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notes from the apocalypse
***
If you're going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
***
I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.
-
J.R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
***
You wake in a hot sweat, like the air is on fire around you. Your skin burns but you’re still alive, just.
“Did it bite me?” you ask her, as you watch her peel the blood-soaked bandage off your stomach.
“I don’t know,” she replies. She doesn’t look at you when she says it, like the night you decided to sacrifice her life for your own, when she drove you through the city and wouldn’t meet your eyes.
You wonder if this makes things even between you. If anyone is still keeping score.
“You’re not going to die,” she tells you, the way she said I know you’re not bent all those weeks ago.
You nod, but you didn’t believe her then, either.
***
Maybe this is some sort of karmic rebalancing. After all, how is it right that the end of the world was your get out of jail free card, quite literally?
Sure, you had to crawl over glass and debris and at least two dead bodies, but when what you’d been expecting were OCG killers or Patricia Carmichael, it had almost felt like a lifeline.
Maybe this is your special skill: surviving when you shouldn’t. You were never supposed to be born, after all. You know the truth about your uncle now, and what he did. Steve told you one night, despite Kate’s objections. You heard them arguing about it, but on balance you think you’d rather know. Know how poisonous you are.
But even beyond that, you think of everything with your mum, and with Tommy and with Patrick and with all those other men. Men who are dead now. And you’re still alive.
Clinging on, just. “Stay with me,” Kate asks, and you try. You’ve never been very good at paying off your debts but something about being in love makes you want to be better.
Shame you didn’t grow that backbone months ago.
You know, of course, that she doesn’t feel the same way. Doesn’t love you like that. How can she, after what you did?
But you also know that everyone Kate has loved is dead or likely dead. Since the radio went out and you lost your last communication with the rest of the world, you have no idea how many people are even still left. You’re a team now, for better or worse. Alone, you will die. She will die.
Then you see her clenching her hand in her pocket, around the photograph you know she keeps thrrr, and you squeeze your eyes closed.
You have made two promises, and you swear to yourself once again that this time, you won’t break them.
***
“Promise me,” he’d said, like an order, just before the end.
And you did. If he hadn’t been minutes from death, you might have been more annoyed that he’d had to ask that; that he felt like he had the right to ask you anything. That what he wanted wasn’t a given. And that his doubt in you was all your own doing.
But petty jealousy and one-upmanship and regrets had no place there, in his final moments. So instead you nodded,and swore you would look out for her, wouldn’t leave her, and then you both waited in silence for Kate to come out of the barn you’d been sheltering in with the gun.
Her hands had shaken loading it, and you had remembered an underground car park and the cold grip of the gun in your hand. Like you rehearsing this moment, this decision. You walked over and took the gun from her. She looked at you, unreadable, and you told her to turn away.
It was the first time the expression on his face when you met his eyes was without a hint of suspicion. To your surprise, his approval meant something to you.
Then it was over, and he was dead, and so was the thing eating him from the inside.
You’d burned him, and though the stench made you both retch, you waited it out.
That was when you made your second promise, this one unsolicited. “What if I don’t make it,” Kate had said, as tears rolled like shadows over her face, and you had to try not to visibly sag in relief that she was still talking to you.
Then you’d seen she was clutching the photo again, the one from the fridge at Mark’s house. “I’ll help you find him,” you swore, and you meant it more than every apology you’ve ever made.
She hadn’t replied, but she’d stepped closer to you, so your shoulders touched as you both looked into the flames.
And you’d had a purpose, for once, beyond simply trying to stay alive.
***
She keeps watch over you and it reminds you of work, of glances across the bullpen and sneaky cups of coffee from since you bean gone instead of the instant crap in the kitchenette.
That time feels like a dream to you now, like it was something so outlandish that you could only have experienced it unconsciously.
Reality is sharing half a tin of beans to stretch the rations as far as they’ll go, and chaining you to the bed when your fever rises in case you turn.
Reality is no other people and the month-long blizzard raging outside, and a sun that doesn’t make it through the clouds anymore.
