Days Like This

by Alison Stewart

‘The waves smashed the pylons,’ Peter said. ‘And the Opera House is under water.’ There was silence.

  ‘Yes, it is hard to comprehend,’ Peter said. ‘And there’s’ more. When the last wave retreated, the water didn’t go back behind the barricades. It returned to it’s natural, post-warming shoreline. Consequently, the harbour has dramatically increased in size. Much of the Committee’s enclave is under water. The tideline now reaches almost up to where the Wall once stood.’

  He paused. ‘Now, there may be those who have been brought to us injured who were a part of that old elite –’

  A cacophony of angry shouts erupted.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard the rumours and rumours are destructive. We need the truth, however painful, so let me finish. Those people will be among us now – Committee members, Blacktroopers, parents who benefited from exploiting their children. Many of these people died because if they hadn’t crossed the Wall by the time the sixth and seventh waves struck, they would have had little chance of surviving, but there are some who made it.’

  Peter’s voice rose. ‘What we need to understand and what they need to understand is that there is no more serum. There will never be any more serum! Without serum, those who have been enhanced will age quickly and they will die.’

  A clamour erupted among the listeners. Some were cheering while others had begun to sob.

  ‘Murderers,’ someone shouted. The chant was taken up and there were cries of, ‘Kill them. Turn them out.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Peter roared, holding up his arms. When this had no effect, he said something to Kieran, Maeve, Tamara and Shah. The four ran down the stairs and darted through the crowd, stopping to speak to people and to calm those who were angry and agitated. Lily couldn’t hear what they were saying, but gradually the noise lessened until people fell quiet, looking up expectantly at Peter.

  ‘That’s exactly what we have to avoid,’ Peter said. ‘What I’m asking for and what those who went out with me are asking for is simple compassion.’

  There was a renewed rumble of discontent, but Peter continued, speaking even more loudly. ‘Let us put that bad time behind us and look to the future. Let us never return to a world that forgot it’s people. Let us try to respect and value one another, even those who forgot how to do this.’

  Peter paused and looked down at the people crammed inside the cave.

  ‘Let us try and comfort those among us who will not survive. If we can manage to do this, to have compassion, we’ll be defining the kind of community and future that we want.’

  Lily saw that some people were beginning to turn to one another and nod.

  ‘I know from Rosemary and the other healers that there are quite a number among us who have taken serum,’ Peter said. ‘Look around now and see who they are.’ He waited. Lily saw some angry shifting and voices were raised.

  Peter spoke loudly, his voice calm. ‘Shall we agree then that we as a community will assist them in their last days rather than torment them?’

  Many among the injured had pulled clothing across their faces or were crying openly.

  ‘Can we have a show of hands?’ Peter put up his own hand. There was a long silence. Then first one and then the next person and the next raised their hands.

  ‘So we’ve agreed. If they’re asked to, our carers will administer sedation to those people undergoing serum withdrawal. We’ll resist the urge to be cruel. Shall we think about this and meet again tomorrow?’

  When the crowd had dispersed, Lily picked up an apple and a cup of powdered milk from the makeshift canteen, which was crowded with stretchers, and then returned to sit with Daniel. As she passed Rosemary’s alcove, she saw Kieran slumped on the bed. Rosemary wasn’t there.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Lily said.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. His voice cracked with exhaustion.

  ‘You did well,’ Lily said, ‘calming people.’

  Kieran shrugged. ‘There would have been chaos otherwise. The injured – they might be innocent or not. All we can do now is take care of them. Their stories will come out eventually.’

  He was pale and thin. It was as if the past few days had drained the colour out of him. He didn’t seem like the Kieran she had first met, who had been so strong and vibrant. Lily sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘It’s only powdered, but you should drink this,’ she said.

  He nodded, dragging himself up and taking the milk. Even his beautiful blue eyes seemed to have faded. The bruises around them were yellowing and some of his cuts still looked raw and infected.

  ‘Are you eating, Kieran?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t seem well.’

