James Smythe - The Testimony

Ally Weyland, lawyer, Edinburgh

I looked like absolute shit. Actually, no, I looked worse. Shit would have been a step up. You have no idea. No make-up, the remnants of week-old vomit caked on my shirt, in my hair, and the last thing I wanted to do was meet Mark there and then. I wanted to have a shower first, at the very least. On the ship Katy had asked me if I liked him – You know, she said, like like – and I said that he seemed nice, but I didn’t know. I wasn’t going to give her anything like gossip, because it was one thing to chat on the phone, but it was quite another to actually meet somebody, aye? But, he seemed nice.

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

They were so fucking cute together it was disgusting.

Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston

First thing they asked was why they hadn’t been allowed to dock at New York, because they didn’t know. The captain hadn’t told them (presumably because it would have caused too many problems on the ship, too many upset people), so it was left to us. From the looks of the dock, that’s what everybody was doing, and there were whole families crying when they heard the news, sobbing, being comforted. It was strange; it felt normal, like, that was how we should have all been feeling. We told them everything else, then. Formal estimations of the numbers of dead; about the Vice President being found, dead, when everything ended; where was uninhabitable. How did it all end? Ally asked, and Joseph fielded that one. We woke up and it was over, he said. Did they cure the sickness thing, then? We don’t know, I said. What about The Broadcast ? she asked, and I said, Shh!, as a joke, and she asked what I meant. Nobody’s really talking about it, I told her, because they weren’t. Then Katy asked if we had spoken to her parents.

Katy Kasher, high school student, Orlando

I swear, I was so happy to be on land, to be back, but all I wanted to do was talk to my mom, check she was okay. Mark said that we were going to get to the van and then we’d drive south, find them, and I said that was fine, but wanted to try and call first. Sure, he said, there’s a cell in the RV. When we got there my mom and dad were on the couch, playing with Joe. Holy shit, I said, and my mom looked really angry at the cursing, but she didn’t really seem to care. You’re home, she kept saying.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

I didn’t move Jess for a couple of days. I didn’t go back to the house, in fact, because there she was, there she would be. I can’t remember what I did, exactly; I called my mum, who was alive, and fine, and I drove to see her. We had a reconciliation. I told her about Karen, about Jess, and she made me spaghetti, and I slept. I slept for hours and hours. When I went home, finally, she went with me, and we called the people from the funeral home to pick her – to pick Jess – up. They said it would take them until much later that day, so we sat in the kitchen and waited. Neither of us went up to look in on her, because it wouldn’t have helped. When they finally came – dressed in jeans and T-shirts, none of the formality you expect, with one of those collapsible trolley things, and a black sheet – they bundled Jess out of the house so fast I barely even noticed that they were there. It helps, the man said as I paid him, that they’ve let us cut the hospitals out of the equation. That would only slow the process down. He only took cash.

Karen was a different matter. We had to identify the bodies, because they needed to know who was dead and who was just missing, so I was asked to go and stand on the steps of her hospital with everybody else who had a loved one inside. They asked us to not cross the white line at the top the steps until instructed, because they wanted to keep us all in control, stop any histrionics. It made it feel like sports day. The doors to the hospital were open, those tarpaulin curtains put up on the inside, so that we couldn’t just see in, see what it was like in there, but we could smell. It reminded me of a rabbit hutch, almost, but more bitter. Sharper. They made us wait whilst they brought some people out – those easily identifiable, I assume – carrying them on gurneys, lining the bodies up against the ambulances at the far side, behind a cordoned-off area. One by one we were called forward, and then there was a pattern: through the barricade, policeman’s arm across shoulder, tears, furious nodding, sometimes struggling, escorted behind the barricade, body tagged. They called me up after I had been there a few hours, led me over. I didn’t even need to look at her, because her ID was pinned to her shirt, and she looked like the same woman in that picture. She hated that picture, I told the policeman, but then, doesn’t everybody? Is this your wife, Mr Gossard? he asked, and I said, Yes, but I didn’t look at her face. I just focused on the picture, because it still looked like her, exactly like she did before.

Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC

After we had welcomed Meredith on board she told us about what had happened to her, what had happened to the cities. It’s all over, though, she said. Nobody seems to be saying how , but it’s over. The terrorists have given up, she said. They gave up? I asked, and she nodded. (She wouldn’t look at me, not directly, so I worried that something – something related to me – had been an issue. It wasn’t, though.) Yep, she said, the main one, on the videos? He said that they had heard from God that they had punished us enough. God spoke to them? Livvy asked, and Meredith said, That’s what he told us. There was another Broadcast ? Livvy asked – she was scared, I think – and Meredith laughed. Oh, no, she said, not as far as I know, no.

Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

I recognized him; of course I recognized him. How could I not? Leonard hated Brubaker, hated him with a passion. I remember, close to the end of the previous administration, when he’d been press officer – I think – Leonard had a picture of him up on his desktop as the wallpaper, with a horse’s ass put onto the picture where his lips should have been. I kept saying how distasteful it was, but Leonard loved it. I couldn’t do something like that myself, he said; I found it on a forum. Funny, eh? So, every time I looked at the man for my first few hours on the boat I kept seeing that damned ass on his face, and it was all I could do to stop myself from laughing.

They asked me to stay the night. It’s a two-berth, Livvy said, and we’ve got all this wine. Seems a shame to waste it. She was lovely . We got on so well, which was nice, and it made a change. We… I don’t want to say that we forgot what had happened, but we ignored it, I suppose, for the evening. We spoke about who we were, rather than what was happening. It was nice.

The next morning I decided to leave, because I had Leonard’s truck. Their boat ran off diesel, same as the truck, so they gave me a can. We won’t need it, Brubaker said, and I reckon you’re going to have a hell of a time finding a station with working pumps, at least for the next few weeks. I got back to the truck, put the fuel on the passenger seat, had a last look around for Leonard – I thought I could see his sign through the trees, if he was still around, but he wasn’t – and then I left. Did I say Leonard? I meant to say David. I had one last look for David.

Jacques Pasceau, linguistics expert, Marseilles

I woke up alone, at some point. I don’t know how many days it had been. A few. Many. My mouth was swollen, and I tried to talk, to shout, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have my teeth, I felt that much, and my arm – my left arm – I couldn’t see it. I was strapped to a bed, thin, I could tell, so I tried to shout out again, but all I could get was wind or dust on my throat. There was nobody around me, no noise, nothing; just that pristine white room, posters on the walls showing stomachs with dotted lines across them, noses with different gradients applied. My doctor, the one who saved my life, was nowhere to be found.