It was eerily quiet too when it should have been filled with the sounds of school children, going from class to class, chatting and laughing. Now, there was nothing but the creak of wood and the sporadic whoosh of the wind as it blew through the windows and struck the curtains.
A dark, sobering thought crossed my mind then.
Assuming an infant managed to survive the virus somewhere, the youngest person on the planet would now be almost five years old. In no time at all, the last child on earth would grow up, and that would be it. Unless the little life growing inside me survived, and then the very last child on earth would be my child.
What would it be like to be the only one? Would she be lonely without other children to play with? Not that she would know any different.
She? Why did I think it was a girl?
“This is it,” Eve said, stopping outside of the only room with an open door. “Get yourselves settled and then come and see me—I’m three doors down. I’ll show you where the canteen is. There’s a small, en-suite bathroom in your room, but the water pressure up here isn’t great. There are more showers downstairs.”
Nate mumbled a thank you, and then we shut the door on her.
I was surprised to see a little key in the lock, which I turned until it clicked, and then twisted the knob to check it was actually locked. It appeared we’d been afforded some privacy, presuming there were no hidden cameras anywhere.
The room was big and much brighter than the oppressive corridor outside. The walls were a soft, powder blue—I could still smell the odor of fresh paint—and the scuffed floorboards had been covered with a large, plush, silvery-gray rug. An ornate, wrought metal, double bed sat in the corner next to an empty, oak-veneer bookcase and a glass-topped writing desk. The window in here was huge, with blinds instead of curtains, and overlooked a playground. I peered out, pressing my forehead to the glazing, my breath fogging up the glass.
Directly beneath us was a net-less, rusted basketball hoop, and I could still just about make out the faded blue lines that marked out the sections of the court. Much further off to the right, was a sparse, grassy area with dozens of sapling trees, and one massive, gnarled and ancient sycamore beside them.
Nate came up behind me and locked his arms around my waist. “Do you really think they’ll let us go after three months?”
Sighing, I leaned my head back on his chest. “I don’t know.”
“What do we do about Rebecca?” he asked.
My stomach lurched as the guilt immediately came flooding back. What could we do?
“She’ll have to wait,” I said.
At this rate, by the time we finally got to the cottage, I’d be showing, presuming nothing bad happened before then. There’d be questions from Rebecca. Lots and lots of questions.
But maybe we wouldn’t have to walk there.
“They do have working cars here. I wonder if we could borrow one?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Borrow?”
Borrow. Or steal, if need be.
Moving away from the window and pulling him with me, I slumped down on the bed. Weary and tired, it would’ve been easy to sleep right now. Possibly for several days straight, given the chance.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He put his arm around me and kissed my temple. “I know that’s probably a stupid question.”
“I’m just tired,” I responded. “And stressed. I never ever want to go through anything like this again. I can’t. It hurt. I watched you die, Nate.”
He hugged me closer to him. “I don’t remember much. The sedative they gave me knocked me out but, whenever I did wake up, there was only pain. Deep in my bones, like being infected with the virus all over again.”
I tilted my head up to look at him as he spoke.
“It was excruciating. I knew the only way to stop it was to find you and get you away from here. I thought something terrible was going to happen to you.”
Did he hear the voices too? Were they trying to tell him I was in danger?
My eyes moved from his and down to the floor. “I think they planned on drowning me too, but when you came back to life, they changed their minds. I don’t know why. I didn’t ask too many questions.”
The lie fell proficiently from my tongue.
He kissed my temple again. “This thing with us…it just seems to get more mysterious, doesn’t it?”
“Does it worry you? That something else might be controlling us?” I asked him. It was unsettling to think some unknown entity was acting as puppeteer. “What if what we feel for each other isn’t real?”
He looked wounded. “How can you think that?”
“I just think if it weren’t for the apocalypse, someone like you would never have been attracted to someone like me.”
He leaned away from me. “What?”
Twisting to lean back against the bedhead, I crossed my arms. “C’mon Nate. Would you—a thirty-five-year-old, intelligent, handsome doctor—have ever looked twice at an inexperienced waitress in her mid-twenties with emotional issues?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“Liar!”
He huffed, cocking his head to the side. He crawled up the bed and then hooked his arm around my waist, sliding me down so that I lay flat.
“I’d have come into where you worked and ordered breakfast.” He swung his leg over me and straddled my knees.
“Bit of a long way to come for breakfast,” I pointed out.
“I might’ve been on holiday.” He leaned down and kissed me quickly. “Anyway, I’d have seen you and thought ‘wow, she’s beautiful’ and then I would’ve said something witty to make you laugh. I’d have come in every day and talked to you.”
After a few more fleeting kisses, he continued. “Eventually, I would’ve asked you to come for a drink with me.”
“I would’ve said no.”
“I’d have charmed you into saying yes.”
I rolled my eyes. He really could be very smooth-talking when he wanted to be. It was almost believable.
“We’d have gone out and talked more. I would’ve found out how funny, and clever, and compassionate you are.”
“Would we have kissed on our first date?”
