Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

Elizabeth stays up. I hear her on our radio: going through the stations, listening for anything but static.

When I ask her again what Alex meant about Calum Ian being strange she tells me to forget it.

There was the day when Calum Ian and me talked about fate. That was back in spring, back when we were still working out how to stay alive.

It was just the two of us, at Message Rock. He’d thrown in a bottle – he still believed in sea-mail back then. I was on a rock, higher up. It was my job to spot the way it drifted, in case it came back into the bay.

He asked if I believed in fate. When I said I didn’t know (because I didn’t know what fate was) he said, ‘Dad said there was nothing you could do about it. Like it had to happen, no matter what.’

‘Like going asleep?’

He shivered at the sea-wind. ‘Listen: Gran met Grandpa because she was late for her bus. Fate. Aunt Clare fell down the stairs and broke her leg, then the man who pushed her in the chair at the hospital, he ended up becoming Uncle Frank. That’s fate.’

I tried to know fate from these two examples.

‘When a mistake leads to marriage?’

Calum Ian clicked his tongue. ‘More than that. Like I said: it’s got to happen. It could be something good, like meeting Uncle Frank, or bad, like this.’

He circled his arms to mean: all the world. The island we were on. The sea keeping us on it.

He threw a stone in the direction of his bottle then said, ‘Keep wondering how it could’ve turned out differently. What I could’ve done to change things. Only what if the stuff we did never made a difference?’

I gathered up pebbles for thinking. ‘You mean we shouldn’t bother sending messages?’

‘We could try. But maybe it’s the same, in the end?’ He held his head for thinking, then said, ‘You can’t change the end of a film.’

I let him go ahead on our way back to the village: so far ahead that he was just another brown dot, just another rock under the headland.

I didn’t like the thought of being part of a film. Not being able to change it. But I didn’t argue against, because I knew by then that Calum Ian had to have all the right answers.

It’s just that now I think I could’ve said more. Because a person can’t always come up with the right answers.

Especially when that person is in a hurry.

I’m about to tell you about my last good night at home with you, Mum, so listen up: because this is the memory that keeps me wanting to be alive.

In this other life you arrive home. I run at you when you open the door.

‘The electricity went off!’ I say.

You find me in the pitch-black. I expect to be rescued, for you to notice my bravery, but you don’t.

You’re wearing a clear plastic suit. I stare up at you as you rip it off, stuff it in the bin.

You find a torch, then light some candles, then go to the sink and scrub your hands for a very long time.

I feel ignored, so I can’t stop myself from moaning.

‘You don’t care,’ I say.

You make a face then pull me close.

‘You not eat yet? Huh? A bheil an t-acras ort? Let’s get something in us right this instant.’

With the gas fire on and after some food it’s better. We find the old radio in the cupboard, and listen to the local Gaelic station, then to an English BBC station on long wave.

‘Is it true people got sick?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will I get sick?’

‘No. You’re well and I’ll keep you well. We can look after one another.’

‘Will you get sick?’

‘Rona: nobody in here is sick. OK? We’re doing just fine. We just need to sit tight and stay indoors.’

I curl up in a ball for you, so that I’m sitting tight. You don’t notice, or if you do then you’re not in your usual playful mood.

You plug in our power-cut telephone, the one that doesn’t need electricity to work, then you sit in the hall and phone people.

Your voice stays quiet, like you don’t want me to hear.

I look out of the window and realise there that are no lights on in the village.

I want to go outside and look, but when I ask about it you say no, we need to get some sleep, you’re bushed.

You let me sleep in beside. Neither of us can get to sleep, so I ask you to tell about when I was born.

‘You were late,’ you begin. ‘Ten days. Everybody ready but you. Happy where you were, curled up inside, safe and warm. Liked your own company right from the start. Rona Aonranach .’

‘How did I get born?’

‘They induced me. Oh, but then… Then you were coming! Your dad was in and out. He fell asleep in the canteen, nearly missed you. Not that I could bloody sleep.’

‘Tell about my eyes.’

‘They were open right away. So I thought: Here’s a lively one, keeps her eyes open. Knows how to look after herself.’

‘What did I do?’

‘You didn’t do anything. I mean to say, you didn’t cry. Just looked at me with those big wide eyes, as much as to say: Is this it? Getting the measure of the world.’

‘Was it because I came that Dad left and went to the mainland?’

‘No, Rona. You should never think that.’

The wind moans in the phone lines outside. There’s the noise of sand crackling on the skylight, above. Outside, a car drives past quick, then another.

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

‘Has Dad phoned?’

You’re reading a book by a small torch – still, I can tell by the sharpness of your shoulder, by the way you hold your breath, that you aren’t really reading.

‘Rona, he’s one of the people who got sick.’

‘But he’ll get better, won’t he?’

‘I’m sure he will. I’m praying for him.’

This makes me want to pray as well; I put my hands together between your shoulder blades and pray, so the magic of it goes through you too.

Another car goes past, sounding very fast.

Then a siren-noise, which I think is the ambulance, but which turns out to be the police.

‘Happening,’ you say, from the window.

Alex’s bed is wet next morning. He stays late so he can hide the dampness of it. When Elizabeth finally stands him up he wobbles like he’s still inside a dream.

Alex: ‘It’s only sweat…’

Elizabeth: ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It was an accident.’

Alex: ‘I said it was sweat.’

Elizabeth: ‘Here’s a flannel, OK? I got you some fresh clothes. Want a drink?’

‘I get sweaty, thirsty if I don’t get my injections.’

‘I know.’

He drinks and drinks, caving in the plastic bottle of red sterilised as he tips it high and finishes it.

The water dribbles down his chin, settling in beads on the mucky front of his T-shirt. He begins to change his clothes and we see that Alex now has three red lumps on his stomach. One is the same size as his hand in a fist.

He tries to scratch this but it hurts, so he presses around the edges of it instead.

Covering up his stomach again he says, ‘Know what my dream told me last night?’

Me: ‘Say it.’

‘It told me I didn’t have any weakness. That I wasn’t scared of zombies, or bad men. Or dogs. And even though I had diabetes, it didn’t count.’

Alex looks at us confident – so confident that we can’t argue back, to say that it does count, that a person can’t just dream away their weaknesses.

Still, he maybe sees that we’re unsure, because he gets the same doubt in his eyes that I feel and says, ‘When you die you have worms up your nose. Sad to say, I haven’t lost my weakness for that.’

As I don’t have an answer he just sags his body and adds, ‘The injections aren’t working.’