by David Moody
His father’s words played through his head once again.
You’ll never find anyone. You’ll be alone right until you die.
You’ll never find anyone. You’ll be alone right until you die.
You’ll never find anyone. You’ll be alone right until you die.
***
Andria turned towards the metal door as it swung open with a loud creak. Bob was standing in the doorway. The look in his eye, one which suggested he’d had enough bullshit, made her feel uncomfortable from the get go. He stepped into the room and kicked the door shut before sitting down next to her.
‘Look, I need to know if this is going to work out,’ he said after pausing for a moment to reflect on what he was going to say. Andria looked at him blankly. ‘Us,’ he explained. ‘I need to know if this is something you’re going to be able to come around to or whether I’m wasting my time.’ It was clear from her face that she didn’t know what to say to him. On the one hand she could appease him to try and keep him calm but, on the other, if she spoke the truth, he might finally realise she couldn’t be kept prisoner like this. ‘I’m going to need an answer.’
Andria hesitated, then said, ‘I want to go home.’
‘Where your children and husband are rotting a few feet beneath the dirt? You really want to go back there?’
‘To my mum...’
‘I keep telling you, she’s dead. How many more times? It’s just you and me. Us. Us and them. I’m the only option you have now... Surely that’s got to be better than becoming one of them?’ He could tell by her face that she didn’t think so. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Am I really that bad?’ She didn’t answer. ‘You know, before all this shit happened out there, people used to say I wouldn’t do that if you were the last person on Earth... Well, I’m the last person on Earth. So, you and me... living here together. Would you do it?’
‘I just want to go home.’
‘This could be your home. What’s the matter with you? Is it not nice enough? Are there bits you want to change? We could decorate. Find some paint from somewhere and...’
‘This will never be home.’
‘So I’m the last man on Earth and I’ll never be good enough for you? I saved you...’
‘I wasn’t going to kill myself. I wanted to live. Yes, for a minute I thought—’
‘I saved you.’
‘You took me!’ Andria snapped.
The room fell silent.
‘Then you can go,’ Bob said eventually.
‘What?’
‘You can go. But you know they’ll get you, right? You know it won’t be long before you’re one of them, yeah?’ He continued, ‘But you don’t care do you? Because you’d rather be with them than with me.’ He laughed to himself.
Andria was almost afraid to ask. ‘What’s funny?’
‘I thought I was saving you by bringing you here but I wasn’t. I was just delaying the inevitable.’ Andria didn’t answer him. She didn’t know what to say to him. ‘I can’t convince you, can I?’
Andria shook her head.
‘You know you’ll die out there, don’t you?’
Andria didn’t respond. She needed to know if her mum and brother were still alive. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to live. Just not with him.
‘I did you wrong and I’m sorry for that but... let me make it up to you.’
‘You can make it up to me by letting me go. Please, undo these restraints and let me go.’
‘I will, I will... But first...’ He pulled a knife from where it was tucked between his belt and jeans. A quick movement. Andria flinched. ‘I’m going to speed things up for you. You’re ready to become one of them... I can help.’
‘What?’ Alarmed. ‘Wait...’
But Bob didn’t wait. He plunged the knife deep into her chest. Her eyes were wide... shock, surprise, pain.
‘You want to be one of them? When you wake up, that’s exactly what you’ll be. One of them. But, and I’m really sorry about this, I lied again. You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here with me. Just the two of us. Maybe you and me... One of us and one of them... Maybe we’ll bring some peace and show everyone that despite the differences, a relationship like ours really can work. Surely they can feel love just as we can? You might not love me as one of us, but I’m sure you’ll love me as one of them.’
Andria was gasping like a fish out of water. Bob pulled the knife from her chest. A dark red river of blood poured from the gaping wound.
‘They say there’s someone out there for everyone. I never realised it would be one of them but that’s fine with me. If this is the way it has to be, then I’ll take it. I’ll prove to my dad that I can find someone. I’ll live my life happy ever after with a gorgeous woman at my side. I mean sure, over the days, weeks, months you’ll change. They all change. But our love will be more than just skin deep.’ He wiped the knife down on the front of his trouser. ‘You go quietly now. You go peacefully, my darling, and when you come back, I’ll be here waiting for you.’
Before he’d finished talking, Andria’s breathing had become shallow. One last yank on her restraints, but it was no good. It was over. It wouldn’t be long now...
He undid his belt, took off his trousers and climbed onto the bed with her. He dreamed of her waking up soon with him inside her, consummating their new relationship.
You’ll never find anyone. You’ll be alone right until you die.
‘You were wrong, Dad. You were so wrong. I’m the last man on Earth,’ Bob started to laugh, ‘and I proved you wrong.’
