The Bitter End

by James Loscombe

  They found what they wanted laying in the middle of the street, casually discarded like coffee cups. Dennis walked towards a gun, some sort of pistol and looked around. She stood a little way back with Cora and Ben, whose arm she had grabbed to hold him in place.

  Dennis looked around but she could tell they were alone there. Then cautiously he bent down and touched the pistol briefly, as if he was afraid it would burn him. When nothing happened he picked it up.

  "It's heavy," he said. He didn't speak loudly but, with no other sounds around, she could easily hear him.

  He put the gun in his bag without checking to see if it was loaded. As far as she knew he didn't even know how. She just hoped that if the time ever came they would be able to work out how to fire the thing. He picked up more guns, gaining confidence each time he dropped one in the bag, making a loud clack. After just a few minutes he had a bag full of handguns, machine guns and rifles. It was not yet mid-day.

  "We should get back to the boat," she said when he walked back to them.

  "Don't you want to do some shopping?" he said.

  Her heart lifted but she pushed it back down. That wasn't what they were here for and they couldn't afford to waste time. They needed to get back on the river and to as wide a stretch as possible. "We don't have time."

  "Come on," he said, already walking. "It's on the way back and we need stuff for the kitchen. The kids need clothes as well."

  She followed him. Ben tried to walk ahead to be with his father, no doubt drawn by the exotic treasure he had in his bag, but she kept a tight hold on his arm.

  "Don't you want anything?"

  She did want things. She wanted a nice dress and some pretty shoes. But that wasn't the world they lived in anymore. "Maybe some more boots," she said. "And some trousers."

  They walked back along the narrow alleyway which still smelled faintly of piss. They walked past the entrance to John Lewis and back across the bridge to the Oracle. She thought he was going to suggest they split up. She wouldn't have let it happen but the fact that he didn't even suggest it worried her. Did he think there was something in the shopping centre that could get them?

  He dropped the heavy bag of guns on the floor at the bottom of the escalator. "Where first?" he said.

  It would have been easy to imagine they were back in the old world. A Saturday morning spent walking around the shops followed by lunch in a nice pub and then the drive home. But she wouldn't let herself be drawn into that fantasy. This was a dangerous world. She couldn't afford to relax.

  They walked up the escalator to the top floor of the Oracle. A 1950s style diner was empty but still smelled of hamburgers. A cart selling cheap mobile phone accessories had been pushed out of its usual spot into the middle of the floor.

  "I didn't realise they'd closed The Gap," she said. The space stood empty, even the fixtures and fittings had been removed. It was a meaningless comment to make.

  Dennis didn't respond. They continued walking towards Debenhams.

  All of the shops were dark and she suddenly found herself wondering where the creatures went when the sun came up. In the old stories they went back to their graves and slept in their coffins. Some of the old stuff was true but this seemed unlikely. For one thing that would make them vulnerable and, as the last six months had proved, there was nothing weak about them.

  Somewhere dark then - like a shopping centre - where they could hide from the sun but defend themselves if needed. She forced herself to look away from the dark shops and dragged the kids behind her as she ran to catch up with Dennis.

  In Debenhams they picked up clothes in bundles and shoved them into plastic bags that they found behind the tills. Hannah couldn’t resist a slinky red strapless dress and matching shoes but she shoved it deep down in the bag underneath the more practical combat trousers and boots.

  Downstairs they got cooking pans and tins of Calor gas for when the boat ran out. The floor was under a few inches of water which ruined anything on the bottom shelves but they still found everything they needed, and more. As they were leaving Hannah saw a display of soft toys and on impulse shoved a couple of them into her bag.

  Outside it had started to rain. They ran towards the boat, their feet splashing in the water. She looked longingly at McDonalds but knew that any food left in there would be ruined. She climbed onto the boat with Cora and Ben while Dennis untied it.

  As they drifted down the river she looked back at the Oracle. A tomb now that the world had ended. There weren’t even enough people left to have ransacked it. Ben and Cora had at least known this world, even though just for a short time. But what would their children think? What would they think when they found these temples that her people had built? She shook her head but kept thinking about the people that would come next.

  The people who knew nothing of the world before, the people who had grown up in a world where they weren’t the number one predator. She wondered what that would be like, to be running scared your whole life. She wondered if the world would ever recover.

  "You coming in?"

  She looked back to see Dennis standing at the door. He was on the bottom step so that only his head stuck out and looked like it was rolling around by itself on top of the boat. She smiled to herself at the thought.

  "Are you going to drive then?" she said.

  "Good point, well made. I'll stick the kettle on shall I?"

  They had picked up some more coffee, bags of different blends and flavours. "Sounds good."

  He vanished from sight and she was left with her thoughts but she had lost the trail of them. Instead she watched the tall buildings on either side of the river give way to smaller ones and eventually to open fields.

  5

  They didn't talk about the guns. Hannah hadn't even thought about them since they had returned from their little shopping expedition. A week passed.