As you slip back into a restless sleep, you wonder if Kate could kill you, if she had to. You remember her shouting at Steve when he begged you both to end it. “Don’t let it take me like this. Don’t make me hurt anyone.” He’d been crying. Kate had punched a wall, leaving a bloody handprint behind, but then she’d gone to get the gun.
The truth is, you know she’d wound her soul before she let anything hurt someone else. That’s the kind of person she is. It’s a comfort, and it makes you hold on harder than ever.
***
She’d been the one who pulled you out of the rubble at the prison, after all. Helped you into the battered four by four you didn’t recognise, then sped with you through what remained of the city streets, shoved in the back seat behind Steve Arnott, who was driving like there was something chasing you.
You didn’t ever ask what they were doing there. You can guess, of course. Can imagine them volunteering to bring you in for interview: Steve, to finally show you he got you, and Kate, to prove something to everyone else and most of all herself.
The why didn’t matter then, you told yourself. You almost managed to convince yourself the pastwas done with, was wiped clean. Who cared if you had lied, or who your uncle was. Did it matter that you’d passed on information to the OCG, that you’d led Kate away from the truth over and over and over again?
Of course it did, you know that now. But self-deceit is your particular talent, right along with staying alive, despite all odds to the contrary.
***
There were more important things to talk about at first, of course, with buildings collapsing around you and thousands dead or worse. With the seemingly endless fog descending over the world and phone and internet signal going out.
It all happened so fast that when you try to remember it, it doesn’t come in order. It’s like you’re rewinding and keep jumping past the bits you want to look at. Stop-start images flash in your mind’s eye. The remains of Kate’s ex husband, in the house they once shared. Shielding her from it, searching for Josh. The note about the geography trip on the fridge, a sliver of hope as darkness fell around you.
And then, and then. Fighting those men over the jeep. The roadblocks, the soldiers.
The thing you think was a bomb, lighting up the sky, and the fog billowing around you like a giant smoke machine had been set up to blow over the world.
Was it days or was it months? Time lost all meaning. You used to check your watch compulsively, back when you were the other Jo, acutely aware of every moment passing, of where your strings were tugging you at any given moment.
But the strings were severed with the double tap of a trigger and then you were adrift, smashing against the sides of a bank you’d always hoped to reach but couldn’t pull yourself onto.
Until she took your hand, despite everything. Pulled you with them before you fell off the cliff and were crushed under the weight of this new reality.
You saw the looks between her and Steve at times; heard the hissed whispers when they thought you were sleeping. You tried not to listen. You didn’t want to know what they were saying. Didn’t want to know if you’d wake up one morning and they’d have moved on without you.
But Kate was there every morning when you blinked your eyes open. She always took the last watch; said she got up early and her body clock was used to it. Sometimes you’d wake up but pretend you were still sleeping, so you could watch her when she felt alone.
You’d felt guilty doing it, like peeping through the curtain into a changing room. But those moments of stillness, of Kate watching the horizon, were like a precious, rare gift. A moment of peace amongst the chaos.
You realised then that what you thought was her mask of sincerity had been her true face, and you’d spat in it with your suspicions and doubts. By then, that open, soft Kate was gone, hidden behind a toughness that made you flinch and ache for her all at once.
Those days were long and cold. Winter was like no other winter you had ever experienced. Whatever they’d done to the atmosphere brought fog and hail and a sunlight so dim you felt like you were constantly squinting.
Yet despite the only food being tins other people hadn’t yet scavenged from petrol stations and industrial estate supermarkets along the motorway, you had never felt stronger.
For the first time ever, you weren’t alone against the monsters. You didn’t let yourself dwell then on how different that felt, but now you have nothing but time, in your fevered half sleep. The tears feel good on your hot cheeks, and so does the cool flannel Kate uses to wash them away.
***
That night, the pain is the worst yet, but Kate has finally let herself fall asleep on the floor beside your bed, curled up on the stripy rug, and so you bite your lip until you taste blood instead of letting out a sound.
