Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

We’re so casual about when we die, now. We have to be. I remember when we first came down here there were twenty-five of us, all from around here. Paul knew about it, and we knew that we had to move quickly. London was gone, and we lived in a commuter town. No chance of our parents coming back, for most of us. Ella’s mum came, but she died pretty fast, because she went to look for her son, who in turn had been to look for his father. Ella stayed firm, like the rest of us. We spent a year waiting to see if anybody else came, but nobody did. When that year was done, we opened the doors and started going out. Twenty-five down to ten in only two and a bit years. Those aren’t good odds.

The others have already turned the showers on for me when I get back. I strip under them, and I let the suit and the golden disc lie on the floor at the side. The water is so hot that I am the only one in here. Even the steam’ll threaten to strip your skin. Mine is, I can see as I look down, pink and blistering. I was outside for too long. I knew it. The water makes some of the bubbles under my skin burst, and then the skin goes soft and flat and rippled. I touch them, because you have to. This is part of how you heal. You get the badness out, before it can become a part of you. When it gets into you properly, that’s when you get truly sick; and that’s when they put you out to pasture. What’s it that Paul says? When they send you to live on the farm. That’s a good way of putting it. I have blisters all over me, more than I have ever had before. It takes so long to burst them all or to pull the top-skin of them off; and to let the water go all over me, into them and through them, and taking the badness out and down the plughole. I use soap when I am done, disinfectant bleach soap, and it stings every part of me. I howl, but, I tell myself, this is better than the alternative. Oh my god is it better than the alternative.

“So what is it?” Paul asks when I’m dried off. My whole body hurts. This is healing. I’m at risk from so many things: infections, disease. I’m wrapped in a towel that has the name of a fancy hotel from when London was still London stamped onto it, only the threads have started pulling, so now it’s the Do-c-es-er –otel, which just isn’t the same. Paul’s taken the golden disc from me, and he’s flipping it in his hands. He turns it, over and over. I’ve seen this before; I remember it. It’s at least slightly familiar, this action. He whistles. “This is probably worth something. Must be worth something, I reckon.” He throws it into the air and it spins, and he catches it. “Is it actually gold?” He puts it between his teeth and pushes down. I don’t know what he thinks that will prove: his bite on the thing.

“What can we do with gold?” I ask. The next stage, post-blisters, is the shivers, and they have come over me. This rings like any other fever: shivers and a temperature, and then sickness and then my muscles will all ache, and it will take me a while before I even begin to feel human again. That’s why we draw straws.

He lays it down flat. “Don’t know. It was your harvest, anyway. You can work out what you do with it. You could take it to some of the groups in the towns, try and get something for it.” These are the rules: we do the harvest, we share the take with the camp. If it can’t be shared, we try and trade it with one of the other settlements we’ve found. They’re all in the same way as us, but they might have use for our junk. But I’m the one who has to do the deal; that way, I’ll be providing for the camp. We each feel ownership and good reason for going out there, going through what we do; and the camp gets money to fix itself up, to feed us all, to buy shared provisions. It’s like taxes, I’m assured. I’m told that this system used to work perfectly well.

I sleep with the disc under my pillow, and I can feel it during the night when I turn and turn, and my skin scrapes against it. It scratches me, cold against my shoulder.

I am not better when I wake up. I’ve had post-outside sickness before, so many times, but never like this. We’ve stopped asking what it’s doing to us, because that’s counterproductive. Once we went to a hospital and we tried to use their machines but we couldn’t get them to work, so it was fingers jabbing at them for hours, and when we got back we were all so much more sick than we were when we left. We lost Joe that day as well, because he was so sick before we even went. He couldn’t stand the journey, being out there for that long. You see it at its worst, then: blisters on the eyes. I never take my goggles off out there now, not after seeing that. So I have felt sick before, but never like this. I wonder if this is what it’s like when it sets in: when it gets deeper to you. I wonder if I am going to die. I have a paper bucket from a fast-food restaurant to be sick into◦– we took hundreds of them one time when we went out, reasoning that we couldn’t wash plates or whatever, so they might come in useful one day◦– and I have to use it as soon as I am awake, vomiting into it. Blood and soot, it looks like.

It’s natural to wonder if you’re going to die from it, I tell myself. I tell myself that I’ll be fine. No question. I hold the bucket and I shudder, and the bucket starts to collapse on the sides from my grip. No question at all.

Paul and the others stand in the doorway and watch me. I catch them; I wonder what they are talking about. No, I know what they are talking about. I’m that sure I know.

I tell them that I am feeling better, which is a lie, but I am worried about the farm that they could send me to. We have a shotgun, which they used to use to hunt rabbits here. I can imagine Paul pulling the trigger, so I tell them that I am feeling better. I stand up, and everything swims. My skin is on fire, and the sweat runs down it. It doesn’t soak in; it’s as if I am rejecting it. I stumble out of my tunnel. It’s colder here, and I can feel that. It’s nice. I lean against the wall and drop the sheet from my shoulders and press against the stone.

The others are standing around a table. There is a record player on it, one of the really old ones. I’ve never seen one used like that; with a long brass horn sticking out of the side. The golden disc from the harvest is on top of it. I see it, now: it’s a record. Of course it’s a record.

Paul grins. “I washed it, while you were sick. There’s little grooves all around it, see?” I can, if I squint. My eyes feel wrong, but I don’t say anything. I stay back, in the darkness, so that they can’t see how bad I really am. “So I went and got this from upstairs, what used to be the music rooms. I remembered that one of them survived.”

There are candles around the record player on the table, as if this is some sort of sacrifice. All ten of us are here, watching; Paul runs the plug on it to an extension cable, and Ella gets onto the treadmill and starts running. We wait for the lights to turn green. Usually takes five minutes; now, that seems like forever. I shut my eyes. I can see something in my eyelids: where the blood is pulsing, red and black. It makes me feel dizzy.

“And we are go,” Paul says. He picks up the arm from the player and puts the tip◦– the needle, I remember, that’s what it’s called◦– onto the disc. It spins, and there’s a crackle, and we expect noise. I shut my eyes and wait, again, but then it comes, as a wave. It steals us, and we are floating. I open my eyes: we are pressed to the walls, hoisted up. Paul is screaming but I cannot hear him. Everything is distorted. The record is spinning, going even faster than the player. The player tears itself apart, pulling and yanking and distorting itself as the record whirs. Lumps of metal and wood and plastic fly off, and the player is held on the table as if a tiny tornado is wrapped around it. It glows; it flashes white.