  ‘I’m just tired,’ he said. ‘No big deal. We all are.’

  ‘I’m so happy you survived,’ she said. On an impulse, Lily leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. Immediately, his hand came up and turned her face so that he was kissing her on the mouth.

  All the emotion of the past days, all the stress and tension of finding Daniel alive, of how she’d left Alice and Greta, of witnessing death on such a huge scale, came thundering in. Lily burst into tears. Kieran cried too, cupping her face.

  ‘You’re a beautiful person,’ she said.

  He dried her tears. She did the same for him and then they sat quietly, holding hands. It was comforting, sitting like that.

  ‘Why do you think Luca and Sal took the van and left us?’ Lily said. She had been thinking about this for days. ‘Luca’s sister died because he didn’t go back in time. He didn’t know that Alice wouldn’t leave or that Greta would be so injured. He didn’t just ditch us, he ditched them,’ she said.

  Kieran looked grave.

  ‘Luca and Sal were scared and getting away was probably all they could think about,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t. You came back.’

  Kieran stroked her hair. Lily tried not to move because she didn’t want him to stop. She’d almost forgotten what tenderness felt like.

  ‘Don’t judge them too harshly,’ Kieran said. ‘You’re probably wondering why Luca and Sal were so bound up in one another?’

  Lily glanced at him – he was perceptive. She nodded.

  ‘It was Sal who talked Luca into finally going back over the Wall for his sister. It was too late, but Sal was the one. She was with him when they found her. Sal brought him back when he was distraught and she stayed with him when he was difficult, sometimes violent. She was the one who got him drawing. You’ve seen the drawings?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘Doing those drawings calmed him, though God knows there was nothing calm about them. He poured out his negative thoughts into them.’

  Kieran shrugged. ‘Whatever happened, we have to accept it because unless Luca and Sal suddenly turn up to explain, there isn’t much more we can do.’

  Lily’s tears had stopped. She kissed him properly and he kissed her back.

  TWENTY

  ‘Maybe we’ll find them today,’ Lily said.

  The expression on Kieran’s face told her he thought that was unlikely.

  It was just before sunrise and they were packing the first-aid kit in preparation for their daily journey back to the tsunami-devastated areas to search for survivors. Daniel had stabilised enough for Lily to feel comfortable about leaving him during the day. Rosemary had promised to look in on him when she had a moment. The growing numbers of injured and those convalescing meant that when Lily woke, Rosemary had generally already risen, dressed quietly and left for duty at the makeshift hospital set up in the main cavern.

  Kieran stopped what he was doing to put his arms around Lily.

  ‘I know this is hard, Lilla, but I’m pretty sure Alice and Greta are gone,’ he said gently.

  Lily nodded miserably. She’d been hanging on to a forlorn hope, but realistically she knew it, too. The way Kieran cared about her made this knowledge almost bearable. He was so sweet and gentle and she loved the little things he did, like when he called her Lilla, as Daniel did, as Alic
e once had, and even her parents long ago.

  Normally, it took five hours of walking, but today there was room for Lily and Kieran on one of the few scavenged vans returning to the city. They would walk home in the evenings because priority was given to the injured. It was a race to find those few still alive and to bury the many dead, as disease was a real and horrible threat.

  ‘Here.’ Lily offered Kieran her eucalyptus oil which he dabbed under his nose to ward off the smell of decay. They were almost at the city and Lily felt the familiar dread. She offered her oil to other searchers crammed into the truck. Everyone was solemn, tying their bandanas around their faces, but nothing, not oil, not bandanas, could take away the pervasive stench of death.

  What Lily was searching for most of all was any sign of Alice and Greta. In the days since the waves, she and Kieran had hunted among the survivors who’d joined other communities and all along the devastated edges of the shoreline, but they had failed to find even the bodies of the two young girls.

  They also searched through the many corpses that had floated to the surface and washed ashore, their faces turned up to the sky, their flesh sodden with the sea. Perhaps the last of the waves had taken Alice and Greta out to the deep ocean. Perhaps their souls slid free as fish in dark water.

