No Escape

by Alex Scarrow

  December

  We’re going through our diesel supplies faster than we thought we would. The space heater does a great job, but, Christ, it’s a thirsty bastard. We’re about a third of the way through our stock! We’ve switched to keeping it on most of the time but turned down to its lowest setting, so at least there’s a constant trickle of heat on our floor. We plugged up the ladder entrances top and bottom to kill the draft and conserve our heat. But then nearly killed ourselves because of the buildup of carbon monoxide fumes! So, there’s a life lesson learned! We unblocked the entrance to the floor above, so there’s somewhere for the toxic fumes to go and some way in for fresh air.

  Duh.

  OK. So we’re playing Risk way-y-y-y too much. You know, the board game? The one where you’ve got the map of the world, and you have to conquer it? Finley made a copy by drawing the world map on the floor with a piece of chalk and we’re using screws and bolts we found in the lighthouse’s workshop for the pieces. I carved several wooden dice, which work pretty well, although some have a habit of rolling higher than others.

  Which of course causes total meltdowns as I’m sure you can imagine.

  December/January (not sure)

  Howard cut his hand on one of the iron railings last week. It’s been getting steadily worse ever since—all pink and puffed up. He’s been on antibiotics, but I don’t think they’re working. I don’t know whether it’s the wrong kind of antibiotic, or whether they’re just out-of-date. No one knows what to do to help him fight the infection.

  Kim’s really upset and worried. She’s grown really close to him. She sees him as like a father figure or something.

  Freya, I don’t know if we can survive losing someone else. Cora hit us hard. And it’s so hard being the leader, constantly having to try and boost morale. Constantly assuring the others it’s going to be OK, that we’re going to be fine.

  Only I’m beginning to wonder if we are. The arithmetic of our situation is only going to go one way, right?

  I’m exhausted trying to be positive in front of the others all the time.

  Feburary-ish

  Howard passed away last night. Finley said it must have been sepsis. We wrapped him up in a tarp. Adewale carried him down to the concrete foundation and said a prayer. Then we tipped him over the handrail and gave him a burial at sea.

  For a moment, I thought his body was just going to stay there, resting on the icy slush, but eventually it slipped through and disappeared.

  So we’re down to four now. Not so good. But, I suppose, trying to look on the positive side, that’s still enough people for a decent game of Risk.

  March

  We’ve got enough food and drinking water for a few more months, when it should, in theory, warm up again, hopefully for the ice/slush to break up enough so we can do another run ashore for supplies. But—and this is a huge goddamn “but”—we’re getting low on diesel for the heater. At the rate we’re burning through it, we’ll run out in a couple of months.

  So, pretty soon, we’re going to HAVE to try another supply run, whether the sea’s cleared or not.

  It’s something we keep discussing that we need to do, but we keep putting it off. I’m thinking we can wait until we’re down to two months’ supply, then we should really go and get some more.

  April

  We need better balanced dice. It led to a fistfight. I actually hit Adewale. I punched him in the face. I can’t actually believe I did that. I feel so bad about it. We were fighting over Europe. I was invading it, he was defending it, and there’s this one particular dice that delivers sixes pretty much every time.

  Jesus.

  May

  Just want to wish you a happy birthday. (I think it would be about now, right?) I miss you so much, Freya. I think if it was just you and me here, I’d be fine with that. I’d be happy here until we died of old age, to be honest. (That or froze into an ice sculpture.) Our little safety bubble. I could go with that.

  In other news, I have a fractured ankle. I missed a step coming back down from a piss trip. Typical. I’ve spent, what? Over four years surviving the apocalypse and the end of the world without a single broken bone, then I go bust my ankle going for a leak!

  I can’t even blame ice and say I slipped on an icy step. I simply missed a step and…crack! We have plenty of painkillers of course, which I am merrily munching my way through (well, maybe not so merrily), but it’s keeping the pain down to a dull throb that I can cope with. I’ll be honest though, I’m petrified I’ll end up like Howard and die of sepsis and an overenthusiastic immune system!

  For the moment, I’ve got my leg up in the air and Kim insisted I move my sleeping bag right next to the heater, since I can’t move around to keep myself warm.

  Which is kind of her.

  May

  They’re going for a foraging trip ashore without me. I feel, like, useless sitting here with my dumb-ass broken ankle.

  May

  Shit. Where the hell are they?

  May

  It’s been three days now. It’s not a weather thing. There’s no such thing as “weather” these days. No storms. No blizzards. One day’s the same as the next—gray sky and a flat, white sea.

  Something must have happened to them. The virus.

  Probably.

  Summer

  I’m alone. I was hanging on to hope for a few weeks that maybe the boat had gotten damaged and they needed to go find another one. But I guess the truth is they’re gone. The virus got them or the boat sank or something.

  “Alone” is going to be hard. I have food and heating and water, and, really, I can last a long time here. But I wonder if there’ll come a time when I choose—you know—NOT to hang on.

  Shit.

  Winter

  I think I’ve been here a year now. Winter’s come again, Big Time. It’s much harder than the last three. Really, really cold now. The snow on the helipad is at least a three feet deep! I’m worrying about how much weight the helipad and this old tower can take. I wonder if I should be shoveling it off.

