Empty World

by John Christopher

  “I’m Neil Miller. What’s your name?”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “Docket. Billie Docket.”

  “I’ll walk you back, Billie.”

  Her figure tensed. “No.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not going to hurt you. Not in any way. I realize things may have been rough. They could be rougher still in time to come. It makes sense to help one another.”

  She shook her head. “I’m all right.”

  The note of dismissal was unmistakeable, but Neil would not accept it. He smiled at her; unnaturally, he felt, but he kept it fixed. He said flatly:

  “I’m coming with you.”

  She was unresponsive still, but seemed to recognize an inevitability. She nodded and set out walking, with Neil pushing the bicycle at her side.

  His efforts to make conversation, though, were not very successful. To direct questions she gave terse unforthcoming replies. No, she had not been in London all the time. Where had she come from? Derby. When had she come to London? A while back. Had she met other survivors? A look, another shrug. No.

  He had a feeling she might not be telling the truth there, but whatever she was concealing was plainly something she did not want to talk about. Something unpleasant, probably: it would not be a good idea to press the point. He stopped questioning, and talked about his own experiences. She stayed silent, apparently uninterested. It did not look as though she were likely to provide either stimulating or restful companionship. But she was alive. He told her about the balloon, and finding Peter Cranbell’s body. She made no comment. Then abruptly she said:

  “I want to go in here.”

  The sign said LADIES. Neil watched her go in. He propped the bicycle against the wall and gazed along the street. In the dusk of a grey afternoon it looked almost normal. Next year, though, with the spring growth, there would be a difference. How long before the saplings reached roof level?

  It was very quiet, of course, a stillness to which he had become accustomed. The click was faint, but it alerted him. He ran round to the back of the convenience: a small window was open and she was half out of it. They stared at each other in silence; then she dropped down inside and came out by the way she had entered.

  Neil said: “I’m really not going to attack you, or anything. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  She did not answer, and he did not pursue it. They walked side by side without talking. He was trying to puzzle her out. She was obviously scared of him, yet somehow did not give that impression. But whatever it was, he knew he must be patient.

  They were in Chelsea, walking through the streets he had fruitlessly searched. This was one like all the rest, Something-Gardens. He thought he detected a difference in her, an added tension. She slowed slightly, then walked faster. He suspected she might be on the point of making another break for it, and prepared to ditch the bicycle. Instead she stopped dead, as a voice broke the stillness:

  “Billie!”

  • • •

  It came from a house they had just passed. Neil saw another girl, leaning out of an upper window and waving. He turned to Billie.

  “I thought you said you hadn’t met anyone else?”

  She did not reply, but turned and walked back to the house. Neil followed with the bicycle. It was not surprising he had passed the place before without noticing anything. There was no indication of anyone living here; and fallen leaves had been carefully strewn over path and steps. It provided an effective camouflage.

  Billie pushed open the door. Neil followed close as she went in, in case she attempted to slam and bolt it on him; but her attention was all on the slim figure running downstairs.

  “I couldn’t understand why you were going past.” She halted a step or two from the bottom, and looked over Billie’s shoulder towards Neil. “Who is it?”

  The hall was lit only by a fanlighting over the door, and it was not possible to make out her appearance very clearly. She was smaller than Billie, a little younger probably, and Neil knew at once it had been her footprint he had seen. Her voice was lighter, more animated than the other’s. It had a soft country burr.

  Billie did not immediately answer the question, so he did it for her.

  “I’m Neil Miller. I found her outside the Supermarket.”

  She was studying him carefully, but he did not get the same impression of antagonism he had had with Billie. She asked:

  “Was it you rang the bells?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. Her look was considering still. He said:

  “I’m not dangerous, I promise.”

  “You don’t sound dangerous.” She paused again. “I’m Lucy Stephens. You’d better come up, rather than just stand there.”

  He followed them both to the first floor. Lucy led the way into a sitting room, the one from whose window she had waved. It was lighter than downstairs, but shadowy from the growing dusk outside. Lucy pulled curtains across: they were of a heavy material, and he observed that she tweaked them fully into place so that not a chink of light showed through. They were in pitch blackness until she switched on a lantern-torch, and put on others in different parts of the room. They were rigged up with pretty shades.

  When she had finished, she asked:

  “Cup of tea?”

  Neil nodded. “Thanks.”

  There was a primus stove in the hearth, and she bent down to pump and light it. Neil had a strange feeling as he watched her. It was a sort of calm excitement, a curiosity so deep that it seemed to twitch at his nerve ends; along with a weird sense of fear and boldness mixed up together.

  He could see her more clearly in the light from the lantern-torches. She had a thin face, he thought at first, but corrected it: above a slight hollowness of cheek, the actual cheekbones were quite broad. Her forehead was high, nose small and slightly snub. In concentrating on the primus stove she bit her lower lip: her teeth were small and even, very white.

  Apart from her slimness she bore no resemblance to the girl he had visualized. Her eyes were neither blue nor brown, but hazel. And she was brunette, her hair a very dark brown, almost black, curling at the ends.

