The Cost of Living (13 page)

And
when I do look out there, I wish I hadn’t.

Ahead
of me for as far as I can see are the infected. It’s like an endless sea. The
road, the cars, the burned out pub... everything’s obscured by an incalculable
number of disease-ridden bodies. Nothing but plague victims cramming themselves
ever closer to the development. And the few spaces which remain between them
are filling as I’m watching, more and more of them edging ever closer. And
they’ll keep coming. I can see it now, clear as day. We’re the only ones left,
Nathan said, so they’ll keep getting closer and closer and closer. When there’s
no room here, they’ll spread out around the sides, and before long they’ll have
surrounded the whole development. I understand what he was saying about their
numbers, because it’s impossible to tell how many there are. All I know is
that, in the absence of anyone else, every plague victim for miles around will
drag themselves here. He’s brought the whole damn world to our doorstep.

#

Gabby’s waiting
for me back at the house. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s wrong?’

I
try to tell her, but the words won’t come.

‘It’s
okay though, isn’t it? You said we’re safe here. You’ve always said we’re safe
here. They won’t get in...’

‘Don’t
you get it? They’re infected. Even when they’re all dead, even when they’ve
rotted down to almost nothing, the whole area around this place will be toxic.
Mile after mile after mile of poison. We’ll never get away from here now.
Nathan’s cut us off. It’s not about the infected getting in, Gabby, it’s about
us never getting out.’

STUART

TUESDAY 18 AUGUST – 11:40am

I tick the
eighty-second day off the calendar I’ve drawn on the garage wall. Almost twelve
weeks since lock-down. A month since Nathan came home.

That’s
it. We’re done. The last of the supplies. The very last house on the
development completely emptied. There’s enough to last another week. Maybe ten
days if I forgo some of my rations. Trouble is, I don’t think I can. I’m so
hungry all the time. But I have to try. The kids must come first. All three of
them are malnourished. Hannah’s half the size she should be. She still looks
like a new-born. It’s like she stopped growing when all this began.

I
give Gabby the food for the day. I half-expect the kids to come running when
they hear us in the kitchen, but they don’t. They don’t have the energy to run
anymore. We spend all our time in the lounge and that’s where they are now.
Nathan’s lying on the sofa, reading the same story to the girls that he’s
already read a hundred times or more.

‘You
look tired,’ Gabby says to me.

‘I
am.’

‘Funny
how exhausted we are, when all we do is sleep.’

I
pull her closer to me. It still catches me out when I hold her like this. She’s
changed so much. So little weight. Her spine is more curved than it was, her
arms much thinner. Her breath rattles. Her smell has changed also... no more
perfumes and crèmes, just her natural scent. It reminds me of the smell of an
old-fashioned sweet-shop, like how my grandma used to smell. And Gabby’s hair...
brittle like straw. It breaks my heart. I know how much she used to love her
hair, how she always used to keep it in such lovely condition.

‘I
need to get on,’ I tell her.

‘Get
on with what?’

‘Checking
the supplies... ordering the stuff in the garage...’

‘But
there’s nothing left in there, love.’

‘I
want to be sure. I need to double-check.’

‘You
did that yesterday.’

‘I
know, but I might have missed something.’

‘Just
stop. Come and sit down. Come and be with me and the kids.’

‘I
will, I will... I just want to go through the bins, check I haven’t missed
anything.’

‘Will
you never stop, love?’

‘No,
Gab, I won’t.’

GABBY

MONDAY 24 AUGUST – 5:35pm

Today’s the day.
Barely any food in the garage. So little left.

‘Do
you know what day it is today?’ I ask Stuart. He just looks at me, blank, so I
answer for him. ‘August bank holiday.’

He’s
been dozing again, and it takes him a while to respond. ‘That’s right,’ he
says. Bloody hell, he sounds about seventy. ‘Weren’t we going to go away?
Didn’t you want to take the kids to Cornwall this week?’

‘We
could still go,’ I tell him. ‘Hop in the car, drive down to the coast...’

He
starts to laugh, but the laughs quickly turn to coughs. Soon his noise fills
the whole house.

So
tired. We’re all so tired.

Stuart
thought I didn’t understand. He didn’t think I realised how serious our
situation was, but I knew right from the start, same as he did. We just had a different
way of dealing with it is all, a different point of view. He’s always been the
practical one, but it’s not always about being practical, is it? I don’t think
he thought I pulled my weight, but I’ve worked just as hard as he has through
all of this. I’m the one who looked after the kids and answered their
impossible questions. The one who cooked and cleaned and kept the house as
normal as I could. The one who saved half their food each day and shared it out
between the children. I’m as tired as he is. I was supporting the family in
different ways, that’s all.

