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“Sam’s givin’ you how much to watch her?” Carena Skeet spluttered, towering over the younger girl, leaning her hands over her head on the brick wall of the housing block. The moon was a sharpened, thin crescent, and lights winked in the guard towers. Over in the main barn, they could faintly hear the twanging of a slightly out-of-tune guitar and some tipsy singing, suggesting the grown-ups’ Christmas Eve party was already in full swing.
Everyone said that Molly Harrison was the prettiest girl in Abel, with blonde curly hair and eyes blue enough to knock out zoms, but right now she was shifting foot-to-foot, looking more irritated than anything else.
“A loaf of crusty bread and a pot of blackcurrant jam, and… you’re not having any of it, Caz.”
“Dr Cohen only promised me a bloody book!” Carena pouted, but avoided stomping her foot. She’d about grown out of that. Nobody would dare call her pretty, but she was too, in a fiercely intimidating way. It was two months until she turned sixteen and could finally start Runner training, and she’d already begun practicing first thing every morning, tearing around the training shed when the sun had barely risen. Where Molly was soft and homely, she was angled and muscular. “You can read it if you let me have a spoonful.”
“That’s a rubbish trade and you know it! I won’t always go along with everything you tell me to do, you know, it’s not fair-“
“Oh blah blah blah, quit whinin’, let’s just get the job done before they realise they double-booked.” She dropped her hands and stalked away. Her foster dad’s old fireman jacket was too big on her, but wearing the king’s clothing added to her swagger.
“You don’t like kids,” Molly pointed out, stumbling a little behind her as she strode off to the front door.
“Kids is fine. Kids is kids. I have, like, fifteen siblings. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yes, and you don’t like any of them. And they’re all the same age as you!”
“What can I say, I’m not good at sharing.” She turned and gazed pointedly at Molly, who shrugged it off. “It doesn’t take two people to babysit a seven year old.”
“Yeah, so go away, Caz. You don’t even want a book.”
“Gotta get on Dr Myers’ and Sam’s good side if I want to be recommended for Runner, don’t I? Janine respects their opinion more than anyone else except Runner Five.”
“So go and sit on guard duty with Runner Five and earn their approval.”
“You jokin’? Five’s batshit.”
“They’re also the only reason we’re not dead, so maybe you should be a bit more respectful.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to tell me what to do, Molly Harrison...” Carena’s tone was affronted, teetering on nasty. Then she stopped herself. “But yeah, you’re right. Five’s batshit bonkers, but they’re awesome.”
“And scary?” Molly added.
“Yeah, if you’re a wuss.”
They’d reached the green wooden door of Maxine and Paula’s apartment, a wreath on the outside, a menorah in the window. Sara had hung paper chains all down their part of the corridor. It made both the teenagers smile for a second or two.
Carena knocked, to no reply. She tried again.
“That’s weird,” she muttered.
“Sara, you in there?” Molly tried, peeking through the window.
“Sara, we brought chocolate!”
This caused a patter of feet to charge towards the door. Carena grinned. “First rule of kids is lie through your teeth.”
“MOLLY!” Sara sprang through the door in a bright blur of red sweater and green trousers, and jumped into Molly’s outstretched arms. “Did you bring Galileo too?”
Years before, when Archie Jensen had lost Mildred van der Graff to an explosion, Five had managed to get their own chicken back to Abel relatively unscathed. Molly, already interested in animals even as a small child, had adopted Galileo Figaro, a now-geriatric menace with a beak that had lasted longer than anyone expected. The hen had strong memories of her dinosaur roots, and, apart from Molly, Five and Sara, would attack almost anyone who dared enter the coop.
“Galileo’s an old hen, she’s resting.”
“She went cluck-cluck-cluck over the rainbow bridge to Ed Harrison’s stomach, you mean.”
“Caz! Dad would never!” Molly looked scandalised as Carena burst out laughing at her own joke. Thankfully, it went over Sara’s head as she dropped down from Molly’s arms and stared up at Carena’s jacket in awe. Caz ruffled her mop of springy hair affectionately. She liked this kid, at least. It was very difficult not to.
“Hello, baby Sara, how’s it goin’?”
“Good, Princess Caz! I’m making a jigsaw puzzle. It’s got a million trillion pieces!”
“Sounds like an absolute riot. Tell you what, Molly can finish it with you and I’ll heat up the rations.”
Molly nodded despite herself, taking the pudgy little hand in hers and stepping into the cosy apartment. “Okay, let’s go, hopefully we have all the pieces...”
“Daddy had to remake some of the missing ones but he said you can barely tell the difference, sort of! Anyway, you said you had chocolate?”
