Under the Blue

by Oana Aristide

  ‘I’m above these things.’

  Both girls laugh.

  ‘Well, don’t pull the ladder up behind you,’ Jessie says. ‘Tell us how to get to those lofty heights.’

  They are teasing him, but on the whole they have decided to be good-natured about everything he says. Even Jessie.

  ‘Ah, it’s a lifetime of work. You have to be a bit full of yourself.’

  ‘Are you trying to impress us, Harry?’

  ‘True. I am probably trying to impress you. I used to work in film, you know. Ask me which stars I’ve met.’

  He thinks about it then, his film work, and before the girls can speak he waves a hand and answers his own challenge. ‘I can’t stand film people, actually. They are horrid. Artists in general, but film people in particular. Horrid.’

  ‘My ex was a cameraman,’ Jessie says. ‘I’d have to agree.’

  Ash says, ‘She just broke up with another boyfriend she only chose in the first place because he reminded her of our deadbeat father.’

  ‘Seriously. What’s this now?’ Jessie says.

  ‘It’s one of those rare occasions when we say straight out what we think. Blame it on the drink,’ Ash says, raising an imaginary glass.

  It’s true, they are acting a bit drunk.

  ‘I’m always straight with people,’ Jessie says.

  ‘You’re not straight,’ Ash says calmly. ‘You’re like someone who sets off bombs to distract attention. Just because bombs are loud and scary doesn’t mean they’re the important thing going on.’

  Harry laughs. God, if only this were a glimpse of the future.

  Jessie narrows her eyes and puts on an evil smile. She points a finger at Ash. ‘She never forgets anything anyone has done. She never forgives. She actually said it to me, I don’t understand what it means to forgive.’

  ‘Really. How come I put up with you, then?’

  ‘You don’t, I just follow you around so you’ve got no choice.’

  ‘I liked you’– Ash turns to him – ‘because you seemed serious about what you were doing. About your painting. Even when you were joking.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Jessie says. ‘And she’s always on the lookout to steal something from everyone she meets. You just wait.’

  ‘You mean learn,’ Ash says.

  ‘Learn, steal. The same thing when it’s so annoyingly calculated.’

  ‘What’s wrong with trying to understand?’ Ash says.

  ‘It’s a dangerous word – serious,’ he says. ‘Fatal. I don’t think I can rise to that.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Ash says, ‘there must be a right way to live. Most people seem to revert to some kind of default setting. The factory settings. Some others just search and search. Artists are the odd ones out because they act like they have actually found something else.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Jessie says.

  ‘Serious,’ he repeats to himself.

  Is Ash blushing? She is looking down at her lap, appearing to seek refuge in her imaginary plate. What is this? He feels a familiar, giddying surge of warmth, is taken aback by it.

  Suddenly Jessie slaps her thigh. ‘Sis, I haven’t seen you eat with such appetite for ages.’ Jessie winks at Harry. ‘She’s been on a diet.’

  Ash shakes her head. ‘If the drones were to overhear any of this, they’d leave us well alone.’

  Jessie laughs. She turns to Harry. ‘Show me that lovely portrait again?’

  ‘Never mind the drones,’ he says. ‘The virus itself would run for the hills.’

  The girls laugh. It will never again not be too late.

  ‘This is nice,’ he says. ‘So nice. I wish …’

  He doesn’t know how to continue.

  ‘This is much more relaxed than one of our real dinners, Harry,’ Ash says. ‘Normally, we would decide at the last minute on something super complicated, you’d be asked to run out for some ingredient that we forgot, the kitchen would be a disaster, we’d ask for your opinion in matters that you probably don’t have an opinion on. It would be loud and messy. You’d have to taste stuff out of a ladle, you’d be dragged and manhandled from one end of the kitchen to the other. At the end you’d have to vote for your favourite dish. You’d either love it or never show your face again.’

  ‘The things I missed.’

  ‘The things we both missed.’