You think again of Steve, of what was maybe the first proper conversation you had with him, the day he got bitten. He’d shown you the wound first, when Kate was building the fire. Electricity was long a thing of the past at that point. You’d spent a whole night discussing how you’d take your ideal cup of tea a few days before that one, if you got another chance to have one. You thought of all the brews Kate made you over those thirteen months, of all the ones you’d forgotten, half drunk, poured away.
He’d waited until she’d left the barn you’d been sheltering in after your lucky escape from the fight with those men, and lifted his shirt; shown you the tendrils of black infection creeping up the tributaries of his veins.
You hadn’t said anything, but you’d pulled the small first aid kit you’d grabbed a few days ago out of your bag and opened the tiny packet of disinfectant wipes.
“It’s too late,” he’d said to you, voice shaking a little, but he’d let you clean it as best you could anyway. He’d almost not winced at all; the kind of pain tolerance of someone who is used to worse. That’s something you were familiar with, and you had realised with painful clarity how affected you were by the realisation he was going to die.
“She cares about you,” he said out of nowhere, as you rummaged around the plasters, hoping one the size of the gaping hole in his side might miraculously appear.
You lifted your head and stared at him.
“She wanted to protect you, even when we told her the truth about you.” He gritted his teeth. His forehead was already visibly clammy. “She’s loyal even when she shouldn’t be.”
Your head felt fuzzy, your ears were ringing. You’d wanted to defend yourself but you had nothing. He was right to be suspicious of you, after all. He’d seen right through you all along, past the person you’d wanted to be, the one you’d projected for Kate, and to the stained, blackened thing inside.
“I never wanted to hurt her,” you’d said, tears starting at the corner of your eyes despite your best efforts, and then Kate had come back and seen the wound, and other things had taken over.
But you think of his words now, and of your fight with Kate, and all the things you wish you’d never said, of the things that you wish you’d said months ago.
How often, in the Before, did you wish you could wipe clean the slate of your life and start over, with everything you’d been buried, and you reborn into someone you actually like?
Now almost everything you knew has been razed to the ground. The things you told yourself you were afraid of are gone, but the fear is still in you. How much of the cage was in your own head, you wonder, now that the bars are down.
You need to make things right, in case this is it. Sometimes, you feel like the fever has you so tightly in its grip that it’s strangling you, and other times you feel almost like it’s passing.
You’ve not felt that hunger yet that Steve talked about, that you’ve seen in the eyes of so many since the first time you saw someone turn in that lay-by, but who knows when that will kick in.
Right now the pain is as bad as it’s been, but you keep silent and watch her sleep, wondering what forgiveness looks like in this new world. If this new you is someone who deserves it more than the old one did.
***
You think about the first night you spent in this cottage. It had been maybe a week since Steve died, and your progress had been slow. You’d thought longingly of the jeep you’d lost at that petrol station, but your one handgun between the two of you had been nothing against the men’s rifles.
So you’d walked, but you kept having to stop and hide from the other groups on foot walking through those fields, those forests. You’d learned the hard way how dangerous strangers could be. You’d crouched on the frozen dirt together and waited, and you’d wished you could know what she was thinking.
And then it had started snowing; lightly at first, then ever heavier. The nights had already been bitterly cold, and you’d forgone the security of one of you keeping watch outside the tent for avoiding hypothermia by lying in the sleeping bag together.
When the first flakes landed on your hand, you’d looked at each other and realised that if you didn’t find shelter, you were dead.
So you’d pressed on, even when you could hear others nearby, until the snow was so thick and the sun so faint it might as well have been night time.
It had appeared out of nowhere, the way Kate appeared in your office one morning. I’m the new DI , she’d smiled, and your stomach had clenched, and everything had gotten harder and lighter all at once.
That was how the cottage felt, when it appeared. A new friend who would change your life. A saviour and an assassin.
You’d stumbled up to the door and found it locked. A hastily overturned flowerpot revealed the key, and you’d hurried in, so cold at this point you ignored the dangers that could be inside.
But it was empty. You’d found why in the back garden the next morning; the frozen, half buried by snow bodies of the two people in the photos all around on the walls.
