Chapter Eight

After…

By the time we returned to the cabin, the night sky was dark and moonless, splashed with thousands of twinkling lights and the faint smudges of faraway galaxies. Unhindered by light pollution, the magnificent spectacle of the universe spread out across the deep blue yonder, observed only by the few remaining humans inhabiting planet Earth.

It made me feel somewhat insignificant. Nate and I were simply two people stuck on a tiny planet, spinning around in a vast universe. Our brief tenancy of Earth— and our extinction—would go totally unnoticed. Perhaps some other dominant species would come along eventually, and hopefully, they’d do a better job than mankind did.

We headed round the back to the solar grid, but it was too dark to fix it now, even under bright torchlight. Nate dumped our rucksacks into one of the outbuildings, and then we walked back around to the front door.

Despite the glow of a few solar lights dotted along the deck of the cabin, I could barely see a thing. In the darkness—and because I’d been staring upward—I lost my footing, tripping over a loose wooden board and banging my knee hard on the balustrade. I yelped and swore. Fortunately, Nate caught me, wrapping me firmly in his arms.

“Halley! Are you okay?” he asked, although he snickered.

“I’m fine,” I told him, ignoring the throbbing pain in my leg.

In the dim light, I could just about make out his eyes, burning into mine.

He made no move to release me, the pull toward him more overwhelming than ever as we stood pressed up against one another.

I couldn’t do this anymore. It hurt me to want him so much.

But did he want me? I feared his rejection, knowing it would kill me to hear he didn’t feel the same way, but the thought of fighting it any longer left me emotionally drained. All I wanted to do was give in.

So, I did.

Rising up on my toes, I pushed my lips gently against his. For the briefest of moments, I was sure he was going to kiss me back, but instead, he let me go and stepped away.

Humiliated, I turned my back to him.

He didn’t want me.

Utterly dejected, I rushed back into the cabin. I wanted to go to bed, crawl under the covers and forget this ever happened.

Except, he came after me and grabbed my arm. “Halley.”

“Leave me alone. I’m tired, and I want to sleep.” My voice came out as a hoarse whisper as I tried to pry his fingers from my wrist, but he hooked his arm firmly around my waist and pulled me toward him. My fists pushed hard into his chest in an effort to break away, but it was no use.

“Just let me go,” I begged.

“We need to talk about this.”

He was right, but I was in no state to engage in sensible conversation with him.

Again, I tried to wriggle out of his grip. “I’m tired, Nate. Let’s forget this ever happened. Please.”

“Halley, I—” he started, but I cut him off.

“It’s fine, Nate.” My voice cracked. “I get it. You don’t want me.”

He gave me a despairing look. “Don’t want you?” he whispered. “Of course, I want you, Halley. It’s all I can think about.”

His hands went to my face, and he tilted his head down until our foreheads touched. “I just can’t do this.”

I slid my hands around his neck. “Why not?”

He sighed heavily. “Because I can’t, Halley. I can’t lose anyone else I care about. If we cross this line, I won’t be able to let you go. Ever.”

“Then don’t.”

“You’ll leave me.”

“I won’t. Where you go, I go.”

Nate shuddered and drew in a deep, labored breath. “That’s not what I mean,” he rasped. “I’m afraid you’ll die like everyone else.”

I swallowed down the urge to cry.

What could I say? I couldn’t promise him anything. It’d be a lie to tell him everything was going to be okay. There were no guarantees, especially in this new world we found ourselves in.

Still, it was no way to live.

There was only one thing I knew for certain. “I want you, Nate.”

He closed his eyes and kissed my forehead. “I want you, too.”

His words sent a wave of crackling static over my entire body. Leaning forward, I kissed him again—lightly, almost not a kiss. He didn’t back away though this time. His lips lingered over mine for the longest time until he suddenly kissed me back, hard and hungry.

“Fuck it,” he growled.

His kisses became ravenous then, demanding more and more until my head spun. When I finally managed to push him back a little to catch my breath, my fingers found the button on his jeans.

Abruptly, he pulled away, a look of hesitation on his face. “Wait. Wait. Are you sure you want this?”

