The Days After

by Alistair Ballantine

  Rosie jumped off the deck and onto the grass below, walked through the small garden and sat with her legs dangling from the wooded bridge above the stream and picked wild flowers from its banks.

  Edwin pointed towards the fence behind the stream, “That fence? So you say it continues around the entire property?”

  “Essentially, if you look to the left there is a stone wall beneath that small forest which covers the entire left side of the property. The fence runs from that stone wall all the way in front of us and around to a cliff face which overlooks the right side of the house, and then the fence starts up again at the back of the house from the cliff across the road where we came in and then meets up with the stone wall to the left.”

  “Perfect, this really is a great place Harry.”

  “Thanks.” I replied, unsure of whether that was in a compliment that desired a reply.

  “Rosie looks happy. Hopefully it will take her mind off of everything.” He said.

  “Hopefully it will take all of our minds off of everything.”

  “Hmm.” Edwin replied and squinted his eyes.

  18th July

  I was enraptured by the first few days at the cottage. It was a dream, the beginning of an endless holiday. The sun shone each day above us and in the evenings we sat under the stars on the deck, looking out to the moonlit sea. Rosie made gin and tonics and even Edwin found time to enjoy the peace. Rosie constantly complemented the cottage and the surroundings and I took them personally but feigned modesty. Edwin kept himself and often us busy in the day time, attaching chicken wire to the wooden fences to stop the organs that came by every now and again. He also found an enormous rubber hose from a local farm shop in Aveton Gifford, and we rigged it up to the well in the village all the way down to the cottage. We stockpiled tinned food and diesel for the generator. On a day trip with Rosie, we found a horse alone in a field and managed with considerable difficulty to get him into a trailer and bring him back to the house. We cleared out the old stable of rubble and junk and Rosie taught me how to ride. She named him Chevy and spent hours each day brushing him down. Sometimes Edwin would jokily, although probably with a serious undertone, call us idle and he would ask me questions about the cottage or the local area that I wouldn't know the answers to, some mornings, he would be gone and whoever woke up first would find a note on the kitchen table, 'Gone foraging, back in a few hours.' Rosie and I would joke over breakfast that he had found a girlfriend that he didn't want to tell us about, and then we would read and sleep on the green sun loungers, drinking beer and white wine in his absence. We picked up an enormous blue plastic paddling pool from Kingsbridge and filled it with the freezing cold water from the well and when Rosie got too hot, she would leap off the deck and cannonball into the icy water in her turquoise bikini, and I would be glad that Edwin wasn't around because she always needed help getting out of the flimsy plastic pool, and her goose pimpled arms would shiver as I hoisted her out of the water.

  She never once pushed me into the pool, even when we were drunk and light headed from the heat and I was wearing my pink swimming trunks, and even when I was standing right on the edge of the deck and she was next to me, not once.

  29th July

  One evening Edwin returned from a skirmish whistling as he walked up the stairs to the front door, happy, it was out of character and when I called to him and asked him what was going on, he jogged up the rest of the way and clapped his hands together as he came into the room.

  “Look what I found.” He placed an Iberico ham on the kitchen table in front of Rosie and myself.

  “Oh my god. I love these. Where on earth did you find it?” Rosie said.

  “Kingsbridge, that's not all either, I came across a pool of engine oil in the middle of the road on my way there.”

  “A pool of oil?”

  “Yes, which means there is at least one person out there, driving about.”

  “Fantastic news.”

  “Yes, I left some signs in Kingsbridge and also on the roadside, telling whoever it was who drove past to meet in the town centre on Sunday.” He paused. “ Five days ought to give them enough time to stumble across one of them.”

  “Are you not worried that any old nutter might turn up?” I asked.

  “That thought did cross my mind, hence the arrangement to meet in town rather than here, but it is a necessity that we find others, so I believe it is certainly worth taking the risk.”

  “Why are you so fixated on finding others, why is it so imperative to you?”

  “As I have said before, we need to rebuild, and that will be impossible with just the three of us.”

  “But what is there to rebuild?”

  “England!” He said dramatically.

  “We can't repair the whole country Edwin.” Rosie said.

  “Not with that attitude, no.”

  “So what is your plan then?” Rosie replied abruptly, clearly feeling put out.

  “Firstly there is the simple fact of repopulating in order for us to survive more than one generation, you two will need to have children, and.”

  “What?” Rosie interrupted. “How dare you say that I must have children, and also who with, it is my decision.”

  I stayed in silence, feeling wounded and embarrassed and kept my eyes on the wicker place mats stacked on the kitchen table.

  “I apologise, that did not come out very well, let me start again. If you two decided to have children, they would need another group of potential mates, in order to continue to procreate. Each couple will also need to have at least three children in order to actually grow the population.”

  Rosie was nodding with a look of sheer disbelief. “So what else, other than becoming a baby machine, what else am I expected to do in your new world?”

