The Last Mutation

by Michael Bray

  INTERLUDE ONE

  Billy, Malorie and the Shelter

  It seemed like Billy had been waiting for that siren to go off all his life, or at least for the last five years of it. He always told me it would be coming, he was always so sure. The end of the world, the apocalypse. End of days. He was always so serious about it. He spent five years ignoring the sniggers, the pointing and the stares of all those people who said he was crazy. Even I thought it of him, his own wife, isn’t that awful? Even so, despite it all, Billy had the last laugh, because he was right. When that flash of light illuminated the air and that siren fired up, so shrill and piercing, those people who pointed and laughed (me included) didn’t know what to do. Billy did though, and within five minutes, he and I were in the bunker under the house, the one he had sweated over to afford and install to a backdrop of sniggers. We spent that first few nights listening to the dull sound explosions and screams coming from the surface and could only speculate on what was going on. There was no television, no internet, and no phone line. Everything was offline. All we had was each other, those steel-walled rooms and enough supplies to live comfortably for three years. The shelter even had its own power generator and air-filtration system. Billy had done well with it, although under the circumstances, there was little to celebrate, not for me at least. I’m not sure what was going through Billy’s mind though, because as we sat there in the dark, listening to those horrific sounds from above ground, he couldn’t stop smiling. He kept repeating that he was right, how he knew the day would come when all his work would pay off. I can’t argue with him, or blame him. Thanks to his dedication (some would say paranoid fantasy), we were alive during whatever was going on topside. We don’t know what’s going on up there, but we know it’s big, a major event. For three hours, we tried to find a radio frequency to listen in on, but there was nothing, just a band full of static punctuated by dead silence when we found a station. Billy said it must be big trouble, because although the stations were there where they should be, the airwaves were dead. Billy joked that maybe the presenters were too. I didn’t find it funny, but he did. He laughed it up, his voice echoing around the metal walls in a way that it no longer sounded like laughter. In that moment, I think I was more scared of him than whatever was happening on the surface.

  DAY THREE

  There had been no noise from above ground for two full days now. Somehow, the silence is worse. Billy is still trying daily to get a radio signal, even though it’s clear by now that there is nothing out there for us to pick up. That’s frightening. It makes me wonder if it’s fate or misfortune that brought me to this point. As I sit here on the cold wood bench, curved steel at my back and heavy silence above, I watch him stalk around the shelter, counting bottles of water, double and triple checking our supplies. It comes to me that he is happy, really happy for the first time in years. The death of the world seems to have come at the perfect time for him. To his credit, we have plenty down here to keep us going. I asked him just now when we might be able to return to the surface and help people, and he gave me that look, that cocky half-sneer that I’ve grown to hate. He told me the supplies were for us and not for them, and it was unsafe to go to the surface. He said he wondered who was laughing at him now. I asked him how he could possibly know how safe or unsafe it was up there when we are so cut off from the world. Billy shrugged and said it was probably nuclear war. Probably the Russians, maybe one of the terror groups had managed to get their hands on some kind of device. ISIS, he speculates.

  That seems unlikely, especially as whatever has happened seems to have reached far and wide. Then there was that flash in the sky just before the siren. If it were a bomb, surely an explosion would have accompanied that sound, but that didn’t happen. Just light and silence and the smell of burnt matches. I want to reason with him and explain my thoughts on this, but don’t want to get into an argument, not here, not in a place that is clearly his domain, his territory. Billy has already made it perfectly clear that I’m a guest here, just another possession to go with the canned goods and water supplies. Part of me wonders if I’m on his checklist too.

  DAY FIVE

  Time works differently down here. Before the event, it was easy to exist alongside Billy because we had other distractions around us. Television, friends, things to ensure we didn’t have to interact with each other too much. With all that stuff gone, it makes me realise how little we have in common. Sharing this space with him is becoming unbearable. He’s started ranting, muttering to himself about how he was chosen to survive, how he’d heard a message from God telling him to make plans to live. He asked me if I knew how lucky I was to be included in his plan, and likened himself to Noah before the great flood. I nodded and agreed with him. I was too afraid not to.

