I’d done it before, but I sifted again, moving ash and blackened wood around with my feet. Clouds of dust rose up, and soon I knew my vision would be blurred, so I worked quickly. Bedroom, living room, kitchen - there was nothing to suggest that Fiona had been here when the fire broke out.
I loved her, but right then I so wanted to find her bones.
Leaving the church, I realized that I would never go home again. There was no need, because it was no longer there. So I walked the town once more, looking in places where I had already searched, glancing into gardens which were already becoming overgrown, amazed at the silence of this place. That was something I could not grow used to. Never a particularly busy town, nevertheless there had always been an atmosphere of bustle. The main street was where most of the shops were, and it was forever frequented by the town’s retired contingent going for coffee or their morning papers, and at lunchtime office workers would visit the several restaurants and pubs. In the evenings too it was a lively place, though rarely any more than that. Now, even though the place was not completely silent, it was devoid of the chatter of people.
Birds seemed to have taken over. Perhaps their songs had always been there, subsumed beneath the constant rattle of traffic, but now they were given free rein. They lined the rooftops and windowsills, pecked around on the roads, and flitted overhead in manic celebration.
It wouldn’t be long, I knew, before Usk began to take on a wild appearance. Always proud of their town, most of the residents had gone to great lengths to make sure their gardens were well planted. Those plants would no longer have to fear the shears or clippers of artifice.
‘Toby!’ The shout came from far away, the direction confused by echoes.
‘Bindy?’
‘Toby, the river!’
I ran. Past the old law courts, across the parking lot, through an alleyway, and out onto the main street. I was gasping already and cursing the middle-aged spread that I’d willingly let settle.
Something for me to hold on to
, Fiona had said once as we made love. As I pelted along the road, the river bridge came into view around a curve in the main street. Bindy was standing on it, not far from the block wall, leaning over the stone parapet and looking down.
‘What is it?’ I called as I ran.
She glanced up and pointed. ‘Jamie!’
I heard his voice then, more drunken shouting and rambling, and if he’d been close to me, I’d have gleefully punched him. He was a tiresome idiot.
Am I really trapped here with him for however long?
I ran up beside her and looked over the stone parapet. Jamie was down at the river’s edge, and he had something slung over his shoulder. His things?
‘Don’t be an asshole!’ I shouted. ‘You get over, they’ll shoot you before—’
‘Fuck off,’ he said wearily.
‘He won’t listen,’ Bindy said. ‘And he’s not going to swim.’
I realized what he had over his shoulder then - the little dead girl from the churchyard.
I climbed onto the parapet and judged the drop. Maybe twelve feet.
And if I break my leg?
I thought.
I’m stuck in Usk with a waitress and a loser, and I’ll end up dying in bed
.
‘Jamie, what are you doing?’ It was a stupid question, because I could already guess. As ever, he was trying to be defiant, because that was the only way he could hide his fear.
‘Helping her escape,’ he said, giggling. ‘See how far she’ll get.’
‘They’re trying to keep this thing contained,’ I said, and I blinked, confused. Did I
agree
with what they were doing? I hadn’t really given myself time to consider that, not yet.
‘You’re a pompous shit, Toby. Y’know that? You should listen to yourself sometimes, look at yourself.’ Jamie stepped down the riverbank onto some mud flats. The river rushed by several feet from him.
I almost jumped. If I had, perhaps I would have stopped him. But the real reason that kept me up on the bridge was the idea that the trees across the river could be home to snipers. I didn’t want to be close to Jamie when they started shooting.
But there was no gunfire as he approached the river, and none as he shrugged the girl off his shoulder and into the mud. Her limbs were still loose, eyes clear.
There’s been a recurrence
.
‘Jamie, do you want other people to go through what you’re going through?’ Bindy asked.
‘Yes,’ Jamie said. He pushed the child into the water. I winced, expecting gunfire, and as we watched her float away, I realized that I had failed. I was a coward. A jump, a punch, and I could have stopped him.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘Yes, ’cause if I have to go through it, why shouldn’t other people?’ There wasn’t an ounce of regret in his voice. In fact, I thought I heard an element of glee as he giggled again, took a half bottle of whiskey from a pocket in his cargo pants, and started drinking.
‘You’re a fucking idiot, Jamie,’ Bindy said, ‘and you’ll get us all killed.’ She was watching the little girl carried out by the river.
The water flow was quite fast here after being channeled through the bridge’s three arches, and the body started to turn as it moved downriver, spinning clockwise with arms and legs splayed, hair billowing out around it.
The dust will be washed from her eyes now
, I thought. A tree overhanging the river snagged her clothing for a beat, but then she moved on, and soon she was out of sight around a bend.
I realized that Jamie had already walked back up the bank and skirted around the old tollhouse at the bridge’s end. He was heading back along the main street, bottle clasped loose in one hand, and he swayed slightly as he walked. Still drunk. Jamie would always be drunk, and I wondered how much worse he’d be sober.
‘What do we do now?’ Bindy asked. She had moved closer to me, and she reached out as she spoke. I took her hand.
‘Just carry on,’ I said. ‘I’m still looking.’
‘But if you
do
find her—’
‘I’m still looking.’ I let go of Bindy and started following Jamie.
