Not Alone, page 18
I strain against a cough, my lungs irritated and tight, tugging Andy’s coat, signalling behind us. I want to leave. I don’t care about the grease. I want to get back to Harry. Now.
Andy presses a finger to his mask, signalling to wait, to be quiet.
But I’m nearly crying, the Fear coming through me in great big waves.
‘I’m not going to let anyone hurt you,’ Andy whispers. ‘Just wait till they move on.’
There’s a lot of noise. Every shout and clatter and clonk startles me.
Then the light rain becomes a deluge, making the knotweed dance and twitch. People and deer scatter.
Andy and I rush to the pavement. We push and pull on doors until we find one that opens. A quick check of the downstairs rooms – mouldy wet floors, cracked windows letting in wisps of moist grey, both of us tripping over the sunken form of a previous inhabitant as we step into a lounge. Recoiling, I nearly head back outside but Andy turns and hurries up the stairs.
‘Wait!’ I hurry after him, dreading what else might be slumped up there, and follow him straight into the back room.
‘Whoa whoa, there, who the fuck are you?’
Rain is bouncing on the roof, weighted with dust and so loud we can hardly hear what the man in front of us is trying to tell us, though his gesture is clear. Leave.
The room is bare but for sleeping rolls and a few blankets. A floorboard in the corner has been lifted, revealing the glint of glass bottles in the dim light of their candles. The windows have been permanently boarded up with thick wood, and the door has rubber round it that makes it suck the floor and hard to move on its hinges. This definitely isn’t a home; it’s a bolthole.
‘Can’t we wait out this storm with you?’ Andy is saying, as I try to stay in the shadows behind him. And the others are shaking their heads.
‘Not enough room. And we don’t trust outsiders: fuck off.’
‘We have to wait out the rain.’
And I can smell it, coming up from the cracked windows downstairs and with us on our damp outer layers – a bitter chemical scent.
I start to shiver.
‘Fine, whatever, but not in here.’
We are ushered out of the room, and the door slams.
Andy goes straight to the front box room. The window is a tiny dormer and still intact. The heavy rain has created a semi-twilight outside, milky-grey raindrops streaking down.
I imagine how many steps it is from here to Harry.
‘We should get back,’ I say, looking out at the rain and the thick grey-white air drifting along the street, buildings now getting lost as if in a mountain whiteout. I wonder if we have time to reach another building or hurry to the end of the rainstorm, even though I know it will penetrate my outer layers – and, crucially, my mask – if I’m out there too long, and that that smell is bad. And I don’t have my cap and nearly useless, scratched goggles, which I wear in winter to protect my eyes when I have no choice but to go out in thick bad air. But not in rain like this, I’d never risk this.
Little grey eddies make it through invisible cracks in the window frame. The more I stare out, the more I can imagine wind wraiths and ghosts drifting out there, ready to suffocate poor victims and snatch your soul away. Nasties, though I really don’t think Harry’s imagination has specific names and images like mine does. I shrink back from the window.
‘This looks set in!’ Andy shouts over the rain rattling against the glass, leaning towards me. ‘It might rain for hours. We have to stay put.’
A horrible anger runs up my spine, alongside this irrational feeling that Andy is trying to keep me from Harry, or has brought me to this house on purpose. But there’s fear in his eyes too and I swallow the thoughts down. I know he’s right.
He searches the wardrobe, divvying out baby-blue and white knitted blankets. Two rodent-nibbled teddy bears tumble out from amongst them, only one eye between them. And we each set about wadding up the edges of the window and around the door.
I grimace, imagining if I had brought Harry with us today. Or if we do head north soon. At the flat, I would never, ever have risked Harry even close to a window when it’s like this outside. Let alone consider travelling hundreds of fucking miles to Scotland out in it! I’m trembling in the gloom as I reach for the side of the little child-sized bed and sit in the corner. Cursing myself for leaving Harry. After everything I promised!
‘They’ll leave us be, with any luck,’ Andy says, as I try to read his lips – his voice lost in the drumming rain.
