The Cost of Living (4 page)

STUART

THURSDAY 28 MAY – 5:17pm

Over the course
of the last twelve hours, hell has enveloped our neighbourhood. The family
leaving in the middle of the night just gone was a pre-cursor to the full-blown
chaos we’ve witnessed today. Now it seems everyone is fleeing their homes, and
I don’t understand why. What do they hope to achieve? Where will they go? Why
this preoccupation with running? The safest thing to do – the
only
thing
to do – is to stay locked away like us and wait. Going out there today...
that’s only going to put people in more danger, not less. I can understand
wanting to get out of the cities and put some distance between yourself and the
rest of the population, but if everyone else is running too, what good will it
do?

I
was worried there might be some kind of forced evacuation, that the authorities
might round up those of us who haven’t been infected while they try to
decontaminate the rest of the country. Half the time I’m convinced I’ll see
tanks and troops driving up the road when I next look out the window, but I
know now that’s just nerves talking. I’ve heard explosions and I can see smoke
drifting into the sky, but think we’re long past any kind of coordinated response.
What’s left of the news on the TV and online shows a country in chaos. I don’t
think there even are any authorities anymore. I’ve tried to find out what’s
happening in those countries where the infection began, but there’s nothing
coming out of them at all, complete radio and internet silence. There are
thousands of possible reasons why communications might have been disrupted, but
the most likely explanation is that all those places are gone. Nothing left.
Dead. I managed to catch a snatch of an emergency broadcast on the old long
wave, but it turned out to be a recorded message on a loop. It could have been
running for days. And I found an old, old website with a list of webcam feeds
too; tourist spots, city centres, those kinds of things. That refugee camp or
evacuation centre or whatever it was? Gone now. There was a camera left looking
down over it; a black, burned out hole... no one alive.

It
feels like the walls are closing in, like the world’s getting smaller.

Gabby
keeps asking me if we should be running too because everyone else is, but I
tell her again and again that this is the only way of surviving. Isolation is
everything. I tell her to try and imagine the chaos on the roads right now. She
doesn’t know, but I’ve been thinking about this day for longer than I dare tell
her.

I
never said anything to Gabby at the time, because she’d either have got angry
or divorced me on grounds of insanity, but when we bought this house at the
start of last year, I had disaster preparedness in mind. Of course the
location, the number of bedrooms, the local school and facilities and so on
were the main reasons for moving here, but I’d been feeling for a long time
that we were overdue a disaster. That might sound overdramatic, but sitting
here today and having watched the neighbours trying to cram what’s left of
their lives into suitcases and cardboard boxes and loading their cars, it seems
I was right. To be honest, I thought it was more likely to have been some kind
of terrorist attack or social unrest that caused all the damage, but whatever
the reason, the end result is the same: the world as we know it is gone.
Nothing’s ever going to be the same again.

Our
development was built on the site of a Victorian hospital. It was closed many
years ago, and only a couple of the original buildings remain now. Despite it
being in a relatively built-up area, the fact we’re on what used to be the
hospital grounds has a number of advantages. We’re enclosed, for a start, the
whole estate ringed by substantial metal railings. There’s a single access
road, and from the other end of that road the development is all but invisible,
set behind a patch of raised grassland and a copse of trees which obscure most
of the houses. Thankfully it’s late spring. The increasing foliage decreases
the visibility. And there are less than forty finished homes here anyway...
from outside you’d hardly know there was anything here at all. Our house is
smack-bang in the middle of it all, completely hidden from anyone looking in.
Invisible from all sides.

When
the time comes I’ll block the access road if I have to; seal us off completely.
We have everything we need to get through this: enough supplies, medication and
water. Most importantly, we have each other. I’ll sever our ties with the rest
of the world in a heartbeat if it comes down to it.

#

The quiet this
evening is unsettling. I hadn’t realised how loud life was until it all
stopped. The sounds have steadily reduced all day. Now there’s nothing.
Helicopters, panic, the occasional scream... the screech of tyres as more
people left the development, the sounds of fighting and uncontrolled panic on
the other side of the border fence, the last of the few overly-optimistic
clean-up crews being overrun and giving up. It was a gradual quietening, but
the silence now feels sudden. It’s like they’ve all stopped trying at the same
time, like they’ve given up together.

Maybe
they have. Maybe we’re all that’s left now. But we can’t be, can we?

And
now the silence leaves me feeling dangerously exposed. This is something I
hadn’t bargained on. I mean, I thought I’d covered all bases, but I wasn’t
prepared for this. Now that everything’s so quiet, any little noise we make is
amplified out of all proportion. That’s okay most of the time because Gabby,
Nathan and me can keep our mouths shut when we need to, but it’s not as easy
with the girls. Sally’s scared, and why wouldn’t she be? How do you tell a
three year-old that everything’s going to be okay one minute, then that she
can’t talk the next? It’ll take time, but she’ll get used to it I guess. To be
honest, I’m even more worried about Hannah. When she cries for her bottle now
it’s like someone’s sticking pins in me. I imagine all the infected for miles
around, turning and heading in this direction when they hear her. I need her to
be safe and well fed, but right now it’s equally important for her to be quiet.
Isolation, remember? We can’t risk being found.

There’s
no information coming in from outside now. The internet has slowed to a crawl
and even when I do manage to get an update, it’s already so old it’s not worth
reading. All the TV channels have gone, replaced by emergency broadcast music
or, more frequently, empty black screens and silence. But it’s crucially
important that I stay abreast of what’s happening, particularly in the area
immediately around our development.