That night, though, you were just grateful to not be out there. You’d lit the log burner and slept next to each other in the living room, under the quilt you’d hauled down the stairs. You’d risked a tin of soup each, despite your dwindling rations. Things had felt so hopeful then, like someone was looking out for you.
Like you might be ok.
Of course, when you woke up the next day and the blizzard still raged outside, the hope had become tainted with realism.
From the letters in the pile in the kitchen, you established you’d crossed the border into Scotland, just barely. But it was clear to you both that there was no way you’d be able to walk in this. Not without dying from exposure before the day was out.
Kate had gone to the garage in search of a car, while you’d done a stock take. She’d shaken her head when she came back, mouth tight, and somehow, your good news about the well-stocked cupboards and freezer didn’t cheer her up.
Maybe she could sense it, already. The way the cottage had become comfortable and safe, and despite being the closest they’d been to their goal, it somehow felt the furthest away.
Still, it was hard to be totally pessimistic when eating a defrosted home cooked lasagne, and not even the knowledge that the people who had cooked it lay dead outside under the snow could fully take away the enjoyment of eating something non-canned for the first time in weeks.
After, you’d sat in the flickering fire light, wrapped in a too big jumper you’d found in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and watched Kate restlessly prowl the room and run her fingers over the spines of the books.
“I never read much,” she said into the silence; a first confidence after a long drought. “Not until I had Josh. Then we’d read together, until he was old enough to read on his own.”
You’d held out your hand, then. “Choose one,” you’d said softly, and you’d taken Persuasion in your hand, remembering your battered second hand copy back in the flat - one of the only things you brought from Scotland with you when Tommy came for you - and you’d read it to her.
***
Now she reads to you, though you’re not quite sure what. The fever is back, and everything aches, and your mouth is so dry and your eyes hurt, and your side burns.
But you’re still you, as best you can tell. You want it to stop, but you don’t want to kill, and you hold onto that, onto yourself.
The ties on your wrists feel loose, and you want to tell her to tighten them, but your tongue feels heavy. “Stay with me, Jo,” you hear, as if from far away. She sounds like she’s crying, but your eyes are too heavy to check.
***
And as the fever reaches its pitch, the worst moments flash before your eyes, jumbled and stuck back together like a collage of every moment you wished it would just stop.
Your mum is there, except then she’s not, and Tommy is. You’re a child again, then that fades too. Helen, the girlfriend you thought you might have loved, who didn’t love you in the end, turns into Kate, staring at you across the dimly lit lorry park. The cold of the handcuffs around your wrists as you watch her being taken to a different car flashes to cool water running over your hands from the tap and this time it’s your fight, and it has more colour than the rest. You realise you’re waking up but the nightmare won’t stop.
You remember the look on her face, five mornings in. “We have to go on,” she’d said.
“We won’t make it, Kate,” you replied, as gently as you could. “We can barely see the gate.”
You’d been right, of course, but that hadn’t made it easier for her.
“We’ll find him,” you’d tried to placate her, “I promise-“
“You promise? ” she’d said, and the tone of her voice had turned as cold as the blizzard outside. You’d realised that all the things you hadn’t talked about had been lying on you both like a weighted blanket, crushing you slowly.
The things she’d said to you then hurt worse than your wound.
And somehow remembering that makes this pain almost more bearable. How many years have you been afraid of pain, of death? Turns out, it’s not so bad as all that.
Not as bad as having Kate look at you and hate you.
You force yourself past the moment where she said don’t act like you care about me when a few weeks ago you were ready to let him kill me , past watching Kate walk out the door through the blur of tears, past pulling on your own coat and boots because you couldn’t be alone anymore, not when there was someone you loved again, despite your best efforts not to.
It was so cold outside that it felt like your skin was burning, like it is now. You had barely been able to see Kate’s footsteps, as you waded through knee deep snow.
Then you’d seen the shadow behind her, up ahead, and it was like a deja vu, but with an outcome you could change.
The next bit is a blur. You remember pulling out the kitchen knife and jumping at it as it lunged at Kate, and you remember flying through the air and it pouncing at you and the knife in your hand going into its neck as something sharp went your side.
