Beyond All Time

Four people were huddled around together, peering out of blankets and old jumpers towards a fire. There was no wind but the fire roared, spitting out little flickers of light, lining the four faces with a shadowed edge.

Immy was hunched over an old pair of boots, blonde head down, clutching a needle. They’d found an old skip a few days before full of hospital apparatus, and although most of it was far past use, there were a few bits and pieces to take away. Some rusty scissors, a few blunt needles, bottles (and cold water to fill them up with).

There was a general murmur of conversation flowing through the rectangle of mouths, each spread around the embers, linked together. It was homey, even though the only thing for miles around was harsh brown sand. All eyes were on Immy’s fingers. Pushing and pulling the needle through along the tear in her boot.

Sewing was a skill she’d acquired years ago, way before Elosen, Ally, or even Jaz. Sewing was sitting on a campfire bed next to her brother, humming and working away at clothes with holes. Sometimes putting a button back in place. The dirty fingers she held the needle with weren’t new either. Just a few shades grimier than they were before.

‘I found a radio this morning.’ Ally said quickly, rushing the words out like they were hurting his mouth to hold in.

Nobody said anything, his words hadn’t even happened, not yet. Not until the impact settled. Immy was the first to react, losing concentration, pricking herself with the needle. She felt no physical sensation to it, but it was enough to get her to look up.

‘Really?’ Her eyes were wide, mirroring the burning fire before her.

‘Well, he says he found it but I saw it first.’ Elosen stood up, stretching out his limbs. His chest was puffed out, testosterone pumping out. Challenging Ally pointlessly. He gestured inland with a stumped hand, ‘It was over there.’

‘The way we walked?’ Jaz asked, sitting up. Her eyes stirred with interest. Years ago, around the time of the first outbreak, the government had given families radios to communicate. It was a one way system, receiving national and international broadcasts. Updates on ‘the situation’.

‘No, the opposite direction.’ Ally said. Even his smile wavered with curiosity. No one had seen a radio after the second wave. Once people started finding out that the virus wasn’t just an accident they went about burning the radios, smashing them up. It wasn’t anarchy, just a token. A sprinkling of defiance as the government dissolved into nothing.

‘How far?’ Immy put the shoes down, tucked the needle back into the bag she’d made for it. Her eyes moved about the half derelict room quickly, pacing around in her sockets. A radio meant that she’d have something else to learn. She could take it apart and see how it worked, then put it back together. Her mind buzzed with all the possibilities.

‘It’s hard to say.’ Elosen grabbed a handful of wood from their side of the line and started lumping it into the fire. Dead houses were great for firewood, and if you could be bothered to dig through layers of earth and rubble, there was old furniture to be had. Rotting and falling apart, but good enough to burn. ‘A couple hours walk each way, maybe more.’

‘Jeez, why were you out that far?’ Jaz yawned. Her eyes drooped and she shuffled herself closer to the fire, and to Ally, wrapping her blanket tighter. It made no difference to her temperature, but the feeling of being wrapped up tight comforted her, made it easier to drift to sleep.

‘Looking for cans mainly.’ Ally crossed and uncrossed his arms over himself. His eyes flashed darker, black in the dull light. Cans were the only food they really had. Most of the time they didn’t feel the need to eat, but looking for old cans of beans gave them some kind of direction. Something to do in the endless days.

‘There’s a reason we do that with all four of us.’ The words rushed out of Immy’s mouth too quickly to breathe back in. Her eyes flicked to Elosen, but he didn’t seem be holding any expression. Jaz kept her head down, body angled towards Ally. The silence bubbled out of the fire, lingering.

‘She’s right though, really. Isn’t she?’ Elosen broke the quiet, laughing. It was sincere, but his eyes were hard glossy shells, staring right through Immy. ‘Sorry I couldn’t reattach my hand. It wasn’t exactly the main priority at the time.’

Nobody said anything. Elosen’s laughter carried through the empty street. Decaying building after decaying building. Most of them were half buried in sand, mud, waste. It was like the Earth was starting afresh. Everything manmade was slowly being covered, the slate wiped clean.

Eventually there would be nothing left, and they all knew that. There would be no people at all; even the mutated survivors would die somehow. Arguments and sarcasm were human, something that shouldn’t have existed then. But still they clung to it, grasped and held onto whatever shreds of humanity they had left.

