Alone: A collection of Short Stories

Alone
- Short Stories

THE HUNTER 5

ANGEL WHARF 14

NOW OR NEVA 21

THE HUNTER

The
attack was over in seconds. Aeva had barely lowered herself into a
squat in the undergrowth when she heard the shuffling nearby. She
held her trusty, sharp blade in her right hand, keeping her wrist
poised and ready to react the moment that it was needed. She shifted
position slightly, twisting to her left and leaning back into the
gnarled old tree trunk behind her.

The sound grew closer,
stopping suddenly a few feet away. Aeva didn’t think, spotting
her chance and taking a single deep breath she twisted her body in a
single practised, smooth movement. Her arm extended, she slammed the
blade into the soil as her back scraped across the bark of the
trunk. The movement and power of her action was automatic, just as
it always was, and she knew instantly by the force she encountered
against her hand, that she had made her target.

The creature hadn’t
had time to react or make a sound before its life ended. Aeva
lifted its lifeless body from the ground. A rat; she stared at the
dirty, rough fur in disgust, pulling her blade from the corpse and
wiping the blood on her leg. She wished there was more to hunt. Rat
meat was full of gristle, and tasted like old boot. One rat barely
fed two people, not like a nice deer.

She knew that she was
wishing for the impossible. There had been hardly anything in the
forests or fields since the great storms. Game was hard to find.
Mostly she found rats, or the occasional rabbit. Anything
substantial had already been hunted to extinction.

The storms had polluted
the rivers; destroying the fish population. Anything that was left
was inedible at best and in most cases poisonous. Only a few
creatures had survived the terrible rain and wind that had ravaged
the planet. Only a lucky few humans had managed to hide from the
years of ferocious lightning storms and the deeply cold winters.
That was years ago, but even now it was hard to survive without a
good harvest from anything that did manage to grow and the
occasional successful hunt.

Aeva packed her catch
into her net bag with the other two skinny, ragged specimens that
she had managed to find. It had been a good day compared to her most
recent trips. For months she had barely managed a catch a day. Three
would feed at least a few children. She slipped her bag onto her
back and smiled. She may even be rewarded with some meat herself.

----------

The
sun was going down, and she knew better than to be outside of the
safe confines of the village walls once it got dark. Aeva slipped
her knife into the leather strap on her leg, easily reachable if she
needed it, and turned to head back.

The stories had been
drummed into her since she was a child herself. Of the rogues and
monsters that roamed outside in the night. Of creatures and people
who fed on any villager who dared to stray from the light, and of
the bodies of those who had tried to fight them. The stories said
that the rogues were inhuman and deadly. She had never seen any
herself, nor would she really want to. She much preferred the safety
of the firelight and her friends.

Out of habit, Aeva
hadn’t travelled far to hunt. She knew the dangers of going
too far from the village and not being able to get back in time for
the gates to close. The villagers and guards would not allow the
gates to be open as the night began to reveal it's shadows. It would
be too easy for a rogue to slip in under their cover.

Even with the short
distance, the walk was slow over the uneven ground. Her boots were
worn and softening on the soles, letting every stone and rock in the
soil make themselves known to her sore, blistered feet. Aeva ignored
the pain, used to it after hunting for the past two years. Besides,
she reminded herself, she was lucky to have boots at all.

Leather was hard to get,
and took some serious trading to get enough for boots. She was
blessed with hardy clothing of wool pants and a warm jacket that
were tough and hard wearing. The material was a dull brown which
afforded her some camouflage when it was needed; essential for
hunting in the dusty, dead landscape. Her long brown hair was pulled
back and tied into a messy ponytail with a piece of old fabric that
she had scavenged from some scraps in the storage huts.

Most were not so lucky.
Many of the villagers wore simple cotton pants and shirts which were
torn and stained from years of wear. As a hunter, and a supplier of
food for the villagers, Aeva was rewarded with the tools and
clothing that she needed. Sometimes she felt guilty, until she
reminded herself of the dangers of her trade and that her safety was
important to them all.

----------

The
gates were open as she neared the village. Aeva knew immediately
that something was wrong. It wasn’t unheard of for the guards
to leave the gates open during the day. They did so to welcome the
travelling traders that moved from village to village bringing tools
and other goods to offer in return for anything that the elders
could spare. But now the sky was darkening, the gates should have
been closed. Aeva had expected to have to ring the bell and wait to
be allowed inside. She didn’t expect to see the entry wide
open for anybody to enter.

“
Eamott.”
She called out loudly and paused, waiting to hear her favourite
guard call back.

There was no reply, and
her heart began to pound loudly in her chest as she pulled her blade
from its strap and dropped her bag behind some boxes beside the
guards hut. Her instincts told her to be prepared and move carefully
as she entered the compound. She forced her feet forward, trying to
keep her movements as silent as possible.

There was nobody around.
No hustle of people preparing the evening meal, no fires lit in
preparation for the cold of the night that was quickly drawing in
and nobody chattering or singing as there usually would be as the
hunters returned home. The silence was unnerving as she slipped into
the space between the guard huts and into the main circle.

That is where she found
Eamott, who had cheerily wished her luck just a few hours before.
His body was now lifeless, bent backwards almost double over a stack
of firewood. His eyes were open in frozen terror, his silent lips
separated as though screaming silently.

