Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

Mum’s room. As well, looks smaller. I open the curtains. A seagull flaps off the windowsill.

Just an empty drying green. Bits of torn washing, still up, amazing.

Her case, halfway to being packed. Some perfumes on the bedside cabinet. I spray once then all over. Stings my eyes. Then I get up on the bed.

When I close my eyes the bed sags down beside.

‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you,’ Mum says. ‘You have to be kind.’

Then she says, ‘Concentrate and the world is yours.’

I concentrate.

‘Don’t run with bullies.’

‘Who would!’

‘Hold scissors by the sharp end. Never, ever run with scissors.’

‘I would never run with them. Or with bullies.’

‘ Tha sin ceart . Keep in mind, last of all: many hands make light work.’

‘We call that teamwork these days, Mum. But don’t get stressed, you’re only catching up.’

I lie beside her for a bit. But then I catch a smell: which makes me open my eyes, quick, to make sure she isn’t actually there.

In the hallway downstairs I notice: one of her letters.

It got crushed against the wall when I shoved the front door open. It’s white on one side where the sun paled it.

Not opened.

Her signing-words: Mo Ivaidh Rona.

It looks too clean against my clarty fingers.

The truth could be she’s been and left it today. For a truth it’s a hard one, but nobody could say opposite – that she hasn’t. Nobody could say better than me how Mum comes and goes, where she goes between.

Calum Ian is hiding outside when I open the door. He had his ear to the letterbox. Quickly I push Mum’s letter down inside my jumper, praying he hasn’t noticed.

‘Yet another stupid kid holding us up,’ he says, poking me in the chest. ‘You headed to stab someone?’

I don’t know what he means – then I see that I’m holding the plastic sword I picked up for Alex.

‘It’s a present.’

‘You get presents for all the rest of us as well?’

‘I forgot.’

‘Then what did you put down your jumper? See – it’s slipping away free – nearly at the bottom—’

I push the letter back up by folding my arms. But as I go to walk past, Calum Ian catches me. He tries to tickle the letter out, but his fingers are too angry for it to feel funny.

We struggle – I don’t want to give up first – so I nip his arm and he pulls away, wincing at the sore bit.

Now I see a new look in his eyes – a look I never saw before, fiercer than the one he gave earlier about his camera.

‘Keep it close, Gloic ,’ he shouts at the back of me. ‘ Real close. I’m not finished with you.’

Calum Ian has a very heavy backpack. He won’t show us what’s inside it, which is bothering Elizabeth, maybe because she’s nosy enough to want to know everything, though not enough yet to force him to show.

‘You’ll find out later,’ is all he’ll say.

We don’t take the bikes, because Alex never learned to ride. And we don’t need Mum’s maps to get to the first house, because it’s still in the village: at the end of the single-track road that begins with the broken-roof church.

The doormat says NOT YOU AGAIN. This is just the kind of dumb joke adults like. Me and Alex take an edge each, throw the mat over a wall.

Calum Ian and Duncan have been here before. They sprayed the door – not Gor B, but Lfor Locked. I try the handle but they got it right: it is locked.

It’s an old house, with an upstairs bit, and a mossy garden. We search around its edges. There’s brown board on the front windows – shutters? And on the side windows. Elizabeth thinks it’s cardboard, Calum Ian doesn’t.

We circle the house to see if there’s a trick way in or an easy way, but there isn’t. I want to give up – then Elizabeth notices the bathroom window. It’s got frosted glass, but doesn’t look like it’s blocked over inside.

‘Stand back,’ Calum Ian says.

He finds a good-sized stone and throws it.

It’s maybe the tenth or ninth throw that smashes the glass in. After this, he uses a slate from the path to knock the broken edges away.

‘Is it me who’s got to be brave again?’

Everyone finds the best bit of their shoes to look at. Calum Ian nods, makes a sound in his throat like he knew we’d be too shitting it anyway. Then he gets Duncan to punt him up through the hole – and he’s gone.

It feels like a year before we hear the kitchen door further along being scraped open. Then he comes out.

‘I’m not doing this on my own,’ he says, glaring at us. ‘For why? Because there’s a stink.’

When Alex hears this he won’t come in. I feel the same: and want to tell them all to turn around, yet I’d rather not show my fear, or make them think I’m just a kid made the same as Alex, so I don’t say anything.

The kitchen’s half-bright. There are pans filled with water in plastic bags, on the table, on the floor. Whoever the person was they used clear plastic bags, which meant that their water inside went slimy. It’s a mistake many people made, but we’re far wiser now.

On one wall there’s a map of the world. In the map are lots of red and blue and green pins, mostly around Asia, but with some around America, Europe. Alongside the map are cut-outs from newspapers. It’s all to do with what happened. There’s a heap of cut papers on a chair, maybe the ones this person never got around to sticking up.

‘Should’ve spent time reading up on water instead,’ Calum Ian says. He picks up the papers and begins to read them out with a posh adult voice—

‘Chief Medical Officer confirms WHO report on Guangdong Virus.

‘As feared it seems to have an extended incubation.

‘Aerosol spread from shopping malls: bogus oxygen bars. Ban on reporting this story finally lifted.

‘UN security council: no consensus.

‘Those in urban centres advised to stay at home. Those in rural areas under no current restrictions.’

He laughs at this, then angrily raps the page: ‘Did you not see what happened to us, then? Did ye not? You got it right for everybody else, so why not us?’

And he begins to tear the pages, into smaller and smaller pieces – then looks up at us looking at him.

‘Get a move on ,’ he orders – like we were the ones keeping him back.

He makes us pull all the kitchen drawers. We don’t find any medicine for Alex, but we do find: tins of Carnation milk, garibaldi biscuits, croutons, brown sugar, raisins, treacle, flour. I’m keen to start taking things home but Elizabeth says no, we’ve our job to do first.

The living room’s dark. Strings of sun around the boards. The smell worse here. Calum Ian goes to the window and finds that Elizabeth was correct: the boards are just cardboard.

He tears a strip, the sun comes in.

There’s a tile fireplace, plus a couch, chair the murk colour of pond but hanging with lace. On the floor, lots of bottles of water: pans, jars, tubs, covered, laid out just anywhere. On the couch, a scrunch of sheets looking like a human with bad dreams got twisted up in them.

I walk between the bottles, pans. Duncan knocks one over – we all hiss at him to be careful.

From the hall Calum Ian shouts – ‘Dead person!’

The body’s on the stair.

It’s a man – curled up, at the corner of a bigger turn-step. He has plasters to keep the skin on his face. The proper skin behind these went black, which makes him look all in bits, like patchwork.

There’s a carton of milk-yuck at his hand. Plus a box of the pills we’ve seen in lots of houses.

The smell of him is bad, but not the worst, maybe because he’s in the dark.