  She was starting to feel a little better about things. They hadn't seen any more of the creatures following the boat and they were making good progress. She had begun to put her suicidal thoughts down to a sort of shock that she now thought she was recovering from.

  They had a plan, a simple one but still a plan: they would continue to follow the rivers and canals to the place where Dennis said there was a sort of commune. After that, depending on what they found, they would either stop or carry on. According to his calculations they would arrive in the next two or three days.

  The weather was fine. The kids were up top with their dad and she was supposed to be asleep. She had tried to sleep but it wouldn't come. The light was too bright coming through the curtains so she had to get up and find her sleeping mask. But then she lay down and tried to sleep and found it was too warm under the covers. On top of them it was too cold. She didn't feel like sleeping anyway.

  Then she remembered the dress. The long red dress that revealed her shoulders. She had bought heels as well. She realised that she hadn't tried on the dress. There hadn't seemed much point at the time, she hadn't expected to ever wear it. Now it seemed foolish to be carrying around a dress that might not even fit. She wondered where she had put it.

  She checked in the small cupboard that was crammed full of jumpers and trousers and at the bottom a pile of shoes. She started to pull them out before she decided that it probably wasn't in there.

  She walked out into the living room, quietly so as not to alert her family to the fact that she was awake and up. She wanted to be alone, even if she wasn't asleep.

  She checked the bags of clothes that were stored beneath the sofa. All of the things they had taken for Cora and Ben were there, the spare trousers and boots for her and Dennis too, but not her dress.

  It also wasn't in the kitchen in the bag that contained the pots and pans, or is the bathroom where more bags had been piled in the shower cubicle. She wondered if she had forgotten to bring it with her, maybe the bag was even now sitting outside the Oracle or, more likely, had been pulled in by the river and was now at the bottom of it.


  Hannah walked back into her bedroom thinking that she would lie down. Even if she couldn't sleep she could rest.

  When you opened the door to the bedroom you could glimpse a full length mirror leaning against the wall. If you stood in front of the mirror you could see yourself but from the door it gave you an angle of the room. Looking in the mirror from the door meant you could see under the bed.

  She looked now and saw it, the off white bag with 'ENHA' written on it. She pulled it out to reveal the rest of the word and her red dress came tumbling out over the floor.

  The brown canvas bag full of guns was behind it.

  She reached for the bag, her dress forgotten about for now. It was heavy but it slid across the floor easily enough. A chill went through her. It had taken her almost an hour to find the bag and then it had been an accident, but what if Ben or Cora found it?

  The bag had been there for a week now and they hadn't found it. Really there was nowhere safer it could be. But she hadn't known it was there and somehow that made a big difference. What she didn't know hadn't been able to hurt her but now she did know and it could. She thought that this new secret knowledge would worry her for days. She would probably say something to Dennis, when she could no longer stand the worry. Not that there was much he could do about it.

  Nervously she reached for the zipper and opened the top. She looked down and the pile of steel and it occurred to her that they wouldn't do much good against the creatures. If ordinary weapons had been any good then the army wouldn't have been overwhelmed quite so quickly.

  It seemed impossible that this thought hadn't occurred to Dennis, although obviously it hadn't occurred to her. If that was the case though maybe they could just throw them in the river and she wouldn't have to worry.

  She reached into the bag and picked up a pistol. It was dense and heavy. She shook it gently but it didn't make a sound. She wondered how she would find out if it was loaded. The obvious way would be to take it up top and squeeze the trigger but if she did that Ben would want a go and if she let Ben have a go Cora would want one too and if you tried to explain to Cora that she was too young she wouldn't listen, she would shake her head and insist it was because she was a girl.

  Hannah could hear the kids up top, running up and down the roof by the sound of it, rocking the boat from side to side, laughing and shouting.

  “They're vampires,” said Ben

  “There's no such thing,” shouted Cora back to him.

  “There is too.”

  “Na-ah mum said.”

  She smiled to herself. They were good kids, she was glad she had them, even though their future was uncertain. She put the gun back in the bag, zipped it up and was about to push it back under the bed when the engine abruptly cut out and the laughing stopped.

  She paused with the bag still in her hand. She could hear Dennis's voice but couldn't make out what he was saying. He might have been talking to the children but she didn't think so.

  Hannah crept out of the bedroom into the corridor that ran past the bathroom and through it into the living room. The door was closed but she could hear Dennis talking now.

  "...no room for anymore," he said.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up as if she might be able to see though the blue metal doors. Her heart was fluttering. She was now sure that he wasn't speaking to the kids but then who was he talking to? They hadn't seen a single person since boarding the boat. Just vam... the creatures. The last time she'd checked they had been passing through part of the country that had been sparsely populated even before the world had ended.

  Dennis was quiet, presumably whoever he had been speaking to was speaking back.

  "Two kids ... don't have any space," he said.

  Whoever he was talking to seemed to want to come aboard but of course he wouldn't let them. She waited for the engine to be switched back on, for them to start moving again but neither happened. She wondered what had got him to stop in the first place.