He winked at me. “Yes.”
“Is that all?” I asked. “Or would you have expected more?”
His body tensed as he replied, his words coming out snappy. “Despite what you might think, I do have some self-control! I would never have pushed you, Halley! Christ, do you know me at all?”
I growled. “Of course, I do! I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t have pushed me. This is a stupid conversation!”
He relaxed a little and sighed, shaking his head. “I’m not Andrew, Halley. Not now and not before.”
The mere mention of his name made me feel sick. “I know.”
Nate climbed off me and rolled onto his back. “What is really bothering you? I feel like there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
“Nate, I—” Now was not the time to announce our impending parenthood. He needed time to digest everything he’d heard today. As did I. “I need to know what you feel for me is real and of your own free will.”
A canny misdirection, but still a question I wanted answering.
He shifted onto his side. “If we have been thrust together—poor choice of words—brought together by some mysterious force, it’s only a physical thing. It doesn’t have any control over my heart.”
I tutted in mock annoyance. “Good answer.”
He smirked. “Anyway, I could ask you the same thing. How do I know whether you truly love me?”
Rolling toward him, I pressed my body against his and smiled. “Because there’s no way in hell I’d let you touch me if I didn’t feel something real for you.”
“Good answer.”
As he planted a soft kiss on my bottom lip, my hands snaked up the front of his t-shirt and lightly brushed over the contours of his skin. In response, he began undoing the drawstring of my trousers.<
br />
“Hey,’ I whispered, batting his hand away. “No time for that.”
“Fine,” he grinned, but then stared at me for a few moments, seemingly deep in thought. “I suppose we’ve got all the time in the world now, considering not even death can tear us apart.”
As mad—and romantic—as that sounded, it was true.
“We could be stuck with each other for a really long time,” he added, with a smirk.
It sounded like a pretty good outcome to me. “Yes, but unless I let Eve drown me, I’ll carry on aging while you’ll still be in your prime.”
He chuckled, but then gave me a more serious look. “I agree with Gabriel. If we are meant to die to evolve, there has to be a better way. If there isn’t…well, maybe I could find some more humane way to kill you.”
I laughed. “Oh, be still my beating heart.”
“Exactly.”
****
Eve didn’t give us much time to ‘settle in’ before knocking on our door to tell us that lunch had been served in the canteen. The hunger pangs churning in my stomach had begun to make me lightheaded, and I couldn’t get to the food quick enough.
The canteen was on the ground floor of the east wing, but the smell of food was detectable the moment we entered the stairwell and headed down. Eve led the way, introducing us to any people we passed. I tried to remember their names, but my brain seemed to have reached the point where any new information refused to be absorbed.
The canteen was huge, divided into two halves. One side had tables and chairs with an open kitchen running alongside, while the other half was being used for food storage with rack upon rack of tinned and dried foods. There appeared to be some organization to it—the racks were color-coded with red, blue, and green tape. The goods on the red taped racks had ‘off-limits’ signs stuck to them, whereas the blue and green racks had ‘help yourself’ signs.
“So many people,” Nate muttered under his breath.
Perhaps it was the gnawing pain of an empty gut that distracted me, but it took me a while to notice the crowd. In stunned silence, I mentally performed a quick headcount.
Claire had told me that there were twenty or so other survivors here, but it hadn’t sunk in until now as I watched them interact with one another, laughing and talking.
Eve replied to Nate. “Yeh, it’s a full house today. A couple of looting parties returned last night,” she said, and then pointed to a table of five people. “That’s Erik—he’s a tech genius. He keeps the water pumps and the hydrogen generators running. We brought one down with us from the bunker in Scotland, but we’ve just retrieved another two. More people mean we need more power.”
Her finger moved from the tall blonde man she’d identified as Erik and went to others that I recognized. “That’s Tobias, Max…” she stopped. “Sorry, you must be starving. We’ll get you some food before any more introductions.”
She ushered us toward the kitchen where the food was all laid out on a long silver counter, along with tubs of cutlery and stacks of multicolored plastic trays—probably what the school would’ve used. As I perused the food, somewhat bedazzled, my nose detected the heavenly scent of curry.
I was immediately drawn to the four large slow cookers at the end of the counter, all bubbling away in a cloud of steam, flanked by dishes of baked potatoes, chips, and rice. My mouth practically filled with drool just thinking about it.
“Help yourself,” Eve said. “Most days, they serve the same stuff—vegetable chili, rabbit curry, rabbit stew, rabbit pie. Luckily, the rabbits are still at it like…well, rabbits. On Fridays, they cook battered fish. Carlos makes his own flour from the wheat we grow here.”
I ladled some curry onto a baked potato and then piled on some chips and a generous dollop of rice. Nate wasn’t quite so indulgent but still heaped a good amount of food onto his tray.
“Are all of the people here survivors from Britain?” he asked Eve.
“No. Erik and five others came over from Iceland by boat about four months after the outbreak—they’d heard there was a safe zone in Scotland. Of course, there wasn’t. We think I.D.R.I.S put out a call on the radio to lure more survivors to the bunker. Erik and his group just happened to pick up the broadcast.
