Where’s Ed?
I could have sworn I saw his face just then.
Oh, there it is again. Whistling, and I’m like butter and my children are cartoons leaping for internal organs and clacking their baby teeth on animal bones like a typewriter.
Phew. Thought I’d lost them for a second.
Thought I’d lost them. There’s a joke.
The sky lady laughs. Big, black bellyfuls of mirth.
Fuck off, sky lady. I’ve had enough of you. Hear me? Enough of you, right? You’re not … you’re not …
Wait. Am I drunk? I’ve not been drinking. Is that my sick?
Just a bit higher, Alice. Go on, sweetheart, you can get it. Aw … too bad. Next time, baby, next time.
Num-num, Arthur. Num-num.
Ed, what the fuck is that tune? It’s a piece of nonsense, that’s what it is. It’s a … it’s a …
What’s that … pain? Oh, aye, I’ve got plenty of that thanks. Too much, if you want to know the God’s honest truth. God is honest, isn’t he? I mean, he wouldn’t lie, would he?
Would he?
Please, God. Please, whatever wherever however whenever whoever you are, please, send me to them, send me … first class … recorded delivery … got to sign for it, love …
Is it whoever or whomever? I can never remember.
That’s some more sick for you right there. Hey, wait a minute … I know that face. That’s Richard. I like him. Handsome. Sigh. Tut, stop it, you harlot, you’re a married woman. Disgusting. Married.
What, Ed? What’s going to be OK? Everything? Oh. Right. That’s OK then. Tickety-boo.
What’s that? A stick? What stick?
This one you’re putting in my mouth. Right.
I can’t bite down any harder or it’ll split my lip.
Why am I … am I drunk? The room’s spinning.
Where am I?
What year is this?
Who’s the president, God damn you!
Ha ha!
Oh, I do tickle myself sometimes I really do … right, sorry, bite down, sorry. Crunch. Ow.
What are you doing there, Dani? Dani? I wouldnae take that boot off if I were you, darling, it’s not pleasant down there. Like that lassie said, bit of a smell – ’cept you don’t keep your fanny in your boots, do you? I don’t, anyway.
What’s that you’re holding, Carmela? Looks sharp, careful now.
Keep trying, sweetheart, jump!
Num-num, Arthur, there’s a good boy!
Ed, shut the fuck—
Reality slaps me in the face. It’s like I’ve surfaced from a freezing lake, gasping for breath. Pain. Pain has torn me back from delirium for no other reason than to remind me of its presence. Searing, screeching, tugging, twanging, tearing agony in my foot. Something’s moving against it, catching on flesh and bone, pulling at tendons.
I howl to the heavens. I can’t get up. I’m being held down and I can’t speak because there’s a stick in my mouth. I bite down hard, I’m supposed to bite down hard, so I do, and I think of all my teeth breaking and decide it would be preferable to this pain, whatever it is.
Carmela’s beneath me, pumping her arm, face a grim, sweat-drenched picture of determination. There’s a spray of blood that hits her lip, but she ignores it. Even though it’s not her blood.
It’s mine.
She speeds up. Her eyes widen. The pain reaches a level I didn’t think was possible. You should pass out before this point, should you not? But no, the pain has done the opposite; it has woken me up to remind me it exists.
There’s a thump. Vomit gloops from my mouth. Carmela fumbles for something as Dani holds a hand to her face. I think I see Bryce turn and heave. Ed’s hand is on my brow, like it was when Alice was born and I had completed the final push and there she lay, a bloody thing upon the bed beneath us.
There is a bloody thing upon the bed beneath us.
‘There we go,’ he says, smiling, ‘there we go, you did it, you did it. I love you, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, there you go, there you go.’
So there you go.
Chapter 27
When I woke, my body seemed to speak to me as if it had been waiting by my bedside. Don’t move too quickly, it said, so I didn’t. I was lying on one of the pull-down bunks. I looked around the cabin, saw other bunks too with lumps on them; three figures lying with their backs turned. It was hot. The air was moist and pungent with salt, old breath and unwashed human flesh.
