by Rhys Thomas
The crossing of the bridge was a return to an old life. It was the life she had to leave behind. South was where Henry had to remain. She had crossed this bridge hundreds of times but it had never appeared as it did now: small, narrow, decrepit. Flimsy legs plunged into the water, fastened to the bedrock by rusting, ancient bolts. It seemed so superficial.
They came to their street but it had changed. All the old things were still there: the large sycamores, the corner shop, the red post box. Those markers were in place, anchoring the memory of the old world. But some of the windows of the houses were smashed, there was litter blowing along the kerb, somebody had spray-painted a garden wall and there was a notable absence of cars. Miriam pulled into the side of the road right in front of her house and her heart sank.
The house was split into two separate living quarters. Downstairs and the basement were given over to one flat whilst Miriam’s family lived on the upper two floors. There were two front doors: one at the left belonging to downstairs, one at the right that belonged to the family. Both were wide open.
The patch of carpet in the hallway was wet with rain. A few unopened letters had been blown along the hall to the stairs where they rested, some face down, some standing up against the base of the first step. The hallway was dark. Fear heightened her senses.
The door had been smashed in. Splinters of wood had snapped outwards where the lock had been beaten. There was a large, concave dent in the door. Miriam eased up the steps. She knew that the sixth one creaked and stepped over it.
She went into the flat. This was where Henry had hugged her and cried last week. She remembered his face again, and how it had been so like the faces she had seen in the dark room at the hospital – empty and inhuman. She brought the balls of her thumbs to her eyes and blinked the tears clear.
The place was empty. She passed from room to room. Every one had been ransacked. They had found and sacked her jewellery box. They had taken some of their electrical appliances and in the kitchen were unwashed plates and cutlery.
They had come into her house and taken their possessions. They had even eaten their food. She checked each room to make absolutely certain nobody was there. She tried to clear up some of the mess and went back to the car where she opened the doors and let the children out.
They were confused by the sight of the mess. Miriam packed clothes into two suitcases. The third she kept for personal effects. She took their wedding album and the family photo albums. She had always kept the journals she had written as a teenager and a young adult, before she had the children. There were various trinkets that held sentimental value – she saved as many of these as she could.
The children were told to pack a bag of their favourite things, which they did. Miriam remembered what an old friend who had once worked for a moving company had said to her. Often his job involved clearing the house of an elderly dead parent. He told her about how he had found the most wonderful things that the families never seemed to want. The life that had been lived was to be forgotten. Many times he would throw away boxes of black and white photographs, books filled with handwriting and old tickets, old musical instruments. She knew what he meant now. She was trying to collect the lifeblood of her old existence. The rest – the bones, the organs, the skin, the detail – would all be left behind.
The traffic around Trafalgar Square was even busier by the time they re-crossed the river. Miriam stopped the car two hundred yards back. The top of Nelson’s Column was just visible, and as she looked up at his black silhouette against the white sky her body began to tell her that something was wrong up ahead. She looked around. The cars were lined up behind her, ahead of her and to both sides. If something should go wrong they would be trapped. She breathed slowly and eased the car across to the outside lane. On the pavement next to them were several bodies.
‘Don’t look at them,’ Miriam said, and checked again that the doors were locked.
The rain continued to beat down. She turned off her windscreen wipers, happy for the world outside to be blurred through the water. They were moving too slowly.
She turned on the radio. A man’s voice. It sounded as if he was in a helicopter because there was a mechanical thumping in the background and his voice was grainy. He was shouting something about Red Square, about seeing dead bodies in the street, lying where they fell, all of them. She turned it off.
Her judgement was clouding. Her face was hot. She knew it wasn’t just her that bad things were happening to but it didn’t matter and she placed her forehead against the smooth skin of the steering wheel in a moment of self-pity. The traffic started to move again. Slowly they edged forward. There was tension in the air outside. She could sense it. She turned on the windscreen wipers again and lowered the windows a fraction so she could listen. The indistinct words of somebody preaching into a megaphone came through the rain.
There were other noises as well. Shouting.
An army truck came into view. It was parked up on the side of the road, to her left. People had gathered round it. Four soldiers had climbed on to its roof and were pointing their rifles at the crowd. The gas masks on their faces made them menacing.
The truck was swaying from side to side and as Miriam approached she heard a metallic banging. There were people inside trying to get out. And the crowd that had surrounded the truck were trying to free them. Miriam remembered seeing similar vehicles outside the hospital, loading people aboard. People whom the doctors thought— A corridor of common sense opened up in her mind. She turned to the children.
‘Go into the bags and get some jumpers and put them over your heads.’
‘Why? What’s happening?’ Edward leaned between the two front seats to get a better view out of the front window. He moved quickly, suddenly, like his old self.
‘Get in the back seat and do as I say or I’ll get very angry.’
‘In a minute,’ he said.
‘Not in a minute,’ Miriam snapped. She raised her voice in panic. ‘Now.’
Reluctantly Edward obeyed. Mary handed him a sweater.
