Part 3

Mark and Ford took the dogs to the bonfire before Rich sprayed them down with disinfectant.

‘Right then, let’s check these bridges.’ Angel sighed.

About nine months ago, Mark, Rich and I set up base at this house. It’s on the edge of a small town, there are plenty of resources nearby and the Host population is far less concentrated than a city or larger town. We invested a lot of time in reinforcing the house with strong barricades, but we also prepared for the possible event of a siege. One of the reasons we chose this particular house is because it’s close to the houses on either side, and most of them, including this one, have ground floor extensions which we connected by a series of crudely built bridges made from bits of wood, fences, doors, corrugated iron and ladders that we scavenged. The idea is, if need be, to escape via the rooftops, and reach one of two cars that we have stationed roughly two hundred yards either end of the street that are permanently stocked with water, food, weapons, clothing, maps, torches and pretty much everything we would need for a quick getaway. Although as of yet we haven’t needed to put this plan into action, the bridges need maintenance so that if we do use them, they don’t break and drop us directly into the rotten mouths of the Hosts. We also need to keep the cars active; it would really suck if we made it to one of them and were all set to go only to find that it was as dead as a Dodo.

We spent the rest of the day just sitting around making the most of the placidity. Angel and Rich played Scrabble with a muted competitiveness that I’m convinced will result one day in them having a punch-up; my money’s on Angel, she has anger issues. Ford sat quietly on the sofa reading an old, battered copy of Paradise Lost and Mark sat at the table, fiddling around with his guns, whistling that annoying noise that people who can’t actually whistle do, you know, it’s a sort of ‘half whistle’ that’s really just tuneful breathing. I sat on the floor in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall with one leg stretched out and the other bent up as an arm rest. A thin beam of light came in through the barricade of the window just above my head and I watched the dust dance around the illumination like a school of fish being spooked by a predator.

I wondered what stories the others had regarding their experiences of the pandemic. I struggled during these calm moments to not dwell on the horrifying things I saw during the early stages, and was now an expert at shutting out those images, but it was always a sound that haunted me the most. A scream. A scream that erupted from my young daughter’s lips. It was like nothing I had ever heard before, it doesn’t compare to the contrived cries you hear on the TV, this was the blood curdling distress call of an infant in unimaginable danger piercing the ears of a parent. That was part of the hideous fabric of my memories but I never shared it. It is a faux pas to indulge in feeling sorry of one’s self in circumstances where everyone has licence for self pity. Maybe sharing our stories would be the healthier option, but we’ve all seen horrors and personally, I don’t see the point in reliving it. Instead, I keep my morale alive by thinking about the peaceful evenings with my family. Julia’s soft voice, Cassie’s ecru hair and Naomi’s alabaster skin; my girls.

Julia was never worried by the news features about T-Gondii; I think she was comforted by my seeming disinterest, though silently it concerned me. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but there was something about this mysterious parasite that was unsettling, like I could sense the hell it would bring. I remember watching a report on TV that was explaining how rats pass the parasite onto cats and my daughters’ cat Belle, was snuggled up on the sofa next to me, purring delicately. I looked down and regarded her with suspicion and fear, I thought about the possibility of finding out that she was infected and having to explain to Cassie and Naomi that she would have to be put down.

We had a bonfire as planned that night and stayed up late, keeping watch in case any Hosts wondered into our territory. We planned on going to an hospital the next night to stock up on medical supplies, so I stayed up all night on my own watching the darkness from the roof. I was nervous about our mission, we hadn’t been out in a while, and I thought about the five of us being outnumbered and surrounded. There used to be seven of us, and it was only a matter of time before five would become four.