James Smythe - The Testimony

Do you have a car? the man asked, and I did. It was Leonard’s; I hadn’t driven in years. Can you drive? I asked, and he shook his head, but, right then, driving was going to be faster than running, so we climbed in and I took the wheel, and we went. Are you scared? I asked the man, and he looked at me, blank, and I smiled. Because of my driving, I said, and I realized that that, then, there, was the first joke that I had made in a long time.

Do you think that God’s abandoned you? asked the man as I drove, clinging to the wheel, and I said, Honestly? If He was here in the first place, I don’t see how He could give up on us now. The man nodded, as if that placated him.

Jacques Pasceau, linguistics expert, Marseilles

When it became obvious that my sister wasn’t coming back, that she wasn’t going to make contact or reply to messages I left on her mobile, I tried to call Audrey. I don’t know what came over me, what I was going to say, but I dialled the number and she wasn’t there, so I tried calling my place, still no answer. I don’t know why it mattered to me, to speak to her then, but it did, so I left a message on my own machine telling her to call me, telling her where I was. As I was talking my mouth was full of blood, so I ran my finger along my gumline and my teeth pushed themselves out one by one. It was like they had never been fixed in in the first place. I found mouthwash in my sister’s bathroom, swilled to get rid of the taste, counted the teeth that I had left – nearly single digits – and then got on my bike again. I was going down her road when I remember a car coming out of a driveway, and I swerved but I wasn’t quick enough, and it thrashed into me, sent me sideways and forwards. I remember – it took hours, it felt like, because I had so many things going through my head – but I remember that I knew it was the end, because with the world the way that it was, with people dying from colds, with their bodies not healing from injuries, where I thought that I would die from just the blood in my mouth where my teeth used to be; I knew that a crash like that would be enough to end it all for me.

Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston

I woke up, showered, got out and was dressing when my phone buzzed. It was Ally, sending me a picture of her and a girl that I guessed must have been Katy, standing and looking freezing cold in front of a gigantic ship, one of those ocean liners, white and blue. We’ll land in a week, said the note with the picture.

I went down the bus to show the Jessops, and I realized that Jennifer wasn’t in bed any more: she was at the stove, cooking eggs. You would not believe how much better I feel, she said, and Joseph said the same, that his cough was gone. You think it’s over? he asked.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

As soon as I woke up I knew that I should have died; that I had taken enough pills to kill me, that I should have been a goner. I was covered in sick – mine, I assumed – and soaking wet from sweat, from where I had pissed myself, but I was alive. I pushed myself up to kneeling, to all fours, and I heaved again, this black-red mess of bile, half-caps of tablet shells drifting in it like buoys. The door was still shut; it was night-time, and I couldn’t see anything, no light from anywhere but the emergency exit sign barely visible at the far end of the hall, and it was silent, absolutely silent. That part was too much to deal with, so I started making noises to myself, little grunts as I used the wall to get to my feet, started talking myself through what I was going to do. I’m alive, I said.

I went to the window I had come in through, looked out, put my hands on the sill to help heave myself out of the room and realized that my bad hand, somehow, God knows how, didn’t hurt, wasn’t even half as swollen as it had been. I pulled the condom off it, unwrapped the bandages and there it was, pink again, still covered in blood and pus, but there, under it all was the beginnings of a scab; thin, new, fragile, but a scab all the same.

Ally Weyland, lawyer, Edinburgh

I get seasick something rotten, which I didn’t tell Katy, partly because I forgot, partly because I didn’t want to make her worry about it, because that makes me even more sick. Nobody wanted me to be more sick than I already was, I’ll tell you that for nothing. We got onto the boat by using Katy again, getting her to beg with the man on the dock, saying that her family were at home. The boat wasn’t charging the passengers, even; it was a mercy run, they called it, to get people back home. Like a hijack, I joked, but I don’t think it was that far from the truth. Everybody involved was employed by the company that owned the boats, but still. Even the captain seemed hazy on the legality of taking the boat out like that, but we didn’t argue. I’m a lawyer, I said; any problems, I’ll fight your case. They packed us all on, nearly four thousand of us – and there was a thing on the wall that said the boat was licensed to carry two and a half thousand, so that made me worry that we were going to just start sinking somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic – and most didn’t have a room or anything; Katy and I found a spot in one of the dining halls, set ourselves up in a corner. I’d taken the sleeping bags from the boot of the car, some sandwiches, a positively grotesque amount of digestives we got from a service station that was still, somehow, operating, and we settled in. There was water, there were vending machines, there were people offering to head to the kitchens and cook some meals up; it was all rather chummy, actually. Very World War 2. We were by the loos as well, in case I needed to dash for them, and after I was sick the first time Katy asked me if it was because of the man stationed next to us, this fat, lumbering oaf of a creature, stuffed to the gills with underarm sweat and with only a single pair of socks to his name. That made me laugh so much I nearly chucked again. The captain made announcements and apologized about the lack of entertainment on the ship. I’m sure you understand, he said, which we did, of course, and we weren’t even paying, so we were all pretty forgiving. Still, a seven-day trip with chuff-all to do but play cards? This is already dull, Katy said when we weren’t even neck-and-neck with Ireland.

After I was sick for the sixth or seventh time that day – which was pretty fucking tiresome, let me tell you – I lay on the floor with my eyes shut and listened as Katy struck up a conversation with fat-and-smelly. I shut my eyes and just listened. He asked her why we were travelling, and she said that she was heading home, because she couldn’t get hold of her parents, and she was worried, and he said that he was sorry, that he had somebody die as well. Katy said, No, they’re not dead. The sweaty man then told her that if they were dead, it was probably because of their lack of faith. He told her about the Church of the One True God, how they thought that, when God left, everybody who didn’t believe in him in their heart of hearts died, that was what the illness was. I had a wife, he said, and she didn’t believe, not truly. She twisted her ankle, and the next day she didn’t wake up. I could smell him as he talked, big fucking sweaty bastard. God works in mysterious ways, young lady, he said. I was worried that Katy would set off, say something, but she just turned to me, leant over and whispered, I’ll bet he used to be Catholic, which made me laugh, only because I was, technically, and she just hadn’t ever asked.

Ed Meany, research and development scientist, Virginia

I was down by myself in the labs, because everybody else was still helping upstairs. True to form, I wasn’t making progress – that whole period of time was the most sterile part of my career in terms of actually being able to do what I was paid to do, what I loved doing – but I wasn’t going to waste even more time moving satellites and punching numbers. I was getting messages flagged every few minutes on the intranet: possible contagious agents released in Iran; lists of where the bombs were going off; lists of possible targets, places that should up their security; lists of where the US government was going to attack next; and, finally, intel about Israel, of all places, saying that they were gearing up to launch something, and recommending that pre-emptive measures be taken. Brubaker had left, that was common knowledge at that point, and he had been my only contact; I didn’t know anybody else that I could phone and ask what the fuck they were doing.