In response, I yanked the zipper down and let my hands slide into his shorts, caressing the bare flesh of his hips. “Nate, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my life.”

His eyes flashed with desire, and he lifted me up, grabbing my thighs so my legs wrapped around his waist. He carried me into his bedroom and set me down on his bed, his lips only leaving mine for a second as he pulled my vest top off over my head.

In kind, I roughly pulled off his t-shirt and ran my fingers down the muscular contours of his abdomen. His skin was hot and damp with sweat. His hands went around to my back to unhook my bra, and then he gently slid the straps down off my shoulders and tossed it to one side. Semi-naked and utterly exposed, my heart raced with a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

Nate kept his eyes locked with mine. “If you aren’t ready, we don’t have to—”

I cut him off with an intense kiss and then lay back on the bed, pulling him down on top of me. He groaned when his bare chest became tightly pressed up against my breasts.

“I know we don’t have to, but I want to,” I whispered as his lips moved to my neck and then onto the bony protrusion of my collar bone. From there, he leisurely made his way down my body, and I inhaled sharply the second his tongue found my nipple. He lingered there a while before letting his tongue trail to my stomach and then gave me a wicked grin before unbuttoning my shorts and sliding them off, along with my underwear.

I gulped, feeling a fresh wave of anxiety rising in my chest. As his eyes moved over my body, he let out a deep breath before diverting his kisses to my inner thighs.

Any nervousness building up in me, instantly diminished when his tongue flicked a spot between my legs.

“Oh my—” I began, too blissed out to finish the statement.

The feeling only intensified when his fingers brushed against my sensitive skin and moved slowly upwards. I felt a brief pinch between my hips, and I whimpered, but the pain eased quickly.

He snapped his head up to look at me. “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” It was more than okay.

His brows knitted together with concern. “We can stop anytime.”

When he felt I was ready, he quickly kicked off his jeans and then leaned over me, gently parting my legs a little more so he could lay between them.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked me again.

With a playful roll of my eyes, I gently grabbed the hair on the back of his head and pulled his face close to mine, letting my tongue flutter against his.

Slowly, still a little hesitantly, he pushed himself inside me.

I stifled a gasp, feeling the same sting between my hips as before, although this time it wasn’t as painful.

Nate stilled himself awhile until he began to move rhythmically and deliberately, carefully monitoring my responses to what he did. I quickly lost myself in the way he made me feel as my hips burned with a pleasurable ache that steadily spread over my entire body.

This wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I’d always thought my first time would be awkward and uncomfortable but being this close with Nate was somehow both liberating and exquisitely all-encompassing. I’d never be able to get enough of him.

He slowed himself and stopped a few times, not wanting to end things too soon. He was struggling to keep his composure—four-and-a-half years was a long time to go without intimate contact.

As soon as he started moving again, I grabbed hold of his hips and arched my back, so we’d be even closer to one another. When I began to cry out, he quickened his pace, and it wasn’t long before a surge of adrenaline flooded over my body in divine electric waves, leaving me in a blissful state of disorientation.

Nate gave one more slow, deliberate movement and then groaned, breathing hard. I held onto him as tightly as I could, feeling his heart beating rapidly against my chest. He buried his head in my neck, kissing me in tender, leisurely, intervals.

“Halley? Was that…did I hurt you?”

He looked at me, genuinely worried.

“No…well, a little, but it wasn’t bad,” I whispered, lifting a hand to stroke his hair.

He gave me a relieved nod, and then a deliciously wicked smile formed on his lips. He began kissing my neck again, and a little moan escaped from my mouth.

Clearly, this wasn’t over yet.

****

As my eyes flickered open, my hand reached out for Nate but found only his pillow.

For one horrible moment, I thought last night had been a dream, but the remnant tingle of static from his touch still lingered on every inch of my skin. Unable to summon the will to move, I laid in his bed for the longest time, my mind on nothing else but what’d happened last night. It all felt so unreal.

Eventually, I disentangled my legs from the thin sheet ensnaring me and shimmied to the end of the bed. After hunting around for my clothes, which had mysteriously vanished, I went to the wooden chest of drawers in the corner of the room and pulled out one of Nate’s t-shirts to wear, hoping he wouldn’t mind.

