by Natasha West
And that’s also around the time I began to feel quite angry. I wasn’t here for this. I wasn’t here for Alice. I was here for my van.
But I’d had a chance to take the van and run and I hadn’t done it. I’d gone back for the Quinn’s. For Alice. I’d been worried about her safety. I’d worried about all of them, but primarily her.
I looked over to see Alice trudging along, a few steps in front. All I could see of her was a third of her face, hidden below that long hair, her stance saying what it had said from day one. That she knew there was pain ahead but that she would bear it. She was the exact opposite of me. I’d decided long ago that I couldn’t bear it, that I wouldn’t. I would walk alone, for whatever remained of my life rather than take one more day of the agony that came with other people. The agony of human connection.
But here I was. Not at a crossroads in the usual sense, where there are specific choices, real options. Alice thought of me as some kind of guide and part-time rescuer. She wasn’t offering anything to me and I didn’t think she ever would. So it would be on me to decide if I wanted to walk in her direction. Whether I wanted to even try.
Watching Alice a moment longer, I made a choice. It was actually quite simple because it involved no change, no breakdown of the status quo. I was who I was and it was far too late to change that, even for someone like her: strong, beautiful, decent. I would leave her be, keep her at arm’s length and eventually, normal service would resume. I would walk them to Gable, come back with them for the van and drive the hell away.
Because if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that no good comes from attaching hope to another person. I learned that lesson nine years ago. And I learned it well.
Nine Years Earlier
I woke to a sneeze. Not mine. Sarah’s. I turned over to look at her and she looked rough. Her usually apple-cheeked complexion was grey, her russet locks pasted to her head with sweat. ‘God’ I exclaimed, still half asleep. ‘You better call in sick again today.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’ve been off four days already. They’ll sack me.’
We were fresh graduates from the same university, Acaster. That’s where we met. First day, I’d sat down in a large hall for an orientation talk, nervous as hell to start my film studies degree, and I turned to the seat next to me and there she was, making a little sketch in a small pad on her lap. Sarah Flynn, love of my life. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. But what I did know was that I fancied the bejesus out of her at first sight. She was intensely cute, with stormy eyes and a naughty mouth, but it wasn’t just that. It was the way her fingers deftly moved over that pad, the way her eyes saw nothing else.
After the talk was done, I worked up the courage to start a conversation and we were flying from the start. We just had that… Click. We pretended to be friends for a while, but that façade didn’t last too long and we soon fell into bed and into love. I never looked back, never looked at another girl, only saw Sarah from that day onward.
Four years later, we were living together, and I knew this was just the start for us. I saw it all. We’d get married when we were older and less silly, have cool jobs, go on fancy holidays, maybe have some kids (I hadn’t made my mind up on that, but there was something about Sarah that made me want the whole damn cliché), a nice house, a chocolate Labrador called Jimmy.
But for now, Sarah worked as a barista, me as an office temp for a recycling company. They weren’t the most secure of jobs and I knew that it was possible that Sarah actually might get the sack, but I didn’t care. It was a crappy job anyway. She’d gotten a first in her fine art degree and she was using it to put designs in the froth on people’s coffee for minimum wage. She was worth more than that, a lot more. ’You’re too sick. Stay off. I’ll call them for you. And then it’s time to see a doctor.’
She began to sit up, ‘They’re advising people to stay away from doctors unless it’s critical. And I’m fine’ she said and then flopped right back down, exhausted. ‘I’m just gonna stay in bed for a few more minutes’ she said.
I grabbed my mobile. ‘I’m calling your boss.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sakes!’ I cried as I ripped open the package. ‘Amazon sent the wrong thing’ I said miserably to no one in particular. I held up the mobile phone box. ‘Those fuckwits. This is the previous model.’
My boss Dave glanced over, not especially interested. ‘Just send it back, Rachel.’
‘Obviously’ I said to Dave with disdain. ‘But I wanted it today and now I’m gonna have to wait-’
Dave interrupted my rant with a cough, loud and wet. I grimaced. ‘That sounds a bit nasty.’
Dave pulled his desk drawer open and grabbed a bottle of cough medicine, swigging it directly from the bottle. I watched, mildly grossed out. ‘Maybe you should go home?’ I suggested.
