On the Third Day

by Rhys Thomas

  He went to Miriam’s bedroom and knocked at her door. She was standing at the foot of the bed in a white bathrobe, drying her hair with a towel.

  ‘Oh,’ she said when she saw Joseph. She pulled the gown self-consciously closer around her chest.

  Joseph pretended not to notice, that it was nothing, meant nothing.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’

  ‘Of course.’ She sat down on the bed and covered her knees by throwing her towel casually across them. The action drew Joseph’s eyes. Her knees were still dark underneath the skin, but the scabs were all but healed. ‘What is it?’

  She looked pretty with wet hair. It made her look younger. Her ears poked out between two clumped deltas. Joseph felt his heart deepen in its beat.

  ‘I want to teach Edward how to use the air rifles.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘They’re harmless, Miriam. They can’t hurt people. I just want to show him how to shoot rabbits.’

  He was frustrated by her reluctance towards guns. It was unreasonable.

  ‘I just don’t want him using guns.’

  Joseph sighed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if I get ill? What then?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We’re safe up here.’

  ‘No we’re not,’ he said, quickly. ‘People come up here all the time. You mustn’t think we’re safe. Not ever.’

  ‘But we haven’t seen anybody who’s been ill for weeks. We can’t catch it all the way up here.’

  Joseph shook his head. ‘Miriam, please, let me teach him.’

  ‘Why can’t you teach me instead?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  They looked at one another for an uncertain moment.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘If you really want to do it, then you can teach me.’

  A few drops of rain tapped against the window. Their heads turned quickly towards the noise, to the droplets running down the pane.

  ‘Why don’t I teach both of you?’

  ‘Joseph, I’m not comfortable with that,’ she said quickly.

  It was only an air rifle. If he had his way he would teach Edward how to fire the shotguns.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. It could wait. As long as somebody else could use the gun he was happy. He doubted that Miriam would actually pull the trigger to kill an animal, but if she knew what to do, how to load, fire, reload, then when the time came she would be forced to act. He breathed in deeply. ‘There’s something else I want to ask you.’

  Bulbs of water were forming at the ends of her hair and dropping on to her bathrobe.

  ‘You won’t agree immediately but I want you to follow my wishes,’ he said slowly.

  Her forehead creased. ‘Joseph, what are you talking about?’

  He crouched down so that he was looking up into her eyes. ‘If it does happen, if I get . . . it . . . I want you to put me in the car and drive me away.’

  She laughed nervously. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I’m being serious. Miri, you know what they’re saying about the sort of people who become violent when they’re infected.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘If I get ill I’m dead anyway. You don’t have to worry about me. It’s what I want you to do.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘I’m afraid of what I might become,’ he said plainly. ‘Promise me you’ll think about it.’

  Miriam did not react. She stared at the wall, past Joseph’s shoulder.

  ‘Miriam.’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘Promise me you’ll think about it.’

  ‘I won’t do it, Joseph. Never.’

  ‘I know it’s hard, especially for you, but you have to be practical.’

  ‘Practical?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Why are you so sure you’ll become violent?’

  ‘Do you not agree with me?’

  ‘No. I don’t. Jesus, why are always so down on yourself ?’

  He thought for a moment she might have been telling the truth. Maybe she really did see something in him that he could not see himself. She seemed so categorical. It was even moving, despite the fact that she was wrong. But that was just who she was, the way she saw things.

  ‘You can’t take the risk.’

  ‘You’re a good man.’

  ‘No I’m not, Miri,’ he said, surprising himself with his forthrightness. He recomposed himself. ‘What I mean is, there’s no such thing as good and bad with this. There’s only truth and non-truth. These people who turn, they don’t do it through choice – they just are what they are. Don’t you see that?’

  ‘You are good, Joseph. You’re protecting us. But you mustn’t ask me to do this again. It’s not fair.’

  ‘If I’m protecting you then this is part of that protection.’

  She wasn’t listening to him. He needed to get through to her that he would never, ever harm her as he was but that if he was changed then he could not make such an assurance. He had seen the violence it provoked in people and he felt it in him, buried deep inside. She had to understand.

  ‘Henry was right to lose contact with me,’ he said.

  She shifted uncomfortably. ‘That was a completely different thing, and you know it. Henry didn’t think you were evil – Christ. It was you that lost contact with him, not the other way round.’

  ‘It wasn’t. He saw me, Miri.’ He prodded his hand to his chest.

  ‘Stop talking like this. It’s making me uncomfortable.’

  ‘So promise me you’ll think about it.’

  ‘No.’

  Why wouldn’t she listen? ‘You’re impossible.’

  Miriam stood up from the bed and went over to the dressing table. She picked up a hair brush and swept it through her wet hair. Their eyes met in the mirror.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive you away and abandon you if you promise to do the same for me.’

  Joseph laughed. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’

  She raised her eyebrows and moved her body between Joseph and the mirror so that he could no longer see her face.

