by Rhys Thomas
Miriam clenched her hands round the hands of her two children. She couldn’t move. The audacity of the horsemen compelled her to watch. The horses were standing in profile to the camp, their riders holding the reins with heads turned sideways.
Those men had taken her house but their tide was not going to stop there. That was clear now. They would keep on coming.
‘What do you think?’ a voice said behind her. It belonged to the injured American man who had been in her house.
A second voice replied. ‘I think that pricks will always spoil everything.’
Miriam turned to McAvennie. He saw her but his eyes could not keep contact. He looked past her and towards the three surveying horsemen on the hillside.
‘And there will always be pricks.’
Somebody had died. The old doctor with the white hair and beard had come in with a group of men. The family had cried and screamed and the body was taken from its bed and laid on a stretcher and covered in a white sheet and removed from the ward.
Charlie had watched and tried not to associate it with an echo from his future, something bouncing backwards through time as his own mirror. Emily did not have long and soon that grieving family would be him.
‘I’m going to leave the camp,’ he said to her. She had eaten nothing in two days. Her eyes gazed steadily and unerringly upwards.
‘There’s no point in staying here,’ he said. ‘I just want to be on my own.’
Emily blinked.
‘Em?’
Her head tilted on the pillow and her eyes gazed into his, a quarter way closed. His heart came instantly back to life. He leaned in. Was that really Emily?
He could smell something. A faint, low smell. She turned her head back and stared once more at the apex of the white veil that draped over her bed.
‘Em?’
He looked at the sheets. The whiteness of them was darkening in an expanding circle around her crotch. Charlie pulled the sheets off her and instantly the smell intensified. He froze. She had soiled herself. She smelt of piss and shit. Quickly, he threw the sheet back over her and looked at the face that did not acknowledge him.
His chest convulsed and he put his hand gently on her forehead. Just by being there he was taking from her the very thing she had always said she would lose last: her grace.
He couldn’t let anyone else see her like this. Thinking quickly, he looked about him. There was a disused toilet off the foyer in which they kept stores. He ran into it and found some toilet rolls. In the corner of the room was an empty waste-paper basket.
He sat her up in her bed. She offered no resistance. Lifting her nightdress over her body he made sure the damp patches did not make contact with her skin. Hooking his hands over her underwear he pulled them down over her thighs. The stench of faeces was as heavy as lead in the air. He gagged but kept going. He threw the underwear on to the pile of sheets and unrolled long lengths of toilet paper. Again, he remembered the daisy chain she had threaded on the campus lawn, a whole world away from here. He stopped.
He slumped down in his chair, deflated. She was dying and he was there in the middle of the night cleaning shit off her legs. This could not be right. In the vast machinery of the universe surely these depths had not been intended.
‘Come on, Charlie boy,’ he said to himself.
He stood again and tore along the perforations of the toilet paper. The moonlight in the windows offered just enough illumination. The faeces had smeared along the insides of her thighs and he started there. He gathered it up in the soft paper, balled it up and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. He then tore off some smaller strips and laid them over her body from her belly button to halfway down her thighs to soak up the glistening urine. He pressed on the paper and his hands became moist and cold. But he had to carry on. He needed to finish before anybody came in.
Rolling up his sleeves he forced his hands under her thighs and lifted her legs up like a mother does a baby. Looking away he finished cleaning. As he threw the final pieces of toilet paper into the bin he started to laugh. This was so ludicrous. He lifted Emily up and pulled off the rest of the sheets. Then he dressed her in a fresh nightgown and laid her down on the bed again.
‘I will never tell anyone about this,’ he said softly. He breathed in through his mouth to avoid the smell in the warm air.
He was finished. She was clean again. He crossed the room to one of the empty beds of the silent ward. If anybody was awake they didn’t say anything. He pulled off the bedding and dropped Emily’s soiled sheets down in their place and went back to her. He checked the mattress and it was not as wet as the sheets. He unrolled some more of the toilet paper and dried it as best he could. He made the fresh sheets up, rolling Emily to one side as he tucked the other in until she was lying, once again, in a clean bed.
He took the bin and the dirty sheets outside to the large, metal dumpster. The cold air made him shiver. The moon was nearly full and the stars were so bright they turned the sky purple.
He went back inside and cleaned his hands with some of the water from the tank near the door. When he sat back down in his chair at the side of Emily’s bed he looked at his girlfriend.
‘There,’ he said. ‘It never happened.’
‘A lot of things have happened,’ she answered.
Charlie’s breathing stopped and he sat up quickly. Her voice sounded weird, like it was not quite hers. It was deeper and slower. He leaned over her.
‘Can you hear me?’ he said. She didn’t answer. ‘Is there –’ he swallowed – ‘can you come back? Can you fight it?’
Emily stared at the white netting overhead as if the words she had spoken had never existed.
