Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

Seonaid comes around to my window. She taps politely and I roll it down.

‘Can I just pop this in your ear, love?’ she asks.

She reaches in and presses a white plastic gun into the hole of my ear; it beeps. Then Seonaid reads the number. After this she rips off her glove and puts on another one.

‘Did very well.’

When she goes around to Mum, they talk first. Mum has questions. One of the cars behind starts to honk its horn. Mum still has questions.

‘We’re trying to keep a safe haven.’ Seonaid waves to the men at the gates, to say everything’s all right.

Then she leans in closer to Mum and whispers: ‘Mary, you need to, otherwise I’ll have to pull you over.’

‘But which side is this safe haven? It’s not clear, is it behind or ahead? Are we in it right now?’

Seonaid thins her mouth, looks around again at the cars. Someone else peeps their horn.

‘The side you’re going to. Come on Mary. I don’t want to have to pull you over.’

Mum tries to ask another question, but when Seonaid walks away like she’s lost her patience, Mum stops asking. Instead she rolls down her window all the way, and puts her head towards the outside.

The white gun beeps.

Mum keeps her eyes away. Seonaid looks at her number for a long time: then writes it down on her plastic card.

Then she rips off her gloves and says, ‘I don’t want to have to separate you right now. So can you keep your mask on?’ Seonaid has to shout over the wind and rain. ‘Listen Mary: keep Rona’s hands washed. Wash everything: cups, bowls, cutlery, before she touches anything. The both of you need to wear gloves.’

‘Been doing all that.’

Seonaid bites her lip: then gives the man at the barrier the thumbs-up. He waves us through.

‘I’ve got us safe,’ Mum says. She rubs my shoulder, picks up her cigarette packet with a shaking hand.

The house is cold and dark when we get back. Mum lights the storm lanterns and puts a candle on the kitchen table and at the window. We can’t use the electric fire, but the central heating still works. It’s nice with candles, and I want to put our sleeping bags next to the radiator and play shadow-puppets, but Mum’s too busy to join in.

‘Not now,’ she says.

She asks for help, but when I try to work beside her she bosses me away. I watch as she fills the kitchen sink with cold water, then the sink in the bathroom, then the bath, which takes ages, then all of the biggest pots and pans. I worry that the world will run out of water, but Mum doesn’t think it will. She keeps pressing her head, and talks to herself when she thinks I’m distracted upstairs.

‘Come on, ’ she says. ‘Get a grip.’

Back in the kitchen she’s putting food in lines: cereals, tins, packets. After this she goes upstairs, to my room.

I get the worst fright to find she’s tearing up, squashing flat the big cardboard boxes from all my games.

Even though I scream at her, Mum takes all the boxes downstairs, then she starts to stick them up on the windows, ignoring me because I’m crying too much.

After this she gets old blankets from the linen cupboard. She rolls them up and uses them to block draughts at the doors. Other ones she hangs over the blinds, like extra curtains.

Still crying, shouting for anger, I follow her around the house. She turns the radiators off, upstairs.

‘We’ll heat just the one room,’ she says. ‘We can save on oil. In case the tankers are a while coming.’

I’m fed up with her. The boxes of my games look stupid and sad on the windows. How will the sun get in? I get in my sleeping bag, hide way down deep.

Mum’s trying to read the leaflet she got from the council.

‘Water,’ she says. ‘Food. Warmth.’

She rubs her head. Then she goes quiet for a bit. Then I hear her moving about, going back and forth to the kitchen.

After this I don’t hear anything for a time.

When I get out of the sleeping bag to go and find her, Mum is sitting at the table. Her face looks creased, old by the storm lantern. She’s got – a stick? In her mouth.

She takes the stick out. Looks at it.

‘What’s wrong?’

Mum closes her eyes like she’s in another world.

‘Could ye do something for me, love?’ she says. ‘Could ye go to the bathroom, get the medicine box?’

Something about her voice makes me forget I was angry. I go upstairs and bring the box to her.

Mum puts one of the temperature-reading strips she uses for me on her forehead.

A car drives past outside, going far too fast.

‘What does it say? What number?’

‘I don’t see a number.’

‘What word, then?’

‘Fever.’

Mum nods. She peels off the strip, looks at it. Then she comes back through to the living room and lies on her side. She holds a tea towel over her mouth.

‘Thought that,’ she says. When I try to hold her hand she shrinks away. ‘Don’t come near.’

I have a proper job now: to convince her that adults, especially parents, never really get sick. It’s only us kids who get truly sick.

‘Look. I have fever in me, too.’

I unpeel another tester, and stick it on the front of my head. And I certainly got the right idea for getting her attention – because now she sits up.

It’s a race to see who will peel the strip off first.

‘See? Fever as well.’

Mum doesn’t look glad that we’re the same. In fact it’s opposite-day for her looking glad.

‘Oh, my wee girl, no, no, no,’ she says.

Then she holds me. She sways me in her arms, which feels the best, it’s a thing to mend our problems.

We do shadow-puppets after all. We do it without sound, which is best because your imagination makes the noise.

Mum’s top creation is a dragon. Mine’s, a dog.

She keeps shining the torch at me, even when it’s meant to be her turn, and won’t let me shine it back.

‘To see your face,’ she says. ‘My love.’

After this Mum starts to shiver again, and so she takes some tablets from her medicine box, then she strokes my hair until I fall asleep.

When I wake again Mum’s already up. The place looks different; strange. She’s taken down all the cardboard from the windows, plus all the blankets she put up on the blinds. Instead, she’s put up the Christmas tree. The lights don’t work, but Mum has set the lantern nearby, plus candles, and that makes the tinsel shine good.

I find Mum in the kitchen. She’s cleaning everything: the table, our cups, even the chairs. Plus she’s put away the pots and pans that we filled up with water earlier. She’s wearing her big jacket, the one for when it’s very cold.

‘It’s all back to normal,’ she says.

‘Except for my game boxes.’

‘Sorry about them.’

There’s three envelopes on the kitchen table. Mum picks up one of them, seals it, puts it in her pocket.

‘This letter tells you how to work the heating,’ she says. ‘That one there is all the phone numbers for emergencies, with your auntie’s number at the top.’

‘What happened to your face?’

Mum’s face has bumps on it. And on her hands. She looks at them as if they don’t belong, as if they’re on the skin of another creature.

‘We need to be going away now,’ she says.

We drive around the island. It seems to take all night, but how can it when our island is only small? Mum keeps having to stop the van. I climb over to the back space to get some sleep.

When I wake up her jacket’s on me.

Then it’s light outside. How did it get light and I didn’t notice?

Mum’s trying to use her phone. It doesn’t work, no matter how many times she presses the numbers. She puts on her glasses to see better, but they don’t seem to work, either.