Chapter Text
He's 12 when he first hears it.
The droning whine of a helicopter overhead, some type of foreign audio blasting over an intercom.
It washes over him in a way that he can’t explain, but he thinks it hurts, and he thinks it means something bad is going to happen.
They don’t do anything. They’re children. They’re not supposed to do anything. So they sit and they wait, and then it’s too late.
*
He’s 16 when the war takes his neighbours.
The gunshots take the Jones’ next door, and the armed men take Anna, the only other girl his age, and the dogs tear apart Mr. and Mrs. Edison, and all the while Harry hides.
He hides.
At some point the soldiers find his hiding place and he’s ready, he’s so ready for it to end, ready for the man in front of him to pull the trigger; all he can do is pray that his sister and the baby cousin he’s supposed to be looking after aren’t watching, pray that somewhere, his parents are looking down on him and thinking ‘you did well, Harry’.
And then they put him on a truck and he tries not to listen to the baby screaming somewhere far away.
When the sun goes down, the gates open to the new life he’s supposed to live.
*
He's 18 when the epidemic takes over the camp.
It starts out as welts, and then the welts turn into rashes, and the people scratch and scratch and then their skin is gone, and people aren't people anymore. They're raw lumps of muscle and blood and skin and shells of the ones they used to be.
And when it gets dark, they finally sleep, and they don't wake up.
And the ones who don't sleep?
They get angry.
They get angry and they scream and Harry refuses to cry because he’s not weak, not after everything. And he knows that if he lets himself cry, they’ll kill him.
The opportunity he’s been waiting for in all his three years here arises soon enough, proposed by a loved one who insists they’ll escape, if he can only get a hold of a lighter. So he does.
That's all it takes for Harry’s world to come crashing down around him in the form of a burning tent and a screaming squadron and he should be relieved.
What was he supposed to do? he asks himself when the smell of smoke has faded and he's in the dark woods leaning up against a tree trunk that's crawling with ants and he's alone and he can hear the soldiers searching for him and he's terrified.
And so he keeps running, and he keeps running, and he keeps running.
*
He's 22 when he unexpectedly stumbles across the remnants of a city called London.