Page 94 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

And Storm and Freya probably would never have known.

Though maybe Digger would have survived.

And either way we’d have just been gone as if we’d never been in the first place, a pointless flash of lightning in the greater darkness, a momentary stutter on the road to oblivion. And no one would ever have known and no one would have thought that it was sad. Gone faster and more pointlessly than a mayfly. Because even if it does only live for a day, a mayfly leaves the next generation of mayflies to each live their precious one day when their time comes. And who knows how mayflies see time anyway? Maybe their day stretches ahead of them and seems impossibly long and full of possibilities, the end of that one day so distant from their now they can’t imagine it until they hit middle age at noon or begin to feel old at dusk.

I wasn’t thinking thoughts like that then. Those thoughts come later, in loneliness, when you lie in the night and talk to yourself in your head. Then, I was running on shock and the fury that had flooded into me in place of fear. I didn’t have time to let fear freeze my brain and stop me doing anything useful. I needed to do everything I could to keep Cat alive. I needed to get her inside and safe so I could see what problems I was going to have to solve for her next.

I put her on the kitchen table because it was big and the light was better than the bedroom and also, if she was going to bleed, it would be easier to clean, and she would be angry if I spoiled her precious bedding by getting it covered in blood. Though even as I gently placed her on the hard surface I did wonder if she’d live long enough to be cross. Then the sight of her leg somehow banished that dark future possibility to the very back of my mind as the front of it lurched in shock back into the present. The leg was snapped below the knee, halfway to the shin, and stuck out to one side at an angle whose wrongness made me weak and nauseous.

This was the point where I nearly got everything wrong. It was when I started crying, drowning in a sea of sadness and fear when I should have been clear headed and swimming strongly enough for both of us. I know I was feeling horror at the thought that Cat was broken and dying, that I was going to lose my only-one and be alone, that the worst fear that had stalked both of our lives was about to happen. I was letting myself be paralysed by the horror of it. And I know that in that moment of letting myself be washed away by the emotion of it all and so nearly losing everything, Digger saved me.

Digger saved us all.

On the edge of my consciousness, I realised I’d noticed her distress, tearing in and out of the Bunker, looking at me, then bounding outside. Then waiting a beat before running back in to look at me and whine her low moaning at me. Finally she had enough and barrelled all the way in and bit me. I mean, I thought she was biting me, and the shock of it put a stop into my sobbing, just enough to make me stop and stare at her as she tried to drag me to the door.

The dog was trying to get my attention, to make me notice the even more relentless wails of unhappiness coming from the other bunker across the brambles. The babies were wide awake, alone and clearly very hungry and distressed. And Digger was outraged by the fact that I was ignoring them. Somehow that broke the spell that had me frozen, suddenly having two things to worry about instead of just one. Cat’s injury, her survival was such a huge fear for me that my brain had just jammed and couldn’t move in the face of it. I knew that I didn’t know enough medicine to save her if her wounds were as bad as they looked, and so I went small, stuck and useless in the face of that immense ignorance. Because I couldn’t trust myself to do the one big thing I might have to do, I stopped doing even the little things that I could. And Digger snapped me out of it by reminding me of the babies. And because I could do something about them – milk the goats, feed them, change their nappies – my thinking unfroze itself, maybe because knowing I had to do something for them stopped me looking at the one big terrible thing and made me make the first decision: which was to prioritise what needed to happen in what order, because clearly both were important – caring for Cat and keeping the babies alive – but one was much, much more urgent. So, without knowing I was doing it I found myself again, doing, not frozen and sobbing. The babies could take care of the crying for the time being. I had stuff to take care of. I needed to triage.

Cat was still breathing. Her leg needed straightening. The pulse in her neck was still there, bumping weakly. Straightening was going to hurt her, so it was best to do it while she was unconscious. It was what First Aid and Safety for Dummies called a closed fracture, which meant the bone wasn’t sticking out of the skin. So that was good, and that helped me keep moving and thinking, gaining a sort of momentum I could use. I knew what to do – splints, something to tie them with, and so on – and as I got everything ready, I was also steeling myself for the hard moment of pulling the leg back into place, especially with my wounded hand now feeling like it might be pretty useless again. And so when that moment came I’d worked out the mechanics of how to do it, and so that too was easier.

I got up on the table straddling Cat’s broken leg, holding the thigh in place with my knees as I leaned forward, took a deep breath and then straightened the horrible angle of her lower leg, pushing towards her foot as I did so, since I needed to try and make a little space for the broken bone-ends not to grind against each other. I was pleased that my wounded hand was still able to make a strong grip. I did everything fast as decisively as I could because my brain was back in charge and I realised that doing it hesitantly was more likely to fail at the first attempt and thus cause more pain and maybe more damage. Feeling the two pieces of bone move under my hands angling against each other where there was no joint made me feel nauseous again. But the fact Cat was unconscious must have helped because her muscles, normally so taut and wiry were slack, and so not fighting me. And by the time I’d done my fast and hopefully well-controlled wrench, and Cat bucked against me, and the muscles did clinch and spasm, the thing was done.

