On the Third Day

by Rhys Thomas

  He was the only one left now. He saw his father’s body in the street again, streaked with blood, shaking, mumbling, dying. There had been dust all over his face, in his mouth.

  There was no warmth in the sun and Joseph felt cold. He set the rifle in the grass before him and propped himself up on his elbows. He liked lying hidden in the grass, watching the rabbits in the crosshairs of his sight. He felt like a lion watching a herd of unsuspecting gazelles.

  He cocked the gun, placed a pellet in the barrel and clicked it shut. He had bought it in a hurry and wished now he had chosen something that did not need constant reloading. Bringing his weight on to his left elbow, he placed his right index finger slowly on the trigger. The telescopic sight was accurate – far more so than the sight on his old rifle. He looked down its length into the deep green haze and adjusted the focus, bringing the grass into sharp, flat clarity. The sight moved slowly over the grass, coming to rest on the first of the rabbits. It was a good size. Its brown pelt was tinged with grey specks. Joseph held his breath for one second and fired. The rabbit flopped on to its side. Joseph sniffed and reloaded. Two more would be enough. It was too cold to stay out here for long. He found another rabbit. This one had reared up on to its hind legs. Behind it, two smaller rabbits grazed silently. Joseph aimed for its head so he would not need to find the shot in the carcass when it came to skinning it. He fired. The rabbit fell backwards violently, rolling head over feet before coming to a stop. The two rabbits behind bolted across the fields, the white undersides of their tails sparkling in the cold sun.

  That morning he had been rummaging through the boxes in the cellar and found his mother’s old mincer, the one she had used to grind the rabbit meat he brought home. The meat was sinewy and tough but she added some herbs and pork mince to make it more malleable. Then she would mould it into patties and make burgers.

  He had forgotten all about it but as he had taken it from its box the memory of those days came back to him. They sparked something inside. Something caught. His head felt light and his chest less tight. He lived in that memory, just for a few seconds, basked in it: the way the sunlight slanted into the house, the warmth in the walls at summer, sitting in the back garden drinking lemonade and eating the food he had caught. It had been a long time since he had had a feeling like that. He had leaned against the metal shelving in the cellar and closed his eyes.

  He wanted to make some rabbit burgers for Miriam and the kids. They didn’t have any pork mince but he thought that maybe he could add some mashed potato. He was sure she would like them. He killed another rabbit, a small one, and collected all three up into his sack. He didn’t like skinning them. It was boring. Perhaps he could teach Edward how to do it. Edward should do it anyway. He had to teach them everything he knew because the day might come when he would no longer be there to help them. He had been thinking about that for a long time.

  Time was something that changed quickly. They still kept the clocks running and Joseph marked off the days on his calendar, but without having any need to be at any particular place at any particular time it became redundant. Day and night – that was all that really mattered. Time became fluid, punctuated only by light and dark, and the passing of events: somebody coming to the house, taking a trip into the village, a meal, watching vegetables appear tentatively one day from the soil. The structure on which so many things had run had now disintegrated. And yet he did not feel any different. There was no great mourning for it. If anything it made him feel a sense of liberation; just another control gone.

  Miriam kept her mobile phone charged and on, but had not been able to get a signal for weeks. The people on the television said that mobile phones still worked, but mainly in the cities. She could not understand why that should be the case. Surely they were run by satellites up in space. She wondered what would happen to those satellites. Would they circle infinitely, for ever? Or would they one day come down, screaming into the land? And what about her bills? Would she still be charged? It was a trivial matter but one that she could not stop thinking about. She did not know how much money was in her bank. Perhaps payments would still be taken automatically, but then, would the bills of the already dead need to be paid?

  The phone lines were still open, but nobody was running them. The electricity plants were still churning energy but for how long could they continue? Surely there must be accidents, fires, people unavailable to keep them safe. The rumours on the television said that a quarter of the world was dead. One in four. But surely there was no way of knowing something like that.

  There was no familiarity in the faces of the people who appeared on the evening news any longer. There were no more reassuring speeches from the Prime Minister because he was dead. Army officials had replaced politicians. Suits became uniforms. Communications grew fewer and farther between.

  There was no more internet for the time being, was what they said. For the time being. It implied a return to normality, a re-alignment of the systems, the re-ignition of money, time, work, services. Life would go back to the way it was and everything would be fine again. But when this return would come nobody knew, just as nobody knew if society was even under any form of control any more, whether or not ‘they’ were still out there somewhere, finding a cure, keeping a handle on things. Perhaps society was controlling itself only through a system of ever-diminishing shadow memories, routines. And as more people died, the more hopelessness pervaded the air.

  It was always in the morning that spirits were highest. The freshness from sleep, the bright light through the house, the promise of something new all funnelled together into lightness.

