The Bitter End (3 page)

She shuddered to think that while she'd been making up beds for the kids those things had been out there. Waiting for them to get close enough so they could jump across.

"What are we going to do?" she said.

He didn't say anything and she knew there was more that he wasn't telling her.

"What is it Dennis?" she said.

She turned to see him squirming. Whatever it was it was the reason he'd called her up. If they had been following the boat for thirty minutes then something else must have changed.

"According to the map," he said in a way that made it clear he thought the map was to blame, "we're approaching a lock."

She nodded. She felt serenely calm. This was what she had expected, there wouldn't be a happy ending for them. "How long?"

"About fifteen minutes."

That was long enough. If she got the kids to sleep she could use a pillow on Cora. Dennis would need to deal with Ben, he was too strong for her.

"Are they asleep?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"Do you want to see if you can sleep for a bit?"

She turned around so she could see him and frowned. Why would she want to sleep now? She was going to be dead in fifteen minutes.

"I can keep going for a few hours," he said, "but not all night."

"Keep... what are you talking about?"

She noticed that they were passing the same cluster of trees again. Or were they? It was difficult to tell in the dark and all trees looked about the same.

"One of us needs to keep driving until morning."

Hannah felt sick to her stomach. Of course, it had been obvious. They just had to keep going until sunrise, by then they would be safe and they could continue to the lock. In her mind she had already stuffed a pillow over Cora's mouth and held it down until she stopped struggling. She started to cry.

"What is it?" said Dennis.

She shook her head. "You go in and get some rest. I don't think I could sleep yet."

He didn't argue with her. She took the tiller from him.

"Give me a call if you need me. Otherwise I'll be out in a couple of hours to take over." He kissed her softly on the lips and went inside.

She watched the creatures on the bank stop as the boat turned. They were smart, that was just one of the things that made them so dangerous. When the boat pulled away again they started to follow.

It started to get cold and Dennis appeared with a jacket for her. "You alright up here by yourself?"

She nodded and took the jacket from him. "You should be resting."

The creatures continued their journey up and down the bank while she continued theirs up and down the river.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Are they still there?"

"Still there." She had considered switching off the engine and letting the boat drift along to save fuel but there was a slight current towards the bank and she was afraid that if she fell asleep they would drift towards shore and the first she would know about it would be when she woke up as one of them.

"You want a coffee of something?"

"Coffee would be good," she said.
 

He disappeared back inside and returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups of black coffee. There was no milk left. "We should think about weapons," he said, settling his cup on top of the boat and closing the door behind him.

Finding weapons would be easy. There were thousands of guns just laying in the street where the army had been overrun. Getting to them would be more difficult but, she supposed, if they set off early enough they could be there and back before sunset.

"Is there a city on your map?" she said.

He took it out of his pocket and peered at it. He wouldn't be able to see anything in the dark, frankly she was surprised he could see anything in the light. His glasses had broken when he tripped over, while they were travelling to the boat. There hadn't been time to find another pair.

"We can't be too far from Reading," he said.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that her sister lived in Reading but, of course, she didn't. Probably no one lived there anymore.

Dennis sat with her until she started to yawn. "Go and get some sleep," he said.

"I'm alright," she said. But a few minutes later her eyes were starting to feel heavy and she couldn't keep them open. The fear of the creatures stalking along the bank remained but it wasn't enough to keep her awake anymore.

"At least let me steer, before you run us into a bridge or something." He didn't need to say what 'something' might be.

"Maybe I'll just go and check on the kids," she said and let him take the tiller. She saw him smile but kissed him anyway and then went back inside.

It was warm and she knew she wouldn't be able to stay awake for long. She also couldn't look at the faces of the sleeping children who, just a few hours earlier, she had killed.

Without getting undressed she climbed into bed, closed her eyes and fell asleep.

3

That night she dreamed. She dreamed that they were back at home. They had a nice home, a nice life. They lived in a new apartment block near the city centre. Dennis was in stocks, 'not a stockbroker' he'd told her but she could never remember what he actually did. She had been in marketing before Ben had come along. She hadn't worked since.

They were in their mid-thirties and their friends were all settled down having children as well. They had a good social life. A good life. Then she dreamed that the creatures came and it wasn't a dream but a memory.

She was laying in bed and she could hear Dennis beside her, breathing heavily, his throat making that irritating irregular rasping sound. He had been drinking the night before. But she could also hear something else, a scratching noise that sounded like hissing.

She didn't know what it was, no one knew what it was back then. The population just exploded overnight. One day they were nowhere, the next day they were everywhere. And that was the night.

The night that they swarmed all over the building. Climbed up the outside of the sleek glass and steel tower. They could constrict their bodies, stretch them out, to get in through air vents that would have been impossible for a human.

And there they were now, crawling through the pipes above their heads, scratching and hissing from behind hollow walls. She could hear them and she knew they were there but she couldn't move. She was paralysed. In the dark of the night she was the only one who knew what was coming and she was the only one who couldn't move.

She tried to scream but nothing came out except a soundless gasp. It was like spiders crawling up her spine. If she couldn't save herself then she wanted to warn her family but she couldn't even do that. She was trapped, they were trapped, there was nothing she could do and they were all going to die.

It hadn't happened like that.

