Leon stared at the page of printer paper and read the scribbled transcription once again.
Don’t give up. Help is coming. Help is on its way. This message is aimed specifically at survivors in the United Kingdom. If you are able to travel, make your way to the city of Southampton by the first of September. Civilian and navy vessels will be waiting for you. Medical help and emergency food supplies will be available there. Those requesting evacuation will be assessed. The ships will be there for two weeks only, leaving on the fourteenth of September.
Freya was stirring stew in its tin over the butane burner. ‘Assessed? For what? Good behaviour? Fashion awareness? Good taste?’
He sighed. ‘Infection.’
‘Infection? Anyone who’s infected is surely just bones and rags now. They must be aware of that.’
He looked up from the sheet of paper as Freya pulled herself up on to her feet.
‘Hey. Let me get—’
She batted him away with one hand and made her way across to a cupboard to get their bowls. He watched her clumsy movement, the wincing on her face as she pressed a hand to her left hip.
He wondered if they meant assessment for fitness. Only the young and fully healthy. The brutal filtering of people. No room for those who couldn’t keep up.
The message they’d heard on the radio was word for word what had been scribbled down on this sheet of paper. Nothing more. Just an endless, repeating, pre-recorded loop. Someone else had made a visit to the BBC studio before them, heard the same message and thought to write it down and leave it behind on the console in case whatever was trickle-feeding the studio power finally ran out.
Someone thoughtful.
Someone else.
‘Here,’ Freya said, handing him a bowl and a spoon. She settled down on an armchair, snaked her feet back into the open mouth of the sleeping bag and worked it up her legs to her knees.
‘Thanks.’
‘So now we know for sure there are others,’ she said, smiling. ‘I knew there had to be. I bloody well knew it.’
‘With ships . . . and meds and supplies.’ Leon dipped his spoon into the can, gave it a quick stir then scooped out several spoonfuls of the thick broth into his bowl. ‘An organized relief effort. Jeez . . . about time.’
‘That announcer on the radio sounded American to me.’
Leon nodded. ‘Maybe they managed to ride it out over there. Maybe they had a contingency plan.’
‘Unlike our useless government over here.’ She helped herself to the stew in the can. ‘And then there’s the question of who wrote this,’ she added, nodding at the piece of paper lying on the floor between them.
Leon looked down at the note. He wondered when someone had last poked their head into the studio. A few weeks ago? A few months? A year ago? Two? There was no way of knowing how old the note was. It could have been scribbled down an hour before they arrived, or a few days after the outbreak.
‘September the first. There’s no year with that date, Freya. This could be old, old news.’
‘Or it could be current news. It’s still broadcasting.’
He sighed. ‘It could be the same situation as the BBC place . . . some old generator running on fumes somewhere, beaming out a message that isn’t, you know, current any more.’
Freya tested the heat of the stew cautiously with her finger. Her lips were permanently numb, no sensation from them whatsoever. She could burn her lips and not even know it.
Another wonderful symptom of her encroaching sclerosis.
‘Leon, that’s what I like about you . . .’ She huffed.
‘What?’
‘The eternal optimist.’
‘Huh?’ He looked up, confused.
‘Sarcasm,’ she clarified. ‘You’re definitely the glass-half-empty type, aren’t you?’
He was going to reply that he just didn’t want them to raise their hopes. They’d been camping out in this small apartment for about fourteen months now, watching one winter come and go and another one come along straight behind it. They were slowly eating their way along the supermarket shelves below, creating gaps that were getting bigger, making it easier and easier for them to figure out how much longer the rest of those tins were going to keep them going.
Another two years. Maybe three.
Then what? A move to another place above another supermarket . . . to exist in bleak isolation, watching snow cover the rooftops in the winter and nettles cover the streets in the summer. Not living, not really – just existing, becoming urban wildlife.
A pair of lonely scavengers.
He pressed a smile into service to match up with the hopeful look on Freya’s face. ‘On the other hand, you might be right.’
She was always upbeat, always optimistic . . . stronger – mentally far stronger than he was. He wondered if he’d even be alive right now if it wasn’t for her.
Probably not.
‘We can’t stay hiding here forever, Leon.’ She chewed her food carefully, slowly, then finally she spoke again. ‘There’s nothing to hide from, anyway. It’s all gone. There’s nothing out there. Literally.’
‘We’re going to run out of butane before we run out of food. And what if there’s another winter like this one again next year? And the next? If this is how the climate’s going to be from now on, one day we’re going to freeze to death.’
‘You’re suggesting we act on this?’ he asked, tapping the sheet of paper on the floor. ‘You want to trek all the way up to Southampton?’
‘Down, actually. It’s south, not north. But . . . yes.’
‘What if it’s nothing? What if whoever recorded that message never even shows up? What if they died two years ago?’
‘And what if it’s something? What if we sit here like a pair of muppets and they do come and we could have been rescued if we’d bothered to get off our arses and go see?’
He nodded. Somehow, dying because of not doing something seemed worse than dying because of doing something. She had a point.
‘And, apart from the cold, what’s out there? The virus?’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Unless the virus is tucked up somewhere with a camping heater and a sleeping bag, I’d say it’s frozen. Properly dead and gone.’
He looked again at the scribbled page. ‘September . . . that’s, what, six months from now?’
She nodded. ‘We could wait out here for a few more weeks. Wait for the snow and the roads to clear . . . Hey, we might even find a car that’s still working.’
‘How far away is Southampton?’
‘I dunno . . . gimme a sec and I’ll check on Google.’ She laughed at her own amazing wit.
He looked down at his food and stirred the congealing gravy. Another couple of minutes and it was going to have a skin. He heard the chair creak and her sleeping bag rustle as she leaned forward.
She placed a hand tenderly on his. ‘Do you want to go home, Leon? Back to America?’
Home. Home had once been New York. It certainly hadn’t been London, not even with Mum and Grace trying their hardest to make a new start.
But they’re gone, MonkeyNuts. Very . . . very . . . gone.
‘Maybe your dad’s still alive over there somewhere?’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Maybe I’ll even get to meet him?’
He snorted. ‘My dad’s a selfish pr . . .’
Is? Or was?
‘He sounds like a total kick-ass from what you’ve told me about him.’
‘You’ve got that about half right.’