Everything happened quickly. The crowd at the rear of the truck stumbled back. Miriam saw the back doors swing open and a mass of people appear out of the darkness. The ones at the front were somehow not moving their limbs as they came forward; their bodies looked static, as if they were floating. Miriam gasped when she realized what she was looking at. They were already dead. Their bodies were thrown clear of the truck on to the crowd below, the people who had been trying to free them. After the dead bodies came the live. From the shadows. They were out. The rattle of gunfire consumed the soundscape. The soldiers on the roof fired indiscriminately into the crowd of people. They perched on one knee as they unloaded their clips. People fell to the ground. Screams cut across the air. The infected people streaked out between the cars.
The cars tried to pull away but there was nowhere to go. They collided with dull clangs. The crowd ran. The men and women who had been inside the truck leaped on whoever they could find. Miriam watched in horror as one sank his teeth into a woman’s neck. The soldiers brought their guns round to the man and fired. Life fell out of his body instantly. The woman lay beneath his corpse, also dead. People were rushing towards Miriam. She closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Please, let this be OK,’ and revved the engine. She pulled up on to the wide pavement on the left. The car in front saw her and did the same. Miriam slammed on the brakes. The car in front jerked forward and Miriam followed in its wake. They passed alongside the army truck, between it and the front of a tall building, and one of the infected people from the truck – a woman – threw herself on to the bonnet of the car in front. A soldier saw her and fired, spraying his bullets in a wide arc up the pavement and along the car. The woman fell lifeless on to the bonnet and the bullets ripped into the roof of the vehicle. The head of the driver slumped to one side. The car stopped.
There was a slam to her left. A figure in the rain was punching the side window. Mary had hidden herself in the footwe
ll and Edward had removed his sweater and was looking out at the attacker. On the third punch a fist appeared through the glass. Blood and rain ran over the knuckles. The fist was withdrawn and replaced by an eye. It peered inside at the occupants and then was gone. The hand came back in and searched for the lock. Miriam grabbed the heavy metal handbrake lock in the footwell and slammed it into the hand. It pulled back. The wrist to which it was attached was sliced by the jagged broken glass and blood streamed out of the wound. Still the hand searched. Miriam looked at the halted car in front and pushed the accelerator. She rear-ended it and shunted forwards. They moved slowly. A second hand grabbed at the glass and snapped it away furiously. The face reappeared.
‘Hurry up and get away if you want to stay alive,’ it said, as its hands clawed at the broken glass. The face came in close.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Miriam. Adrenalin burned through her. She took the blunt end of the handbrake lock and shoved it into the face, between the eyes. The hands fell away and their owner fell backwards. He came back, his face contorted out of shape in rage. The window was slick with blood.
They kept moving forward. More infected people had climbed up on to the roof of the army truck and were falling back to earth as the soldiers picked them off easily. Miriam forced the car past the truck and the road opened up before them.
The hands were clawing for the lock again. Edward was leaning over and struggling with the fingers, preventing them from opening the door.
‘Hurry up, Mum,’ he screamed.
Miriam pushed the car in front forwards another ten feet until there was enough room to pull back into the road. The car lurched with a violent swing as it dropped back down from the pavement to the road surface and Miriam accelerated away through a squeal of tyres. The hands that were trying to get in were drawn across the glass one final time and were gone.
Bodies were strewn along the road. Miriam manoeuvred the car between them as quickly as she could. She thought it might turn over. Some of the bodies reached up to her for help but she could not stop this time. In the rear-view mirror she could see the army truck, the soldiers still on the roof, still firing, this time off into Trafalgar Square itself. Screams merged with the gunfire. Her heart was thumping so fast she found it hard to breathe properly. The sounds receded as she sped away. The rain deepened and soon she could not see more than a few feet in front of her. That was all she could concentrate on – those few feet.
When they came to the house they ran up the steps and across the garden. The rain ran down her neck and along the line of her spine. Her fingers were shaking as she opened the door. The children ran ahead of her and she saw, in the dark hallway, the figure of a man looking at her. He stepped forwards and her heart started to beat with confusion. But it was not who she thought it was. It was Joseph. He had come back.
‘We have to go,’ she said.
In the kitchen she could see the portable television set glowing. Sitting in a chair in front of it was her old priest. She hadn’t seen him in years. A trench of memory opened up beneath her and she knew now just how far away the old world was.
Joseph closed the kitchen door behind him and whispered, ‘I know.’
‘All I’m saying is we need to wait until the morning. It’s just one night, Miri.’
Miriam shook her head. ‘You don’t understand.’
She couldn’t explain properly what she had seen. He wasn’t listening. The light of day was fading from the window and the corners of the bedroom were amassing a dark gloom.
‘We can’t drive in the dark, Miri. Surely you can see that. I need to get back to my flat and pick up my van. It’s got all the stuff in it. It’s too dangerous to go across town now. You’ve seen the news. You saw it for yourself.’
