The Cull - The Forest of the Forsaken

Photo by Bradley Dunn on Unsplash

I took a step forwards, ready to confront her, but she never looked in my direction. It felt like I was invisible – a nuisance – prying into matters I wasn’t meant to know.

I couldn’t have made up the memories of her leaving the psychiatric ward. She was discharged. I was positive. I didn’t see her back when the bus arrived, either. How did she end up here?

I wanted answers but the young girl averted her hazel eyes, shutting all my attempts to get through to her. Something about her felt off. She had no reason to ignore me yet this was exactly what she was doing. Did she know more than she let on?

I shifted my focus to the others as this question crossed my mind. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen these people either. None of them wore hospital gowns like me.

From what I could gather from my brief observation, the father and daughter duo seemed like immigrants – perhaps Arabs.

The boy, a bony thing, seemed to be autistic and too loud for his own good, and the elderly woman sitting in the corner looked like the only English person here. She was also the one who acknowledged us.

 “Come in, hurry. They shouldn’t find us.”

“How long have you all been here for?”

“Must be half an hour at best. Noor?”

The Muslim girl stepped forwards and checked her watch. She wore a black and gold-patterned hijab, which concealed her chest and forearms.

Her loose, pearl grey abaya was soiled, it reached all the way down to her ankles and hid her womanly curves. Her eyes sparkled even in the dark, perhaps as excited to find another survivor as she was worried about who I was or could be.

“Twenty-three minutes, to be precise. Who are you? Is that your son?”

Ali seized my hand and hid behind me as she leaned over to greet him.

“No. No, that’s… It’s a long story. I’m Elin. And you are…?”

“That’s Yudes over there. Her son placed her in a nursing home a decade ago before she ended up here. The boy you see at the corner speaking to himself is Niclas. He’s autistic. Other than that, I couldn’t get much other information out of him.”

She then pointed at the man with a long and unkempt beard, who was probably in his mid-60s.

“This is my dad. His name is Khalid. We’re both from the Gaza Strip and applied for asylum in the UK five years ago due to, you know, the genocide. And I’m Noor. His only surviving child.”

I smirked. “Basically we’re all what the rest of the society perceives as the lowest class possible, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around you,” I said. “We’re all a burden to society. At least, that’s what they tell themselves to get rid of the guilt. They want us gone.”

“But those who brought us here said it was a rehabilitation programme. That it is supported by the government.”

“I don’t why or who was sick enough to call this death sentence a ‘rehabilitation programme’, and I don’t want to know either. All I know is that we need to find a way to survive until daybreak. This isn’t the first trip this bus has taken.”

Khalid joined the conversation. His accent was thick and the way he pronounced each word was hardly fluent, unlike his daughter.

“You say this happen before?”

I sighed, unsure of how to explain myself or choose my words. The last thing I wanted was for these people to panic.

“I’ve studied human biology. Those cadavers outside the bus are at least a week old. Even if we consider the frigid weather, those cadavers are not fresh. These people have been doing this for at least two weeks. If they’re truly supported by the government, the chances of our survival depend entirely on whether we make it to sunrise or not.”

I glanced at Amina without really meaning to at that moment. Her back was still turned to me, persistent and unrelenting, shrouded in mystery.

Another notification came through. All eyes were turned towards me as I picked up my phone. When I noticed the staring eyes, I shifted my focus from the birthday notification to the survivors.

“It’s a phone…” Noor said, her voice trailing off briefly. “We- we can call the police!”

I backed away. “Listen, I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But it’s not picking up any signal. Besides, even if it did and we somehow called for help, we wouldn’t get any.”

“How can you be so sure without even trying? They can’t just- just let us die like this! This a crime against humanity!”

“And yet isn’t this exactly what happened in Gaza a few years back?” I couldn’t help but smirk. “Crime against humanity? There’s no such thing. Not if you’re backed up by the world’s largest and only superpower.”

Noor dropped her eyes. “I- I don’t want to die. It’s… it’s not fair.”

“That’s the kind of world we get if a bunch of derailed people run it. I wish I could tell you something else. But this programme… It’s a death sentence for all of us.”

I regretted these words as I looked around and noticed how everyone grew quiet all of a sudden, their eyes bloodshot and misty.

This wasn’t good. Once these people lost hope, there was no going back – no second chances.

I shouldn’t crush their hopes, even if the chance of survival was close to none. That was how human nature worked. The only way it worked. Through hope.

I looked up at Noor carried on, a real warrior who had seen hell on Earth and come back alive.

“Even if that were true, let’s say it is, shouldn’t we at least try to call the police? Don’t expect us to just surrender and let those people have their way! Not again!”

I bit my lips and averted my gaze. I didn’t want to ignite false hope. Calling the police was a waste of time. Our best shot was to wait for daybreak and then make a break for it. If we were lucky, we’d find a car along that roadway or a safe place to spend the night.

There was no way those cowards would be here past sunrise and risk getting caught red-handed.

“She’s right,” Yudes said, adding before I could interject. “We should at least try. That way, we won’t have any regrets.”

“We don’t even have a signal.”

Noor looked at each of us in turn before speaking her mind.

“I saw a watchtower further up the slope.”

 “A watchtower?” I said. “In the middle of nowhere?”

“I- I’m not sure but we could be near a military base. That would also explain why there are no passing vehicles.”

“What if it’s guarded?” I said.

“I don’t think it is. We would’ve seen light coming through if that were the case. It’s so close to the roadway that we’d surely see it.”

“Which means this is an abandoned military base,” I muttered to myself, before adding. “Don’t you think that’s inconsistent with how there’s no traffic here?”

“It must be at a secluded place, at least a few miles from the nearest civilisation.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.”

“How can I trust you?”

“I’ve studied military history. I know every single military base in this country, both active and abandoned. This place isn’t one of them. It must’ve been inactive for at least a century – if not more.”

“I see,” I said, before returning to face the others. “Do you all agree on this? That we should seek help?”

Everyone but Niclas nodded. He was too deep into his own world to listen. Even Ali agreed.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll go and see what I can do. But don’t get your hopes up too much.”

“I’m coming with you. I told you about the watchtower and I know more about these kinds of constructions than you do. I’ll be of help.”

Her father, with a sense of urgency, said something to her in Arabic. Even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, his voice held a distinct undertone of concern.

He was probably begging her not to go. Even if this place was a temporary solution, it was the only haven at the moment. No father would want his daughter to risk her life for him.

But Noor stood steadfast in her decision. We left the vicinity twenty minutes later.

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