I’d
just like a break. I’d love to just switch off from all of this for a while.
Nathan told me about the infected again this morning, about how when they’re
not hunting, they’re just
drifting
. He says it’s like they haven’t got a
care in the world, like nothing matters to them.

I
got angry yesterday when I caught Stuart in the garage again, divvying up our
already meagre rations into smaller piles still. I said
it’s the same
amount, love, doesn’t matter how you share it out
, but he just got all
defensive. He kept asking me what else I expected him to do, and I said I
didn’t expect anything, that he’d already done enough. I told him he didn’t
have to keep trying to take all the responsibility. He said he did. I don’t
think he’ll ever listen.

All
things considered, I think we’ve probably got enough food for another week. We
might make even it to the beginning of September. That’s sad. Such a shame.
It’s the kids I feel for most of all. At least Stu and I have lived a little.
Still, if your fate’s sealed, I’d struggle to think of a better place to go
than at home, surrounded by the people you love the most.

We’ve
all been sitting together in the lounge this morning, a brief illusion of
normality. We still sit around the TV, even though it’s been dead for months.
When I half-close my eyes and relax, I can almost imagine this is a normal day
like the ones we used to have. Nathan’s found some batteries and has managed to
squeeze a little life out of a handheld game he used to love. Sally’s playing
with her dolls, with occasional help from Hannah. Stuart’s in his armchair,
trying to read a book but struggling to stay awake.

The
moment feels perfect, but desperately fragile. This won’t last long. I think if
I could bottle and preserve these feelings, I could live off them for years.

It’s
definitely time.

‘Who’s
hungry?’

They
all look up when I ask the question, surprised. After having to save every
crumb, every morsel for weeks on end, it’s shocked them all that I’m actually
offering food.

‘Gabby,
what...?’ Stuart starts to say, immediately concerned. I put my hand on his.

‘It’s
okay, love. I know I shouldn’t have, but I kept something back. I thought there
might be a day when we’d like a nice family dinner together to help keep our spirits
up, and as it’s a holiday, I think it might as well be today. That okay with
you?’

He
looks like he’s about to cry. ‘Yeah... that’s fine. That’d be lovely.’

‘What
is it, Mum?’ Nathan asks, looking up from his game.

‘Some
meat and vegetables. All out of tins, I’m afraid, but I’ve got a bit of gravy
powder left and some herbs and spices. I think I’ll be able to rustle up a
decent stew.’

‘I
don’t like stew,’ Sally grumbles.

‘You
don’t like anything. You’ll eat it if you’re hungry enough.’

I
leave them bickering and go into the kitchen, enjoying their noise. I shift
some of Stuart’s crap out of the way, then give the camping stove a quick wipe
over and start cooking. I’ve had this planned for a while. Almost as long as
we’ve been shut away here, I think.

The
smell quickly fills the house, and it’s heavenly, like the Sunday roasts we
used to love. Another wave of nostalgia washes over me. The kids are laughing
now. It’s wonderful to hear, but heart-breaking too. So sad that this is just a
fleeting reminder of what we used to have all the time, what we used to take
for granted.

No
one notices me nip outside.

#

Whether they
like stew or not, no one’s complaining. Even Hannah’s managed a few mouthfuls.
That should be enough, I hope. I laid the dining table like we used to. Sad
that a simple thing like a family meal with hot food feels like such an
extravagance now. It feels like fine dining. I would have gone upstairs and put
on a dress, if the stairs weren’t such a climb, and if I had anything that
still fitted.

The
meal tastes good, even if I do say so myself. So good that no one notices.

#

By late-afternoon,
we’ve all got it. I make up beds in the lounge, telling the kids they’ll feel
better in the morning, but knowing they won’t. They won’t feel anything. That’s
what I planned.

I
close my eyes and imagine myself drifting.

Stuart
looks frightened. I lie down next to him and hold him tight, feeling his life
draining away as fast as mine. It’s hard for him to speak, but he manages a few
words. ‘What... what did you do?’

‘I
did what I had to,’ I tell him. ‘I love you, Stu. You worked so hard to keep us
all safe, but we both know we’re long past the point of no return. We knew it
would get us sooner or later. We wasted so much energy. We should never have
fought so hard.’

‘But...’

‘I
thought it would be better this way. I’ve seen those things beyond the fence.
They’re free and out of pain, we’re not. Seems to me the infected have a better
life than we do now.’

He
squirms, his guts beginning to spasm, and I hold him even tighter.