  She asked Billie: “Did you remember teabags?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the stuff still in the bike basket? Be a dear and bring it up.”

  Billie hesitated, but reluctantly went. Lucy looked up, brushing hair back from her face.

  “You rang the bells in the hope of someone coming?” Neil nodded. “And no-one did?”

  “No.”

  “We talked about it.”

  She sat back on her haunches. She wore a white skirt and blouse, very fresh-looking. He said:

  “And decided not to do anything?” She nodded. “Why?”

  “Billie thought it was too risky. I suggested we might go along quietly to see, without showing ourselves, but she said it might be a trap.” He looked at her in query. “There might have been more than one—others waiting in ambush.”

  “The blackout of the windows.” He gestured towards the curtains. “And spreading leaves in front of the door—did Billie think of them?”

  “Yes.”

  Billie came hurrying upstairs, her arms full. Neil said:

  “And not replying to the message I left?”

  Lucy wrinkled her brow. “Message?”

  “In Harrods. After I found your footprint there.”

  “We have been in Harrods. A footprint?” She laughed. “Like Robinson Crusoe?”

  “I put my name and address on cards, and left them in both doorways.”

  “We didn’t see any cards.”

  “But one was taken.”

  Billie, who had been listening in silence, said:

  “Blown away, maybe.”

  “I don’t think so. It was quite heavy. And out of the wind.”


  “Or a rat took it. I’ve seen them carrying quite big things.”

  Neil did not comment on the improbability. He guessed she was lying again: she had found the card, and removed it before Lucy could spot it. But it would do no good to suggest that. The kettle was beginning to boil and Lucy bent towards it. He said only:

  “I could do with a cup of tea.”

  • • •

  Afterwards they talked. Neither girl had originally lived in London; like Neil they had been drawn to it by the promise of plenty. Lucy came from a village in Oxfordshire; her father had worked on the land. Her mother had died following the birth of a brother, when she was five. She’d looked after the household from an early age. She referred to her father indifferently, and Neil gathered he had been a cold man, but he thought there were tears in her eyes when she spoke of her little brother.

  She had met Billie while wandering through the outskirts of London. For her that had been the only contact since the Plague. Billie, on the other hand, had had encounters, she said: unpleasant ones. Neil asked in what way unpleasant?

  He looked at Billie as he put the question, but she stared back mutely. Lucy said:

  “She doesn’t like talking about them. So don’t ask.”

  She had told him that she had not met anyone. That had been to conceal the fact of Lucy’s existence, but he wondered if anything she said was to be relied on. The unpleasant encounters could have been another lie, aimed at Lucy. Not pursuing that, either, he told again the story of Peter Cranbell. It troubled Lucy.

  “How dreadful. . . . And if you’d managed to get there just a bit sooner. . . .”

  “Yes.”

  Billie made a comment at last.

  “He must have been weak-minded, to do something like that.”

  Neil looked at her. “How long did you have of it?”

  “Of what?”

  “Being on your own.” He turned to Lucy. “Have you been together long?”

  “A couple of months. Three, nearly.”

  “You don’t get used to it. It gets worse, not better.”

  Lucy said: “I suppose it would. I hadn’t thought. You didn’t meet anyone, before us?”

  “Only once. And only for a few hours.”

  He told them about Clive. Billie showed more interest.

  She said:

  “You can’t say he wasn’t mad.”

  She spoke with some satisfaction. Neil said: “Perhaps. Fairly harmless, though.”

  “Was he? He ripped your car up, didn’t he? You were lucky he didn’t use the knife on you.” She spoke to Lucy, her whole stance excluding Neil. “It’s like I’ve said. It doesn’t make sense to take chances—to trust anyone, the way things are now. There’s no policeman on the corner, and you can’t dial 999.”

  “But you’ve got to take chances,” Neil said. “How many people are there alive, do you think, in the whole of England? A few hundred? Less, probably. Some of them may be mad, some may be dangerous, but you can’t just isolate yourself.”

  Billie regarded him with open hostility.

  “Can’t you?” She added, with emphasis: “We’ve been all right, on our own.”

  There was a silence, which Lucy ended.

  “Anyway, you’ve found us. And you don’t strike me as either mad or dangerous. The least we can do is ask you to stay to supper.”

  The hostile look was still fixed on Neil. He ignored it, and said to Lucy:

  “That’s kind of you. It’ll be a pleasant change to sample someone else’s cooking.”

  • • •

  Rather to Neil’s surprise, Billie cooked the meal. She was a good cook, using seasonings and spices to improve the flavour of the inevitable tinned meat and vegetables. She made him realize how primitive and inadequate his own techniques had been.

  After supper she was mostly silent, while Neil and Lucy did the talking, but he found her silent presence oppressive. He tried to disregard it, and talked of the problems of the winter, now almost on them. For heating the girls had paraffin stoves, and a plentiful supply of fuel. (They had decided against open fires, he realized, because of the impossibility of disguising a smoking chimney: Billie’s decision.) Neil mentioned the Calor gas he had found in Peter Cranbell’s house, and his idea of fitting gas cylinders into a central heating system.