When
we first visited this place, a couple of months before we agreed to buy the
house, we left the sales office with a file full of stuff: brochures with floor
plans of all the different house designs, leaflets about the locality and
various financing schemes, and a map of the development. I’ve pinned the map to
the garage wall and have been slowly marking it off. When people have moved
out, I’ve crossed their house through. There are plenty I’m not sure about yet
– all the houses we can’t clearly see from ours, those which are
unfinished – but I know which of the others are empty.

Clive
and Christine Parish, that awful couple who lived at number one, were amongst
the first to go. And since they cleared out (almost two weeks ago... off to
stay with relatives up north until this all blows over, Gabby said she’d
heard), all the houses between ours and theirs have emptied too. I take a
chance and sneak out while Gabby, Nathan and the girls are occupied elsewhere,
telling them I’m going to sort out the supplies in the garage again.

Christ,
I don’t like being out here. There’s no one else around, but I feel like I’m
constantly being watched. Either that or I’m about to be jumped, but I know from
the unending silence that there’s no one here but me. If there is anyone
watching, they’re too scared to show themselves. That’s good. We keep ourselves
to ourselves from here on in.

I
break into Clive and Christine’s house easily enough: in through the side gate,
then prise open a kitchen window the idiots left open on vent around the back.

I
do a fast recce of the house, making mental notes of everything that might be
of use in case they’re not back before our supplies run low. There’s not a lot.
Bloody hell, it’s just as I expected it would be in here. Hideously over-fussy.
Every available windowsill and surface is covered in tat: little porcelain
dolls, collectibles, glass ornaments, commemorative china plates... I always
wondered who bought those bloody things. I used to see them advertised in the
back of magazines, but I never actually saw any in the flesh until now. The
birth of one royal, the death of another... they’ve got the history of the
whole bloody family Windsor immortalised in garish crockery. Waste of time,
money and effort. Makes me think about the royals, though. Don’t suppose their
lineage and blue blood’s helping right now.

Anyway,
it’s not so much the contents of this house I’m interested in, more the view.
Christine used to make a big deal about how she and Clive were the first people
to move onto the development, crowbarring it into every conversation I was
unfortunate enough to have with them. She was always going on about how the
people in the sales office made a fuss of them, and how there was a bottle of
champagne and a fancy box of chocolates waiting when they first walked through
their front door. Fat lot of good any of it did them. Better common-sense and
an escape plan than a box of fucking chocolates.

I
head upstairs, because I know at least one of the rooms up here should give me
a decent view of what’s left of the world beyond the development. I’m in their
bedroom now – more tat, more crap everywhere, all kinds of stuffed toys
– but the view from here is as good as I’m going to get. I brought my
binoculars with me and I can see right out through the trees.

Christ.

I
almost can’t bear to look, because it’s worse than I imagined. It’s hard to
believe what I’m seeing, but there’s a part of me that’s almost relieved
because I know beyond any doubt now that locking my family away from everything
and everyone else was the right thing to do.

I
remember seeing something on the news just before the BBC went to hell...
something about how the virus or whatever it is that’s caused all this has an
inherent desire to spread. We saw it in the supermarket, way back when, but
didn’t understand what we were seeing at the time. Thinking about that day
makes me catch my breath. So much has changed. What I’d give for the safe
normality of life back then... But seeing one of the infected in the distance
brings me back to reality. Damn thing looks lost, dragging itself along the
street. What’s it thinking? What’s it feeling? Anything?

For
a few seconds I’m struggling to remember what it used to be like out there
beyond the development, because all I can see now is about half a mile of utter
chaos. Litter blows across the street like tumbleweed, and there’s a car on its
side halfway up the road. I used to joke with Gabby that people must do that on
purpose whenever the shit hit the fan, because there’s always a smashed-up or
burned-out car somewhere, no matter what crappy post-apocalyptic movie you’re
watching. But I know this isn’t a joke, because through the spider-web cracks
covering the windscreen I can see a bloodied face pressed up against the glass.

The
pub down the way has all but disappeared; just a charred but still smoking ruin
left behind like a scab. We used to like going there for a drink at weekends.
Such a shame.

That
damn infected fucker wanders lazily into view again. This bastard of a disease
is spread through the transmission of bodily fluids: blood, sweat, saliva...
even piss and shit I heard. Infection renders the victim brain-dead within a
few hours... still breathing, still functioning on a very basic level, but no
longer the person they used to be. Infected people are plague carriers, no more
and no less, existing purely to spread the infection. I’ve been sheltered from
the worst of it over the last few days, but I can see it happening right in
front of me now. The sick are hunting out the living.

A
bloke appears, running at speed. I can tell from the way he’s moving that he’s
like us, not like
them
. It looks like he’s been running for a while and
he can barely keep going. He turns right, straight into the path of that
infected creature I was just watching. He panics... tries to turn back and run
the other way, but there must be one behind him too, because now he doesn’t
know which way to go. At least four of them converging on him at once. This
poor sod looks exhausted... broken. He slips past two of them, straight into
the path of another bunch of three I didn’t see. They swarm all over him, and
there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop it. He knows it’s over.

The
attack – if you can even call it an attack – is over quick. They
don’t bite him, don’t scratch, barely even fight... they just infect. Job done,
they roll away again and leave him, no longer of any interest. He lies there
helpless in the middle of the street, all but invisible to the infected now,
drenched in their foul brown gunk.

And
in my head now, all I can see are the thousands of helpless people who crowded
into the overflowing hospitals and refugee camps we saw on the news: all
herding together, waiting for the worst of the crisis to pass. I guess all it
would have taken would have been for a handful of infected to get in. Maybe
even one would have been enough to wipe them all out, perhaps just a single
drop of blood or saliva... The fragility of it all is terrifying.