Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

The boat makes smoke. We take it in turns to watch them with binoculars, and it’s still my turn when they go around the headland past Message Rock. For a second the east shore has white waves, then we see an edge of ripples and smoke on the water, then they’ve gone past.

After this he pushes us hard. We shove the prams while he acts as slave-driver. Mairi has a pram as well, though it’s getting most of the way to being her size.

When we get to the steep road going up the big hill she can’t push it: her strength is not enough.

Calum Ian just watches, as she huffs, digs down her head, slides her feet away on the loose stones.

‘Useless. Ach, give it to me.’

He takes some big steps ahead, turning often to check we’re being as strong and going as fast as him.

At about quarter-way up Alex’s legs have gotten sore. I give him some chocolate buttons in case it’s lowness of sugar, but he doesn’t much want them. Instead, he wants juice: as much as he can be allowed of our journey-supply, until he’s had lots more than his fair share.

At halfway up Mairi tries to help him. She takes one side of Alex’s pram and pushes.

Right away me and Alex step back – holding up our hands, drawing back to how far we agreed for safety.

‘Why’re you stopping?’

‘She came too close. It’s for her health.’

‘Just let her bloody help.’

‘But it’s bad for her safety. We don’t want to make her sick.’

Calum Ian drops his rucksack between roadside stones.

He comes back.

Spitting on his hands he wipes them on Mairi’s face: making sure that some of the spit goes on her nose, and in her mouth.

Then he rubs his hands off on her jumper.

‘Now it doesn’t matter how close she gets. So let her do it. Or this’ll take us all day.’

Mairi’s left looking at the spit-smear on her jumper.

I bite my tongue and touch the letter Duncan handed over; try to keep in mind what he said, try to remember the good side he mentioned.

Alex stops again and again to look at boring things: sticks, rusted cans, a bird skeleton. He stops to pee and takes ages to catch us up, even though we’re bored waiting.

He stops by the forest of seven trees, twice. It would seem ridiculous, only Elizabeth already told us that going to the toilet lots is what happens with diabetes – so the only ridiculous thing is how Calum Ian never gives him a proper rest for doing it.

I hold onto my anger. I hold onto my shout. It’s nearly too much, but I manage.

Calum Ian keeps looking with his binoculars, stopping almost as often as Alex does, trying to stay high on the hill for as long as he can for the widest view.

‘Don’t see them yet,’ he says, standing on a fence for a longer look. ‘ Seadh , they must’ve got ahead.’

We come to the first forest, then the sheep-wash, then the village called Breivig.

Where Alex stops and says he needs more water.

‘No – you’ve had enough.’ Calum Ian upends an empty bottle. ‘You had all your share, plus half of mine as well. That’s your bloody lot. No more.’

‘But I feel bones when I do this.’ Alex sucks in his stomach. ‘You can’t be not giving me it.’

‘Bonus Features, you’re only showing your ribs, see? It doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean you need more.’

But Alex pushes away his pram. His bag was hung over the handle of it, so when he pushes it, it topples backwards.

‘Not going any further.’

Calum Ian throws away the empty bottle. Now Alex is sitting on the ground in protest.

‘Get up.’

‘I need another drink first.’

‘I said you already had your share. A big greedy share. Get up.’

‘My legs are sore and my arms are sore and my—’

Calum Ian grabs him by the neck of his T-shirt, which rips when he tries to haul Alex up.

‘Look what you did! This was the last T-shirt Mum ever put on me!’

‘Quit your fucking whining – it was old anyway. It stank. You wear it too much, that’s why it ripped.’

Alex, wishing to disobey even more, now lies on the road, holding the torn edges of his T-shirt together.

‘Shoot me then,’ he says. ‘If I’m so slow. Go on, I know you’ve got your stupid petrol gun. I saw it sticking up. Burn me with it – you big bully.’

Calum Ian’s mouth is thin-lined for anger.

‘If you could do it to a dead person, then you could do it to an alive person. On you go, you’re the bad man: it’s you. Go and burn me for being slow.’

Calum Ian looks uncertain. But then sure.

He unclips the top of his rucksack, takes out the plastic bag in which he keeps his water gun.

He unwraps and holds the gun up, then goes to stand five feet from Alex, and points it.

‘Final warning.’

Alex trembles and screws up his eyes and doesn’t move.

‘Go on.’

‘Last warning.’

‘Put a flame on me, you big bully!’

He aims the gun.

Presses.

The spray reaches the cracked end of Alex’s shoe.

Now I pull Alex away, away from the edge of the petrol drops. And Calum Ian shivers: seems to wake up to what he’s just done.

He doesn’t spray more – not even when Alex juts out his chin, calls him bully, coward, bad person.

Calum Ian just looks sad: to be him, to be standing here beside us.

I get myself between them. Now I can’t hold onto all the good that Duncan told me about: it’s forgotten.

‘What would your hero dad say, now? Not a lot of good about you. He wouldn’t like you at all. He would not be proud of you. No sir. He wouldn’t, he’d be sick, sick of the sight. You and your bad bullying.’

Calum Ian waves at me to go away.

‘And he’s not coming back. Because he’s all rotten and dead. Like you said to me. Dead, dead, dead.’

Now he moves. Croak-voiced: ‘ Gloic , at least I don’t imagine – like a baby – seeing my mum all over the place.’

‘I don’t do that, not any more. Want to know why? Because I went to the gym. After you said. To check, I saw her. Saw where she was. So now I’m no baby. All right? Now I know she did die – all right?’

This makes Calum Ian’s eyes close, as if I’d sprayed some of his own petrol back into them.

‘You went there? On your own?’

To prove it I tell him about the man in the chair. About the screen walls. About the signs and the flies and the shoes and clothes left in piles.

About Mum’s blue jacket.

He looks at Mairi, then me. Then Alex.

Then he passes his last full bottle of yellow sterilised to Alex.

‘Have it all,’ he says.

Then he gets up and starts to push the pram Alex was pushing: only this time slow enough for us to keep alongside.

‘So this wasn’t a trap?’ I shout after him. ‘You weren’t going to burn us? Or harm us like Elizabeth thought?’

He doesn’t even answer this.

Ard Mhor goes in and out of sun. Birds go scattering, the noise of them tells you where the dogs are.

The ferry waiting room is middle-sized, on the rocky point, wood walls with their paint peeling.

The car park, beside, has about ten cars in it. Their tyres got flat, and all the windscreens are streaked.

Calum Ian walks to the nearest, then around the rest. One of them got burnt, so the tarmac is black in a square beneath.

‘Don’t look inside this one,’ he warns us, pointing to a white car on its own. This car has yellow BIOHAZARD tape swirled all around its doors and windows. Alex hurries past to stop himself from looking by mistake.