by Terry Tyler
Then my daughter, never very good at sitting still for a long time, shuffles around next to me.
"Um, I know everybody wants to discuss this, and I know it's, like, well messed up and shocking, but please, please can we have dinner first? I'm so starving!"
Oddly enough, it turns out that no one could have said anything better, right at that moment; we all relax, visibly, we smile, and make our way through to the dining room. We light candles and put food on to heat up, we pour out wine and clink glasses together, because we're alive, and we're together, and whatever plans have been orchestrated by the most powerful, malevolent and greedy on our planet, we're still here, on this winter solstice, and they didn't get us. We won, because we're still here.
Chapter Twenty-two
What Scott Knows
When I go into the homes of the dead, I look at their photographs on the mantelpieces before I raid their kitchen cupboards. I inspect the pictures on their walls, their fridge magnets, the calendars hanging in their kitchens, reminders on cork noticeboards left over from their lost, forgotten lives. Meetings, bills to be paid, cars to be taxed, future dental appointments never to be kept. I apologise to them for the intrusion. I wander into their bedrooms and sit on their beds, and wonder if any of them are still alive, somewhere, living as we do.
Now and again I get weepy, but mostly I just feel sad.
Then I open their wardrobes and rifle through their clothes, I empty their bathroom cabinets and shove anything useful into my holdall, I help myself to anything and everything that might help me, my daughter and our group stay alive and healthy.
I wonder if there's anyone going through my house in Shipden, if it's even still there. One day I want to go back and see, but not yet. Phil says that, as time goes on, any groups of survivors will have become more desperate, more ruthless, and no one should be going anywhere on their own.
I think about my old friends. About Linda with her hairdresser's appointment, Claire and her family, about Lawrie and Gemma who became ill just after getting the 'vaccine', and I wonder if their lives were sacrificed for the great experiment. I'm guessing they were.
Later on Scott's first night with us, the night of the winter solstice, after we've eaten and drunk too much and talked the situation to death (pun intended), including what we will do if we ever come across anyone who was involved in the Great British Beta Test (unlikely), I get Scott on his own.
He was the last person to see Dex; I need to know if he can remember anything, anything at all that might give me some insight into what Dex might be thinking.
Scott looks wary. My impression is of a young man more at home with a computer screen than people, particularly uncomfortable around women he fears might become emotional. He badly doesn't want to be having this conversation with me, to the extent that he actually backs away, but that's tough.
"It's okay," I say. "I'm not going to quiz you about Naomi. Kara told me about the two of them."
His relief is so apparent it's almost funny. "Oh, good." He squeezes his eyes shut underneath that big, thick clump of a fringe. "Sorry! I mean, it's not good, but—"
I smile. "I know what you mean. I just wanted to know anything you can tell me about your last day together. Doesn't matter how inconsequential it seems."
He draws his right hand up to his left shoulder and scratches it. I've read a paperback about body language since I've been here; he hasn't got an itchy shoulder, he's putting his arm in front of his body to shut me out.
"I don't remember it very well, to be honest," he says. "We were all in a hurry to get the hell out of there, because of Gia not turning up."
"But you were there for some hours before that. You think Dex went to Jeff's bunker?"
"Oh, absolutely. That was what they said, anyway."
"But you don't know where it is."
"No. No one does."
His eyes are darting everywhere, over my shoulder, to his side. I'm damn sure there's something he's not telling me—my nose proved me right before, after all—but I let him off the hook.
I find out what it is the next day. Scott mumbled it out in a red-faced sort of way to Phil; he thought I ought to know but didn't want to be the person to tell me. Phil tells Kara, who tells me.
Naomi is pregnant.
She announced it to Scott and Jeff on that last day, said they'd only just found out. Smiling, as though it was something they were both celebrating. Dex was, apparently, very embarrassed. Even Scott thought her behaviour odd.
"He said to Phil, 'Jeff and me both thought it was a bit off. Because we knew he lived with his girlfriend and her daughter. But we just thought, well, it's none of our business'."
I think about Dex talking to her on the phone, just before he told me he was going. Now, his words, the tone of his voice, it all makes sense.
I'm kicked in the guts all over again.
Last time I saw Dex he held me tight, told me he loved me, and promised we'd be together again soon, when all the time he knew that another woman was carrying his child.
Liar.
Liar.
Liar.
I remember how distracted he seemed that last week. I thought it was because he was worried about Bat Fever. His furrowed brow had less to do with the state of the world and more to do with that age-old fuck up: the man with the pregnant mistress.
Liar.
Maybe it would have been different if the virus hadn't got out when it did. Maybe Dex wouldn't have felt obliged to support her. If that's what he's doing.
"I want to talk to Scott," I say. I'm hurting so badly. "I want to hear it from him. About how Dex reacted, I mean."
Kara shakes her head. "Don't. He felt awkward enough telling Phil, and he doesn't know you. From what he said to Phil—and you know how men are, most of them don't get emotions, and want to talk about them even less—I got the impression that Dex wasn't happy about it at all. I imagine that once everything blew up, he felt he had no choice but to stick with her. Think about it. Would you want to be alone and pregnant right now?"