‘Can’t’ Dave told me flatly. ‘Everyone’s coming down with it and I’m managing, so I gotta stay here.’
I looked around at the mostly empty office. ‘Shit, yeah. You don’t… You don’t think…’ I started hesitantly. But Dave knew where I was going. He looked at me sharply. ‘No, it’s not that. That started in a country with no money for medicine, that’s why it got so bad. We’ll be alright. I got my jab and everything. Plus, how would that even make it here? They closed the borders pretty sharpish. It’s just a cold, that’s all - it’s cold season’ Dave said, putting his medicine back in the drawer. But there was something in Dave’s face. I wasn’t sure that he was really as confident as he was trying to sound on the topic. But I decided he was probably right. A plague virus, wiping out the UK? It was the stuff of science fiction.
I opened a tab on my laptop, going to twitter. I saw that #H3N2 was trending and I found myself clicking on it. That was the name of the flu, the one they kept talking about on the news, the one that had wiped out half of South America. I scrolled through, as people told of how sick they were and that they thought they had it. They were saying that the government, who had so far denied any outbreak in the UK, was lying.
Dave began to cough again and I looked over sympathetically. ‘Dave, please go home.’
Dave shook his head. ‘No. But you should. You’ve not got it yet. Go home and hole up, wait it out. No reason everyone has to suffer.’
I mulled it over. On the one hand, I felt fine. On the other, I was sitting in a space with a man coughing germs all over the place. On yet another hand, I was being offered an unexpected afternoon off work.
‘You know, you’re right. I’m gonna head home. My girlfriend’s sick too, I should go and check on her.’
Dave nodded and turned back to his screen. ‘Look after her.’
All the way home, I was getting texts from my mother. ‘The woman at the corner shop says half the street is in the hospital with this bug’. I texted quickly, ‘But you and dad are all right though?’ ‘Oh, fine. We’ve got a touch of something, but I don’t think we’ve got what everyone else has.’
I was actually comforted by that. Imagine. Everyone’s getting sick, nasty, hospital sick, and so are they, and I buy into that lie - that they’re a different kind of ill. But that’s what it was like then. We all told ourselves that if we or someone we loved was sick, that we were the special ones, that we’d be alright. Because we lived in a culture that told us we were all so bloody singular and that we mattered and that we all had some special hand guiding us to our future. And we gobbled up these ridiculous stories greedily. We felt protected by every lie.
And yes, I did come out alright. I was spared H3N2. But there was nothing special about me or my life, no greater purpose that I was meant for. I didn’t win the lottery. I was just left behind.
But I didn’t know that was my future, to live while everyone around me died. Not then. I was still trying to believe that it was all a storm in a teacup. That was before the mass cremations.
But back to that day, off from work, skipping home to see my girlfriend. We were twenty-two and all that mattered was today. And today
, I was going to get some unexpected time with the woman I loved and all I felt was lucky. Yeah, we had shit jobs right now and we were always broke. But it wouldn’t always be that way. I felt sure of that.
I let myself into our tiny little one-bed, calling, ‘Sarah? You home?’
There was no answer. And then I heard a shuffle coming from the bedroom. I crept toward it, opening the door slowly. If Sarah was asleep, I didn’t want to wake her.
Under the duvet was a still figure. I moved over to her and pulled back the covers. Sarah was facing the other away and I put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Oh!’ Sarah yelled, surprised, looking up from her phone. She’d been idly thumbing through twitter under the covers. I could see that same hashtag I’d been looking at. ‘I thought you were at work ‘til six?’ she exclaimed.
I grinned, pleased to see her face. ‘Gotta freebie so I decided to come check on you. How you feeling?’
She sat up, ‘I feel a little better, actually.’
‘You do look better’ I told her. ‘Can I get you something to eat? You must be starving?’
‘I would love some cheese on toast’ she moaned. ‘And a cup of tea, if you’re feeling generous.’
‘Of course’ I said, hopping to my feet. I was naturally lazy but doing things for Sarah never felt like a chore. It felt like a privilege to take care of her when she needed it.
We spent that afternoon in bed watching stuff on my laptop while Sarah detailed the course of her sickness, which included sweats, headaches, a dash of vomiting. But the colour was starting to come back to her cheeks. She even suggested we go out for a walk.
