32 Days Later

They went to Ivy’s apartment the next day. David found an old vespa and two helmets and drove them all the way out to Goldbridge Estate where she used to live. Neither of them wanted to go by car.

She opened the apartment door with trembling fingers, and David fought the urge to gag at the horrid stench that hit them in the doorway. Ivy put the sleeve of her sweater over her mouth and nose.

David put his hand on her shoulder when he saw her grave expression. “I have to do this,” she had said when he had asked why they were going here, even though he knew – she needed her peace, just as he did. He thought of their talk about heaven and wondered if it had sparked something inside her, since she had obviously been more of a believer than he.

All the doors in the four-room apartment were closed but one, but David didn’t ask why that was. There were old blood stains on one of the living room walls, but Ivy didn’t look at it as she tried to smile at him and then quickly made her way inside her room.
The large, dark stain on the living room carpet couldn’t be anything else than more blood, but there was no body there. David copied Ivy to keep the smell at bay, and took a few steps into the room that was located directly to the right when you entered the apartment.

One of the walls of the medium sized room was dedicated to dozens of framed photographs, arranged in a symmetrical pattern. There were photos of two young children and their father, photos of Ivy and her brother separately, one photo of a woman that looked so much like Ivy that she had to be her mother, a photo of Ivy as a baby, her brother on his first bicycle, Ivy on her birthday…

She had never told him about her family, only that they were gone too. Sure she had had nightmares, but… this? Had her father killed himself in this very room, or was it her brother? Had Ivy been here when it happened?

Ivy appeared behind him with a few photos in hand that she had collected in her room.

“Let’s go back, David,” she said quietly, as if not to disturb the eerie silence of the apartment.

“All right,” he said, turning his back on the wall with the photographs. But as he approached the door, he saw that Ivy was still standing in the living room. Her eyes were glazed over as she looked at the pictures, and she raised her hand to touch the glass frame on one of them. The one where she and her brother were smiling into the camera with their arms around each other, on a sunny day by some lake.

“Jamie,” she said, not looking at David. “He was seventeen. He’d just met his first girlfriend.”

Her voice didn’t sound like it used to. It was the voice of a devastated big sister, small and broken. David took a few steps to stand beside her again. She wasn’t holding her sleeve to her mouth anymore, as if she wasn’t aware of the smell.

“Ivy?”

She turned to him, her face streaked with freshly shed tears.

“I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed quietly, turning to the wall again. “I just don’t… Why should we keep on going, David? What’s the point?”

He put his arms around her waist and she turned to face him, looking up at him – had this been a zombie film, they probably would have kissed. Instead, Ivy hugged him back, her whole body shaking with suppressed sobs.

“There is no point,” he said quietly. “There’s only hope.”

Ivy didn’t say anything as they made their way down the stairs, but David saw the look in her eyes as she cast one more look on the run-down building that once had been her home.

Her grip around him on the vespa was tight all the way back to the shop.