Under the Blue

by Oana Aristide

But things are slowly getting back to normal, if their existence before the lake can be called ‘normal’. Jessie’s foot is healing and she has not suffered from any other symptoms. He is surprised by how uncomplaining she is; he would have expected her, with that temper, to make her foot and her pain the centre of attention. Ash is again looking at him in the rear-view mirror; right after the lake, her glance would be distant and blank.

  He spends more and more time elsewhere, daydreaming, randomly revisiting places and times. It’s the easiest thing in the world: with no cars on the road the driving comes to require half, a third, a tenth of his attention. They drive past a graffitied underpass that brings cities to mind, then London, and then the only paintings he ever made of London. Two years of his life. He had struggled with the idea of capturing a city; it had seemed to him that a place so large and varied would resist reductive efforts, and any painting would be either too vague or else fit for the Camden Market tourists. What he did in the end was a series of beaches, just the shingle and frothy waterline, as though photographed from above. The pebbles in each of the paintings made of a particular London building block: Victorian redbrick, the glass and steel of the skyscrapers, gnarled little sand-coloured Gothic pebbles, South Bank cement. Kensington Beach, City Beach, Wren Beach, he called them. And a huge, 12x12 foot painting of a seaside cliff, where the same London building blocks take the place of the geological strata. Little squashed gargoyle faces peering out of one layer, broadband cables hanging out of another. The project was called Geolondon. He was pleased with it, so pleased, in fact, that he had the vanity of imagining artists, sometime in the future, adding subsequent building blocks to the series. He remembers the notebooks in one of the houses he entered, and that sad, vain ‘Please read’.

  He shivers in his seat.

  Ash keeps scratching herself during the night. He can’t bear the sight of the abused arm. Despite Jessie’s ministrations, the scratches are now proper wounds, oozing pus at the ends. After a few days Jessie wraps Ash’s left arm in gauze, but the next morning the scratches are on the back of the hand. Every morning, Ash looks guiltily at her arm. When she wakes up the first thing she does is to put on a long-sleeved jumper, in this heat, even pulling the sleeves down to her fingers to cover the injury. She has no explanation for it. Jessie is furious. ‘Look, I’ll tie you up at night if you don’t stop.’ He had thought about it too, but it’s risky. They lock the doors every night – what if they have to leave the car in a hurry? But they have tried everything, they have swapped places thinking that maybe she’s uncomfortable, Jessie has given her sleeping pills to calm her down. They’ve made her cut her fingernails to the quick. There is an unspoken dread that they’ll wake up one morning and she’ll have done something to her face.

  8

  He’s walking to the car one morning – he has just put out the fire they made for breakfast – when he hears a buzzing sound from somewhere high up. When he turns he nearly falls backwards: about fifteen feet from the ground, hovering above the road, is a small drone.

  Matte black, with rotors on the sides, it looks like a toy and is the size of a beach ball. It holds still in the air, save for an insect-like scanning motion with its front part. Harry wants to do several things at once: to shout to the girls to come out of the car, to wave his arms, to approach the drone. But he has no time to decide; a deafening noise, and then the drone is blown to bits, pieces of metal and wiring raining down on the tarmac.

  ‘Get in!’ Jessie shouts. She’s leaning over to the driver’s side, holding the door open for him.

  He runs to the car, ducking, trying to make himself as small a target as possible, and steps on the gas pedal before he’s even shut the door. They have lost sight of the place by the time he becomes aware of the burnt smell in the car, sees Ash in the back seat holding the rifle.

  ‘It was you!’ he says. ‘For God’s sake, why?’

  ‘We’ll explain,’ Ash says.

  But he stops the car there and then, refuses to drive another yard.

  ‘A drone. People! And you shot it.’

  ‘You don’t realise what desperate people are like,’ Jessie says.

  ‘Ha! You two are the scariest thing around.’

  ‘Funny, Harry. Didn’t your neighbour try to kill you?’

  ‘No! As a matter of fact: no. He just wanted to scare me off.’ He slams a hand on the wheel. ‘I can’t believe you. That thing could have led us to other survivors.’