Cat made a noise that was half a gasp half a gurgle and then dropped her head back on the tabletop and lay there, tremors of shock making her shake so badly I feared I’d done something very wrong.

I leaped off the table as cleanly as I could without knocking her any more and spun round to look at her face, but she was still unconscious. I checked her breathing and pulse, my own heart pumping with anxiety, but was relieved to feel life was still coursing through her veins. I put my ear on her chest and listened to the fast thump and whoosh of her heart. That was when I noticed that though she was breathing, it was at a sped-up pace, and, more than that there was definitely a sharp crackle in each intake and outflow, like her lungs were stuffed with dried twigs and thorns. But because I was now in the triaging business, I decided breathing happening and a pulse present was good enough for now, and so decided to quickly see to the babies crying so insistently in the background. Luckily there was enough goat milk from the day before, so I wheeled them in to the kitchen space and fed them while I watched Cat in case she woke and tried to get off the table and so fell on the concrete and made a terrible day even worse.

It took a while feeding and changing them while continually checking on Cat every time I thought I heard a change in her breathing.

By the time it was done both of the babies were happily in their pen which I had dragged in the kitchen so as to be close to us.

The rain had stopped and I left them to have a closer look at Cat despite a terror of what this might reveal about her injuries.

Her face was no longer pale because the bruising had set in, as had the swelling from the impact of her fall so there was more colour, but it was colour of the wrong kind. She definitely had a big injury across her upper torso where her ribs on one side were bent into a sharper curve, offset with the other side. The good news was that if they were broken the bones did not stick out of her skin. Her chest was already blue and purple with a bruise that spread the whole way across her body. It was horrid to look at because it seemed to be telling me there was worse damage inside her that I could not see. The pink stuff was still dribbling out of her mouth which worried me a lot. But when I looked inside her mouth I could see that she had bitten her tongue as she landed which was probably the cause of that bleeding not – I hoped against hope – the result of some deeper internal injury. Her breathing was steadyish but still crackly, and though her heart was still beating faster than normal it was a regular beat which I also – desperately – took to be a good thing. And as I stood back, I looked at her splayed out on the table and the two babies in their pen on the floor beyond I realised I was not going to be able to cope with this by myself.

Not for long anyway.

I was pretty sure that whatever was wrong with Cat was going to need more and more of my time to help her with, which would be less and less time for the babies. That was when I decided to light the tyres. It was a decision I had to make by myself because of course Cat was unconscious and couldn’t discuss it with me, and even though I did not really think that Freya and Storm would turn back if they saw a column of black smoke in the sky coming from where they had just fled from, it was still a small chance worth trying for, that they might come back to see what the emergency was. There was of course the very real possibility that they would think it was Russians signalling to each other, but there was also a slim chance that they might realise it came from the Bunker, and that might prick some conscience or remorse in them that would make them come back to see why we had lit the tyre signal. Like I said, it was a very thin chance but at that stage I had to try anything. As I went to where we kept the tyres covered up and dry under a tarp I imagined the conversation I would be having with Cat if she was with me. I think she would have agreed it was worth trying, but I think she would also have told me to prepare myself for the other chance, which was that Russians might see the smoke signal and think it was meant for them. It might bring them to our doorstep. And maybe because Cat was not actually with me, I found myself answering that maybe if the Russians did come, and it was the ones we had seen up in Stitch Country, it might not even be a bad thing after all. I still felt that the one I’d first seen in the tank in the Bear shirt had kind eyes.

It’ll be OK, I said. I mean, I think it’ll be OK. I just didn’t get a bad feeling from them, not like Storm did.

And then I started laughing at myself, crouched in the middle of the old airfield trying to kindle a fire under the signal tyres. Because who was I talking to and why was I talking? I think the fact that I might never speak to Cat again nor she to me was making me voluble, wanting to say things out loud rather than just leave them to rattle around inside my head unspoken and unheard.

The bare truth of it was this: I needed help, needed it so badly it was worth taking risks to get it because the cost of not getting it would be too high. It wasn’t a perfect solution but we weren’t living in a perfect world, just the one we had in front of us.

And then it was too late for second thoughts as the tinder took and the fire caught at the crumbling old tyres sent their stink into the sky along with a dark plume of smoke. I turned my back on it and ran back into the Bunker, trying to make my mind settle and be calm about the uncertainty of what the black pillar in the sky above me might bring.

That afternoon was full. I made a splint for Cat’s leg and lashed it on. I kept the babies occupied and cleaned and sometime in mid-afternoon I went out and milked the goats, at the same time putting another couple of tyres on the fire. I then had to deal with the problem of both how and whether to move Cat from the table, which she might fall off, to the bed. In the end I decided that it was good having Cat at table height rather than low down in a soft bed where it would be hard for me to work on her if I needed to. So I pulled the mattress from the bed into the kitchen and awkwardly lifted Cat on it as I pulled it on to the tabletop. It was probably a rash thing to do, but in the end I got it done and she lay there looking bruised, weak and almost terminally asleep beneath her rainbow of bruises. I pushed the table against a wall so that she was safe on one side from falling and then I went and got some of the wood from the workshop and strapped it on the other side of the table, making a cot out of the tabletop so that she was protected on both sides but I could still get to her to help her. As I covered her with a blanket I wondered if I was really doing it to keep her warm or just so that I didn’t have to look at the changing colours of her massive bruises.