This was still one of the oldest housing blocks in Abel, but instead of enough bunks for eight people the two rooms comfortably housed the little family of three, bathroom splitting a bedroom on one side and a family room on the other with a table and a bookshelf and warm candle-lit lamps too high for Sara to knock over on the mantelpiece. Woollen throws covered the kind of battered armchairs you sank into and artwork lined the walls. There was even a tidy kitchen corner with a kettle and a camp stove and a stack of chipped plates and mugs. It was one of Carena’s favourite places: better even than sharing a room with some of the roller girls on a rare trip to see her foster dad in London; much better than her own springy bunk in the children’s dorms, the wall behind her chequered curtain plastered in pictures and photos and plans but still not private enough to block out the whining and crying of the little ones all night. It was nice to see a place where a real family lived. When she stood in the centre of the room, she could squeeze her eyes shut and almost picture the faces of her real parents, her actual bedroom, the kitchen they’d had with a white-tiled floor. Or was it sand-coloured tiles? She wasn’t quite sure, not that she’d admit it. Whenever anyone asked, she always said she remembered the pre-zombie world perfectly.
“Caz? Are you heating up the food or...?”
“I’m getting to it!” She stomped towards the stove, where Sara’s parents had already left a few crumbling Tupperware containers of pea soup from the kitchens, and Molly had brought a bowl of eggs to hard boil if they felt snacky. Not particularly inspiring, but then food had been limited for the last week as the kitchens saved all their supplies up for Christmas Day. And none of them knew how to be fussy: Sara and Molly did not remember a time when food was plentiful, and Carena’s last remnants of pickiness had been starved out of her when the Ministry occupied Abel. She’d been nine, and her stomach hadn’t stopped rumbling for that whole terrible ten months. It ached again a little just thinking about it. She wondered if that had left her weaker, permanently damaged her chance to become a Runner or a roller-girl. As if her asthma wasn’t enough of a handicap. Well, she’d do it anyway. Nothing was going to get in her way, least of all the legacy of those who had hurt her foster father.
“Three bowls of green soup, coming up!” She added a lick of salt, and stirred the metal pot. The ruckus from the square was louder now, almost matched by the younger girls playing with the puzzle behind her.
“I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a man’s face or a rat.”
“Daddy’s not a very good draw-er.”
“I mean… he could use some practice, to be honest. Any clue on where this piece should fit, Caz?”
Carena doled out the bowls and spoons. “Looks like a squiggle with earmuffs to me. Sam’s crap at art.”
“Don’t swear in front of Sara!”
“She’ll be fiiiine,” Carena rolled her eyes. “Lighten up, Molly.”
“Yeah, lighten up, Molly!” Sara echoed jubilantly. “Crap, crap, crap.”
“Okay, you can cut it out now. Eat your dinner.”
Molly changed the subject, sensing another mischievous outburst of swearing on the horizon. “Are you excited for Christmas, Sara?”
“Yeah! Did you hear that we’re going to have a hog roast and potatoes?! And games! And, and, Ms Marsh knitted me a hat and mittens!”
“How do you know about that?” Molly admonished. Sara immediately looked caught in the act.
“I… maybe heard her and Mama talking about it.”
“Did you ‘maybe hear’ or were you spying on your Mama?”
“I wasn’t spying! People just think kids can’t hear stuff!”
“Hey, spyin’ is a great skill, don’t knock it, Mol. Don’t worry, we won’t tell.”
“I wasn’t spying!” Sara drank down the last of her soup, licked the bowl, and pouted adorably. It was hard for the babysitters not to laugh.
“You know, I think that piece might actually be a clockwork mouse. I think it goes down at the bottom…”
They finished the jigsaw with only four missing pieces. “It’s… a big man in a red coat with a white beard! With lots of toys. I’m going to call him Mr Bob.”
“Sara, that’s Santa. Do you not know about Santa?”
“Father Christmas?” Molly tried, although she wasn’t completely confident either. Sara looked blank.
“You know my father is called Sam Yao?”
“No, baby, Santa Claus is different. He brings things to good children at Christmas.” In the back of her mind was an image of Ed in a terribly cobbled together Santa suit, a tiny Molly on his shoulders. A good memory in a flock of bad ones. It twinged in her chest.
“He’s a Runner?”
Carena sighed. “Basically. Yeah. Santa Claus is just another name for the Christmas Runner. Every Christmas Eve, he goes from township to township, leaving gifts for all of the children.”
“How does he get through the gates?”
“Well, duh, he lets the township leaders know what time he’s going to come on Rofflenet first. And he’s really fast, so he doesn’t need to worry about Raiders or zoms. He’s got a big sled drawn by nine dogs for all the presents!”
Sara’s eyes sparkled. “What are the dogs called?”
“Well, the main one is Rudolf, and he’s an, an Irish red setter. Or he wears a red jumper, like you. Something to do with red. The other ones…” she looked to Molly for assistance, and realised the blonde girl was just as enraptured. “The other ones aren’t important.”
“Caz!”
“Fine! Dasher, Dancer, Prancer… Victor?”
Her mind drew a complete blank. Somewhere in her subconscious, a woman’s voice read the words of Twas the Night Before Christmas, but she couldn’t quite make them out. “Um… Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh and Spam?”
Molly snorted in surprise, her face contorting and shoulders shaking as she tried to hold back a peal of laughter. At least Sara seemed satisfied. “Okay, so how come I don’t hear them all?”
