The Bitter End (2 page)

Hannah sighed and considered going back inside but her thoughts were churning now and she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. She would probably just wake Dennis and he wouldn't be cross but he'd be able to tell what sort of mood she was in and want to talk about it.

She picked at a loose bit of paint on the blue doors. Until a week ago she had never been on a canal boat. She didn't like the water. Now it looked like she was going to spend the rest of her life living on it. The idea appalled her in the way unnatural things often did. She could see the land, could almost reach out and touch it but it was too dangerous to go there.
 

The piece of blue came away like dry glue and revealed a dull grey beneath. She flicked the hardened paint away and watched it land on the water, float there for a moment and then sink below.

She felt like crying all the time. Dennis said she was suffering from shock. She both loved and feared the way he was just getting on with things but thought he was probably suffering from shock as well. If such a thing had still existed they would probably both be seeing psychiatrists.

The cold wind went through her and she shivered. Inside it was warm and comfortable but she wasn't ready to go back yet. Dennis had found the long boat. Some rich jerks play thing, he'd called it. Whoever owned it was probably dead so they'd taken it.
 

It seemed strange that only three days had passed, like it should have been more. The boat was already starting to feel like home in the way she supposed a prison cell would if you stayed there long enough.

The boat rocked gently back and forth, towards the shore and away from it as if it couldn't make up its mind. She watched the ripples spread out across the water and out of sight in the darkness.

She should go back inside. Dennis would be worried about her if he woke up and found her gone. He might even wake up the children in his panic before realising that was the last thing he wanted to do. Then he would fumble and mumble some half-cocked excuse to try and get them to go back to sleep but it wouldn't work.

She leaned against the side and looked out behind the boat. The scene was almost unchanged from the one in front. A crooked spired church stood in place of the farmhouse and a black bird soared across the sky. She wondered what the animals thought of all this, whether they wondered what had happened to all the humans in the same way they had wondered when the animals started to vanish. Or did they simply enjoy the extra food and freedom it gave them?

Hannah turned back towards the door. The cold finally starting to get to her, she wanted to be back inside. She took a final look around to make sure nothing had snuck up on her and then she went in.

The warmth of the boat stung her skin like a hot bath. She closed the door behind her and stopped to look down at each of her children asleep before walking into the bedroom. The floor rocked from side to side as she moved but nobody seemed to notice.

2

Hannah woke to the smell of bacon frying. She rolled over and opened her eyes and saw she was alone in bed. The boat engine hummed and she could hear water splashing aggressively against the side. They were moving then and nobody had woken her.

She arched her back and stretched. Despite her late night wandering she felt as if she'd had a good eight hours. She felt better for it and climbed out of bed with the nearest thing she'd had to a smile for weeks.

In the kitchen she found Dennis cooking breakfast. He smiled at her as she walked towards him. "How are you doing?" he said in that soft sympathetic voice that sometimes irritated her, sometimes didn't.

"I'm good," she said and meant it. Maybe the dark days were behind her. She opened her arms and embraced him. He was a few inches shorter than her, his dark hair tickled her nose.

He pulled away and turned back to the bacon.

"Who's driving?" she said.

He shrugged. "They couldn't stop arguing about it so I told them to take it in turns."

She thought about going up to see them, felt a desperate longing to see a pair of carefree smiling faces, but she didn't. It would only irritate them, make them feel as if she was checking up on them. "Smells good," she said.

The toast popped up and he pulled it straight from the toaster and onto a plate. They ate well for the time being. The fresh food would only last for so long so they might as well enjoy it. She wondered if she would eat bacon again before she died.

"What's the plan for today?" she said.

He put two more slices of bread in the toaster and spun around to the frying pan. "Keep pushing on," he said.

He placed a cup of coffee in front of her. She let the smell rise up and savoured it for a moment before picking it up.

When the bacon was cooked she took two plates up to the kids. Ben was the spitting image of his father and Cora had a lot of the same features too; the straight roman nose, the round jaw and high cheek bones. She had Hannah's blue eyes and curly blond hair though.

"Thanks mum," said Ben. He had grown out of calling her 'mummy' some time in the last six months and she supposed Cora wouldn't be far behind. They had both aged more than they should have recently.

She stood on the stairs and drank her coffee, silently watching Ben devour his sandwich while Cora steered and then swapping over. They were her reason, they were why she hadn't hung herself or put a bullet through her head, like others had done.

She left them to it and returned to her now cold bacon. It tasted as good as anything could at the moment. Her mood was starting to sour as she wondered what the future held for Ben and Cora.

In the afternoon she took over up top. A grey mist had settled low over the canal and the moisture in it soaked her clothes as good as rain. She watched the open countryside pass by at a steady ten miles per hour. She had never been much of a country girl. She preferred the hustle and excitement of the big city but she would have given anything to stop the boat and run through the green fields. Anything except what it would actually cost.

Alone with her thoughts she tried to remain upbeat but really, what was there to be upbeat about? The world was over, there was no more civilisation. The people who were left lived like gypsies, roaming from place to place in search of a safety that no longer existed.

As the sun began to set Dennis appeared with dinner. A steaming plate of meat, cooked almost to ash.

"You want to talk about it?" he said.

