Last One at the Party

by Bethany Clift

  January 3rd 2024

  The power, of course, cut out at night.

  It was January 3rd 2024, three days into the brand new year. I’d spent New Year’s Eve alone for the first time in my life.

  I was sleeping in Xav’s spare room (now my bedroom) as it was blizzarding outside, making the hammock an unenticing prospect. It was pretty late and I was just getting into bed when the bedroom light went out. I thought the bulb had gone but when the hallway lights wouldn’t come on either I carefully felt my way downstairs to try to locate the fuse box. Not that I would have had a clue what to do with it.

  As I reached the kitchen, Xav’s intruder alarm went off. It is a noise I suspect they play over the tannoy in hell; less an alarm and more of a metallic cat screech, ear-shatteringly loud and piercing.

  I panicked and ran full pelt from the kitchen straight into the stairs bannister, smacking my face into solid oak and dropping to the floor like a stone.

  I came to, lying on the floor, with my face covered in dried blood. I was freezing cold, my head was pounding, and it hurt to breathe through my nose.

  The alarm was still shrieking, adding to the agony in my brain, so I went to the hallway cupboard, where I knew the reset switch was, and banged my fist against it.

  Blessed silence.

  But now I could not only feel the thump, thump, thump of my pounding head but also hear the snuffling noise I was making with each hard-fought breath and it was seriously freaking me out. Too scared and in too much pain to look in the mirror, I crept back to my bedroom, took two Tramadol and two sleeping pills and passed out.

  I awoke in darkness once more. The clock on the wall said it was 6 o’clock, but I had no idea whether that was 6 a.m. or 6 p.m.. I fumbled for my mobile phone, which told me it was 06:00.

  I gingerly put my hands up to my face; my nose was still there but it felt misshapen and lumpy. I had a large bump under one eye and realised I was struggling to see out of it.

  My face felt cold. My hand felt cold. In fact, I was still bloody freezing. The house was freezing, and when I tried the bedside light it still didn’t work.

  I got up and opened the curtains to let some street light in and it was only then that I fully understood what had happened.

  There were no street lights or house lights or any other signs of electricity. As far as I could see out of the window all the lights were off.

  The power had gone.

  I was in shock. I went down to the kitchen to make a nice cup of tea and have a sit down to think. But then I realised I couldn’t make tea any more.

  Panic levels rising, I decided to Google ‘lights going out’ on my phone, but when I went to open the internet there was no Wi-Fi. I switched to 5G.

  Nothing.

  I hadn’t checked anything on my phone in a couple of days and, whether because of the lack of electricity or purely by coincidence, the internet had also stopped working.

  No more internet meant no more daily checks of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. No more reading old emails or flicking through photos on the cloud.

  I burst into hysterical tears.

  I wept for the internet and my last connection to my past. I wept for hot tea and hot showers and hot food and central heating and cold beer and TV and music and disco lights and hot tubs on the roof and all of the things that I could no longer have. I wept for the home that I had made for myself that had been easy and warm and cocooned from the horrors outside. I wept for the loss of my cosy post-apocalyptic life. I wept because I was frightened to go outside and face this new, dark world.

  As I blubbed snottily over the kitchen counter I realised there was another reason for the growing bubble of panic inside my chest – I was about six hours late for my dose of Tramadol and, despite promising myself I wasn’t reliant on it, my body was very strongly telling me that I was.

  I dragged my painful and swollen face up the stairs to get my pills and got my first disgusting glimpse of the reality behind my façade of cosy domesticity.

  The house was an absolute mess. Rubbish strewn across the floor, piles of rotting food left by my bed, wet towels discarded carelessly, clothes heaped onto every available surface, bottles smashed in the corner, stacked towers of filthy crockery and glasses balanced precariously on scratched, dirty furniture. My bedding was streaked with filth that I couldn’t name. Food? Bodily fluids? My room stank.

  Added to the horror of the house was my growing realisation at the horror of my situation. What the hell was I doing? I was cocooned in Xav’s house enjoying a relaxing narcotic holiday. Why wasn’t I looking for anyone else? I was merrily cruising the London tourist trail rather than trying to find out if other people were still alive. What if there were children? Babies? I should have been finding the last survivors of the human race, not lying in a hot tub. I had to get out, find people, do something.

  Worst of all – maybe I’d left it too long? I might have missed my chance of finding anyone else alive. I might now really, truly be alone, and it would be entirely my own fault.

  I rushed to the bathroom, swallowed down my normal Trams dosage with water from the tap, and then added an extra tablet for good measure.

  I hadn’t checked the TV since I’d arrived at Xav’s to see whether the BBC broadcast was still running and if anybody had used it. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I should be the one that should go there and use it. Why hadn’t I used it? My only chance to speak to the entire country at once, to see if there was actually anybody else still alive, and I had been having a fucking disco instead.

  I had to go, I had to do something.

  I had to get to the BBC building right now.

  I didn’t think I would be going back to Xav’s house.

  I look back on it now and think it must have been the drugs playing with my mind but, at the time, I genuinely thought there would still be people out there, that someone would call or come to the BBC when they saw me.

