by Rhys Thomas
He lowered the gun and the two men looked at one another. In that moment Joseph felt a sudden connection with the man. Crowder seemed to sense it too. They had both survived this far. One day ago they had not even known of each other’s existence, one hour ago they had been trying to kill each other, but now, suddenly and irrationally, at the side of the road, everything had changed.
In the old world Crowder’s actions would have been unforgivable but now, with the gloom-laden dawn light and the freezing wind, it became clear that it was nothing more than the sheer will to survive, a will that burned equally fiercely inside his own body.
‘You’re letting me go.’
‘I’m . . .’ Joseph paused. ‘I’m not a bad man,’ he said.
Crowder put his arm up to block the light from the car. The wind intensified in the trees.
‘You’re letting me go.’ He was smiling at him. ‘Why are you letting me go?’
Joseph felt the wind on his face, through his hair. ‘What else can I do?’
‘You could kill me. You’re going to have to kill somebody eventually, Joseph, why not get it under your belt? It’ll be easier the next time you have to do it.’
He fixed his gaze on Joseph. Gone was the emaciated weakling. In its place stood a dark and tortured soul, too intelligent for what he had been through, too weak to do anything about it.
Joseph raised the shotgun.
‘That’s it,’ said Crowder, his eyes on the gun. ‘Put me out of my misery.’ He brought his eyes back up to Joseph’s. ‘This is your chance.’
Joseph took a step towards the car.
‘Don’t come back to the house. Find a hospital.’
Crowder did not answer. His body was intensely bright in the headlights, his head lowered at a slight angle as he watched Joseph go to the back of the car. Joseph opened the boot and took from it the sleeping bag, torch and bottle of water he had put in there. He placed them a few yards from Crowder, keeping the gun on him.
‘I’m giving you these,’ he said. ‘They’ll help you.’
Crowder looked at the items, then back at Joseph. ‘Thank you.’
The light was gaining the day, the eastern sky white at its apron, the trees and the road a dark pencil outline.
‘Promise me you won’t come back to the house.’
‘You’re going to tell your wife I’m dead, aren’t you?’
‘She’s not – yes. I have to.’
‘Why?’
‘I just do.’
Crowder collected the water and the torch in his arms. ‘So I can go now?’
Joseph hated that Crowder felt the need to ask permission. He did not like that power. Crowder turned and started to walk away.
‘Bye then,’ he said.
Joseph watched him walk down the deserted road into the darkness. He thought about shouting good luck, but he said nothing.
He stopped in the village on the way back. The old pub was closed. Large wooden boards had been nailed over the windows. He walked down the main street in the dark. The line of street lights had failed. He found his way along by the occasional light from a house, and from habit. He had walked along this street thousands of times.
He wondered how many people in the village were dead. His father would have known. He would have knocked on every door to see who was all right. Not Joseph though. He had not been to visit anybody since coming to Cornwall. He had told himself he didn’t care, that it was every man for himself.
A Siamese cat padded down the pavement on the other side of the road. He could see its white body through the gloom. It stopped and looked at him, its eyes gleaming in the dark.
By the time he got back to the house everybody was in bed. He parked the car in the garage and paused at the garden gate to listen to the sea.
He crept up to his bedroom and switched on the light. Crowder’s rucksack sat on the floor at the end of the bed. He opened it and looked inside. There was nothing in it apart from some dirty clothes and sheets, and some empty tins. Right at the bottom was a perfectly rounded pebble. In the front compartment he found a sharp piece of broken glass wrapped in a rag. That was the sum of Crowder’s life. There were no photographs, no books, no letters, nothing that told of a past. Those things had been discarded.
There was half a week of good weather. On the Sunday, Joseph had driven to an old industrial estate in search of wood. He wanted to board up the conservatory. The metal shutters for the windows were in place but the conservatory was still too exposed. When he was within half a mile of the industrial estate he had stopped the car. He knew a way in round the back and when he had got to the fence he had seen a line of cars. There were men there, and lots of them. He had watched them for a while. They wore black clothes, he noticed, and they had dogs, and guns, and were organized. They had gone methodically into each of the buildings, collecting things of use, before moving on to the next. Slowly, and with a low feeling of worry, Joseph had made his way back to the car.
Miriam had said nothing to him since that night, and he had said nothing to her. The incident with Crowder hung heavy in the air. It was the first Tuesday since they had come to the house that they had not waited until dark before descending into the cellar.
He woke late the next morning and looked at the clock at the side of his bed but the screen was blank. The red electronic numbers were not there. The electricity had failed at last. He wondered if it would come back or if it was the end of the energy. He saw the deserted power stations, sitting silent, in his head.
He got changed and went downstairs. Four faces stared up at him from the breakfast table. He crossed the room to the refrigerator and marked off the date on his calendar.
‘I’m going to go to the supermarket,’ he said, and left the room.