The boat was hardly moving, though I heard it creak. The broken window had been patched with plastic and duct tape. Occasionally the plastic flapped, inflating inwards like a broken lung, before returning again. Through its grimy surface I saw a sickening bright blue sky.
‘Hello?’ I croaked.
None of the figures responded. I watched them, straining to see if they were breathing, but I couldn’t tell. I decided to risk movement, starting with my hands which were curled into claws at my chest. I unfurled one, then the other, and the fingers responded with just a brief stab of discomfort. So far so good. I tried my neck. Stiff, sore, but I managed to turn it and lift my head from the flattened pillow. I raised myself up on my elbows and looked down at my legs.
Thirty-eight years on the planet makes you used to certain things. The shapes, sounds and feelings reality presents to you on a daily basis, those little maps of the world we take for granted and only notice when they change are or gone. Like the smell of your own house. Or the way the streets fit together in your town.
Or the fact that when you look down, you see both your feet.
My first instinct was grief. It was as if I’d been told that someone I knew had died. Tears appeared. My left foot was missing. My foot. A bandaged stump was all that was left of it. I began to weep and shake, but as the tremor reached my calf I froze, eyes and mouth suddenly wide open. I clawed for the pain, making no sound but a gasping croak followed by a deep, trembling groan I was sure I had never made before. I clutched my calf, letting more groans come, slow and measured, as if through bellows.
When the pain had gone I opened my eyes. One of the figures had sat up in its bunk. It was Josh. He looked back at me over his shoulder, eyes swollen, skin pale.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, struggling to speak.
I shook my head slowly. ‘What happened?’
He swallowed and pushed himself up. ‘You had … you had gangrene. Carmela said it was probably because you had been moving about when your leg hadn’t healed properly. The blood wasn’t getting to your foot, so it went –’ he looked at the stump ‘– it went black. It was pretty gross.’ He looked up at me. ‘It gave you that fever. Carmela had to cut it off with a hacksaw. I’m sorry.’
I stared at him, trying and failing to take in what he had just told me. Instead I looked down at the stump, willing it to sprout a new foot.
‘How long?’
‘What?’
‘How long have I been out?’
‘Two days,’ he said.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
Josh shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The storm blew out in the morning after –’ he coughed ‘– Bryce fixed the cable. Since then there’s been no wind. We’ve been drifting, I think.’
He fell back into the bunk, his coughs answered by more from the other bunks; Dani and Richard, I thought.
‘What’s wrong with everyone? Josh?’
Josh made no reply. He had turned back to the wall.
I sat motionless for some moments, staring at the space left by my foot. I had heard that people still felt the presence of body parts even once they’d been amputated. Flesh ghosts. That was almost true. I felt the presence of something all right, but it wasn’t flesh, or bone, or muscle, or tendon. It was more like – something incendiary. A tripwire. An unpinned grenade of pain hovering below the stump, ready to explode at the slightest twitch.
There were thumps overhead and I looked up. I thought I could hear voices mumbling.
I g
lared back at it, my new enemy made from empty space, attempting to tell it what had to be done. With dreadful care I lifted my leg from the hammock and quickly swung my right over with it. The muscles in my back, stiff with disuse, protested, but the stump had the monopoly on my pain. Their petty arguments were nothing.
I stiffened as if shot through by a jolt from an electric chair, but the pain gradually subsided. Whimpering, wiping my mouth of drool, I let my right leg take the weight of my body and stood.
A wave of vertigo rushed through me and I staggered against the ladder. I scooped up the boat hook Bryce had used to rescue the wayward cable from a nearby seat. It was longer than my lost broom but it fitted beneath my armpit and took my weight. Resting my head against the ladder, I closed my eyes and placed my right foot on the bottom rung.
It took me three attempts. The first time the boat hook slipped off the first rung and I landed on my right foot. The second time I managed two rungs before I slipped, this time my stump missing an open cupboard door by a hair’s width. I froze in horror, trembling, watching it hang, until I found my breath and tried again.
But on the third rung the hook slipped again, and this time my stump hit wood.
