by Rhys Thomas
They were in a darkened corridor now. It intersected with another corridor at right angles. When they reached the intersection a human scream rang out along it. It was jagged and cutting, made by somebody in extreme pain. Miriam felt it jolt her bones.
The doctor looked left, to the source of the scream. He put his hand in the centre of Miriam’s back and pushed her along.
‘Ignore it.’
‘What was it?’
‘It was nothing.’
Everything was coming back to her all at once, as a great flood. Ahead was a solid steel door. It required the doctor to swipe his card along a magnetic reader. The internal mechanism of the door clicked and he pushed it open. They were in an underground parking bay. Two men dressed in army uniform were standing before them.
‘Is my car here?’
‘It’s on its way,’ answered one.
A car engine echoed through the hollow chamber. There was a screech of tyres and a door being held open.
‘Good luck,’ said the doctor.
She climbed in, confused, and he closed the door behind her. The seats were made of leather that crunched beneath her weight. She placed her hands on her knees and spread out her fingers. There was salt water in her throat. The car sped up a ramp. A thick tube of painted yellow and black steel rose in front of them and they ascended into bright daylight.
The roads were damp with rain. A frail sun waited just on the other side of the thin clouds, its disc visible as a ghostly rim.
There were bodies in the street. These were not the hopeless, desolate souls of the illness’s victims; these were dead bodies. They lay prostrate and limp, their limbs set at strange angles. Small puddles of blood escaped from underneath their corpses like red shadows.
Miriam said nothing to the driver. There were official trucks – great white cubes of machinery – with men in full infection-control bodysuits. They were slowly gathering the dead like garbage men. The scale was fully apparent now. It towered and glared over the city. It had taken a week to reach this state. This was no instant disaster, a switch from one state to another. It had crept slowly up and in. Its power was in its sheer size.
The people looked so small against the buildings. They muddled helplessly along dangerous streets. She felt the hopelessness in them, reduced as they had been to mere fractions of what they once were. This thing sought out every corner of every person, every inch. It had come for everyone.
The car stopped outside her mother’s house. She climbed out and closed the door. The smell in the air was putrid, acrid and warm, like rotting fruit. A small head stared from the window of the living room. It disappeared and a few seconds later the front door of the house was flung open and Edward was running fast down the garden path to her. His feet slapped on the compacted gravel. His hair bounced up and down on his scalp. He was calling her. She stepped forward. His movement was natural, his wound was healing already. He threw himself off the top of the three steps leading up to the garden and her body rocked backwards under his weight. In his mother’s arms, he fell silent. His bare skin was against her neck. She could feel his breath on her chest.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s OK now.’
Her mother was standing at the top of the steps, her face tired and confused.
‘James?’ said Miriam.
Her mother shook her head and looked away.
Her head leaned against the plate glass. Dora was in her arms. Her head rested against her collarbone. Miriam stroked her hair. The girl’s body was so small, so thin. It was light, like a bird’s.
The car was silent. The road moved beneath them in heavy clicks. The fields darkened with the sky. The world was wild again.
And then Miriam felt it as it left the girl. It was nothing tangible. It left with a grace and quietness. It was delicate and fragile as it peeled off the girl. It fell from her and dropped away from the car and waited at the side of the road. It watched its old owner disappear into the horizon.
Miriam could not say anything. The body rattled more now. Every bump, every change of speed toppled its balance. She held the back of Dora’s head with her hand and felt her own chest tighten. She wanted to keep the girl close to her for a little while longer. She did not want to say anything to her mother. She did not want to frighten the children.
She looked down on to the top of Dora’s head. It bobbed with the car’s momentum. She placed her lips to it and ran her fingertips along the curve of her ear. The skin was already cold. She was determined not to cry. She remembered that night when she had told Henry she was expecting Edward. His joy had been limitless and instant. There was no hesitation in it. More life was coming into his world. More life.
Darkness fell around the car and Joseph’s van. They moved into the night, a tiny convoy under a giant sky. The fields were invisible now. They had turned to black. Dora’s body grew heavy.
‘Mum,’ said Miriam, quietly. She had come to the end. ‘We have to stop the car.’
PART TWO
JOSEPH
There were bulbs in her left hand. Joseph said it was worth the risk of planting now. Perhaps there would be a frost and they would die, but spring was coming and they needed the food. They had spare, anyway. With a trowel in her right hand she turned the soil, made a small hole and dropped in a bulb. Thin white noodles of matter grew out of its base with small, creamy nodules bubbling from them. It was trying to live. At her side was a bag filled with compost that Joseph had taken from the shed. Miriam had kept guard as he unlocked the door and went inside. She thought it was foolish. There was nobody around. But Joseph was insistent. ‘It’s the system,’ he had said, again. ‘We can’t get into bad habits.’
She sprinkled the cool, loamy granules on to the bulb. They were soft in her hands. The rest of the hole was filled in with the loose earth. She thought about the life she was creating there, up against the stone wall that marked the end of the back garden. Know your onions! That was the phrase they used to use in Henry’s work. She thought back to the day he had shown her a catalogue of fonts. He went through each page, pointing out the different typefaces he liked and what they meant: this one is powerful, this one means class, this one is cool. Miriam had laughed at his enthusiasm for things that seemed so trivial. ‘Hey,’ he had protested. ‘You have to know your onions.’