Slowly I nod, as Andy pulls his hood up and a blanket around him and gets comfortable in the opposite corner on the floor.
It’s a long dark afternoon and night. The men in their sealed room get louder and drunk enough that I can hear them over the rain, and I can smell food cooking, my own stomach growling and contorting. Their laughter and voices slowly become strangely comforting – human against my imagination of outside and that prostrate shape we tripped over downstairs.
I keep trying to weigh up the sickening gamble of going north. At some point I doze off, and dream of Jack up in Scotland, his body hanging, swinging as I open a door, and later, of him alive and angry, shoving Harry away from us, out into the dangerous smog.
I wake – desperately trying to shake off that new horrifying nightmare as the rejection stings me, the unsmiling expression on dream-Jack’s face alien and awful. Jack would never . . . never . . .
Yet all the ways Harry doesn’t look like Jack suddenly thud, heavy, in my chest. Jack’s mum’s photos clear in my head. He’s not like Maggie’s fair-haired little boy pinned on those boards in her stairwell. Or the grown-up Jack I’m carrying inside that diary in my pack. I feel guilty wishing – even for a moment – that he was, as if he’s not enough or wrong as he is and it would make things easier, simpler. The love I crave for him more certain.
I blink, becoming blearily aware of my surroundings, realizing it is the low throbbing glow of a gas flame in the pitch-black room that woke me. I begin to open my mouth to ask Andy what he’s doing. But the eyes glinting at me are not his, nor are the sharp contours of the forehead, cheekbones and square fabric mask. The rain has slowed to quieter tapping. So much so that I can hear the wet regular slapping inside the room.
I feel frozen again, small and powerless. Trapped in the corner of this little bed. The knife I slowly pull from my trousers seems feeble – short and slender. I can feel the wall behind me, nowhere to escape to. As I shift he takes a step closer, the pounding getting faster. So I stay still and don’t look away, not wanting to make things worse. In case this is all he wants. Just let me have this. The words there in my head already. I just have to sit here and take this. Like I am nothing again.
The hiss and smell of burning plastic fills the room, the gas lamp’s flame jumping and bulging inside its glass orb like a little trapped fire demon. Trails of dust from round the wadded dormer window reach towards the heat like ghostly fingers, fizzing and burning in the air as they near the lamp, and orange glowing embers begin to dot my mattress. I yelp, hot stings biting through my clothes, and I slap the blanket across the mattress, putting out the sparks.
When I look up again he is gone. I think about getting up to wake Andy, who I hope is still on the other side of the room. But with the rain still tapping and the bedroom door left open, I feel numb and afraid to move. And as the minutes roll by, those fresh worries of my nightmare keep returning to keep me company. I pull my stinking, still-smoking blanket tighter around me, knowing I’m not going to get any more sleep.
21
Five Years and Four Months Ago
I heel the last tent peg into the ground, swaying – the tight prickling sandpaper feeling of my lungs inhaling and exhaling making me feel sick and weary. I feel watchful, in case it gets worse, like it was in the first few months, when I dreaded each cough – terrified of one day seeing blood on my hands – lungs hot, tight and splinteringly painful.
It’s dark now, but I can feel the dry crisp grass beneath my boots. Hitchin is a few weeks’ slow, breathless trudge behind me. I’m tired of dead brown grass and leafless dying trees, everything withering and winking out, brown and black, the sky an unsettling thick grey haze that blocks the sun. And still that dry, unpleasant chemical taste to the air. I feel about ready to choke on the death everywhere.
I can hear the group that I passed lower down the hill – only male voices seem to carry to where I’m standing. I wonder if some are friends that survived together. That hope burns inside me, of what I’ll find when I get to Mum’s house in Birmingham. Please. Let her be alive.
It feels safe to be within calling distance of those voices, like we have some unspoken agreement that proximity is comforting. I have this urge to go down to them and tell someone about Jack. More than anything I want my mum to put her arms around me. But even a stranger’s acknowledgement of it would mean something. To have some sympathy and understanding for the awfulness. There’s been no one to share my pain with, no one to say things out loud with, and now I fully understand why they call it bottling up your feelings. I feel ready to burst. But I don’t know how to begin. So I climb inside the tent, finally pulling free of my mask, the heavy exhaustion in every limb from the day’s breathless walking like a thick smothering blanket over the grief.
