M. Marshall - The End Is Nigh

“Jesus.” I was appalled. Liam laughed at my reaction.

“I told you. There’s no way you’d have spent five minutes in a bar with me before this.”

“I was married. So I wouldn’t have done that anyway.” I retorted.

“Wouldn’t you now?” He shot a smile over his shoulder, and his eyes sparkled. Full of mischief. “I got myself a place and started arranging fights, taking in some serious cash. That’s when my ex found me. She liked the money, didn’t mind the blood. But when I got locked up she found someone else to pay for her fake tits and blow drys.”

“So you were in prison because of that? Organising illegal boxing matches?”

“No love. I knocked the lights out of a bloke who grabbed my wife’s arse in front of me. Sent him into a coma and when he woke up, he was blind. I also broke the jaw of one of the prison guards at Elmley which didn’t help my case.”

I listened in rapture at the stories coming out of Liam as he drove. Some things I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear, but he told me them anyway. Realising that he had been speaking without a sound from me for some time, he looked for my reaction. The break in his storytelling gave me the chance to ask him a question.

“When did you get out?” He didn’t answer. I shifted in my seat. Rosa weighed heavily in my arms.

“I would never hurt you or Rosa, Elizabeth. That’s not what I’m about, never have been. I did what I needed to do to survive.” I could hardly blame the man when somewhere in the south of England a dead body lay rotting on my stairway carpet.

I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt us. Although I had no real reason to trust him, something about him had claimed it. I’d never met anyone like him.

“You want to go our separate ways now you know who I am?” He looked straight ahead as he asked the question.

“No. I don’t. But if we’re going to be honest with each other you should probably know. I killed a man. So don’t ever try anything funny with me.” He turned to look at me then, mouth open in shock. “Yes, It’s true.”

“Not in the bunker?”

“No! God no.” I wasn’t ready to talk about it, but it felt better to say it out loud. I had carried the guilt around like a weight around my neck since it happened. Admitting it to another person felt freeing. I knew that if I had explained it to Liam, he would say that I’d done the right thing. The only thing I could have at the time, but for now, that conversation would wait.

“There is a children’s nursery up this road somewhere we passed a sign about a minute ago. I bet they’ll have stuff for Rosa.” I was impressed that he had kept her in mind and was grateful for his suggestion.

“Great, put your foot down.” It would be easier than trying to find a chemist or a store which still had what she needed. Liam pulled the car into the drive leading up to the nursery and parked the car towards the back of the building, hiding it from the main road.

Shadow jumped down from the back seat and stretched his legs. Liam took Rosa from me and together all four of us walked through the cool night air towards the entrance of the deserted building.

LIAM BROKE INTO the building using a brick from the crumbling wall in the garden. It was one of the first buildings I’d seen that hadn’t been touched since the bombings. Everything was as it had been left. Tiny little pegs and shoe racks lined the wall in front of us. There was a square hatch with a sign which read “reception” above it where staff would greet parents as they dropped off their kids off before dashing into work.

I wasn’t sure where we were. It was apparent that we were in the sticks somewhere, every window looking out of the nursery was filled with views of lush green fields and tall leafy trees. If we hadn’t been in such a hurry it would have been a smart place to hole up for a few days while Rosa recovered. Liam said as much.

“I can think of worse places for us to stay.”

“It’s only for tonight Liam. I just want to get to Kate as fast as I can. I need to get Rosa settled.” I remembered seeing signs for Leicester before we had been forced to turn off the motorway due to a section of the road which had been torn up. It was a scene that neither of us felt able to get any closer to. There had been more damaged vehicles than I cared to count, and from where we had stopped it was easy to see that they weren’t empty.

I walked through to the back of the hallway and found a small office, on the wall above a storage unit there were rows of passport photos. Each one had a name beneath it of the child who had attended the pre-school. I started to rake through drawers and opened every cupboard I could find until I came across one which was locked.

“Liam, can you pick locks?” I shouted out to him. He popped his head around the doorframe.

“No, darling. I’m a fighter, not a thief.”

“Fuck!” I slammed my hand against the cupboard door.

“Easy. I thought breaking in and out of stuff was your skillset. You’ll figure it out.” He flashed me a smile and a part of me felt grateful that at least I wasn’t doing this alone, for now anyway. After a minute he reappeared. “Here. Give it a crack with this?” He handed me a hammer.

“Makes no sense. They lock up the medical stuff but not a deadly weapon? Where was it?”

“Under the sink in the staff bathroom.” He waited, watching me as I pulled back the hammer. It only took three good swings at bashing the lock on the front of the cupboard to get access to the medical supplies inside.

He gave out a low whistle. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“It’s a bit late for that statement.” He raised his eyebrows at my cheeky reply and gave me a dirty look. I stifled a grin. Even if he had been to prison, I knew enough of him now to say that he was a good guy.

Inside the cupboard there was a blue inhaler, an epi pen and a whole little box full of children’s medication. Calpol, liquid Nurofen, chamomile lotion and lots of other paper packets and bottles. I didn’t have time to read them right now, but I took the whole case. We had plenty of room in the SUV.

Liam had carried Rosa over to the area of the large playroom which had sleeping mats and placed her down on one, closely following at Rosa’s side was Shadow. He must have sensed that she was sick. I had to tell him several times to stop trying to lick her hands and face. In the end he gave up and lay at her feet and gave the toe of her shoe the odd lick when he thought I wasn’t watching.

I ripped open the box of Calpol and using the syringe fed a double dose to my daughter. Liam had propped her up using cuddly toys he’d found in the playroom and covered her legs with soft knitted blankets that we had plucked from the shelving unit at the back of the room. The nursery had a water dispenser which I had pointed out to Liam. I used the water to make Rosa a bottle of formula.

The medicine must have helped to soothe her because she took much more of her bottle than I had expected her to. What she needed was a doctor to tell us what was making her so sick. Our chances of finding one when there were no hospitals. It was everyone for themselves now. No-one cared about other people’s suffering kids anymore, there were too many of them.

Then there was the point Liam had made when we first met, any doctors who had survived might not be so keen to advertise their skills because people like that were a valuable commodity now. I took Rosa’s temperature with a thermometer I’d found in the box with the medicines. It had gone down slightly since we had arrived but I hadn’t been convinced that the paracetamol would be enough. Within half an hour of giving her the Calpol, she fell asleep. Rosa was snuggled up in the blankets. Her little hands tightly grasped at the cuddly toys keeping her company.