by Rhys Thomas
‘I don’t know but if they don’t want us going up there then there must be something, surely.’
‘Maybe they just want to give the people up there some space.’
‘Yeah? So why wouldn’t they let you in yesterday? When they took that man there?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Charlie,’ a voice called.
Emily and Charlie looked at one another.
‘Come on, comrade. Time for work.’
Charlie grinned. He lowered his voice and said in a thick cod-Scottish accent to Emily, ‘Och, man, will ya nae leave me alone for the love of William Wallace!’
Emily laughed.
Emily had been sent to work in a place called the Hall of Records. It was a static caravan lined with shelves of paper documents. There were credit card bills, phone bills, medical appointments, sales letters, all the types of correspondence that might have fallen through any typical letterbox.
The job of the women who worked there was to file the documents alphabetically according to surname. The letters came from the salvages the men went on. The documents were kept for posterity, according to the woman in charge; to retain a semblance of what humanity once was. She liked the work, she told Charlie. She had worked in offices before, during her summer holidays, and it wasn’t that different. But Charlie knew that it was. Emily would come back from work tired and quiet, as if the shadows of the people she filed away every day were getting into her soul, darkening it.
In the evenings, meals were collected from a tent in the main car park. You could choose to eat at the tent on the large tables that had been brought in, or you could take it away with you. Vitamin tablets were taken with every meal.
Because the population levels had dropped to such an extent, they lacked for little in terms of utilities. Vans, cabins, tents, tables, hardware – all were in plentiful supply. Petrol was the rarest commodity but McAvennie had the foresight to make a store of it. It was collected in large canisters and stored in a brick structure they had made themselves at the far wall of the car park, away from the wire fences. The petrol was guarded at all times.
As winter settled into its machinations the temperatures dropped. Charlie spent the first few weeks working in the woods. They cut the firewood and loaded it on to the back of the truck and nobody ever mentioned the man who had died that day. Every time he passed the old house at the top of the hill Charlie would think of the two women and two children inside.
Sometimes word would spread around the camp that a salvage team had been sent but had not come back. But they always came back in the end. Because of the nature of the salvages, the teams would have to spread further afield. This meant they spent progressively longer away from the camp with each journey.
Rumours of raiders and marauders had gained momentum. The main arterial roads of the country, the motorways and A roads, were seen as off limits. Travelling along them was not safe any more. When new people arrived at the camp, increasingly they came with tales of being attacked, or having seen the aftermath of a violent incident. Sometimes they had even seen human remains at the sides of roads. The people at the camp listened to the stories. They had no connection now with the outside world and so the only news was hearsay and whisperings. The fragility of the knowledge was in itself enough to unnerve them; it described to them just how cut off they really were. Inversely, it made the safe running of the camp an ever more precious thing to preserve.
At the end of each day Charlie and Emily would return to the cold of the campervan. They had taped cardboard over all but one of the windows, following the advice of one of the women who worked with Emily. It made little difference – it was still freezing in their flimsy husk. They slept in their clothes and when they woke in the mornings they would find that some parts of their bodies were warm and other parts ice cold.
At some point Charlie stopped showering in the mornings. The showers in the car park were too hard a prospect to confront in the cold dawns and so he started going to work unwashed. He had always been meticulously clean but his body was so weary on waking that the long walk to the bottom of the slope was too much. His mind was tired. The food they ate was enough but no more than that.
They had seen McAvennie speak on the beach on several occasions and now his words resonated far more deeply than they had on the first night at the camp. His reassurances penetrated further now that their bodies were weak. Emily admitted to having felt it but said it was because their minds were tired, more malleable, she said. Charlie was not so sure. He saw it more like an alignment. They were a part of something. They belonged to something again. With the old world gone, they had found a new place. And this time he knew how important it was to hold on to it. He felt in his fellow refugees the same will. They were tired, but they were aligned.
The children and their mother waited in the cellar in silence. They were sitting on the sofa beneath the small, thin window – Miriam in the middle, one child on either side. She had her arm around each of them and the feelings in her stomach made her think that she shouldn’t be doing this. But it was best to hide in the cellar. People were not to be trusted. In the darkness they waited until the door creaked open at the top of the stairs and the call came.
‘It’s OK. You can come up.’
Miriam expelled the air that had been waiting in her lungs. They rose to their feet and went upstairs.
‘Who was it?’ she said. She looked down the hallway. They weren’t alone. Two figures, a boy and a girl, were standing there. They held in their hands plastic carrier bags. Miriam recognized them immediately.
‘We have guests,’ Miriam’s mother said happily.
The boy stepped forwards.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’
‘I’ve come past this house quite a lot since we moved to the camp, and I’ve always wanted to call in, but I’ve always been with my colleagues’ – he noticed Emily smirk when he said the word colleague – ‘so we couldn’t stop.’
‘Was the potato soup really that good?’ Miriam’s mother said, with a smile.
