The Things We Leave Behind by Whittaker

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A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the forest. Ingrid stood up from the stream where she was collecting water and scanned the horizon.

‘Goddamnit, that came from upstream, didn’t it? Why are the undead so determined to poison this water source?’ she thought to herself. She chucked her bag over her shoulder, picked up her polearm (it was just a machete on a long handle) and started running upstream towards the sound.

She came upon the scene of the altercation, just one human and one undead. Easy pickings. She rushed up and kicked the undead off the living person, then swept up into it’s face with her machete as it stumbled, dispatching it easily. She performed a quick 360-degree surveillance of her location before leveling her blade at the chin of the person she had just saved.

"Take off your clothes" she demanded.

"What?!" he had a strong British accent that was immediately detectable.

"Don’t be dense." Ingrid responded. "You either strip down, prove you’re not bitten anywhere, and live to see another day, or I kill you here and now."

The man slowly lifted his hands in surrender; he peered around him as though self-conscious of invisible onlookers before he slowly began to peel off all his clothes.
Standing in his birthday suit, he looked like he may have once been a good-looking man. He was probably in his late 20s, tall, with striking facial bone structure making him look quite regal. He was horribly underweight however, and had an enormous mane of greasy brown hair that was matted and full of pine needles and other debris. It fell to his hips, though it was so tangled Ingrid wouldn’t have been surprised if it had once appeared longer.

"Show me your arms, wrists and hands.", Ingrid commanded. The man presented them to her for inspection. She checked every finger diligently for any evidence of abrasion from an undead mouth.

"Okay, now spin."

The man held his arms out from his body and slowly rotated for her to inspect all sides of him.

"Do it again, but this time hold your hair out of the way", the man winced as he tried to pull his hair up. The mats were obviously tugging at his scalp.

"Now show me your scalp." She demanded.

"What now? Checking if I have lice?" he asked.

"No. You obviously have lice. I’m checking that buddy didn’t knick your scalp with his teeth anywhere." She leveled her weapon at him again. "Show me your scalp."

He bent over, revealing the top of his head to her, and tried to part his hair in as many places as he could to prove that there were no injuries on his scalp.

"That’s enough." She stopped him. "It’s clear that no undead could bite through that helmet on your head."

The man grimaced and itched absentmindedly. "I know, it’s gotten away from me."

Ingrid ‘hmmd’ in acknowledgment of his statement. "Well, you’re cleared. You can stay with me until you feel like moving on or until your die."

"Gee thanks" he muttered as he stooped down to pull his clothes back on.

Ingrid set down her weapon and began tearing off her own clothes. When the man noticed he startled. "Bloody hell woman, it’s fine, you can just say you aren’t infected, and I’ll believe you."

Ingrid shrugged. "Alright", she said, and began pulling on her clothes again. "What your name?" she asked finally.

"David." The man responded.

"Nice to meet you David, I’m Ingrid. Sorry for the rude introduction, unfortunately I’ve learned that it’s necessary to point machetes first and make friends later."

David shrugged. "It’s okay. I suppose I should be thanking you for saving my life."

"Don’t mention it." Ingrid slung her machete over her shoulder. "Can you help me move this corpse? I’m trying to protect the integrity of this waterway."

David nodded. Ingrid grabbed the ankles and he grabbed the wrists and they dragged it a few hundred metres away until Ingrid declared that she was happy. When they turned back for the head, David tried to take the lead.

"David, you’re drifting." She intoned.

"Huh?" he asked.

"The river is that way." She pointed 60 degrees to the left of his trajectory.

"Oh, sorry." He looked sheepishly at his feet and let Ingrid correct their course. She led them straight to the undead’s head, which she then carried back to where they had discarded the corpse.

Ingrid made an animated performance of dusting her hands of. "That should be far enough away to not cause any issues. Thanks for the help. Got any other plans for the day?"

The question made David laugh. "My schedule is pretty jam packed", he joked. "What did you have in mind?"

"I was going to patrol a few more kilometers of this stream before starting my trip back home."

"Home?" he asked.

"Yeah, you’re welcome to come. It’s about a weeks walk if we haul it. I’ve just been out on patrol these last couple weeks, making sure none of the undead are tainting the river."

"Are there many people there?"

"I mean, that’s kinda relative… Like, it’s a small town… You don’t have to come if you’re not comfortable. But if you are, I could totally make everybody strip for you." She smiled and winked at him.

"No, just… ", he stuttered. "I haven’t seen people in…. I don’t know how long."

Ingrid furrowed her brow. "David, where were you headed?"

David scratched the back of his neck. "Nowhere in particular" he mumbled. "Just trying to reach the ocean in general. That’s why I’ve been following the river."

Ingrid stared at him in incredulity. "Wait a moment, do you have any idea where you are right now?"

He looked at his feet as his cheeks flushed. "Not really. That’s why I was trying to find the ocean. I thought it would help orient me. So, I’ve been following rivers downstream, since they all eventually lead to the ocean…?" He turned up the pitch of his voice slightly at the end of his sentence, as if asking Ingrid to reassure him that you could indeed, follow all rivers to the ocean.

