Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

The first is an advert ! Everyone cheers, it’s amazing! There’s a bathroom being cleaned with blue stuff. A lady with shining blonde hair smiling at her clean toilet. Adverts only happen when the world is going OK!

Then it’s the news. Alex hides his eyes.

It’s an early news. They didn’t know yet. There’s a foggy picture of a night-time street. Then a lady reporter, wearing a mask and lifting it up to talk to the man in a blue suit beside her.

We press return for MAIN MENU. Elizabeth reads the dates of the clips with her finger. Her shoulders drop and she makes a sad groan in her throat.

November, December.

‘Who did these? All these recordings?’

‘Dad.’

Next: a newsman beside a fence. Behind him is a plane. This one and lots of other planes have been told not to leave. But the people can’t get off either.

They’re waiting for days. The steps to get people down are forbidden. Some of them jumped.

Food gets passed up, after dead people start to land on the runways. Flat trucks come and take them away.

Elizabeth goes to MAIN MENU. More adverts. More news. She doesn’t want to press the button to start – but then Calum Ian presses it for her.

It’s cold in the news, because the people talking have smoke on their breaths, plus they’re wearing scarves.

‘He’s the one that frightens me,’ Alex says.

‘Him?’

‘No, the next one. He’s the one that made me scared of seeing zombies.’

It’s a film we’ve seen before. Someone being chased by police. The picture freezing into dots, like when storms used to shake the satellite dish. Then, when the picture comes back, the running man has fallen asleep beside some stairs. Black paint is coming out of his shoulder.

‘Shot,’ Duncan says.

Elizabeth holds her head like it’s sore. Calum Ian covers his ears from the film’s shouting, though it’s crackly and it isn’t even that loud.

‘He was only ill,’ Elizabeth says.

Calum Ian chooses another one. It’s a film of someone talking: a man with a sweaty face. He looks at the camera and smiles and talks patiently, so you’d think he’d be a good teacher. There are two people sitting beside him. They both look strict, or bored. Or fed up. These two don’t look like nice teachers, and they don’t look at the camera.

The man talks about growth. He uses words we don’t understand. He mumbles, then talks too fast, calls growth a cancer that has to be stopped. There’s a light that’s too bright for his face. He might be patient, but still, he looks like he’s in a hurry. We all agree that even though he’s smiling it’s probably not a true smile.

‘Can’t understand him,’ Alex says. ‘It’s like he’s talking in sore tooth language.’ On other days this might make us laugh, but right now, here, it doesn’t.

The man goes on and on. I get bored with him, which is fine because then the clip changes. And then I want to be bored again, because it’s a man Elizabeth recognises as the Prime Minister.

‘I am appealing for calm,’ he says. ‘I want you all to know we are doing the best we can. Please put your trust in the efforts of our emergency services—’

The clip cuts off – then there’s a film of people camping or working inside a sports stadium.

Elizabeth rubs her eyes with her sleeve. She’s shaking like she’s been outside for too long and got cold.

We watch the rest. I don’t even remember the one about the man running from the shopping place. I feel sorry for him, because he’s left behind his box of stuff. It’s all tipped onto the shiny floor beside a Christmas tree.

The DVD stops. It goes to blue screen, and we know we’ve come to where the electricity stopped.

The big kids should be in the lead, but they’re not.

Alex: ‘What was that man doing?’

Elizabeth puts on a smile. ‘In the very last clip? I know, actually. Mum and Dad used the same thing to help people.’

‘What?’

‘He had a mask. Called a nebuliser. Doctors and nurses use them to help people: maybe if they have asthma or lung problems, for their breathing.’

‘But the mask didn’t help the people who died.’

‘No. The bad man used it to hurt them.’

‘How?’

‘He used it to send bits of sickness in the air.’

‘Is the sickness still in the air?’

‘I don’t know.’

Alex goes quiet for a bit. After this he frowns and says, ‘If the people didn’t have asthma, or lung things, why did they want to put the masks on?’

‘Because he told them a shitty lie. He said it was oxygen. To give them energy, for shopping. He told them it was extra healthy, that it would give them extra strength for their Christmas shopping.’

As we leave the house the last person still sitting is Calum Ian: staring and staring at the blue screen of the player until Duncan has to wake him up, ask for the player back, tell him to get going.

Calum Ian clicks out the DVD – then he takes it outside and sprays it with petrol.

He throws a match, and we all watch as the silver top of the DVD bubbles and melts and goes black.

Alex keeps turning to have one last look at his house: watching to see if there will be any change, maybe hoping for some sign of life at the windows or door.

Then we’re back, walking the road.

Up in the north, where the wind blows hardest, some of the telephone wires got knocked down. Rubbish, plastic bags and fishing nets all snagged in a line along the fences. Tin cans, plastic tubs buried down in the sand drifts that the wind has built at the corners of the road.

It’s when we come to an abandoned car that Calum Ian, still walking behind, whistles for us to stop.

The car has been spray-painted.

There are red and blue swirls on the doors. Also on the front window.

No names, no letters or messages, no drawings: just swirls of spray.

We look inside. Calum Ian stays by the grass verge. There’s empty crisp packets and juice cartons and tins bashed but not opened on the front not-driver’s seat.

We look around, but there’s nothing: just some blank houses, the rubbish-snagged fences, the empty hill.

Duncan whistles on his brother, who doesn’t come but instead hunkers deeper in the grass.

We open the car door. It creaks bad, plus the inside smells old: old like the sun dried the air in it for weeks.

‘Nobody recent,’ Duncan says.

Still though: he looks at the hill and the nearest house in case there’s a trap we didn’t see.

When nothing bad happens Calum Ian comes over to us. I notice he’s got one of the knives out: tucked in the side of his belt so the end of it points backwards.

He takes out his tarpaulin and rolls it out on the road: offering us weapons, if we want. Then says, ‘Duncan saw smoke. Three month back. It was coming from the other side of the big hill. From the side we’re on now.’

Nobody speaks.

He must see something in how we’re all looking because he adds in a hurry, ‘Listen: it was hard to know if it was really smoke or just more clouds.’

Elizabeth gets him to slowly repeat what he said, and to give more details: about the exact date, about how long since, about whether the smoke was black or white.

‘Why didn’t you tell ?’

Even though the question is aimed direct at Calum Ian it’s Duncan who finally answers: ‘He ordered me not to.’

Calum Ian looks caught. But then he gets his confidence back and says, ‘Tell me then: why didn’t they come and help? If it was truly friendly adults, they would’ve come. If it was my dad, he would’ve come. But nobody did. So you work out if a person doesn’t come – maybe that means they’re watching and not wanting to be found.’ Pointing to the rubbish inside of the car he says: ‘An enemy.’