Her voice had become high-pitched with the excitement of entertaining guests. Even if the guests had supplied all the food. They had brought with them something near a feast: two cooked chickens, potatoes, carrots, peas, a parsnip. But the pièce de résistance was a dry packet mix of coq au vin sauce. Added to this were some freshly baked loaves and for dessert they had brought a large bar of chocolate. They cooked the vegetables, prepared the sauce and were now sitting around the dining table, illuminated by candles.
Charlie laughed. ‘I don’t know. You were the first people we met when we got here. Since things started looking up.’
‘Looking up?’ said Miriam. She failed to see how the situation could have improved.
Charlie took the serving spoon and dropped some peas on to his plate. She noticed he had rings around his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping.
‘I know it might sound weird, but yeah, things are looking up I’d say. It was really strange when we first got there but you get used to it. It’s a bit . . . different.’
‘Different?’ Miriam leaned over the table on her elbows, her empty wine glass dangling over her plate. A few glasses of wine wouldn’t hurt.
‘The people there are just so . . . nice.’
He turned to Emily, who nodded her agreement.
‘It’s better than we’d hoped for,’ she said.
‘But it’s funny,’ Charlie went on. ‘I got there and I thought it was safe because there were people there. It was such a shock when we saw that people are still—’ Charlie stopped. Their children were there. ‘You know, getting the s-a-d-n-e-s-s.’
Edward looked at his mother and made a funny face as if to say, does this person really not realize how old I am? Charlie looked down at his food.
‘But I guess that just is what it is.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, you certainly don’t
seem to be lacking for food down there. My goodness, look at this,’ said Miriam’s mother.
‘This is all from George. We don’t normally eat as well as this, but it’s not bad down there.’
‘Who’s George?’ asked Miriam.
‘I guess he’s the leader. Big bald chap? Scottish?’
Miriam nodded. Him.
‘So why has he given us all this food?’
‘It’s supposed to be a gesture,’ Emily said. ‘He told us to bring it. He wanted to let you know you have nothing to worry about from us.’
Miriam looked at the girl. She spoke with the same faint confidence she herself had cultivated as a young woman. Her dark complexion and chestnut brown hair were different but she didn’t look unlike Dora. She had the same small, pointed nose and dark eyes.
‘That’s very kind.’
Miriam’s mother smiled at Emily, little orange dots flickering in her eyes. Miriam said nothing. She watched the girl glance across nervously to her boyfriend.
‘To tell the truth,’ said Emily. And then she looked directly at Miriam. ‘He was wondering if you wouldn’t feel safer at the camp.’
The air in the room changed as soon as she said it. Miriam felt herself seize.
‘We’re fine up here, thanks,’ she answered slowly, trying to keep herself calm.
Charlie held up his hand. ‘What he means is that you might feel exposed up here on your own.’
Miriam nodded and leaned in. She needed to make herself clear.
‘I know you two are not to blame for this, but you can tell your George that if he wants something then he should come and ask for it himself.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘No?’ She cocked her head.
‘No.’
‘So what would happen to the house if we left?’
‘They want to use it as a lookout,’ said Emily, honestly. ‘That’s what he said.’
‘A lookout.’
‘To see if people are coming this way,’ Charlie explained.
Miriam shook her head. She could sense how awkward the two of them felt. They were too young for this kind of conversation. The Scottish man who had come to her house a few months ago should never have sent them to do his bidding.
‘It was only a suggestion,’ Charlie said quickly.
‘Did you ask him why he didn’t come himself ?’
Emily answered as politely as she could. ‘He said he’s tried before.’
Miriam sat back and thought. ‘What happens if I say no?’
Charlie and Emily shifted awkwardly. The air was getting increasingly heavy.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if we want to stay here?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Then you stay here. I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.’
She had been waiting for this moment for months, ever since the camp had first assembled a few days after the arrival of the stricken tanker. It was bound to happen.
‘Is he going to take the house off me?’
‘What? No!’ Charlie coughed with the absurdity of Miriam’s thoughts. ‘Definitely not. It’s not like that down there. It’s really not.’
He genuinely believed it to be true, but Miriam also noticed the girl was looking at the boy with surprise.
‘Is it, Em?’ he said.
Emily waited for a moment.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not.’ She turned to Miriam. ‘I was sceptical of the camp, I still am probably, but I really don’t think they would do something like that.’
‘I know they wouldn’t,’ added Charlie, speaking quickly and defensively. ‘They’ve realized that we have to do things together. They’ve even got speeches for it and everything.’ He stopped.
Miriam finished the wine in her glass. Perhaps she would have another one. What harm could it do?
‘Tell George we’re fine where we are,’ she said, and leaned forwards for the bottle.
They finished their meal and the children were put to bed. They drank the wine and Miriam brought out extra bottles from the cellar before taking them through to the living room where they were now sitting in the light from the candles Charlie had carried from the kitchen.