My first port of call was to the bathroom to freshen up. The sound of the shower running had been completely drowned out by the sound of heavy rain pummeling the cabin roof, and as I slipped in through the door, I was startled to see Nate—wet and exposed—behind the glass enclosure. Despite the events of last night, I averted my eyes just as he turned around and saw me.

“Sorry.”

He opened the enclosure door. “Morning.”

“You’re awake. I didn’t hear you get up,” I said, lifting my eyes a little.

He grinned. “I don’t recall getting any sleep.”

My cheeks suddenly warmed as I shot him a coy smile.

“I got up early to fix the solar grid,” he explained. “Figured we’d need a shower. There’s room enough for two in here, by the way.”

There was a sharp tug at my solar plexus then, and I realized my need for him hadn’t eased off at all. If anything, it was worse. As he beckoned me toward him, I pulled the t-shirt off over my head and stepped into the shower obediently. Even with the fierce torrent of water beating down onto my skin, I felt the familiar buzz of electricity as he placed his hand on my lower back and drew me close.

“Do you feel that?”

His lips went to my neck. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“No idea,” he muttered, his hands sliding down to my thighs.

“But, it’s weird, right?”

“Yep.” He lifted me up and pushed me back against the glass wall, kissing me with such fervency my lips ached. I promptly lost my train of thought.

I guessed we’d talk about it later, whatever it was.

****

Hunger finally forced us apart, sometime after midday. Nate quickly fried up some omelets as I opened the front door and flopped down on the sitting room carpet, letting the breeze cool me off.

A few times, I caught him watching me as though he expected me to vanish at any minute. Sometimes, I feared he might suddenly disappear too. Nate had the ability to make me forgot all about the end of the world. When we were together, there was nothing but the two of us, and everything else just blurred into insignificance.

There was no point in denying it to myself. I was completely in love with him.

He joined me on the carpet, and we ate quickly, watching the rain fall onto the veranda. After seeing him yawn a half-dozen times, I shuffled closer to him and laid a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“Sorry, am I keeping you up?”

He sniggered. “Yes.”

There was definitely some innuendo implied in his answer.

“We can go back to bed for a bit if you like. To sleep, I mean.”

Another yawn. “I think I might need to.”

We headed back to his bedroom, where I quickly helped Nate change the sheets that had become twisted up and sweat-soaked during our sessions of abandon. He flaked down on the bed, pulling me with him, and we kissed a little before fatigue saw him pass out. With my head on his chest, lulled by the rhythmic beat of his heart, it wasn’t long before sleep took me too.

This time I remembered my nightmare. It felt familiar as though I’d had this dream before—or something similar, at least.

The second my eyes open, I know where I am.

I see my bookcase first, at the end of my bed. All my books are gone except for one title that sits alone on the top shelf. Throwing my blankets aside, I crawl down the mattress, my hand reaching for the lonely book. It is ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’

Suddenly, I’m blinded by the morning sun as it streams in through the window. When my vision clears, the book is gone. Confused, I get up and peer outside.

A wasteland of orange-red sand greets me, below a muted blue sky.

Where the hell is this place?

I leave my room in a hurry to find Rebecca, but instead of stepping out into the lounge, I am now barefoot on the strange sand. As I take in my surroundings, my breath catches. Thousands of skeletal remnants lie on the ground, their bones protruding half-in and half-out of the sand, all crawling away from me like I’m the enemy who burned the skin from their flesh as they tried to escape.

I try to walk forward, but the bones are everywhere and gouge my feet until they bleed. The tiny patch of dirt where I stand is the only part of the wasteland that isn’t beset with corpses.

There is nowhere to go.

Something tickles the skin on my toes, and I look down to see tendrils of lush green grass rising up through the red grit. It starts to fan out, covering the carcasses and sucking them down into the ground like they were never there. The vegetation spreads across the terrain like a tidal wave, sprouting flowers and sapling trees in its wake.