The swift grind of the zip, from bottom to top, wakes me, but I feel so groggy that I don’t even open my eyes.
I do to the crinkle of the groundsheet as my sleeping bag is yanked out, my legs tangled up inside.
‘What the fuck are you—’ I find my croaky voice only to be smacked across the jaw. My face throbs. Numb pain grows in my gums, something warm running from my nose. His face is a blurred shape in the dim twilight. He’s shouting, but I can’t focus on the words. His skin is rough and greasy as I struggle, like that of a teenager, but his voice is deeper and hoarser – damaged. He’s tearing, pummelling, but it dawns on me that he doesn’t know what he wants.
His boot slams into my stomach, crumpling me.
‘Stop!’ I’m wheezing, trying to suck air in, then coughing and gasping, my lungs becoming hot again like they were months ago. I try to protect my chest. His hands are in my hair, yanking my head back onto the hard earth. I feel myself waver between here and unconsciousness and I fight it. Feel my hair tear at the roots.
He figures it out. There’s a hand on my crotch. My whole body responds to the unwanted touch, vomit churning at the back of my throat, my fists flailing. He tugs at my trousers. Tears at the buttons. I feel cold air on my pelvis.
‘Stop it!’ My scream is ragged and inhuman, reducing me to something less: an animal. I don’t care. I’m kicking, punching.
But he’s heavier than me, stronger.
‘Please. Just let me have it, I just need—’ His voice is muffled as we struggle. His weight keeps me pinned down, the pressure on my tender lungs making me feel like things are beginning to spin. Panic thickens. I feel him shove his way between my legs. Heat flushes through me.
I try to twist and kick, remembering suddenly that I need to use my knees and elbows if being overpowered. I try, twisting and heaving, but I can’t get free enough to jab in.
The sharp sting of teeth cut into my bare shoulder, like we are animals, like I just need to be subdued.
‘Why aren’t you her? It’s not fair!’ Elbow or head, don’t know which, comes at my face. ‘You’re nothing compared to her. Nothing. Stupid useless bitch.’ I don’t feel it, not really. Just numbness. And warmth trickling from my nose, from my mouth, dribbling down my chin.
And he carries on. Desperate now, his breathing deep and fast.
And I begin to drift away. Something inside me has shrunk and tried to hide, even though there’s nowhere to hide. I’m not moving anymore. Can’t feel anything. Even all the grief has numbed down and I find I don’t want not to feel it – that pain is Jack and I want Jack.
I scream at myself to fight harder. But there’s nothing left.
So maybe I am a useless bitch.
Nothing.
After all, I’m nothing to anyone anymore, am I?
22
In the dawn darkness, I keep looking back the way we’ve come, convinced there’s movement amongst the shadowy mass of zigzagged fronds – but the pale yellow glow on the horizon is barely enough to see by, my eyes still adjusting from the bright torchlight we used to navigate the warehouses.
The night Harry was born swims in my head, that second spring After. My mind travels backwards from there, through nine months of scavenging in Hitchin and bodies and the Fear and a growing bump, to that awful day in May or June of the first year, making me happy to hurry after Andy’s quick footsteps in the dark.
And that crack inside me opens up as I force myself another four hungry harrowing months back to Jack and January and the storm.
I keep blinking it all away, focusing on treading softly and making it back to the railway line, where the wet crunch of gravel and squelch of leaves and mud greets us underfoot. Neither Andy nor I have bothered with masks – the air is deliciously clear and fresh, the rain having damped down the dust.
It’s jarringly still on the tracks this morning, no breeze, and the ground littered with sodden dead moths and their plastic-munching ‘waxworm’ caterpillars.
Andy catches my eye, flashing a small smile in sympathy. ‘They wreak havoc on the remaining bees, though, don’t they? Eating beeswax too. One problem just triggering another and another . . . the world unbalanced and swinging like a broken chandelier.’