She made another hole and into it she dropped another bulb. She layered in the compost and the earth and made another hole. Keeping busy was the only way of defending herself from the phantoms. Clean the house, prepare a meal, practise one of Joseph’s ‘Training Modules’, as she had sardonically named them. By keeping busy, her emotional range could be narrowed. The deep waters could be closed off. It was easier being shallow. Any feelings now could not penetrate deeply into her. Instead they caused short, frenzied squalls, quick flashpoints of tears, but they soon passed.
Mary was playing in the garden behind her. She could hear her feet running up and down the path between the vegetable patches. She could smell the herbs from the pots near the house. Joseph had said that although things might become desperate, it was important to always have flavour. To lose it would be to lose their humanity, he announced one day. And so they grew herbs. At first they grew them in the kitchen. It was too cold, too near the sea for them to grow outside from seed, but now they were alive. She had been surprised on that day when the green lines sprouted from the soil in the pots. Bringing these things into the world from nothing had given her a deep sense of satisfaction.
She dropped the final onion into its hole and buried it. She brushed her hands together and got to her feet, looking out east, past the house. It looked so desolate. Deep, dark shadows cut long, thin triangles from the land. There was no sound. The rabbits were small grey circles on the grass, some sitting up on their hind legs looking out over the sea.
She looked the other way, out towards the point. The sun was setting again as a giant orange ball and the sky had turned red. She could see all the way down the hill to the des
erted car park at the far end of the beach that people had used in the summer. Beyond that, the road led up to the pristine white tower of the lighthouse. As she watched the scene before her she knew it was time to go inside. Somebody was walking along the road towards the house.
She called to Joseph and told him somebody was coming. Edward and his grandmother came into the hallway with them and they all went down into the cellar. Joseph opened the gun locker and took out one of the three shotguns. He loaded two cartridges and clicked it shut before locking the cabinet again. He gave Miriam the keyring with all the keys and went upstairs. Miriam went with him and locked the door when he left.
It seemed strange that a man might come from the direction of the lighthouse. The road didn’t lead anywhere and so he must have found his way through the forests on the other side.
Miriam went back down the steps. They had moved lots of things into the cellar since they arrived at the house. She went to the freezer and took out a tub of ice cream. She made two bowls and took them to her children. They didn’t like it when they were locked in the cellar but the ice cream always helped. And anyway, they were getting used to it now.
The first five weeks had passed without any new horror. They buried Dora in the field behind the house and held a joint service for her, Henry and Henry’s father. It had been nothing much, just a silent prayer. Joseph had said nothing. They marked the grave with a large pebble from the beach.
They had turned the back garden into a vegetable patch. Joseph had done most of the work on it. He had turned the soil for hours and hours, in silence, like a machine, as if expending his grief. He stopped to eat and sleep. For the rest of the time he worked. Miriam had watched him from the back bedroom window. He had removed his shirt on one of the warmer days. His body was longer and more lithe than Henry’s had been.
On one day he drove away and returned with three rolls of barbed wire. The three of them unfurled it together – Joseph, Miriam and her mother – and ran it around the garden walls twice so that nobody could get in. Or out. Miriam did not like the barbed wire. It was ugly and dangerous. She thought it would attract unwanted attention more than deflect it. But Joseph had insisted.
They still had plenty of food. There were three freezers now in the cellar. Joseph said he was going to build a coal-burning oven. The television still worked.
Thirty minutes passed before Joseph knocked at the cellar door. They had a secret knock. Like children. Miriam went up the stairs. She refused to carry a gun. She opened the door and looked at him expectantly.
‘He’s gone. It was OK.’
The children had to remain in the cellar. Miriam had agreed to this. They had bartered over the time and come to an agreement of thirty minutes. Just in case people came back after being turned away.
She looked at the table to the right of the front door. There was an empty plate on it. At least Joseph had given him the food this time. That was another thing they had argued over.
It was a Tuesday night so they all went to their bedrooms, turned off the lights and waited. Joseph knocked on the door. Miriam and Edward rose from the bed.
‘OK, honey?’ she said.
He didn’t answer but she heard him climb down on to the carpet. They went silently to the door and out on to the landing. Mary and her mother were already there. Joseph led the way.
It was a clear night and there was the small mercy of moonlight on the carpet. It was just bright enough for orientation. Up was up. The carpet on the landing was cold and thin. The banister was their guide, the grain of the wood coarse on her fleshy palms and fingertips. It forced her hand up and down unevenly, like a gentle ocean tide. Sometimes Miriam would drop her hand from the rail and run it along the wooden balusters underneath. She liked the dull jolt that came with each new collision. They reached the newel post at the end of the banister. They had passed Joseph’s bedroom. Directly ahead was the bathroom and to the left of that was the room in which Mary and Miriam’s mother slept. They turned back on themselves to descend the stairs. They were well versed in the process by now. They felt their way along the hallway.
