The girl finds a teaspoon while I fiddle with the stove knobs. It’s gas, which means it needs to be lit. There’s a strange clicking sound.
“What’s that smell?” Madeline asks, then gasps. “No!”
A rush of fire sweeps across the stovetop and singes the hairs on my hands.
“Shit!” I exclaim. “Blasted thing.”
The girl is rummaging about in the freezer and returns with cubes of ice in a towel. She places it against my hands and says, “You’re burnt!”
“I’m fine,” I snap, but allow her to keep soothing the irritated skin.
The kettle is whistling. “Hold this here,” she says, and I push the cold wet cotton down against the burn while she goes off to prepare the cups of coffee. She gives me a cup, and I take a sip and almost spit it out. It’s awful.
“Cream,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and then goes to the fridge and gets some for me. Then she’s in my cupboard, the little busybody. Who does she think she is?
“Get out of that,” I say, using that grumpy old man’s voice, which does sound really old. I can hear the television blaring.
She’s shaking strange packet things with pictures of cups and steam on them. The television is getting louder, so I storm out of the kitchen, dropping my icy towel, and see the screen is blank. Shattered. Destroyed.
“What happened?” I say, going over to inspect the mess, and I’m certain that I can replace the glass with one of my windows and get the electrical wiring back together. Then the television will work again.
I sit down in front of it, and the little girl stands in the dining room recording me with her camera. Then she’s gone, cabinet doors are slamming, and I hear the sounds of beeping.
The girl comes in with a mug and a side plate with three pieces of buttered toast.
“Soup and toast,” she says.
I inspect the contents of the mug to see red. It looks like blood. “Tomato?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiles at me. “Are you trying to fix that?”
“I’ve got tools.”
“I’m going to clean the kitchen and upstairs,” Madeline says.
“Don’t you go upstairs,” I snap.
“Okay, just the kitchen.” And she skips away as if to patronize me.
I hope Hannah comes home soon, because I really miss her. I need tools from my garage, and I turn upstairs and realize I’m going the wrong way. The tools are downstairs.
Back in the kitchen, I find Madeline on her tippy-toes, scrubbing the countertops with bleach.
I snatch it from her. “That stuff’s too hard, it’ll burn the laminate off.” I’m feeling a bit strange being taken care of by a young girl. Is this how old people feel in nursing homes? Having someone come in and do everything for you? It’s disempowering.
The basement door is open, so I close it and lock it.
I notice a video camera set up on the bench; it’s on, recording me. The red light blinks, as if it knows my confusion. It knows that I’m not right in the head today. In one hand, I’m carrying my tools, in the other I have the mug of soup, which is running down my arm. The red liquid jogs a memory of Hannah, dead in the bed beside me.
“Oh…” I gasp, feeling my chest collapse with a shudder of grief.
“Are you okay?” the girl asks.
“Turn that thing off!” I say, pointing at the camera.
She runs to it and switches it off. “Hannah said—”
“Hannah’s dead! She’s dead!” If the little girl didn’t know she was dead, then she must have killed her.
Madeline’s eyes are wide and terrified. Her hands are in the air, defensive. Guilty. Definitely guilty.
Anger surges through my limbs, and I lunge forward and grab her arms forcefully, trying to leave a bruise to teach her a lesson. “Did you kill her?”
“No…no…” Tears are running down her face and she’s fighting me. Then she brings her leg up and kicks me right in the groin and I topple over.
“Mr. Fowler, I live next door.” She’s sobbing and rubbing her arm. “They took my parents. They took my parents. You have to help me.”
“Who?”
“The soldiers. The virus, remember?”
The bruise is forming on her arm, and I feel wretched. “We need to bleach the house.”
“Yes! To kill the germs. I can help you,” she says. “I don’t want to get sick like everyone else.” The tears are gathering on her chin and dripping down onto her top making the ink of her name run. It now spells MageHne. She runs to the kitchen and returns holding the bleach, gloves, and a scrubbing brush. “See? I’m here to help.”