  Winter

  I’m really going to have to start rethinking my heating plans. There’s fuel for just a few months if I keep burning through it like I am. I’m going to have to ration it. Maybe there’s some stuff I can find that I can burn. There are old stores.

  There must be something down there I can use. I’m going to freeze to death otherwise.

  Winter

  I just managed to hobble downstairs and came across a stash of coal bags. I’m not sure how long it will last or if I’m going to end up choking myself on fumes in here, but I’m gonna use it anyway. I might even heat up some of my meals on it. In other news, I found a bunch of old books on the floor downstairs. I’m guessing that’s from when this place wasn’t automated and had a crew. The choices are interesting. There’s a bunch of books by someone called Jilly Cooper and a guy called Archer. But there’s also a whole load by Stephen King. A writer I’ve actually heard of!

  I think I’m going to start with him.

  Spring

  OK. Listing in descending order of favorite Stephen King books: The Dead Zone, Firestarter, The Stand, It, The Shining, The Tommyknockers, Cujo, Needful Things, Christine. Speaking of The Dead Zone, I can’t believe Stephen King predicted a total ass hat like Trent!

  Sheesh. Now for the Archer guy.

  Spring

  Seriously? OK I’m gonna do it. I’m going to have a go at those Cooper books.

  Winter

  Winter’s here again. Does that make it two years now? Or three? I’m losing track.

  Winter

  So, Freya, I think today is the day. I’ve been listening to Dad’s advice. And he’s right—at some point, you’ve just got to admit when the game’s over. So…this is me signing off. Which is nice timing really, since there�
��s only a few more pages left in the notebook.

  I love you, Freya. Always have.

  Chapter 50

  Leon set down the pen and closed the cover. Writing down a long, protracted goodbye felt stupid. It would’ve felt like he was stalling, delaying the inevitable.

  “Today is the day.” His words spilled out amid a cloud of evaporation and echoed off the hard, concrete walls. Pale daylight leaked from the ladder well of the floor above. Leon had no idea what the time was, other than it was day.

  It was day and night, that was all. The days were best used for sleeping, the nights were for keeping moving and eating and using a few minutes’ worth of fuel to boost his small, dark world above freezing for a few hours.

  But the last liter and a quarter of red-tinted diesel fuel was sitting in a milk carton. There was enough there for two or three more blasts of the heater. Then, that was it.

  Really it.

  He could hear Dad’s voice. Your core body temperature’s not going to last very long once that heater goes out for the last time.

  “I know, I know.”

  Leon looked up at the ladder. He and Dad had discussed the options last night. The drop from the helipad would be certain. No mistaking that. But Leon wasn’t sure he could do it, to will his body to take that last step and lean forward.

  There was the gun, lying on the ground; all that was required was the twitch of one finger.

  Dad shook his head. I heard stories of idiots who screwed that up. Took an ear off, lost an eye…ended up paralyzed or in a coma. You make sure you aim straight, Son.

  Leon nodded. “I will, Dad.”

  He pulled himself slowly to his feet and let the mound of sleeping bags and blankets fall away from him onto the floor.

  Today’s the day, Leo. Don’t leave it too late. Don’t leave it until dark. Don’t leave it until you’re too cold to hold the gun straight.

  “I won’t,” he croaked.

  He picked the gun up and tucked it into the inside pocket of his anorak, safety on. The last thing he needed to do was shoot himself in the gut or the groin and bleed out painfully.

  He cleared the debris away from the well leading down. He didn’t want to do the deed in the space he’d been living in these last two years. It had served him well. It felt vaguely disrespectful doing it here, leaving a mess that wasn’t ever going to get cleaned up.

  He wanted to go down to the bottom. Open the door of the storage room and step out on to the concrete base, lean against the handrail and do the thing there. He hoped he’d go over and leave no mess behind. No fuss, no muss.

  Like Dad said, if somehow he flinched at the last moment and ended up unconscious, at least the freezing-cold sea would finish the job quickly.

  “Anyway, it’s not like I’m giving up,” he mumbled as he took hold of the ladder and began to climb down.

  No way, Son. I’m so frickin proud of you. You held out, Leo. You’re the very definition of a born survivor. Marine material for sure.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Leon replied. “You remember that time you told me I was a waste-of-space loser?”

  I do. I was so, so wrong, Son.

  “Yes, you were.”

  He began to make his way down the creaking, old spiral stairway. He realized he hadn’t actually descended this far since last summer. It had been six months since he’d last tried limping down these creaking, old, rusty steps.

  “Echo!” His voice echoed around the cavernous darkness and rang the word back at him as he clanked his way slowly down the last few steps.

  He could see the faint outline of the doors at the base, light seeping around their edges.

  “Let’s not be total dicks about this,” he said. “We’re just going to unbolt and open. We’re gonna step over to the rail and do this. OK?” His voice echoed in the dark all around him. “That’s the plan. Are you with me, Dad?”

  I’m with you, MonkeyNuts. I always have been.