In the dark silence between our crunching boots, my lungs wheeze and gasp, catching at each end of my breath. They’re not just itchy now, but prickling as if lined with sandpaper – aching open and wincing as they deflate. The inflammation is worse after last night and I can’t dislodge Andy’s observations of the suffering deer from my head.
Andy looks back the way we’ve come, and even in the gloom I can see his smile falling away.
‘What is it?’ I stare at the long grey silent track. Around us, the thick embankments are full of deep shadow, and dripping gently from last night’s rain. But I cling to the thought that we’d hear the rustle and snap of vegetation if someone was there.
‘Nothing.’ He forces a smile that makes me hot and alert – and I wonder if this is how I make Harry feel when I pass things off as nothing. I stick close as we keep a brisk pace. ‘Don’t break into a run, Katie,’ he says at one point, ‘we’re not scared.’
But I’m getting breathless, grimacing, and I have to slow, hunching over to gasp and cough.
Andy absently pops blackberries – straight off the bush – into his mouth as he waits, eyes darting behind us. My own stomach rumbles, but I’m surprised he would risk that coating of fresh milky residue – all the details of the vegetation becoming more visible in the dappled but growing light.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ he says.
I look over my shoulder. ‘What is it you’ve seen?’
He shakes his head. ‘If we stay calm, I think we’ll be alright.’ He swallows another berry, smiling, and I feel myself grow irritable.
‘You shouldn’t eat that,’ I say as I get going again.
‘A few probably won’t hurt, just this once. The chemicals leaching from plastic dust reach everything we eat through the soil anyway, don’t they, and dust is in the air everywhere, so even if we pick from sheltered spots and wash things and are careful with masks and gear – it’s all gradations of contamination, right? But we’re still surviving, aren’t we? So is the world –’ he gestures around at the lush cherry-red and golden dripping leaves, fresh shoots springing up after the rains – ‘everything’s fighting to survive.’
‘Nothing’s thriving, though,’ I say, that wave of irritation stronger at whatever it is he’s not telling me. Does he think I’ll panic? I want to scream that I was right not to want to be near those survivors last night – but I don’t want to draw attention, if he doesn’t know what happened. I fear it being brushed off, or resulting in questions, or worse, bringing up all the other nightmares of last night.
‘Most things don’t grow over head height,’ I say, ‘constantly dropping leaves, that colour – anthocyanins and carotenes, reds and yellows – the trees put that out in autumn Before, so they could gasp last breaths before winter. Or give young fragile shoots in spring a fighting chance. And everything is sweeter but less nutritious—’ I wheeze, face scrunching at that prickling in my chest. ‘And the skin of that blackberry is probably worse than what’s inside – it’s just rained grey.’
‘You’re right, it’s a gamble I don’t usually take,’ he says softly, reaching a calloused hand to squeeze my shoulder – a warm, solid, good hand, like Jack’s, which makes me crave to feel it – but I cringe away.
We continue on quietly for some time, until we reach the stretch of butterfly-bushes, the sweetness damped down by last night’s rain too. I flinch as Andy suddenly tears off his jumper. Ripping shreds from it and wrapping them round the end of a thick stick, he then trails this through the moist dust accumulated along the tracks – layer after layer – finally lighting it. It sparks into a foul-smelling flame, the thick white smoke following us as we move.
There’s rustling in the bushes.
Andy lights a second torch and hands it over, raising his hand. Stop.
I freeze. I see nothing at first but the narrow railway line, shadow-grey and yellow-ochre leaves fluttering thickly either side, and the tremble of a few stray moth wings emerging into the pale dappled light.
Shit.
I clamp a hand over my mouth to smother the gaspy note of fear, keeping it there even though my hands are unwashed and dirty.
Long legs and heavy feet creep out through the flutter of wings and shadow. A ruffed neck that makes its face look broad. A grizzled grey coat. And two eyes shining greenish orange, pinning us to the spot.