LAST CHRISTMAS
David Moody and Wayne Simmons
ONE
‘Twas two nights before Christmas, and throughout the Kaplan Industries head office building, everyone had stirred. In fact, most of them were fucking wired, off their faces. The social committee, in all its dubious wisdom, had proposed that instead of heading into town for this year’s office Christmas party, it made more sense to take advantage of their brand new, multi-multi-million pound, state-of-the-art headquarters and keep things in-house. To be fair, parts of the building looked like those swanky clubs in the heart of the city that most of the staff didn’t have a hope in hell of getting into. It was all chrome and glass. Sharp angles. Hot desks and breakout areas. Biometric locks and cutting-edge IT. The cavernous atrium with its wide, zigzag staircases on either side was dominated by a Christmas tree so tall and ostentatious that if you stood at the bottom of it and looked up, you’d struggle to see where the damn thing ended. The top of the tree was perfectly visible from the stairs and outside, though, resplendent as it was with a rotating illuminated star bearing the Kaplan logo. It had cost a small fortune.
The party had been in full-flow for several hours and showed no sign of slowing down. The booze was free, and most staff were taking full advantage. Enough food had been laid on to feed a small army, and the entertainment (though some senior members of the board thought that too generous a term to use) was, by all accounts, a reasonably well-known DJ who usually played those same clubs that most of the staff were regularly denied entry to.
As office Christmas parties went, this was a pretty fucking awesome one, actually.
Howard Stanton wasn’t enjoying it, though.
Howard was the lucky bugger from the outsourced security company who’d ended up working tonight. Normally this was his favourite shift of the week – 6:00pm Friday to 6:00am Saturday – because it was a chance to roam the corridors of in relative peace and quiet and just think or read or catch a movie or two (or three or four). His presence was little more than a token gesture: the Kaplan building was so damn hi-tech that if anything did go wrong, the installation itself had normally identified the issue, isolated the problem and taken any corrective action necessary before the first warning pop-up had appeared on one of Howard’s myriad TV screens. Why they needed Howard here at all was beyond him, but he wasn’t complaining – a job was a job, after all, and there were worse ways to pay the
bills than working in a fancy pad like Kaplan.
Howard wasn’t as anti-social as people might have thought. He preferred his own company, sure, but he was perfectly capable of mixing with other folk and socialising. Problem was, most of the people he found himself mixing with on a day-to-day basis irritated him beyond belief. Certainly the people he mixed with here, anyway. They had a frustrating in-built superiority complex, just because they worked for Kaplan (the most profitable UK firm capita last year, according to a recent Financial Times report, and one of the top three employers to work for in the UK, according to some other thing he’d read). They knew nothing about Howard’s background or his education, and they clearly couldn’t be bothered to ask; they just assumed. It reminded him of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ which he’d just re-read for a module on his Open University Masters degree (five modules out of six now completed, thanks for asking, graduation on track for next summer). The staff here tarred security with the same brush as catering, IT support, facilities and housekeeping. Howard felt like an Alpha citizen, trapped in the body of an Epsilon. He’d tried to explain as much once to one of the chaps who worked here and who’d seemed reasonably well-educated. He’d just grunted.
But the truth of the matter was sitting in front of this endless bank of CCTV screens gave Howard a definite sense of power. He could see everything and everyone. When he’d started in security, CCTV camera technology had been ropey at best, with images captured on video in grainy grey-scale. Not anymore. Now he could watch everything in pin-sharp, ultra HD. It was like watching a movie. Albeit an outrageously dull movie starring a cast of imbeciles.
Look at him! Frigging idiot.
Howard watched one of the finance partners, an older bloke called Jenkins, lurching down a corridor, zigzagging as if one leg was shorter than the other, barely able to keep himself upright. He tripped over his own feet, then crawled a few steps further forward and threw up in a plastic plant pot. Howard made a note. He’d have to report that to someone, get it cleaned up.
He shook his head and turned his attention to his iPad which was propped up just behind his keyboard, showing something far more interesting. Die Hard. This was a Christmas ritual for Howard: an annual viewing of the most Christmassy movie of all time (in his opinion). He’d even put on a clean white Bruce Willis-style vest under his uniform polo shirt and sweater. Yippie ki-yay, motherfucker. It made him feel the part, with the Kaplan HQ standing in for the Nakatomi Plaza, although he knew he was as far removed from John McClane as it was possible to get.
He paused the film and panned around a few more rooms, checking no one was where they shouldn’t be, doing things they shouldn’t be doing. The staff had been given strict instructions to stick to certain parts of the building tonight: the central atrium with the Christmas tree taller than Howard’s second-floor flat was high, the dining room, and the Horatio Suite (often used for board meetings, named after Horatio Kaplan, the company’s founder and current chairmen Ken Kaplan’s great-great-great-grandfather). Howard noticed one or two stragglers up to no good, sneaking off to find quiet corners where they could engage in tried and trusted office party pursuits, namely drug-taking and extra-marital liaisons.
He saw her sitting on a printer.
Debbie.
She was way out of his league (heck, Howard wasn’t in any league), but that didn’t stop him thinking about her constantly. She was the most beautiful creature. Always perfectly presented, always bang on-trend, always flawless. She enraptured him and terrified him in equal measure. Howard reckoned he might even love her. One time, when someone in HR had left their computer logged-in and unlocked, he’d looked up her address and had driven past her house, hoping she’d appear so he could feign a chance meeting. It never happened, of course and, seventeen trips around the block later, he’d given up and never gone back again.