  So, before I left the house, I went upstairs to say goodbye and thank you to Xav.

  The heating that I had been using had accelerated the decomposition of the bodies dramatically and, even through my broken nose, the smell when I opened the bedroom door was almost enough to make me turn tail and leave.

  But he had looked after me in his life, and in his death, and I had resolved to leave the drugs I had taken there with him. He might need them in the afterlife. I held my breath and crossed over to the bed, told Xav I loved him and kissed his stinking, rapidly blackening cheek, put the cocaine and Tramadol on his bedside table, waved a friendly goodbye to the Adonises, and left the room.

  Then I went back in and took the Tramadol with me because I am a bad friend, a weak person, and had recently, I realised, become a drug addict.

  January 4th 2024

  It was snowing heavily so I didn’t want to walk to Broadcasting House, but Xav doesn’t own a car. Needs must and, as I learnt, stealing a car in this new world is incredibly easy.

  I started a technique that day that I still use now. I simply went to the nearest road with plenty of cars parked on the street, broke into the easiest-looking house, found the car keys (almost always in a bowl in the hallway or in the kitchen or in a key safe on the wall), stood on the doorstep of the house and pressed the unlock button on the key. In the silence and dark of the new world the clunk-click of car doors opening and the flash of headlights is like a homing signal.

  So, break into house, find keys, use keys to find car, get in car, start engine, drive off; when car runs out of petrol simply repeat the process.

  I say ‘simply’. It took me an hour to pluck up the courage to break into a house, thirty minutes to realise that keys are mostly kept in the kitchen, and nearly an hour of trying the key in different car doors to work out I could just press the unlock button.

  I am not a criminal mastermind.

  Also, don’t run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m. when it is pouring with rain and you have no idea where you are. Trust m
e on that one.

  I got to Broadcasting House four hours after leaving Xav’s.

  The power was still on.

  I was worried that I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do when I got to the building; but I needn’t have been. I think the BBC must have developed instructions for what to do in the event of a population-decimating apocalypse many years ago. They literally walked me through the entire thing from when I entered the doors to the building.

  Printed signs welcomed me and showed me the way to go to the studio, encouraging me to take the stairs rather than the lift in case of power outages.

  Once in the studio more signs told me what the equipment did, where to sit, how to put my lapel mike on, where to look, and even what to say.

  It was all simple, straightforward, and made so that the most technophobic amongst us would find it easy.

  It scared the shit out of me that someone had planned for this.

  I realised I had better go and see what my face looked like, and maybe make use of some of the make-up that had been thoughtfully left for me, before sitting in front of the camera.

  I followed the handy signs to the toilets and found a body slumped in one of the stalls.

  It was the first time I had seen someone who looked like they had died as a result of 6DM rather than T600.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  She was surrounded by her own shit and vomit and had bled from the eyeballs, nose, and ears. Her head was back, her mouth open as if her last act in life had been to scream, either in pain or maybe at the injustice of it all. I didn’t recognise her as someone off the TV so maybe she had come here to broadcast before she became ill.

  There was nothing I could do for her now. I left the ladies and followed the signs to the gents instead.

  There was no one in there.

  I looked at my face in the small mirror above the sink.

  It was both worse and better than I had imagined.

  My left eye, which had been closed and I had been unable to see out of, was a deep shade of purple but had started to open slightly and seemed to be healing already. My nose may have been broken, I’ll never know, it was definitely about three times its normal size and flattened dramatically on one side.

  The biggest shock though was my general appearance.

  I hadn’t properly looked in a mirror for about a fortnight. In that time I seemed to have aged five years. The eye that wasn’t swollen shut was bloodshot and puffy. My face was bloated and flushed and spotty and had a weird sheen to it that did not look like a natural, healthy glow. Despite using incredibly expensive shampoo, my hair was a dry, messy, wild frizz-ball, and my fringe was already growing over my eyes.

  I don’t think I am overly vain, but I looked fucking awful and there was no way I was going on TV like this.

  I used practically everything in the make-up bag and all the hair products I could find by hunting through the desks of now dead people. It took nearly an hour, but by the time I sat down in front of the camera I was reasonably sure that I looked like an ordinary woman who had suffered a terrible car crash, and not a crazy bag lady whose cat wouldn’t even eat her.

  I had looked at the suggested text to read in the handy notes left on the desk, but it was strangely stilted and impersonal (Hello. My name is — I am alive and at BBC Centre. If you too are alive, please call me on 0800 915 4650. Thank you). I also wasn’t sure where the number they gave would go through to, so I decided to say my own message.

  I practised off screen a few times and it sounded fine, but once in front of the camera I panicked and so ended up saying:

  ‘Hi, I mean hello. How are you? Sorry about my face, I bumped into a bannister in the dark. Ha ha! No really, I did, this isn’t from someone hitting me (awkward pause). Err, so, I am alive and am at the BBC Centre and am hoping that maybe there is someone else out there alive as well and that if there is you can come here and we can meet. I’ve been in London and it’s fine here so far, but the power is starting to go out so I’d probably get in touch sooner rather than later if I was you. Sorry I’m rambling. So, I am here and I’m going to stay here and it would be great if you could come or give me a call on my mobile. I am on 07689 341244. I’m going to leave a sign in front of the screen, so you’ll have the number. Great. Oh, and Happy New Year. Ha ha. Okay. Sorry. Right, hopefully speak to you soon. Take care …’

  Then I lost my momentum and sort of just wandered off to the side and then wandered apologetically back on and replaced myself with a big bit of cardboard with my phone number on it.

