Note 1
The house was at least a hundred meters too close to the tree line. A month ago we wouldn’t have even considered it. Because it was fucking suicide.
I lowered the binoculars and watched the trees. Ignoring the fear prickling up my back, threatening to leave my limbs frozen and my mind numb and useless.
It seeped into my thoughts like cold through clothes when sitting on the ground, making me question every decision. Fear is the mind-killer.
It’s often more dangerous than the thing that evoked it. Not this time though.
“How long are we gonna sit here?” Måns whined, bumping the back of his head against the undercarriage of the overturned car we were hiding behind. He was too inexperienced and/or stupid to understand how dangerous this mission was.
Grass sprouted through the wheel next to him, touching the ground, and big, green hop leaves hid the exposed front axle. The smell of warm earth and meadow flowers mixed with rust and sun-warmed rubber.
“Until I say so. And stay quiet.”
“Why? What are we even waiting for? Fucking messiah? If I led this mission I would—”
“Get us all killed. Just shut up so Liv can think,” Astrid interrupted, giving me one of her lopsided smiles. She had her arms crossed on top of one of the wheels turned up to the blue sky and her long brown hair tied in a braid around her head. One end of the two-meter iron pole strapped to her back stuck up behind her, its unrusted parts reflecting the sun.
I raised the binoculars again, finding the cursed house.
It didn’t look special. A yellow brick villa. Maybe the ivy was a bit too aggressive in the way it spread over the roof, the flowerbeds too overgrown, too reminiscent of the underbrush rustling between the trees, whispering of death.
Or was I projecting? I sure was procrastinating.
I’d led hundreds of missions—dangerous and desperate ones, rushed and without a trace of a plan. But none of them came even close to this.
I glanced at Astrid again and she raised her brows, silently confirming that yes, this was insane. And yes, we were still going to do it. If there was a way to survive this, we would find it. Like we always did.
The fourth person—one I understood even less why the fuck they had been assigned to this mission than Måns—was Hedda. Or I knew exactly why, I just thought the reason was stupid. Short, shy and silent, Hedda was standing behind Astrid as if she wanted to melt into her shadow and disappear. Still frowning at Måns for insulting her messiah.
A small pin in the shape of a sprout was fastened to her chest, marking her as a Believer.
I wished I could talk to Astrid alone, the urge to tell someone—anyone—that this was a fucking bad idea, to free me from the responsibility of keeping them all alive, was overwhelming. But it wouldn’t matter. Because even if everyone agreed with me that this was madness it would be my fault when they died.
I raised the binoculars again, ignoring the steady thump, thump, thump of Måns’s head hitting some part of the car no one living cared to learn the purpose of.
The main road always reminded me of the pictures of a stormy sea I used to love when I was a kid. The roots bursting through the asphalt, making sharp, crumbling waves as the road continued into the forest. Like anyone would ever walk in there of their own free will.
The sky was an unnaturally bright blue, not a cloud for the eyes to rest on. No sounds but the small ones ever-present: rustling of leaves as the forest moved, buzzing of insects hiding in the shadow of a semi-truck pierced through and tied to the ground by roots, the rushing of my blood.
They were all looking at me. Astrid with her loopy smile, hiding the excitement I knew bubbled in her chest, Måns glaring at me with his arms crossed, and Hedda looking like I was about to announce her execution.
So I did. “Let’s go.”
