I also couldn’t deny the reality of what the death of Susan Palmers meant – that even if I did find another survivor, as soon as I spoke to them or tried to help them in any way they would, in all likelihood, die. Susan Palmers had succumbed to 6DM within a week of my food delivery – so the chances were that the same thing would happen again if I met anyone else.
Susan Palmers had put the final nail in the coffin that I had filled with my hope of meeting any other survivor.
I was responsible for killing Susan Palmers, and eventually, without even leaving her house, she would be responsible for killing me.
March 11th 2024
On the morning of the fourth day of my Susan Palmers death vigil I woke up to the sound of dogs barking. Lucky was asleep beside me as usual and he jumped up and bounded to the window.
Across the street in front of Susan Palmers’ house was a gathering of maybe twenty dogs. Dogs of all shapes, sizes, and breeds, jumping up and down and barking in a frenzy. Whether they had been called there by Susan Palmers’ recently decaying flesh or my fresh scent I wasn’t sure, but I was glad I had shut the front door of the house I was staying in firmly the night before.
After discovering they couldn’t get into Susan Palmers’ house, the dogs calmed down and broke apart. A couple of them wandered across the street and started sniffing at the footpath to the house I was in. I clutched Lucky to me, half for comfort and half to keep him quiet. I was unsure of what being discovered by this pack would mean for us both. But soon, the larger members of the pack started trotting down the road in search of their next adventure, or dinner. The rest followed in twos or threes and, fifteen minutes after I had heard the first bark, the street was empty again.
Susan Palmers had left me one final note.
Your a killer fucking cunt. I hope you die in agony
Imagine spending four days dying from 6DM and saving all your hate up for one final message only to have it ruined by bad grammar.
Poor Susan Palmers.
This was not the first time I’d been called a cunt.
James’s best friend thought I was a cunt. ‘A stuck-up cunt’ to be precise.
He, Matthew, was the friend that James was living with before we moved in together and, when I came downstairs after spending my first night at James’s flat, he was making a cup of tea in the kitchen and his exact words were …
‘Yeah, she’s quite fit, but a bit of a stuck-up cunt don’t you think?’
Matthew pretended he was talking about Kate Middleton, but we all knew he was talking about me.
He made me a cup of tea. I didn’t drink it.
James continued to be best friends with Matthew. He was the only one of James’s friends that I refused to hang out with. I couldn’t really complain though, my best friend thought James was boring; so we agreed that James wouldn’t have to see Xav and I wouldn’t have to see Matthew.
Until James chose Matthew to be his Best Man at our wedding.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the fact that James had insisted on having someone who thought I was a stuck-up cunt as his Best Man that made me cry on our wedding day.
Despite everything I was doing that day to stave off panic attacks, depression and any other unwanted emotion, it turned out that all it took was a song.
The Carpenters.
The bloody Carpenters, and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’.
On a radio in the background as I was having my hair done.
All that stuff about starting out in life together and so many roads to choose and working together each day.
It was written for couples like my mum and dad. Couples who married when they were still at the beginning of their lives together and were still filled with hope and excitement for the journey to come.
It wasn’t written for couples like James and me, who had already completed a large chunk of their journey.
My reality was the complete opposite to the one Karen Carpenter sang so sweetly about.
I had wanted James to ask me to marry him because he couldn’t imagine life without me, not because we’d been together eight years so it was about time. I wanted to get married when we were still taking a leap of faith that it would work out, when we didn’t know each other’s bowel movement schedule, when we were still having sex because we JUST HAD TO, rather than when it matched my ovulation cycle.
I wanted a Karen Carpenter wedding and, as much as I told myself I was lucky to be getting married at all, the heart wants what the heart wants.
So, I started to cry.
I cried when my mum and Ginny, assuming that the emotion was all too much, rushed over and mopped up my fragile lady tears before they smudged my newly applied mascara.
I cried when my dad met me at the top of the aisle and walked me down with the proudest look on his face that I have ever seen.
I cried when James turned back to look at me and mouthed, ‘You look beautiful.’
I cried the most when Matthew turned around and beamed at me as I walked down the aisle. I cried because I knew he still thought I was a stuck-up cunt, but James was his best friend and Matthew loved James, and James loved me; so if James wanted to marry me then Matthew was going to darn well support him in his endeavours.
It was during my dad’s beautiful, heartfelt and loving speech that I stopped crying and started bawling because, there, surrounded by beaming faces I realised that all anyone in the room wanted was for me to be happy.
But I just wasn’t.
It was Xav who finally stopped me crying.
But not in a good way.
I was sitting at the edge of the dance floor watching everyone I loved having the time of their lives to ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, when Xav appeared.
I hadn’t spoken to Xav in seven months. He hadn’t said he was coming to the wedding.
He was thin and crumpled. His hair was too long and his normally alabaster clear skin was a fester of spots and cold sores. I knew he was high before he even spoke to me, I could tell by the way he jerked his left shoulder every now and again, the way he tugged at the front of his hair.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.
‘You’re high.’