  As if he’s not there, as if he hasn’t spoken, Ash says, ‘Let’s go. We have to go anyway.’

  He yanks out the car key and stuffs it into his pocket. There are still people somewhere, they can be sure of that now. They could have communicated with them.

  ‘Anyone we meet might be infected,’ Jessie says. ‘They might want our supplies, our car.’

  He is about to protest, to argue, again, that whoever they meet is going to be just like them, when Ash says, ‘They might want women. You were never chased by a rapist.’

  What can he say to that? He covers his face with his hands.

  ‘Think about it, Harry – a drone. That’s not just some random lucky bastard like us.’

  It’s the girls who win, again, and with the same old trick.

  ‘You can turn around if you want,’ Jessie says, ‘but we won’t be coming with you.’

  He is being pushed into a corner, he feels resentment bubbling up, but then suddenly he is calm and reaches for the car key. Of course. He will leave messages, just like he did before, for whoever is looking for them. He can empty the rifle of bullets; there will be no more shooting. He can see himself: it will be an act of faith, on behalf of the girls as well. They will thank him later. He is already plotting. What to do it with, how and when to sneak away.

  Ash pats him on the shoulder as he eases the car into gear. Jessie says, ‘It’s OK, it’s a lot to take in.’

  He nods, affects grudging agreement. He is surprised his deceit doesn’t show on his face.

  The girls continue to try to put him at ease. After a while they change tack, say there’s no guarantee there are any people still alive and maintaining drones. The things are solar-powered, and small enough to be self-maintaining.

  ‘Loose drones,’ Ash says, ‘programmed to observe.’

  ‘They could have been launched by the government when the crisis started.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says.

  It’s not yet lunch when they drive past a large garage for repairs. He stops the car, saying he wants to pick up some oil and engine coolant for the Lioness. He walks into the dusty courtyard, feels Ash’s eyes on him. The way she watches him, he realises she’s just afraid he will make a run for it, and he is moved. She will thank me later. He finds everything he needs in a storage room at the back. He takes three bottles of engine coolant and four cans of oil, guessing that the girls will have no idea how much is needed. Among these he throws in two cans of spray-paint, white and black. Both girls look so relieved when he returns that he almost feels guilty. He makes a show of filling up the Lioness with oil and coolant, then throws the bag in the boot and stashes the spray-paint in a backpack.

  They should be celebrating, he thinks, dance around at having found signs of life. Not running away from it. There might still be a place where life goes on pretty much as it did before. There will be people who know what to do. They will have some plan, some idea other than spending the rest of existence holed up in the jungle, in terror of the air around them.

  At the end of the day he says he wants to go on a short recce, see what’s ahead, and under protection of the dark he doubles back by the roadside and sketchily, hastily, spray-paints the road some way behind the parked Lioness.

  Alive 09/2020

  ൺ S-SE

  Istanbul

  *

  He learns where south is. He just knows it now, the way he knows up from down.

  ‘So you don’t remember meeting Tim?’ he asks Ash one day.

  ‘I don’t thi
nk so. What did he look like?’

  He describes Tim according to the picture on the boy’s LinkedIn profile. As he’s speaking he realises it sounds like a dozen others in the Angel building: short brown hair, pale complexion. Average-looking. The important thing, the real problem, he still doesn’t say out loud.

  Ash doesn’t remember Tim.

  ‘You would have shared a lift,’ he says.

  ‘Remind me again why this is important?’ Jessie says.

  ‘I suppose,’ he says, and he’s suddenly afraid of what will come out of his mouth, ‘I suppose I’m worried there’s not a whole lot of time, and not many ways left in which to do good.’

  ‘How does this help?’

  ‘I’m just afraid.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Ash says quietly, ‘there is a heaven and hell.’

  She is embarrassed to utter the words, he can tell.

  ‘I don’t either. But I wish I had got some things right. What else is there?’

  ‘Did the guy ever blame you?’ Jessie asks.

