Page 92 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

I talked to Cat about it that night as we turned in to sleep. We could hear Storm and Freya whispering away in their room, obviously speaking low trying not to wake the babies. The Bunker felt fuller and warmer somehow than it ever had, maybe safer too.

This is nice, I said. Like a family.

Don’t jinx it, said Cat.

And then after a pause she said, But yes. It is nice.

That’s when I told her what Freya had said to me about being soft being OK.

Hmmm, Cat said. Let’s take it slowly. One day at a time. Let’s not, you know…

Count our chickens before they’re hatched, I said.

Those girls aren’t chickens, Mouse, she said. I still think they’re wild. Like leopards. And they don’t change their spots.

I went to sleep grinning and looking forward to telling Storm that Cat thought she was a leopard. For some reason I thought she’d find it funny.

Chapter 30

In battalions

Mouse – Year 201 AG

I woke the next morning dreaming of a tree full of crows, all huddled together on the leafless branches against a winter sky. And then something spooked them, something bad I could not see behind me and they all rose in the same moment, in a black explosion of oily feathers going in every direction at once, and I was filled with the kind of sticky dread you only really get in a dream, convinced that they really should have stayed on the tree because now they weren’t safe, but before I could turn to see what from, I woke with Cat shaking me back into consciousness.

And I never got to tell Storm about the leopard thing because the reason Cat was tugging me out of my unlucky-feeling dream was that they were gone. Run off. In a pelting rainstorm. With the horses. But not the babies. They left them, and a note that read SORRY. THANK YOU. BABIES IN OTHER BUNKER. SAFER WITH YOU THAN US.

I was still half mired in my dream when we ran out into the rain, which was falling so thick and hard it felt like it was trying to hold us back so that we couldn’t interfere with the girls’ getaway. Cat had the presence of mind to grab her rain cape from the hook on the door as she ran past but I careered into the downpour with no protection, pounding along behind her as she wrenched the oilskin over her shoulders while she ran for the other bunker. And even though she was dressing as she ran, she got there ahead of me, so that by the time I slid into the library bunker wet as a fish just pulled from the river she was bent over the cot looking down at two happily sleeping babies.

They’re fine, she said. Untie Digger but keep her on the lead.

Digger was wagging her tail at us from where she’d been tethered in the corner of the room.

Maybe she can help us find them, she said.

Despite the speed at which we were moving, I was still thinking slowly, not because I’d just woken but from the shock of the message and the fact of their great betrayal. Which hit like a punch that came at us out of nowhere.

I could hardly breathe. I felt winded by it. Now I can think back and see there were plenty of signs I missed or that I, maybe Cat too, just chose not to believe. Now, far beyond the immediate shock of it all, I even understand why they did what they did. But there is a part of me – maybe all of me – that won’t forget no matter how hard I try and which can’t forgive them. Not just for the leaving, not for that in itself. What I can’t forgive is how they did it.

If we’d known. If we’d all talked more about it. Planned it even, they could have gone but everything else would not have happened. Cat and I wouldn’t have been so surprised, so shocked, so hurried that we didn’t quite think straight when we really needed to. We forgot that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, and went too quickly.

Where are they? I said.

They’ve taken the horses, but the goats are still here, she said.

Which way did they go? I said.

She ran back to the other bunker without answering. By the time I caught up she was coming back out with the binoculars.

Slow down, I said,

No time, she said, pushing past me. Need to see where they’ve gone. Top of the Tower is the best viewpoint.

I grabbed the binoculars as she passed, stopping her in her tracks. She didn’t let go. We looked at each other.

I’ll go, I said. My spaceship. Your ankle.

She didn’t smile. Just tugged at the binoculars.