by Rob Ewing
‘Hullo?’
Nobody answers.
In the kitchen there’s dirty washing in the sink. Sinks can smell, though ours doesn’t. Mum’s grey pants and bras are on a clothes horse. The tablecloth with those pen marks she scolded me for. Our folding chairs. The bit of wallpaper I used to peel. She scolded me for that, too.
In the living room there’s six Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. Season’s Greetings, says one. Greetings here doesn’t mean crying or meeting but Happy Returns.
There’s the Christmas tree. Now I remember her putting it up, on our last night together. Plus the broken boxes, including the box for my game, which she flattened then tried to make good again right at the end.
Mum’s boots; her spare post office jacket. That smells of wool and oil and being in the rain.
Upstairs, everything got small. My room. Most of all I see the stickers I shouldn’t’ve put on the wall. Left-alone bits of Lego. My Sleeping Beauty costume, my armbands for swimming. Everything with dust on it. There wasn’t as much dust last time we came in.
My best CD. Mum bought me Queen Greatest Hits. It’s only the case, the CD proper is at our new home. It gets ten stars from everyone, apart from Alex who doesn’t like the bit where the man sings ‘I don’t like Star Wars’.
The bed feels cold, which is wrong because it’s summer. It doesn’t feel like my bed. It doesn’t feel like my room.
In the cobweb-dirt underneath I find two things: my teddy-chimp called Tom. Then an old plastic sword that Alex could like. I give Tom a cuddle, but his eyes are just stitches crossed so I decide not to save him.
Mum’s room. As well, looks smaller. I open the curtains. A seagull flaps off the windowsill.
Just an empty drying green. Bits of torn washing, still up, amazing.
Her case, halfway to being packed. Some perfumes on the bedside cabinet. I spray once then all over. Stings my eyes. Then I get up on the bed.
When I close my eyes the bed sags down beside.
‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you,’ Mum says. ‘You have to be kind.’
Then she says, ‘Concentrate and the world is yours.’
I concentrate.
‘Don’t run with bullies.’
‘Who would!’
‘Hold scissors by the sharp end. Never, ever run with scissors.’
‘I would never run with them. Or with bullies.’
‘Tha sin ceart. Keep in mind, last of all: many hands make light work.’
‘We call that teamwork these days, Mum. But don’t get stressed, you’re only catching up.’
I lie beside her for a bit. But then I catch a smell: which makes me open my eyes, quick, to make sure she isn’t actually there.
In the hallway downstairs I notice: one of her letters.
It got crushed against the wall when I shoved the front door open. It’s white on one side where the sun paled it.
Not opened.
Her signing-words: Mo Ivaidh Rona.
It looks too clean against my clarty fingers.
The truth could be she’s been and left it today. For a truth it’s a hard one, but nobody could say opposite – that she hasn’t. Nobody could say better than me how Mum comes and goes, where she goes between.
Calum Ian is hiding outside when I open the door. He had his ear to the letterbox. Quickly I push Mum’s letter down inside my jumper, praying he hasn’t noticed.
‘Yet another stupid kid holding us up,’ he says, poking me in the chest. ‘You headed to stab someone?’
I don’t know what he means – then I see that I’m holding the plastic sword I picked up for Alex.
‘It’s a present.’
‘You get presents for all the rest of us as well?’
‘I forgot.’
‘Then what did you put down your jumper? See – it’s slipping away free – nearly at the bottom—’
I push the letter back up by folding my arms. But as I go to walk past, Calum Ian catches me. He tries to tickle the letter out, but his fingers are too angry for it to feel funny.
We struggle – I don’t want to give up first – so I nip his arm and he pulls away, wincing at the sore bit.
Now I see a new look in his eyes – a look I never saw before, fiercer than the one he gave earlier about his camera.
‘Keep it close, Gloic,’ he shouts at the back of me. ‘Real close. I’m not finished with you.’
Calum Ian has a very heavy backpack. He won’t show us what’s inside it, which is bothering Elizabeth, maybe because she’s nosy enough to want to know everything, though not enough yet to force him to show.