‘Come on, Emily,’ he pleaded. He stood and leaned right over her face so they were both staring at each other. ‘You have to be able to come back,’ he said. He felt his chest fill with something. It was like joy. If she was talking, she must still be there. ‘I know you feel sad but we can fight this.’ He kissed her cheek. His voice was loud in the dark, silent room. ‘You don’t have to be sad because I love you. Em, please.’ He moved his hands on to her arms and shook her gently. ‘You don’t have to give in. Please don’t. You have to stay alive. We need people like you in the world. We need more people like you, not less.’ She was looking at him. She wasn’t turning away. ‘That’s it.’ He smiled. The weight in his body was lifting. The darkness was retreating. He was getting through to her. He could sense that behind her eyes she was fighting. ‘Remember that time when we went for a bike ride in the middle of the night on the last day of term? And we found that bench on the seafront? You said it was the happiest you’d ever been.’ He smiled at her. ‘Think of that. Think of all the great times you’ve had. Put them in the front of your head. Think of all the great things still to come. Everything will be better one day; it’s not impossible. Just fight it. I think what you have to do is put the happy things right up there, that’s how you can beat it. I just have this feeling.’ Emily continued to gaze at him. He wished that tears would form in her eyes. That would at least be a sign. Something flickered in her. Charlie lifted his face away from hers. She was going to say something.
‘I’ve seen so many things now. I think they’re true, I don’t know.’
Charlie nodded, urging her on.
‘It’s like there’s more than one truth,’ she said. ‘One thing is true if you feel one way, but if you look at the same thing and you feel differently, then another thing is true.’
Charlie nodded again.
‘Love is an extension of hope,’ she said. ‘Not the other way round.’ He stopped smiling. Emily swallowed and regarded him as if she did not know, and had never known, who he was; as if he was just some impostor who had invaded her life. ‘That’s why I don’t love you any more.’
The baby was restless. It could sense its mother’s unease. It kicked hard against its wall, over and over. Miriam placed her hands on the globe of her stomach.
She was lying in bed,
far away from sleep. The children slept next to her. Her mother was sitting up, looking out of the window of their little campervan. Thinking her daughter was asleep she sat over her family and Miriam wondered how often this had happened in the past without her being aware of it. She said nothing. In a way she felt like a child again with her mother keeping vigil like that.
I’m safe, she told herself. There are no noises and I am safe.
The surrounding danger was palpable but it was not moving. In the present was solace. Stretches of time, long-term plans; if you had such concepts then you had not adjusted correctly to the way things now were, and Miriam realized this. Time was immediate. If she was going to worry about the future then she would never stop worrying and the thin lattice of hope around which her whole existence was now precariously balanced would crash.
Into the small hours of the morning she waited for the sound of gunfire, or screaming, or explosions, or some other indicator of violence. The camp held its breath and waited for something that never came. Safety in numbers, she thought.
There was no attack. Miriam was washed into sleep halfway to dawn and there she stood, in the library again, not on the cellar floor, between the shelves and shelves of books, waiting for the beach to her right to burst into flames and for the great black sea monster to devour her husband once again.
Morning came. The temperature had dropped and the sky had lowered itself with dense grey clouds. In the bay the great skeleton of the grounded tanker yawned its metallic song. Its innards were rusted and breaking, the decomposing metal amalgams of its hull raining down to the seabed as they would for centuries until the violence of the day that had marooned it became so great that all other remnants of the machine would be lost to the effortless infinity of the ocean.
The people of the camp awoke from their few scant hours of rest and emerged from their little shelters blinking and with a temporary relief. They had not been attacked. They were still alive. They took the shared air into their lungs and wiped their weary eyes.
Mary was getting much better at holding a grudge. She still hadn’t forgiven Edward for not letting her play football, despite the fact that he had pulled her from the cellar of the house and taken her to the safety of the beach. In the olden days she would have got over it in a few hours, but it had been four days now and she still wasn’t back to normal. It made him feel bad inside. He had promised to protect her and now he felt he had betrayed her.
When Edward tried to speak to her she would turn dramatically away and look into the air as if she could not hear him.
‘I said, are you coming to play?’
Still she refused to answer.
‘Fine.’ She was so stupid. He stormed off.
‘Wait,’ she called after him.
Edward turned. Her wellington boots were caked in mud and her dress fluttered around her knees.
‘Where are you going?’
‘We’re going up to the lighthouse,’ he answered. A sudden pang of love struck him, as it always did, out of nowhere, and he wished his dad was still alive because Mary needed her dad. ‘Why don’t you come?’
He could see that she wanted to.
‘I’m going to stay here and keep Grandma company,’ she said stubbornly. ‘She’s probably bored,’ she added.
He knew what she was doing. She was trying to make him feel bad, and it was working.
‘You could stay with us, Edward,’ she said, tilting her head and placing her hands behind her back.
‘But I told the others I was going to meet them.’
‘Why are you so mean?’ she said.
‘I’m not being mean. I have to go because I said I would.’
Mary turned and ran up the muddy hill to where they were staying. The mud hopped up around her boots as she ran, like a group of slimy frogs jumping all around her. He wanted to go after her. He didn’t want to make new friends if it meant she was going to be on her own all the time.
He started back up the hill, following his sister’s tracks. If he went after her this time then it might be enough for her to forgive him for what he had done on the beach with the football game.
‘Eddie.’