Ahead, Miriam heard the click of the cellar door opening. The door was underneath the stairs, on the right. They went down. Miriam pulled the door closed behind her and slid across the lock Joseph had installed. They sat in darkness in the chairs of the makeshift living space, the children and Miriam’s mother always on the sofa, and waited.
Miriam had bristled when Joseph had first suggested this. It was ludicrous and childish. It seemed as if it was all just a game to him and it was only slowly that she realized he was right. They did need to be able to do this sort of thing. And besides, there was no harm in it. Scrambling around the house in the dark took up some time at least.
‘OK,’ said Joseph at last. ‘That’s fine. Let’s go to bed.’
Joseph would take Edward fishing. The boy enjoyed it. He liked the idea of providing food for his family. If they returned home with a fish Edward had caught, he would appear in the kitchen doorway with a great swelling of pride, the fish held aloft in triumphant glee.
They fished from the beach. For the most part it was mackerel they caught. Sometimes whiting. On one occasion Edward caught a bass. It was too big for him to pull in by himself and Joseph had helped. His mother had been delighted. They cooked it and garnished it with spring onions.
Edward liked the feeling of pulling the line hard and fast when a fish was on the end of it. He thought he could feel the hook digging into the mouth and that meant the fish could not escape. Sometimes he would tug harder and more often than was needed. He wanted to wound the fish so it would struggle less but the tactic never worked. They would flop around every time, slapping the surface of the water manically as they were wrenched from the sea.
Sometimes, like today, Mary would go with them. She grew bored easily and would run up and down the beach, but not too far because if she ventured further than a few tens of yards she would be scolded by Joseph.
‘How deep is the sea, Uncle Joseph?’ she asked.
‘It depends where you are.’
‘Oh.’
Joseph woke up early, as always. He looked out of the window. There was nobody coming. He went downstairs and commenced his daily ritual of checking the doors and making sure that nobody had arrived surreptitiously in the night. He carried an air rifle at all times when making his checks because Miriam would not allow him to carry a shotgun around the house. That was how life had become between them: small agreements struck here and there; she would agree to one thing if he agreed not to do another thing, was the way it usually worked.
On the fridge door was a calendar. He ticked off another day. He liked to know what the date was, even if it didn’t hold any relevance to his life. Time meant little now. It was hard to believe it was only April. Everything was happening so slowly. His brother and father’s deaths seemed so long ago. The image of his father’s face flashed across his mind as it so often did, just a fraction of time before it was gone again. He ignored it. Thinking about it was pointless, it served no purpose.
He went into the front room and stopped. Miriam was sitting in his father’s old chair, at the window. She was never up before him.
‘Hi,’ he said.
Miriam said nothing. She kept looking out of the window. It was overcast and only half light outside. The near side of her face was in shadow. Joseph crossed the room in a second, his heart beating fast.
‘Miri?’ he said.
He squatted beside her.
Her eyes were blank, her face expressionless. Joseph did not know what to do. It had been so long since he had seen somebody like this. He had tricked himself into believing that people were no longer dying. He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.
‘Miriam,’ he said.
He could hear the panic in his voice.
Her mouth changed. It moved. It curled upwards at the sides and she looked at him. She was smiling. Her eyes had regained their life.
‘April fool,’ she said.
In the evenings, if it wasn’t raining, Miriam would walk with her mother to the cliffs at the front of the house. It was a short walk but had become something to look forward to in the long days. The occasional tanker still crossed the horizon but today the sea was empty.
‘Do you think this will ever pass?’ She pulled the hood of her jacket down.
‘It has to. Everything passes eventually.’
‘Aren’t you frightened?’
‘We seem to be safe where we are.’
‘So you just don’t think about it?’
The sea wind blew her mother’s hair. ‘I guess you could put it that way, yes.’ She nestled some of her hair behind her ear. ‘We’ve been here for nearly eight weeks and nothing bad has happened.’
‘Not here. But people are still getting ill. Bad things are happening in lots of other places. Don’t you think that it could come here?’
Her mother shook her head.
‘I just try not to think about it.’
They didn’t often speak about the outside world any more. Thinking about what was happening gave it power. Not speaking made it separate – it was not a part of their lives. It had already taken enough from them.
Joseph tucked his gunny sack between his belt and the waistband of his jeans, took his air rifle and a box of pellets and left the house. Edward had wanted to go with him but Miriam had said no.
Joseph usually chose the wide expanse of grassland between the house and the ocean. He crossed the road and lay down on a patch of thick grass. Up until a few weeks ago he had not hunted for rabbits since childhood. His father had never been interested in hunting but had finally succumbed to his son’s insistence to learn on his thirteenth birthday, when he had bought him his first air rifle. The three of them had often gone out to the cliffs to shoot for rabbits, or to take pot shots at cans: Joseph, Henry and their father. For the most part Joseph had needed to persuade them to come with him. They didn’t want to go but Joseph had not wanted to go on his own. He liked the idea of father and son on a hunting trip, even if it was just shooting for rabbits at the front of the house.