Ice Diaries (2 page)

“Tori … supposing I can’t
get the baby out?”

There were tears in her eyes. A stab of
fear went through me – what an appalling way to die, and poor
little Gemma would have to manage in this hostile new world without
her mother. Women often died in childbirth before the invention of
modern obstetrics; Mary Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia, slowly
and agonizingly over days … I spoke robustly.

“You’ll be fine. Loads of
women do this every day – well, not the same women, obviously,
different ones. But it can’t be that difficult. Anyway, they
say it’s easier the second time, and you’ve been
practising the breathing, and you’re healthy. Plus you’ve
got me here, and I won’t let anything bad happen. Hey, I’m
really good at boiling water …”

Claire smiled a scared smile and
gripped my hand.

I wouldn’t want another day like
that in a hurry. Far too terrifying, and it just went on and on. I am
now entirely certain that if God exists, he is male; he could so
easily have designed women better. I’d be in favour of laying
eggs myself – small ones, about the size of quail eggs. But it
was all right in the end. Soon after dusk Claire delivered a healthy
baby boy. Paul and I dealt with the umbilical cord between us, and it
was obvious even to the uninitiated – i.e. us – that the
afterbirth was all there. We opened a bottle of wine and drank to the
baby, shaky with relief and triumph. Claire had a cup of tea and
couldn’t stop smiling and admiring their new son, her face
radiant. They both kept thanking me, though I’d done hardly
anything except turn up. A little later I said I must be going.

“Stay here tonight,” Paul
said. “It’s dark outside.”

“There’s a full moon and no
snow falling.” These days I always know what the phase of the
moon is without looking.

“Let me see you home, then.”

“No, you stay with Claire and the
children. I’ll be fine.”

The night was beautiful, in a slightly
sinister way. Dark skyscrapers loomed on the horizon. Not a breath of
wind; a sky of the deepest possible blue, an enormous moon and
countless stars. Even the worst situation has some good, and seeing
the Milky Way over London is a treat that never dims, even while it
brings home to me the world I knew is gone forever.

The wine had made me feel cheerful in
spite of my weariness, and I was happy for Claire and Paul. The trek
home seemed to pass in a flash. I neared my balcony, looking forward
to bed, and paused for a final look round. A few hundred yards away
moonlight broke on the mounds of snow from our failed excavation on
Old Street, the only disruption of the ubiquitous smoothness; beyond
Bézier, candlelight from Greg’s window showed he was
still up – he’d missed his wash, we’d have to
reschedule. To the north a white carpet interrupted by tower blocks
and the odd crane stretched to the horizon.

That’s when I saw something
moving.

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

A long way away, dark against the
expanse of white to the north a small shape crept, stopped, moved
again. A person crawling on hands and knees, and not one of us,
because we seldom go out at night, and when we do, we go to each
other’s places. A crazy hope lit up my heart and made me shake
all over.

It’s David, come to find me.
Please God, let him be all right.

I hurried to my flat, stepped over the
glass wall of the narrow balcony, through the patio door and into the
dark interior to get my sheet of tough plastic. I climbed once more
over the balcony railing and headed as fast as possible into the
night towards the distant figure. A man for sure, I could see as I
got nearer, inching agonizingly along, his strength almost gone. He
had stopped moving by the time I reached him, and lay face down in
the snow. I turned him on his side with trembling hands.

“David?”

Not David.

For a moment my disappointment was so
great I wanted to lie down and howl and thump the snow with my fists.
I took another look. This man was in his mid-twenties, with a short
beard not much longer than stubble, taller than me, wearing dark
padded trousers and a jacket with a fur-lined hood. I crouched beside
him, fatigue replacing my former excitement.

“Hi, wake up.” Nothing. I
shook him but he didn’t respond. I’d have to roll him on
to the plastic. I’ve got a trailer made out of the top of a car
roof box – we all have – for dragging supplies home, but
the plastic sheet, originally used to wrap a double mattress and now
with holes cut for handles, is useful for things I can’t lift
over the box edge. I rolled him on to the middle of the plastic where
he settled on his back. His eyes half opened and he muttered
something inaudible.