I grip my torch tighter, wishing I had hold of Andy’s rifle, which he is slowly manoeuvring off his shoulder one-handed while swishing his torch to and fro.
Andy presses a finger to his mask, signalling to wait, to be quiet.
But I’m nearly crying, the Fear coming through me in great big waves.
‘I’m not going to let anyone hurt you,’ Andy whispers. ‘Just wait till they move on.’
There’s a lot of noise. Every shout and clatter and clonk startles me.
Then the light rain becomes a deluge, making the knotweed dance and twitch. People and deer scatter.
Andy and I rush to the pavement. We push and pull on doors until we find one that opens. A quick check of the downstairs rooms – mouldy wet floors, cracked windows letting in wisps of moist grey, both of us tripping over the sunken form of a previous inhabitant as we step into a lounge. Recoiling, I nearly head back outside but Andy turns and hurries up the stairs.
‘Wait!’ I hurry after him, dreading what else might be slumped up there, and follow him straight into the back room.
‘Whoa whoa, there, who the fuck are you?’
Rain is bouncing on the roof, weighted with dust and so loud we can hardly hear what the man in front of us is trying to tell us, though his gesture is clear. Leave.
The room is bare but for sleeping rolls and a few blankets. A floorboard in the corner has been lifted, revealing the glint of glass bottles in the dim light of their candles. The windows have been permanently boarded up with thick wood, and the door has rubber round it that makes it suck the floor and hard to move on its hinges. This definitely isn’t a home; it’s a bolthole.
‘Can’t we wait out this storm with you?’ Andy is saying, as I try to stay in the shadows behind him. And the others are shaking their heads.
‘Not enough room. And we don’t trust outsiders: fuck off.’
‘We have to wait out the rain.’
And I can smell it, coming up from the cracked windows downstairs and with us on our damp outer layers – a bitter chemical scent.
I start to shiver.
‘Fine, whatever, but not in here.’
We are ushered out of the room, and the door slams.
Andy goes straight to the front box room. The window is a tiny dormer and still intact. The heavy rain has created a semi-twilight outside, milky-grey raindrops streaking down.
I imagine how many steps it is from here to Harry.
‘We should get back,’ I say, looking out at the rain and the thick grey-white air drifting along the street, buildings now getting lost as if in a mountain whiteout. I wonder if we have time to reach another building or hurry to the end of the rainstorm, even though I know it will penetrate my outer layers – and, crucially, my mask – if I’m out there too long, and that that smell is bad. And I don’t have my cap and nearly useless, scratched goggles, which I wear in winter to protect my eyes when I have no choice but to go out in thick bad air. But not in rain like this, I’d never risk this.
Little grey eddies make it through invisible cracks in the window frame. The more I stare out, the more I can imagine wind wraiths and ghosts drifting out there, ready to suffocate poor victims and snatch your soul away. Nasties, though I really don’t think Harry’s imagination has specific names and images like mine does. I shrink back from the window.
‘This looks set in!’ Andy shouts over the rain rattling against the glass, leaning towards me. ‘It might rain for hours. We have to stay put.’
A horrible anger runs up my spine, alongside this irrational feeling that Andy is trying to keep me from Harry, or has brought me to this house on purpose. But there’s fear in his eyes too and I swallow the thoughts down. I know he’s right.
He searches the wardrobe, divvying out baby-blue and white knitted blankets. Two rodent-nibbled teddy bears tumble out from amongst them, only one eye between them. And we each set about wadding up the edges of the window and around the door.
I grimace, imagining if I had brought Harry with us today. Or if we do head north soon. At the flat, I would never, ever have risked Harry even close to a window when it’s like this outside. Let alone consider travelling hundreds of fucking miles to Scotland out in it! I’m trembling in the gloom as I reach for the side of the little child-sized bed and sit in the corner. Cursing myself for leaving Harry. After everything I promised!
‘They’ll leave us be, with any luck,’ Andy says, as I try to read his lips – his voice lost in the drumming rain.
Slowly I nod, as Andy pulls his hood up and a blanket around him and gets comfortable in the opposite corner on the floor.