‘What? You wanna go outside. For nothing!?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been in all day.’
That was classic Sarah. Outdoorsy. I was a couch potato and I hated the idea of moving unless I had to. I couldn’t comprehend the concept of walking for fun. But Sarah could never sit still, she always wanted to see what the world was up to in her absence. And I liked to make her happy. So we dragged our bones out of bed, put some shoes on and out we went.
We ended up in a park nearby, mostly populated by dogs and kids. Although I couldn’t help but notice that it was far less busy than usual. It was four and the sun was setting so we sat down on a bench to watch the light fade. Sarah snuggled up against me, saying ‘Some people are saying it’s that same virus from South America.’
I shook my head and thought of Dave’s words on the subject earlier. ‘They didn’t have the money to inoculate or treat anyone, it all started too quickly. It’s sad but that’s the truth. The UK has money and stuff in place. The borders are locked. It hasn’t gotten here, don’t worry. I mean, look at you! You’re getting better by the minute. Everyone’s got a bit of flu, sure, but it’s just a normal one.’
‘That’s true’ she smiled and turned her eyes to the setting sun. ‘You’re right.’
‘Don’t go on twitter’ I told her. ‘Big mistake.’
She chuckled. ‘Yeah, I know.’
And then we both went quiet, snuggled on the bench, as the sun faded.
The next morning, I woke up and turned to Sarah, facing away from me. And I knew. Before I touched her, before I saw her, I knew.
But my mind, it refused to let me accept the truth. So I jumped out of bed, putting some trousers on, chattering to her. ‘Hey, how’s about some breakfast? There’s eggs and bacon in the fridge and I’m pretty sure we’ve got an avocado left.’
Sarah didn’t answer.
‘Come on, lazy bones. I’m offering you the works’ I said nervously to Sarah. But not really to Sarah. To myself. Sarah wasn’t there anymore.
I walked out of the bedroom, trying not to panic as I ran downstairs and put the kettle on. I tapped my fingers noisily as I waited for the thing to boil. It seemed to take forever. And those feelings, more like instincts, began to creep deeper inside, worming their way into my thoughts. Telling my mind what my body already knew. And that’s when I thought to myself, ‘This is silly. Just go upstairs and pull the covers off. She’ll turn around and you’ll see she’s fine. Just fine.’
So that’s what I did. I ran up the stairs like a kid on Christmas morning, to open a package of the purest horror I’d ever known, would ever know. Even when my parents went, it wasn’t like that. Because when Sarah went, she took my future with her. My parents’ death hurt, of course it did, but not in the same way. I went to their funerals and grieved for their loss and it was fucking awful. But they didn’t get the best of my tears. They were just for Sarah. Lying peacefully in our bed, sleeping forever, never to look at me that way again, never to make me laugh, never to drag me out for a walk, never to smile, never to hold me tight as we fell asleep, never to draw me, never to kiss me.
Never again.
Twenty
Alice
It was the last night on the road. Rachel reckoned we’d hit Gable around 3pm tomorrow. Part of me wanted to walk through the night, we were so close. Another part of me didn’t have any idea what we were walking into and was scared to death, happy to delay the moment. But I didn’t need to make that decision, Rachel made it for us. And since the incident at the hotel, her word had been law. Even Emma kept her snark to a minimum. It couldn’t possibly last, but I was enjoying her submission while I could.
Jude, however, was being weird. I kept catching him staring at Rachel. I don’t think she noticed because she seemed pretty focused on putting one foot in front of the other. She didn’t pay any attention to me either. Even though I was feeling some kind of pull to her now, I didn’t try to get her attention, didn’t try to start any conversations about anything other than the practical considerations of our journey.
But Jude was putting me on edge. He obviously had something on his mind. It occurred to me that perhaps it was the same thing that was on mine. He’d developed a crush.
It made sense, she’d rescued him from the clutches of a terrible scarring incident. Thinking of it that way, it was hard to imagine that my feelings amounted to anything more than his. We liked Rachel because she was our hero, plain and simple. Watching Jude peeking at Rachel reflected something in me, making me feel as silly and adolescent as him.