He shrugged and tugged his hair again. It looked as if it might be falling out.
‘I said, what are you doing?’ He almost shouted it this time.
I wasn’t going to make a scene so through clenched teeth answered, ‘I’m just having a break. I’ll get back up in a minute.’
‘No,’ he snapped, ‘I mean what the fuck are you doing?’
He wasn’t just high, he was angry. High and rambling and angry.
‘What is this?’ He gestured to the huge wedding venue and heaving dance floor. ‘You always told me you wanted a registry office wedding and just a dinner afterwards. And this?’ he said, yanking a handful of my sweetheart-necked, tulle-skirted, full-length princess wedding dress. ‘This isn’t the dress you showed me. You wanted a short one.’
I shrugged.
‘I’ve seen you miserable before, and I’ve seen you faking it. Doing your “everything’s fine” smile.’ He grabbed the corners of my mouth and pushed them up. It hurt. I pulled my face away. ‘But this faking it on your WEDDING DAY. I mean, what the fuck? Why? Why all this? I don’t understand you any more. I don’t know who you are!’
I didn’t know what to say. He was right. This wasn’t the wedding I had dreamt of. It wasn’t the wedding I wanted. It was the wedding my mum and Ginny and James had dreamt of and wanted for me.
The perfect wedding.
But I wasn’t going to admit that to Xav. Not now.
I was tired and hungry and my wedding dress was digging into my hips.
But I had stopped crying.
I wasn’t sad any more. I was angry.
And Xav was there. So I went for him. Full throttle.
‘You don’t understand me any more? You don’t know me? I’ll tell you why you don’t know me, because I have changed, I’ve got myself
a proper life and you can’t understand that! Look at the state of you! You have money but you have NOTHING else. You didn’t even have anyone who wanted to be with you during quarantine.’
He backed off from me as if I had hit him.
I wasn’t finished.
‘Some of us don’t want to spend our lives pretending we’re still twenty-one, some of us want to grow the fuck up! We want jobs and husbands and babies and real friends that aren’t off their faces all the time. Some of us just want to try and be FUCKING NORMAL.’
His face was blank. His voice emotionless.
‘Well, congratulations, because finally, you really fucking are.’
He turned and stumbled from the room, cannoning off tables and chairs on his way out.
I should have gone after him, but I didn’t.
My mum told me they drove him to rehab two days later when James and I were on our honeymoon.
I didn’t ask myself why I was going into the house to see Susan Palmers’ dead body. I just knew I was going to.
It never crossed my mind to bury her.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in the house, so was wearing the hazmat suit and had the helmet on, but I didn’t use the oxygen tank as I had no idea how to work it and couldn’t be bothered to try and find out.
I should have used the oxygen tank.
Susan Palmers was slumped in one of the sofa chairs. She was very, very thin and her eyes were wide open and stared straight at me. She had bled profusely from her nose, and the front of her filthy shirt was encrusted with a torrent of black, congealing blood. My skin crawled and I quickly threw a blanket over her. I could feel her dead eyes following me from underneath it.
The house was in complete squalor. Food, clothes, empty glasses, books, newspapers, scrawled notes and bits of paper, blankets and pillows on a filthy mattress all stiff with dirt and sweat. One corner was filled with plastic bags of human faeces. The kitchen held a pile of small animal bones that were picked clean and white. Many of the books had pages missing or had bites out of them. Everything was filthy, covered in a layer of grime and dust; the accumulation of nearly four months of dead skin.
Except for the bookcase.
All the books were on the floor and the bookcase was filled with photos in photo frames. Each framed photo was polished and gleaming. Placed in an exact spot. Each one captured a moment of happiness. Susan Palmers on her wedding day, shy smile and lace-capped veil. A man (her husband?) beaming with pride while holding a new-born baby as she smiles up at him, exhausted but happy. Children’s birthday parties, Christmas, family holidays. Later pictures taken in a garden with grandchildren. Hers? Probably. In each photo she smiled. Carefree, relaxed, a woman content and happy with the people that she loved.
6DM must have started rotting her heart months ago.
On the mantelpiece was a graduation photo of a young man in gown and cap with his arm around Susan Palmers. He was smiling at the camera and she was beaming up at him, face filled with love and pride. In front of the photo was a small Dictaphone tape with the name ‘George’ on it.
The Dictaphone player was on the dining-room table.
I shut the door as I left the house, not wanting any of the smell and horror inside to be able to escape. I took the hazmat suit off, sat in my lawn chair, and listened to the tape.