  Every day Lily and Kieran went back to the cave where Daniel waited anxiously for a report. This day was no different.

  ‘Nothing again,’ Lily said in answer to Daniel’s silent query. They had gone straight to his alcove as usual on their return. Lily’s whole body ached. She looked at Kieran who stood in the doorway and wondered if she’d lost as much weight over the past couple of weeks as he had. His face was dusty and drawn and his body all sinew and bone.

  ‘Kieran’s right, Lil,’ Daniel said. ‘We have to accept the worst.’

  Lily flopped down on Daniel’s bed and studied him.

  ‘At least I still have you, Dan,’ she said softly, reaching out to hold his hand. She could feel his bones sliding underneath his skin and she held him gently for fear of hurting him. He was still weak, his body emaciated and the drainage wounds reluctant to heal. At least he was well enough now to have his own little space, though. Rosemary had encouraged Kieran to return to his alcove. Lily had moved back in with Rosemary. Ingie, who was much improved, had returned to her own room and Rosemary had found Daniel this tiny alcove next door to Kieran.

  ‘I’m off to wash,’ Kieran said. ‘Then I’ll bring you something to eat, Dan. You too, Lily.’

  That was something else Lily loved about Kieran – his uncanny ability to know when she needed to spend time alone with her brother. After Kieran had gone, she and Daniel sat quietly for a while.

  ‘I don’t think Alice could cope in the end. It was such a breach of trust when Megan and Pym turned on her,’ Lily said after a few minutes.

  They hadn’t talked much about why Alice had refused to leave the house when the waves were coming; why she had effectively chosen death, not only for herself, but also for Greta.

  ‘Greta picked it up straightaway. She said that Alice was shocked, traumatised. She was spot on,’ Lily said. ‘Alice wasn’t thinking right, Dan. I think she was unbalanced by the pregnancy.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘There wasn’t anything more you could do,’ he said.

  Lily shook her head, blinking back tears. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever believe that. I’ve thought and thought about it and I should have been able to help them, persuade them, whatever.’

  ‘There’s no point dwelling on it,’ Daniel said. ‘We both have to accept that nothing we do now will change the past. We have to look ahead. We have one another. You have Kieran, too. And thanks to you, I’m here, Lily. Remember that.’

  Lily nodded. ‘You’re probably right about looking ahead, but I don’t want to remember the past as all bad, especially Megan and Pym.’ She paused. ‘Mum and Dad,’ she corrected herself. ‘There were reasons why they did what they did. It wasn’t their fault and I want to forgive them.’

  Daniel looked dubious. ‘They turned into monsters, Lily. it’s difficult for me to be generous about them.’

  Lily hadrn’t told Daniel about Meredith. She told him then, how Meredith had been tricked and manipulated by the Committee, fed their drugs and how it had taken away her proper feelings.

  ‘That’s how those animals on the Committee made our parents give us up, too,’ Lily said. ‘Meredith’s story makes it real. After she stopped taking their drugs, she realised what she’d done. She was heartbroken, Dan. We have to believe that our parents still loved us, that they would have felt the same as Meredith if they’d stopped taking the drugs.’

  Daniel shook his head slowly. ‘It’ll be hard, but you’re probably right. It’s better not to blame in the long run. Peter was right about that.’

  Eventually the daily search parties started winding down. Kieran and Lily stopped going, choosing instead to help Rosemary, Mary and others with the wounded and dying who were already at the cave. And Lily spent as much time as possible with Daniel. She brought him food and fed it to him. She changed his dressings and encouraged him to try and walk, supporting him, with Kieran on the other side, to exercise his wasted muscles. Even though he’d been a floater for a long time, he was still Daniel, as determined as ever.

  ‘I want to walk on my own again,’ he told Rosemary and Lily when he was still weak and wobbly.

  ‘Dan, it’s not possible,’ Rosemary said pityingly.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, nothing’s impossible. You just have to keep telling yourself. Right, Lilla?’ he said.