And then, darkness.
The darkness fades now, from your eyes and in the room. The sun is still weak but the blizzard is thinning, and the light bounces off the thick icing sugar outside like huge spotlights pointing into your shelter.
You watch her wake, and at the same time it’s like you’re waking. You feel exhausted, and weak, but you also feel there . Your wrists ache, and your stomach twinges, and you’re parched and thirsty, but-
“Jo?” she asks you, and you nod, and her face crumples like linen as she sobs in relief.
***
She gently unties your wrists, rubbing blood back into them softly with her thumb, and apologises when you hiss at the sensation. You shake your head; you can’t quite put into words that this is what it felt like when you met her, like she was pushing the blood back through the veins of your life.
She brings you soup, a whole bowl for just you that you definitely won’t be able to finish, and sits awkwardly on a chair she’s brought up instead of the side of the bed where you vaguely remember she perched the last few days.
You try not to read into that but it’s hard. Kate never does anything just because.
You eat so slowly the soup goes cold, but you shake your head when she asks whether to reheat it, because it sounds like she wants an escape more than anything.
You watch her wring her hands in her lap as you swallow, and then, when you push the tray away with trembling hands, and she puts it on the floor, she finally comes out with it.
“This was my fault,” she tells you, and her eyes are swimming again. “I’m so, so sorry.”
You shake your head, which makes your ears ring a little. “No it wasn’t,” you tell her, holding out your hand without thinking.
She takes it though, slowly, like she’s being given a gift she can’t quite believe. She’s leaning forward in her chair, and you wish she’d just come to you but you can’t bring yourself to ask.
So instead you ask the other thing, the thing you’ve been putting off, that’s sat deep inside your chest like a splinter, broken off and healed over but still painful to touch.
“Why were you there, that day?” you ask her. “That day at the prison?”
She stares at you, with huge, open eyes, the way she used to look at you after drinks, after spontaneous dinners, under the glowing orange street lights. She stares at you like the answer should be obvious and your heart starts thumping so hard you feel a little sick.
“I couldn’t leave without you,” she says like it’s obvious, like anyone has ever come back for you before.
You swallow.
“I should have trusted you, back then,” you say, cutting open that bit of yourself you keep sown up, voice almost steady, and she says “I should have given you more reason to.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” she says after a beat, her head looking down. You squeeze her hand, and when she looks up, her eyes are dark and solid. You tug, and it’s like nothing, because you have no strength, but she complies, slides closer, slides up beside you.
“Kate,” you whisper, a permission. You feel sick, desperate hope rising up inside you.
You can see it in her face now, as clear as always, but your blindfold is off. She reaches out and cups your face. Her hands are cool and a little dry. You close your eyes in a long blink, and when you open them you lean forward, and she kisses you.
***
You keep count of the sunrises, if you can call them that, as best you can. Time, when counted in weeks and months, means almost nothing, except to measure the distance between you and the you that is gone. But you still count the sunrises you spend with her, like a collection of precious stones you keep inside of you.
Your wound scabs, scars, and you’re spared once again. You sit with her and she reads to you as your strength returns, as you make it to the bathroom alone, without her support. After five sunrises she brings you to the big armchair downstairs, wrapped in a blanket, and you play backgammon for hours.
You know she must be counting too, but she doesn’t say it. Instead, she kisses you, and then you tell her everything, finally.
After eleven faintly pink mornings, when you can walk the stairs alone and your feet feel steady, you pull her into the largest bedroom, and you peel away the last of what she hasn’t seen.
“Jo,” she whispers when you touch her, when she touches you. She tells you she’s wanted this for so long, and you believe her. Once this would have made you ache for the time you lost, but your last escape made you realise instead you need to work with the time you have left. Stop looking over your shoulder and start looking at what’s right in front of you. So you pull her inside and you shudder around her, and you close your eyes, because you trust her, finally, completely, and you tell her so.
Then you entangle your fingers, and count the freckles on her arm, let her play with your hair, and for a moment, you just exist.
***
Days and hours under the blankets, in the bath, by the fire, can’t disguise that the blizzard thins out and the snow slowly, slowly, starts to lessen.