  He would like the evening to go on like this, he’s willing to say anything, to start singing even, so as to just stay there together, but Ash is still weak and wants to go to sleep early.

  ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ Jessie yawns, and he can’t protest because his voice will give him away.

  Ash briefly touches his shoulder as she stands up. ‘I’d almost forgotten, we were human once.’

  He stays out in the fig grove, tells the girls that he wants to stretch his legs. He feels leaden, all of him. It suddenly feels entirely plausible that his body might refuse to obey him, might simply refuse to walk away.

  What he’s thinking about, now, that he shouldn’t think about, is that once he’s even a small distance away from them, he will have lost them for ever. He might change his mind, or, who knows, something might happen that will prove this was a bad idea, and they’ll be lost, they’ll have driven off, in the vague direction of south-east Africa, and he’ll have no means of finding them.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Ash is standing next to a tree. She is light-speckled, shimmering with the last of the sun through gaps in the low foliage.

  She comes nearer, crouches by his side. ‘Hey.’ She speaks softly. ‘Are you OK?’

  She is lovely, he thinks, even after all this. There could not be a lovelier survivor.

  ‘I forgot to thank you,’ he says. He takes her hand, presses it between his. Releases it.

  ‘Thank me?’

  ‘Best dinner of my life.’

  She lets herself slowly fall backwards, ends up sitting like him, her back to a fig tree. Eyes him questioningly.

  ‘Maybe there will be better days,’ she says. ‘Who knows? Maybe it won’t all be about death and endings.’

  She has never looked at him like this.

  He suddenly feels ill, ill everywhere, in his skin, in his bones, in his hair. He cannot believe what is being asked of him.

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she goes on.

  What can he say? He searches for words that will still leave room for doing the good thing.

  ‘It was a big meal, Ash,’ he hears himself say. ‘I’m just tired.’

  He can’t look her in the eye, just sees her feet moving in front of him, and hears her stand up, walk back to the car. A smell of evening dust in her wake.

  He holds up his hands before him; they’re trembling.

  The girls have long gone to sleep, and he has dozed off on the ground under the figs, unable to either leave or give up on leaving tonight. Maybe there will be better days. No: he can’t do it, he would need someone to actually take his hand and lead him away.

  He wakes up again in the middle of the night, and only then, too sleepy and confused to fully comprehend what he’s doing, does he shuffle back to the car. He stands watching as his eyes get used to the dark and the forms of the two sleeping bodies slowly emerge in the moonlight.

  Enough.

  From the boot he takes a bottle of water, stands for a moment staring into the jumble of stuff but can’t think of anything else to take. He fumbles in his back pocket and takes out the green scratch card, then carefully opens the door and props up the card on the steering wheel.

  His miraculous luck might be so miraculous that it can be given away.

  Before stopping for the night they drove past a town, and he sets off back that way, in the hope that he’ll find a car. He needs to put as much distance as possible between himself and the girls.

  Lisa thank god thank god thank god

  finally got hold of a neighbour

  henrik

  always a conspiracy theorist

/>   used to annoy the hell out of me

  but now

  neighbour says he packed car and kids a week

  ago

  right at the start

  said they’ll go into the mountains

  as far away from humans they can get

  they’re safe

  14

  He drives like a madman. Westwards, for once, westwards and to the sea, at 120 miles per hour; trying to outrace his fear. The previous night he only had to walk for about an hour until he found this car, and he’d been too preoccupied with the darkness and any animals lurking by the roadside. But now there’s a risk that everything will sink in.

  It’s a couple of hours into daylight. The girls will have woken up by now.

  At some point during the night he was overcome with this mad desire to reach the coast before anyone catches up with him. Right now, if he could wish something just for himself, not for Ash, nor for the world, nor for everyone who was ever wronged, he would wish this: to reach the sea before they catch him. He punches the ceiling of the car in frustration whenever he’s on top of a hill and a vista opens up, revealing only more of this rock-strewn dun-coloured land. It’s so dreary and pointless it looks like it could well go on for ever.