  Joseph looked from his bedroom window. Nothing there. He went out to the landing and checked the east-facing window set into the wall above the staircase. You could look through it from the landing. Nothing coming that way either. He went downstairs and checked the front of the house, and then the back. He had to make sure that nobody had arrived during the night. The process was the same every day. Miriam called it overkill, but Joseph was unwilling to take the risk. Miriam was too trusting. She was naive. Joseph knew this, just as he knew that one day she herself would come to learn that. Even if the illness went away, too many people were dead. Society was on the edge. The cities were chaotic masses of disease and violence and soon there would be a final exodus.

  Other countries had reverted to chaos within weeks but Britain had managed to hold itself together, tentatively. Those who had family in the country had already left the cities, but the people with nowhere to go – the immigrants, the lonely, the broken and the isolated – were still there. They would have to leave eventually, and what then? Where would they go?

  He walked around the low wall surrounding the house. Nobody there. He checked the bolts he had punched into the stone to keep the barbed wire in place. He crouched on his knees and pressed his fists into the ground. There was no sign of frost. The plants were still safe.

  He paused at Dora’s grave. Already the tough grass of the coast was closing in on the naked earth. Ugly, patchy weeds were growing up like an old man’s beard. Miriam had wanted to plant flowers on the grave but it wasn’t the right time of year. He pulled some of the larger weeds away. The roots gave some resistance and came from the ground with a satisfying tear. He threw them to one side.

  Bringing himself upright he stretched his back. The tendons and muscles expanded and released. He closed his eyes and thought, as he did so often, about what would happen if he became ill; what he would become, and what he would do to the family he was supposed to be protecting. He looked at the house through the jagged frames of the barbed wire and pictured them all in there: sleeping, safe.

  Joseph wished that Miriam’s mother wouldn’t use as much butter as she did. When he went back into the house there she was, starting breakfast, leaning over the butter and shovelling it from its tray as always. It wouldn’t last for ever and supplies in the supermarkets, the only stores that remained open following the first great purge, were
diminishing with every visit. Why couldn’t she understand that?

  ‘Morning, Joseph,’ she said, with that chirpy jocularity of hers.

  ‘Morning.’ He went to leave the kitchen.

  ‘How are you today?’

  He stopped. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Come and sit down. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  Joseph turned reluctantly back into the room and sat at the table. Crescents of dirt lined his fingernails. He curled his fingertips into his palms.

  ‘Is it cold outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Spring will be here soon.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She brought Joseph his tea and a piece of toast, this one unbuttered.

  ‘The planets haven’t stopped turning,’ she said. ‘It’ll get warmer soon.’

  He sipped his tea. The heat scalded the surface of his tongue and he winced. He had never liked tea without milk but there wasn’t enough of the powdered stuff to go round.

  The old woman sat opposite him. He looked into his cup, feeling her eyes on him.

  ‘So this is the house you grew up in?’

  He nodded. He didn’t want this conversation. He knew what she was angling for – her interrogation techniques were not subtle. Soon she would ask again how he was, but with more force, as if the question had a deeper meaning. Joseph didn’t want to dredge up old memories. Or at least, he didn’t want to talk about them.

  ‘I was amazed how clean the place was when we got here. Your father kept the house well after your mother died.’

  ‘He liked to keep things tidy.’

  ‘Not like my husband. Always so messy, he was.’

  Joseph smiled wanly.

  ‘How are you, Joseph?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He couldn’t understand why she kept pushing him like this.

  ‘We’re worried about you.’

  He took a bite from his toast and sank down into his seat. ‘Why?’ he said, his mouth deliberately full.

  She paused. She and Miriam both did this. They left pauses where there should be words, waiting awkwardly for them to be filled.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Don’t you want to talk about your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It might make you feel better.’

  ‘It won’t. The way I feel has nothing to do with my father. He died. He’s the lucky one.’

  He could sense the shock in her. He wished that people wouldn’t be so shocked by the things he said. They were always nothing more than true.

  ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He dropped the toast on to his plate. ‘All I want to focus on is getting things set up here and making you all safe.’

  ‘And we appreciate it; we do. But you’ve got to take time for yourself as well. Miri told me not to say anything to you but I think it’s important.’

  He didn’t like the fact they had been talking about him when he wasn’t there.

  ‘I just don’t feel the need to talk about things. I’m not like you and Miriam, you understand? Talking about things doesn’t help me. It might work for you, but not me.’

  ‘If you bottle it up—’

  ‘Look. Talking about it is only going to slow things down.’ He sighed. ‘We don’t know what is going to happen up here. We don’t know for how long we’ll have to wait for the disease to go away. Maybe it won’t ever go away. Maybe it’ll come here.’

  Miriam’s mother blanched at the suggestion.

  ‘Maybe I won’t be here to help you. If I get ill . . .’