‘You’re not, in case you were wondering,’ she said, as she followed on behind.
‘Not what?’
‘A pompous shit.’
I shrugged as if I didn’t care.
Jamie was sitting on the curb close to the post office, a stupid grin on his face. Waiting for us. Waiting to gloat.
‘What?’ Bindy said. I cursed her silently for encouraging him.
‘Showed them,’ he said. He laughed, but I detected an uncertainty in him. The laughter was there to cover that, perhaps for himself.
‘Yes, you really showed them, Jamie,’ I said. ‘They’re sure to buck up their ideas and let us leave now. Prick.’
He went to stand, swayed, and I saw violence cloud his face. I didn’t want to fight him, because I’d never been a fighter. But I realized it was something else that would come between him and his uncertainty, and he was set on the course now.
He threw his empty bottle away and took a step toward me, and then the chopper came.
‘What do they want now?’ Jamie said. He sounded scared.
‘Stay where you are,’ that mechanical voice instructed.
‘Lecture,’ I said. ‘We’re their pets, and they’re going to give us a good talking-to.’
I was right. But they didn’t say another word. Instead, as the chopper hovered just above the buildings fifty yards along the street from us, a man leaned out with something in his hand.
Camera and microphone
, I thought, and then Jamie flipped back onto the pavement, blood spewing from his throat just below his Adam’s apple. His eyes were wide, hands waving like separate animals as they tried to find the wound, and before they could, a second shot rang out. This one was right on target, and the top and back of his head splashed across the post office’s front steps.
The helicopter left. Bindy had turned away, but I couldn’t help but look. I’d seen a lot of death, but there was something worse about this one. For a few seconds, as blood dripped, his left foot twitched, and his eyes slowly turned up in his head. I couldn’t work out what it was.
‘And then there were two!’ Bindy said, verging on hysteria.
And that was it. Because inside I knew we’d be in here for a very long time, and prick though he was, Jamie was company. And prick though I was, distant and aloof, I knew I could never hope to survive this on my own.
I went to Bindy and held her, and this time it was me taking comfort from the contact as well. She felt warm and alive, and I held on to that with everything I had.
That night, Bindy moved into my room at the hotel. I did not object, and she didn’t ask. She simply dropped her small bag of belongings next to mine, stripped to her underwear, and climbed into bed. I put my arm around her shoulders, and she rested her head on my chest, and soon she was asleep. There was nothing sexual at all. I smelled her, felt her heat, felt her heavy breasts pressed against my side, but I didn’t stir. This was pure survival instinct, and though we didn’t need each other’s bodily warmth, there was so much more to share.
The next day we went about burying Jamie. I tied a bag around his head so that we didn’t have to look at where wildlife had been picking at him. Bindy broke into a hardware and do-it-yourself store to find a shovel and pick. We carried him together across the main street and through a small alley that led to a pub garden. There were rose beds here, so the ground was still quite soft even in the summer heat, and I saw no reason to carry him all the way to the church.
We took turns digging. While Bindy dug, I squatted and watched her. There had never been any attraction - and the thought of betraying Fiona’s memory was terrible to me - but for the first time I realized what a striking young woman she was. Perhaps fear took this away from her, but now, digging in shorts and a vest top, sweating in the morning sun, mud streaked up her legs, she was quite beautiful. I enjoyed watching her, and that enjoyment ceased only when I saw movement from Jamie’s body.
I gasped, stood upright, and saw sparrows flitter away from his bloodied chest.
Only them
, I thought;
it was only them
. But when it was my turn to dig again, I used the pick and made sure we planted him deep.
It took a couple of hours, and halfway through, Bindy went to the shop and came back with a couple of bottles of water. The shop stank now - so much stuff in there had rotted, its stink was rank and stale - but there was enough canned and bottled goods to see us through for a long time.
‘Are we going to be here forever?’ she asked, as I shoveled dirt in on top of Jamie.
I paused, panting and sweating hard, and leaned on the shovel.
She doesn’t seem so scared now
, I thought. And there
was
something changed about her. Maybe it was because Jamie had gone, or perhaps it was the simple fact that we’d slept comforting each other, holding the nightmares at bay.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Or at least until they know exactly what happened here.’ Past her head I could see one of the camera tripods on a building’s rooftop. Soon, it wouldn’t be long before they could watch us almost anywhere if we were outside.
Bindy nodded, then looked down at Jamie’s grave. ‘We’ll be okay,’ she said, and she sounded so certain that I wondered if she’d been stronger than me all along.
The he licopter overflew the town all day, turning a tight circle several times if it saw us in the street. It dropped those two men down a few times, letting them set up other cameras before lifting them away again. I supposed we could have gone to those buildings and smashed up the cameras, but maybe there would be a punishment for that. These people seemed keen to keep their own special lab rats under control.
Bindy helped me look for Fiona. I couldn’t find it in me to say I wanted to do it on my own. Then after we stopped for lunch, I realized that I
wanted
her with me. She was good company; she seemed to have taken her fear under control; and I found myself stealing more glances at her as we walked.
I really am a pompous shit
, I thought, because I’d never given myself a chance to know this woman at all.