You wait for her to bring it up every day. You pack your bag, so you’re ready.
But she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything except sometimes, when you find her looking out of the window with this expression on her face, like something is hurting her.
You don’t push her, because you know that every day you wait, it’ll be easier to get there, to reach your goal. You’ve found an old OS map, and you think you’re about fifty miles out, yet, from the youth hostel listed on the crumpled letter in Kate’s pocket about the field trip. Doable, now your strength is back. Now the weather is changing.
You sort the tins into what you think you can comfortably carry, and start focusing more on emptying the freezer, since you won’t be able to take that with you.
And still she doesn’t say anything, until one morning, when some actual sunlight filters through the blinds, unfiltered by fog, and there’s something about the tint of the light that makes you think it might be almost spring.
Kate’s up, looking out the window, and then she turns to you and says “Do you think their vegetable patch survived this? That we could revive it?”
You stare at her, pull yourself onto your elbow. “Maybe,” you say cautiously, feeling suddenly like you’re walking on floorboards where some of them are rotting through, and you’re not sure which might hold your weight. “But we won’t be here long enough to know.”
She turns to you then, and there’s such heartbreak on her face it makes every part of you hurt. “Jo,” she whispers, pain in every syllable, “it’s been months. Do you really think he could still be…”
You push down the instinct to comfort at any cost, because you won’t lie to her anymore. Instead, you think about it. “I do,” you nod after a moment. “They had food with them, they’re resourceful. They’re young and fast. They had shelter. I do.”
Kate closes her eyes and presses her lips together, like she’s trying not to fall apart. “We could stay here,” she whispers, and you’re not sure which one of you she's trying to convince. “Make a life here, as best we can. Be happy.”
You slide out of bed and pad over to her on your bare feet. The morning chill makes the hairs on your arm stand up. You feel awake, alive. “But you’d never be fully happy,” you tell her, knowing she already knows. “You’d always wonder.”
She leans your foreheads together. “You’ll come with me?” she asks, a prayer, a mantra.
“Always,” you reply.
***
On the morning you get there you accidentally pull on a long sleeved t-shirt from Kate’s bag and you both laugh as it falls below your knees like a dress. Even on Kate the borrowed clothes are long but on you they’re ridiculous.
You remember together then, the day all that time ago when you were driving to a crime scene and Kate had to brake sharply for a cat running across the road. Your cappuccino had gone all over your shirt, and she’d been mortified.
“I’ve got a spare in the boot, boss.” Sometimes she still calls you boss, when you say things like ‘time for bed’ or ‘can you get on top?’. It makes something inside you twist, warm and achy. You think you like it, though. Think she might, too.
You have to roll up the sleeves to make it fit you, and you see her smirk. And you laugh too, a moment of sun during the long winter.
There’s thin sunlight trying to break through the fog, a valiant fight that never stops, and so neither do you. Your progress has been steady, and there are fewer people about now. Your borrowed boots make the walking easier, and with every step you take closer to your goal, you feel stronger.
Now, though, you rest, not because either of you particularly need it, but because you know she needs this. A moment to ground herself. To prepare.
Something rustles in the trees and you both turn, but it’s just a bird. A rare sight these days, and it buoys you. There are still things alive up here. Things surviving, despite the odds.
She smiles at you, some of the tightness loosening from her jaw at last. Then she takes your hand as you walk up the hill, and it’s clammy and shaking. You squeeze it, letting her know you’re there, and then you look over the top and down towards the village.
Some of the roofs have caved in, but the majority of houses stay standing, which is a good sign. You know the hostel is to the left, and you turn towards it; towards the roof dusted in white, still, and the hostel symbol on the sign in front.
You’ve made it.
Then, beside you, Kate gasps as two tall, lanky figures emerge from the building; the unmistakable gait of teenage boys.
“Is it him?” you ask.
Her breath shudders. “I don’t know.” You can feel her whole body trembling beside you.
You stand with her, one last moment of not knowing.
“Ok,” you say then. “Let’s go find out.”