Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

The tape makes a ripping then a sucking noise as we pull it off. Flies come out – we wait for them to stop. There’s a smell. Elizabeth pushes the door, but it’s stuck.

We know already what the problem is. There’s someone behind it.

Actually it isn’t a someone, it’s a some thing . A dog. Gone flat, like dead things usually are.

It’s easy to push aside. Once inside we find a carpet to cover the dog over with.

You can hardly even see it, once it’s covered.

Duncan used to reckon that dead things went flat because their souls had left their bodies.

He told us that Father MacGill once mentioned an experiment where they tried to measure the weight of a person’s soul, by taking their weight before and then after they had died. The difference in the sums, he said, was how much the person’s soul weighed.

Calum Ian, however, thought it was rubbish.

‘Flatness is the difference between sheep and sheepskin rugs,’ he said. ‘It’s fuck all to do with souls.’

The carpets are grey, the walls white. It feels like a dentist’s. In the front room there’s a fishtank. The water has turned green. The dead fish are floating in stringy black bits of mould. I go to dip my finger into the water just to hear what the plop sounds like.

Elizabeth: ‘Don’t!’

She comes and sprays my hand with soap.

There’s a big mess in the kitchen. Wood splinters, dust, bits of ceiling. The roof’s broken down. Amongst the dust and splinters are lots of black bags, tied. I check inside, but they’re empty. They feel damp still.

Me: ‘What happened?’

Elizabeth: ‘The roof caved in.’

This person was starting to get prepared. We find pots filled with water, but not covered. The downstairs bath got half-filled, but still not yet covered. The windows of one room are blocked with cardboard and sheets.

Then in a hallway cupboard we find food hidden in a cardboard box – enough, maybe, for weeks.

Alex: ‘We can eat and eat!’

Me: ‘And eat and eat!’

At the back of the cupboard there’s plastic tubs with the most complicated labels I’ve seen. The tubs contain pink stuff, brown stuff, yellow stuff. They are called recovery drinks. Elizabeth sniffs, tastes, then mixes some with her water bottle. She tries it, then gives me some.

‘Maybe OK?’ I say.

We find chocolate bars called Maxifuel Protein. In a big box. Meal replacement, it says. Hooray! We can eat just bars! No more tins! But they don’t taste much like chocolate, more like bad fudge. I don’t like them.

Me: ‘They safe?’

Elizabeth: ‘I think they are. Still in date.’

We find the person upstairs. I was expecting a man, but it’s a woman. She’s a mystery. She’s on the toilet floor. The floor has fallen through to downstairs. Her mask has slipped to her neck, with lots of brown spots on it: sick, or blood. There are towels laid out on the floor. The towels are dirty. There’s broken glass. There’s little red and white pills spilt in the bathroom. They’re stuck to the tiles like they got glued on. She’s wearing clothes like an Olympic runner. There’s mushy spots on her skin.

We gather our shopping on the front step. Elizabeth takes her blue spray-can and sprays a Bon the door.

Alex: ‘No more New Shopping. Please. Can we not just stay outside now? I don’t want to do any more.’

Elizabeth: ‘You’ve done really, really well. Thank you. No more for today. We’re done.’

Alex: ‘Are you being truthful?’

Elizabeth: ‘Yes.’

Alex: ‘Why do we have to bother?’

Elizabeth: ‘Because we need to do all we can to survive OK? Remember? Anyway, I didn’t ask you to come upstairs with me. You should’ve stayed downstairs.’

Alex: ‘It was too late. I was there.’

I fill my backpack while Alex frets, and while Elizabeth adds the house to our map of food-stores.

People are mostly dead in bed, or in the toilet, or between the two. They smell the worst of all things, worse than cats or dogs. So you get in and out fast. And you don’t look at them in case the memory of the way they look becomes long-term.

Mum always said about bad stuff on the internet: ‘Never look for bad stuff because you can’t unsee it.’

On the way back home we stop at the cool box. For the past month, since the world started to feel warm, Elizabeth has kept Alex’s injections in a cool box in the stream beside our village.

Now she takes the foil packet out and stares at what’s left inside. When I try to be nosy, she shuts the box.

As soon as her back is turned I sneak a peek inside.

Me: ‘There’s hardly any!’

Elizabeth: ‘ You … We’ve loads. OK? Enough for months.’

Me: ‘But just one packet…’

Elizabeth: ‘ Shut up about it.’

Then it’s sandwich time: crackers, corned beef. Corned beef is the opposite of a Wow Word as it doesn’t taste of corn or beef. Today Elizabeth has made jelly-water. Our water on its own tastes of coal and chlorine, but add a packet of jelly cubes and it tastes like sweets.

After this she gives us each a tablet, which she says is a vitamin. Alex looks very suspicious about his, and so do I.

Me: ‘Where – honestly – did you get these?’

Elizabeth: ‘Shopping.’

Me: ‘New or Old?’

Elizabeth: ‘Just shopping.’

Me: ‘Did you get them from a bad house?’

Elizabeth: ‘Just because something comes from a bad house doesn’t mean it’s actually bad.’

Me: ‘I’m not keen.’

Alex: ‘Is it safe for diabetes?’

Elizabeth looks surprised, like she hadn’t thought of this. She digs out the boring book she always carries and reads it, frowning. In a long time she looks up.

‘It doesn’t mention vitamins… truthfully then, I don’t know. I think it’ll be all right.’

Me: ‘Polar bears have too many vitamins in their livers. You should check it isn’t made of polar bear.’

Elizabeth: ‘I think it would say on the packet. Like with cod liver oil for instance.’

Me: ‘And hot dogs, for instance.’

Elizabeth: ‘Smart arse.’

In the end we flick our vitamins into the stream. Elizabeth looks sad about it, but doesn’t stop us. It’s good fun, and I want to flick more, but she won’t allow.

‘We’re not getting enough fruit,’ she says. ‘I did a project last year about sailors in the olden days. They got something called scurvy. That’s where you need vitamin C. Your gums and skin start to bleed. Well, Calum Ian and Duncan have very red mouths, don’t they?’

Me: ‘That’s because they’re always sucking petrol for their stupid bonfires that never work.’

Elizabeth doesn’t disagree.

Me: ‘Know something? I got reminded there about our hot dogs. Remember, that the boys took? Well I want them back. It still gets me fed up that they stole them.’

Elizabeth: ‘Best forgotten.’

Me: ‘No it isn’t. I bet they have hundreds of stuff in their house. I bet they eat all night until they’re sick.’

Alex: ‘If I get sick the thingamabob that hangs down my throat comes out.’

Elizabeth: ‘Rubbish, it only feels like it does.’

Me: ‘I think we should go to war with them.’

Elizabeth: ‘ Nobody’s going to war. We all need to stick together. Remember – what’s going to work?’

We deliberately don’t say – teamwork.

When Elizabeth and Alex go back home I lie and say I’m going for a walk.

It’s not usual for me to go alone, but she looks fed up or in a sad mood again so I get away with it.

I know their garden right away. I know their street even, because of all the black bits from fires.