  He stepped across the basement floor in total darkness, guided only by the door’s outline. He stepped on granules of broken glass that crackled, on something tacky that squelched in the dark, then Leon found himself beside the door.

  He knew, the moment his hand grasped the bolt, there could be no stopping. No last-moment jitters or change of heart. No deals with God.

  He could hear the soft moaning of the gentle wind outside squeezing its way through the cracks. This world was slowing down, cooling down, going into a hibernation from which it might never wake up.

  It’s time to leave the party, Leon.

  “I know, Dad.”

  And don’t go beating yourself up, Son. It’s not like you’re checking out early. You fought for as long as you could.

  He could the feel the weight of the gun in his anorak, bumping against his ribs.

  Let’s go, Son.

  He reached out for the bolt and found it with the tips of his fingers.

  Chapter 51

  “Hey…Leon?” The voice echoed around in the darkness.

  He remained where he stood, stock-still, his fingers on the bolt, his other hand wrapped around the gun’s grip.

  “Leon?”

  The voice was female. If it had been male, he would have let it go and stepped out. He wasn’t delusional; he knew he’d been talking to himself for the last two years. He knew Dad was dead and gone, not keeping him company up there in that room.

  But this voice was female. “Leon…don’t go outside.”

  It was vaguely familiar. Not Kim though. Kim had had a London accent. Not Cora—she’d had a northern accent. Maybe he really had gone nuts. He heard the soft scrape of something moving closer to him.

  He slid the bolt and pushed the door open. Light flooded in, pushing back the gloom and revealing a figure standing in the middle of the damp and cluttered floor.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  The figure was still forming. In the half-light, he could see the glistening nodules of knitting flesh, dangling loops of pink and red tubes pumping raw material into and onto her unfinished frame. Her neck and head, however, had enough skin that he recognized her features.

  “Freya?”

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  It was her voice. He wasn’t yet sure about the waxwork dummy molding itself before his very eyes.

  “You…you’re the virus?”

  “I’m a part of it.” She nodded. “Yes.”

  He was vaguely aware of the cool weight of the gun still in his hand. One swift arm movement, one twitch of his index finger. Not to shoot her, but himself. He knew well enough how ineffective guns were on the virus.

  “I can guess what you’ve come down to do… Please don’t.”

  I’m looking at Freya. She’s right there. She’s right in front of me. That’s her!

  Another voice inside his head, equally compelling, was screaming: That’s not Freya! That’s not her. That’s a viral!

  He jerked the gun out of his jacket and…

  “No!” she cried.

  …put the barrel to the side of his head.

  “DON’T!”

  She didn’t move forward, didn’t try to reach out for the gun. Instead, she held her still-forming hands out—an invitation, not a threatening gesture.

  “Forget our pact!” she cried. The words bounced around the enclosed space while outside the freezing-cold sea slapped lazily against the rocks. “Forget it. We were so wrong!” Her voice was firm. “Death is death, Leon. It’s stupid. It’s really stupid!” She smiled. “You know, it’s for morons with no imagination.”

  That sounded so like her. He realized he wanted her to sound convincing. Wanted it so badly. His finger fidgeted on the trigger, gentle compressing and releasing it, compressing and releasing, anxious, it seemed, to get on with the plan as previously agreed.

  “You go
and do that, and there’ll be nothing left of you, Leon,” she said. “No rebirth. No second chance. You’re gone for good.”

  “That’s the point,” he replied.

  “Then it’s a dumb point.”

  He lowered the gun ever so slightly. “You are Freya…aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh. I know I don’t look so good.” She smiled. “Bad hair day.”

  “What…what happened to you?”

  “The very same thing that happened to Grace. To everyone else.”

  “She’s infected too?”

  “She was saved. And she saved me.”

  Second by second, he could see Freya’s form developing, her skin knitting, thickening, losing its shiny translucency and acquiring opacity and color. Like a ghostly form emerging from a mist. The ethereal becoming real. He could hear liquids moving in the darkness behind her, drips of goo running down and puddling, the soft crackling of hard-edged resin fragments locking into place.

  “I don’t want to die,” he whispered. “You…you got that, right? You understand?”

  “I know.”

  “But I will. Tonight. When it gets dark. I’m finally gonna run out of—”

  “We know.”

  “Fuel. I’ll freeze. I’ll go to sleep, then I won’t ever wake up again.” Saying that out loud to her, his voice hitched and he struggled to hold back a sob. “But I…I don’t want to g-go that way either. I don’t want to die.”

  “Then take my hand, Leon.”

  He shook his head. He glanced at the glistening crisscrossing growth tendrils on the floor, throbbing gently as they propelled forward the gobbets of soft tissue inside them. “I…I…really can’t…”

  “Don’t be frightened, Son.”

  The faint sound of his father’s voice didn’t shock Leon. He was certain it was Dad inside his head. Dad, the ever-present adviser, the inner provider of pep talks. He glanced out of the open door at the concrete walkway outside—three steps down, then the rusty, old handrail. In just a second of time, he could run and throw himself over that. If he wasn’t killed by the drop onto the rocks three yards below, he’d be unconscious within a minute in the freezing water.