth it now.

The track widened and I could see ahead. I could make out the shape of a chapel ahead, the top of its short spire lost in the mist. Like the other buildings in this village, it seemed remarkably well looked after. We passed rows of gravestones which looked in similarly good condition. Was Seth the one who looked after the place?

We didn't go into the chapel. The track wound around the back, past a statue of an angel with its head bowed in prayer, past rows upon rows of crosses and slabs. My heart suddenly caught in my chest. Was Seth here in this graveyard? It was suddenly getting harder to breathe. I had travelled so far.

We stopped next to an oak tree and she pointed at the headstones beneath it.

I felt lightheaded. I made my way off the path, only half-noticing that she wasn't following me. I knelt down to read the words on the grave.

Seth and Hester, dated some ten years previously.

Ten years.

There was the grave next to it.

Anne and Simon, with the same date.

And the next grave.

Benjamin. Ten years.

Ten years.

I couldn't do anything. I stared at the graves. I was so cold. I felt so empty. I was too late.

"I'm sorry," she had walked up behind me. "You didn't know."

"I was too late." Her arm was around me and I found myself weeping into her shoulder. "I was too late."

She said nothing, but let me stand there, crying until I had exhausted myself, holding me.

At last I broke away.

"I'm sorry," I told her.

She shook her head. "He was a good man. A good father and loved by all around here. He spoke of you often and said you would visit."

"What happened?" My voice was a croak.

"There was a disease ten years ago. Tuberculosis, you would call it. Many died."

"Anne and Benjamin too. And Hettie."

She nodded again. "And many others. But many survived."

She led me back to the track.

"What will you do now? Will you stay and meet the others?"

I didn't know. I hadn't planned for this. Was there anything for me here?

"I don't know."

She nodded, her eyes wise and understanding.

"Go, Tam. Live for yourself. Tell your own story."

I didn't know what I would do but one thing was for certain, I couldn't stay. We parted ways in silence and I headed back up the muddy road. There was nothing for me back there.

One thing occurred to me as I walked. I never knew her name but she knew mine.

Epilogue

This will be my last journal entry. I don't know exactly where I am and I don't know where I'm heading. My purpose for the last few decades has gone and I don't know what I'll do next. One thing for sure is that, whatever I do, life will be different.

Maybe I'll head back to the community. Maybe I'll try life as a trader. Maybe I'll be a travelling storyteller. I'm young enough yet.

Because the world now isn't the one I grew up in. Some things are better, some things are worse. And I'm one of a very small number who has lived through these changes. I need to make sure that the next generation, and all future generations, can be as prepared as possible to take on whatever challenges come their way. The problems weren't all caused by me, or my generation. They weren't all caused by my parents' and grandparents' generations. But we're the ones who have to live here now and the next generation will still be here long after I'm gone. For their sakes, and for those who come after them, I have to try.

Let's see what I can do. I'm only one person but it's a start.