“When your parents come home, you have to go, too,” I say.
“Yes, Mr. Fowler,” she says. She puts on the gloves, which are way too big for her, and goes to start cleaning with bleach.
“You should mix that with water,” I say. “I’m going to ring Hannah.”
The little girl stares at me in horror. “Do you remember your birthday?”
I can’t remember it. It’s not there. How old am I? Old, definitely over fifty. Don’t go outside. Don’t go outside.
The panic and fear rises, swelling in my gut. There are a few bottles of spirits sitting in the kitchen, so I go in there and take a swig from one and close my eyes. I’ve never used alcohol to calm my nerves, I use…what’s the name of my pills? Where are my pills?
Wake up, meds, ra…what’s the next one? I need my routine! I’m so tense, my hands are shaking, and there’s something to work out, a puzzle, an unsolvable puzzle that my mind won’t let me solve. There’s millions of them.
“Will you play a game with me?” she asks, looking sad.
“No,” I say irritably. “You made me lose my thought, and it was an important thought!”
The walls feel like they’re closing in. The piano, sitting nobly in the corner of the living room, calls to me. I smile and go to it, sit down, and let my fingers touch the cool keys, and then break out in song. Moonlight Sonata.
After the tenth playthrough, I notice the pungent smell of bleach—which means the house is properly cleaned—and see the little girl asleep on one of Hannah’s knitting projects. Ruining it.
“Get up!” I shout at the top of my lungs.
The girl snaps awake, and I’m standing over her in a threatening manner. I shove her aside and move the knitting to a safer place.
“That’s Hannah’s, isn’t it?” she asks.
“How do you know about Hannah?”
She bites her lip, looking frightened.
I get right in her face. “Tell me, or I’ll make you tell me.”
The girl is so frightened she can hardly speak. She points above the kitchen table. On the wall is a message in red paint.
Hannah isn’t dead.
Day 4
Sunday. I think. My watch is broken.
Fog dampens the morning. No, not fog. Smoke billows through the house, sticking to the ceiling, suffocating me. I jerk awake. It’s dark. I’m in a sitting room on the couch, but I don’t recognize the house.
I cough and cough. My lungs are raw and ready to explode. The oven is on fire. Hannah is awake; she’s too short to reach the power switch, so I press into the heat of the flames and switch it off. It’s oil left in a pan under the grill that’s enflamed.
I open a window, open the back door. The fresh air is like bathing under a waterfall.
Hannah takes my hand. “I’m sorry. I wanted to surprise you.”
“You’ve never been a good cook,” I say.
“I’m only ten.”
I drop her hand and step back to really stare at her. I don’t know this girl. Where did she come from?
“Who are you?”
“Hannah, your daughter.” Her shirt is inside out.
“No, my wife’s name is Hannah. I’m too old to be your father.”
She smiles at me and pulls out a Polaroid photo. It’s a picture of me holding a baby. “Look, Dad, it’s me and you.”
I
take the picture from her. “I’m…” I don’t know what I’m trying to say.
The smoke is fading from the kitchen. There’s a big scorch mark around the oven. The thought of my daughter dying in the fire brings terror to mind and I hug her tightly. “Next time, ask me for help.”
She hugs me right back. “Yes, Dad, I won’t. I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
I take her hand in mine and then kiss her on the cheek. “Don’t worry about it, mistakes happen. What do you want for dinner?”
She glances nervously at the oven. “Peanut butter on bread.”
“Go watch television while I make it for you.”
“It’s broken, remember?”
I frown. “I think I have a spare one.”
“No!” she cries and takes my hand. “No television. Let’s play a game tonight. Mom will be home soon.”
Mom. Her mom will be home soon. What’s her mom’s name again? Her mom is my wife. For some reason, my bones are aching and I have a bad headache. I rub my eyes. “I think I’ll take a shower.”
“Then can we play snap?”
I walk away, trying to remember where the stairs are.