‘Come on, let’s just sleep it off. We’re all pretty tired.’ Ally yawned as a booster to his sentence. Jaz was practically asleep already, curled up on the floor. The only part of her visible was her head on Ally’s lap, his fingers woven into her hair, curling the tangled strands.

‘I’m not really in the mood to nap right now.’ Immy stood up, disturbing the sand beneath her. She walked towards Elosen. ‘Look, I’m sorry, all right?’ Her eyes begged, pleaded to avoid confrontation. She generally liked to organize things, keep control of the situation, but that didn’t always work. ‘Let’s go now, look for this radio. Yeah?’

‘Fine.’ Elosen grabbed his makeshift backpack. The air was thinner, greyer than the usual black. A sunrise was coming.

There had been sunrises since they found each other, and they never knew how to react. They were lasting longer, but becoming fewer and less often. Most of the time they just sat in silence and watched the sun.

‘I’m not leaving you two to kill each other.’ Ally slid out from under Jaz. He bunched up one of his coats, and gently lifted her head to rest on it, a substitute for him.

‘What about Jaz?’ Elosen nodded towards her as he clambered out of the shop front.

‘She’s a big girl, she’ll be fine.’ Immy laughed. She held the window open for Ally, then climbed out after him, leaving it ajar for Jaz.

The sound of them bickering was audible to anyone awake for miles around. There was nothing else to hear, and even though she was falling in and out of sleep, Jaz’ advanced ears picked up snippets of their snarky conversations. Her mind processed them into dreams, and for a couple of hours she slept soundly, kept so by the dying fire in front of her.

The room, despite the damage of time, was almost cosy in the amber glow. They’d been living there for a few weeks, it was almost home. Something wasn’t quite the same though.

There were bags, and clothes scavenged on one side, the cleaner side. Any furniture they’d found for firewood was there too. But the other was untouched. The wall had been knocked down, and scattered around were decaying designer brands. Food packets, trinkets, jewellery. Things that they didn’t recognise. Only Elosen knew what they were, and that was because his parents had kept catalogues, years and years old, just to look at. It was all the rage before the second wave to reminisce on the governed times.

To touch this edge of history seemed almost immoral, especially to Jaz. She drew a line in the dirt, in the dark sand, and declared the opposite side out of bounds. She’d sit on their side of the line and just stare for hours at the rotting memories.

She was the youngest, so they just let her be. Nobody questioned her, and Ally had even taken to sitting with her. She’d rest her head on his shoulder and they’d sit, just watching, exchanging heartbeats.

And that’s what she did when she woke up. She stirred, the sound of Elosen’s voice carried, no matter how far away they were, and she couldn’t get back to sleep. Her head was full of stories. It told her about people she didn’t know, people that lived way before the virus. And it hurt.

The whole of her body was dark, dirty with sand. Everyone else seemed to dress as if they were cold, but maybe they were. Jaz wasn’t. She ripped and tore clothes to cover as little of her as possible. Unbelievably hot under her own greying skin.

She tore the blanket off and bunched it back with all the others. The fire was almost completely dead, but it still let out light enough to see around the room properly. What was left of the ceiling was wholly blacked out from smoke.

Jaz imagined herself sprouting wings. In her mind she flew up and wiped her hands across the soot. If she had wings she’d fly away.

She’d come back. She’d never leave them, but if she had wings she could follow the sun. She’d wait for it to rise, and then chase it as it fell. If she had wings, which she didn’t. Her spine twitched at the thought, and she shook it out of her head as best she could.

The floor was comfortable under her as she sat down. She perched herself on her knees, bent forward to see the other side clearer. A deep, pointless breath slipped past her lips, and she stuck her index finger into the sand. She ran it along the previous rut, redrawing the line like she did every day.

Her eyes fixed on one particular point across the back wall. Half of the building had been torn down, or was falling down from years of natural erosion, but across the back wall there was a hole. A perfect circle that had to be manmade, cut through the brick. That’s what her eye always settled on, like if she kept on staring her eyes would chisel more and more away until there was no wall left.

So her back slacked, and her hands found her knees, and she sat still. Frozen in place. Time passed through her, through the hole in the wall, and she watched it go. Her mind emptied, and for once she felt total peace. It’s not that she was usually weighed down with an immeasurable sadness, but when the rest of the world is sat in its silent grave it can feel like a personal burden, and it was one that she tended to feel, more so than the rest of the group.