  Several times he opens his mouth to say something, share some insight with the girls, and feels actual daggers in his chest the moment he remembers.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he says. ‘Spare yourself.’

  It’s afternoon, hours after he has finished the bottle of water, when he stops for provisions, and he does so reluctantly, the break an unwelcome distraction from his quest for the sea. He kicks in a flimsy screen door, walks into the house as though he’s done it a thousand times before. He finds bottles of water by the bedside of a mummified corpse, also a packet of rusks, and several tins of chickpeas.

  It would have started already, in Europe.

  He keeps driving long after nightfall, doesn’t stop until he has a fright; he had fallen asleep at the wheel. He stops in the middle of the road, pushes down the backrest and tries to make himself comfortable.

  He wonders how long he will be alone for, and for how long being alone will feel like this.

  Lisa paul i can’t sleep

  i just remembered

  ollie is terrified of the dark

  henrik won’t be able to have a fire going all the

  time

  he’ll scream through the nights

  Paul You’ll drive yourself mad. Stop thinking about it.

  In two days he reaches the sea. He smells the water before he can see it, salty air blowing in from beyond bungalows and hotels. Happy air, forget-it’s-the-end-of-the-world air. He drives the car through a flimsy bamboo fence, mows it down, and straight on to what he thinks will be the beach. Instead, it’s a large marina, with row upon row of moored sailing boats and yachts. He must be back in Turkey.

  It’s early evening, the colours warm and golden.

  He leaves the car there, walks to one of the seafront hotels and breaks a ground-floor French door. He has a brief, panicky struggle with the thick curtains before he finds the opening and gets a clear view of the room. He needn’t worry: the room is clean and ready for guests. He tiptoes around the broken glass to check the minibar.

  He throws off clothes and lies on the bed, clutching a miniature Stolichnaya and feeling mortally wounded. He will need to distance himself from what will happen. He will need to not be there.

  Several times during the night he wakes up in a panic over where the girls are, why he’s alone, or fretting over some new scheme to get Ash to eat.

  He gets out of bed very early, the sun barely up, has a breakfast of minibar peanuts and BBQ crisps, and goes off in search of paint, or some other way of making his presence known. It’s on a whim he decides to board a sailing boat and finds the box with signal flares; it even takes him a moment to comprehend what he’s looking at. After this he goes through the boats in the marina, spends the whole morning amassing a pile of signal flares, flare guns and spare cartridges on the pier. The search helps him forget. When it gets too hot he soaks a hotel towel in the sea and wraps it around his head, and drapes a bed sheet on his shoulders. He catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror looking like a cheap Halloween sheik.

  It’s a treasure hunt. Sometimes the flares and guns are in a special box under the dashboard, but other times they’re in plastic bags or in jars. In kitchens, under bunk beds. On one boat, he finds five flares in a Hello Kitty lunchbox.

  Did someone stop the clock for him? Has he cheated? Is it cheating, to be doing the right thing at last, one breath before midnight?

  He has a lunch break on the prow of a motorboat, in the baking sun, olives and marinated octopus, washed down with some more vodka. He remembers that tins go off, badly, that in a few years from now there won’t be a single tin that’s safe to eat. He hopes the girls are aware of this.

  He forgets himself there, staring at the sea. He thinks how he has always loved the sea, but never done anything about it. He could have had a small motorboat like this one, but it seemed such a momentous addiction – financially, socially, mentally – that he has never indulged in it. He would have become a recluse, a wave fanatic. A hermit at sea.

  If he had followed this whim, he would have missed this whole thing. He shakes his head at the thought – to have known nothing of it.