‘It
was the only thing left for me to do, love. Think about it... the infection is our
last way out of this nightmare. I took some blood from one of them and added it
to the food. We’ve all got it now. It’s done.’

I
kiss his forehead. He’s burning up, soaked with sweat.

‘It’s
for the best,’ I tell him, and I hope he can still hear me because I really
want him to understand. ‘You see, love, there always comes a point when you
just have to face facts, don’t you think? There’s no way out of this for us.
This is the best option, our
only
option. It’s funny, you were the one
always banging on about the cost of living, and I always said it didn’t matter,
because we’d always get what we needed. But you just couldn’t see it, could
you? I was never talking about pounds and pence. When the real price is hidden,
love, it’s impossible to make the right decisions. Sometimes, it’s just too
high a price to pay.’

THE END

There are
more than a thousand corpses outside the house in Ashbourne Close, and at least
as many more again dragging themselves towards the mouth of the cul-de-sac.
They come because they know there are survivors here. The reasons why they come
are unclear and unimportant. The only thing that matters is that even now,
almost a month after the beginning of the end of everything, there’s no let up.
They just keep coming.

Inside number nine live Stuart and Gabby Parker and their
seventeen year-old son, Nathan. They haven’t set foot outside for almost thirty
days. There’s no question, they’ve done spectacularly well to survive this
long. In fact, if you were to start at their house and search outwards, you’d
have to travel more than thirty-two miles before you found anyone else still
alive.

What time is it?

I
open my eyes and look around. It’s almost light. The alarm clock says
six-thirty, not that it matters anymore. I lean across and check on Gabby.
She’s still sleeping. I don’t want to disturb her. Her breathing is light and
shallow and I carefully slide out of my side of the bed. Christ, it’s cold in
here. I take my clothes to the other end of the room and get dressed.

The
rest of the house is colder still. I pass Nathan’s room and pause outside the
door to listen before heading downstairs.

Morning
rituals.

You’ve
got to have a routine. It’s vital. My only purpose now is to keep my family
safe inside and keep the outside out, but we’d never have made it through the
first week if I hadn’t been so organized. Regimented, almost. I check all the
downstairs doors and windows are secure, pausing in the front room to look out
across the drive. It’s clear but I can see the bodies on the other side of the
blockade. When the shit really started to hit the fan, I blocked the entrance
to the house with our cars and a couple of my business vans, parking them
end-to-end. The barricade’s holding firm for now. I thought a few of them might
have been able to slip through or under but, so far, it’s kept them out.

Fetch
the daily rations of water, food and fuel from the garage, then lock and
double-lock it again. With the cars out on the road, I’ve used the space in the
garage to stockpile supplies. As soon as I heard what had happened to the
bodies in London, that the dead were rising and the infection was spreading, I
knew this was going to kick-off big-time. I’ve never had much faith in
government emergency plans and the like and as soon as they started telling us
everything was under control, I knew it really wasn’t. Everyone else seemed
content to sit at home and watch the unthinkable happening on TV. It was easier
to watch from a distance than to look outside and accept it really
was
happening, I guess. I took advantage of their malaise to get out and get
stocked-up. I bought two van loads of food home from the cash-and-carry and
paid for them through the business, figuring that if this really was the end,
then no one was going to bother chasing me for invoices and credit card bills
anymore. I reckon we’ve got another month’s worth of stuff left in there, maybe
six weeks if we’re careful. After that, who knows?

I
split the food into three piles for Gabby to prepare today’s meals –
breakfast, dinner and supper. It’s important we stay strong and well-fed. I put
out three small bottles of water, one each. I’ll leave Nathan’s outside his
room later.

I’m
going to have to change the gas cylinder on the stove later so that Gabby
can—

Oh
Christ, here it comes again.

This
is a morning ritual I could do without. My stomach’s cramping with pain, so bad
I’m doubled-over. I’ve had this every morning for the last week or so. I
haven’t told the others – don’t want to worry them. I can’t afford to get
sick. I know Gabby would cope without me if she had to, but she’d struggle.

I
use the downstairs toilet so they don’t smell anything,  but I have to
stop when I’m only halfway there and hold my guts again. What the hell is this?
Is it just sickness or nerves or something more serious? I barely get onto the
toilet in time.

I
can handle the diarrhoea and the sweats, it’s the impact on our resources
that’s the real concern. I have to drink more water so I don’t get dehydrated
and use more water to flush, and I’ve already had to start on next week’s
toilet paper and bleach allowances. But I don’t have any choice. They need me.
I have to stay healthy and strong.