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

  Her eyes turned into triangles, creased heavily at the edges. Joseph wished he could hold his tongue, say things less harshly. He didn’t mean to scare the old woman.

  ‘This is a race against time,’ he said. ‘That’s how I see it. I know you and Miri don’t agree and you think I’m being too cautious but it’s safer this way. So thinking about my father is not going to help.’

  ‘But it’s affecting you.’

  ‘Please. How do you know what I’m feeling?’

  Miriam’s mother lowered her voice. ‘What about his bedroom?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We can’t keep the sleeping arrangements as they are for ever. You know we need more space.’

  ‘It might not be for ever.’ He smiled at her cynically.

  ‘Joseph. You know, it might make you feel bet—’

  ‘We’ll leave the sleeping arrangements as they are. Can you give me that much? Just for now?’

  He was getting fed up with her persistence.

  She regained herself.

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled, but with sadness. ‘You take as much time as you need.’

  It rained for three days. It came down in great, gusting swarms. It shook the windows in their frames. It sluiced down from the guttering like waterfalls in a rain forest.

  Joseph went into the cellar and took out two large recycling bins made of thick, black plastic. In the rain he sank them into the soil of the back garden until they were half buried. They would work as fresh water collectors. Miriam had smiled, as usual, because she still didn’t understand, and for a moment Joseph was glad of it. Something was coming back to her, a lightness of energy that she had had when he first met her. She was laughing more and making jokes. The shadow of her grief was loosening. Things were going well. There were still dark moments, but she was getting better.

  On the third night the rain stopped and the clouds drew up into the ether. The moon and the stars dazzled and what water had fallen was collected into a few bottles, the whole family working as a team, together.

  When they woke up the morning after the rainstorm the ground was coated in the dull silver of a thick frost. Joseph and Miriam stood over the soil. Thin spikes of crystalline ice criss-crossed the ground; the green shoots that had sprouted from the soil were encased in it. The ground crunched beneath their feet. Joseph held his palm an inch above the garden and felt the cold radiating upwards into his skin.

  ‘Do you think they’re dead?’ she said.

  Steam rose from their mouths as they breathed. The air was freezing and glacier fresh.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. The young ones can’t survive this.’ He stood and looked at Miriam. Her body had deflated. ‘Not that I know much about gardening,’ he said.

  Miriam’s head and shoulders slumped.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded but was upset. ‘It’s not fair, is it? What’s the point? Why kill our plants?’

  He considered opening his arms and hugging her. It would not have been inappropriate. He wanted to do it, but he stayed where he was. He maintained the yard of space that separated them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll replant. We’ll start again, OK?’

  Miriam folded her arms and brought her thumb to her mouth.

  ‘It’ll be OK, Miri.’

  She said nothing and stared at the ruined garden.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. He felt pathetic. ‘I’m going to go back inside.’

  He walked past her and when he did it felt like an act of abandonment. He wished he had done something more, something to show that he knew.

  He reached the back door to the house that led into the conservatory, then turned back to the garden. Miriam was standing at the far wall, looking out over the fields. Joseph felt the distance between them. She did so many things he didn’t understand. He stared at her back. She was leaning on the wall in the same way she always did – her arms folded in front of her and resting on the top of the stone, her head placed carefully between two curls of barbed wire. She was looking at Dora’s grave again.

  The children were usually in bed by ten. That was one thing that time still held power over. The women would go to bed soon after the children, leaving Joseph alone to lock the doors.

  He wanted to make shutters to cover the windows but ha
d not had time. There were just so many things to do. He had some sheets of metal he could use but he needed frames and sturdy hinges to fit them on to. Metal was best because nobody could set fire to them. There was a large hardware store a few miles away that had remained open that he wanted to visit.

  When he reached the top of the stairs that night he went past his bedroom door and further along the landing. The door to his father’s bedroom had been closed since the day they arrived. On that day Joseph went in there to make sure that it was tidy, had stared from the window out over the sea, and had closed the door behind him.

  It was still his father’s bedroom. Allowing people to sleep in his bed was something Joseph was not ready for. He would allow it, soon, but not yet.

  He closed his hand around the cold metal of the handle and pushed his head inside. The lower edge of the door was too low and dragged on the carpet. A square of moonbeams lay on the floor, shining in from the side window that looked out towards the village in the east. The room was so quiet and so still. The same recurrent memory flashed through his mind again, still fresh, still emotive, still connected to him: his father lying with dust all over his face, blood at his lips, like a clown. Small raindrops clicked against the window and Joseph watched them gather, one by one, lines against the night.

  Mary was fond of the rabbit burgers Joseph had made, and demanded more. She reminded Joseph of Henry. She had the same manner as him. She was clumsy and unintentionally funny, and had that same dreamy quality, as if she was never quite there, always away to some better, happier place. Edward had withdrawn and become quiet but Mary was the same as she had always been.