  The irony is, that I was ready to leave him, in fact I was all set to leave him the day it happened. For too long, I’ve had to suffer his pompous, self-absorbed ranting. He’s old school, one of those people who believe men go to work and women stay at home in the kitchen. Even down here, that trend has continued. I’m expected to make all the meals, even though he’s there anyway standing over my shoulder, telling me to make sure I don’t use too much, that we have to make it last. How I’d love to tell him to do it himself if he thinks he can do better, but I can’t do that. He’s made it clear that this is his place, his show, and he is in charge. I’m not sure he’d throw me out, only because I don’t think he’d risk opening the shelter hatch yet, but he’s cruel enough to do something to punish me. Maybe deny me some food or water or something, just a gesture to show that he’s the boss. So, as frustrating as it is, it’s easier to take it, just like I used to before the event. Like it was when we lived up on the surface. I put up with the ranting, the frustration, the fear and the silence on my own, soaking it up like a sponge. I realise there is no love between us. Not anymore. I feel cold to him, resentful. Of all the people who shouldn’t have been proved right, it was him. It changed him, made him arrogant and cocky. Now he thinks he’s something he’s not. He has some kind of weird god complex which is a concern. He’s expecting me to go to bed with him now, I can hear him calling me, saying he has needs to fulfil. The thought of him touching me, pawing at me as he climbs on top makes me feel sick. Like the rest of it, there is no love in the physical act. He’s as selfish there as he is everywhere else, pleasing only himself. I told him I’m concerned about pregnancy, especially now with the world the way it is. Could you imagine bringing up a child in a world like this? How irresponsible would that be? Billy though, like always, has the answer. He says he has protection, plenty to last as long as we could ever need (oh joy). It looks like I will have to get used to the idea that he’s going to have his way regardless of anything else and I’ll have to just do my best to cope with it.

  DAY TWELVE

  This is unbearable.

  Billy barely speaks anymore. He sits in the corner, nose buried in his Bible. It’s ironic, as he was never religious and always said he never believed in anything apart from the value of the American dollar, but now he seems to have had a change of heart. Every now and again, he will look up at me, eyes as wide as his grin and recite a passage to me. God he looks a mess. He hasn’t washed or shaved since we came down here. He looks awful, smells worse. I have to nod and agree with him as always, not because I’m trying to keep him sweet anymore, but because I’m scared of him. Even though the Billy from before was starting to seem distant to me, this version of him is a total stranger. For the first time, I’m starting to wish I was out of the house when the event happened so that he couldn’t have brought me down here. I know that might sound selfish, but I can’t help it. I don’t think it would have bothered Billy. He’d have come down to the shelter without a second thought for me, that much is obvious. It’s getting to the point where I think I’d rather have died up there than have to spend any more time listening to him rant, or lie there in that bunk as he pumps away on top of me, eyes glassy and staring at the wall so he doe
sn’t have to look at me until he’s done. It got me to thinking about the people I left behind. My parents, my sister, my friends. I resent him for it, for dragging me down here into this place. Any sense of connection to the outside world is starting to fade, and not for the first time I ask myself if this is really living, or just existing. I wonder what it’s like up there on the surface, then soon enough find myself having to shut those thoughts off because the answers to the questions might frighten me more than I am already if that’s at all possible. This life is hell.

  DAY FOURTEEN

  I hate him. He hasn’t slept for two solid days now. All he does is read that Bible. He’s started to take notes, and the walls of the shelter are starting to fill up with yellow sticky notes with verses and passages scrawled onto them. Yesterday, as we ate our rice and beans, he told me we needed to start thinking about the future, about our long-term plan. I considered asking him why he was even consulting me about it when he will do what he wants to do regardless, but didn’t want another argument, so I played nice and asked him what he meant. He said it was clear enough that the world was dead (how he reached this conclusion I don’t know; since we came down here, we have been completely isolated), and we now have to think about repopulating for future generations. That was a worry, and I asked him what he meant. He told me he wanted to start thinking about us having more children, starting off a new bloodline. That was too much, and I lost it. I told him it was irresponsible, and that thinking about bringing children into the world was crazy. I was sure I’d pushed him too far. He got this look in his eye, rage and defiance, anger and a little bit of madness. He asked me who I was to think I could question his decisions, and that he would do what was in the best interests of the world in order to ensure the human race survived. I told him I wouldn’t be a part of it, and he swiped the food off the table, plastic dishes spilling lukewarm food all over the floor. He asked me why I thought I had a choice, and reminded me that I was only there because he chose to let me live.

