The Road to Winter by Mark Smith

more than I meant to and it sounds like something out of a war movie. But she sits back against the pillow and looks straight at me.
    The afternoon is fading and the light in the room is droppingaway. She slides to the side of the bed and pats the blanket for me to sit next to her.
    ‘Stay with me for a few minutes,’ she says. ‘Until it gets dark. Until you have to go.’
    I prop myself against the bedhead and we sit there with just our shoulders touching. I can feel the warmth of her through my shirt.
    ‘What was it like for you, Finn? When your parents died?’
    This isn’t what I was expecting. I thought she’d want to hear more about the plan. How I would go about finding Kas. Outrunning the Wilders. The danger of it all.
    ‘When Dad died,’ I say at last, ‘I still had Mum, and I felt like I’d be safe. I didn’t realise how hard it must’ve been for her. We had no support in the town; it was dog-eat-dog by then. So we just threw ourselves into surviving, neither of us owning up to the big hole Dad had left in our lives. But when I lost Mum too, it was like time stopped. Even the simplest things were hard—like breathing. For weeks after that it was as though the world had tipped a little bit and everything was out of balance. I stumbled around trying to do things I’d been doing for years, but I just couldn’t find a way through them. I guess I gave up.’
    ‘But you made it through.’
    ‘It was Ray. Just having that contact with someone again, someone to talk to. Funniest thing?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The whole time, he never said anything about the way I talk—growly.’
    She nudges me then, just being playful. And I nudge her back.
    ‘You’re still a bit hard to understand, dog boy, but I’m getting used to it.’
    The light’s dropped away altogether now and we sit in the dark of the room. I’m almost drifting off to sleep myself when she nudges me again.
    ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘You awake?’
    ‘Yep. Just.’
    ‘I think your plan might work.’
    Then, quietly in the dark, I feel her moving closer to me. She nuzzles into my neck. After a couple of minutes I feel a slight tremor go through her body and she sits up.
    ‘Feel this,’ she says, excited.
    She presses my hand against her belly, but I don’t feel anything.
    ‘Wait,’ she says.
    And then, there it is, kicking. The baby.
    Everything tonight is fizzing and cartwheeling—it’s like there’s too much to take in. Everything has been happening slowly for two years and now it’s like time is going twice as fast, spinning and sliding out of control. I’m struggling to keep up.
    ‘I can’t do this on my own, Finn,’ she says. ‘You have to come back safely, okay? And you have to bring Kas.’
    She lies back down with her head against my chest. We sit like this for ages until she pulls away.
    ‘You won’t save the world sitting here, dog boy,’ she says.
    ‘It’s just us I’m trying to save. The world can look afteritself.’ I slide off the bed and make my way back to the kitchen.
    She calls from her room, ‘Hey, any more of that soup going?’
    After I’ve fetched her another cup of soup, I’m out the back door, careful to make sure Rowdy doesn’t slip through and follow me. I keep to the shadows and make my way down the street towards the river to check on the Wilders.
    I can see the glow of their campfire before I’m halfway there. Edging closer, I make out the shapes of six men, standing around the fire with their hands held out to the flames. To the left of them the light dances off the metal of the trailbike. I’m pretty sure they are all there so I head back up the street and walk parallel to the main road until I get to the bridge. Just as I’m about to break cover I notice a shape sitting with its back to the railings, midway across.
    They’re guarding the bridge.
    ‘ Fuck ,’ I breathe.
    I should have expected this. It means I have to go further upriver to the footbridge. I back away and follow the trail