‘You’ll find out later,’ is all he’ll say.
We don’t take the bikes, because Alex never learned to ride. And we don’t need Mum’s maps to get to the first house, because it’s still in the village: at the end of the single-track road that begins with the broken-roof church.
The doormat says NOT YOU AGAIN. This is just the kind of dumb joke adults like. Me and Alex take an edge each, throw the mat over a wall.
Calum Ian and Duncan have been here before. They sprayed the door – not G or B, but L for Locked. I try the handle but they got it right: it is locked.
It’s an old house, with an upstairs bit, and a mossy garden. We search around its edges. There’s brown board on the front windows – shutters? And on the side windows. Elizabeth thinks it’s cardboard, Calum Ian doesn’t.
We circle the house to see if there’s a trick way in or an easy way, but there isn’t. I want to give up – then Elizabeth notices the bathroom window. It’s got frosted glass, but doesn’t look like it’s blocked over inside.
‘Stand back,’ Calum Ian says.
He finds a good-sized stone and throws it.
It’s maybe the tenth or ninth throw that smashes the glass in. After this, he uses a slate from the path to knock the broken edges away.
‘Is it me who’s got to be brave again?’
Everyone finds the best bit of their shoes to look at. Calum Ian nods, makes a sound in his throat like he knew we’d be too shitting it anyway. Then he gets Duncan to punt him up through the hole – and he’s gone.
It feels like a year before we hear the kitchen door further along being scraped open. Then he comes out.
‘I’m not doing this on my own,’ he says, glaring at us. ‘For why? Because there’s a stink.’
When Alex hears this he won’t come in. I feel the same: and want to tell them all to turn around, yet I’d rather not show my fear, or make them think I’m just a kid made the same as Alex, so I don’t say anything.
The kitchen’s half-bright. There are pans filled with water in plastic bags, on the table, on the floor. Whoever the person was they used clear plastic bags, which meant that their water inside went slimy. It’s a mistake many people made, but we’re far wiser now.
On one wall there’s a map of the world. In the map are lots of red and blue and green pins, mostly around Asia, but with some around America, Europe. Alongside the map are cut-outs from newspapers. It’s all to do with what happened. There’s a heap of cut papers on a chair, maybe the ones this person never got around to sticking up.
‘Should’ve spent time reading up on water instead,’ Calum Ian says. He picks up the papers and begins to read them out with a posh adult voice—
‘Chief Medical Officer confirms WHO report on Guangdong Virus.
‘As feared it seems to have an extended incubation.
‘Aerosol spread from shopping malls: bogus oxygen bars. Ban on reporting this story finally lifted.
‘UN security council: no consensus.
‘Those in urban centres advised to stay at home. Those in rural areas under no current restrictions.’
He laughs at this, then angrily raps the page: ‘Did you not see what happened to us, then? Did ye not? You got it right for everybody else, so why not us?’
And he begins to tear the pages, into smaller and smaller pieces – then looks up at us looking
at him.
‘Get a move on,’ he orders – like we were the ones keeping him back.
He makes us pull all the kitchen drawers. We don’t find any medicine for Alex, but we do find: tins of Carnation milk, garibaldi biscuits, croutons, brown sugar, raisins, treacle, flour. I’m keen to start taking things home but Elizabeth says no, we’ve our job to do first.
The living room’s dark. Strings of sun around the boards. The smell worse here. Calum Ian goes to the window and finds that Elizabeth was correct: the boards are just cardboard.
He tears a strip, the sun comes in.
There’s a tile fireplace, plus a couch, chair the murk colour of pond but hanging with lace. On the floor, lots of bottles of water: pans, jars, tubs, covered, laid out just anywhere. On the couch, a scrunch of sheets looking like a human with bad dreams got twisted up in them.
I walk between the bottles, pans. Duncan knocks one over – we all hiss at him to be careful.
From the hall Calum Ian shouts – ‘Dead person!’
The body’s on the stair.