  I countered by asking him why he thought he was some kind of god. He said he was more than a god. That was a worry, and stopped me in my tracks. He said he had been given divine knowledge of the end of times and been given the opportunity to prepare for it. He said he had spoken to God, and had been told that the world was soon to be a blank canvas for him to reshape in the way it should have been. He grabbed me then, hard fingers digging into my arms, his face inches from mine. He told me the world of old was a bad place, filled with corruption and greed. He said he and I could change it, be the mother and father of the new world because we had been chosen to do so by a higher power. He said our bloodline would be pure, how our children would mate with their siblings so that, in time, the planet would be filled with variations of ourselves. I screamed at him and told him I wouldn’t do it, I’d have no part of it. That was when he hit me. Not a slap, but a balled fist to the face. The explosion of heat and pain was only marginally worse than the shock. He stood over me, defiant and angry and said I would either learn to do things his way or he would make things difficult for me. Later that night, he took me. He came to the bunk I was lying in and pretending to be asleep and climbed on me. He didn’t use any protection, and I was too weak-willed to stop him. When he finished and released his warmth into me, he whispered in my ear that he loved me.

  I wanted to scream.

  DAY THIRTY-SIX

  I’m scared.

  Really scared, so much so that I’m considering leaving and trying my luck on the surface. Since the day he hit me at the dinner table, things have fallen into a pattern. We wake, I cook, and Billy reads his Bible. I clean and wash up, Billy takes inventory and reads more of that damn book, and then he takes me when it suits him. The act itself has become robotic. He won’t even face me anymore, he just bends me over whatever is close and goes at it, grunting at me that it’s all about the survival of the human race. I’m a toy to him, a slave. A vessel for his insane plan to become some kind of father to the whole planet. That’s what I think has happened to him. Insanity, madness. I think there may have been a little of it before, maybe some undiagnosed condition that I shrugged off as weirdness during the whole prepping thing before the event. Now though, I’m pretty sure there is something seriously wrong with him. Every few days, he makes me take a pregnancy test, and every time it’s negative, I feel relief inside then pain as he tells me there ‘must be something wrong with my plumbing,’ and that he’s disappointed in me. After that, he usually beats me as punishment for ‘letting the human race down.’ Bastard. I fucking hate him, hate him more than anything. The idea of being stuck here with him for who knows how long terrifies me. It’s not like I can just get him to see a doctor or get some medication. It’s just the two of us down here and only a matter of time before he makes me pregnant. Last night, I woke up and could hear him talking. I got out of my bunk and crept through to the main shelter room. This is the central hub almost. Most of our food is in here along with the radio equipment. Billy was sitting there at the radio console talking. At first, I thought he had managed to get through to someone and that the nightmare might be over, but as I watched, I realised there was just static coming through, not that Billy noticed. He was having a full conversation with himself, talking about repopulating and doing what was right. I stayed there in the shadows, watching him for a while, wondering what had happened to him, then went to bed before he noticed I was there. Some things are just too difficult to explain, and I think that would be one of them. At least things can’t get much worse than this, can they?

  DAY THIRTY-NINE

  I’m pregnant.

  I did two tests and both are positive. Billy is elated, and still manages to get in a little jibe about how it’s a good job the plumbing started to work as he was pretty sure I was broken.

  Bastard.

  I hate myself for letting this happen. I dread to think what it might be like up there on the surface, and how it must be so much worse than what I’m going through, which in turn makes me feel guilty for feeling so bad. I try to convince myself that it might not be too bad up there, and we had badly overreacted by coming down here, but then I realise the lack of radio or television reception is a very bad sign and tells me that things are only going to get worse. Plus, there was the bright light, and the screams and the explosions. Even so, I have been thinking about leaving again, only this time I’m serious. I could go when Billy is asleep and take a few supplies with me. After all, it was my money as well as his that paid for all this stuff. I’m entitled. My main concerns are actually getting out of here (the hatch is twenty feet up a ladder) without him hearing me. The thought of what he might do to me if he catches me trying to escape with his precious supplies, especially now that I’m carrying his child, is too terrifying to consider. My other worry is what might be waiting for me up there. What if I do everything I set out to, if I steal the supplies, manage to escape and get free, only to find out there’s nothing left and he was right all along? I don’t think I could handle that. I really need to think about this and keep him sweet until I make a decision. God only knows what he would do to me if he found out.

  DAY FORTY-SIX

  I have a plan. I would have liked more time to think things through, but I’m not prepared to stay here any longer. I think he knows I’m up to something, and I need to act fast before he finds out. Jesus, this diary alone would be enough to make him go crazy and do something bad. First things first though, I need to write down what happened yesterday if only to see it on paper and convince myself it was the right thing to do.