It’s a long dark afternoon and night. The men in their sealed room get louder and drunk enough that I can hear them over the rain, and I can smell food cooking, my own stomach growling and contorting. Their laughter and voices slowly become strangely comforting – human against my imagination of outside and that prostrate shape we tripped over downstairs.
I keep trying to weigh up the sickening gamble of going north. At some point I doze off, and dream of Jack up in Scotland, his body hanging, swinging as I open a door, and later, of him alive and angry, shoving Harry away from us, out into the dangerous smog.
I wake – desperately trying to shake off that new horrifying nightmare as the rejection stings me, the unsmiling expression on dream-Jack’s face alien and awful. Jack would never . . . never . . .
Yet all the ways Harry doesn’t look like Jack suddenly thud, heavy, in my chest. Jack’s mum’s photos clear in my head. He’s not like Maggie’s fair-haired little boy pinned on those boards in her stairwell. Or the grown-up Jack I’m carrying inside that diary in my pack. I feel guilty wishing – even for a moment – that he was, as if he’s not enough or wrong as he is and it would make things easier, simpler. The love I crave for him more certain.
I blink, becoming blearily aware of my surroundings, realizing it is the low throbbing glow of a gas flame in the pitch-black room that woke me. I begin to open my mouth to ask Andy what he’s doing. But the eyes glinting at me are not his, nor are the sharp contours of the forehead, cheekbones and square fabric mask. The rain has slowed to quieter tapping. So much so that I can hear the wet regular slapping inside the room.
I feel frozen again, small and powerless. Trapped in the corner of this little bed. The knife I slowly pull from my trousers seems feeble – short and slender. I can feel the wall behind me, nowhere to escape to. As I shift he takes a step closer, the pounding getting faster. So I stay still and don’t look away, not wanting to make things worse. In case this is all he wants. Just let me have this. The words there in my head already. I just have to sit here and take this. Like I am nothing again.
The hiss and smell of burning plastic fills the room, the gas lamp’s flame jumping and bulging inside its glass orb like a little trapped fire demon. Trails of dust from round the wadded dormer window reach towards the heat like ghostly fingers, fizzing and burning in the air as they near the lamp, and orange glowing embers begin to dot my mattress. I yelp, hot stings biting through my clothes, and I slap the blanket across the mattress, putting out the sparks.
When I look up again he is gone. I think about getting up to wake Andy, who I hope is still on the other side of the room. But with the rain still tapping and the bedroom door left open, I feel numb and afraid to move. And as the minutes roll by, those fresh worries of my nightmare keep returning to keep me company. I pull my stinking, still-smoking blanket tighter around me, knowing I’m not going to get any more sleep.
21
Five Years and Four Months Ago
I heel the last tent peg into the ground, swaying – the tight prickling sandpaper feeling of my lungs inhaling and exhaling making me feel sick and weary. I feel watchful, in case it gets worse, like it was in the first few months, when I dreaded each cough – terrified of one day seeing blood on my hands – lungs hot, tight and splinteringly painful.
It’s dark now, but I can feel the dry crisp grass beneath my boots. Hitchin is a few weeks’ slow, breathless trudge behind me. I’m tired of dead brown grass and leafless dying trees, everything withering and winking out, brown and black, the sky an unsettling thick grey haze that blocks the sun. And still that dry, unpleasant chemical taste to the air. I feel about ready to choke on the death everywhere.
I can hear the group that I passed lower down the hill – only male voices seem to carry to where I’m standing. I wonder if some are friends that survived together. That hope burns inside me, of what I’ll find when I get to Mum’s house in Birmingham. Please. Let her be alive.
It feels safe to be within calling distance of those voices, like we have some unspoken agreement that proximity is comforting. I have this urge to go down to them and tell someone about Jack. More than anything I want my mum to put her arms around me. But even a stranger’s acknowledgement of it would mean something. To have some sympathy and understanding for the awfulness. There’s been no one to share my pain with, no one to say things out loud with, and now I fully understand why they call it bottling up your feelings. I feel ready to burst. But I don’t know how to begin. So I climb inside the tent, finally pulling free of my mask, the heavy exhaustion in every limb from the day’s breathless walking like a thick smothering blanket over the grief.