Edward stopped. He recognized the voice as that of Adam, the tall blond kid. Turning back round he saw them there, five of them, standing in the path waiting for him.
They went down the muddy track with the line of lightbulbs along its side and into the car park.
‘I thought we were going to the lighthouse,’ said Edward.
Michael, the short, ginger-haired boy, was walking next to him. ‘Change of plan,’ he said.
Adam led the way. Behind him were three others. One of them was a kid who, Edward remembered, was called Trio. He remembered because he had long hair down to his shoulders and looked cool. The second boy was the fat one with glasses who had played in goal. His name was John. The last one was the small black kid, Saul. He was the one whose father had apparently been killed by the marauders. He was the youngest.
The boys made their way through the car park. They stopped when the entrance to the beach came into sight, just past the utility block.
A group of men were sitting in chairs around the low wall. Beyond them a tower of sandbags was piled high to protect the camp in the little valley between the low sand dunes.
Grass-covered sand dunes bulged up on either side of the entrance point. On top of them more of the wire fences had been put up, but they looked a little wonky to Edward’s eye because the ground on which they stood was not flat.
‘What are we doing?’ Edward asked.
‘Ssh.’ Adam put his finger to his lips and went over to Edward. He smiled slyly. ‘We’re going to do some spying.’ His glassy blue eyes scanned for Edward’s reaction.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard my dad talking to some of the others. They reckon McAvennie’s a wimp and that he should be doing something to fight back.’
Edward found it hard to believe that Mr McAvennie was a wimp. He was huge. Edward looked at the other children. They all seemed happy with whatever plan Adam had devised.
‘So we’re going to spy on the vampires,’ he said.
‘If we know what they’re doing,’ interrupted the fat kid with glasses, ‘we can report back to our dads and they can find a way to beat them. No offence, Saul,’ he said to the fatherless black kid as an unnecessary aside.
‘Don’t you want to help your dad?’ said Adam.
Edward looked at him. Did he know?
‘My dad’s dead,’ he said firmly. Something moved in his chest. He had never said that before. His face was burning red and then there was somebody patting his back. Looking round he saw Saul smiling sadly up at him.
Edward knew his mother would kill him if she knew what they were planning. It had been hard enough to get her to let him out in the first place after he had sneaked down to the beach without asking.
‘But there’s no way to get out of the camp.’
Edward had already decided he did not like Adam. He was cocky and loud-mouthed and there was an aggression bubbling away inside him. This plan only confirmed his feelings. Adam grinned again.
‘Follow me.’
‘I think I’m going to go back,’ Edward said quickly, making his decision.
All the boys looked at him.
‘It’ll be all right, Eddie,’ said Trio. ‘Even if we get caught they won’t do anything to us. We’re just kids to them. That’s why we have to do it. It’s more dangerous for the grown-ups than it is for us.’
‘But still.’
‘Come on, man,’ Saul said. ‘They killed my dad.’
The two boys made eye contact. The marauders were evil. And you do have to fight evil. Something told him this was the right thing to do, even if it was stupid and dangerous. His uncle would have done it.
‘Look, Eddie,’ said Michael in his fast, high-pitched voice. ‘They’ll thank us for it.’ He pushed Edward gently in the back.
‘Are you
with us?’ said Adam. He was standing right in front of him and Edward suddenly realized just how much bigger Adam was. He no longer felt like he had a choice.
They ducked between the cars in the car park and made their way to the front wall. Edward’s heart was thumping. He was remembering climbing out through the little window in the cellar on the night the marauders had come, and the level of fear that had propelled him so quickly across the grass to the cliff path with his little sister.
Beyond the car park was an uneven patch of marram grass hummocks before the tall, wire fences about twenty yards away.
Adam peeked over the wall to check the coast was clear.
‘OK, go.’
He jumped easily over and disappeared to the right, towards the beach, into the grass hummocks. The other boys followed. Edward tried to wait until they had all gone but Michael refused to let him go last. Edward felt sick. Over the wall he went. The grass came up past his knees and his feet sank into the soft sand.
He ran as fast as he could after the other boys, adrenalin pushing him on. He caught up with them and overtook the fat kid with glasses. They snaked along the floor of the little valley they were in, between the small, grassy dunes, until they came to the wire fence, where they stopped.
Adam gave them instructions to remain in the tall grass at the back of the beach and to run to the cliff path. The metal containers where there had been people living were now empty and so it should be a clear run.
As he spoke Edward looked at the top of the fence; he couldn’t see how they could get over it but Adam crouched down into the grass and parted the tall, bony stems at their base to reveal an open space at the valley floor where the fence did not quite meet the ground. It was just big enough to crawl through.
The fence rattled and the boys had to cover their mouths in case the men further along the beach heard them laughing. Edward started to feel a little better.
They were standing on the precipice of a low bluff and they clambered down on their bottoms until soon they were jogging along through the marram. The tide was far out, but it was just turning inwards. The boys waited at the base of the cliff path to catch their breath. There was no sign of the marauders and Edward’s sense of fear was giving way to one of adventure and excitement. It felt like a game.