It’s a man – curled up, at the corner of a bigger turn-step. He has plasters to keep the skin on his face. The proper skin behind these went black, which makes him look all in bits, like patchwork.
There’s a carton of milk-yuck at his hand. Plus a box of the pills we’ve seen in lots of houses.
The smell of him is bad, but not the worst, maybe because he’s in the dark.
Elizabeth puts on her perfume-hanky and goes as close as she dares to see if there’s any insulin on the ground beside him. There isn’t.
We do the rest of our search, quick. In the second bedroom, in a cabinet, Elizabeth finds a box with an insulin pen, and one glass vial.
But it’s empty.
‘It’s only the first house,’ she says. ‘At least we found something, which is a good sign.’
On the way out we stand to pay our respects.
Elizabeth shows me a framed picture she found upstairs: of an old man, smiling beside the school gates. Now we know who it is: Mr Roseberry, the retired headmaster who used to be the teacher for Mum at the big school.
Everyone tries to remember at least one nice thing about him. Duncan goes first: says Mr Roseberry was one of the people who used to tut if you were noisy in the shop.
I remember him as an old man pushing a trolley, buying meat and eggs.
Elizabeth thinks of his eyes being blue.
Calum Ian, though, doesn’t have a memory. Instead, he starts unpacking his rucksack.
Now he’s holding up – what?
A plastic water gun. I recognise it from the Co-op, from a display of toys nobody needs now.
He holds it up – then begins to wet the body of Mr Roseberry. It’s so strange that I nearly want to laugh.
Elizabeth: ‘What are—?’
‘Fucking shut up; keep your eyes peeled for once. This is one way we’ll survive, just you watch.’
‘Is that – petrol?’
Calum Ian is holding a packet of matches. With the gun he sprays a line on the floor between us and the headmaster.
‘Who wants to light?’
Elizabeth can’t seem to talk, or move – but then she remembers how and tugs at my jumper, pushing Duncan, who’s behind her, back towards the door.
‘Go. Out, quick.’
So we’re pushed back through the living room: her hand jabbing at our backs, until we’re on the step again, still expecting a flare or a flash from behind, running in case the heat of a fire swallows us up.
In the end there’s no fire. Did he use the spray for show, or just to worry us? Now we’re back on the road.
Calum Ian is showing us the rest of what’s in his backpack.
He unwraps a square of blue tarpaulin. He’s taped it at the edges – making pockets on the inside, from which we can see handles poking out.
The handles are of knives. He slides one out. It’s the sort that Mum used in her kitchen. On the handle of the first knife he’s put a sticker: of the devil, grinning.
There’s another knife: very long and all-silver. This one has a tiny skull-and-crossbones sticker.
Elizabeth stands quite deliberately ahead of me and Alex, blocking us from going too near.
‘The sticker ones are poison-tipped,’ Calum Ian says, sounding casual like it’s normal for knives to be poisoned.
‘What should I say?’
‘Say you’re impressed.’
‘What kind of poison?’
‘Homemade. Stuck them in dirty water I created. If you want to know how to make the water dirty – just look at what the dogs leave on the road.’
Elizabeth stares at him, as if it were opposite-day from how she felt yesterday – when he helped at the surgery, when he went into the gym.
Then she says: ‘I want you to put those away. I want you to wrap them up and get rid of them. Now.’
Calum Ian looks at her with the same hard face, then doesn’t do as she says. Instead, he goes inside another pocket and hands something to Alex and Duncan.
‘Found these in the pub. Darts. Keep them in their wallets till you need. Practise with them, much as you need. For when the time comes.’
Looking at me he says, ‘You’re not to be trusted. So you’re not getting anything.’
I make a rude sign at him, then fold my arms for not caring.
After this he puts away the wrap.
Elizabeth lifts, shrugs on her rucksack: but slowly, still keeping an eye out for what Calum Ian will do next.
‘Are you scared of something?’ she asks.
‘What me, scared? Ha! I’m not scared of anything.’
‘Then let me give you a different question. Why do we need weapons?’