Mesmerized, I barely hear the noise behind me and, it isn’t until it whispers again, that I turn around.

A human-shaped shadow stands before me. It floats closer and closer until it envelops my body, and I can no longer breathe.

Clutching my throat and gasping for air, my knees give way and I fall to the ground. The grass rises around me. I begin to sink. My fingernails dig into the dirt as I am dragged down and down, the sunlight diminishing the deeper I descend.

A voice in my head tells me not to struggle, but I continue to resist until my body is too weak to fight anymore. With my last ounce of strength, I cross my arms over my chest and close my eyes. But the end doesn’t come. Still, the voice in my head whispers to me.

“This isn’t how it ends,” it says. “We are waiting for you.”

It is the sudden warmth on my face that wakes me. When my eyes open again, my body is back on the grass, as though I am Alice on the riverbank, waking from her dream of Wonderland.

“We are waiting,” the voice murmurs again. “For both of you.”

****

Before…

Three billion people gone in two-and-a-half months.

It was January, cold and wet.

The news was much of the same, with random snippets of other events inserted in between the usual horror. Elderly people were dying because they hadn’t received their yearly flu jabs. A church in Wales had become a cat sanctuary. There was a mass-suicide of over two-thousand people in Berlin, and some C-list celebrity had married their fiancé on his deathbed.

The news anchors changed daily, and today’s events were being read out by a former soap star in an animal print dress with huge, gold-hooped earrings that swung about whenever she moved her head.

Most of the time, it was like watching a surreal, avant-garde student film.

A dwindling throng of journalists still camped out at key locations, waiting to be the first to break any major news. I.D.R.I.S was yet to come good on their promise of a vaccine, and as the world went to shit, the people wanted to know why.

After days of no updates, a representative from I.D.R.I.S finally rolled up to Downing Street and stood, side by side, with the acting prime minister—a man whose name I kept forgetting because he’d only taken up the role last week.

“Thank you for your patience,” the prime minister said, from behind his flu mask. He stared down at the cameras with a look of cool superiority in his eyes. “There has been a delay in delivering the vaccine, but rest assured, it is only a matter of days before the first inoculations begin.”

His manner seemed genuine, but it didn’t necessarily mean it was the truth. He was clearly reading from a pre-prepared script.

The reporters started with their questions. The representative answered most of the questions with the same non-committal responses.

“Can you tell us how many survivors there are now?”

“I don’t have that information to hand.”

“What about the infertility issues?”

“I’m only here to discuss the vaccine.”

“We heard there was a survivor in Bristol. Can you update us on their condition? Where are they now?”

“I have no information on that at this time.”

One reporter stepped forward, somewhat aggressively. “I’ve been told by a reliable source that some people in the U.S are immune to the virus. Has anyone here been found to be immune?”

The I.D.R.I.S rep nodded. “It’s not something I’ve been made aware of, but with any virus, there are always a small number of people resistant to it.”

I blinked at the television screen. Maybe my aunt and I were immune. Maybe we wouldn’t catch the virus at all.

The same reporter asked another question before anyone else could get a word in. “Is it true there is no vaccine because it isn’t a virus?”

Not a virus? What the hell did that mean?

“That’s ridiculous,” came the response from the rep. His eyes flickered about wildly over the crowd. “We’re doing everything we can to get a vaccine out to the people. We ask you to have faith—”

The cottage was suddenly plunged into a dark silence—the second power outage today. I got up and went into the kitchen, where Rebecca was mopping the floor. The whole cottage stunk of bleach now as my aunt sanitized every surface at least twice a day. I didn’t say anything about how pointless it was because it gave her something to do and allowed her to believe she had a modicum of control over what happened to us.

She also prayed several times a day, in her bedroom, usually with the door wide open so I could hear. She prayed, asking over and over that we be kept safe from the virus. But, if the news was anything to go by, no one was safe from the virus, no matter how much they bleached, boiled, and locked themselves away. The virus was everywhere.

But my aunt and I hadn’t caught it so far. Maybe we were immune. Or, if not, all we had to do was stay alive for a little while longer until they found a vaccine.

For the first time in months, I felt hopeful.