The swift grind of the zip, from bottom to top, wakes me, but I feel so groggy that I don’t even open my eyes.
I do to the crinkle of the groundsheet as my sleeping bag is yanked out, my legs tangled up inside.
‘What the fuck are you—’ I find my croaky voice only to be smacked across the jaw. My face throbs. Numb pain grows in my gums, something warm running from my nose. His face is a blurred shape in the dim twilight. He’s shouting, but I can’t focus on the words. His skin is rough and greasy as I struggle, like that of a teenager, but his voice is deeper and hoarser – damaged. He’s tearing, pummelling, but it dawns on me that he doesn’t know what he wants.
His boot slams into my stomach, crumpling me.
‘Stop!’ I’m wheezing, trying to suck air in, then coughing and gasping, my lungs becoming hot again like they were months ago. I try to protect my chest. His hands are in my hair, yanking my head back onto the hard earth. I feel myself waver between here and unconsciousness and I fight it. Feel my hair tear at the roots.
He figures it out. There’s a hand on my crotch. My whole body responds to the unwanted touch, vomit churning at the back of my throat, my fists flailing. He tugs at my trousers. Tears at the buttons. I feel cold air on my pelvis.
‘Stop it!’ My scream is ragged and inhuman, reducing me to something less: an animal. I don’t care. I’m kicking, punching.
But he’s heavier than me, stronger.
‘Please. Just let me have it, I just need—’ His voice is muffled as we struggle. His weight keeps me pinned down, the pressure on my tender lungs making me feel like things are beginning to spin. Panic thickens. I feel him shove his way between my legs. Heat flushes through me.
I try to twist and kick, remembering suddenly that I need to use my knees and elbows if being overpowered. I try, twisting and heaving, but I can’t get free enough to jab in.
The sharp sting of teeth cut into my bare shoulder, like we are animals, like I just need to be subdued.
‘Why aren’t you her? It’s not fair!’ Elbow or head, don’t know which, comes at my face. ‘You’re nothing compared to her. Nothing. Stupid useless bitch.’ I don’t feel it, not really. Just numbness. And warmth trickling from my nose, from my mouth, dribbling down my chin.
And he carries on. Desperate now, his breathing deep and fast.
And I begin to drift away. Something inside me has shrunk and tried to hide, even though there’s nowhere to hide. I’m not moving anymore. Can’t feel anything. Even all the grief has numbed down and I find I don’t want not to feel it – that pain is Jack and I want Jack.
I scream at myself to fight harder. But there’s nothing left.
So maybe I am a useless bitch.
Nothing.
After all, I’m nothing to anyone anymore, am I?
22
In the dawn darkness, I keep looking back the way we’ve come, convinced there’s movement amongst the shadowy mass of zigzagged fronds – but the pale yellow glow on the horizon is barely enough to see by, my eyes still adjusting from the bright torchlight we used to navigate the warehouses.
The night Harry was born swims in my head, that second spring After. My mind travels backwards from there, through nine months of scavenging in Hitchin and bodies and the Fear and a growing bump, to that awful day in May or June of the first year, making me happy to hurry after Andy’s quick footsteps in the dark.
And that crack inside me opens up as I force myself another four hungry harrowing months back to Jack and January and the storm.
I keep blinking it all away, focusing on treading softly and making it back to the railway line, where the wet crunch of gravel and squelch of leaves and mud greets us underfoot. Neither Andy nor I have bothered with masks – the air is deliciously clear and fresh, the rain having damped down the dust.
It’s jarringly still on the tracks this morning, no breeze, and the ground littered with sodden dead moths and their plastic-munching ‘waxworm’ caterpillars.
Andy catches my eye, flashing a small smile in sympathy. ‘They wreak havoc on the remaining bees, though, don’t they? Eating beeswax too. One problem just triggering another and another . . . the world unbalanced and swinging like a broken chandelier.’