  It was only after I had put the sign up that I realised I had forgotten to give my name.

  I went in front of the camera and repeated my speech on the hour, every hour, for the next three days.

  I stayed in the BBC Centre, just in case someone came or called. There was food in the vending machines and cafeteria, and plenty of magazines to read, plus there were sofas to sleep on in the dressing rooms of the big stars.

  At first, I distracted myself by wandering the halls, looking at photos of famous people doing fabulous things and snooping in dressing rooms and offices; but after a while it got repetitive and who was around to care if I found haemorrhoid cream in the dressing room of a certain well-known newsreader, who was I going to tell? So, I read the magazines and tried to find a dose of Tramadol that made me look relaxed on camera but not zoned out, and also chilled me enough so that I didn’t act on my increasing urge to go outside. I tried very hard to convince myself that I wasn’t taking more and more Tramadol with less and less effect. But I was.

  I was desperately missing James and my mum and dad. I had a permanent ache in my chest that no amount of Tramadol would take away. I couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to eat, and spent hours staring out of the window hoping and praying that someone would walk past.

  By the fourth day, despite the drugs increase, I had gone from calm and friendly to pleading and crying. My time on camera was spent begging someone, anyone, to reply. Please, please, just call me or come here. Please.

  I don’t want to be alone any more.

  By the afternoon of the fourth day I was running out of things to read, things to eat, and hope that anyone was ever going to contact me. I had also run out of Tramadol and was perilously close to full-on panic so I decided to risk going out to replenish my supplies.

  It was raining again. The temperature outside had risen in the last two days and the difference in the decomposition rate of the bodies that surrounded me was smell-able (not sure that’s a word – I can’t look it up). I was sorry that my nose had healed enough for me to start to breathe properly through it again.

  London fucking stank.

  It smelt a bit like our bin used to smell when we put empty plastic meat trays in there without washing them, or like the food recycling bin after a week in the sun, but it actually smelt far worse than anything I had ever smelt before because I knew what it was. Thousands and thousands of human bodies slowly rotting.

  I gagged and gently wrapped my scarf around my face to ward off the stench.

  I scrambled into my car and shut the door, gasping happily in the familiar stink of a smoker’s vehicle.

  I drove the one hundred feet to the nearest chemist and dashed from the car, running through the open front door at full pelt. I skidded on something on the floor and slid on my arse across the room before coming to a sudden stop by banging into the payment desk.

  I stood up slowly, yanked my scarf from my face and vomited the Mars Bar I had stuffed down earlier all over the floor of the shop.

  Not that it mattered. The floor was already covered in all manner of bodily fluids and by-products. There was a group of bodies to the left of the counter and they had been leaking copiously for some time. It was like I had stepped into the money shot from the world’s worst torture porn movie. God knows how they had got there, what they were doing there, or what had happened to make them so … runny.

  I wasn’t going to hang around to try to find out
.

  Gagging and crying, I slipped and slid from the shop, gasping from the smell and shock. Outside I collapsed to the pavement and wailed out loud to no one. My hands were covered in blood and fluids that no person should ever have to touch, and my clothes were smeared in the same.

  I ripped off my clothing and stood naked in the rain trying to wash the physical and mental memory of what I had just encountered from me. I was freezing, but I didn’t care. I screamed and screamed into the stinking London air and barely held onto my sanity.

  It was only when I paused for breath that I heard someone screaming back.

  At first, I thought that it was the chimpanzee again and that I had somehow stepped back into that hellish nightmare, but then I realised it was coming from multiple places and that it wasn’t the same voice.

  In fact, it wasn’t a scream at all.

  It was a bark, a wail, a screech, a caterwaul.

  I thought back to Xav’s neighbour’s dog and realised in horror that the noise was the neighbourhood’s beloved pets. There must be thousands all over London locked in houses waiting, in vain, for their owners to release them.

  What were they drinking? Oh God, what were they eating??

  That thought snapped me out of my reverie and back to my present naked state.

  All my previous middle-class sensibilities and fears now forgotten, I smashed the window of the nearest clothes store, checked for occupants, and then quickly dried and dressed myself. I wrapped a clean scarf around my face, abandoned the car and, ignoring the smell and noise as best I could, jogged back to the BBC.

  The power had finally gone out.

  In the thirty minutes I had been away, the BBC had been plunged into darkness and any hope I had of contacting other survivors was over.

  I sat on the floor.

  The internet was gone, TV was gone, I could barely get a signal on my phone, and the landlines were dead. The power was going out rapidly, and food would soon start to go off.

  I was scared. Scared of being alone, scared of living, and scared of dying.