  ‘Then this conversation is over.’

  The rain started again and the sky darkened. The clouds sank towards the sea like a jagged, bloated underbelly. In some places it fell in black funnels towards the water; in other places patches of light caught the cloud, illuminating from within, telling of texture dense and thick, wild and massive.

  Miriam was sitting in Henry’s father’s favourite chair. It was a comfortable old thing, out of keeping with the rest of the room, but a piece of furniture the old man had refused to discard as the various redecoration projects of his wife came and went.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have replanted so soon,’ she said, looking at the rain.

  Joseph was tired. He nursed his tea in his hands.

  They watched the evening news alone; they did not allow the children to watch it any more because it frightened them, Edward particularly, as he was more aware than Mary.

  There was a new presenter today, an unfamiliar face. She seemed too young. The first report carried pictures of New York, but not the New York Joseph remembered. There was a lot of litter in the streets, and few people. Many of the buildings were charred or sooty. There were cars and familiar yellow taxi cabs destroyed by arson. But at least the satellites were working – how else could they have broadcast the pictures? thought Joseph. At least there was still some level of connection between the continents. It was reassuring.

  American cities had not been able to cope with the disaster – that was what this news report was about. Many had been deserted. Only scavengers and the very rich remained. The scavengers and looters moved from house to house, building to building, taking what had been left behind. The military were still in the cities but they were useless with no people to shepherd.

  A po-faced reporter stood in front of a railing
behind which was a large, open park. He said that only the most secure buildings were still occupied, those with twenty-four-hour security. The very rich stayed where they were. Vans would bring cargoes of food. The screen showed an electronic gate roll back to allow a truck access. The reporter clutched his microphone as he spoke about a death toll of seventy million and about a superpower falling into ruins; he called it a labouring relic.

  ‘You’d think they’d try and make the news a little more lighthearted,’ said Miriam, chirpily.

  She had tied her hair back and Joseph looked at her long neck.

  ‘The media have become too strong. They’ll only tell the truth.’ He paused. ‘It’s better this way. At least we know what’s happening. At least the government can’t tell us lies to try and make us feel better.’

  ‘So you think it’s more important to tell the truth than to keep people’s hopes up.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said firmly, without hesitation, as if this thought had occurred to him often and he had arrived at a final conclusion long ago. ‘Always. Truth first.’

  The rain broke and Joseph wanted to go to the hardware store. The roads were soaked. They had to drive along several narrow lanes. High hedgerows towered either side leaving only a thin strip of sky. Run-off from the rain gushed in fast rivulets at the sides of the patchwork concrete.

  ‘I wonder how quickly these hedges will overgrow if nobody cuts them,’ said Miriam.

  Her mood had lightened incrementally as each week passed. The horrors of London, it seemed to him, had been all but crushed by her positive nature. He was surprised at how light-hearted she could be. It was not that she didn’t consider wide-reaching ideas like the end of the world and how society would re-order itself were this disaster ever to relent; it was more that she didn’t seem to care as much as him. She preferred to concentrate on smaller, more personal things like making sure her kids were having fun, or stroking Pele’s belly, or just poking fun at his seriousness.

  She was one of those people he had always resented, accidentally selfish and unthinking, but he was beginning to realize that if everybody was like her then he wouldn’t have to worry half as much as he did about how the future would be.

  There were a few cars in the car park when they arrived.

  ‘I can’t believe this place is still open.’

  She turned the key and the engine stopped. She looked at him and smiled casually, and realized he was looking at her strangely.

  ‘What?’

  Joseph shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  Some shops were still open – the larger chains. The army had helped keep them open. It was easier to control a small space than a whole city. Supplies still got through, under armed guard, and spending was limited. That was the system they had devised: buy as much bread as you want, as long as you stay beneath your spending quota.

  But there were no army vehicles outside the hardware store. It had stayed alive on its own. Joseph climbed out of the car and went inside and Miriam watched from behind the steering wheel. She adjusted her mirrors and found herself checking that nobody was creeping along the side of the car.

  A car pulled up in the space directly adjacent to hers. A man. He was messing with something in the passenger seat. He pushed his door open and climbed out of his car. He was holding something inside a large, polythene carrier bag. It looked heavy. It stretched the base of the bag, pushed out at the edges. She watched him go inside and then started the car engine. She eased slowly forward. The density in her body had returned. The seatbelt over her shoulder cut into her chest. She rolled the car up to the main entrance. She could see inside the store. It was startling in its ordinariness. She pictured it from above, people moving slowly along the aisles, unseen.

  There was nobody in sight. In front of her were the lines of trolleys, all stacked neatly, one leading into the next. More than anything she wanted to sound the horn, to get Joseph out of there. She could tell that something was going to go wrong. She could feel it. The new sense was firing.

