Empty World Read online

  When the silence had come back, Neil walked along to the east front of the church. He guessed they had been aiming the bottles at the stained glass windows, but as far as he could see in the dark they had missed.

  As he went back along the quiet street, lacking even its solitary lamp at the corner of the square and lit only by the glimmer of a rising moon, he thought about the incident. They had been tearaways from Hastings presumably, on the rampage. A quiet enough rampage—they had done relatively little damage—but next time might be different, in a world where law and order was either armed soldiers or non-existent. It would make sense, he supposed, to find a place out in the country—like the farmhouse where he had milked the cow—and hive up until the Plague was over and life had become normal again. But he had a reluctance to move away from the place he knew; even the hateful smell of death, pervading everywhere, was not enough to overcome it.

  He let himself into the empty house and lit a candle. He only had half a dozen: the shop had been sold out before it closed down. He decided to go into Rye the following day and try to find some.

  Rye was horrifying. It was not so empty as Winchelsea: Neil saw quite a few people in the streets, and a couple of motor-cars being driven. But the people had dazed hopeless expressions and the smell of death was overpowering, a sickly cloying sweetness which hung nauseatingly on the hot breeze. He travelled the length of the High Street and paused to stare from the Lookout on Hilder’s Cliff. The marsh stretched away, green and empty, traversed by a trafficless road but specked with the familiar white dots of sheep. Immediately below on the Salts were the lines of brown and one gaping ditch. Presumably it had been left like that when the bulldozer operator died or fled. He could see the whiteness of lime at the bottom of the ditch.

  He had found no candles: people would have stripped the shops when they realized power supplies were likely to go. Most of the shops were closed, in fact, but a few remained open. One of these was a grocer’s, and Neil traded useless pound notes for tinned foods and plastic-wrapped bacon. The shopkeeper, an anxious man in his middle years, expressed some scruples about the latter: it had been in the cellar since the refrigerator stopped working, but he could not guarantee its freshness.

  Neil said: “It doesn’t matter.”

  The shopkeeper looked at the notes he was putting in his till.

  “No,” he said, “I suppose it doesn’t.” He took off his spectacles and stared at Neil from blank eyes. “I had the fever two days ago.”

  Neil was anxious to leave; the town depressed him unutterably. He had come in on an old bicycle he had found abandoned in Winchelsea, and which he had left at the bottom of the Mint. On the way to get it he met someone else he knew, but this time it was he who spoke.

  It was not the face he recognized—he could never have done that. But the red hair and the canary yellow waistcoat were unmistakable; worn by an old man he knew to be only months older than himself. He stopped, shocked more by this than by anything so far.

  “Hendrix. . . . Is it you?”

  Hendrix looked at him dully. He seemed to be about to speak; then shrugged as though the effort was too much, and shuffled on.

  Neil pedalled fast out of Rye and along the empty road through the Marsh. He felt sick and out of sorts, but had a curious sense of exhilaration and lightheadedness. It was good to be in open country after the nauseating smell of the town.

  The exhilaration evaporated as he pushed the bicycle up the steep hill into Winchelsea. It was replaced by a leaden feeling, not merely in his legs, but in his back and arms. He went on through the town gate and up the last few yards of incline, but reaching level ground did nothing to lessen his fatigue. At every step of the way along the last hundred yards he wanted to drop everything and curl up in the road.

  The bicycle slipped as he tried to prop it against the wall of the house, and he made no attempt to pick it up. He managed to get the shopping bag with the food into the kitchen, but no more: he was too dead beat to put things away.

  The mirror over the mantel in the sitting room showed him his face: cheeks flushed crimson, brow beaded with sweat. His head was beginning to ache, and he found himself shivering uncontrollably. There was a thermometer upstairs in the bathroom, but the top of the stairs might as well have been the summit of Everest. And he did not need telling that he had a high temperature: the palm of his hand burned against his forehead.