Aeva gasped, a tear
springing to her eye. Eamott was as close to family as she had ever
remembered. She reached a hand to his face, pushing his eyes closed
with a gentle brush. He was gone; his clothes tattered and stained
with his own blood that was flowing from his neck. It looked as
though his throat had been ripped out by an animal, leaving damaged
muscle and tendon on display. Her stomach turned, forcing her to
turn away.

Bodies were littered
around the compound, each one with identical wounds. Each one
discarded like chicken bones at a feast. Everybody that she had
once loved, from children to elders, all destroyed by whatever or
whoever had been here. Bodies were thrown across tables and on the
ground, their bones twisted at awkward, broken angles. Pools of
fresh blood stained the straw and sawdust on the ground. It was
sprayed up the walls of the surrounding huts.

Death had been here.
Aeva’s senses where taken over by the smell, the sights and
the unnatural silence that hung in the air. Her village had been
cursed with its presence and now she was alone with it. She was
alone in the world.

She shielded her eyes
and used her inner compass to guide herself to her own hut, trying
to find a place away from the mangled corpses of her loved ones. She
felt sick to the stomach and needed to stop and think. She needed a
plan, and she knew that she needed one quickly.

----------

It
was clear that whatever had done this was from the outside. A rogue,
she was sure. There was no way to know how it had gained entry, but
she knew that the village was no longer safe. The sky was almost
dark and she knew that she shouldn’t stay here. The rogue
might return. She needed to be far from this place before that
happened if she wanted a chance of surviving, and a chance of
finding whatever animal had committed this vile act.

She hoped that her
skills as a hunter would help her to gain a place within another
village for a while. Maybe they would take pity on her if she could
get there safely. Travel was a risk that Aeva knew that she would
have to take if she wanted to get to somewhere safe where she could
make her plans.

She pulled a weathered
bag from the cupboard beside her bed. She had found it on a hunt
once, she assumed lost by a travelling trader. It had been filled
with tools and other shiny objects that she hadn’t recognised.
There were shiny intricate objects that shone in the sunlight. Aeva
had wished to keep them, but the village laws forced her to hand the
objects to the elders to be traded for food and other items.
Anything that would benefit the village as a whole.

The bag, however, she
had been allowed to keep. She had treasured it since that day. She
had only taken it from its storage to feel the hard, worn leather
and hard metal loops and clips. Smyth, the oldest man in the
village, had told her that it was from before the wars. It was
called a satchel. Aeva didn’t care for its name, only for the
strange roughness of its edges and for the interesting patterns of
its stitching.

Now, she filled it with
her scarce belongings. Her spare blade and some nuts and berries,
along with her sleeping clothes and some old rags that she hoped
would be useful. She then slipped out of her hut and ran, ignoring
the bodies, into the elders hut where she began tearing open the box
of trade-able objects and loading a few items into the front pocket
of the bag.

Some of the sparkling
objects caught her eye and she held one up. It had chain, similar to
the ones that held the pans aloft above the fire, and yet so much
smaller and shinier. The chain led to a small yellowed metal piece
that held a hard rock the colour of blood. It was both beautiful and
ugly at the same time. Aeva turned it over in her hand, unsure of
what it could have been, before pushing it deep into her pocket.
Maybe it would make a good trade for a place within another village
and safety. She could only hope.

She added some kindling
and flint to her bag, remembering that she might need to make fire
in the outside. The nights were cold, and the fire doubled as a
warning to stray creatures. She had learned survival as a child, but
this was the first time that she had really needed the skills.

She stepped out of the
hut, closing the door behind her out of habit and respect. The sky
was almost at its darkest, so she said a silent prayer for her
fallen family and moved quickly to the gate, collecting her hunting
bag as she passed.

----------

“
Going somewhere
child?” The voice startled Aeva as she approached. She turned
quickly to the sound, readying her blade to strike if needed.

Before her stood a man,
much like the men from the village and yet very different in the way
that he wore himself. His hair was long and as dark as night itself,
flowing freely around his shoulders and down over his dark, almost
black jacket that appeared to be made of new leather. His eyes bore
into her as he awaited an answer, but Aeva could do nothing but
stare, opened mouthed in shock.

“
Do not be
afraid.” The man’s voice came across the few metres
between them in a whisper of sound. It was soft and soothing, easing
into her mind. “Come to me child, I shall not harm you.”

Aeva tried to pull
herself back from his spell. She could feel her body betraying her
and moving towards him, uncontrolled by her own mind.

“
Who are you?”
She mustered, battling herself with every word. “What do you
want with me?”

The man laughed with a
musical sound that reminded her of the bells at mealtime. “I
simply want to speak with you child, I can see that you have had a
scare.”

Instinct pulled at her
brain, which was thick with betrayal, she was no longer in control
of her body, which was moving slowly towards him, but she still
battled to keep her mind. Instinct was telling her that she was in
danger, that this was the rogue that had killed her village. Her
body was ignorant and determined to lead her to doom. She could feel
his lies, and herself believing them.

“
Come child, come
to me.” His voice was whispering, singing directly into her
mind now.

She felt her body
moving, stopping only once she was within his reach. It was too late
to run away. Her knife dropped from her hand; she could no longer
attack him.

“
That's right, let
me see you properly.”

She tried to force
herself from his bony, cold fingers as he took hold of her. She
could no longer feel her muscles to command them. She was his, even
if she didn’t want to be.