Page 4 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

One big, long shed was used for a different thing, which was soap making. Soap stopped you getting infected or catching something from people who were ill. It was as important as the antibiotic, Cat said. Later it became even more important. Even though she was young when the strangers came from the sea, she was already working in the soap shed, helping and learning how to make lye from the wood ash and mix it with the cooking fat. We still make soap now, here in the Bunker, and keep as clean as we can to stop infections because the antibiotic is just a memory now.

Anyway, back to the long-before-us: for a while the old world just drifted away as those who’d soon be dead got older and machines and factories and then electrics died too and the base became a place people would come from far away to get the antibiotic, and so they started trading and that’s how they survived for a bit longer, and then people stopped coming altogether, and maybe that was because they were now dead or there weren’t enough to remember where we were. And then the skies went dark and the weather got very bad and there wasn’t a summer for two or three years and the trays of mould and the vats went bad and the antibiotic became the poison instead, as someone died when they took some, and so they stopped trying to make it any more. Cat said the antibiotic turned to the poison when her dad was a kid, but that the miles of trays on racks still had a deep, sour smell and that those long low buildings – except for the soap shed – were the saddest places she’d ever been, though she couldn’t ever quite say why.

So instead of growing the antibiotic the families became full-time farmers, and things were fine, except little cuts and infections could be deadly again. Cat’s mother only had one hand because the other one had blown up like a puffball mushroom when she had scratched herself on a bit of old rusty bob-wire when she was playing hide-and-go-seek as a child and they had to cut it off to stop the black infection spidering up her arm veins towards her heart where it would have killed her stone dead.

And then one day, two generations after they had stopped tending the vats and trays and just become farmers, strangers on two sailing boats sailed into the bay beneath the base and said they’d heard about the antibiotic, and could they trade for some?

They were nice, Cat said, and even when they were told the antibiotic had gone poisonous and the trays were now dry as dust, they still gave the things they’d brought hoping to trade with, and then stayed.

And for a week or so it looked very good, because they were proper sailors and our families weren’t really. They just fished on old lines and hooks from the rowing boats or pulled up lobsters and crabs from pots in the bay. They were coast-huggers, as I said, never going so far out they couldn’t outrun the nearest cloud if it turned towards them. The strangers offered to teach them to sail properly if they could stay and join the group, and in turn they would like to learn farming so they could help in that way too. Only thing was, presents weren’t all they’d brought for us.

They carried a small cough.

It didn’t start like anything big, just a tickle in the throat. But then it got worse, fast. The sailors went first, drowning in their own lungs, which is how everyone knew it had come with them, and then slowly, one by one, our families started to get it. The coughers were made to stay in the main house away from the others who moved into one of the sheds, except pretty soon everyone was coughing and dying and in the house anyway, except for me and Cat and my mum. And then she got a tickle in her throat, and so then it was just Cat and me in the shed, which must have been really scary for Cat. Mum said she’d come back, but she didn’t and after an afternoon on our own, Cat went across the yard to see what she should be doing.

Cat’s parents were already in the coughing house of course, but they didn’t come to the window when Cat stood balancing wonkily on an upturned bucket in the rain, holding me in the crook of her arm, standing on tiptoe so she could reach the glass and bang on it and shout for them. After a long while during which all Cat and I got was wet, one of the other children who was coughing a lot came to the other side and said they couldn’t come now, not ever in fact, because they’d gone. And then my mum came to the door with a rucksack in one hand and a cloth wrapped round her mouth and made Cat stay away, upwind, while she held me for a minute, squeezing me tight as tight but with her head turned away in case a cough happened.

I was there but I remember nothing of this. I was only a baby. This is just what Cat told me.

Then my mum gave me to Cat and told her to take the rucksack and run, run before we started coughing too. She pointed out into the rain and told Cat to get far away and not come back for a week. And even then she was not to come close if she still heard coughing. She said not to come close until a grown-up who wasn’t coughing came out and said it was OK. She said if no one came, she definitely shouldn’t come inside. At all. Ever. Because then the only thing in the house would be the cough, waiting to get us too. She made Cat swear and she told her to take one male and two of the female goats and to milk them so I could feed, and let the others go before we left, because no one in the coughing house would be able to feed them.

Cat did what my mum said. She freed the other goats, took the rucksack, bundled me up and tried to outrun the coughing.

Cat’s small and wiry. And she’s always been a good runner. She carried me and the pack as she ran, leading the goats through the thunderstorm the rain had turned into, and she only stopped when she got to the remains of the next village inland, where she’d been with her parents in the summer, on a picnic, scavenging for useful things. She found us a house with a good roof and a chimney that worked and we slept in front of the fire, which she kept going all night, every night. She was small but she knew fire not only kept you warm but made the bad things out in the dark stay away.

The rain stopped after two days. After five, one of the goats disappeared in the night. Or maybe something got it. After seven days she saw smoke in the sky from the direction of our home. She thought it was a signal that we should return.

The sick house was burned to the ground. Nobody was coughing any more because nobody was alive. There was another bag of stuff left in the middle of the farmyard. There were clothes and tools and a couple of books – one that helped us for years and then really saved us and then nearly destroyed us, a heavy book with a bright yellow cover called First Aid and Safety for Dummies and one with no cover called Bushcraft 101. There was a weighted throw-net that Cat’s mother used to catch both fish and rabbits and things, made small so she could use it with only the one hand, and so the right size for Cat to use. And food, of course. And soap. There was always soap Cat said, even though it hadn’t kept anyone from getting infected this time. There was also a note, and I know what it said because Cat kept it for me, tucked safely inside First Aid and Safety for Dummies. It’s the only thing I have from my mother. It says:

Stay away now, Cat. You have to stay away even though you won’t want to, even though you’re scared and alone. Sickness might still be here. It’s dangerous. But you are still alive.

I’ve let the rest of the animals go.

Be strong. Find more books and read them. Reading will be your mum and your dad. It will teach you about the world and that will help keep you safe, and it will keep you company at night.

Teach him to read too, dear Cat.

You are strong. You are not alone. You have each other.

Don’t trust strangers like we did.

When you do feel lonely, look up at the moon. Think of us in the sky, looking back down on you with love. Always love.

Tell him too.

That he was loved.

Is loved.

You were both loved.

Cat says Mum must have burned everything else to try and kill the sickness in case we came back and it got us too.

When I was old enough to wonder what had happened to Mum after she burned the house with all the dead people in it, Cat said she expected she had just gone down to the bay and swum out. Cat said she’d read a book that said that was the nicest way to go, in the water, rocked by the sea, like going to sleep. Cat said it was the bravest thing she could think of, what my mother did for us.

I spent a long time being proud my mother was so brave. It was a good feeling. Not as good as being able to remember her.

But it was something.