I did think about it. No hospitals, no doctors. No safe, warm home for mother and baby. "I think I'd find a cliff and jump off it."
"Exactly. Only the biggest bastard in the world would leave a woman alone in those circumstances."
I think about it some more. "But she didn't know everything was going to blow up when she allowed herself to get pregnant, did she?"
"No. But I think the affair meant more to her than it did to him."
I wondered why Dex was attracted to her. "What's she like?"
"Oh, she's alright. Very serious. Kind of intense."
The opposite of me, then. "Bet she did it on purpose."
Kara grins. "Yeah, I bet she did, too. Still, it's come back to bite her on the arse, hasn't it? And at least you know, now, why Dex never turned up here."
"There is that." I picture him, cosy underground with his new woman. We watched a TV programme a while back, about underground bunkers commissioned by 'preppers' in the US; they were like proper houses, with kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, flushing loos and power. Dex said it was the sort of thing Jeff was building, in which case they would be sitting pretty right now.
I can't imagine him being satisfied with the restrictions of such a life, though. He's too active, too restless. A doer. I know him; he won't be sitting back, waiting for something to happen. He'll be out there somewhere, trying to forge some sort of community, finding a way to make the very best out of what's left.
For his woman and his unborn child.
He could have come to see me. He could have explained.
This thought kicks me in the guts again, and the pain makes me cry out.
"I'm sorry," says Kara, and puts her arm around my shoulders. "It's shit, isn't it?"
"Just a bit."
"If he's still out there somewhere, he should have come to tell you, at least."
"I know. Whatever else he is, I didn't think he was a coward."
"At least you know, now," she says, again. "You can move on, instead of sitting here wondering if he's ever coming back."
"Yes." Knowing doesn't make it any easier, though. I thought it would, but it doesn't. Before, there was still a little bit of hope, but now there's none. "I just want to see him again."
"Do you?"
"Yes. So I can kick him in the nuts."
She laughs. I wonder if she knows I'm saying that for her benefit, so she doesn't think I'm a total sap. Because although I do want to rant and rave at him, I also want to know. Does he love her? Would the fling have been over by now, under normal circumstances? Does he still love me?
"I wish I could talk to him about it."
"I get that. The 'closure' thing. It's perhaps best you can't; if he says he loves her it'll cut you in two, and if he says he's only with her because of the baby, your emotions would be all over the place."
"It's hypothetical, anyway." I stand up and look out of the window. "It's not like I can text him to meet me for a chat."
When I'm alone, though, I play over and over in my mind those last days we were together, and I can't help wondering if he's somewhere, right at this very moment, missing me like I miss him.
Probably not.
I think about what Scott said about Europe being 'gone', and I have to accept that my parents are more than likely dead.
Not knowing is so hard, but we all have people we miss; there seems to be an unspoken agreement not to dwell on stuff we can't do anything about.
Scott wants to look for his cat, and I go with him and Kara to his house, but we don't find him. Scott weeps a little and feels silly for doing so ("It's only a cat, what am I like?"), but Kara and I both tell him it's okay, we understand.
A new member of our group means a shuffle around of bedrooms; the most practical solution is for me to share with Lottie, Rowan to take her room and Scott to take Rowan's sofa bed in the back room. I don't want to share with Lottie any more than she wants to share with me, because we both need privacy, but there's not a lot we can do about it. Heath isn't wild about having to share with Jax, either.
The house feels too crowded, with nine of us; it's odd how one more person, and not even a big, noisy or demanding person, has tipped the balance. We're concerned about security, too; Scott was able to scale the wall and pick his way over the barbed wire, and none of us saw or heard a thing.
"It wasn't easy, I fell down twice, but I did it," he says, when we go out to see the spot he found where uneven bricks gave him tiny footholds.
The only solution is to have someone permanently on watch, even during the night. None of us fancies that, so our intention to remain in this house indefinitely is under review.
Phil wants to find somewhere bigger, out in the country.
Kara and I are reluctant; the place has become home.
Ozzy wants to stay, too. He suggests finding guard dogs, and motorhomes which we could keep parked in the driveway, take in more people.
"Or we could make a yurt! Yurts are so cool."
Rowan said, "Explain, please do. Why, exactly, would we want to live in tents, when all over the country there are empty houses waiting to be taken over?"
"Yeah, but yurts aren't just tents, they're cool," he says again, but with less conviction.
Phil suggests that we all have a think, and on the first of January we will sit down around the table, pool ideas, and make a decision on what we're going to do.
I want to go back to Shipden.
I want to go home.
I know, I know. I'm just going through a phase of longing for the security of the past.
"Shipden will be totally trashed now," Lottie says. "Remember the flames we saw on the night we escaped? It won't be like going home. It'd be like going back to somewhere you were once happy, and finding it destroyed. I tell you, Mum, if you're pissed off now, you'll be super-mega-double-and-triple pissed off if you go back to Shipden."
She's right. I know she's right.
