I Found Them Lost, and Lost Myself

I was lost.

The darkness whispered against me, pressing down upon my shoulders like a burden of sin. In every direction spread the endless host of dark trees and thick foliage as far as the eye could see. Ripping and tearing, I pushed my way through the undergrowth, struggling against the strong hold of fear by focusing only on putting one foot in front of the other.

I wasn’t making any progress. The further I traveled, the clearer the path became, and even my aching head understood that I was going in circles. Walking through the same trails I had cut hours ago. Tripping over the same stones. Cutting my hands on the same thorns.

I had to stop. But if I stopped, I knew I would never find strength enough to rise again.

I had to go on. But if I went on, I would only wander deeper into this labyrinth of wilderness.

It was an impossible choice. One that I could not make.

I squeezed between two thick oak trees, feeling the rough bark scrape against my back. With a pop I appeared from the other side, doubled over and gasping for breath.

When I looked up, my head swam. The blood pounded in my chest, and my ears throbbed. I didn’t know why I felt like that. Could be loss of blood. Or lack of food. Exhaustion. Fear. Loneliness.

Then my dry eyes caught sight of a single object, flapping in the brittle wind. It was a piece of cloth the size of my palm, snared by a tangled bush, hanging from one thin branch. I felt my heart pound, and I staggered over to the cloth. It was warm and black, and felt like a cross between leather and velvet. A piece from the clothing of one of my friends? It had to be.

With a spark of new strength, weak but alive, I pushed into the blackened trees. I hadn’t traveled this way yet. It was all new territory to me.

And there! In the red earth, a footprint lay pointing in the direction I was walking. It marked the passing of a traveler. A traveler who was not me.

A single bit of hope lit some light inside me; I heard myself laugh and felt a smile stretch my dusty lips. This was it! I had found them again!

Then my newfound joy crumpled. Who was to say they wanted me to find them? They had left me behind once. What was stopping them from doing it again, once I found them?

The hope died.

In truth, I didn’t know exactly why I had woken up yesterday morning completely alone. My company, consisting of four other desperate individuals, had vanished over the night without a trace. At first I had assumed they had been taken. The Sickly Ones roamed these parts of the mountains quite commonly, so commonly that we—the company and I—had seen several small groups of these poor infected people wandering the cliffs around us. Moaning. Screaming. Writhing in the pain of their disease.

Then I realized that it was impossible. The Sickly Ones would not have left a defenseless victim such as myself unattended. I hadn’t been hidden in our makeshift camp’s foliage. Surely the Sickly Ones would have seen me.

So my mind turned to the next likeliest answer: that they had been captured by the government assassins—the Blackcoats. They, like the Sickly Ones, roamed the land; but with far more silence and purpose. It was our greatest fear that we would be caught by the Blackcoats; they were cold-hearted killers without a shred of pity for anyone caught trying to escape the country.

But I realized that this, too, was an impossibility; and for the same reason as before. The Blackcoats were sworn to merciless vengeance, and I would have shared capture and execution with my company had it been they who were responsible for my friends’ disappearances.

Then how had they vanished?

When I awoke to a silent clearing void of humanity, I had worried for them.

Now I wished them dead.

Staring at that single footprint pressed into the earth, I began to wonder whether I should follow this trail or abandon my friends—as they had no doubt done to me. My mind was so clouded with fatigue and fear that I knew no logic nor reason, only that gnawing resolve to survive.

So I decided to follow the trail for as far as it led me.

There were three sets of tracks for certain; and a fourth trail was possible. It wasn’t as if the path had been hidden; the further I went, the more footprints I saw, all pressed firmly into the dry earth. Branches were bent and broken; and at one place I even saw where someone had sat down to rest. I pushed on.

The watch on my wrist had died long before, but by the orange sun in the dull gray sky I could tell that several hours passed before I noticed many more footprints mingling with the trail I was following.

I bent over to study them, every bone in my body aching for a rest; but I forced myself to remain on my feet. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Seven pairs of footprints made by my company of four.

Could I be traveling with the same path my companions had made in the days before now? That would explain the extra footprints. Many times one of our number had swept back over our trail to search for pursuers. I had even done it once or twice.

But that couldn’t be it. There were too many footprints, even for that.

Could this trail be that of the diseased? I dismissed the idea immediately. Sickly Ones didn’t wear heavy boots like my company and I did. They walked barefoot, or with soiled rags wrapped around their feet. There was no doubt I was following the trail of normal human beings.

This was the one opportunity to turn back. To flee from the danger that inevitably stood ahead. To avoid my doom and find another way forward.

But I continued.

Every step I took I felt the gnawing hunger within me growing stronger. As the sun set and the light waned, the blood in my ears rushed like a flooded river. My headache grew so powerful that I couldn’t hear the crackle of leaves beneath my feet.

I was dying, and my only hope was in what lay ahead.

An hour later, the world was completely dark. The sun was gone, and in its place the moon hung like a ghostly scythe in the clouds. I couldn’t see the trail before me, but I walked on despite that. I had to live. I just had to.

I could feel the darkness pushing. Every time the cold wind blew, every time I walked into a tree, the forest seemed to warn me of the dangers ahead. And I ignored it like a fool.

Then I heard the gunshots. The shouts from a forest which had held its breath for days. The bloodcurdling screams that, to my horror, I recognized. My company! I thought. My friends!

I became a wild thing, scrambling like a blind beast deeper into the foliage, my parched voice screaming hoarsely for them. Crashing through the undergrowth, I stumbled into a clearing.

Where lay my four friends. Silent. Still. For eternity.

And above their crumpled forms, three men whom I almost died at the sight of.

Blackcoats.

One pointed his rifle at me. I heard the blinding white flash. I tasted blood upon the air. And my fading vision locked upon a place on one Blackcoat’s uniform. A place where the black cloth was torn. A place where a patch the size of my palm was missing.

That was all I saw before the world blurred and fell away.

And yet again, I was lost.