  Lily grinned. ‘Remember how you tried to tell me that we would overcome the Wall?’ Lily said to her brother.

  ‘Well, we did, didn’t we?’ Daniel said. ‘We’re here and it’s gone.’

  Often through the night when Daniel woke in pain, Kieran got to him first, massaging his limbs to encourage the sluggish circulation. And it was often Kieran who hauled Daniel up and tried to get him to shift his legs or lift his head upright. Kieran got Peter to make Daniel a wooden walking frame so Daniel could try and balance himself and push one foot in front of the other. And it was often Kieran there encouraging Daniel when he cried out in pain and frustration.

  Daniel persuaded Kieran to take him out into the cave every day, practically lugging him along the walls where the other floaters were.

  ‘What d’you reckon?’ Daniel would call out to them. ‘Am I ready to run a marathon? Am I ready for rollerblading? Rhythmic gymnastics? Okay, then, knitting?’

  He made them laugh and Lily noticed that some of them were trying as well, even just lifting up an arm or bending a knee.

  ‘I’ll have them doing cartwheels before they know it,’ Daniel would gasp when he lay back down in his space, but Lily could see how much the physical exertion cost him. If she said anything to him about overdoing it, as Rosemary sometimes would, Daniel would shake his head gently.

  ‘Remember, Lily, we will overcome the Wall,’ he’d say softly.

  In Kieran, Lily found enough compassion, enough love, to balance what she’d lost. His unconditional care helped her adapt to the changes that had inundated her life as completely as the water.

  ‘I want to be with you forever,’ he told her one day. ‘I love you, Lily.’

  ‘I love you too, Kieran.’

  At Kieran’s urging, she moved her meagre belongings into his room. That he was the very last person she saw before she slept and the very first person when she woke was precious beyond belief. He had reached out through her long silent years, drawing her as close as one person could be to another. Lily felt as safe with him as he felt with her. And Daniel was in the next alcove. It was all Lily could ask for.

  One by one, those among the injured who had taken serum died. As had happened to Meredith and to the girl Chrissie, the years rushed through them so that they aged rapidly. Many went mad with this knowledge and had to be sedated until they slipped away. But with others, the community witnessed the
strangest thing. As the effects of the serum decreased, it was as if, released from the burden of perfection, they woke from the longest dream.

  Probably because of her own mother and Meredith, Lily was drawn to these people, and to one woman in particular, whom Lily and Kieran had found wandering in the rubble. Lily didn’t know where she had come from. And the woman couldn’t tell her because her mind was dishevelled and she could barely speak, let alone remember her own name. She was emaciated, weak, cut and bruised, and both of her legs were damaged. She had a little book tied to her wrist in a waterproof bag which she had managed to save and carried like a beloved child.

  When Lily and Kieran found her, she had already begun to age. She was one of the survivors whose mind was blurred, but there were moments when the light came through, and she looked at Lily as if she were beginning to remember. Lily brought Daniel to sit with her. In a strange way, this woman reminded them of Megan, of what might have been had their mother survived.

  Of course, the speed of the woman’s decline was awful to observe. She would die soon, but at least she had been freed from her false youth. The absence of drugs and serum loosened the inflexible wiring of her brain and there were traces of the person she must have once been. Her name was Ruby. They only knew this because it was written at the front of the little book she had carried out of the devastation; her diary.

  Nobody claimed her. She was completely alone and so Lily, Daniel and Kieran became her temporary family. Ruby loved to be massaged because it eased the pain of her rapid ageing and it seemed to help her remember happier times. So they massaged her daily; smoothing her poor, diminishing body and brushing her thinning hair.

  ‘I used to love food,’ she said in her papery voice. ‘I loved making it and feeling it and smelling it. Like dough for bread, all smooth under my hands. I loved the smell of roasting meat and garlic and rosemary and the crunch of potatoes.’ She shivered with pleasure.

  But there were times when Ruby couldn’t be soothed and they could only sit with her and listen as her voice quavered and rose.