She shrugged and chewed on a mouthful of what might have been beef. "What's the point? It's not going to change anything."

"Maybe not," he said, "might make you feel better though."

She kept eating but knew he'd get it out if her. She wasn't putting up much resistance, she didn't have the energy for it.

When she had finished eating he took the plate from her but didn't go back inside.

"So what is it?" he said.

Hannah swallowed the last of the meat, playing for time. Then she spoke; "Don’t you ever wonder what the point of all this is?"

Dennis nodded as if it was what he had expected her to say. For all she knew it was, he could be surprisingly perceptive at times. For a long time he didn't say anything. The world around them became dark. She could hear the kids inside shouting and laughing, playing some silly game they'd made up to pass the time.

"What's the alternative?" he said at last.

She shrugged. She knew what her alternative was, it was up to him to find his own.

"We just give up? Stop the boat now, get off and wait for the first group of those things to find us?"

"There's other ways. I mean, I'm not saying that I want to, but we don't have to keep running."

He shook his head and she thought he looked disappointed. "What about the kids?"

"We could take them with us."

"You don't mean that."

"Don't I?" she was starting to get upset now, could feel the tears burning behind her eyes. "What is there for them here? They'll spend their whole lives running, scared and alone. Is that the kind of life you want for them?"

"It's better than no life at all, isn't it?"

She wasn't so sure but she didn't have the energy for an argument. She just shook her head and said, "I don't know Dennis. I just don't know."

He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a battered piece of paper. He started to unfold it and she saw how weak the folds were, like it had been opened and poured over hundreds of times.

"What's that?" she said.

He held it out and she took it. It was a map of the canal network with pencil scribbles she couldn't read. "I didn't want to tell you, until I knew for sure."

The fact that he had kept it secret from her was almost as surprising as the fact that he had a plan at all. "What is it?"

"Somewhere we can go. I think. I guess we won't know for sure until we get there."

She examined the map but didn't really understand it. She hadn't read a map since she was in the Girl Guides, sat-nav had been a common feature in cars by the time she was old enough to drive.

"It should take us another week," he said and took the map back from her, folded it and put it back in his pocket. "If we don't run into any trouble."

He did not need to elaborate on the sort of trouble they might run into. "And if there's nothing there?" she said.

"Then we can consider alternatives," he said, which was as close as he ever got to saying there was merit in her idea of a quick and painless death.

Dennis took over so that she could put the children to bed. She washed them at the sink because they hadn't figured out how to get the shower to work. While they were drying and brushing their teeth she pulled out the two sofas and put bed sheets over them. Ben got into bed wearing Spider-Man pyjamas that were getting too small for him. Cora was still little enough to be happy in a pink nighty.

They hadn't brought any books with them which was a shame. She had a lot of books, leather bound editions that had been worth a lot of money. Not that it was the money that bothered her now. Now it was the knowledge that those books were gone, lost, as if they had never been written at all.

She had an ebook reader but without electricity to charge it was a lump of plastic. She kept it with her in the hope that one day they would be in a position to waste petrol running a generator and that the books it contained could once again be accessed. If that ever happened maybe she would copy the books out onto paper, to preserve them for the future. If there was going to be a future.

The only books she had to read to the children were those left by the boats original owner. Unfortunately most of those seemed to be smutty erotica. Not the sort of thing she wanted to expose her children to. Instead she told them the stories she remembered, making up the words and some of the character names. They weren't really sleepy yet but they listened anyway, there wasn't anything else for them to do in the dark.

At some point during Hannah's version of Oliver Twist the door opened.

"Hannah?"

She looked back but she couldn't see anything in the dark.

"Could you come up here a minute?"

She recognised the tone of forced calm. Something was wrong and he didn't want the children to know about it.

"What is it mum?" said Cora, she sounded sleepy but she was fighting it.

"It's nothing honey," she said but couldn't think of a reasonable explanation for Dennis calling her away from them. "Just wait here and I'll go and see."

She bent over and kissed her little girl on the forehead. She turned to do the same to Ben but he scowled so she made do with patting his arm.

"Close the door," said Dennis in a calm whisper that worried her at once.

She did as he told her. "What is it?"

He didn't speak but pointed towards the bank on their right. It was lined with overgrown trees and tall grass. She squinted into the dark and saw two shapes running along the bank, easily keeping up with the boat despite the obstacles presented by fallen branches and fences.

She jumped when she felt Dennis's arm around her. She hadn't realised that she had moved closer to him. He held he firmly. "It's alright," he whispered. His mouth was so close to her ear that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. "They can't get us while we're on the water."

Hannah watched the shapes that from a distance might have been mistaken for human. But if you watched closely you could tell the difference. They moved like animals: their long limbs making smooth movements through the air. They were faster, they had better vision, hearing and smell. If you got close enough to one, they said, you could see their smooth pale skin, like white porcelain. Personally she didn't think anyone had come that close to one and survived. If you got that close they would just grab you and sink their sharp fangs into your neck. If you were lucky they would kill you outright, if not you'd become just like them: superhuman in some ways, subhuman in all the important ones.

Hannah sunk into Dennis. She could hear them, grunting and growling. "Are you sure they can't cross the water?" she said.

"If they could they would have done by now. They've been following us for the last half hour."