  “Not just you, we would need a group large enough to farm the land, educate the children and also to generally care for the well being of one another.”

  “So how big is this group you envisage?”

  “Hard to say, we would need at least twenty couples I suppose, all having at least two children, which will be difficult to find, considering how much of a struggle it has been to find even one other person, not to mention that these people would all need to be prepared to have children and be of an age where they are biologically able to reproduce, although, at least men can reproduce at pretty much any age, so it will just be the women who will need to be of the right age.”

  “And what if the women you find can't reproduce, do we just take them out back and shoot them, after all, that's all we're good for, isn't it?”

  “Look, Rosie, I am just trying to be logical here, of course anyone who cannot reproduce would contribute in other ways, as I said there will always be a need for education and labour.”

  “So what if Harry here.” Rosie said as if I was deaf. “What if Harry cannot have children, then you're saying, in order to be a candidate for your society, that I will have to fuck some disgusting old man, over and over again until I have had three children or the guy dies on me, and then I have to do it with some other disgusting old man until I reach my quota.” She said with wide eyes like a bull about to charge. “How can you be so fucking detached, what is wrong with you? When have you even been thinking about this? You just drive around all day rationalising your ideas as to who and what your sister is going to do with her life.

  Edwin looked visibly wounded and confused like a dog that had just been smacked on the nose.

  Rosie looked at me, “Harry, what do you think? Do you think I am being unreasonable?”

  I stupidly shrugged, “I haven't given it any thought to be honest.” Even more stupidly, I muttered, “I don't know.”

  “You know what is wrong with you, you spend your lives under a veil of chivalry, pulling chairs out, opening doors, ladies first, women in the lifeboats first, when war breaks out you go off on conscription and the women stay behind under some false pretence to yourselves and everyone else that your wives, sisters, m
others and daughters are all too precious to be risked, but where is this value? Why spend so much bloody time talking about how you're doing things for us, to keep us safe without actually consulting us, why don't we get a say, how can you think we are worth saving if our opinion is just ignored? It's all backwards, it's all a fucking lie.”

  “Rosie you have misunderstood my intent, I do not mean to tell you what you must and mustn't do, but only to understand that in light of what is evidently an almost total population wipe-out, there is actually the possibility that humanity might fail entirely or perhaps more likely, small pockets of people are going to survive for a number of hand to mouth generations where eventually those who are left a few hundred years or so in the future will live among the relics of our world but with the knowledge and facilities of those living thousands and thousands of years before.”

  “Don't talk to me like I’m a fucking idiot, don't you dare try and make it out as if I’m being selfish.”

  “Please at least think about what I’ve said, and why I am so desperate to find other people.”

  “Ugh.” Rosie groaned and waved Edwin out of the room.

  I left Rosie in the kitchen and went outside to smoke and took with me a bottle of scotch by the neck. I sat on the deck, in the dark, under the stars and tried to work out if Rosie was so outraged at being my assumed mate or whether it was anger at being told what to do. I told myself it was the latter, and I hoped that she would come out and join me, she would take comfort in the fact that I wasn't her brother and would give in to his rationale and we would start trying to procreate right there on the sun lounger under the stars.

  Rosie never joined me on the deck and I got needlessly drunk imagining what life would be like if Rosie and I did get together and the thought combined with the whisky warmed through me for three quiet contented hours.

  3rd August

  Over the next several days I gleaned from Rosie's general chit chat that she had at least resigned herself in part to Edwin's motives, although she didn't make any such indication to him. She sustained an obvious distaste for the manner in which Edwin, in her eyes, regarded her with such objectivity.

  On the Sunday morning Rosie refused to join Edwin on his trip to Kingsbridge and he suggested that I stay with her, which I was more than happy to do. The idea that he might meet a group of handsome men terrified me and I was glad to be able to hide my head in the sand and hope a group of nuns awaited him.

  Edwin drove up the country lane and left Rosie and myself alone. We decided to walk through the village to take our minds of our own trepidations.

  The pink and white cottages with blue window frames were ominously still to our left and right. A face or a flash of movement often appearing in their ghostly windows' and only on a second look would we realise that it was a trick of light or a shadow from a swaying branch.

  Rosie took my hand at one point and swung it back and forth in-between us and my mind spiralled out of control with possibilities and thoughts of unconscious meanings. After a minute or so she claimed my palm was too clammy and released it and I fell back down to earth.

  “Do you think there should be a death penalty?” She asked me and the conversation stuck with me.

  “No I don't, but to be quite honest, I have never given it much thought you know? It is just one of those things that is someone else's opinion and it has been drummed into my head so much that I’ve kind of always thought it was my own.” I replied.

  “That's what I mean. Sorry. I mean, I was thinking the same thing. Suppose we 're the last people left, well, then we will need to make rules. Rules that for the most part we have taken for granted our entire lives.”

  I ruminated for a moment, hoping not to appear as a yes man, “You're right. So tell me, what do you think about the death penalty?”

