Page 93 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

I’ll be careful, I said.

I’ll be lighter, she said. And my ankle’s better…

And indeed there was no sign of a limp as she ran. She looked like one of the crows from my dream as she sprinted towards the Tower, cape flapping untidily as she flew past the brambles and the tank and the broken-down building beside it, and it took all my speed to catch up with her and grab her arm.

I don’t know why I was trying to stop her. I didn’t really think the Tower was that dangerous. I was more worried about her ankle, and I could see it was better and she hadn’t been lying about that. I think maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I just needed to slow everything down so my brain could catch up with my gut and settle it a bit. Because at that moment the feeling in my gut was bad, as if the girls going like that had ripped an unexpectedly large hole in me, a hole that felt full of nothing but darkness, a darkness that had its own suck to it, like a whirlpool, like water spiralling down a drain pulling everything with it. That hole in my gut had its own gravity that was threatening to pull me in on myself, like the outside of me would get sucked into the inside and then there’d be nothing left.

Maybe we should let them go, I said. Maybe they’ll come back…

No, she said. We don’t let them go off like this, unprepared, scared.

Why? I said.

Because they’re family, Mouse, she said, rain slicking her face as she stared up at me like I was being slow on purpose.

They’re family even if they don’t realise it yet. Even if they think they don’t want to be.

But this, Cat? I said. Isn’t this sneaking off them showing they don’t want to be a family. Our family?

No. This is a different thing. This is us not having solved it for Freya. We didn’t do a good job, Mouse. This is Storm trying to save her sister. Thinking this will make her better, said Cat. It won’t. But maybe we will… We don’t have time to argue, Mouse.

She tried to tug the binoculars out of my grip, I didn’t let go. I think I knew she was right but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. Maybe my head was still woozy from the dream.

Be careful, I said.

She grinned at me.

I’m always careful, she said.

In the distance the sound came to us of the babies wailing and hungry.

I’ll shout if I see them, she said. I won’t be gone long. Go. Look after the babies.

Digger wanted to follow her, but I pulled at the lead and dragged her back towards the library bunker. It slowed me a bit, so I was still outside when it happened.

That instant when everything changes, when your life turns suddenly and finds itself inescapably different from all the other moments in your life up till that point, is another thing that happens both slow and fast. Like when I killed the Russian, a fraction of time come and gone in a flash, but also painfully stretched out again and again as you go over it in your mind and try to see whether you might still be in that earlier, happier place if only you had had the sense to do something different.

So when it happens, when I hear the crack of doom above my head, I turn and see the thing that makes no sense, the tilt in my world made real as the horizontal platform that spreads in all directions from the supporting trunk of the Tower is no longer staying parallel with the ground, no longer static at all, but in motion and angling faster and faster towards vertical, turning turtle, presenting me with a nightmarish view I have never seen, that no one has ever seen from the ground, a dirty grey mottled and rain slick rooftop on which two things are moving, one slow, one furiously itchy-twitchy fast. My pilot’s chair is sliding down the tilted surface towards me, and a figure in a flapping oilskin is running uphill, past it, in the opposite direction, trying to beat the slope as it gets steeper and steeper, and I don’t understand what I’m seeing because it makes no sense and then I realise the roof’s toppling over and Cat is trying to get clear of the collapse. She knows – she must know – she’s going to fall, but she’s trying to fall on her own terms, not the Tower’s or gravity’s because if she lets them have their way she will be landing in the debris, or the debris will be landing on her. She’s going to try and jump clear in the other direction because it’s the only thing left to her, to risk the fall and take the broken bones so that she might survive, rather than end up in or under the tons of iron spiked concrete and glass now heading towards the ground behind her.

And I’m shouting her name as if that will help and she almost makes it to the top of the pitching incline when the roof snaps. It breaks across its middle, like one of the oatcakes we make. The half closest to me hinges sharply down, shedding the pilot’s chair as it slams into the supporting Tower beneath, and that impact hits as Cat scrambles upwards on the other half, on all fours now. That half of the roof is momentarily stuck at a terrifyingly acute angle and I think as long as she can hold onto the rim of the top where she is now hanging, she’ll be OK, and then the impact of the other half slams the Tower beneath, and the impact turns the top half circle that Cat is clinging to into a giant bat that smacks her grip loose and punches her into the void where there’s nothing to grab hold of but an infinity of raindrops.