Whether it was due to temporary unconsciousness or the fact that my mind simply deemed those several seconds of my life as unnecessary, I don’t know, but I found myself in shock on the cabin floor, staring at nothing with my heart pumping a sparrow’s beat, unable to make a sound.
There were shuffles from the hammocks, but nobody moved. Once the pain had subsided I got to my feet and inspected the three lumps in the dark. The fetid air caught in my nostrils.
I wanted to get out. I had to get out. The seven feet of ladder towered above me like a cliff face in cloud.
On the fourth attempt I made it. It must have taken five minutes, thirty seconds per rung, before I finally flopped out onto the deck like a landed fish. I lay there gasping, waiting for the rushing feet and cries of alarm I was sure would come. Ed, Bryce, Carmela, Maggie – but there was nothing, just bright, hot sun bearing down on my neck. Though better than down below, the air was still not fresh. There was a staleness to it, like compost or boiled turnip.
I heard mumbles and looked up. Maggie was at the cockpit. Her hair was loose and matted and she had removed her shirt so that all she wore was a discoloured bra digging into the reddening skin of her back. I could see scabs on her shoulders and the filthy bandage protecting her gunshot wound flapped idly in the breeze. She was poring over the chart which, even from my position on the deck, was clearly upside down, and occasionally she would look up, scan the sea, mutter something, and return to the useless lines around which her fingers roamed.
‘Maggie?’ I said, pushing myself up onto my right knee and using the boat hook to stand. She glanced back but didn’t make eye contact. I hobbled over. The helm was loose, the compass swaying in the slow current upon which the Buccaneer drifted. ‘Are you all right?’
She muttered something, then looked back over her shoulder. On the seat behind her Colin lay beneath a towel. His body was rigid, his mouth was open and his eyes were squeezed shut. One tiny claw stretched out for Maggie, as if in some last attempt at comfort. He was dead. I pulled the blanket over his face.
‘Maggie?’ I touched her shoulder and she flinched. Her wound was raw and swollen. Her eyes were red. Her breaths rasped. She blinked.
‘You …’ she said, hardly a whisper. ‘You’re awake.’
‘Maggie, your shoulder.’ I reached for it, but she turned away protectively. Her eyes fluttered and she frowned, confused. Then she returned to the chart and her mutterings.
I looked up towards the bow. Bryce was sitting halfway up the deck, hunched, with his feet through the guard rail. His shirt was off too, and his great hairy back gleamed a furious red. I couldn’t see his face; it had become shrouded once again in beard and hair.
Carmela lay next to him with her head on his lap. Her skirt was hitched up, bare flesh exposed to the sun. I hobbled to them, stopping at the place where the cable had come loose. A rough panel of wood had been hammered crudely around the tether. The mainsail was up and the boom secured for a starboard wind, but there was none, and it hung like a plastic bag in a tree.
Bryce looked up as I approached. He was holding what appeared to be a child’s fishing rod with a line dangling in the oily water. He grunted.
‘No fish,’ he said. ‘Nothing biting. ’S like there’s nothing alive in this lake.’
He sniffed and wiped his nose. ‘Sea,’ he corrected. ‘Sea, sea, sea.’
‘Bryce, what’s going on? Is Carmela all right?’
‘Aye, just taking a snooze.’
I peered around him, afraid I was going to see her face twisted into something like Colin’s death mask but, though she looked far from peaceful, the rise in her chest told me she was alive.
‘She’s burning, Bryce. You are too.’ I looked up at the blazing sun, then shouted across the deck: ‘You’re all burning.’
Nobody spoke. Bryce sniffed again.
‘Just no bloody fish.’
I looked around in horror. Ed was slumped over the bow. I squeezed past Bryce and Carmela and pulled myself from rope to rope towards him. Josh and Danni’s bottles were still cable-tied to the guard rail, each one dry as a bone.
‘Ed,’ I said, shaking him. ‘Wake up.’
He gave a start and grunted, looking up. Behind his ragged beard his lips were cracked, one deep welt lined with yellow pus. His eye focused on me.
‘Beth,’ he said, straightening. ‘Thank God. Are you all right?’
