Back in one of the dens in the Castle, some of the friends came to congregate.
'Hey, Tom, hey, Andy!' Jane said brightly as she walked in with Emma and Jenny, freshly face-painted. Jane carried a sculpture they'd made and the girls discussed where would be best to hang it. Andy was sprawling on a sofa completely drunk, high and languidly smoking a loosely rolled spliff. The sun shone brilliantly through the curtains. The distinctive odour from the Bhuna smoke could be smelt from downstairs. The room was thick with it.
'Wow,' said Emma, as she waved her hand in front of her face. 'You're really hotboxing it in here!'
Tom was sitting cross-legged on a chair with his guitar in his lap. 'I'm pretty high and I haven't even smoked any. It's all second-hand from this nutter here!' he said. Andy started chuckling as he held out the spliff to Jane.
'Will you play something for us?' Jenny asked.
'Sure,' said Tom, and he ran a thumb down the strings of his guitar. It was so covered with band decals and stickers that the wood couldn't be seen underneath. He improvised gently on a few chords with ease. 'I was trying to teach Andy a few things, but I think that's probably out of the question now,' he said.
'Drink! Drink!' said Andy, grinning to the girls, and he jumped up. He played on his Scottish accent for comedy value and clumsily knocked cups over on the coffee table. 'Oops, that one was quite full,' he said, and then he stacked fresh ones in their place.
'Oh, I don't know if I should. Doctor says I should cut back,' Emma said drily.
'No I don't,' said Andy.
'You're right. Stuff it. Anyway, technically the sun's been setting since noon.'
'That makes it okay,' said Jane, laughing.
'Yeah, we can't have you drinking before noon,' said Andy, as he poured a rosé and lemonade, which he knew was Jane's favourite, and gin and tonics for the other two. 'That is, unless you're carrying on through the night till the small hours. Or if the sun comes up when you're still having your after-party.' Andy said, sniffing. 'Bloody rude, that.' He kept pouring.
'Or if you have a hair of the dog for a hangover,' said Tom.
'Right before you go to work,' said Jenny.
'Or if you just call in sick and have a cheeky weekender,' said Emma, and the groups' laughter made Tom fumble and stop playing for a moment.
'Been there, done that!' he said.
'Think we all have,' said Jane.
Andy passed out the drinks, eager to have people join in the good times, to share the feeling and come together.
The girls hung up their sculpture on the curtain rail. They made a garland of mobile phones strung together with a severed length of phone cable. They were smart, expensive-looking phones, probably the best you could get, once. Most of the friends wouldn't have been able to afford them back in the old world. Now they were worthless and free to anyone left alive to take them. They punctured a hole through the middle of the useless, forever darkened screens with a pickaxe and ran the equally dead telephone cable through the gap. The ends of the cable were frayed and exposed, and the colourful inner wires were splayed out and the opal colours of the LCD fluid seeping inside the screens.
'That's good, that,' said Tom.
'We couldn't decide whether to call it "Prank Call" or "Dead Line",' Jenny said.
Tom strummed away and improvised on a few blues chords as they mounted it, then beamed happily at their work and as they high-fived each other. Then he struck into 'Little Wing' by Jimi Hendrix and the girls cheered for their adopted anthem.
They sang loudly along with each other. Andy's voice drunkenly grated along too in the background, but he could barely remember half the words. ''Ang on, 'Ang on,' he said, and he found some cutlery and chimed them against the bottles on the table like the glockenspiel on the music track.
Jack, Joe and Nick walked in. They'd heard the music from the gardens and were drawn in by the sounds of the party and had seen everyone was bright with smiles and laughter. They quietly took their places at the back of the room and were glad for the welcome distraction. The spliff-smoke swallowed up the guilty stink that clung to their clothes. They watched as their friends abandoned themselves to their fun and scarcely noticed them enter.
The rest of them sang along joyfully in the haze, and the music broke into loosely improvised freestyle sections. Lost in the music, they didn't realise that they played and repeated their favourite sections of the song and chorus over and over or sang their favourite lines, gospel-like, in harmony with the background. It was beside the point as they were having such a great time, and they wouldn't have cared anyway. Right there and then there was only the music and their friends all together in the room in a bright world, a happy one, and there was nothing else. Everything else was forgotten in the haze and the colour and the music, the smiling faces, the ecstatic expressions, the laughter and the singing.
Jack stared. For him there was a stark moment of clarity that came like a thunderclap. For a brief second the illusion was cut away. All he was doing was just sitting there in a room full of smoke with strangers he didn't know or even like. They looked deathly ill. Sick, skinny, bony, pallid. They lurched about and waved their arms rapturously in the squalor of this hovel. They made themselves more intoxicated, sicker through yet another day. They moaned and wailed along to an atonal, un-rhythmic mess of noise coming from the mangled strings of a guitar as someone hit bottles of alcohol with a couple of filthy spoons. The room was a disgusting dump and the people in it looked morbidly unwell, with insane, ugly colours smeared across their faces and across the walls around them and among the rubbish they paraded as 'art'. Jack held his head in his hands and murmured things over and over incoherently. Joe turned to him. His eyes had a blank, dead stare and Jack looked back at him in horror.
