Page 29 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

The earth’s soft enough, I said. With all this rain.

It wasn’t really, not at all, but we tore at the side of the hole and tossed handful after miserable handful of dirt down onto his hunched back until we could no longer see his coat or his twisted legs or the puddle that he was already half submerged in. It felt more like we were drowning him than burying him.

The dog joined in, as if it thought we were trying to excavate the side of the hole, not fill its bottom. It panted with exertion as it did so, and I got the strangest sensation that it was happy.

It’s playing, I said. Like it thinks it’s a game.

Cat looked up, muddy handed and out of breath.

Certainly likes digging, she said.

The sense of happiness coming off the dog was the one light thing in a very dark day. I watched it, and it turned and paused to look back at me, head cocked, one ear up, as if to ask why I was stopping.

We could maybe come back with the shovel and do more later, Cat said, stopping and looking down into the gloomy bowl of wet mud in the shadow of the ripped-out root plate, breathing hard with the effort we’d put into hiding the day’s handiwork.

Yeah, I said, feeling like all I wanted to do was sleep and forget all that had happened. Maybe tomorrow.

I think we both knew that though tomorrow would come, maybe we wouldn’t. That “maybe” made it OK to turn and walk away. I could say that our footsteps were easier as we did so, but that’d be a lie. Even though we’d left him under the earth I felt no lighter as we trudged back through the rain, heading towards a home that was now not going to feel anything like familiar, not with the two girls up there waiting for us.

Cat looked down at the dog who was trotting between us, muddy, wet and somehow happy enough to tease the ghost of a smile from her drawn face.

Digger, she said. We could call it Digger—

Seems to trust us, I said.

Yeah, she said. More than they do, anyway.

I still don’t know if they ever trusted us, not fully. I think what they had experienced before we came across each other made it impossible for them ever to trust anybody other than each other again. I can understand that. Especially now. It’s what I felt about Cat, what I’ll always feel. Though until we met them and the man with the gun I hadn’t had any experience of other people. Obviously. But even if I had, she would always have been what she was – the person I would for ever trust. Cat. My only-one, even in a crowd – if I ever saw such an unlikely thing. And they were each other’s only-ones, even when they argued or fought. Perhaps, looking back, especially when they fought, because they did it in a secret language of intense looks and whispered jabs that only they understood.

To begin with, they tolerated us. Maybe that was because they had no choice. The one called Freya couldn’t walk properly, wouldn’t scarcely talk except in terse whispers to her sister, and seemed really tired all the time. Unlike her sister, Storm, who lived up to her name by always being angry instead. If they’d have begun to cough, we’d have moved out and gone to Plan B until the coughing took them I suppose, but the tiredness didn’t, in the end, seem to be because of a disease. It was just how Freya was. Storm, on the other hand, seemed to fizz with pent-up energy that fuelled her fury. In some ways that fizziness was like Cat’s itchy-twitchiness, though that only occurs to me now, looking back at us as we all were then. At first Cat thought Freya’s tiredness might be due to some injury to her insides, or maybe because she’d eaten something bad, but in the end we found out it was both – just how she was, the tired and needy one and, in a way, the result of an injury.

That first night was uncomfortable and strange for all of us. Once we had buried the man – sort of – all I wanted to do was sleep. Not because I also felt tired, though deep in my bones I did, but because I hoped if I was asleep I wouldn’t have to keep endlessly churning over the day, rolling the cycle of events round and round in my head which did nothing but let them cut a deeper and deeper groove that I didn’t seem to be able to get out of. I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep and lose myself in either blank sleep or soft, happy dreams because that spinning mind was only going to be able slow itself down by grinding against the hardest of nightmares. This eventually turned out to be true but before that Cat and I, without talking about it, both decided that the thing to do was keep busy and try and behave normally. Which in this case was of course futile, because normal was a million miles away from the reality of two people who have been alone for ever suddenly playing host to two other scared and injured strangers.

Despite that, we focused on doing practical things to make them feel safe and welcome. Thinking it would help them be comfortable with us, Cat gave them her bed and moved some of her stuff over to my sleeping area. That only seemed to make them suspicious, which made no sense to me. And the more Cat told them they were OK and that we would look after them, the more suspicious they got. I didn’t feel a bit like eating myself, but I decided food would make everyone else feel better. Or if not better, at least not hungry. Sometimes food’s just fuel, sometimes it’s a pleasure, but this time it was more like ballast, something to weigh us down and keep our feet on the ground, even though – or maybe because – it felt like the ground itself was shifting beneath us.

I heard their uneasy whispering intensify as I went into the kitchen, but because I was basically sleep-walking through the idea of cooking, it took me a while and some fruitless searching for where I’d left the kitchen knives before I realised what had happened and how very deeply they must have distrusted their situation.

I beckoned Cat over and pointed to the knife rack she’d screwed to the wall beside the sink.

What? she said.

See anything missing? I said, pointing.

Oh, she said. Ah. They’ve been busy.

The rack was empty.

What do we do? I said.

Fuck, she said. I don’t know.

Cat was not a big swearer, like I said. She turned and walked into her sleeping space where the girls sat on the bed staring at her, their hands awkwardly hidden under the blankets. She sighed and suddenly sounded as exhausted as I felt.

Look, said Cat. Just look.

Their eyes followed her across the room as she walked over to one of the big metal tool cabinets we used to store our useful finds. Metal shrieked against metal as she yanked open the first few layers of drawers.

You want more knives? Come and get them. We got axes here too, and a big machete thing that Mouse found in one of the other bunkers over there. If it makes you feel safer, here it is, she said, her face fizzing with anger.