Looking after the babies, milking the goats and keeping the fire going in the house so that everyone would be warm kept me busy enough till the light began to fail and of course anytime I wasn’t working I was sitting by Cat reading First Aid and Safety for Dummies trying to figure out what to do with the huge bruise across her misshapen chest. I wondered if the lopsidedness meant that she had ribs puncturing her lungs, which might explain the funny noise of her breathing but then I decided the fact she was not bleeding out of her mouth any more meant that her lungs were still intact. That didn’t mean there weren’t a lot of organs inside that might well be bruised or bleeding her away into death. I just tried not to think of that because there was nothing I could do about them. I wasn’t a hospital in the crowded clever past, I was just me in the empty now. I tried to keep positive. I tried to stay away from the hole in the middle of myself that threatened to suck me in every time I forgot about it. I tried to keep moving, like Cat would. By the time it began to get dark I realised that Storm and Freya would not be coming back. And I also thought that Bear Shirt’s party would be so far over the horizon by now that they would not have noticed our signal fire at all. In fact, it had just been a waste of tyres, but it had kept me going through the afternoon. I realised I was hungry and hadn’t eaten anything at all, so I was heading back to the kitchen and Cat when I heard the horse whinny.

Since the fire was no longer roaring and spitting, the faint sound carried across the emptiness all around me. It was a distant noise, but it was unmistakably a horse. My heart bumped in excitement as I ran down the shallow slope from the bunkers and clambered to the top of the tank, trying to see the girls coming back in the direction from which the noise was coming. Premature relief was flooding my system, which was almost as mind-stalling as fear and I tried to steady my brain as I balanced on the top plates of the turret, scanning the rain-sodden terrain spread out in front of me. It took me a while to admit I had no sight of them; nothing was moving except the birds that flicked from tree to tree or soared high overhead in the failing light of early evening. Even though I felt gutted with disappointment and naïve for believing in a sudden happy ending that was clearly more hope than reality, I wasn’t a fool. There was a horse out there.

Whose horse it was remained an open question, and one of the possible answers had the potential to be the very opposite of relief. So, I went and got my bow, and then I fetched the Russian’s gun from the high box where Cat had hidden it from the girls. I had to put it together with its magazine full of bullets and carried it as I jogged towards the motorway in the direction of the horse noises.

If it was Freya and Storm returning with second thoughts and two pairs of hands that I could really do with, it would be one happy thing, even though at that stage I hadn’t thought it all through, because of course what they had done had sent Cat up on to the unstable roof of the Tower, and so they were to blame for her injuries. At that point I just needed help so I could focus on Cat and not the demands of the babies. If it was the Russians, I would at least be prepared in case they were as dangerous and hostile as the girls made us believe they were. The horse seemed not to be moving from the noise it was making and indeed the whinnying got shriller as I crossed the M-way and got closer to it. And now I could hear it better, coming from somewhere in the trees on the way to the quarry, I could sense the growing urgency of the whinnying, as if the horse was in trouble. Every step I took away from Cat cost me as I crept forwards, stalked by the fear that she had woken up and was in pain and didn’t know where I was. Nevertheless, the rising desperation of the unseen horse pulled me onwards.

I found myself knowing where I was going once I entered the Miserable Wood. There was a sort of inevitability to it, on this day when the girls had gone. I came to the edge of the dripping green space made by the fallen, overgrown legs of the pylon. The horse was the mare, Red, and she was tethered to one of the struts, almost exactly as we had found her when we first came upon the horses and the dead Russian’s camp all those long lifetimes ago, before we saved the girls from the quarry. It was disorienting, like the past was looping back into the present. I don’t know why they left her there.

Maybe they didn’t. Not both of them. It wasn’t something I could see Freya deciding to do, leaving me a horse. I think Storm did it by herself. Maybe it was her parting gift to me, her way of apologising in a way that was more believable than the “sorry” that had seemed so stark and insincere in the short note they’d left. Freya and Storm weren’t there to ask, nor were the two faster horses, so I’ll likely never know the truth of it. But what I did know at the time was two other things: Firstly, that in its own way it was as inexplicable and miraculous as Devil coming back from Stitch Country with the other goats in tow. And the second thing was the bigger one, and of course I’ve told this backwards, because it was also a surprise but a very much more dangerous one. It was the three wolves. Cat and I had seen wolves, moving across a very distant snow-covered hillside, long before we came to live under the Tower. And we’d heard them a couple of times, in the dark, maybe five winters ago. But despite the fact I’d never seen one up close anywhere except an old picture book, I had no doubt about what the trio of animals looking at me were. Bigger than a fox, smaller than a horse. Grey-brown fur bristling up into a mane around shoulders hunched up behind yellow eyes that were simultaneously both dead and terrifying, and in front of all that muscle that moved under the fur as they crouched and slunk with their chests low to the ground, the main bad things and the focus of my attention – big and shockingly white teeth bared in a black-lipped snarl.