Her mother was dozing in the chair with her head tilted to one side, her mouth half open.
‘When it first started,’ said Miriam, ‘I tried to, I don’t know what, pretend it wasn’t happening, something like that. It’s kind of hard to accept, do you know what I mean? Probably not,’ she said. ‘You’re still so young. When you get to my age you get so settled you think the little life you’ve built is indestructible.’ She was sitting in her father-in-law’s chair at the window. ‘My husband got it so early on. We didn’t even know what it was. He was one of the first.’
Emily and Charlie, sitting side by side on the sofa, said nothing.
‘When I finally did come to terms with the fact that it was real, and that took a long time, I always thought things would be OK in the end. I don’t how, or why I would even think that. It’s funny, isn’t it: why we would think that. My brother-in-law brought us here.’ She turned her head to the window. ‘He never trusted other people. That’s why he wanted us to come all the way out here, away from London. He didn’t believe in happy endings.’ Her words caught on something and she had to stop.
‘Things will get better,’ said Charlie. ‘If you came down to the camp you’d see it.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, rolling her head around on her neck.
‘You will,’ he said, and hesitated. ‘I suffer from depression,’ he blurted. And then he paused again, thinking about what he had just said. He looked at his wine glass and closed one eye to focus. ‘Er, yeah.’ He swallowed. ‘But since I got to the camp I’ve been a lot better, haven’t I, Em?’
‘You suffer from depression?’ He seemed so jolly all the time.
He waved his hand up and down in front of him. ‘I actually have to make an effort to be this happy.’ He smiled sarcastically. ‘I actually have to make an effort!’
Miriam laughed at his light-heartedness.
‘It’s a shame you don’t trust any more. But it’s an easy thing to lose, I guess,’ he said.
Miriam didn’t say anything to that. In truth, she wished she could trust again. She just couldn’t see how.
‘But if you do feel like that then I guess you’d not like the camp. George says this thing about trust. It’s one of the things that keep things going down there. We have to trust each other. It is hard, and sometimes we’re expected to trust him, and it doesn’t seem right, but if you don’t trust then who knows what will happen?’
‘That sounds sinister.’
‘It’s difficult to explain.’
‘The lighthouse,’ Emily said, quickly. ‘It’s where they take the sick. But we’re not allowed to go up there.’
‘Why not?’
They made eye contact.
‘I don’t know. We’re just not. We’re expected to “trust”,’ she finished.
Miriam took a sip of her wine.
‘I’m sure they know what they’re doing,’ Charlie interrupted, his words mildly slurred. ‘I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with the place.’
‘I’m just not entirely convinced by all this Great Leader stuff.’
‘I don’t think he claims to be anything he’s not,’ said Charlie. ‘It just kind of happens, doesn’t it? Some people are just good leaders. You naturally get used to it. You shouldn’t be so down on him. He’s a good guy. Anyway, I for one am happy to fall in line.’
Emily lowered her head. ‘Charlie’s a naturally trusting person,’ she said, as if he wasn’t sitting right next to her, ‘but I, maybe, am not. Well, not as much as him.’
‘It’s good to question things,’ said Miriam.
‘But the thing is,’ Emily went on, ‘although I can’t say I fully understand what it is that’s going on down there, I have to say I’ve never seen anything, um, untoward there. Yeah.’
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The room fell into a silent hollow and they each drank from their wine glasses.
‘So what do you think it is?’ Charlie asked.
Miriam looked at her sleeping mother across the room. ‘The illness?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Miriam sighed. ‘A virus? Who knows?’
‘I don’t think it’s a virus,’ he said with faux-confidence. ‘The scientists have already said that.’
‘It could be a new type of virus.’
Charlie shrugged. His pupils were great black orbs.
‘Have you noticed how, since it’s happened, the world seems . . . different, somehow? I don’t mean because people are dead and the world has ended,’ he said quickly. ‘I mean how everything seems, like, quieter. And, I don’t know, more clear.’
‘It’s because there are fewer people. Fewer cars. No factories. It changes things.’
‘So you have noticed it?’
‘Of course.’ She had assumed everybody had. She’d never questioned it.
‘So what you’re saying is the world is healing itself, is that right? Now that there are less people.’
‘I don’t know if that’s happening.’ She tilted her head. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I have given it quite a lot of thought,’ he said, jokingly. ‘Are you religious?’
He said it suddenly and casually. Miriam felt her mind stumble.
‘Yes,’ she said, slowly.
‘Well, what if it really is something to do with, you know?’ and he pointed upwards with raised eyebrows.
Miriam shook her head and smiled.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘Lots of people are saying it. We’ve all scoffed, but why not? It could be. Don’t you think so?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But if you really are religious then you have to admit it’s a possibility.’
Miriam looked at him. ‘But if it is true, why did he take my husband? And what happened to your family?’
Charlie raised his finger drunkenly. ‘My family are gone too. But I’ve thought about that.’
‘Oh you have, have you?’