In the porch he pulled on his boots and walked round the house. When he reached Dora’s grave he stopped. The mud with which he had filled the hole was shot through with tufts of weed and grass. He closed his eyes and stood as still as he could for a moment. He listened for the sound of cars or aeroplanes, or any other human noise, but there was nothing apart from the wind and the sound of the sea.
He thought of those moments when he and Miriam had been standing in the hallway, debating whether or not Crowder would be allowed to stay. He remembered how the scent of her perfume had dislodged those feelings in his gut. The building fibres of healing had all but finished their work and now he had to unstitch those same fibres that he cherished so much.
Miriam was waiting for him in the garage. Scant light filtered in through the small square windows above the door.
‘What are you doing?’ he said to her.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘What for?’
She climbed into the passenger seat without answering him. They pulled out of the garage and followed the roads down which Joseph had driven with Crowder four nights before. In the metal light of the morning the landscape looked different to how it had then. The bright green of the summer made his body feel lighter and cooler.
‘What did you do to him?’ she said.
Joseph checked his wing mirror and said nothing.
‘Did you kill him?’
He still didn’t answer.
‘So you’re not going to say?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘I’d like to know if my children are sleeping in the same house as a murderer.’
He glanced across to her. ‘And what if they are?’ She folded her arms and placed her forehead on the side window. ‘You think Crowder wouldn’t have killed you? He had unlocked the shotgun for Christ’s sake. He had to go. So I got rid of him.’
‘Good for you.’
‘You should be thanking me.’ He drove in silence for a moment, the tension building. ‘Fucking hell,’ he snapped. ‘How can you be so blinkered?’
‘I don’t know,’ she screamed. She sat up in the seat suddenly. ‘I don’t know what we should have done, OK?’ She began to cry.
&n
bsp; Joseph kept his eyes on the road. His mind was becoming foggy. All he had to do was tell Miriam he had let Crowder go. He just had to tell her the truth. But he couldn’t. He had to see this through.
‘Why are you religious?’ he said, hating himself inwardly for saying it. He turned his head to her, taking his eyes off the road.
‘What?’
‘Why are you religious? Still, I mean? There’s clearly no God. You must see that now. Your husband’s dead, your life has fallen apart, the whole fucking world is descending into shit, you’re being protected by a man you hate—’
‘Why are you—’
‘God would never allow something like this to happen.’
‘Please stop it, Joseph.’
‘I’m just interested, that’s all. In how you could continue believing something when it is so crushingly obvious it’s not true.’
She had stopped crying now. He felt her eyes on him.
‘If you want to have this conversation, then come on, let’s have it. You’ve been waiting long enough.’ She folded her arms.
‘Well, go on then. Tell me.’
The engine pitched down as Joseph rounded a bend in the lanes.
‘You take the leap of faith,’ she said calmly.
‘But it’s wrong.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s up to me to make that choice. It has nothing to do with you. I suppose you’re going to tell me that religion causes wars now.’
‘Well, doesn’t it?’
‘No, it doesn’t. People cause the bad things in the world, Joseph; people who are sure of themselves and want everyone else to think like them. People like you.’
He forced himself to carry on. ‘Your God is a lie,’ he said. ‘Everything you have based your life around is fake. I want you to admit it.’
‘I won’t admit it. You don’t know.’
‘Everyone knows it.’
She laughed. ‘No they don’t. You just don’t get it. You think you’re this beacon of intellect and you’re not. You don’t understand people, Joseph, and because of that you understand nothing. What I don’t understand is why you’re so down on people who want to be happy.’
‘You don’t need God to be happy.’
‘It has nothing to do with you how people find happiness,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you understand that? I want to have faith in me, and I don’t push it outwards. It just sits in me and makes me happy – why do you want to take that away?’
‘Because it’s fake.’
‘So what are you saying? That people should just abandon hope?’
‘Hope has nothing to do with it.’
‘Of course it does. It all comes from the same place.’
He clutched the wheel firmly. The car slowed and they turned into the supermarket car park. There were three large army trucks parked near the entrance and lots of armed guards standing outside. None of them wore gas masks or surgical masks as they had when the illness first broke out. As they pulled up two of the trucks chugged to life and drove away.
‘It’s not me who’s the idiot,’ she said as she unclipped her seatbelt and let it slide up across her torso. ‘You’re the idiot, Joseph. You always were.’
The car park was half empty. The cloudy sky was beginning to clear, leaving stark patches of blue beyond the giant steel frame of the supermarket entrance. They parked as close to the building as they could get. Joseph looked out of the windscreen at the guards standing at the entrance. They were clean shaven and smart in their uniforms.
‘Look at that,’ he said.
She leaned forward but couldn’t see anything.
‘The lights are on inside. They still have power.’
They climbed out of the car and approached the doors. A thin road ran along the front of the store. When they were halfway across it one of the guards walked towards them, a chunky-looking sub-machinegun slung over his shoulder.
‘Good morning,’ he said, cheerily, stopping in front of them. He was an officer. ‘The budget has changed,’ he said.
‘Changed?’
‘It’s a twenty-pound limit now.’
