M. Marshall - The End Is Nigh

My teeth chattered noisily as I rinsed the soap off my hair and stepped over the side of the bath and onto the blood-spattered bath mat. I pulled a towel off the rail to my left and wrapped it around myself. The soft fibres rubbed against my cold wet skin and it made me realise how much I missed Matt. I felt my legs give way and I stumbled, managing to catch the toilet lid and used it to support my weight before I fell.

My legs were shaking so much it would be a while before I could stand. I needed to think. What in the name of Christ was I going to do with my twenty stone neighbour lying dead on my staircase? He was definitely dead. After checking his pulse I had sat and watched him for over an hour. I had been paranoid that he would wake up, not trusting my pulse taking capabilities.

I had killed him, no person could lose that much blood and live. Dripping soapy water on to the bloodstained carpet I stepped over the body and into my bedroom. I pulled open a drawer on Matt’s side of the wardrobe, finding some small comfort in wearing his clothes. I pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a large jumper, which reached the middle of my thighs. I plucked a hair band from my dressing table and tied my soaking wet hair back into a high ponytail and sighed. I would have to investigate the damage he had caused when he broke in.

I walked into the room across the landing and saw the bits of broken glass, glittering on the pretty pink carpet. He must have gotten in by standing on the garage roof and had smashed one of Rosa’s windows and climbed through. Thank God we had stayed down at the bottom of the house. I would need to board it up with something to keep the rain out, but more frightening was that it meant our shelter was no longer safe. If a man of his size was able to get in then what was there to stop anyone else from doing the same thing? We couldn’t kill everyone.

I pushed the mattress back up against the broken window, not that it made much of a difference. I walked out of the room, closed the door behind me and was confronted with the slightly more pressing problem. I had a dead man in my house.

I knew from being pinned under his weight that I had no chance of being able to lift him. I couldn’t face getting his blood all over me again. I decided.

“This is all a little too much for me right now. I’ll deal with you later” and stepped over his leg to get down the stairs. It was nearly time for breakfast.

The smell coming from upstairs was getting more and more putrid by the hour. The hot weather hadn’t helped. Today it seemed to be so much worse than the day before. I hadn’t gone up there since the break-in. Even Shadow hadn’t gone up there. I wasn’t sure that I could face it and so told myself that I didn’t need to. We were running low on supplies again, but I was so afraid of going outside. The rational side of my brain told me that we couldn’t stay here with a dead body upstairs, so I was going to have to face up to it soon.

My phone had been out of battery for well over a month now, and the last remaining batteries for the radio had died 3 days ago. There may be some more up in the spare room at the top of the house, but that meant walking past a dead guy, so… Understandably I hadn’t looked. The day went on, Rosa and I went through our usual routine, but the smell invaded my nostrils, acting as a constant reminder of the rotting corpse on the floor above me. I knew what I needed to do. If I couldn’t move the body, then we would need to be the ones to move.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. Some days I felt sure that Matt was dead. It had been far too long now. He was either dead, or he thought we were and wasn’t coming here. I had waited as he had told me to in his message, but I felt sure that if he could see how we were living, the danger we were in, he would tell us to get out and find help.

I started thinking about what that would entail. Rosa and I would need a car and supplies. We were almost out of water and food again so we could try to find some on our way. Would Shadow come too? I looked over at him sleeping by the foot of Rosa’s travel cot in the kitchen.

Shadow had taken a nasty beating that night. He was still not back to his usual self and his old limp had returned. I was worried about him. The only thing that interested him at the moment was sleeping. I had to cross my fingers that it was just his way of healing his injuries. The ones I could see I kept an eye on but it was the pain in his ribs that I couldn’t see which scared me the most.

“Where do you think we should go?” I asked Shadow. He lifted his head and settled it back down on his front paws and heaved out a great sigh.

The Bunker broadcast on the radio had said that it was in the south-east, the recorded message had said something about a meeting point. The last time I had listened to that was about a week ago. I needed to go up and look in the spare room for new batteries. Peering over at Rosa in her travel cot in the kitchen she looked so peaceful, Shadow glanced up at me again and sensing that I was about to leave them he started to get to his feet.

“No. Stay.” I knelt down to scratch his ears and looked into his dark amber eyes. “You stay here. Look after Rosa. Good boy.” He let out a low whine and placed his muzzle back over his paws.

I felt each muscle in my body tensing as I walked towards the first flight of stairs which would lead me up to the top of the house. I covered my mouth and nose with the baggy jumper I had been wearing for the past two days trying to breathe as little as possible. The smell. I reached the first landing and kept my eyes away from the floor, not so much so that I would risk stepping on the body. I didn’t waste time.

Finally, I reached the room I was after. I settled myself on the floor in front of the chest of drawers and pulled out the bottom one where we kept odd electrical bits and bobs. I raked through it. No luck.

“Bugger!” I stood up dreading the sight that awaited me in the stairway. I saw the open skylight on our next door neighbour’s roof. I had an idea. There could be batteries maybe even some tinned food and water in there. What if we moved into their house? No dead body on the stairs, just an empty house.

Still thinking the possibilities through in my head I pulled the empty bed frame over to line up with the bottom of the window and swung it open as wide as it would go. I had my knee and first leg out of the window, and before I knew it, I was pulling my other leg out on to the roof. I turned behind me and caught the skylight with my fingers before it could shut behind me. Looking around for something to keep the window open, I took off one of my trainers and jammed it into the side of the skylight wedging it open.

I needed to be able to get back inside when I was done. I’d just take a quick look and see if this idea could work. A couple of steps down the slope of our roof and I was met with the rising pitch of the one next door. It wasn’t difficult at all to get in, I surprised myself at how much my core strength had improved. I was able to lower myself down from the skylight to the room below. Landing with a heavy thud, I noticed how light the house seemed, all of our windows were covered up. It felt almost like stepping back in time to what life was like before the attack. Looking around I saw the beautifully made bed with matching folded towels at the foot of it.

As I walked through the house It felt strange, I knew that in a way it was wrong what I was doing, but they had been camping in France. I knew that because Rick and Emma had mentioned it before they left, we often kept an eye out for each other when we went on holidays. Walking down to the kitchen and checking the cupboards for tinned food was my first priority. On my way down I couldn’t help but notice the dozens of family photos on the stairway walls. The faces staring out at me looked so happy, they always had seemed close. You never saw them arguing, even with their two teenage daughters. I hoped they were safe, somewhere, wherever they were now.