The Walking Dead

They had come down the hill and had walked past places she had known all of her life. Had left the big stores far behind. And the turning into the road where the mosque dominated — she had prayed there before moving to the smaller mosque where she had seen the videos and been recruited — and they had gone along a road with stalls, on which were laid out the fruit and vegetables, from which she shopped. The scent of spices had billowed at her from the open doors of the edge of the ghetto where her society lived, and soft silks for clothing had danced in the sunlight from racks. She had brought him to the square. As they had walked, there had been silence between them. What had happened at the top of the hill, the attack, was gone, irrelevant; all that remained of it was the knife in her bag. The square was wide in front of her. She could not fathom his mind, but the smile on his face — spread and open — ,was childlike. She thought him at peace, but did not believe she could be certain of it, not when he walked the last steps.

'There are women there, and children, and men of our Faith — many others. Do not see their faces. Look at them and you will, want it or not want it, identify with them and hesitate. Do not join your eyes to theirs. Promise me.'

No answer was given her. He had been in step with her, had matched her stride. If she stopped, he had stopped. If she had gone quicker, so had he. She realized her power over him, his dependence on her. She-checked her step, and he slowed.

'You do not look at them…You think, when you are with them, when you have the button in your hand, of God and of your Faith — of where you will go and who you will be with, and of the pride of your family. Hear, as God welcomes you, the praise of your family, and of all those who love you.'

She did not know if it was enough, but had nothing more to say.

Most days, Faria walked through that square. Most weeks she climbed those steps and entered the shopping centre. She pointed to it, had no reason to but did. Her arm, loose in the folds of the jilbab, gestured towards it. Her vision was blurred, clouded by the enormity of what she did. She did not see, misted in her eyes, the shape of the man in the old raincoat who held the clipboard and gazed round him, or the expectation and pleasure on his features. What she saw, as she directed him with her arm, were the images from the videos that had been shown to her: the statements to camera of martyrs, the movement of crowds in street markets, the passing of convoys of Humvee personnel carriers, the guns of the enemy…did not see the man in the raincoat turn, break away from the little cluster close to him and advance towards her.

'You're just in time. I had started but it doesn't matter,' Steve Vickers chattered. 'You've come for the inner town's historic tour…Well, you've found it. I've done the Roman period, but we can do that again — no one will mind. Now, if you could just follow me…'

They were rooted. Oh, people were so strange. The young woman had waved at him, clearly. Had seen him, had waved — he had explained that repeating what he'd already said did not make a difficulty for him, had asked them to follow, but they stood stock still. It would be shyness, perhaps embarrassment.

Vickers, the amateur historian, saw the smile on the young man's face. So many of them, so often — and absolutely he rejected prejudice and would have thought stereotyping beneath him — were so defensive, so withdrawn and uninterested in learning the heritage of the society they had become part of. It was a fine smile, so filled with youth, almost with happiness. The woman was different, had a chill in her eyes — and he thought he saw a gleam of anger there. It dawned on him.

'Are we at cross purposes? I'm Stephen Vickers. I take parties of interested people round the town so that they may better understand what happened here, where we are now, in the generations and centuries before. I assumed you'd seen my advertisements in the local paper and are intent on joining us. Am I wrong?'

'Yes, wrong,' the woman spat.

He saw the livid scar on her face and the blaze in her eyes, but the young man beside her merely smiled, like some sort of idiot, and seemed decent enough if detached.

'Then I'm sorry to have intruded…Of course, should you wish to join us, not having intended to, please do. It's a fascinating story, the town's. We walk where Romans did, where Saxons, Vikings and Normans made their lives and—'

'Leave us alone,' the woman hissed.

He would have said that she was on the point-of tears, but her rudeness was extraordinary. Vickers said, 'Another time, then, perhaps.'