Then it was over. Jack gave a start as he found himself back in the room. Had anyone else seen that? Joe was talking to him. He nodded and mumbled something.
'Wow, this is great,' Joe said as he watched Andy's impassioned percussion performance on the empty bottles with a couple of spoons, but he wasn't smiling. 'I think we'll miss times like this when we get rescued.'
'This is what makes it all worthwhile,' Nick said drily, sitting beside him as he looked the group over as they slurred and swayed.
'Who's missing?' asked Jane, lost in the heights of her delirium. 'We should always be happy like this. Where is everyone? They should be here.'
'Maybe I should get Emily and the rest. This is sure to make her feel better,' said Joe, and he made to get up.
'Let me go. I want to get her,' said Jack. He was glad for the chance to get out of there.
Sarah, Katie and Emily didn't take much persuading, Jack was pleasantly surprised to find, once he'd gathered the courage to ask. Emily still rarely strayed from her bedroom and Katie and Sarah were sitting in the adjacent kitchen. It seemed they had less talent for entertaining themselves than the others. When Jack and Joe found them they were sitting together in a long awkward silence that not even a slender cherry-flavoured spliff they were passing back and forth gave them the words to break.
They returned to the party together after waiting a little while for Sarah to put something nicer on than a varsity hoodie and at least do something with her hair, and for Jack to coax a reluctant Emily out from her room.
Jack beamed happily as Emily linked arms with him, and he walked her over to the den and let her up the stairs first like a gentleman. All of them were greeted pleasantly by the rest of the group, with warm smiles for the rarely seen Emily, which was encouraging. They were rather more fixed and nervous for Sarah, who cast a meaningful look towards Jenny and ignored Nick altogether. She raised a toast, however, unwilling to let any iciness in the room be an obstacle to her enjoying the party.
'To us and the future!' Sarah said. She raised a wine glass and the rest of the group raised theirs. Conversation started right away as people offered drinks around and things to smoke.
The subject of discussion came to what they were looking forward to the most once they got rescued and their own theories about how and where help would come from. They talked about what roles they could fill in the new society they would rejoin. They were bright and optimistic about their future prospects and Tom and his guitar created a pleasant improvisation in the background.
'Well, I'm a trained nurse so that's what I'll do,' said Andy.
'I want to be an accountant,' said Emma.
'I always wanted to be a chef,' said Tom.
'I don't really know. I suppose I've always been interested in mechanics,' considered Joe.
'I used to want to be a vet, but that didn't work out. I don't know, I love horses. I only painted horses for my degree, which is maybe why I got a 2.2. I want to work with them somehow in the stables,' said Katie.
The rest said they didn't know.
'I never knew you were interested in mechanics. What kind of experience have you got?' Jack asked Joe.
'Well, I haven't got any experience, really. Not yet. My dad made me help him tinker with his car engine and clean it. I sometimes helped change a wheel.'
'What was your degree in again?'
'Journalism.'
They went around the rest of the group and asked them what they studied. 'English.' 'Fine art.' 'Music tech.' 'Events management.' 'Health and social.' 'Film studies.' 'Drama.' 'Sociology.' 'Computer games design.' 'Feminist studies.'
'Never mind, eh, girls? We've got the future generation to think about! Someone's got to repopulate the world. Who better than us!' Sarah said, laughing to the group.
'I think I could take on being a mum while I do something else. I want to be some kind of manager or something, and work with people. I've thought about it a bit, quite a lot, actually, and it's something I'd like to do. I suppose every girl would be obliged to do so – settle down and make a family, I mean. I want five kids, a husband and a nice big house…'
The lads listened to her ramble on, their agreeable nods and smiles gradually interspersed with quizzical expressions as Sarah seemed to get stuck on the subject. She talked rapidly, with a fixed, manic expression somewhat at odds with the optimism of what she was saying. All the other girls were silent, their heads lowered, their expressions frozen, and an awful quiet spread out around the group.
'…I mean, I haven't thought of names or anything. Well, not much. I haven't even decided in which order I want them – boy, girl, boy, girl, or even the other way round! There should be ample space and resources wherever they set up. I mean, even we've managed to do alright for ourselves with what little we've got. They've got the rest of the country and it shouldn't be too hard to make a home.' Sarah seemed stuck on the subject and her wide eyes were fixed at some point beyond the far wall.
The boys didn't understand what was going on. They shot glances around the room and saw that the other boys were just as confused as they were, as all the girls sat with lowered heads, their faces hidden behind their hands or hair.
'Sarah… don't,' Katie said.
Sarah kept on going with her monologue. She talked about which town she thought they might settle down in after all this to put down some roots.
'Sarah, stop,' Emily said, but she kept on going.
'I mean, I always wanted to pursue a career for at least a couple of years after graduation, maybe wait til I was about thirty at the very latest before I got to be a mum. I didn't want to leave it too long before I got old and ran out of time and had my, you know…'
'SARAH, STOP IT! WHY CAN'T YOU SHUT UP?' Katie shouted.
Sarah froze and went silent.
