A little horror, a little apocalypse.
Does this work as a piece?
Megan Thomas — Snowdonia Ranger
While John cursed his gates and beasts, high in Snowdonia a ranger counted her own heartbeats against the wind. The first night she made a list: shelter, heat, water, signal. The Land Rover ticked as it cooled; she filed the noise under good signs. On the hour she keyed the handset and spoke into static like it might answer: “Megan Thomas, Snowdonia Ranger. Alive. High ground. Waiting.”
Work made hope feel logical. She sleeved off a length of guttering to rig a catch on the lee side of the boulder, built a boil rig from mess tins and wire, logged each litre in her notebook. She sealed her sleeping bag in a bivy, packed and repacked the grab roll. When fear showed up she put it to work too: collect deadfall, mark a route, check traps, check bearings, check again.
She saw the first stag three days in, lifting slowly out of the birch like a bad thought. He didn’t bolt. He stared with dazed eyes. When she shouldered the rifle her hands shook, and she let it drop—because something in her still loved the animal more than the meat. She told the radio she’d find other food.
Snow dusted the scree. Nights, cold pressed from all directions and she counted breaths until her fingers warmed enough to move. She imagined rotors, pictured the orange underbelly of a Sea King sliding between crags, a hand in a glove reaching out. She fitted joy to that picture like a puzzle piece. It clicked.
“Hold,” she said aloud, putting another bottle on to boil.
Lips split. Eyes bright.
By week four, optimism rode in her voice but not in her body. Nails lifted from their beds. A rash crept like lichen. When she stood too fast the world dimmed at the edges and came back in slow. She adjusted. Sit before standing. Count to ten. Add more salt to the thin stew, then remember why salt was a bad idea and think harder next time, cursing herself for sloppy thinking.
Then gurgled laughter because she’d caught it in time. Wins were small now and she hoarded them like coins.
The radio became a ritual. Same words, same cadence. She cleaned the contacts with a scrap of emery and set it in the mouth of the sleeping bag each night to keep it warm like a chick. Rescue was not a wish; it was a date on a calendar she could not see.
The deer she did take later rattled in her hands, bones like bamboo. The meat bled wrong, filmed over with something that turned her tongue to copper. She dug with a mess tin until her wrists gave up, buried it shallow, and laid a cairn because that still felt like respect.
When the coughing came, she rationed breath. When the bruises bloomed, she made a joke to a grey rock about once having sexy legs. She worked until the work was done, then invented more.
The stream sang in its thin winter voice. She crawled to it on a morning with air like glass, set the radio on a flat stone, and cupped water to her mouth. It was cold enough to taste of nothing.
She moved deeper into the mountains, hoping the air would be cleaner. It wasn’t. Fallout sat on every slope. Breathing felt like swallowing glass. Her skin split and peeled; raw patches wept through the bandages she wrapped again and again.
By week six her mind wandered. She spoke to the ridges, asked the peaks why they had carried her this far only to leave her now. The wind answered, dry and thin.
She coughed blood into the snow. Her hands shook when she tried to strike a fire, the wood fizzing green smoke. Sleep was gone. Hunger gnawed in every joint.
Her last fire was no more than a sputter, a fist-sized flame fighting the mountain wind. She crawled toward it, dragging useless legs. Her arms folded. Her cheek met stone. Something small gave way beneath the skin.
“Alive,” she whispered, and gave the world one last smile that split her lower lip crimson.
The radio clicked once.
In six weeks she hadn’t broken once.