Gatefall Gallery — We Are Still Here

01 / THE VALLEYA LIGHT BELOW THE RIDGE

Smoke means someone stayed.

From the ridge, the camp looks too small to have survived anything. A few roofs, a fence, smoke caught in the pines. The gate leans above it, enormous and broken. One of the three starts down the path. The others follow before they have agreed.

Three survivors on a wooded ridge looking down at a timber camp beneath a ruined gate — They meant to keep walking. Then they saw the smoke.

Survivors filling water barrels and splitting wood in a palisaded camp at dusk — By dusk, everyone smells of wet wool and woodsmoke. The argument over where to put the barrels has lasted longer than the roof repair. It is beginning to feel like a place people live.

02 / THE DAY’S WORKFOOD · WATER · WOOD

Tomorrow starts with a full canteen.

The path to the river is easy downhill. Coming back, the cans knock against your knees and every rise looks steeper than it did before. Food, water, wood. Three short words that can use up all the daylight.

Two survivors watching a third walk toward the treeline past unrolled bedrolls on day one — At the treeline, the first volunteer turns and raises a hand. The two by the bedrolls raise theirs. They watch the gap in the trees long after it is empty.

Gloved hands packing mushrooms, berries and a snared hare into a tin ration box — Someone remembers which mushrooms are safe. Someone else remembers a recipe. For a while, kneeling in the leaves, they discuss butter as if there might be some.

A survivor filling a canteen and jerricans from a fast meltwater river below the camp — The cold gets through the gloves before the last can is full. You fill it anyway. Back at camp, two people are listening for your footsteps.

A survivor splitting a felled trunk with an axe beside a small stack of firewood — An axe head strikes. The valley answers. Between blows, the woodcutter listens for any sound that might be coming closer.

Field manual page showing the four survivor vitals — health, hunger, thirst and energy — with Eat, Drink and Rest as the three interventions — Someone has pinned the manual page above the cot. Four things to watch, three things to do about them: eat, drink, rest. Along the edge, underlined twice and in two different hands: *a full store doesn’t mean your people have eaten.*

03 / PUTTING DOWN ROOTSTHINGS WORTH MENDING

Then someone puts up a shelf.

The first improvements are practical: a well, a patch of soil, a dry place to mend a tool. Then someone puts a shelf beside their bed and sets a small, useless object on it. No one asks how long they intend to stay.

Survivors drawing water from a timber well head into a reservoir barrel — The first bucket comes up clear. They pass the cup around without speaking, each taking less than they want. For once, there is no walk to the river afterward.

A terraced grid of raised crop beds under cold frames with a survivor planting seed — At first, the beds look like carefully arranged mud. When a green shoot appears, someone calls the others over. They all come.

A survivor working a forge in an open timber workshop hung with axe heads — The new axe sits better in the hand. Its maker asks to see it once more, adjusts nothing, gives it back.

A lit canvas medical tent with a survivor on a cot and herbs drying overhead — Under the canvas, the kettle ticks as it cools. Someone wakes and asks whether the others came back. The person beside the cot says yes, and stays until they sleep.

A survivor studying salvaged schematics by lantern light in a dark camp at night — A thumbprint has blurred the diagram. By lantern light, they try three readings of the same line. On the fourth, the person holding the page begins to smile.

A survivor on a watchtower platform signalling with a lantern toward a figure on the trail below — Three flashes from the tower. A pause. Down on the trail, a smaller light flashes back. Someone runs to put another cup by the fire.

04 / THE YEAR TURNSWATCH THE WATERLINE

The river is lower than yesterday.

Ashfall Spring leaves gray rings around the puddles. In Scorch, the walk to water grows longer. Graywind Autumn fills the gathering baskets and shakes the canvas all night. Then one morning the bucket freezes, and somebody goes to count the wood.

Survivors repairing a palisade in ash-fall and meltwater with the first crops showing — Ash settles into the fresh-cut timber. Below the fence, meltwater finds the old channels. The crew works with their coats open for the first time in months.

A survivor standing in a cracked dry riverbed holding an empty jerrican under hazy sun — In Scorch, they carry the empty cans farther downstream. On the walk home, nobody has enough spit left to complain.

Survivors raking wind-piled seed heads and leaf litter into sacks against the palisade while the crop terrace is stripped behind them — By afternoon the drift against the fence is waist-deep, and none of it was planted. In Graywind Autumn they rake up what the wind brought before it can move on, while behind them the beds are stripped and the netting rolled. It was never meant for them. It is theirs now.

Survivors carrying cut logs through heavy snow toward the camp fires — The last stretch to camp is uphill. They trade the heavier logs without discussing it. Through the snow of Static Winter, the fire appears and disappears; each time it returns, they walk a little faster.

05 / PAST THE FENCELEAVE WORD OF YOUR ROUTE

Some of the wreckage is still warm.

There are tins in the drowned houses, tools beneath the wrecks, and tracks in the mud that nobody in camp made. You pack enough for the journey and leave word of the route. At the fence, someone asks when to start worrying.

Field manual map of the three expedition routes from camp — Collapsed Suburbs at four hours and low risk, Machine Graveyard at eight, and the Gate Scar at sixteen — Three routes, drawn from memory and corrected by whoever came back. Four hours to the suburbs, eight to the graveyard, sixteen to the Scar. In the margin, in a hand nobody admits to: *a long absence costs more than time. Fewer hands at the fires. Slower builds. Tired people.*

Two survivors lowering a salvage sack from a rooftop over a flooded housing estate — In the Collapsed Suburbs, water has reached the upstairs wallpaper. A cupboard holds two sealed tins and a cup that says GOOD MORNING. The tins go into the sack. After a moment, so does the cup.

Survivors picking through a fog-filled valley of wrecked machine hulks — They wait for the fog to lift over the Machine Graveyard. When it does, the wrecks go on farther than anyone expected. Somewhere among the hulks, metal knocks against metal.

A survivor rappelling down a black canyon wall of slagged rock and buried machinery — The rock at the Gate Scar is warm through the gloves. Halfway down, the receiver begins to click. Above, the sky has narrowed to a strip no wider than the camp road.

06 / WHAT WE LEAVETHE FIRE · THE NAMES · THE SIGNAL

Leave a light for whoever comes next.

One evening, someone tells a story the others have already heard. They listen anyway, correcting the bit about the rain. Later, it gets written on the back of a supply list. Small things travel that way. Farther than the people who remember them.