But she’s Cat. And for a moment she’s there, in the air, her oilskins spread around her, untidy as a crow’s wings, and she hangs just like a crow does – looking like flight is impossible. And then like a crow she flaps her arms which must be a reflex like her legs that are trying to run in the air, and her arms snarl up in the cape and look even more wing-like and my treacherous heart leaps in hope. And then gravity reaches up and grabs her and yanks her flailing body down into the ground below, hitting at the same time as the front half of the Tower roof, and the slam of all that concrete shakes the ground under my feet taking my breath away as finally as the sight of Cat plummeting has taken my hope, my heart, my life from me in one vicious and irretrievable moment.

And the impact stirs up so much concrete dust and the dirt of centuries banked up in those untroubled rooms beneath the roof that even though it’s raining harder than I’ve ever seen it there is, for a moment, a dust cloud before the rain dampens it down.

And it’s blurry because of that dust cloud and it’s blurry because of the rain and it’s blurry because I’m running. Because if the roof didn’t flip and land on Cat there’s still hope. Hope dies last. And while it’s there it’s powering me forwards into the wreckage. And I can’t find her, I can’t see her, and it’s not just the rain in my eyes. I can’t catch a glimpse of her and it’s quiet after the cataclysmic thump and all I can hear is the distant sound of the babies, still crying, and my voice shouting for Cat, shouting itself hoarse, ripping my vocal cords raw as I beg her to call back so I can find her as I scramble over the rubble she has fallen into.

I don’t find her.

Digger does, working by smell despite the rain. I must have been tearing at the rubble, trying to move things to find her but I don’t remember that, all I know is that when I get to where Digger is my hands are raw and the bandaged one is throbbing badly again, and my knees are torn and bleeding, and when I see Cat I start wrenching at the concrete lying across her chest and when I stop, unable to move it, it’s easier to look at the rain pinking and thinning the bloodstains my fingers are leaving on the concrete than it is to look at her face, so still and white and not itchy or twitchy – or moving one bit.

And then I make myself look at her, because she is Cat and my world and the rain is still falling and Digger is still whimpering and pawing at her and so the world is carrying on so she must be alive, and if she is alive there’s hope, but the realisation doesn’t fill me with joy as much as anger, but I still don’t know why that was but fury swept into me, the white hot kind that is so pure and unrefined it destroys everything in its path, and I grabbed the concrete slab again and strained so hard it felt like all the muscles in my body were going to rip clean of whatever tethered them to my bones, like my tendons were going to snap and my heart burst at the same moment, and then there was a rough grunting noise and a broken scrape as the immovable slab shifted and tilted and stayed tilted enough that it remained where it was and I dared myself to let go and drag her broken body clear.

And as I did so she coughed a pink bubble that burst in spatters round her mouth and her head lolled sideways away from me and she coughed again and then went as still as the concrete slab, and I thought she was dead again, but I stared at her neck and saw the tiny telltale bounce of her skin over the big vein. And so I did the thing that First Aid and Safety for Dummies was very clear you shouldn’t do until the emergency services arrive, which was move her. Because the emergency services hadn’t been coming for centuries. Because I was all the emergency services left in the world, I lifted her broken body and ran for the Bunker trying not to stumble, trying not to fall, trying not to drop her and hurt her again. I was expecting her to scream in pain or tell me to stop because I was breaking her even more with each step, but she didn’t say anything, and her eyes stayed shut even as her open mouth dribbled more pinkness down her chin.

The fury stayed with me. I was furious, I was on a mission nothing could have stopped, and then there was a crump and a thump behind me and the ground bucked again and I looked back and saw nothing, and that did stop me in my tracks because a moment ago there had been a whole broken concrete tower where nothing now was. The half of the roof that had hinged down and slammed into the stalk of the mushroom tower had dealt it a final fatal blow, only delayed by moments, only delayed in fact enough to let me and my fury rip Cat free and get us both out of its way. If I hadn’t moved her we’d both have been flattened by the weight of all the rest of that downbound concrete fly-swatting us into oblivion.

And then the babies would have starved.