What was she waiting for? She sat perched on the printer, idly swinging her legs. Did she find Christmas parties as tedious as he did? Was she looking for someone who’d challenge her intellectually as well as physically, someone like Howard? Was she a Die Hard fan, he wondered? Maybe they could watch the movie together. Or was she hiding from someone, maybe upset by something that had happened? Howard considered working back through time on the screen, following her progress in reverse with his CCTV tools, trying to find the son-of-a-bitch who’d broken the heart of the woman he loved. He played out a scene in his head where he casually walked into the room on the pretence of checking the paper stocks were secure, then struck up a casual conversation which led to who knows where...
His dreams were shattered when Brian Boyd appeared on-screen. The office lothario. A complete non-entity in Howard’s book. Regrettably, however, he and Debbie clearly had some kind of thing going on. Howard reached for the control to change screen when they started to kiss, but then stopped himself. Difficult though it was to watch, he wanted to make sure Debbie was okay and that Brian wasn’t trying to take advantage. It soon became clear, however, that Debbie was absolutely fine and that she was more than happy to see Brian. Howard quickly changed feed when she jumped down from the printer and let Brian Boyd have his wicked way with her from behind, against the huge network printer they’d had installed last week.
Howard sat for a moment and returned his attention to Bruce Willis, his heart like some heavy thing in his chest. Brian Boyd, of all bloody people. The same Brian Boyd who’d got off with Thelma from HR last year and Chrissie from Sales the year before that. What was Debbie thinking?
Howard forgot about his movie and went to the window, watched the traffic go by outside. It was definitely busier than usual, what with it being the last Friday night before Christmas. This was peak time for office parties and an absolute nightmare for taxi drivers, bar staff and cops and anyone else who had to deal with the fallout of it all, the hordes of drunken people roaming the streets. Friday nights were bad enough – some comedian on one of those panel shows Howard liked (was it Frankie Boyle? No, Sofie Hagen) got it right when they said it was like there’d been a fire at the Cunt Factory. Well, tonight it was that times ten. The season of goodwill, and all that bollocks. Howard was seeing the effects of it all right now.
There was a guy staggering across the street, yelling at the cars going by, coat hanging off one shoulder, shirt tail out, a total mess. Idiot’s going to get himself killed, thought Howard. A couple of passers-by tried to help, calling for him to get off the road, but he wasn’t having any of it. Then the cops showed up, their blue lights flashing, stopping the traffic so they could get this prick moved on, but still he resisted, grabbing one of the cops and... and Jesus Christ, was he trying to bite him?
‘Hey Howard, mate.’
Turning around, Howard saw Charlie Ellwood standing behind him. Howard’s heart was thumping in his chest.
‘Bloody hell, Charlie. You scared the crap out of me.’
‘Yeah, I always wondered if you were cut out for security,’ Charlie said with a wry grin. ‘Thought I’d bring you down a few nibbles. You wouldn’t believe the amount of food up there, could feed several bloody armies! How’s things, by the way? Haven’t chatted to you in ages.’
Charlie was one of the few decent people in Kaplan. He would never pass Howard’s desk without a hello, always had a smile for you.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Howard said, taking the plate of mince pies and sausage rolls from Charlie, neither of which would work with his new gluten-free/ dairy-free/ everything-free diet, but whatever. He sat the plate to one side.
‘What the hell’s going on out there?’ Charlie said, peering out the window at the scene outside. The cops seemed to have got things under control, two of them holding the drunken guy on the ground now, but he was still all worked up, hissing and screaming like a man possessed.
‘Bloody Christmas,’ Howard said. ‘Brings out the worst in people.’ He turned, looked at Charlie and smiled. ‘Wouldn’t catch you behaving like that, mate.’
Charlie held his hands up,
mock-serious. ‘Mate, I wouldn’t dare with you on patrol.’ He laughed good-naturedly. ‘Anyway, any plans for Christmas?’
Howard shrugged. ‘Just the usual,’ he said, as nonchalantly as he could. ‘What about you?’
The usual for Howard would be his own version of Christmas dinner – pie and chips – and a couple of beers in the house. None of that would go with his new gluten-free/ dairy-free/ everything-free diet either, but he could allow himself one day off, right? God knows there wouldn’t be anything else to look forward to – no friends or family calling, just him and the remote and bugger-all on telly anyway, if every other Christmas was anything to go by. But Howard wasn’t going to tell Charlie any of that.
Charlie took the bait, rattling on about his own plans, how the mother-in-law was coming over and what a nightmare it would all be. He rolled his eyes and made a few jibes but it was clear he was looking forward to it on some level. ‘Christmas is all about the kids,’ he said. ‘And if they’re happy having their Granny over to spoil them, well who am I to complain?’
The lift door pinged in the corridor outside. Several heads peered around the CCTV room door, a few of the girls from Finance all wearing tinsel around their necks and those stupid paper crowns you got from crackers. ‘There you are,’ one of them said, an older woman who dressed way younger than she should. She stumbled over, all leery-eyed and drunk. For a second or two Howard thought she might have been coming for him but she grabbed Charlie instead and pulled him away. ‘Party’s this way,’ she said, not even so much as looking at Howard.