“That’s the garage, Dad.”
I turn around and head in the other direction, back past…the girl, who’s pulling out bread and chips from the cupboard.
“We’ll have cheesy potato bake when I’m…done washing.”
“Yum,” she says.
Getting up the stairs is a struggle. I feel like I’ve aged ten years, and there’s pain in my legs and back. What day is it again? Must be the weekend. I’d be at work otherwise. In the bedroom, I find clothes everywhere. Outside, it’s dark. I must have finished work already.
Hannah’s stuff is everywhere.
“Hey!” I yell angrily. “Get up here, now!”
Light footsteps are running up the stairs. The little girl looks guilty; her head is lowered.
“How could you? This is Hannah’s. She’s gone.” There are tears filling my eyes, but I don’t know why. “It’s all I have left. It’s all I have left.”
The girl points to the wall above my bed. Hanging there is a finished jigsaw puzzle that Hannah used to do. One of the ones she never finished.
“I finished it for you.”
My mouth falls open. “You finished it? Only Hannah can work on her projects.” Hannah…who is Hannah? I must be getting senile.
The little girl shakes her head. “We finished it. For Hannah. Then we hung it.”
I eye her warily. “You’re lying to me. Go to your room!” That seems like the right thing to say.
After she leaves, I sink to my knees and stare at the beautiful jungle tiger, crying, seeing Hannah in every part of it. She’s the only real thing I have left.
Day ?
What’s my name? The radio is on. I like the radio.
Hello to those who are left out there. I believe we’ve been invaded by aliens…
The man keeps speaking, but it doesn’t make sense. I go to the window, but as I walk, I notice my shoes are on the wrong feet, and they sort of look like bird wings, which makes me laugh. I kick them off.
A little girl walks in and I look at her, and she looks at me. “We can’t go outside today, Dad.” She coughs hard, and then sniffles.
I keep staring at her, waiting for her to say something interesting. I’m boring, and blank; there are no words. There’s a whirring sound in my ears, like static, like the radio trying to catch on to the right station.
There’s a bad smell—it’s me. I’m not sure how to get rid of it. The room is full of objects, a…sitting thing. There’s a lying thing with a blanket. I sleep there.
“Let’s get you cleaned up for today, okay?” the little girl says, squeezing my hand. She coughs again.
“Where is everyone?” I ask her.
She looks at me and smiles dramatically. “We had a party yesterday, remember? And today we’ve got to clean the house so we can have another one.”
“I don’t want a party.”
She sighs. “But you like the house clean.”
The girl—Hannah is her name, I’m sure of it—Hannah is right. I do like the house clean. After nodding, she leads me to the…the place where I wash my body. The hair on my face is too long, and peppered with gray flecks. The person is me, I know that—mirrors reflect things—but he’s strange. Old. A future me. I have a headache.
“Is it Monday? It feels like a Monday.”
“It’s a Sunday.” She shows me a picture of her and me. “I’m your daughter, see?”
“Yes. You’re my daughter.”
She turns the shower tap and as the water flows, says, “You need to undress and wash with soap.” She picks up a bar of white slippery stuff.
There are faces above us, like cloudy eyes and knife smiles; they belong to ghosts that live here, and they want me to suffer. They want me to slip and fall and then slide down the drain to where Hell awaits me.
As I unbutton my pajamas, which are stained with brown and black smudges, Hannah calls out, “What’s this?”
She rattles a box.
I glance at her, saying nothing. There’s not much to say because I must shower. I smell bad.
“They’re pills,” she says. “Are you si—?”
I’m in the shower now, naked, letting the warm water run over me, and I’m smiling. Grinning at those faces peering down at me because this feeling is so wonderful and they hate it when I’m happy. They can’t hurt me while I’m wet.
“Here.” Hannah takes my hand and puts six little round things in my palm. “I think you’re meant to take these.” She grabs a glass off the sink and fills it with shower water. “Take them.”