His eyes were red and he hadn’t shaved. He looked tired, even more so than usual. He sat down next to her on the edge of the bed and they both stared at the carpet.
‘The vicar from your mother’s church is here,’ he said, gently. ‘Don’t you want to have dinner with him? It might be the last chance you’ll get for a while.’
‘You should have seen them, Joseph. They just started firing. They didn’t care.’
He put his hands together in his lap. ‘Are you OK with staying for one night?’
Miriam nodded. She thought he might say something like, I told you so, but he didn’t.
‘We’ll go to my place on the way tomorrow and get out of here, OK? It’ll be fine.’
‘OK.’ She took a deep breath.
‘Miri,’ he started. ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’
As she stared at the fibres in the carpet she felt a tiny shift in the air.
‘I never resented you. Saying that just wasn’t true.’ He kneaded his knuckles with his fingertips awkwardly.
‘You don’t have to explain yourself, Joseph. I understand.’
‘I do need to. You’re a good person and I’ve just – I’ve never . . .’
‘Joseph, please.’ She looked at her brother-in-law. His face was flushed and he was embarrassed.
‘Just let me finish. The way I’ve been with you, you know’ – he still didn’t look at her – ‘since the start.’
She felt emotion rising in her own throat.
‘I’m sorry. That’s what I mean.’ His head shifted slightly towards her. The air was thick. ‘Since Henry died, I’ve just . . .’ His voice shook under the weight.
With an old instinct she reached out her hand and touched his fingers.
‘I had to come back. Not just for Dad, but for all of you. You know, I don’t have anyone else now.’
She had never seen him this vulnerable. She patted his hands and then did something she never thought she would. She rested her head on his shoulder. His body seized for moment, then relaxed.
‘Did you know that I always liked you?’
He didn’t answer.
‘I used to tell Henry I wanted you to show us around the university. You were all he used to talk about – the papers you used to write and the job you had. He was obsessed with you. But he always said you wouldn’t be interested in showing us around, that you wouldn’t want to be bothered.’
She surreptitiously wiped the tears out of her eyes. Joseph didn’t say anything. It was almost dark outside now. They sat in silence as the beginning of night absorbed the ends of day.
‘Will you tell me a story about Henry? From when you were kids?’
He thought for a moment. She thought she could hear his mind ticking.
‘Did he ever tell you about the time when he won a tree-climbing competition but then couldn’t get back down?’
Miriam half laughed and half cried when he said it. She could no longer hide the fact that she was nearly crying. She knew the story, Henry considered it one of the proudest moments of his life, but she shook her head anyway.
‘Tell me it,’ she said.
‘Miriam, how are you?’
He smiled a wide smile and opened his arms to her. He had changed little, impeccably groomed with his clothes well pressed and fitted, his hair thin at the crown. He still had an air of arrogance about him which she had always found more amusing than offensive. Out of courtesy she moved to him and he closed his arms around her. Father Moore’s scent triggered a bloom of memory.
‘I’m so sorry about Henry,’ he whispered into her ear.
She looked over his shoulder at the television set, which showed a vision of Moscow, the Kremlin and the streets around it like a toy city. There were bodies lying in the roads and on the squares; hundreds of bodies, none moving. There were no cars, no cyclists, none of the little vibrations that brought a city to life. Everything was still.
The newscaster’s voice was discordant and urgent.
‘It is not known when the incident occurred, or how, or what the details are. The spread of the illness seems to stretch from far in the east of Russia all the way across the country as far west as the Ukraine.’
She noticed that everybody else was
anchored intensely to the screen. She came out of the embrace.
‘Fears are mounting now that Russia is not the only place to have suffered such a fate. Other areas that have lost contact are central China, the west of India and parts of Thailand. But with so many remote places on the planet, and international agencies already stretched to their limits, it is difficult to know where these pockets of death have struck.’
Henry’s father stood up and turned off the television.
‘We don’t need to watch this,’ he said. ‘It will only frighten us.’ He turned to his son. ‘Come on, we’d better go.’
Miriam looked at Joseph. ‘Where are you going?’
Joseph threw his coat across his back. ‘Looking for food. We won’t be long.’
‘But it’s dark outside.’
Henry’s father joined his son at the kitchen door.
‘Won’t be long,’ he said cheerily, and they left.
Miriam felt sick. The dense sensation in her gut that she had been feeling since Henry became ill began to petrify. She just wanted to get out of there, get to Cornwall, darkness or no. She felt trapped.
‘I’ll do those,’ she said to her mother, indicating the peas on the kitchen table she had been shelling, trying to keep her voice even. ‘You and Father Moore go into the living room.’
Her mother gave her a look that made Miriam feel like the scared child she had been after her father died. It was that same mixture of pity and knowing, a deep empathy that would flood through her and make her feel less alone.
‘Dora’s resting in the living room.’’
‘She can come in here with me.’
Miriam’s mother smiled and when she did it set something off in Miriam’s heart. It snagged on the inside of her throat; a jagged pocket of hopelessness.