“We also have a survivor from the Faroe Islands—by luck, he was picked up by Erik’s group en-route. Tobias and Ben were both living in Ireland at the time of the outbreak but were flown to Scotland like Daniel and I were. Laura was flown over from Italy—she was born here in London, her family moved to Venice when she was a kid.
“Based on those numbers, we think there could be a few hundred survivors worldwide. Whether those people are still alive or not, we don’t know. We suspect Scotland wasn’t the only facility testing on survivors.”
It was a lot of information to absorb. “What about people who were immune to the virus?”
Eve shrugged. “We’ve never come across any. I wouldn’t put it past the government to invent such a notion.”
Nate and I exchanged furtive glances, both thinking of Rebecca.
We followed Eve to a table and sat down. A few people began to notice our presence, throwing curious glances in our direction, along with some hushed murmuring behind their hands. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. Not to mention, it’d been such a long time since so many new faces surrounded me.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Ben enter the canteen with Laura. He appeared to have recovered well from our last encounter, although he scowled at me when our eyes met. To my surprise, he purposefully passed by our table on his way to get food.
“What do you want, Ben?” Eve said as he stopped beside my chair.
“Just to welcome our new friends.” He glanced down at me with a snicker. “Oh and, in case you were worried, I’ve stopped bleeding out of my eyes now!”
Eve groaned as her eyes rolled. “We weren’t worried. Move along now, Benjamin. The adults are talking.”
Ben huffed and raised his middle finger. Still, he did as instructed.
“What happened to him?” Nate asked me.
This was the part of the story I’d omitted. It invited questions I didn’t have the answers to and a secret I wasn’t ready to divulge.
I took a bite of a chip and focused my attention on the food in front of me. “You punched him. Don’t you remember?”
Not a lie, technically.
Nate widened his eyes. “Vaguely,” he said. “How hard did I hit him?”
Eve cleared her throat, and when I looked up at her, she had a hand over her mouth, hiding a smile.
“Really, really hard,” I replied.
I decided, there and then, this would be the last time I ever lied to Nate.
****
Before…
Packed and ready to go, the only thing stopping me now was the rain. For three days, it fell torrentially and unrelenting. So, I waited.
What would a few more days matter after years of waiting?
“I supposed it’s good for the grass,” Rebecca muttered, staring out of the kitchen window.
Her mood had been low the last few days, and I noticed several bottles of whiskey had disappeared from the drink cabinet. These days, Rebecca seemed more inclined toward spirits and other liquors, rather her usual bottle of red. Apparently, the vino wasn’t taking the edge off anymore.
Who could blame her? Under normal circumstances, everyone was prone to spells of depression, but these weren’t normal times. They were often lonely and difficult and gloomy.
This in mind, I found it even harder to understand why she wouldn’t leave this place. Why not go out and look for other survivors? There was nothing left to lose anymore. Literally nothing.
“I noticed you repaired the tire on the bike in the garage.”
I froze. “Yes. I thought I’d go for a ride when the weather was better.”
“Ride where?” Rebecca asked.
Retrieving a sharp knife from the block on the counter, I sat down at the kitchen table. It was
one of my daily chores to prepare dinner, so I began by peeling some baby turnips for tonight’s stew.
“Anywhere,” I shrugged, avoiding her gaze.
Rebecca began to pat dry some asparagus she’d just washed. “Just around the village?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She dropped the long green shoots onto the table next to the turnips and poured herself a tumbler of whiskey. “You won’t go far though, will you?”
The knife caught the flesh on the side of my thumb, and I hissed, sticking the bloody digit in my mouth to stop it from dripping on the vegetables. “I won’t go far.”
The tumbler in Rebecca’s hand was soon empty and refilled again. “You won’t like what you find out there.”
Ignoring her, I began chopping the turnips again.
“I don’t think I could stand being here alone,” she said.
The irony of her comment made me laugh. “But you leave me here by myself all the time.”
“Because I know you’re safe here. I know where you are.”
I pursed my lips together angrily. Funny how my safety hadn’t been more of a concern to her after my mother had died. As it turned out, living with Andrew had been far more dangerous for me than the apocalypse, so far. But I couldn’t tell her about that.
Instead, I lied. “I won’t go far, Rebecca.”
She smiled and gulped down another drink. “You’ll think me awful for saying this, but sometimes I think they were the lucky ones.”
“What?”
She looked at me, her eyelids drooping from the inebriation. “It’s always worse for the ones left behind.”
“Are you saying we’d be better off dead?”
Rebecca shrugged and stared at me. “No,” she muttered after a long pause. “But, sometimes, I wonder—” Then she laughed. “What do I wonder? I don’t know.”
She was quite clearly drunk now, and it irritated me. “Why don’t you go and lay down? I’ll cook dinner.”
She nodded and swiped the whiskey bottle off the table, putting it under her arm. She kissed the top of my forehead and then shuffled off to her room.
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