Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“I’m so sorry…”

“What are you sorry about?”

“I didn’t know you lost a husband.”

“Lots of women lost their husbands.”

“How many had to kill them?”

“Too many. You’ve done it again, haven’t you? You’ve got me talking about myself.”

My smile was humourless, but still sympathetic, I hoped. “I think I’ve said this before, Olivia, but you do like giving people advice. If you can tell me anything about how to deal with a partner who’s not being reasonable, I’d be glad to hear it…”

She sighed. “Let me guess. He doesn’t like you working.”

“He’d prefer I spent less time here.”

“Well then, he’s a sensible man, isn’t he?”

“Olivia. Seriously.”

“Well…” she cast about for something to say. “You’ve got it all different here, haven’t you? You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to go to work.”

“Is that how it was on your world?”

“Of course that’s how it was. We were primitive. Remember?”

“So you weren’t very happy with things as they were.”

“No I bloody wasn’t.”

“But you did marry.”

“Yeh. Eventually.”

“Was he your first…?”

“No, he wasn’t. More fool me. What about you?”

“No. He’s not my first.”

“And it still goes wrong, does it? Even when you’re all advanced and not as primitive as the rest of us?”

“We’re only human.”

“And men are still getting jealous when women go to work.”

“It’s not that. It’s more that he thinks I’m working too hard.”

“When was the last time you went home?”

It caught at me for a moment. “He’s been away for a few weeks. He came back today.”

“Well for gods’ sake, woman, bloody go and see him! You don’t want him to forget the sight of you! He’ll take up with some trollop, mark my words…”

I could only manage a thin smile. “I’ll bear that in mind. But what happened to you?”

“What about what happened to me?”

“You were married. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Yeh. Don’t do it.”

“Is that because you had to kill your husband…?”

“No… just don’t . It’s not worth it. You fall in love with the bugger and then he’ll let you down one way or another. They always do.”

“It sounds like you’ve had some unhappy experiences. Can you tell me any more?”

She sighed. “You never let go, do you? All right, number one,” she held out a single finger, “Antony Whatecroft. My professor when I was doing my master’s degree. Brilliant mind, everyone looked up to him, he said his wife didn’t understand him, I fell for it. Number two,” she held up two fingers, “Jack Lockehust. Married him when my research career was over, only he killed himself because he was in debt up to his eyeballs, the stupid shit. And then he got up again, and, well, you know what I do about that kind of thing. Number three,” she held up three fingers, “Mike Brokefeld, head of security at Tringarrick after the last outbreak. He was… well, he was available, if you take my meaning. He buggered off with everyone else when they all gave up.”

“I suppose Antony died before the last outbreak…?”

“No. He was supposed to come out and join us at Tringarrick. He was on the last train but he never made it.”

“So you still knew him, even then?”

She shrugged. “Once I realised the last outbreak was coming, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I had to do my bit, and he was still doing the best research.”

“Wasn’t that uncomfortable?”

She gave me a crooked smile. “Didn’t care. I made him think the children were his and then he gave me whatever I needed for my research.”

“Your children?”

“Yeh. I had children. Girl and a boy. Happy now?”

“You’ve never spoken of them.”

“They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying you’re sorry. You’re not sorry and even if you are how are you going to keep saying sorry every time you hear someone died?”

“It’s a mark of sympathy, Olivia.”

“Well stop it.”

“If you want me to, of course. But you were talking about your children…?”

“No. I wasn’t. I was talking about my men.”

“Oh. Well, please continue…”

“You want more? ”

“They can’t have been all bad.”

“Not all the time. They always took advantage, though. Antony certainly did.”

“How did he do that?”

She sighed. “Well, if you must know, he was the one who got me out of medical school and onto the biology course. I wanted to do something about the bloody revenants and being a doctor wasn’t enough.”

“Was it difficult to get on that course?”

“Well they didn’t want me, did they? Last thing they wanted was a woman they couldn’t say no to because she was wearing a medal from Tanymouth. But Antony decided he wanted me on the course and that was that.”

“Did he have sexual intentions from the start?”

“I don’t know. It was years before he did anything. I had my degree by then and I’d joined the research group. We were working on the marinade…”

“The marinade?”

“Yeh, the marinade. All our livestock was infected, how do you think we fed people? Antony discovered a chemical formula that would kill the revenation bacterium. Took a couple of years to figure out how to use it to treat meat and not kill whoever was eating it.”

“What did it taste like?”

“Horrible, until it fried your tastebuds off and then you didn’t mind as much. A lot of people got used to being vegetarians after the first outbreak but that went out of the window as soon as meat was available again. We should have stayed vegetarians…”

“Why?”

“Because it didn’t work. The bug didn’t die, it just went dormant. A couple of months later it woke up and did what it always does. All us clever scientists trying to find a way to save the world and all we did was end up killing it a bit more.”

“I think we should get back to Antony Whatecroft. What was it about him you liked?”

“He was the only one who was doing anything about the revenants that actually worked. So I worshipped him, didn’t I? Like a little girl. And I did what little girls do when they meet the big man, I went weak at my knees and got into his bed as quick as I could…”

“Did it go on long?”

“Years. When I was in his research group, then when I had my own group working on phages, but the damn bugs wouldn’t do what they were supposed to and then somebody discovered antibiotics and all the money went in that direction so I ended up with nothing. And then I found out Antony was sleeping with one of his graduate students, so I wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you. There was me thinking he was going to leave his wife for me one day. Stupid.

“So I got married to someone else, got out of science and got pregnant so I could tell him to go frig himself.”

“I can see how you’d be angry.”

“I was stupid. I should have stuck with it. Instead… ugh. I wasted years living in a pretty little house, and I let Jack sort all the money out like an idiot. Until he died.”

“That must have been traumatic.”

“Hah! I’ve killed hundreds like him.”

“I thought you said he killed himself?”

“He did. And then I killed him again.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“I thought the revenants were almost gone. You didn’t hear anything about ’em. They were keeping it quiet. Anyone who died went into the marinade to make sure they didn’t get up again. When I found Jack, he’d been dead a couple of hours. Took pills in his tea and wrote a note about all the debts and how he couldn’t face admitting it and all that nonsense, but he was still warm, I thought he’d only just done it, I thought I might be able to save him. I stuck my finger down his throat, tried to get him to throw up. Only he didn’t. He bit me.”