'We've all seen it, we've all felt it! Every one of us is the same. You've got to stop pretending. It's happened to all of us. None of us have come on – been on our period – for weeks now, months!
'Don't you see what's happening to us? We're different, we've changed.' Katie ran her fingertips down her forearm with the greyish, hardened blood vessels beneath.
'Something's happened to us. DON'T YOU GET IT? WE'RE ALL BARREN. None of that's ever going to happen… to any of us. NO ONE'S GOING TO HAVE CHILDREN. WE'RE STERILE.'
The boys looked around to the left and right, dumbfounded, and saw that every one of the girls had tears in their eyes.
Sarah was standing rigid where she was, but her bright confidence cracked up before them and tears spilt freely from her eyes.
All this time the boys had absolutely no idea this was going on. They'd never considered that anything like this could happen.
Then a terrible thought occurred to them, and each of them subconsciously reached for their own groin through a trouser pocket, for their testicles, and wondered if the same had happened to them.
Katie ran outside, unable to bear being in the same room as any of the others who had done this to her, with their awful drugs, their stupid curries, whatever it was that had done this to her. She fled out into the gardens and blindly twisted through the pathways until she was disorientated and lost and sat down on a lawn chair somewhere on the far side away from their house.
Was she ever going to have children anyway? Gasps shook her lungs. No boy she'd ever met had inspired any feelings in her, other than a general antipathy and dislike when they revealed their true colours as what she felt was at the core simple, callous, and unattractive.
They had killed her on the inside. She felt hollow, gutted, like her insides had been pulled out. She felt less of a woman, less of a person. Dehumanised. Like an object, a dried-up, dead flower, pressed and preserved for no purpose but to mindlessly continue. What was she ever, anyway? She had always been without love.
The only thing that ever moved her was being close to someone, a certain someone, who filled her with a yearning that made her ache, a forlorn yearning she knew deep down would never be reciprocated. A hopeless wish to be held tight to that generous chest and to plant kisses upon the lips of that one amazing goddess in this world as she ran her fingers through her long, golden hair. Sarah was the only one she wanted.
She had such an interesting life. She was always effortlessly part of the most popular group of people wherever she went. Katie was plain, bony-thin and quiet, with a voice she knew had a flat, unflattering Yorkshire accent. 'Dorky' was a word which she had heard behind her back too many times.
What a painful, cruel curse to love someone who couldn't love back, and what a thing to give up for the sake of it. She'd felt so guilty for her feelings in the past, but there might have been some way she could have known a mother's love. Now it was set and sealed in stone. It was final. It would never happen. Did she want it to? It didn't matter. It was over.
She pressed her palms to her face to wipe away the tears and her hands came away covered with the smudged multicolour mess of paint. At least she wasn't totally dead inside, Katie thought bitterly. At least she could still do this.
She couldn't take this place any more. She couldn't bear to be around these awful people, or stay in this place. She was leaving and didn't care where she went.
Back in the house, Jack looked dumbstruck at Emily, who was sitting next to him. Poor, gentle Emily, who had been hurt so badly in their recent misadventure and was hurting worse still all this time.
Without thinking, he reached out and held her hand. She pulled him out of his seat and they ran out of the house together, hand in hand.
Emily was hurt, she was vulnerable, and Jack held her close to him, as hard as he could. The one and only wish in the world he had right there was not for himself, but to wish that her hurt would stop. Without any kind of warning, she gave him a fierce kiss, pushing her mouth deep into his, and held him tight by his shoulders.
Jack was stunned, surprised so much he couldn't even move, rigid, as she kept pushing deep, bitter kisses on his lips. He could only stand there and let her. His first kiss. Somehow they were in the next house before he knew it and into the pantry. Jack kissed her back as best he could, trying to figure out how to do it as he went and quite overwhelmed by it all.
Emily sat up on the washing machine and pressed Jack's hand to her breast as he kissed her neck. Hastily, Emily hiked up her skirt and fumbled with her tights, trying to peel them down. Jack tried to help. They got them and her knickers down by her ankles. She fumbled with Jack's belt buckle and pulled down his trousers.
They both breathed hard and held each other in their frenzy. Jack told Emily to hold on a moment. He struggled to get into position. There was a moment of more fumbling that grew more frantic and a little hopeless. He struggled, but he couldn't get it to work. Surely this couldn't happen. Not now! He began to panic a little.
After all this time, the moment he had waited for, for so long and thought about so much, and he couldn't do it. Maybe he was too flustered, but his own body wouldn't do what he wanted. He couldn't get a response from it. The moment was finally here, but it was slipping away and there was nothing he could do.
Emily hugged Jack's head into her chest as Jack gave up and just held her as tight as he could. They breathed out and their mania subsided. Their feelings were raging, passion inflamed. At least they knew they were alive, and it was still sticking one up at Death.
Emily said it was alright, that it was okay. Jack mentally screamed in disbelief that the final, agonised-for moment had come and he had been betrayed by his own body. What a cruel trick. Would he get another chance? How incredibly embarrassing. Jack kissed Emily again and they stayed there in their embrace for a while.