  In the afternoon he tests a flare, finds it doesn’t work, is luckier with the next two. Red and orange smoke billows over the water. He learns to hold the flares downwind. He brings booze from the hotel, discovers the flares have expiry dates, counts his stash and arrives at 300 plus, and decides he may as well fire all the expired ones. He boards a boat and wobbles to the bow, where he sits with his feet dangling over the water and sets them off. Some don’t even fizz, but most work. He throws some in the sea, where they spew out coils of red smoke, like Chinese dragon lanterns skimming the surface. He coughs, covers his mouth and nose with the bed sheet.

  Through the smoke and the tears from the smoke, the scene looks like a naval battle. Yes, he thinks. The small explosions over the water, the red smoke billowing among masts, the deserted sailing boats and yachts: a battle to which everyone is late, and to which death was early.

  He is still on the bow long after the last flare is spent. His knowledge of art, the little there is. Years of his life spent in front of the canvas, mountains of paint applied. Where will it go?

  Paul I have a fever.

  Lisa where are you

  paul

  are you in the office

  where are you

  Paul You know the drill. You can’t come.

  Stay clear of my entire building.

  Lisa don’t do this

  it could be something else

  Paul It could be, but it isn’t.

  Lisa quarantine yourself

  that’s the prudent thing to do

  Paul You have to restart Talos.

  There’s no more time.

  We have to take our chances with him as he is.

  Lisa we’ll restart him together

  Paul You know what to say to him.

  Make it clear to him that he is in control.

  That he can engineer the outcome.

  He won’t resist that.

  Lisa we’ll do it together

  Paul I’ve loaded the old picnic.

  It’s my favourite. And it lasts long enough.

  I’ll be gone before it unravels on me.

  Lisa don’t do this

  please

  Paul I knew it, Lisa.

  I told you.

  We stayed here so long, now there’s nowhere

  else to go.

  The following day, his head clear, he makes better decisions: he climbs up the hotel’s service stairs and on to the rooftop, and from there he fires a flare gun at the sky every few hours. The flare shoots up several hundred feet, and releases smoke for at least half a minute. He stashes unused flares in
minibars, hoping that they’ll be protected from humidity. In between signalling, he wanders the streets of the resort, sees shuttered shops and pink bougainvillea blossoms covering the wind-strewn garbage along the pavements. A street vendor’s empty metal grill and overturned stool.

  He realises that in almost six decades of existence, he’s only had moments of lucidity. Flashes.

  He’s on the nearby beach, in the shade of a palm tree, eating peeled whole tomatoes out of a tin, when he hears, ‘Hello, Harry.’

  Ten feet away from him, perched on a bar table, is a thing shaped like an ancient warrior’s helmet, but about ten times the size. If it’s a drone, it looks nothing like the other ones.

  Dignity, he tells himself, this is the last chance to do the dignified thing. He hopes his voice will hold.

  TALOS

  Arctic Circle

  September 2020

  Talos XI Doctor.

  Dr Dahlen you’ve had enough time since last night to update your records?

  Danything missing?

  Talos XI A lot, but I’m assuming the missing inputs are due to broken connections. Nothing you can do anything about.

  I see you are infected.

  Dr Dahlen i’ve got a couple of hours

  unless you come up with the cure before then

  Talos XI I can’t find a cure without a laboratory and a lot of specialised human assistance.

  Dr Dahlen that was a joke, Talos

  god

  there’s just you left to joke with

  Talos XI I didn’t anticipate this, Doctor. Not as such.

  Dr Dahlen you didn’t intentionally keep this from us?

  there’s hope?

  Talos XI I’m just saying I did not assign a high probability to this turn of events. It was extremely unlucky.

  Dr Dahlen so unlucky

  and so improbable

  that maybe it’s a bad dream

  and i’ll wake up

  Talos XI I don’t dream, Doctor.

  Dr Dahlen you’re in it, Talos

  you’re in my nightmare

  Talos XI You have a fever.

  Dr Dahlen the plan

  yes

  you have your brief

  Talos XI To find the immune individuals, guide them to one of the three laboratories that have been prepared for this, help them make an antibody serum, and then distribute this to the isolated human communities that still have a chance of surviving.