Chapter Twenty-three
New Year
That's it, then. It's decided. We're going to Lindisfarne. Otherwise known as Holy Island, off the Northumbrian coast. One castle, one ruined priory, a church, lime kilns (not sure what we might use them for), a few souvenir and book shops, a museum, two pubs, two hotels, and plenty of houses that may or may not be empty.
It's Scott's idea.
"We were talking about it, at Jeff's, on that last day. While we were waiting for Gia."
"What, about actually going there?" I ask. "All of you?"
He looks at me a little nervously, as though he's worried I'm going to start grilling him again. "Yes." He grins. "Well, actually, we were discussing where might be the best place to go, in the event of a zombie apocalypse."
"Bloody wish there were zombies," Jax mutters. "It'd make life a bit more exciting."
"Yeah, we wouldn't miss video games if we had the real thing!" says Lottie. She mimes knifing one in the head and wiping her knife clean on Jax's sleeve. Then they start getting too silly, and Heath shuts them up.
"Joking apart, we reckoned it would be a good place to start up a community," Scott goes on, "because it's tidal; the causeway to the mainland is under water for half the day. Access, but security; it's ideal. It was, um, Dex's idea."
"Certainly is ideal," says Phil.
I'm dying to ask exactly what Dex said, but I don't.
"I wonder if that's where they've gone," Kara says, and gives me a little kick under the table.
"Wouldn't surprise me," says Scott. "Then again, Jeff's bunker does sound pretty awesome. You ought to see his collection of video games, kids!"
"I can't imagine Dex being shut underground for months on end," I say, and I wonder if I make myself look foolish for even talking about him.
"No, nor can I," says Kara. "He used to pace around the room and wander out into the garden even when we were deep in Unicorn business."
Memories of him flood back, and I shut them out.
Phil consults the atlas and encyclopaedia, and Auntie Sylvia's various books about the local countryside. "Soil looks reasonable. Fishing, sheep, although they'll belong to someone who may or may not still be there. Boats, ditto. But it's that causeway that attracts me, as you said, Scott; it would help guard against invaders—"
"Invaders?" Lottie's grinning all over her face. "What, you mean like Vikings? Jax, this is going to be well exciting!"
Phil laughs. "There is actually a strong Viking history there. It was the first place in England that they invaded, did you know that? But, yeah, the causeway will cut us off, but also allow access to the mainland when we want it. It's the way to go, I reckon."
"I'm not sure," Heath says. "Don't you think that if we've thought of it, a ton of other people might have, as well? And if there are people still alive, residents of the island, they might resent us being there. Chase us off, even."
"I don't think there are a ton of other people left to think about it, either way," says Kara.
"We'll have to see, won't we?" Phil strokes his beard, in that way he does when he's thinking. "Says here the population was eighty-nine in 2020. If we estimate that ninety per cent of the population is gone, and that's just a guess, of course, there might be a few still there. And if it doesn't feel right, or we're not welcome, we'll just come back and think again. But it's a good place to start."
The more we discuss it, the keener everyone becomes. I study the pictures; it looks so beautiful. A bit like Norfolk.
And there's a possibility Dex will be there.
Stop it. Stop even thinking about it.
I can't.
Up in the bedroom, I fantasise about coming across him on the beach. It's an excellent fantasy, in which his jaw drops when he sees that I'm no longer a soggy, blonde-highlighted housewife but a cool, slim, fit, post-apocalyptic warrior. In the background is a hazy figure of a pregnant woman with a stupid haircut and a resentful face as she, too, notices Dex gaze at me with longing.
Luckily, Lottie barging in without knocking (something we're going to have to sort out) and pulls me back into reality. Why would Naomi leave a comfortable, safe bunker, in the middle of a harsh winter when she's six months pregnant?
I sit up, while Lottie hums away, sorting through her stuff.
If he's still somewhere, anywhere, with Naomi, he's been with her through all the difficulties of the past five months. Whether or not their relationship started out as a fling, they will have grown closer because of the shared experience. He may have fallen in love with her. She's carrying his child. I've changed, so he will have too, and the memory of me is probably shut away in a box, a part of his old life.
He doesn't even know if I'm still alive. Anything could have happened to me. And he hasn't bothered to find out.
Says it all, really.
Lottie is in high spirits; she can't wait to go. She keeps jumping around and making lists.
Rowan complains that it's crazy to move away from our relative comfort now, in January, when it's bloody freezing cold, and for once I agree with her. But Phil says we will need to start planting in March, so, if others are there, we'll need to establish ourselves and lay claim to a patch of land.
Makes sense, I suppose.
Preparations go ahead.
Heath and Ozzy spend a day looking for one of those twelve-seater minibuses that taxi firms use, and come back with a brand new sixteen-seater. We crowd outside in the falling snow to take a look at our new ride with great excitement. Phil says we need to take two vehicles, in case anything happens to one of them, so they go out to hunt for another.
We girls decide on a clothes run and have a hell of a day in Jarrow, even though the freezing rain has turned the snow to a muddy slush, and Rowan complains every ten minutes about the quality of the shops.