In the dark silence between our crunching boots, my lungs wheeze and gasp, catching at each end of my breath. They’re not just itchy now, but prickling as if lined with sandpaper – aching open and wincing as they deflate. The inflammation is worse after last night and I can’t dislodge Andy’s observations of the suffering deer from my head.
Andy looks back the way we’ve come, and even in the gloom I can see his smile falling away.
‘What is it?’ I stare at the long grey silent track. Around us, the thick embankments are full of deep shadow, and dripping gently from last night’s rain. But I cling to the thought that we’d hear the rustle and snap of vegetation if someone was there.
‘Nothing.’ He forces a smile that makes me hot and alert – and I wonder if this is how I make Harry feel when I pass things off as nothing. I stick close as we keep a brisk pace. ‘Don’t break into a run, Katie,’ he says at one point, ‘we’re not scared.’
But I’m getting breathless, grimacing, and I have to slow, hunching over to gasp and cough.
Andy absently pops blackberries – straight off the bush – into his mouth as he waits, eyes darting behind us. My own stomach rumbles, but I’m surprised he would risk that coating of fresh milky residue – all the details of the vegetation becoming more visible in the dappled but growing light.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ he says.
I look over my shoulder. ‘What is it you’ve seen?’
He shakes his head. ‘If we stay calm, I think we’ll be alright.’ He swallows another berry, smiling, and I feel myself grow irritable.
‘You shouldn’t eat that,’ I say as I get going again.
‘A few probably won’t hurt, just this once. The chemicals leaching from plastic dust reach everything we eat through the soil anyway, don’t they, and dust is in the air everywhere, so even if we pick from sheltered spots and wash things and are careful with masks and gear – it’s all gradations of contamination, right? But we’re still surviving, aren’t we? So is the world –’ he gestures around at the lush cherry-red and golden dripping leaves, fresh shoots springing up after the rains – ‘everything’s fighting to survive.’
‘Nothing’s thriving, though,’ I say, that wave of irritation stronger at whatever it is he’s not telling me. Does he think I’ll panic? I want to scream that I was right not to want to be near those survivors last night – but I don’t want to draw attention, if he doesn’t know what happened. I fear it being brushed off, or resulting in questions, or worse, bringing up all the other nightmares of last night.
‘Most things don’t grow over head height,’ I say, ‘constantly dropping leaves, that colour – anthocyanins and carotenes, reds and yellows – the trees put that out in autumn Before, so they could gasp last breaths before winter. Or give young fragile shoots in spring a fighting chance. And everything is sweeter but less nutritious—’ I wheeze, face scrunching at that prickling in my chest. ‘And the skin of that blackberry is probably worse than what’s inside – it’s just rained grey.’
‘You’re right, it’s a gamble I don’t usually take,’ he says softly, reaching a calloused hand to squeeze my shoulder – a warm, solid, good hand, like Jack’s, which makes me crave to feel it – but I cringe away.
We continue on quietly for some time, until we reach the stretch of butterfly-bushes, the sweetness damped down by last night’s rain too. I flinch as Andy suddenly tears off his jumper. Ripping shreds from it and wrapping them round the end of a thick stick, he then trails this through the moist dust accumulated along the tracks – layer after layer – finally lighting it. It sparks into a foul-smelling flame, the thick white smoke following us as we move.
There’s rustling in the bushes.
Andy lights a second torch and hands it over, raising his hand. Stop.
I freeze. I see nothing at first but the narrow railway line, shadow-grey and yellow-ochre leaves fluttering thickly either side, and the tremble of a few stray moth wings emerging into the pale dappled light.
Shit.
I clamp a hand over my mouth to smother the gaspy note of fear, keeping it there even though my hands are unwashed and dirty.
Long legs and heavy feet creep out through the flutter of wings and shadow. A ruffed neck that makes its face look broad. A grizzled grey coat. And two eyes shining greenish orange, pinning us to the spot.
I grip my torch tighter, wishing I had hold of Andy’s rifle, which he is slowly manoeuvring off his shoulder one-handed while swishing his torch to and fro.