  So this is what it’s like, he thought; and sank, uncaring, on to the sofa.

  • • •

  He did not move during the rest of the day or the following night except to stumble out to the kitchen when driven by thirst. It seemed strange and wonderful that water ran from the tap; after he had drunk deeply he put his head underneath and soaked it. Then he went back and drifted into a sleep of nightmareish dreams. He was in the car again, watching the juggernaut loom in front. But there was no crash—only his parents and brother and sister staring at him from blank, wrinkled faces. And he was at school, with Hendrix jeering “London wet . . .” in a voice that cracked and faded. Dream slipped into dream, each episode more ridiculous and horrifying than the one before. Once or twice he awoke, hearing his own voice crying out and the hot silence of the night sinking back.

  In the morning he did move, but only as far as his bedroom where he lay, feverish and stupefied, for the rest of the day. During the next night the fever went down. He awoke to the sound of birds—sparrows under the eaves, a thrush further off—and a feeling of ravenous hunger.

  Downstairs he looked at bacon, eggs and potatoes in the larder and was momentarily dizzied by the thought of a gigantic fry-up. But the cooker was useless, of course, without power. He opened a tin of baked beans and one of tuna. It was not what he would have chosen for breakfast, but he wolfed it and felt better. A cup of tea would have improved things, but you needed power for that, too.

  As he rinsed the dirty plate under the tap, he thought about it. Gas supplies had probably been cut off as well; it would have been unsafe to keep them on. Outlying places, though, might have ­bottled gas, or solid-fuel or oil-fired cookers.

  It would be worth exploring. The reluctance he had felt about leaving the house was no longer there. The thing was to be practical, and cope with things as they were. He could try going back to the farm for a start.

  While he was thinking that he caught sight of his face in an old looking glass that hung above the sink, and remembered. Not that there was anything unusual to be seen: it was the face he had seen in mirrors all his life—the same slightly squashed nose, high cheekbones, pink complexion, brown curly hair.

  Neil dropped the plate and heard it clatter in the bowl. No difference showed, but there was a difference. Even though the mark was invisible he had been marked. He had had the fever. He had maybe a week to live; maybe less.

  4

  NEIL SAW FEWER PEOPLE EACH day. Those he did encounter in the ghost-like streets of the little town seemed as disinclined for contact, for greeting even, as he was himself. It was funny, he thought: it had been understandable in the beginning, when people were hoping to avoid catching the Plague and shunned possible carriers. But now, surely, they must know there was no way of missing it? They were all victims, or destined soon to be. And yet he himself, knowing he had had the fever, found himself crossing the road if he saw someone coming in the opposite direction.

  On the fourth day following the fever he saw no-one. His supplies were running out, and he went to the shop which had been the first to close. There was no sign of life, but he rapped on the door, loudly and repeatedly. After some time he stood back, and called:

  “Is anyone in?”

  His voice echoed. He called again, more loudly, then shouted:

  “Is someone alive in there? Or anywhere?”

  The hot weather still held, and a scent of roses mingled with the smell of death. He looked desperately around at the neat white clapboa
rd houses. Surely someone would open a window, lean out, call? It did not matter what—a demand for silence would be enough.

  But nothing came. He waited again; then picked up a stone, smashed the glass of the door, reached in and undid the bolt. It was dim inside the shop and cooler, with a smell of rotting vegetables adding to the other smells. Something moved in the shadows and he checked, startled. It was only a cat: large, tabby, glossy. It came to him, amiable and unafraid, purring and pushing its head against his leg. It did not look at all starved; either enough food had been left out for it or there was a plentiful supply of mice. Or, more likely, it could get in and out through a cat-door at the back.

  At least the shelves were full of tins of food, and Neil found a cardboard box and methodically filled it. He did not bother to leave money: that was all over, too. As he left the shop, carrying his burden into the heat, the cat followed. He encouraged it, calling “Puss.” He thought it might come with him but at the end of the street, perhaps with memories of traffic snarling along the High Street, it turned back.