#

Gabby looks
tired.

‘You
okay, sweetheart?’

She
nods and nibbles the corner of another biscuit. I almost have to force her to
eat these days.

‘I’m
fine.’

‘You’ve
got to stay strong, love. We all have.’

She
nods again.

‘Have
you spoken to Nathan this morning?’ she asks.

‘Not
yet. Don’t want another argument like last night.’

‘I
know, but you need to talk. Poor kid’s not...’

‘Poor
kid’s not seeing the bigger picture. Poor kid’s not considering what’s at stake
here. He’s old enough to understand and I need him to cooperate. If I lost my
temper every five minutes and did whatever I wanted to without giving a damn
about anyone else, we’d be screwed right now. We probably wouldn’t even be
alive.’

‘I
know, love, I know.’

‘He
needs to grow up fast.’

‘He’s
just a kid.’

‘I
need him to be a man.’

‘Just
try and talk to him, Stu, will you?’

#

I need to keep
this family together so I do what she asks. I always try and do what Gabby
wants. I knock the door then push it open. Nathan’s sitting on the end of his
bed. He doesn’t even look up at me.

‘You
okay, mate?’

He
grunts something and throws a tennis ball against the wall then catches it. I
choose my words carefully so I don’t fire him up. He keeps bouncing that bloody
ball. Every time it hits the wall or bounces off the floor I cringe at the
noise it makes. He knows as well as I do what effect it’ll have on those
bastard things outside. I can see them through a gap between the boards across
his window. There are hundreds of them out there, thousands even, all crammed
into our cul-de-sac. We’re safe here, but there’s no point him winding them up
unnecessarily.

‘Nathan,
just stop throwing the ball for a second, please. I want to talk.’

He
catches it and holds it.

‘What?’

‘Look,
I just wanted to say, I understand why you did what you did last night. It’s
just that—’

‘No
you don’t,’ he says, bouncing the ball again. ‘You don’t understand anything.
You haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on here.’

‘Keep
the noise down, son. They’ll hear you.’

‘They
won’t. They can hardly hear anything. Bloody hell, they’re dead, Dad. Remember?’

‘Mind
your language, sunshine. Just because—’

‘I
can say what I want.’

‘While
you’re in my house you’ll—’

‘What
you gonna do?’

‘What?’

‘You
gonna ground me? Take away my TV? Stop my allowance? Face it, Dad, you’re all
out of options so just piss off and leave me alone.’

‘Don’t
you dare talk to me like that. Have some respect.’

‘Respect?
I’m supposed to respect you? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘If
you don’t shut up I’ll...’

‘You’ll
what? You won’t do anything, Dad, because you’re a fucking coward. That’s why
we’re trapped in here. You’re hiding because you’re too scared to face up to
what’s happening outside.’

‘That’s
rubbish and you know it. You know we can’t go out there. You’re just being
difficult for the sake of it. When I was...’

‘Keep
your voice down, Dad,’ he sneers. ‘They’ll hear you, remember? Don’t want to
upset the neighbours.’

‘You
little shit. If it wasn’t for me you’d be...’

I
don’t get to finish my sentence. Gabby pulls me away and pushes Nathan’s door
shut.

#

‘Stuart,’ Gabby
shouts from the kitchen, ‘come here quick. They’re in the garden.’

Damn,
she’s right. My legs go heavy with nerves when I see them out there. Looks like
the fence between next door and next-next door has collapsed and some of them
have managed to get through. A couple have found the hole in the hedge at the
bottom of our garden. Shit. I knew I should have blocked it up... What the hell
am I going to do now? There’s still only a handful of them on our lawn but
where one of them leads, hundreds more usually follow. I run upstairs to the
bathroom to get a better view and Gabby follows. She looks down over my
shoulder.

‘What
are we going to do?’

I
can’t answer. Can’t think straight. Can’t risk going outside.

‘We’ll
wait,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe they’ll keep going? What if I go out there when it’s
dark and make a hole in the fence on the other side? I could try to shepherd
them out.’

‘But
they’re getting closer, Stu. We have to do something.’

‘If
we go outside then they’ll know we’re in here. That’ll be the end of it.
They’ll never leave us alone. They’ll keep coming until—’

‘Get
rid of them and block up the fence,’ Nathan says from behind us. Didn’t realise
he was there. ‘Five minutes and we could have the place cleared. Come on...
Jeez, just look at them. They’re useless. They don’t stand a chance. If you
leave it we’ll be overrun.’

‘Did
you not hear me? We can’t risk going out there. It’s too dangerous.’

He
turns his back on me and goes back to his room.