Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

‘You should ask Elizabeth. She’s the boss.’

He looks across at Elizabeth, who’s now gone to the window and is peeping out through the blinds.

‘I did. She won’t tell. But I know. I’m not a very stupid boy, I know already.’

‘They’re coming,’ Elizabeth interrupts, coming over to shake Mairi from her nest-bed. ‘Alex, be beside me. I want the two of you out of sight.’

I go to hunker down in the dusty back corner of our bunk beds. Mairi kneels under the table. In a minute we hear voices outside. Then inside. I put a finger to my mouth to warn Mairi to be quiet, in case there’s a war, but Calum Ian doesn’t even come looking for us.

Instead, I hear him talking to Elizabeth. She doesn’t tell about her leg. I think the telling might be about me, yet when I listen at the door I realise it’s about Alex.

Calum Ian: ‘Think we should just give him some, seadh ? What else is there? You’re too scared of taking chances, if that’s all—’

Elizabeth: ‘It’s gone bad. It’s giving him sores in his skin. And there was only half a vial, anyway. The stuff inside is worse than useless – we can’t use it.’

‘What about the radio?’

‘I listened all night. I’m fed up listening. We listen and listen and for what!’

Arm by arm I let myself creep out. Mairi stays crouching in her place, watching to see what happens.

Elizabeth is bent down, with Calum Ian standing over her. She’s holding Alex. Her body is shaking.

Something about the look of her – some oldness in her eyes – reminds me of the last time I saw her mum.

‘Is there something wrong with you?’ he’s asking.

‘No. It’s nothing.’

Calum Ian keeps himself close to the door. I can smell him: he stinks of petrol again. His white T-shirt and trousers are grey-smudged from smoke.

‘Now look at her .’ He’s pointing at me. ‘You were the one said we had to stick together. And what did this one do? Back when I got the worst news ever of my life? Pulled a knife on me then ran away.’

‘Leave her alone.’

I look for the knife he tucked in his belt yesterday, but can’t see it. The brothers have on their backpacks. It’s not hard to guess what’s inside his.

‘She’s keeping secrets from the rest of us. Aren’t you? And where’s the other one? Miracle-girl with no scars. How many worlds would that be the chance in? You hiding her back somewhere, she scared?’

‘Leave them both alone.’

‘So she’s not going to die then. Maybe it doesn’t matter for her that she doesn’t have scars. But what about us? What about her making us sick? Did you think about that? Did you not even think she might be a trap?’

Elizabeth holds her ears. Her hair hangs down in long wet threads, falling onto her lap.

‘Stop it. Stop .’

This word she says over and over. She won’t cry, she’ll never cry. But her body is shaking.

I look at Calum Ian: and begin to see him as the type of person who’s strong when someone is sad, or weak, which I think could be the worst kind.

I’m getting ready to find the best way to throw all my anger back at him when Duncan says: ‘We’ve got a boat.’

This makes Calum Ian stop. This makes him look less like he owns us, owns all of the room.

He looks at Calum Ian and says: ‘You were going to tell, weren’t you? You just lost your temper there. Weren’t you Calum? You never meant it. We – him as well – we came to tell, for helping.’

Right away Calum Ian is furious at Duncan: ‘Come away out ,’ he says.

They go out. We watch from the window. We can see them arguing. Duncan seems smaller, much smaller, maybe more scared than we feel here.

When Calum Ian comes back again his voice sounds sent to how it was when we found his dad.

‘You better follow me,’ he says. ‘But I want to say that it was his idea. I want to get that told right now.’

We follow him through the village: to the shops, to the House of Cats, to the church, to the pier.

Elizabeth is slowest of all, so that I wonder if she woke up the wrong way, without her energy.

Two boats got tipped over in winter. Another two stayed the right way. They’re all tied to the big ferry pier. Their nets got snagged, and the mast of one boat fell on top of another. The first one sank, and in the shallow water the bottom of it sticks up like a whale’s back.

Past these turned-over boats, in the sheltered space above the beach, are the boat sheds.

The door of one shed has been broken open. It smells inside of oil, rotted seaweed, mud.

Calum Ian turns on his torch to show us around.

There’s an orange boat: not big-sized, made of rubber. It has boards to sit on, plus two paddles, which look snapped, but are in true fact folded. The engine motor is grey: Duncan calls it an outboard.

‘Uncle Frank’s rib boat,’ he says. ‘Went out loads with him – and Dad – checking the creels. We had to work it, made sure we could – on our own, find the way. It’s ready to go, petrol in as well. Checked it the other week. Isn’t that right, Calum Ian, didn’t we check?’

Calum Ian doesn’t say.

‘So… so we can use it. To leave the island, right? We get medicine for the wee man, we can use it.’ Duncan shows us how to fix the paddles, how to make them straight.

Elizabeth puts a hand down on the rubber rim of the boat. Then says, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? About this ?’

It isn’t Duncan she’s asking – but his brother.

Calum Ian scrapes the broken door open: all the way to the edge until the hinge of it groans.

‘Have a closer look then,’ he says. ‘Go on. You’ll see. You get cracking, drag it out and see.’

He doesn’t help us when we take hold of the rope going around the edges and pull. We drag one way, then the other, until the boat sucks, scrapes, comes unstuck.

When we get the boat outside we see that the bottom of it is dirty with mould and grey water. There’s a plastic milk carton cut in half on a piece of thin rope, which Duncan says is for bailing out.

We stand staring for a minute. Then Alex asks, ‘How do we get it bigger?’

It’s a question that sounds small-kid, or wrongly put, until we realise that it’s not.

The boat lost its air. The sides of it get blown up – and they’ve gone halfway to being flat.

When Elizabeth says it needs inflated Calum Ian barks: ‘You think we didn’t know ? Anyhow, we tried already. There isn’t a place to blow it up: not on the side, or on the top or underneath.’

‘You use a pump?’

‘No, we used our breath… ’ course we used a pump.’

‘Was just wondering—’

‘You find one then, you’re the leader! You’re the doctor’s daughter, who knows everything there is to know.’

Elizabeth holds up her hands for not needing a fight.

‘Let’s float it. Let’s float it and see.’

We clear a path through the rubbish on the shore, then together drag the boat to the water.

It folds with the first wave, but only a little. Otherwise it sits high enough for a person to get in, maybe even two.

Duncan climbs inside. We steady the boat for him, then he warns us away and stands at the back as he tries to turn the engine on.

His third shot makes the propellers roar.

Birds go up. The noise, the smell of engine: it’s like the adults came back, just to this here . It feels like victory: we left the island already, we are the winners!

While we cheer, Duncan turns the engine’s handle, so that the boat spins, makes waves, churns, roars.

Calum Ian runs in to give him orders: ‘ Go easy, don’t rev it on the bloody sand! You’ll wreck the propellers, stop ya eejit! ’