  Lucy was dubious. It would need skilled plumbing, she pointed out, and proper tools.

  “I could find the tools,” Neil said. “And a do-it-yourself plumbing manual I could learn from.”

  “Do you know where there’s a supply of Calor gas cylinders?”

  “No. But Peter Cranbell managed to find some. Clive, too. It shouldn’t present that much of a problem.”

  “I think it’s simpler carrying on as we are,” Lucy said. “We’ve a heater in the bathroom for water. You can’t have a proper bath, but it’s better than ­nothing.”

  She spoke firmly, and once again Neil decided to let it go. He said:

  “You’re probably right. But it’s something to keep in mind, for a permanent place.”

  “Permanent?”

  “Well, we’ll need to think about that, won’t we? Somewhere in the country.”

  Billie broke her silence. “You push off to the country if you want. We’re all right here.”

  “We all headed towards London for the same reason,” Neil said. “We knew the supply position would be better—food, clothes and the rest. But it’s no good in the long term.”

  Billie said: “I don’t see why.”

  “Well, for a start we need fresh food. We’re going short of vitamins. Eventually our health is bound to be affected.”

  “Plenty of vitamins in the chemist shops. More than enough.”

  “It’s not the same as getting them naturally. We could keep chickens—have fresh eggs.”

  Lucy said: “Fresh eggs!”

  It was a line to pursue, Neil thought. “And milk.”

  Lucy said more doubtfully: “The cows will have gone wild.”

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult to catch a few, and tame them again.”

  “And then there’s milking.”

  “I managed to milk a cow I found wandering, in the early days,” Neil said. “They’ll have gone out of milk, of course, but they’ll come back in when they calve. We just need to find one that’s in calf.”

  “The whole idea’s silly,” Billie said.

  “I don’t see why,” Neil said.

  “Because it is. Stupid!”

  She was suddenly voluble, pouring scorn on the suggestion, haranguing them in a grinding monotone. Neil at first attempted some mild objections, hoping to have Lucy support him. But she did not, and after a time he abandoned argument and sat in silence. When Billie at last came to a halt, it was with the authority of an undisputed victor.

  • • •

  The girls shared a room on the same floor, at the back of the house. Lucy made a bed up for Neil on the floor above. Billie made no comment, but her look was unfriendly.

  Neil left his door open and could hear them talking. The words were unintelligible, but he could recognize the voices and realized that Billie was doing most of the talking. Putting the case for kicking him out, he guessed, but was too tired to bother much. It was good, after the months of solitude, just to listen to the murmur of voices. And even better, knowing one of them was Lucy’s. He drifted into sleep, thinking about that.

  10

  NEIL AWOKE TO A FEELING of strangeness and slight apprehension, but as he took in the details of the unfamiliar room and remembered how he had come to be there, it was replaced by contentment. He stretched out in bed. He had slept well: it was quite light outside the window, and birds were making their ordinary daytime noises rather than the full-throated dawn chorus. He listened: sparrows, and a blackbird. Apart
from that there was silence all round.

  He sat up. Silence. . . . He thought of Billie’s open hostility, and the monotonous arguing voice after he had come to bed. He remembered Lucy’s muteness in the face of her earlier hectoring. There was nothing to have stopped them moving away while he was asleep. They would not have been able to take much with them, but that scarcely mattered in a world where everything was so easily replaced. And while they would not have been able to travel far, in the course of a night, there was no shortage of hiding places. Nor would it be easy to track them down, now that they were forewarned.

  With these thoughts spinning through his mind, Neil jumped out of bed and pulled clothes on. The stillness seemed more marked as he ran downstairs. He was sure they had gone; equally sure that, though he could well do without Billie, the thought of losing Lucy was unbearable.

  He pushed open the door of the sitting room and found it empty. Their bedroom door was already open, and a glance showed that to be empty, too, the beds unmade and abandoned. Neil’s pulse hammered as he ran downstairs. Haste was almost certainly pointless—they would have left hours ago—but he could not help himself. He pulled open the front door and saw, as expected, an empty street. He was staring out, wondering what to do next, when his name was called.

  “Neil? What are you up to?”

  Lucy stood at the top of the stairs. She was wearing brown slacks and a cherry-red jumper: a glow of brightness. Neil went slowly back.

  He said: “I thought you’d gone.”

  “Gone?”

  He looked at her. “Run away.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “I was in the kitchen, cleaning up.”

  He felt a fool. “I didn’t look there.”

  “I’ve finished, more or less. Would you like some breakfast?” She paused. “Billie’s gone out.”

  Neil sat on a stool and watched her prepare it. There was an appetizing smell of cooking and coffee. Her movements were quick and deft, and gave him a cosy feeling whose roots seemed to lie a long way back. She was humming as she busied herself, a McCartney tune. He said suddenly: