In the afternoons she helped carry those who asked outside. But even in the early summer air they complained the sea breeze felt like an arctic gale. She wanted to weep with the frustration, exhaustion and bitter cruel irony of it all. They were good people. They were kind people. They didn’t deserve this. No one did. But whilst they faced everything - except the weather - with such stoicism, she had to be strong when in their company. And when she was alone she found she couldn’t cry. All she felt was burning fury at the evil humanity had created. The undead, the end of the world, it was all so utterly devoid of reason and yet, somehow, so inevitable.
She had stopped looking out to sea. No one was searching for them. No one knew they were alive. No one knew anyone was alive unless they could see them and touch them and… she shook her head, trying to think loudly of rescue to drown out those dangerously painful thoughts. But no rescue would come. She dared not admit it, but she was half-glad of that.
She dipped a spoon into the pot. It tasted bitter, almost entirely unlike spinach. She lifted the pan off the fire and left it to cool. The Abbot would distribute it to those amongst the sick who were still able to swallow. Nilda hated going into the hut and couldn’t face it in her present mood.
Though she had stopped looking out to sea, she found her gaze inexorably drawn to the waves breaking on the shore. She’d seen a horror movie the summer before last. The film was appalling. The producers had blown their miniscule budget on the soundtrack, leaving nothing left over for effects, cast, or script. The plot, though she wouldn’t call it that, was centred on an eighteenth-century Irish fishing village being terrorised by undead sailors walking up out of the waves. It was absurd, she had thought. She’d seen enough of those Floridian cop shows to know that humans decompose in water. Now she wasn’t so sure. She kept expecting that horde of the undead which had followed her over the cliffs to come slouching up the waves towards her. There was no reason she could see why they wouldn’t.
She didn’t sleep much. Every time a piece of flotsam - or was it jetsam? She couldn’t remember the difference. But every time some piece of sea-borne litter washed up against the shore, she would be startled out of sleep, convinced it was the horde of the undead, following her from where they had fallen off the cliff.
If the undead did come, if whatever animated their bodies protected them from natural decay, then there was nothing she could do. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way off the island. Her hand searched for the comfort of the short spade. One edge was serrated. She tested it with her thumb. It was sharp enough. If it came to it, she had her way out.
She’d seen that movie with Jay. It had been part of her strategy to treat him more like an adult in the hope he would stop shutting her out of his life. It hadn’t worked. And it hadn’t mattered. She bit back a sob, got up, and walked off into the woods.
There was no medicine, but if the others ate something nourishing, then maybe that would be enough to ensure that at least some of them survived. She had no basis for that reasoning but there was nothing else she could do, and she couldn’t simply let them die. But roots and leaves weren’t going to be enough.
A bird took off from a branch a short way off. Where there were birds, she thought, there was meat. There would be eggs too. She remembered that she’d said that to Jay a few weeks and a lifetime ago.
“Birds,” she said out loud, in an attempt to dispel the memory. “They can be caught.”
By the time she walked back to the beach, she’d not worked out how.
She found the Abbot sitting outside the hut. Next to him hunched Lorna Fraser, one of the older survivors. The Abbot looked tired, but following the old woman’s instructions, he was busy at something. Propelled by guilt she walked across to them.
“Did you find anything edible?” Lorna asked, kindly.
“A few more patches of dandelions. A lot more nettles.”
“Ah well, that’s something. But you know we need something more than that. I’m feeling a lot better today. I’m not the only one. I think a decent meal might do us all the world of good.”
“I was thinking the same. Bacon and eggs for preference,” Nilda murmured.
“Spoken like a townie. Spent your life in the city I expect.”
Nilda was about to snap back a retort, but the old woman began to cough. Nilda saw blood on the woman’s raised hand.
“I was used to getting food from the supermarket, yes. But I watched enough documentaries to know what food looks like in the wild.”
“And did any of these documentaries happen to mention fish at all?” the woman asked. There was a glint in her eye, an echo of a smile on her lined, wan face. She wasn’t that old, Nilda realised, not that much older than her.
“I’d… no. I suppose I’d overlooked the obvious.”
“Potatoes would be nice, but you can live on fish and nettles.”
“We’ve no rod. No bait,” Nilda said.
“You can dig can’t you? There are plenty of insects in the ground. And we don’t need a rod. We need traps. That’s far easier.”
“Traps for fish?”
“We’ll try that. But we’ll start with crabs. Good crabbing round here. Get some more branches. Thin ones that we can weave together.” She pointed at the pile that the Abbot was inexpertly threading together. “And then I’ll show you how to make a trap.”
2
nd
April
There was meat to add to the pot.
3
rd
April
Nilda looked down at the body of Lorna Fraser. The woman had died in the night. The Abbot was still in the hut, offering comfort to those who would join her shortly. Nilda tried to think of something to say. Nothing seemed appropriate. She began to fill in the grave. There were more that needed to be dug.
5
th
April
“There’s just four of us left now,” Nilda said.
“Hmm,” the Abbot murmured. He’d been quiet all afternoon. The last two survivors were asleep. That was how the Abbot described it. Nilda would have said they were unconscious.
“Is it Friday today?” she asked as brightly as she could manage.
“What? Oh, I don’t know. Why?”
“Fried fish,” she said, pointing at the saucepan lid she’d propped on top of the fire. On it two fish, the first she’d caught, were sizzling away. “Maybe we should try and wake them,” she added.
“There’s no point,” the Abbot said. “They’ll be dead by morning.”
“One last meal, then?” She regretted the words the moment she’d spoken them. She’d meant to be light-hearted, but they sounded callous.
“No. Let them sleep. Please let them die in their sleep. Please, God, let them have that last mercy.”
She looked over at him. She’d not heard him pray before except over the dead.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m tired. Tired of all of this. Tired of just keeping going. One more day, just one more day, but there’s always another day after that, all for what purpose? All to what end?”
Nilda didn’t say anything. She’d had those thoughts herself. She had kept going because giving up was just too difficult.
“We should think about heading back to the mainland,” she said, eventually. “We could build a raft. It’s not far. It’s only forty miles. Perhaps fifty.”
“You know how to make a raft? You need rope and nails. We have none.”
“We can’t stay here. If we do, we’ll die. We have to try to leave.”
“But why? What is there for us over there but pain and death? Don’t we have enough of that here?”
“We’re alive aren’t we?” she said angrily. “Doesn’t your religion teach you not to give up?”
He gave a snort. She thought he was about to laugh, but it turned into a cough. He raised his hand to his mouth. When it came away, she saw the blood. Their eyes met.
“I thought…” she began.
“I was sick, wasn’t I? We all got sick, down in that cellar. That’s how it works. You get sick, then you seem to get better. For a few days or a few weeks, all depending on the dose. And then you get sick again, and this time there is no recovery.”
“You didn’t say. I thought…”
“I knew. I just didn’t want to speak the words out loud. I hoped I was to be spared. I hoped I was different. And that is the vanity of our race. We each think ourselves special.”
6
th
April
“Now there are just the two of us. And soon it will just be you,” the Abbot said. “And then what will you do? Will you return to the mainland? Will you still search for revenge? I know you think that is what drives you. It isn’t. You are consumed with guilt. You desire to undo the mistakes of your past. None of us can do that. There are sins that can be atoned, others which cannot, and none which can be undone.”
“What is it you did?” Nilda asked.
“Did?” he coughed. She raised the cloth to wipe his mouth.
“The reason why you were in the Abbey. You weren’t always a monk. I’ve been thinking about it, about the way you care for the sick. There’s a reason why you were still in the UK. A reason why you weren’t out in some famine struck war zone. Why were you rebuilding old walls when you could have been out there doing some real good?”
“Why? Because I was caught.”
“You mean arrested? You had your passport taken away?”
“I did. They gave me a choice. Disappear into a monastery or just disappear. That was the choice they gave me.”
“Why? Who said that?
“And if I tell you, will you give me absolution? You can’t. But telling you won’t hurt. Not anymore. But once, the knowledge would have been fatal. I was only a young man, yet in a short space of time I managed some terrible things. Unforgiveable things. All on the orders of others. On the orders of the government. But you want to know how I was caught. I was asked to set a fire. One of my… colleagues had killed his wife, and then himself. The couple had two children. An infant and a teenager. The teenager disappeared. The two bodies and the still living infant were discovered by our commanding officer. I was called in to set a fire and to plant the evidence that would make their deaths look accidental. I never found out what happened to the infant, but afterwards I was tasked with finding the teenager. My instructions were simple. The entire family had died in that fire. That was what the press believed. I was to make that belief reality. It took years to find the boy. It wasn’t the only task set for me. I committed many a terrible act, yet none was so great as my single-minded pursuit of a child who’d done no harm to anyone.”
“And you found him?” she asked.
“Not exactly. I almost found him. The boy had fallen in with some very bad types. People as bad as me. Perhaps worse. An organised gang, exchanging passports and guns for heroin. I’d followed them to the exchange. I heard gunfire. I went inside. Something had gone wrong. Either one side didn’t trust the other or, more likely, no one trusted anyone. Everyone there was dead, but the boy wasn’t there. He had escaped. And that was where my pursuit ended. I wasn’t the only one who’d heard the shots. The police arrived, and arrived too quickly. There had to be a trial and for that there needed to be a criminal. The whole affair was too complicated to be covered up. The passports had come via Ireland, the drugs thanks to the Soviets. A thorough investigation could not be allowed. I was told to plead guilty. I did. I thought I would be allowed to escape. I wasn’t. I was left to rot in prison. But I knew my guilt. It crept up on me until I was consumed with a single question. What would I have done if I had found that boy? Would I have killed him? I didn’t know. I still don’t. And I hadn’t been forgotten. They arranged for a retrial, then they arranged for the evidence to disappear. I was released. I wish they had left me there, but they were always the cruellest of masters. They thought I would return to the fold. I would not, for I had peered deep into my own soul and seen the darkness staring back. They let me join the monastery. It was that or death, and I was not ready for it then. They told me the boy was dead and my life became a prison. One from which I could never be freed, because the dead can’t be asked for forgiveness.”
“Don’t you believe in eternal life and all of that?”
“Honestly?” He cracked a weak smile. “What I want, more than anything, is to find that in death there is nothing but an empty silence that will finally still the screams I hear every time I close my eyes. So, believe me when I say revenge will do you no good. Get off this island and find something good to do with your life. Find a purpose. Help others. Death will come soon enough.”
Nilda murmured something non-committal. She had been thinking back to those first few days after the fight on the railway tracks. She thought of that cottage she’d taken refuge in, of the rainwater that had drenched her, and which she had drunk. She remembered how sick she had become. She looked over at the Abbot and wondered how long it would be before death came to her.
7
th
April
She looked down at the body. The Abbot would want words said over him. She looked up at the sky. What words could she say? None. She began to shovel earth over his corpse.