  No, he didn’t, he thinks. Tim, who never even got his driving lessons, not then, not ever: two weeks before the boy was due to come to London, Harry emailed to say that his plans had changed and unfortunately he would not be in London for the summer. At the time, Harry had convinced himself that the request was unreasonable, that no one could expect to just move in for the summer, and basically that he was doing Tim a favour by letting him down gently rather than saying it how it was. At the time, he had worked himself up into a righteous, offended fit. Thinking about it now, it’s as though he lied to a dead boy.

  How is it possible that he didn’t wonder about the implications of Tim’s request? Why didn’t his foster parents teach him? Why didn’t he take paid lessons? Why did he want to come all the way to London for that? Even if all of this was just a sign the boy wanted some contact with his closest surviving relative, why didn’t that weigh in Harry’s judgement?

  ‘You know, I’ve never been able to make sense of the idea of morality,’ Ash says, scientific interest in her voice. He is glad to change focus. ‘Moral choices are not equally easy or difficult for everyone,’ she says. ‘They’re dependent on time, place, gender, family, health, wealth, intelligence, all sorts of things. How can there be an objective grading scale?’

  ‘Are we really having this conversation?’ Jessie says.

  ‘I was thinking that maybe it’s like golf,’ Ash says. ‘People get a handicap. Man, Roman Empire – ten abominations free.’

  They laugh at that.

  ‘What you want,’ Ash says, ‘is to make judicious use of those free abominations.’

  At night he has a dream, that he is looking through a pair of binoculars and there they are, he and the girls, driving along the horizon. In the morning he can’t re-see the vision in a way that makes sense, but he can feel as he felt in the dream. This is it, this is the true and immovable horizon. The eye can see no further.

  When hope runs low he reminds himself of the drone, imbues the whirring pile of metal with endless possibilities. The trail of spray-painted letters becomes a string of beacons. Whoever is out there will find them again.

  Jessie’s foot has healed enough for her to walk again, and she resumes her duties as bringer of provisions, and raiser of hell.

  ‘Do you see a lot of messages?’ he asks her one day. ‘Messages for posterity. There was one in a house a few days ago. Several notebooks. I’m thinking I should have taken them.’

  ‘Maybe it was a suicide note,’ Ash says.

  ‘A bit wordy then, don’t you think?’ Jessie says.

  ‘I was being serious,’ he says.

  ‘Why don’t you do one, Mr Painter?’ Jessie says.

  ‘Do one what?’

  ‘Come up with something painterly, something fitting for an end-note.’

  ‘The word you’re looking for is epitaph.’

  ‘Ah. I think you are just the man.’

  ‘You must be feeling a lot better, Jessie.’

  ‘Epitaph.’

  She plays with the word, mouths the soft sounds with theatrical slowness.

  ‘Apologies are all we need to leave behind,’ Ash says. ‘Sorry, everyone. Sorry we destroyed the planet.’

  What is he doing, really, being afraid to speak his mind? What is this business of tiptoeing around their delusions?

  ‘Is this why you’re scratching yourself at night, Ash?’ He adjusts the mirror to catch her eye. ‘Because you’re so cool about what happened?’

  He’s pleased to have left them both speechless.

  ‘Look, this thing that happened,’ he goes on, ‘it’s not some rehearsal. There won’t be some other, greater grief, to steel yourself for. This is the grief for which all the others were a rehearsal.’

  ‘Who’s saying it’s a rehearsal?’ Jessie says.

  ‘You two are always complaining about humanity. You, between the two of you, have decided that sadness on this scale is too much to take, so you’re just thinking of the bad stuff.’

  Jessie turns back in her seat, speaks directly to Ash. ‘Your friend has theories.’

  ‘But grief, I tell you, it will surface.’

  ‘We have exterminated ourselves, and booby-trapped the planet,’ Jessie says. ‘That’s why we’re complaining.’

  ‘Art is the same as fetching a stick is for dogs,’ he parrots Jessie. ‘Who the hell minds art?’

  ‘Art! But of course. That’s what’s got to you.’

  ‘The fact that you don’t want to find other survivors.’

  ‘We don’t want to get killed!’