  Joseph could feel the human presence behind him. He kept walking until he reached the end of the aisle, passing lines of screwdrivers hanging on rails. Turning the corner he quickened his step. He pushed his trolley past two aisles and ducked left, out of sight. He slowed and listened.

  The aisle was filled with pots of paint, the cylindrical tins gleaming under the artificial lights. He stopped. He was the only person on the aisle. His mind registered the colours at its edges: magnolia, orchid, calico. He waited for thirty seconds but nobody came. He turned to continue and when he looked up he saw two large men walking towards him.

  Slowly, he turned his trolley round and headed back the way he had come.

  The store was so empty. The absence of other humans made the place cavernous and alien. He looked about him for something he could use as a weapon. If the two men came too close he wanted to be ready. He had seen some hammers a few aisles over. He brought his trolley round, painfully conscious of his shoes clicking loudly on the cheap, tiled floor. He found the hammers. He stopped his trolley and then saw him, ahead. Another man. He was carrying something inside a carrier bag. Their eyes met and the stare was held.

  Joseph could sense the other men now, coming up behind him. He lowered his head and listened. They were close. Slowly, he lifted his arm. His fingers closed around the thin handle of one of the hammers on the wall. Its head was small but one of its tines tapered away to a dull, dense point.

  He turned and looked at the two men coming his way. They did not seem ill, but being ill was not the only thing that caused violence. Not in this new world. Not even in the old. When they saw him looking at them they stopped. Everybody was stationary; four men, all standing still, all aware of the danger in the strangers around them. Joseph readied himself.

  Back and forth he brought his head, watching the two men on one side and the man carrying the bag on the other. The store was silent, a faint hum of lights but nothing more. The scent of paint hung in the air.

  And then, on both sides, movement. Joseph kept his head low,his ears pricked. He brought his head up, looked up and down at them from the tops of his eyes. They were moving backwards, slowly, cautiously. He realized something. They were backing off from him, easing away. They were scared of him. He felt the weight of the hammer in his hands, his grip tight. The men receded from his peripheral vision, slowly. He watched them go until, at last, he was standing alone in the aisle, his chest heaving. His fingers loosened their grip and he closed his eyes. He was the one to be feared. He thought of the woman in the car outside, waiting for him. He was the one to be feared.

  She kept checking the rear-view mirror. He could sense the same tension in her that was in him. The sound of the road rolling beneath the wheels was loud.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think the people back there were dangerous.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She gripped the steering wheel. ‘I can’t believe how untrusting I’ve become. I don’t mean to be. It’s just hard, you know?’

  They drove between the tall hedgerows. The car came to a bend. It arrived too quickly and Miriam was driving too fast. The wheels lost traction, the balance of the car toppled and the tyres skidded on to the narrow grass embankment. Joseph held his breath. Miriam brought the wheel hard round and slammed on the brakes. The vehicle righted itself and they rejoined the rough road.

  ‘Shit.’

  Her voice wavered. She hit the wheel with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ he said.

  She breathed heavily, trying to get herself under control.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice faltered. ‘You think everything’s going OK, and then . . . it’s just small things. Christ, I’m a wreck.’ She laughed.

  Joseph said nothing. He glanced across to her and wondered how often the thought of Henry passed through her head. Perhaps he was always there, in the back of her mind, like a dead weight.

  The hedgerows gave outwards and the road widened.
It was straight here. Forest grew on either side. Tall sycamores, the first vivid green shoots of spring flicking from their branches, towered over them and receded into the distance. Joseph looked into the trees. Maybe he could come here one day. It might be a good place to hide. He had played in these trees as a kid, ridden his bike out there in the woods and spent the days exploring.

  It was still bright outside when they got back to the house. The days were getting longer. Edward and Mary were playing on the grassland, throwing a tennis ball over Pele.

  Joseph looked at them, and looked at Miriam. A complex set of thoughts channelled themselves into the front of his mind. She was beginning to trust him. He could sense it, in the same way that he could see her coming out of her grief. She was never going to let him go.

  Edward threw the ball in a high arc. Mary flailed her arms hopelessly in the air as the ball curled over her head and bounced gently on the soft grass. Joseph felt a steady stream of warmth grow up in his stomach. He knew what it was. It was happiness. His body felt relaxed as Mary ran to fetch the ball, her little legs circling fast and silent beneath her.

  The world was breathing colours back into the trees and plants. It was nearly June and the sky was lighter, the afternoons warmer and the days longer. Today the sun caught the sea and turned it glaring white. Joseph and Miriam lay side by side on the cliff top, the sun warm on their backs. Joseph felt peaceful.

  ‘So this is what you do,’ he said. He lifted the gun off the towel he had used to keep the dust from getting to it. ‘You have to cock it. You press this button here, that’s called the “safety”, and then hold the stock here, and pull the barrel down like this until it clicks.’

  He lifted the gun up and handed it to Miriam.

  ‘So I press this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then pull this down?’ She grasped the barrel halfway along and pulled. ‘It’s quite tough.’