But it turned out, I had him all wrong. It was nothing like a crush.
As we sat down to a dinner of the last of our bread, along with fish from the river and some roasted nuts from the forest (checked very carefully), I noticed that Jude did something he’d never done before. He sat next to Rachel. Rachel noticed it but said nothing, just kept turning the fish. And then Jude gave a little cough and everyone turned to him. He looked embarrassed but he swallowed and said, ‘Rachel.’
Rachel turned to him, hearing his serious tone and said, ‘What’s up? You got a blister? I can sort that.’
Jude looked flustered and shook his head. ‘No.’ That was followed by many seconds of silence while Rachel waited, with one raised eyebrow, to see what was up.
Emma gave me a look, as if I might know what was going on. I shrugged.
‘Rachel,’ Jude began again and then coughed one more time. ‘I want to say something to you.’
Rachel looked amused, but she waited. Jude spent those moments looking at his feet.
‘So…’ Rachel prompted.
‘I’m sorry that I put a gun in your back.’
‘You already said that’ Rachel shrugged, unimpressed.
‘Yeah, but now I get it. I was scared at that hotel. I tried to scare you like that.’
‘Kid, if it’s any consolation, you didn’t succeed’ she said with a light punch on his arm. I think she was trying to make this easy. Whether it was for Jude’s benefit or her own, I couldn’t have said.
‘No, it’s not’ Jude said forcefully, and Rachel started to take him a little more seriously. She looked at me. ‘This you?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Nothing to do with me.’ With one thing and another, Jude’s apology, while not forgotten, had been downgraded. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him, to ta
lk through his crime, to wrinkle out some empathy for how Rachel might have felt with his gun in her back. But it turned out, I didn’t need to. He’d gotten there all by himself.
But in true Emma style, she began to interject. ‘Look, Jude, she said it was alright so why don’t you leave it there.’
‘No’ Jude said, turning to face her. He didn’t say that word to Emma very often and I felt shock at the sound of it, passing from Jude’s lips to Emma’s ear. One word, two letters. NO. Small yet big. ‘You were wrong, Mum. You said it didn’t matter. I think it does.’
I turned to Emma. ‘You told him it didn’t matter that he tried to mug a stranger.’
Emma looked immediately ready to get into it, but then she glanced at Rachel and I could see her predicament. She owed Rachel now. ‘I didn’t say that. In fact, I told him he shouldn’t have, remember?’
‘That’s not really what she said’ Jude spilled. ‘She said ‘It’s not that big a deal but your Aunt will make a fuss so let’s pretend I told you off and you were sorry.’
I shook my head at Emma, angry and unsurprised. I’d thought it had been too easy to get her to agree with me on this one.
Emma sighed. ‘Look, the world’s different now. Rachel gets it. It’s only you living in the past’ she told me.
My mouth fell open. ‘Living in the past?’ I exclaimed, looking from Emma to Rachel, as the person who Emma thought ‘Got it’, hoping for some back-up. But Rachel wasn’t giving it, she was staying silent and out of it. I suppose I could understand that. This wasn’t her fight. It was a family fight, the same one we always had. Manners versus selfishness. Morality versus survival. Us versus Them.
But I didn’t exactly need Rachel’s backup. I had another voice to take my side. A new voice, one I’d never heard. Jude’s big boy voice. ‘MUM. You can’t just act like an animal. Otherwise you turn into that lot at the hotel. You treat people like objects and it makes you less of a person too. Those people, the Randall’s, I bet they didn’t start out like that. I bet they were a family just like ours. And something changed. I think I know how it started. It started with people saying stuff like you do, that it’s just the way the world is and all that matters is your people. Everyone else is just there to take from. Well, they weren’t even that nice to each other, were they? Rose was being manipulated and she didn’t even know it. She was just used to it. And if we act like that, like we’re all that matters, one day, we won’t even matter. To each other or to ourselves. We’ll lose something’ he cried passionately. ‘I know Dad felt that way and you always said he was naïve but now I know he wasn’t because I’ve seen for myself what he meant. He wasn’t naïve, nor is Auntie Alice. I get it now’ he finished with a far-off look. ‘What’s the point of surviving if you forget to be a person?’