  She felt the boat rock as if someone had jumped on or off. She waited but she couldn't hear any more talking and after a time the motion stopped. She thought about going back into the bedroom to get a gun but she'd read somewhere that you were more likely to kill a member of your own family than anyone else with a gun. So instead she continued to wait.

  Five, maybe ten minutes later the door opened and Ben looked down. She was relieved to see that he was okay and almost told him so, but then he held a finger to his lips and she was quiet.

  She waited at the bottom of the steps while Ben came inside followed closely by Cora. Their father did not come down which wasn't unusual. Someone had to steer the boat so it was rare for all of them to be in the same place at the same time.

  "What's going on?" she said. Her heart was fluttering like it was Christmas morning and she was eight years old.

  "Dad's gone ashore," said Ben.

  She frowned, couldn't understand what she was being told. "Why?" she said at last.

  "There was a man who wanted to come with us," said Ben. "Dad said no."

  "So why did he go ashore?" she said.

  "The man said he had a boat but it didn't work. He asked dad if he would take a look."

  "And he said ‘yes’?" she said. She couldn't believe Dennis could be so irresponsible. What if something happened to him? What would she and the kids do?

  Ben nodded. Cora stood by his side, she looked guilty, as if this was her fault.

  "Can you see them?"

  Ben shook his head.

  She sighed. "Okay, do you know which direction they went?"

  He nodded.

  She thought about going back into the bedroom and getting a gun but she wasn't even sure if she was going to go after him. What good could she really do? Either he would be okay or he wouldn't, if she went after him and the man intended to hurt, or even kill, him she would just end up suffering the same. Then what would happen to the kids?

  They would be all alone. They knew how to drive the boat but they didn't know where they were going. If they lasted a night they would be lucky. No, it was better that she kept herself alive and leave Dennis to whatever fait awaited him. She was on the verge of making up her mind to lock up the boat and move on when she heard him call her.

  She looked at the kids but they just shrugged. They had no more idea what was going on than she did. "Wait here," she said.

  Hannah climbed the steps. She didn't think his voice had betrayed any sense of fear but she was feeling plenty of it herself. At the top she could see Dennis sanding on the grassy bank with a man beside him. He wasn't an old man but he had long white hair and a big white curly beard. She could understand why Dennis had trusted him; he looked just like Santa Claus, right down to the belly full of jelly and excepting the different clothes. The man standing next to Dennis was wearing brown and green camouflage combats and a green t-shirt.

  Dennis was smiling which was good. The man beside him was holding a dark green hat in his hands, nervously twisting it back and forth. There was a gap of about five metres to the bank so the boat must have drifted away since he'd crossed.

  "Who's that?" she said, still not convinced that she shouldn't run back in and get a gun.

  "This is Mr Shorehill," said Dennis.

  The man leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

  "Frank," said Dennis. "He says you should call him Frank."

  She raised a hand, unsure how to react. This felt strange. Frank Shorehill was the first person she had seen, other than her own family, in more than three weeks. She couldn't tell whether he was friendly or not.

  "Bring the boat over Hann," he said.

  She examined him for some secret cue that he didn't want her to bring the boat to shore but if he was giving one it was too subtle for her to detect. She turned the key and the diesel motor groaned into action, chugging away beneath her.

  Dennis had always parked the boat at night so she was not used to the delicate movements required to
get it to shore. After several unsuccessful attempts Ben and Cora appeared on deck and threw the front and rear ropes to shore so Dennis and Frank could help pull the boat in.

  Cautiously she stepped off the boat onto the shore. A yellow rubble path was mostly hidden by long grass.

  Frank offered her his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you dear."

  She put his age at about fifty but he might have been younger. These had been tough times and she was sure she wasn't the only one who looked a few years older than she actually was.

  "Frank wants to come with us," said Dennis. He was practically jumping up and down on the spot and she realised that he was excited.

  "We don't have room," she said, not unkindly.

  She was not overjoyed at the idea that Dennis had invited a complete stranger to join them. Maybe he was excited but how much could you really learn about someone in fifteen minutes. He might have been a murderer for all they knew. "Sorry Mr Shorehill."

  "Frank, please," he said, "and space won't be a problem. I have my own boat."

  His voice was soft and his accent well-to-do not to murder them all.

  "You should see it," said Dennis, "it's something else."

  She ignored him and continued to look at Frank, he didn't wilt or budge under her hardest stare. "If you have a boat," she said, "why do you need us?"

  He shrugged and for the first time she thought his true character might be coming out. His cheeks reddened. "Its been a long time since I've had any company," he said. "My dear wife, she..." he turned away.

  Hannah didn't need to hear the rest. He'd lost his wife to the creatures. The vampires, as the kids called them, although the term worried her. Films, television and books had softened the image of vampires and these creatures were anything but soft. She worried that calling them vampires made them seem less threatening.

  "I'm sorry," said Frank, pressing his fingers into his eyes. "It’s still difficult to talk about."