Hi George darling, it’s Nana. You know I’m not very good with my writing so I thought I would record this instead. You remember how gramps and I used to do this for you when you were at university? I wonder if you ever listened to them? Probably not. Don’t suppose it matters now. And I know that you can’t listen to this either, but I wanted to explain. I wanted to say sorry … sorry that I shot you. It wasn’t because I don’t love you! I love you very much. And your sister and your mum. And I know you think you were doing the right thing coming to get me, but I’m not sick. I’m really not. Your gramps went out at the beginning and didn’t come back, so I haven’t seen anyone else to catch it from and I’m not sick and I don’t want to get sick. I want to live George. I’ve never thought about not being here before, about dying, but now that it is all around me, I don’t want to. I don’t want to die. So when you came into the house and then into the hallway even though I told you not to, well, I couldn’t let you come any further. You’d have made me sick. You understand George, don’t you? You were dying anyway and I know what your mum said about everyone getting ill in the end, but maybe I’ll be okay. I’m so sorry, but I had to think fast and my brain has been a bit fuzzy since I shot your gramps and I couldn’t think straight and I didn’t want you to come in and you were dying anyway. But it wasn’t because I don’t love you. I love you very much. I just don’t want to die. Your gramps did come back. He’s in the back garden. I love him and I love you. I’m sorry.
When I went around the side of the house, I discovered a pile of fuzzy bones in the back garden. I assumed it was Gramps.
Susan Palmers really did want to live.
No wonder she hated me so much.
After listening to the tape, I went into the house across the road, got into bed, and stayed there.
I didn’t cry. I think my tear ducts may finally have dried up or gone on a well-deserved holiday. I just lay in bed doing nothing. I occasionally stared out of the window, at nothing.
Lucky was worried about me. He lay with my hand on his head and if I moved it at any point he nudged my hand gently until it was back in place. He followed me to the toilet, to the kitchen, and lay next to me on the bed, climbing back on if I pushed him off. He brought me his ball to throw for him, but I just didn’t have the energy.
I wanted to tell Lucky that Susan Palmers was dead. Everyone was dead. And now the fog had come and this time it might not go away.
I wanted to tell him I was afraid I may never get out of bed again and that this was it. No trip to Soho Farmhouse, no glamorous death in Egyptian cotton sheets. I would just slowly fade away in a heap of nothing until I was a pile of dust like the ones that had gathered in Susan Palmers’ house.
I wanted to tell him to leave while he still could, that I couldn’t be there for him any more, that I couldn’t be there for anyone. I was done.
But I knew he wouldn’t understand.
One of the drawbacks of having a dog for my best, and only, friend.
March 14th 2024
I got out of bed. Eventually.
I gave up on getting to Soho Farmhouse. I could barely make it across the room, let alone complete the long list of things that would need to happen for me to get to my suicide location of choice.
My new, very vague, plan was to drive to the first pharmacy I saw and grab some T600 before I lost my nerve. Then I was going to find a random hotel and spend a couple of days getting so ridiculously drunk that I either took the T600 in a drunken, maudlin moment or fell asleep and then woke up with a hangover to rival the one I had at the end of the (old) world so that I would want to take the T600 just to put myself out of my misery.
It wasn’t a particularly good plan.
But it was good enough.
I found a Boots in the centre of Banbury with boxes of T600 just inside the door. I grabbed a packet and then didn’t quite make it out of the shop before throwing up all over myself.
My tummy had been dodgy since a week before Susan Palmers died, and my random projectile vomiting had been happening on a regular basis. Neither Lucky nor I were a fan of it.
The nearest hotel to Boots was called Whatley Hall. It was no Soho Farmhouse, but it was big and had some lovely airy bedrooms, and lots of space. It was also clean, free from decomposing bodies and, miraculously, had electricity, central heating, and hot water. I went in the bathroom of the first room I could get into and showered three times before the smell of vomit faded. I have spent the past three days throwing up for most of the morning and feeling sick for the rest of the time. The only thing I can face eating is peanut butter or Mini Cheddars. My stomach is churning and my head spins when I move t
oo fast.
Maybe I am sick, maybe 6DM has mutated and this is how it is going to start, and end, for me. Maybe I am experiencing extreme physical symptoms of depression. Or maybe my body, like my mind, has just had enough and is finally giving up.
Prisoners kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time say (or did say) that the key to surviving with your sanity intact is to create a strict routine and stick to it. People who were in isolation alone in 2020 said the same – routine, routine, routine.
I have no routine now.
I’d had a routine when I left London because I had somewhere I wanted to go. I’d had a routine at the cottage because I was detoxing. I even had a routine when I left the cottage because I had Susan Palmers to get to and then look after.
But now Susan Palmers is dead and I have all but given up on the idea of dying at Soho Farmhouse, so I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
I am just here. In Banbury. Alone.
I will always be alone.
I miss my family and friends. Every day. At some point in every 24-hour period I think of them and the ache in my chest returns; sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for hours. I think of this as my penance for surviving.
There will be no end to the self-isolation I am in. There will be no vaccine developed. No lifting of quarantine laws, no celebrations at being able to see loved ones again, at being able to embrace freely once more.
This will never end.
I don’t want to live like this any more, bouncing from place to place, chasing a dream that I now know isn’t, and will never be, real.
I think I’m ready to go.
I was chasing a dream before the end of the world as well.
It is the same dream now as it was then; I want someone to be here, someone who will love and take care of me. Someone who will make it all better.
Ginny had that.
Ginny found all that and more – and she wasn’t even looking for it. She’d been perfectly happy by herself.
Last One at the Party Page 21