He got to his feet, stumbling and steadying himself on a rope.
‘No,’ I replied, looking down at my missing foot. ‘Not really, Ed.’
He put a hot, dry hand on my cheek. ‘I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do. If you’d only seen it … it was like … it was dead. It would have killed you. That’s why you had that fever. Has it gone?’
I nodded, dimly remembering the haze of madness that seemed to separate now from before. I could still see the cartoon loop in my head if I tried, but it no longer ran of its own accord.
He breathed out. ‘That’s good. I thought … I thought I was going to lose you.’
He broke into a coughing fit. When it had passed, he stood, hunched and shivering.
‘Ed, what’s wrong with everyone?’
‘I don’t know. Fever, bug, dehydration maybe. We only had four bottles of water left, and we ran out yesterday.’ He reached into a pocket and produced a flattened plastic bottle. ‘I kept my share with yours.’
With no thought I took it, unscrewed the top and threw the contents down my neck. The water was warm, almost hot, but it could have been dog’s urine for all I cared; my parched throat no longer felt like it was glued together. From the corner of my eye I saw Ed watching me. I stopped, wiped my mouth and handed him the bottle.
‘Drink it,’ I said, dizzy with relief.
‘No. You need it.’
I shook the bottle at him. ‘Drink it, Ed. I need your help.’
He stared at it for a moment, then took it and drank the rest, eyes closed with bliss. When it was done he shook the last drops into his mouth and exhaled. Then he replaced the bottle in his pocket.
My eyes had travelled to the water behind us. Ed knew what I was thinking.
‘There’s been no sign of him. We’ve seen nothing since the storm, just flat water. It’s like we’re floating through a graveyard.’
I searched for memories of engine sound in the delirium of the past few days. ‘Have you been motoring?’
‘There’s hardly any fuel left. We’ve been keeping it for an emergency.’
‘Do you know where we are?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve been drifting since last night, but we’ve been keeping to the same heading. It’s so hot here, Beth.’
He staggered again and I caught him, relying on my boat hook to take my weight.
‘We need to get
the others inside or they’ll burn. And Maggie’s shoulder needs attention. Can you help me?’
He looked up and nodded. ‘Of course.’
With some persuasion we managed to tear Bryce from his fishing line and woke Carmela, who looked around, dazed as we led her to the hatch. Maggie wouldn’t come at first, but eventually we managed to usher her away.
‘Colin,’ she lamented, as she passed the stiffened body of her ape.
Ed opened the windows in the cabin, and kept the hatch open when he returned.
‘You should go down and get some rest too,’ I said.
‘No,’ he murmured, landing heavily on the bench behind the cockpit. He fell back in the shade and closed his eyes. ‘I’m staying with you … staying … with you.’
His head lolled and soon he was still, breathing short, shallow breaths. I picked up the dead ape from the seat next to him. He felt hollow and brittle, and without a word I emptied him into the water, where he floated away like dry sticks. When he was gone I found my way to the helm.
There was a peace to that moment I still remember to this day. It was a feeling that had no right to be there, by all accounts, as if it had crept in from some other time and place. It wasn’t as if I knew what I was doing, after all. I had no idea where we were. I had no idea how far we were from anything. I had no idea how far off course we had been blown, or drifted, or whether our course had been at all right in the first place.
But surrounded by that searing sky and dead sea, I was somehow overcome by a stillness. I was alone on a boat in the middle of an ocean, sloshing around a recently devastated planet in an endless space. I was in a void, in a void, in a void. And yet still I felt this peace.
If that was possible, I thought, then maybe anything was.
So I put my faith in that feeling, and in a number.
Propped against the side of the cockpit with my stump-grenade hanging, I gripped the helm and turned it port, waiting until the compass needle turned to 263.
Chapter 28
The time I spent at that helm – it wasn’t days or nights. Days are like rivers and nights are lakes, and this time neither flowed like rivers or sat still like lakes. It was riddled with eddies that sucked in moments, and running with dangerous undercurrents that threatened to drag you down to thoughts you never believed you could have.
The End of the World Survivors Club Page 25