“What?”

“Rucksack.”

I looked back along his tracks, and saw
something dark in the distance. I went to fetch it – the bag
was surprisingly heavy, I had to drag it – and dumped it on the
plastic beside him. Getting going was hard, but once moving the
plastic slid fairly easily over the surface in spite of the combined
weight of the man and his belongings.

Back home, hot and sweating, I lumped
the backpack over the railing on to the balcony (what on earth was in
it?) and tried to lift him. I have crates there so it’s easier
when I’m carrying stuff, but getting an inert man over was a
different matter. I struggled and heaved. No chance. Having got him
this far, I didn’t want him dying outside my window. I could
have built ramps out of snow to drag him up and down the other side,
but that would take as much time as the alternative option, fetching
Greg – twenty minutes at least, and the man would get frostbite
if he hadn’t already. I shouted in his face.

“Wake up!
You’ve got to
help, damn you
. WAKE UP!” He didn’t. I took off my glove,
pushed his hood out of the way and slapped his cheek a stinging blow.
He grunted and his eyelids flickered. I went to slap him again and
found my wrist trapped in an iron grasp. Furious eyes met mine. His
voice was a snarl.

“Stop that.”

“Fine. Stay out here and die of
hypothermia, then.”

He glanced around, still gripping me.
“Where’s my bag?”

“On the balcony.”

He let go my wrist and after a moment
pulled himself to his feet, hanging on to the edge of the railing,
and stepped over painfully slowly as if he were in his eighties. I
followed with my plastic, grabbed his bag, slid the door open and we
both went in. I lit a tea light lantern. The stove had gone out, and
the place was icy; most of the snow in the buckets round the walls
still unmelted. Greg would have topped the stove up for me, if I’d
thought to ask him. Sometimes I long for radiators and a timer and no
smell of wood smoke in my hair. I was down to my last few sheets of
newspaper for fire lighting. I glanced at the headline before
scrunching the paper into a ball:
PM sets out three point plan to
halt spread of SIRCS
above a photo of Boris Johnson looking sombre. I
opened the stove door and dropped it inside, added kindling, wood,
and a handful of coal, then lit the paper from the tea light so as
not to waste a match.

The man had slumped on the stone-effect
tiles and was leaning against the kitchen island, head down, face
half hidden by straggling hair, pulling off his gloves with a visible
effort. Irritation swept over me at finding myself lumbered with this
uncouth man and his problems – my compassion appeared to have
been all used up on Claire with none left over for this random
stranger. I picked his gloves off the floor and hooked them over the
stove. He was probably dehydrated, so I scooped him a glass of water
out of the nearest bucket. He drank it in one go and I gave him
another.

“Is there anything wrong with
you?” This came out impatient rather than sympathetic. “You
haven’t got frostbite?” The best treatment for that is
body heat, which I was not going to volunteer, or warm water, and I
didn’t want to use up my water on him; it’s a lot of
work, melting enough snow for daily drinking and washing. And the
stove was cold. I was tired and wanted to go to bed.

“I’m all right.”

He didn’t look all right. By the
lantern’s dim glow I could see a dark red bruise on his left
cheekbone, and his skin was ashen and sweaty in spite of the cold. He
was clearly dead beat. But there were no white patches on his face,
and his hands weren’t discoloured, swollen or blistered;
assuming his feet were okay he had no frostbite.

“D’you want something to
eat?”

“No, I want to sleep.”

“You’d better sleep on the
sofa.” The opulent plum sofa that came with the flat would not
be my choice of furniture, but there’s no denying it is large
and comfortable. Also it’s leather, so easier to clean. It
faces towards the stove and away from where my bed is, and is the
warmest spot in the place when the stove’s going.