Now he doesn’t answer: instead he looks ahead, to where we’re going, to the road going up over the hill and beyond.
He says, ‘Just dogs. They could’ve gone wild.’
‘We live beside them here. They don’t bother us, not even the ones that kill the cats, chase the sheep.’
‘Only trying to be safe.’
But even I can see – maybe even Alex can see – that he’s only telling half of what’s worrying him.
Past the signpost at the end of town we look back. The cats are dust, the dogs just specks. When I hold up a finger to cover the rubbish on the beach, and the wrecked trawler, everything could be back to normal.
Soon we’ve passed the furthest anyone went on their own. Elizabeth’s furthest mark is a toppled rainbow of fish crates; Calum Ian’s, a rusted van.
We go quick at first but then everything slows down. The bigger kids want to walk at different speeds. Elizabeth goes way out in front, from where she calls on us, pulling Alex’s hand to help him go faster. Calum Ian, meanwhile, is the opposite: he stalks in the fields alongside, calling on Duncan if there’s anything he’s suspicious of or doesn’t understand.
This is why he slows so much at all the dead sheep. One, then another, then another. He thinks it’s too many to be a coincidence – and so he shouts on Elizabeth, who’s forced to come back and look at the nearest: a ram with its neck stuck through a fence.
After dying it turned into a head with no eyes, and straggles of skin and wool behind.
‘There wasn’t a farmer to set it free,’ she explains. ‘After a while it died. End of story.’
She asks him to look at her then says: ‘There’s something you’re not telling us. Right?’
Calum Ian won’t keep looking. Instead, he goes back over the fence, and crouches there, waiting until she moves on before starting up his stalking again.
It takes us all day. Calum Ian holds back, holds back. It gets in me that he’s waiting by the roadside to see if we’ll get into trouble first. Which is not very nice.
At least ten times Elizabeth comes back and shouts on him to speed up, but he won’t: won’t walk the road or walk beside us, even when there’s rocks he has to climb, or lines of fences.
‘We set off too late,’ E
lizabeth says. ‘It’s late.’
I forgot how big the world was. Forgot how the west beaches had big waves. Forgot how the sun could be shiny on the sea. Forgot that sand blew in drifts on the road.
And we all forgot the roadblock.
Nobody wants to see it, be reminded. Yet here it is. It truly did happen.
Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred cars jammed together on the uphill beside a cliff. It looks eerie: like all the people of the island were here all along, waiting until we plucked up the courage to come and find them.
For safety we throw stones at the back of the nearest cars for a while. When nothing serious happens, we get close enough to touch the one that’s nearest.
Its tyres went flat, like Mum’s van at home. There’s salt-swirls, dust, bird shit covering the windows.
Up ahead are five big metal baskets, filled with stones and boulders. The baskets are way bigger than us. They’re spread out, right across the road, with the spaces between them only big enough for side-on walking.
‘I saw them put the baskets in here,’ Duncan says. ‘We got stuck on the other side. It was when Mum was trying to get Flora to hospital. It felt like all day.’
‘It was all bloody day,’ Calum Ian says. ‘Then they came and took her anyway. And left us on the bad side.’ Grinning not for fun at Elizabeth he adds: ‘Bet you were on the good side. ’Course you were, being the doctor’s daughter. Only the best for you.’
Elizabeth doesn’t bother to reply.
We pluck up our courage to walk between them. Further in the cars are jammed so close that they’re nearly touching. I guessed that they were all empty – but then figure my guess was wrong when Alex calls out and begins to cry and Elizabeth shouts, ‘Don’t look in the windows!’
Too late: he already did.
Once again, Calum Ian comes last. Elizabeth watches him – while he watches us, bending down between cars, ready with his gun and matches and knives.
‘What is wrong with your brother?’ she shouts at Duncan. ‘Why is he being like this?’
Duncan only finds a hole in his jeans to widen. If he does know, he won’t say.
We’re tired out when we get to the second house. I’m ready for it to have a smell – after the last place it seems likely somehow, and I’m ready, even though I never slept one night in a bad house – but the smell is clean.