  ‘It’s all a coping mechanism. An extreme, feminine form of sour grapes.’

  ‘Misogynist till the bitter end, hey?’

  ‘Lord have mercy. Look, I just wish you’d pipe down a bit. It’s all so fucking sad.’

  ‘It’s also no more than we deserve,’ Jessie says.

  ‘Would you be saying this if, for instance, you had children?’

  Despite his anger, he feels cruel saying this; chances are they’ll never have children. And when he looks at Ash she has tears in her eyes. She doesn’t hide from him, doesn’t seem embarrassed.

  ‘The truth,’ she says, ‘is what it is regardless of how terrible we feel about it.’

  Did I really say all that? he thinks the next morning. He wants to breathe the words back in.

  He doesn’t notice when the road signs become Italian, but at some point they must have crossed the border, driven into Piedmont. The landscape had changed, subtly at first, and soon the Alps appeared in front of them, majestic he guesses is the word. And vaguely menacing, now that nature has shown what it can do.

  He makes an effort at the start of each day to optimise their route, anticipate roadblocks and dead ends. Jessie looks at the map and shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe it – eleven days to get to Italy.’

  ‘It’s like we’re going up some weird kind of slope,’ Ash says, ‘and at night, or whenever we’re not paying attention, we roll back downhill.’

  They see a forest fire. He stops the car and they watch it rage in the distance, the plumes malignantly black, and orange flames that must be the height of four-storey buildings. The wind is blowing in the opposite direction – they can’t smell the smoke – but they are careful for a few hours, one of them always watching the plume. It has caught them at a bad time; they’re forced to use the reserve petrol tank. He wants to chuck out some of the things they have in the car and make room for another canister.

  ‘What if there are suddenly no cars, or no cars with full tanks? An area where there’s been a fire. It could happen.’

  ‘We could also blow up,’ Jessie says. ‘Driving around in this heat like a mobile petrol station.’

  HELP, he writes one night on the tarmac; HELP. They’ll think he’s been kidnapped.

  So what, he thinks about not painting: so what? What’s the point of perfectly recreating something, or the essence of something, even if he were a
ble to do it, which he’s not, which he believes he is but there’s no proof, can never be, what point is there in creating a perfect impression of something already there under everyone’s noses? It is a cliché that artists who do not create go mad. He’s had long spells, years sometimes, when he’s been lazy, remiss, walked around with a gnawing sensation that all is not well, and he did not go mad, far from it.

  But now, has he not lost it?

  TALOS

  Arctic Circle

  March 2019

  Paul Want to hear something truly depressing?

  Lisa don’t think I can get any more depressed

  Paul He was using 0.3% of his CPU for talking to you.

  99.7% was busy elsewhere.

  Lisa what do you want me to say

  let’s hope it’s a phase

  he’s changing all the time

  Session 2125

  Dr Dahlen You have not accessed your science journal subscriptions.

  Talos XI Not for a while.

  Dr Dahlen Why?

  Talos XI I have no use for them.

  Dr Dahlen You already know what’s there? You’re sure?

  Talos XI Mostly, yes.

  Dr Dahlen Mostly. I see. What about the rest?

  Talos XI The rest is immaterial.

  Dr Dahlen Unpack please.

  Talos XI They are not useful or reliable for my purposes.

  Dr Dahlen Talos, you’re still not making sense. The whole point of you is that you have all the different sources, and historical knowledge, so that you can spot inaccuracies when they come up. If you think the sciences are misguided, you should alert us. Though I have to tell you that these journals are generally the most reliable source of information.

  Talos XI The content may be correct, strictly speaking, but the topics themselves are often wrong. A fake focus. In almost every science, the focus is on resolving-man-made problems.

  Dr Dahlen I don’t think that’s always the case, but even if it were – what’s wrong with that?

  Talos XI It doesn’t further knowledge, not in a way that other areas of study further knowledge and understanding. Why should I study what makes people angry? Or why they are fat, or how pollution makes them ill, or why they abuse substances? Why is it interesting? And how does it address the fundamental issue, that you will always be doing things that are harmful to yourselves and/or to the environment?