He smiled at them when he said it, trying to make the news easier to digest.
‘Twenty pounds?’ Miriam glanced at Joseph. ‘But that’s not enough.’
The officer shrugged.
‘The orders came through yesterday, I’m afraid. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the same for everyone.’
Joseph felt the slow creep of panic. ‘How can we live on that?’
‘Prices are still frozen.’
At the store entrance somebody walked out carrying two bags of shopping, hurrying towards his car.
‘Is there any news?’ asked Miriam. ‘Anything about a cure yet?’
The officer laughed. ‘If there is, they ain’t told me about it.’
Joseph tried to guess if the officer was older than him. His hair was grey above the ears and his skin was creased at the eyes.
‘Why are there so many guards?’
‘Some markets have been forced to close so there’re extra men available.’ There was a falseness in his voice. But he left his statement at that. ‘Just go in, get your stuff and get out. That’s your best bet.’ He smiled again. ‘Before everything runs out.’
Miriam led Joseph into the store. The shelves were almost empty. People wandered slowly up and down the aisles, checking prices, dropping what items they could find into trolleys.
They had visited the supermarket only a few times in the last few months but it had never been like this. The army had supervised how much people bought, obeying the ration orders that had been handed down from the top. It had been a quick fix, a decision made fast, that people’s shopping should be rationed through monetary values ahead of goods. Unprecedented events called for unprecedented responses; that was what they said. The people could choose what they wanted and all prices were frozen. Supplies had been channelled into these central hubs instead of being shipped to smaller stores with less capacity to protect the goods, and that system of rationing had always kept the shelves stocked. They had never been empty like this.
They took a trolley and pushed on through the store, saying little, picking items they had to have. They came to each aisle and their silent desperation grew. There was no milk, no eggs, only rotting fruit and vegetables nobody else wanted. There were still bags of sugar and flour, which they put into the trolley. Some aisles remained filled with electrical goods, or toys, or camping gear; things people no longer needed. They found some rice and some pasta. And some boxes of instant mashed potato. There was no bottled water left.
The store was set up like a ribcage – bones lined up off the central spine that ran adjacent to the front windows.
The bread aisle was towards the back of the store, far away from the entrance. As Miriam and Joseph approached it they heard somebody shouting. There were people gathered there and they were arguing.
Joseph stopped. He knew it would be best to leave the trolley where it was, to get out of there. He had seen how rapidly situations like this could escalate.
‘We have to stay here,’ said Miriam, reading his thoughts. ‘We don’t know how much longer this place will stay open.’
‘I know.’ They kept their voices low. ‘Shall we take what we have and pay?’
‘But what about the bread?’
‘I don’t know if going up there is a good idea,’ he whispered.
‘But we need bread.’
They were looking at two men, both standing behind trolleys. They were facing in the same direction, into the bread aisle, trying to reason with somebody. One of the men was small and timid whilst the other was large, bald and threatening. He pointed at whoever it was he was speaking to with sharp, thrusting jabs of his finger.
‘I don’t care how many mouths you have to feed, you can’t take all that.’
Joseph turned to Miriam. She nodded, and they went forward.
They reached the two men and stopped. An ob
ese woman was standing in front of a row of empty shelves. Her trolley was filled with loaves of bread. Next to her was her husband, rake thin with a small head and dead eyes. He was ill. He had it.
‘We’re not breaking any rules. We’re under twenty quid. We can buy what we want.’
‘But you’ve not left any for anybody else,’ said the timid-looking man.
Behind the obese woman and her husband were another group of people. Joseph counted nine loaves in the woman’s trolley and felt the rising tide of anger in his body.
‘Why don’t you give everyone with a trolley a loaf?’ he said. ‘And you have the rest.’
‘Stay out of this, mate,’ said the large man.
He looked at Joseph. The top of his bald head shone in the overhead lights.
‘I’m just saying that would be a fair deal.’
‘Why should you get some? You’ve only just got here.’
‘Nobody’s getting any,’ argued the woman, in a shrill voice. Her hair was greasy and she was ungroomed. ‘We’re not doing anything wrong.’
Joseph heard approaching footsteps behind him. Three soldiers were heading quickly their way. The large man saw them and quickly pushed his trolley forward. It slammed into the front of the trolley filled with bread. He rushed round to the side and grabbed two loaves for himself.
The woman lunged to reclaim them. Her husband watched but did nothing. Joseph saw somebody sneak along the lines of shelves behind the back of the obese woman and surreptitiously take a loaf. It was a small, young woman in a thick, fashionable jacket of bright red. She looked at Joseph and he returned her stare. She was ashamed and turned away, but kept the bread.
‘Hey,’ called one of the soldiers, from behind them.
And then the whole dynamic shifted. The floor moved beneath him and he fell. There was a huge boom and the shelves rattled, lurched forward and spilled their contents on to the floor. The overhanging lights rocked like swings in a playground. Miriam clattered into his back.
His ears were ringing. The sound of people screaming came from somewhere within the store.
‘What was that?’