I put them in my mouth and roll them around with my tongue until one of them breaks into tiny fragments and feels like sand between my teeth. It’s bitter, yucky; I poke my tongue out and she puts the cup to my lips.
“Drink it.”
I do.
I keep showering. I can feel those devil pills infecting my insides. My ribs poke out like the overhanging…stone things on a mountain where the furry animals live. Why can’t I remember the words? My hips are curved and pronounced. Am I eating? My stomach lets out an almighty growl and I push against it, feeling sick. “Hungry.”
She nods. “We’ll have peanut butter on toast, okay?”
I shake my head. “No, steak.”
She bites her lip. “I can’t cook steak.”
“Let’s dine out, then!”
The idea makes me so happy that I start singing and laughing. Hannah is laughing with me too and pointing out where I should wash myself. The shower makes me think of sexy times and I can feel myself getting aroused. The little girl notices, but leaves; she doesn’t want me. I’m ugly to her now that I’m old.
I hear the radio on again.
Radio Host: Seventy percent of the population is infected now. At least 10% of those are in the last stages and have already, or are about to, become vegetables. There’s nothing we can do.
I call out to Hannah. “Do we have vegetables?”
She’s standing at the bathroom entrance looking at me like I’m a crazy person, and I laugh. She’s so sweet and pretty and funny. I’m lucky I married her.
“No,” she says, and I can’t remember what she’s responding to. She turns off my water, passes me a towel, and points at my clothes. After I fail to remember which way to put on my jeans, she helps me dress.
When I’m done, she leads me down the stairs and into the living room. It’s so familiar, yet strange. There are crystals organized neatly into a box by their colors. Stamps from across the world are ordered by their series in stamp albums. And figurines have been painted—poorly painted, but finished nonetheless. They make up the pieces of a chessboard.
“We’ve been finishing Mom’s hobbies,” Hannah says.
“Eggs on toast,” I say, knowing exactly what I want to eat.
Hannah coughs again; this time she’s leaning over, almost h
eaving. “I think I’m sick.”
“Eggs!” I let go of her hand and stomp into the kitchen. I get the eggs out of the fridge, knowing I need to crack them open, but I can’t think straight. There are cupboards everywhere; the eggs need to be cooked on something. The hot plates are black and round like the image in my head—the eggs must be cooked on there.
I take an egg, crack it messily, and place the gloopy bits onto the plate.
Nothing happens. They’re supposed to bubble and cook. I feel angry. I take the carton of eggs and smash them against the top of the counter.
“Where are my clothes?” I’m only wearing jeans, but I want my business shirts. “I need a tie, and coffee, or I can’t work. Where are my car keys?”
I bang the eggs down again.
“We’re not going out today, remember?” Hannah’s throat croaks. “Anyway, you’re sick. I’m sick too.”
She’s holding a tissue to her mouth. There’s blood on it, and her face is pale. Paler than usual, and her blonde hair mats against her forehead.
“I’m okay.” I take cheese from the fridge and peel back the wrapper and start chewing. It’s hard to swallow in big chunks.
The little girl is laughing and coughing at me. “I don’t feel well.” And then she faints, her body collapsing into a fleshy heap.
That’s bad. Hannah can’t die. I pick her up in my arms.
“What…where…?” I don’t know how to ask her the question.
Something is happening to me. I’m in the kitchen of my house and I feel like I’ve been on holiday. I’ve taken a vacation from my mind, but I didn’t take any holiday snaps. What the fuck is happening? I’m calm, and I can breathe properly. My thoughts are fighting to keep track of memories. The days have passed, spaces of time erased as blankness.
I’m crazy. I’m not sane. What’s happening with the virus? I remember the virus. Hannah is dead.
“Bill?” The sweet sound of my name echoes in my head. The girl knows me, and she’s got tears on her ghostly, feverish face.
She’s wearing a white shirt that says Madeline. It’s messily written on with marker. “Madeline,” I say, and the girl giggles, and then her giggling turns to sobbing and wailing.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 23