No one had known they were coming but it hadn't happened over night. It took weeks rather than days for it to become an epidemic. It was true that no one seemed to be able to stop them but it was also true that no one even seemed to try until it was too late.

She woke in a cold sweat to find sunlight streaming through the thin white curtains behind her. She was panting, out of breath. Hannah jumped up and ran out of the bedroom to find her children gone, their beds neatly made. She could hear them laughing and joking outside.

4

The river had flooded the Oracle shopping centre. It lapped against a deflated bouncy castle, the blue plastic had faded and turned yellow in places. Little waterfalls had formed running down the bricked hills. The McDonalds on one side was beneath a foot of water, on the other side the tables outside Starbucks had been turned over and lay half submerged.

Hannah steered the boat. Dennis jumped off holding a length of rope and looped it around the metal safety barrier that ran along the length of the the river. He pulled the boat towards him and then tied the rope. Ben threw another rope from the back and he tied that off as well.

She stopped the engine and the silence was like being punched in the stomach. The Oracle wasn't as big as some shopping centres but it had always been noisy. The sound of a thousand people talking, laughing and joking, their only worry being whether the dress they liked would be available in their size. There had been music and the sound of children. Now there was nothing.

"All ashore that's coming ashore," said Dennis.

She turned and saw him helping the children down. They soaked their shoes and trousers in a foot of water that had once been dry land. She wondered if it was safe for them to be doing this, whether it made more sense for her and the kids to stay on the boat while Dennis went looking for weapons. She didn't much like the idea of Ben and Cora handling guns but what other choice did they have? They needed more than just guns if they were going to keep going.

Dennis helped her down and she winced as the cold water climbed up her trousers. The children were already standing at the top in front of another coffee shop. She let Dennis take her hand and lead her up the wet steps.

The automatic doors were stuck on open. The floor was slippery with about an inch of water running down into House of Frasier and to the escalators. Which weren't working. Hannah reached for Cora's hand - she knew that Ben wouldn't let her take his - as they passed the cash machines which might as well have been spitting out fifties for all the good they could do them now.

At the top of the stairs they passed Thornton's which was one of the few shops to have its shutters pulled down. She would have liked to take some chocolate with them but supposed it was all beginning to rot now.

The floor was dry at the top and their shoes squeaked as they walked. The lights were off but there was a dirty glass ceiling that let in enough light for them to see by. They walked slowly around the corner and then out the other side, across the bridge and up to John Lewis.

She and Dennis had been discussing the plan for the last three days. She knew exactly what they were there to do. But she hadn't accounted for an increasing desire to look around the shops she used to buy clothes from and maybe pick herself up a nice outfit. She thought it would make her feel better. She kept quiet and followed Dennis through the narrow passageway and onto the high street.

This was where the damage had been done. The air still smelled faintly of smoke. The brick ground was carpeted in glass from the windows that had been broken, overturned army vehicles lay in ruin. An old book shop must have been hit with a bomb or something, the buildings on either side of it leaned towards each other like drunks at a party. Hannah hadn't realised how much she would have liked to take away a few books but all that was left were charred pages and empty covers laying in the rubble.

They found what they wanted laying in the middle of the street, casually discarded like coffee cups. Dennis walked towards a gun, some sort of pistol and looked around. She stood a little way back with Cora and Ben, whose arm she had grabbed to hold him in place.

Dennis looked around but she could tell they were alone there. Then cautiously he bent down and touched the pistol briefly, as if he was afraid it would burn him. When nothing happened he picked it up.

"It's heavy," he said. He didn't speak loudly but, with no other sounds around, she could easily hear him.

He put the gun in his bag without checking to see if it was loaded. As far as she knew he didn't even know how. She just hoped that if the time ever came they would be able to work out how to fire the thing. He picked up more guns, gaining confidence each time he dropped one in the bag, making a loud clack. After just a few minutes he had a bag full of handguns, machine guns and rifles. It was not yet mid-day.

"We should get back to the boat," she said when he walked back to them.

"Don't you want to do some shopping?" he said.

Her heart lifted but she pushed it back down. That wasn't what they were here for and they couldn't afford to waste time. They needed to get back on the river and to as wide a stretch as possible. "We don't have time."

"Come on," he said, already walking. "It's on the way back and we need stuff for the kitchen. The kids need clothes as well."

She followed him. Ben tried to walk ahead to be with his father, no doubt drawn by the exotic treasure he had in his bag, but she kept a tight hold on his arm.

"Don't you want anything?"

She did want things. She wanted a nice dress and some pretty shoes. But that wasn't the world they lived in anymore. "Maybe some more boots," she said. "And some trousers."

They walked back along the narrow alleyway which still smelled faintly of piss. They walked past the entrance to John Lewis and back across the bridge to the Oracle. She thought he was going to suggest they split up. She wouldn't have let it happen but the fact that he didn't even suggest it worried her. Did he think there was something in the shopping centre that could get them?

He dropped the heavy bag of guns on the floor at the bottom of the escalator. "Where first?" he said.

It would have been easy to imagine they were back in the old world. A Saturday morning spent walking around the shops followed by lunch in a nice pub and then the drive home. But she wouldn't let herself be drawn into that fantasy. This was a dangerous world. She couldn't afford to relax.