"Oh my god. Dude you are currently following a tributary of the Mackenzie River. You’ll hit an ocean eventually, but it’ll be the arctic ocean, and correct me if I’m wrong but you don’t exactly strike me as being an experienced arctic survivalist."

David’s eyes widened and his hand reached up to cover his mouth.

"Where are you coming from?" Ingrid asked.

"I was on holiday with my sister in Jasper, Alberta when everything collapsed. A group of people who said that they were experienced in wilderness survival helped us escape into the woods and we stayed and travelled with them for maybe a month. I’ve lost track of the days. Everybody died except me. I’ve been walking since. I can’t believe I didn’t realize I was heading north."

"I can’t believe you’re still alive." Ingrid blurted out.

David looked stricken. "Fair enough" he admitted.

"Sorry." She said, "Do you want some reindeer?"

"What?"

"Reindeer. I have jerky." She pulled a strip of meat from her bag and handed it to him.

Saliva instantly pooled in his mouth at the sight of it. He accepted it and began chewing furiously. "Oh my god this is amazing." Tears came to his eyes.

"David it sounds like you should come home with me. I’m not sure if you know this, but it’s been a while since things collapsed. It sounds like you’ve been walking for close to 4 months. You don’t have to stay forever if you don’t want, but we can at least teach you some survival skills, okay?"

He wiped the tears from his face. "Okay. Can I have more jerky?"

Ingrid chuckled. "Yes." She handed him another strip and he started tearing up again as he ate it.

Ingrid began leading the journey home, reassuring David that it wasn’t a big deal that she didn’t patrol those extra few kilometres of the river that she had originally hoped to. When she got tired and the sun hung lower in the sky, Ingrid made them stop and showed David how to make himself a quick temporary shelter up in the trees.

"We’ll camp here for the night." She handed him a couple more pieces of jerky and then did some mental math trying to figure out how long her rations would last her with her new deadweight in tow. She would have to hunt. She went off and set some quick snare traps a little way away from their camp, and snacked liberally on huckleberries on the walk back. When she got back David was trying to settle on his bed of boughs.

"This is awesome", he said. "I’ll probably sleep better than I have in months."

"Good. You’ll need the rest to keep up with me. Sorry that I only had the one hammock." Ingrid climbed up a tree and into her hammock. She hung her backpack on a broken branch and clipped it around the trunk with another strap, then tied her polearm to the bag. She curled onto her side and watched David fiddling around. He had roughly pulled his hair over one shoulder and looked to be trying to untangle it with his fingers. The matting was so extensive that all he was really doing was trying to separate it into smaller distinct chunks of matted hair. The only untangled portions were some slightly shorter strands that framed his face.

He caught her watching and blushed sheepishly. "You wouldn’t happen to have a hairbrush, would you?"

She rolled over and reached into her bag, tossing him half of a broken wooden comb. It only had seven teeth. "You’d have better luck with a knife", she remarked.

David inspected the comb, and then sighed at the state of his hair. "I haven’t cut my hair in 14 years," he said. "I’ve been rather stubborn about it."

Ingrid shrugged and tossed him her hunting knife in its sheath. David glared at the blade where it had landed beside him, but reluctantly accepted it and set it off to one side of his sleeping area.

Ingrid fell asleep to the sound of wooden tines ripping through hair.

She awoke the next morning and collected her belongings while David still slept. She checked last nights traps but hadn’t managed to catch anything, so she spooled up her supplies and packed them away. She filled her belly with huckleberries again on her short walk back to their camp. David was awake when she got back.

"I was worried you might’ve left without me." He admitted.

"I’ll try not to be that cruel." Ingrid responded. "Let’s get going."

David gathered his things and dutifully followed Ingrid as she continued downstream. They didn’t always walk a path where they could see the river, but by the sureness of her step, it was clear she knew exactly where she was going. They walked in silence until Davide broke it.

"I haven’t cut my hair since I was last forced to." He said out of nowhere.

‘Oh, so we’re talking about this are we?’ Ingrid thought to herself. She had noticed this morning that his hair was neither shorn, nor appearing any less tangled than it had the night before, but she didn’t care to inquire. He hadn’t returned her hunting knife. She didn’t respond, just turned her head and briefly made eye contact with him.

He took it as an invitation to continue.

"My whole childhood growing up, every school I had ever gone to forced me to have short hair. I hated it. Hated being touched by strangers. Hated being unable to look the way I wanted to look. As soon as I was done school, I stopped cutting it, and I finally started feeling like myself. I finally started liking myself."

"My people know a thing or two about that." Ingrid replied coolly.

David took in her long dark braids falling in front of her shoulders and hung his head in embarrassment. "I’m sorry."

Ingrid shrugged her shoulders. "We also know a thing or two about hair as symbolism; about cutting our hair to symbolize grief or moments of great change."