“He sneaks in with magic and only when you’re extremely tired so it’s, like, impossible to stay up to hear. But if you leave a sock on the end of your bed he’s guaranteed to put sommat cool in it.”
“How will he know what I like?”
Molly looked thoughtful. “Maybe you should leave him a list? But you like a lot of things.”
“And my socks are quite small.” Sara looked pensive, kicking her feet in the air to check the size of them. “You two should write lists as well!”
“I’m too old to write one-“ Carena tried, but Sara was already insistently jabbing a pencil and an old receipt at her from a scrap paper drawer in the cabinet.
“These big long lists from the olden days are perfect, we can use the back.”
Carena’s eyes flitted over the receipt. Morrisons. Mango, papaya, hummus, avocadoes. All words she didn’t recognise, foods she would never get to try, and, suddenly intimidated, she laid it down on the table. She wasn’t the strongest reader or writer at the best of times - she’d learned too late, and it was difficult with so many new things in a row. Sara sounded out the letters on her own list as she wrote, her reading already confident.
“Dear Christmas Runner. Thank you for all your hard work, and for taking so many risks to deliver presents…”
Molly glanced over at Carena with a dash of awkward concern. They’d shared a schoolroom as children, and again for the last few years, and had some of the same frustrations, although Molly struggled more with maths and numbers and the purpose and point of algebra and geometry than writing and words. “Can I write both of ours, and you do the pictures? Your drawings are really good.”
Carena nodded, and got up abruptly to wash out the pot and make some tea. Outside, the town choir had drummed up enough numbers to give a few carols a go. She cracked open the window a little to let the sound filter up.
“I would really like some bubblegum but I know it is hard to find and my mothers don’t like it so don’t worry if you can’t find any. I also like marbles and you can fit lots of them in a sock!”
“You’re already running out of space!”
“Okay. Lots of love from Sara Myers-Cohen-Yao, kiss kiss kiss! What are you going to ask for?”
“Nicer soap,” Molly said, quite serious. “And I need a new metal bucket for chicken feed and milking. Mine is close to holes.”
“A bucket won’t fit in a sock!” Sara scoffed with childish mirth. “That’s ridiculous!”
“I don’t know, she has really big feet.” This made Sara giggle even more, and slide off the chair to look at Molly’s feet more closely.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Molly gave Carena a mock-withering stare. “What do you want, Caz? I’m doing yours now.”
Carena thought as the water began to bubble. All she really wanted was to be a Runner. To explore. To get buckets and soap and marbles and gum and make faces back in the township light up. All she wanted was her lungs and airways to do as she commanded, her muscles and heart to work with her, to let her push past exhaustion.
“Eh. Shoelaces would be nice.” She smirked at Molly. “Or some chicken fat.”
“Make one more threat to my chicken’s life, Carena Skeet and you won’t be getting anything from the Christmas Runner!”
“I surrender, I surrender!” Carena laughed, and poured the tea. “Anyway, shouldn’t you be in bed by now, Sara? If we’re going to get this Runner to come at all.”
“But I’m not even tired,” the small girl yawned, still on the floor with her head on the chair and cuddling one of the throws her mothers had stacked on the sideboard.
Molly grabbed the rest of them. “Come on, we’ll build a blanket den, have our tea in there, and Caz can tell you more about the Christmas Runner.”
“Startin’ to feel like Caz does all the work around here,” Carena added, stirring in milk and honey and using the puzzle box as a makeshift tea-tray. “Go on then, lead the way.”
Five minutes later, they’d constructed a large blanket fort and, huddled together inside it, Carena began to tell them everything she remembered from the world before, embellishing the odd detail or ten.
“You’re lying, there were no flying snowmen.”
“Well, I saw a film about them!”
Eventually, Sara curled up and fell asleep, thumb in her mouth, dreaming up a jumble of tinsel and angels and dancing snowmen and turkeys.
Molly smiled, sleepy herself. “You know, you’re actually really good with kids.”
“You’re actually good at lightenin’ up.”
“Yeah! This was fun. I had a really nice evening.”
“Molly…” Carena began, and stopped. She tucked Sara’s blankets around her a little tighter. She didn’t know how to say how safe she felt, maybe for the first time since she lost her brother, warm and wanted and hopeful, surrounded by the peace she wanted so badly to fight for. “I think tomorrow is gonna be a really good day.”
The bell in the square jangled once, twice, twelve times and for once they didn’t panic. It had been years since a horde went anywhere near the gates. This was midnight.
“Merry Christmas, Caz.”
“Merry Christmas.”
***
Carena awoke under a pile of blankets, her head on the end of Sara’s bed, the sound of Dr Cohen humming in the kitchen as she fried the eggs for breakfast, and caught three bulging stockings out of the corner of her eye. A lump came to her throat as she saw the book, as promised, bound in ribbon, that she recognised even without reading the words.
The Abel Runner’s Handbook, fourth ed.
She nearly knocked the wind out of the doctors in her rush to hug them.