He struggled upright, picked up the
rucksack, made it to the sofa and lay down as he was, eyes shut, one
foot still on the floor, dead to the world. Reluctantly, I unlaced
his wet boots and pulled them off, because the flat was freezing and
boots can restrict blood flow, making frostbite more likely. He
didn’t move while I did this. I got out two spare duvets and a
couple of blankets and dropped them over him, and put a glass of
water to hand on the coffee table. I didn’t much like the look
of him, but at least he wasn’t in any state to pose a threat. I
washed my hands and face and cleaned and flossed my teeth – in
a world without dentists anyone with sense does this with religious
zeal. I adjusted the stove’s air intake to last overnight, went
to my bed corner and took off some of my clothes, and snuggled into
my sleeping bag under the duvet.

I woke as it began to get light,
thinking about Claire and the baby. Then I remembered the man and
slipped out of bed to check on him. He’d turned on his side,
facing inwards, and still slept, the duvet moving almost
imperceptibly with his breathing. He must have taken his jacket off
during the night, as it lay across the rucksack beside his boots. The
water glass was now empty, and I refilled it.

I dressed in the privacy of my bed
corner. The man didn’t stir as I raked out the stove, added
fuel and put porridge to cook. Usually I dress by the stove. When I
moved in, I dragged one bed into the living area and partitioned it
off with neat stacks of firewood from floor to ceiling, so I only
have to heat one room. The flat is seldom really warm, since a
wood-burning stove needs constant feeding and when I’m off
foraging I have to turn it right down so it doesn’t go out.
More wood is stored against the walls; I’m paranoid about
running out, and work hard to keep supplies high. I live in the
spacious living room/kitchen, and keep the bedrooms and two of the
three bathrooms for stores. I’ve stacked heavy stuff on my
toilets – after the sewers froze rats came up through the pipes
to basements and ground floor flats, and though I’m probably
too high I’m not taking any chances.

I watered my spider plant and removed a
few dead leaves. It’s an offshoot of Claire’s enormous
one, and doing quite well. They are the only plants left in this part
of London. Sam used to have some cacti, but they didn’t like
the cold. Though there’s not much difference between a dead
cactus and a live one, eventually she had to admit they had shuffled
off this mortal coil and were now ex-cacti.

I’d planned to go foraging today.
There’s this block of flats I found on my own, only the top
floor above the snow, and I’m working my way down it,
collecting everything of use – wood, paper, food, clothes,
blankets. There are bodies, but not too many; I work fast in those
rooms and avert my gaze, careful to shut the doors behind me to keep
the rats out. The worst ones are where there are several people,
huddling together, especially children. I try not to think about
their last hours. I don’t worry about catching SIRCS, because I
reckon I’ve got natural immunity or it would have killed me
when the pandemic raged. Probably most of them died of cold, anyway.
One flat had a fireplace, which got me excited, but apparently they
relied on the radiators and the fire wasn’t often lit –
there was only a single bag of coal, which I’m using up bit by
bit for keeping the stove in at night. Wood burns much faster.

I decided to start my journal and
simultaneously melt a load of snow to top up my water supplies, so
I’d be around when the man woke. I could forage the next day.

Greg interrupted my writing
mid-morning. I’ve started to worry too much chocolate will rot
his teeth, so I gave him a musical snow globe from the flats. It was
a particularly nice one. He wound the brass key carefully, shook the
globe and set it down. We stared into the tiny perfect world; a
village on a snowy hill, a church and snow-covered houses around a
central Christmas tree. A miniature train ran on its track through
tunnels while a cheerful tune tinkled and snowflakes swirled.

Greg was very taken with it, though
you’d think he’d have had enough of snow. I certainly
have. I said, “Imagine if we were tiny and lived there.”

“I wish we did.” Greg
pointed. “I’d have that house, with the ivy. You could
have the big one opposite. We could ride on the train.”

A snow globe and London have a lot in
common these days; both are perpetually snowy and limited in scope. I
put water to boil. Greg had already called on Paul and Claire and
admired the new baby, and told me they’ve decided to call him
Toby. Greg was in favour of calling him Bart (he was a great Simpsons
fan, and misses them). I said the name wouldn’t suit him as his
face wasn’t yellow. Greg said Bart Simpson probably wasn’t
yellow in real life, just in the cartoons, then he noticed the man.

“There’s a man on your
sofa, Tori.”