Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

Outside, Alex is noisily counting. Mairi stares and stares until we get uneasy about her.

‘This could be a trap,’ Calum Ian says.

Elizabeth gives him a look which means Shut up.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘We’re in a bit of a hurry. It can be a big help, in a group. You’ll get teamwork. It’s crucial to be helping together. It’ll be your best ever decision.’

Mairi starts to creep back. She’s keen to play with Elizabeth’s school badges. She points at the one that says BANKER, then points like she wants it.

Elizabeth gives her both badges.

‘You haven’t seen Alex yet,’ she says, with a hurry to her voice. ‘I’ll tell you one big issue, Mairi. He needs medicine. If he doesn’t get any he’ll become sick. So for that reason we’ve got to go back. It’s our mission.’

Elizabeth pins the badges to Mairi’s T-shirt. All the smudged dirt makes the gold and green shine.

Elizabeth takes out a wet wipe from her rucksack and begins to wipe clean Mairi’s cheeks.

‘So we start to see you.’

Mairi looks very solemn. Her face comes in like a window being cleaned. Her skin’s the colour of clouds. Or even whiter – it’s the colour of snow.

Elizabeth’s hand stops moving. Then Calum Ian makes a mad sound I never wanted to hear.

Elizabeth quickly cleans all the way down to Mairi’s neck and ears.

With her mouth sagging she says – ’Show me your stomach.’

Mairi shakes her head, so Calum Ian gets behind her and grabs her arms. She kicks, but she’s too small.

He pulls up her jumper. After this he turns her around to look at her back.

‘She’s got none. None at all.’

I don’t know why, but Calum Ian pushes us away from Mairi. And for once Elizabeth doesn’t disagree.

When we get back outside Alex is writing with dirt on the path. His face goes amazed like Duncan’s did when Mairi appears. She keeps hiding at the door, as if Alex was the bad person we were hiding from her.

It’s Elizabeth’s face I don’t understand. She looks like something awful happened – which can’t be true.

Alex holds out his hand, to shake. Mairi doesn’t reach for it. ‘You want water?’ he asks. When he holds up our bottle of red sterilised Calum Ian stops him from getting too close.

‘Don’t think about touching her,’ he says.

I ask what’s wrong. I ask it ten times or more and then I get angry because they don’t want to tell and it makes me feel like a dumb kid who doesn’t understand.

In the end Calum Ian says, ‘It should be obvious. Just look at her face.’

I look at Mairi’s face. It’s mostly hopeful, like she wants to be friendly. Plus it’s more clean. I mention both.

‘ And she doesn’t have scars.’

I see that he’s right: she has true skin like from an old photo or DVD: not broken around her nose and cheeks like all of us.

‘So she got lucky,’ Duncan says.

‘But none of us got lucky. We all got ill.’

‘Then she’s still lucky.’

‘ Not if we give it to her. Then we make her sick. Then she might die.’

Everybody now looks at Elizabeth: all at once, as if we need her to tell that it couldn’t happen.

She just looks away to the big hill, the turbine.

Mairi begins to touch her own face: a sign that she understands what’s being said. Maybe she’s only waiting for her best chance to speak?

‘But none of us are ill now,’ Alex points out. ‘Apart from Duncan’s face, but that got better. Apart from the insulin with me. Maybe that makes it OK to be friendly?’

‘How do you know we’re not still infected? How do you know we can’t make her sick? All the adults who got sick died. All the other kids as well.’

I try to think of another person with no scars. I can’t think of even one. All of the babies we saw, all of the dead adults. Every person in every house.

It doesn’t feel right. I hate to think I still have some sickness in me. I want it gone. I want us to be healthy.

We end up standing in two groups: her and us. We throw food, we throw water. Duncan makes a line of stones on the road for not crossing.

Yet the longer we wait, the more it gives us of worry: even more when Calum Ian takes out his petrolgun and begins to talk about hiding again.

‘Something’s not right here.’ He curls his finger on the trigger of the gun. ‘How can she be the only lucky kid? I think she’s not talking because she’s not telling.’ He sprays one spot of petrol on the road, looking deliberately at Elizabeth, as if challenging her to stop him.

‘I vote we leave her,’ he says.

Elizabeth rubs and rubs at the sides of her head.

‘Can’t do that.’

‘We could feed her, put down some food. Aye? Then we come back later and check she didn’t get ill.’

‘No!’

‘So you bloody take her. But make sure she keeps herself apart. Maybe fifty feet? Till we know it’s safe. I’m taking Duncan back with me.’

‘When will we know? When can any of us know for sure that it’s safe?’

‘I don’t know – you’re the expert! You’re the expert-girl, doctor’s girl! An e dotair a th’annad? You’re the one who knows it all! The one whose mam and dad knew so much they couldn’t even save themselves!’

When he shouts this Mairi sags her head. I want to put the dirt back on her cheeks so no one knows the truth.

He goes to the edge of the stones, stares at Mairi, then begins to rearrange his rucksack, for going.

When a paint-swirled dog comes to make friends with him he kicks it.

We watch him stuff Duncan’s rucksack with the blankets we carried. Then he throws clothes belonging to me and Alex onto the ground between us.

I pick up my clothes, pack them safe beside Mum’s letter.

And we watch the MacNeil brothers walk away.

Mairi comes nearer. She looks worried, as if we’ll kick her like Calum Ian already kicked the dog.

Elizabeth puts a hand up to say Stop ; but the hand trembles like it got too heavy to hold.

‘Don’t come past there,’ she says. ‘We need to think about you, all right? Decide if you’re safe.’

Mairi stares and stares at the stones, like the only thing she wants now is to be part of the team.

How does an alone kid keep alive? I think this when I think of Mairi. For starters, she kept her count of days. For second, she knew the idea of having friends: dolls to stand in for real people. She even painted the dogs, maybe because that was like giving them clothes, and clothes equals human.

But still: alone, she forgot how to talk. Which is why I’ve started to say aloud all the adverts and films I could ever remember.

It gave us trouble, in the end, Mairi not talking.

The other question: how does an alone kid keep safe? She was the best at that. Now I want to shake her hand and tell her how well she did.

Today, I made it a theme for the ‘Plans and Activities’ jotter I started—

ACTIONS

I have no one else to blame for my actions. There’s only me who did it. Everyone else can’t be blamed.

MESS

It’s the same with mess. Try to blame Alex? But my mind knows that can’t be true.

Now that I’m at risk, I could never hit anything. Even the snails. Or flies. They are like spiders, only more innocent.

STAYING SAFE

Be careful with the edges of chairs. You can hurt yourself on the top of the edge. DON’T swing.

Glass is bad. Plastic cups don’t break. If you get glass in your foot then infection gets in.

Chew until there’s no hard bits. You never want to choke, the dogs can’t help.