  Neil rested his box on top of the churchyard gate; he had filled it rather too full for carrying comfort. The graves stretched out in front, their stones grey among the uncut grass. The church clock had stopped at just after half past seven. He looked at his own watch and realized he had forgotten to wind it: it said a quarter to four. He wondered what time it was—somewhere around mid-day from the position of the sun in the sky. No BBC time signal, but he might find a sun-dial. He shrugged as he lifted the box and went through the gate. It didn’t matter.

  • • •

  Several times during the afternoon he thought he heard what sounded like a human voice. He told himself it was probably no more than imagination, and in any case what did it matter? But in the end he went to investigate.

  It was louder as he approached the row of houses called Trojan’s Platt, a whimpering cry. Neil traced it to a particular house and nerved himself to approach, and then to call in at the window:

  “Who is it? Are you all right?”

  The whimpering ended. He waited, but nothing happened. Moments ticked by. It had stopped, whatever, whoever it was, and the old urge returned—to go away, avoid contact, crawl back into his hole and wait for death. He was starting to move when the front door opened.

  It had taken him a long time because it had not been easy: he had had to stretch on tiptoe to reach the latch, and strain to pull it back. He looked at Neil from a dirty tear-smeared face. He was about six years old.

  His name, it seemed, was Tommy—Tommy Mitcham, he said, and went on to reel off his address. His parents would have taught him to do that in case he got lost: Neil remembered his mother teaching him. She could never have imagined him being lost like this.

  He told his story haltingly but clearly. Mummy and Daddy had got sick, and then died. They were upstairs. They had told him not to go out without them. He had been eating biscuits, but they were all gone. He was hungry.

  Neil said: “That’s all right, Tommy. I have some food. You come with me.”

  He hung back, standing in the doorway. Neil put his hand out.

  “It’s all right for you to come out now. Your mummy wouldn’t mind.”

  The boy whispered something Neil failed to catch. He asked him to speak up, and bent towards him. The boy whispered:

  “Susie.”

  “Susie?”

  Tommy turned and went back into the house, and Neil followed him. The room was very untidy, with toys and clothes and biscuit wrappings scattered everywhere. In front of the empty fireplace was a rug, cherry red, with a yellow half moon on it and a couple of big silver stars. On the half-moon a very grubby two-year-old girl, partly dressed by her brother’s fumbling fingers, lay sprawled asleep.

  Tommy looked at him, expectant but doubtful. Neil said:

  “That’s all right. We’ll take Susie with us.”

  • • •

  Neil carried her back, with Tommy trotting beside him. She was half asleep and mumbled words he did not catch, but seemed quite happy. In the house he ran water into the bath, and put them both in. They accepted this contentedly, not minding the water being cold because the day was so hot. That solved the question of clothes, too, for the time being; after he had dried them on a bath towel he let them run about naked. The clothes they had been wearing were too filthy to be put back on.

  He set about opening tins to make a meal for them and they were soon eating hungrily. While they got on with that—the little girl was more deft with a spoon than he had expected—he washed their clothes through and hung them out to dry.

  Later, while they played with china figurines from his grandmother’s china cabinet, he watched and thought about them. The Plague had struck first at the old, later at the middle-aged, finally at young people. Youth had offered a greater resistance to its onslaught, which seemed to suggest there might be something, some innate defence, which weakened as people grew older. And might that not mean that in the very young the defence would be strong enough to defy the Plague completely?

  Susie, playing with a shepherdess with a crook and a lamb, dropped it and it smashed on the floor. Neil remembered his grandmother letting him hold that piece, very carefully, telling him it was a special piece of Dresden and extremely valuable. Susie looked alarmed, and he thought she might be about to cry. He quickly found her something else, a Limoges jug with snails crawling up the outside, to amuse her.