David seemed to consider this and nodded, but that evening, he took up the little broken comb again and kept stubbornly trying to salvage the strands.

They carried on for another week, as Ingrid was slowed down slightly by her malnourished charge. She taught him how to set snares, and they eventually managed to catch themselves a couple of rabbits. She cleaned one and David copied her with the second one, using her borrowed hunting knife which he was still holding onto. They cooked the rabbits first thing in the morning before they left their camp behind, to minimize the chance of attracting attention that would leave them vulnerable overnight.

After three more days of travel, Ingrid finally announced that they were close.

"We’ll be there by this afternoon." She informed David as they packed up their respective shelters. He was becoming faster at finding good materials and making sturdy structures with every passing night.

"Okay. Anything I should know before we get there?" He asked.

"Not that I can think of. Just be respectful, you’ll probably be asked to tell your story. Be a good listener, don’t interrupt. I don’t think you have to be worried."

David nodded.

"Can I have my comb back?" Ingrid asked.

"Oh. Really? But I thought I had lice?" he smirked and held it out to her.

"I’m going to wash it off." She grabbed it and made a show of wrinkling her nose and holding it out in front of her like it was full of disease. She walked to the edge of the river and crouched down to rinse it off. She grabbed a handful of sand from the bottom and scrubbed it on each surface, then she rubbed some of the fat from the rabbit into the wood. She scrutinized it carefully for any sign of bugs or eggs.

"Show me your scalp again." She requested.

"Your wish is my command." He knelt down beside her and bowed his head, moving his still matted hair around to expose different areas. She peered at it suspiciously.

"Okay fine, maybe you don’t have lice."

David chuckled at her, but then scratched his head, so Ingrid made him show her that exact spot again.

"I think it’s just itchy because it’s dirty and tangled." David told her.

She hummed suspiciously as she unbraided one half of her hair and used the tiny comb to smooth it out before weaving it back together again. David watched silently as her fingers confidently manipulated the strands. She wasn’t accustomed to being looked at with so much intensity, but he was being respectful, so she didn’t ask him to stop as she moved on to the other side.

When she was done, she offered the comb back to him, but he turned her away.

"So… we’re going to be there soon…" he said, gazing placidly over the water

"Mmhmm." She confirmed.

"I’ll get to meet your community. I’ll learn survival… and they might even let me stay…" he rubbed a pensive hand over his face. "I might even come to belong there one day…"

"If you want to." Ingrid offered.

"It’ll be like a new beginning for me…", he looked down into the water at his distorted reflection. "A moment of great change…."

Ingrid nodded but found that she couldn’t look at him, suddenly entranced by her own fingernails.

David pulled her hunting knife from the sheath that he had clipped to his belt and held it flat in his palms. He breathed in an enormous, anxious breath. He slipped one hand around a hank of matted hair and with a shaky exhale, brought his knife wielding hand up to the root. Ingrid turned her head away from him as the knife began to rip into the strands. She grimaced, and her stomach filled with butterflies.

When he had freed the first chunk, he turned to her. She forced herself to look at him and take in the patch of short strands close to his right temple.

"Will it harm the water, if I let my hair float away down it?" he asked.

Ingrid shook her head. "It’ll be fine. Hopefully it won’t make it to town before we do. If anybody sees it, they’ll be confused."

David smiled ruefully. He placed his severed lock of hair in the water and watched it drift away. He steeled his resolve again as he took another handful of hair beside the first and slashed the knife through it.

David stripped one side of his head down to nothing but short, jagged tufts before he lost the grip he had on his emotions and began to cry quietly. He let the tears flow unbidden from his eyes as he hacked through what remained.

When all was complete, he set the knife down and scrubbed both hands back and forth through the hair that he had left. He lowered his head into the river and tried to rinse off some of the debris from the last few months. He splashed water on his face to wash away the tears.

"Here", he said, offering Ingrid her hunting knife back. "I’m sorry that I kept it for so long, I knew that if I gave it back to you, I’d never work up the balls to ask for it again and actually do this."

Ingrid smiled. "Keep it, it’s yours now."

"Why? Cause of my lice?" David joked.

"No, because you’ve earned it."

David smiled and put the knife back on his belt. He dried his short fluffy hair with his T-shirt before pulling it back over his head.

"Come on", Ingrid said, and held out her hand to him. "Let’s go home."

"Home" he sighed, smiling, and nodded. He accepted her hand and let her help pull him to his feet.

They walked for a few hours in silence until David spoke up.

"So, how does it look?" he finally asked her.

She allowed herself to pause and take him in. On one hand, his piercing green eyes were no longer obscured by a miserable, lanky, greasy rat’s nest. But on the other hand, his whole head was made up of uneven brown tufts between one and two inches long. The honest answer what that he looked ridiculous.

"Different." She deadpanned.

They both burst into laughter, and David ran a hand through his hair and tugged on the strands ruefully.

"Would it be too much to ask you to fix it for me at some point?"

"I think that would be best for everyone." She chuckled and resumed walking through the woods, David following behind.

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