M. Marshall - The End Is Nigh

“Get out.” I bellowed as I flew out and around the car, opening all of the doors as I went. I quickly considered Liam and made a judgement. “How fast can you run?”

“Er, I dunno. I can run but I dunno how fast. Ten miles in an hour or something.” He held out Rosa to me and glared back utterly baffled. I took Rosa from him.

“That will do. I need you to run up this lane. In about a mile there’s a fork in the road, keep left. After about another mile or so you will see a gravelled lane at a 90-degree angle to the road, it’s opposite a postbox. Take the turn and run straight until you see a big farmhouse on your right. It’s called Chakra House. There’ll be signs.” He looked shocked. “Liam! Are you taking this in?” He nodded. “My sister’s name is Kate tell her you are here with Lizzy and Rosa. Tell her I need her to get a doctor or bring a car to take us to a doctor. I will start making my way to you, but I’ll be much slower carrying Rosa. When you find her come back and collect us as quickly as you can.” He stood there with his mouth open. “RUN!” And he did.

Shadow was confused he wasn’t sure if he should be running away from us with Liam or staying by our side. He kept starting off up the road where he could still see Liam in the distance but then would change his mind and trot back. I gathered any useful bits from what was left of the medical kit and shoved them in my pockets.

Shadow seemed relieved when I began to jog with Rosa. He ran ahead of us. Probably hoping that he would be able to catch up with Liam. When I looked, I couldn’t see him. That was a good thing I reminded myself. Rosa was still awake and breathing heavily in my arms. I noted that her legs had developed a twitch. I tried not to panic over it. Right now we needed to get her to my sisters. It could be the effects of the adrenaline wearing off, but just in case I passed my hand over her head. Worryingly her temperature had started to rise again.

Shadow trotted ahead with his tail rhythmically swaying side to side as he went. My arms were in agony. They ached so much from holding Rosa. I stole glances at her face as we moved and tried to steer my mind away from how close I was coming to losing her.

My heart was in my mouth. I had taken a considerable risk bringing her here, so far from everything. I was a fool not to take her straight to an emergency centre. There had to be one somewhere that we could have driven to. I hadn’t tried hard enough.

I had to keep stopping and slowing down. Shifting Rosa’s weight to my other hip and catching my breath it felt like we’d been on the road for half an hour when I saw the old blue pick up truck driving towards us over the crest of the hill ahead. I could make out that Liam was driving, but he was alone. Kate wasn’t with him. My heart sank. She must have already left.

I didn’t know any of her friends up here. We hadn’t been very close in the time since I had fallen pregnant. It had been weeks since the last time we had spoken on the phone.

Liam pulled up the truck at the side of the Road and jumped out quickly taking Rosa out of my hands and putting her in the cab with him. He was in such a rush he didn’t speak until we were both in the front.

“You were much closer than I expected you to be.” He turned the car so fast I thought we were going to reverse into the dry stone wall behind us. “You need to see this house. She has everything. Is she a prepper?”

“A What? Liam, where is Kate?”

“She said that we need something. I told her that Rosa was sick and she asked me a bunch of questions about what was wrong with her. I said that we didn’t know what she had but that we thought she might have been poisoned by radiation.” I watched him intently as he said his piece and then looked around and realised that Shadow wasn’t in the car.

“Shadow! He isn’t here. We left him.” I turned to get a look behind us but couldn’t see much through the back of the cab’s window. Liam did the same.

“I don’t believe it. What a champ!” He said. “He’s running behind us I can see him all the way back down the lane. Look in the wing mirror.” I looked back trying to make him out, and there he was trotting along in the distance behind us.

That dog had grown on me faster than any other living thing. Shadow’s loyalty to us was touching. He’d adopted Rosa and me as his family. He hadn’t even left us when we were stranded at the side of the road and had nothing but our company to give him.

I watched him in the distance until we were turning up the gravel track towards Kate’s house. It amazed me to see that it too hadn’t changed. I jumped down from the pickup and cradled Rosa turning to make towards the house. Liam shouted to me from the driver’s window.

“I’m going back for Shadow. She said it wouldn’t take very long. I’m worried he’ll miss the turn and get lost.”

“Okay.” Liam skidded back out of the driveway and disappeared while I carried Rosa towards the house. It turns out that Shadow had been busy growing on someone else too.

“Where the hell has Aunty Katie gone?” I could smell the fire in the sitting room before I walked through the front door. The logs crackled as I walked through and lay Rosa down on the sofa. I retook her temperature and monitored her pulse. I had to steady myself as I discovered that she was showing the same signs as before when she had stopped breathing. Leaving her semi-unconscious on the sofa. I ran into the kitchen to get her a glass of water. I racked my brain to think if there would be anything in the house that I could use to help her.

She had already had double the maximum dose of liquid paracetamol I couldn’t give her anymore. The Epi-Pen was now useless. Utterly beside myself, I filled a glass of water and rushed back to the place where I had left her. She was beginning to shake again. I watched over my daughter, unable to help her. Silently I begged Kate to hurry back with someone that could save her.

“WHERE IS SHE?” It was Kate. Finally. I let out some of the tension that I’d been holding since we arrived. I could hear her voice floating towards us through the front door. She was barking questions at Liam who walked in with Shadow behind her.

I’m not sure how long I’d sat there rocking Rosa on my lap. She hadn’t got much worse but was still in pretty bad shape. Kate barged in through the doorway of the sitting room, shoving her way towards me. I stood up to greet her.

“Did you bring a doctor?” She was on her own. Kate handed me a bottle of pills and hugged me so hard around the neck I thought I would choke.

“There is no one like that out here Liz. She needs to take these. They work. I had to do it myself last month.” I stared stupidly at the bottle which she had thrust into my hand. “It’s potassium iodide. If it’s only a mild case of poisoning, then those will soak up any of the radiation in her thyroid. Her body will excrete it safely through her urine.”

I sprang to my feet and ran into the kitchen, slamming all of the drawers around the kitchen before I remembered where Kate kept the cutlery. I grabbed two spoons and crushed four of the pills between them until they were a powder which I could mix into a small measure of water. That was the only way I could think of which would encourage her to swallow the medication. I squirted another 5 ml dose of Calpol in there. I needed to bring her temperature back down, and this was the only way I knew how. These were extraordinary circumstances. I tried not to think how much of the stuff she had taken in the past 24 hours.

I darted back through to the sitting room where Liam was holding Rosa upright over his shoulder, trying to rouse her from her sleepy state physically. Seeing her like this was excruciating. I was petrified. We kept her in a sitting position, propped up on pillows and opened her mouth. Carefully I used the syringe to give her the mixture. It took her a while to swallow the strange tasting substance. It must have been disgusting because she used the little energy she still had to turn her face away. Something she usually did when I was trying to make her eat anything green. It took us a few minutes, but eventually, the syringe which I held over her mouth was empty. I looked over to Liam and then at Kate.