  “Well, prison is a luxury, to some extent. Suppose we end up in some sort of commune, like the one Edwin is searching for. Suppose one of them kills someone, you can't really keep this one person in a cell forever. I mean where would you even have a cell. You could make one, but it wouldn't really be out of sight out of mind, everyone would know this person is locked up in that makeshift prison, and supposing he gets out and is in a mad rage; he could wipe out the entire community in one night.”

  “You couldn't even banish him for the same reason.”

  “No you couldn't! Also, this person might always be inclined to commit crimes. He might have a different brain chemistry, where he doesn't feel remorse or perhaps he has a mental disorder where he cannot connect his actions to their consequences, and therefore we can't punish someone for being born one way or another, but nor can we think it is fair for everyone to live in fear just because we don't think it is ethical to punish this person?” her voice lifted.

  “A decision like that, it would not be fair for just one or two people to choose, either way it would be on their conscience for the rest of their lives. There would need to be a trial and a measured punishment set by a vote either by the entire community or an elected group. If we do become part of a community, then the decision making process itself will need to be formalised and until then, whilst it is just the three of us, we will just have to muddle along with our principles.”

  We continued chatting, sitting on the stone well in the middle of the village and I could sense a knot in Rosie, her apprehension was growing. She leant her head on my shoulder and told me that whatever happens, that she was grateful that she met me, and thanked me for bringing her to the cottage and then she nervously asked me again if I had given much thought to what Edwin had proposed on the night that no longer seemed so distant. I put my arm around her and in a thinly veiled joking tone told her, that, for me, his plan had some merits. I couldn't see her face, I wanted to know if she was smiling, if her cheeks had turned red, and whether thoughts of the two of us together where comfortably passing through her mind, but she stayed with her head on my shoulder and said nothing, and the knot started to grow inside me as well.

  Edwin eagerly burst into the kitchen to find Rosie and myself sitting around the table. A man hunched through the door and lifted his hand into the air, “Hullo there.”

  He was wearing a long green jacket, he was too tall for the room and he had enormous sandpaper hands that crushed mine when we shook on a, “Nice to meet you.” A black and grey beard surrounded his red face and thick black brows menaced his eyes which remained focused on the middle table in front of Rosie and myself, and whenever I did meet his eyes they nervously darted back and forth between me and the table.

  “Roger is in contact with a small group of people not far from here.”

  “Aye.” The main said and continued to speak in a thick Scottish accent that I struggled to understand. Something about a farm, he definitely threw the word tractor around.

  We sat down for coffee, which Roger declined. He wasn't particularly talkative, which I was glad about because I found it very difficult to understand him, yet Edwin seemed to have no trouble, and peppered him with questions, and he responded with one word answers and his eyes continued to shift about the room.

  Without any lunch, and feeling the coffee swelling around my empty stomach Rosie and I were ushered out of the door and into a car and told to follow Edwin, who in turn would follow Roger into the unknown.

  Rosie had a lovely voice and a lovely mouth that sang all the way. She was unbearably nervous, she was sitting with her feet on the chair and her knees up to her chest, whaling her head left and right as she dropped words and hummed over lost lines. In the middle of a 90's pop song she pressed her finger against the pause button and looked at me from her passenger perch.

  “What do you think they will be like?”

  “I just really hope I can understand them! Could you make out anything of what that giant said earlier?”

  Rosie giggled and replied. “Could you not? We used to spend Christmas in Scotland. I can do quite a good accent if you would like to hear?”

  “Yes! I wou
ld absolutely love that.” I said excitedly and patting the steering wheel.

  “Aye, ye cannae ken me.” She said, butchering the Scottish language.

  I laughed and told her it was sexy. I wasn't sure myself whether I meant it or if I was trying to wind her up, either way she tittered and changed the subject.

  “I wonder if any of them will know; you know? Whether they will have any answers.”

  “I really hope it is not just a bunch of god fearing nutters who think the rapture has come and any survivors are the chosen ones.”

  “Yeah, and they probably think the organs are in purgatory. In fact I bet they do. Makes sense doesn't it, I mean, if you were a religious nut then it all kind of pieces together. All those people not quite dead but left to walk the earth.”

  The end of her finger turned white as she pressed the play button on the stereo, she burst back into song and put her hand on mine which was holding the gear stick. I looked at her hoping to get an affirming glance but she was too busy to notice as her head continued to bob left and right out of time with the tune.

  The convoy turned out of the hedge lined country road and before us stood Burgh Island. A green hill rising from the sea, connected to the mainland by a narrow path of sand, that within hours would be enveloped by the tidal waters to its left and right. A large rectangular white building stood almost halfway up the island, its windows flashing in the sunlight, beneath it stood a grey stone wall embossed into black rocks. A few crumbling ruins and disjointed stone walls sat precariously in fields intermittently amongst the green.