  These two, he thought with a growing excitement, really might survive. But could they cope, small and unskilled as they were, with the day-to-day problems of living?

  He went to a mirror and looked at his reflection. There was no sign of ageing yet: the lines in his face were only lines of nervousness and disappeared when he relaxed. But he could not have long. Three days? Four, at most. Not long to prepare a boy of six for the task of looking after himself and a helpless younger sister. But one must do the best with what one had. He called:

  “Tommy?”

  “Yes, Neil?”

  “There are some things I want to show you. How to use a tin-opener, to begin with.”

  • • •

  Neil got them to bed early. Tommy asked to be told a story, and he did what he could in the way of remembering one his father had been in the habit of telling them at bedtime, about a big steam puffer train and a little electric train. It sounded more and more ridiculous as he went on with it, but Tommy seemed to enjoy it, laughing at places where he remembered laughing, and asking questions he was hard put to answer. Susie made no contribution but sucked a thumb contentedly, staring up at the ­ceiling.

  They wanted to be kissed goodnight, or Tommy at least, and he did that and tucked them in. Then he went downstairs, and thought about ways of helping them to survive.

  Food and shelter were the fundamentals. Tommy had been very good at picking up the use of the tin-opener: fortunately it was of a kind that was relatively easy to operate. He must get in a really big stock of tinned foods; or perhaps take Tommy along to the shop and show him how to forage for himself. Then clothes. They obviously could not manage with the ones he had washed, even in the summer. There was no clothes shop in Winchelsea. He could go into Rye, but it would be easier and made more sense for him to go back to Trojan’s Platt. He did not much fancy venturing upstairs into the presence of the dead parents, even though he had grown used to death and corpses, but there would be clothes there to fit them though probably nothing that would be of much value for the winter. They would have outgrown last year’s and next year’s would not yet have been bought.

  Thinking of that he felt a sudden quick despair. What chance was there, in reality? They might survive the summer months if he left them a large enough supply of food, but how could they possibly cope with winter? If they did not starve, the cold would finish them off.

  Neil shook his head. It was hopeless, but he would not
abandon hope. From what he had seen in this brief acquaintance he judged Tommy to be a bright boy, capable beyond his actual years. Providing they could get through the winter, spring would find Tommy nearly a year older and that much more resourceful. And Susie would be big enough to travel with him, as long as they went by easy stages. They would find more food that way: there must be large stocks in Rye and even more in Hastings.

  Neil went back to the looking glass above the mantel. The sun had gone down and the room was shadowy, but he was fairly sure there was still no change. That meant little: the deterioration, when it did come, was often rapid. Three more days of usefulness? He stared into the glass no longer seeing himself but thinking hard.

  For a start, this place was no good. Water still flowed from the taps but there was no knowing how long that would last; and although he could open up the old town well and show Tommy, using it would be too difficult and dangerous for a child. And it was too far from an adequate food source. No, it would have to be somewhere else—somewhere with a spring or stream close by and to which, in the short time remaining, he could bring the essentials to keep them alive.

  He felt relaxed; more at peace than he had been for a long time. He went into the bedroom where the little ones were and found them both asleep, with their covers kicked off. He replaced them, and Tommy mumbled something without waking up.

  Looking down at them, he wondered what the odds were. A hundred to one against, or a thousand? Worth taking, anyway. And first things first: he would go and get clothes for them.

  • • •

  Neil was up soon after six. Sunshine slanted in at his window, promising another fine day. He found Susie sitting up; she smiled as he came into the room. He woke Tommy, and set him to the task of washing and dressing himself and his sister.

  After they had breakfasted, off corned beef and biscuits, he explained to Tommy that he had to leave them for the day. The boy looked unhappy, and he explained that he would be looking for a better place for them to live in. Tommy accepted that, but wanted to come with him. Neil told him he was needed to stay and look after Susie. He did not argue with that, but said: