"Noel K. Hannan - Parlour Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hannan Noel K)

E-scape--Fiction: Parlour Games

Parlour Games

by Noel K. Hannan

      It was on his fifteenth birthday, during the long summer of their first year alone, that she first suggested the idea to him. After all, they could soon be the last boy and girl left alive in the world, if the television was to be believed.
      "We can't," he protested, blushing fiercely, although she knew that he had already thought the wicked thought while watching her undress or swim or bathe. "I'm your brother."
      James became distant then, staring out from his seat on the cliff top outcrop they called The Rock to the thin smudge of the mainland shimmering on the horizon. On a clear day like this, it never felt so close, yet so far away, all at the same time. He felt the familiar tears well up and he knuckled them away. He didn't like her to see him cry, even if she was a year older than him. She touched his elbow tenderly.
      "It doesn't mean anything anymore," she said gently. "I mean, all the things we were told were right and wrong, good and bad. It all means nothing as long as we're stuck here, just you and me. We can do whatever we want. What's going to happen when everyone's dead?"
      "How will we know?" he asked, turning to face her. "Stuck here, how will we know when everyone is dead?"
      "When there's no more television," Suzanna said grimly.

      Suzanna was right: he had been watching her bathe and swim, and he had felt something stir inside him, and he had enough schoolboy—hearsay knowledge in his head to know that what he was feeling was wrong wrong wrong. That night, after she had shocked him by asking him outright, he heard her running a bath in the big old bathroom upstairs, and he found himself tiptoeing to the keyhole. He knelt before the oak door and pressed his eye to the brass latch.
      She was slim and pale and blonde—she didn't revel in the sunlight like he did. Over the last year her hips had widened and her breasts had swelled. He remembered the morning she had rushed downstairs, tearful, with bloody sheets bundled in her arms. He watched her examine herself in a full length mirror. It was not the vain self-adulation of a movie star or a model, more a detached, technical inspection. She sucked in her belly and stuck out her chest, turned and posed. She clambered into the steaming bath, a gothic monstrosity of ceramic and festering green ironwork, and began to soap herself down.
      James rose from the door, excited and ashamed, and bumped against the banister in his haste to leave. Suzanna heard the noise and listened, hearing his muted retreat down the stairs. She smiled secretly to herself.

The house was an enormous Victorian folly, commissioned by a 19th century writer driven mad by apocalypse fever on the eve of the new century. One hundred and twenty years later, it stood on the cliff top promontory, gazing out over the straits to the mainland like a lonely stone sentinel, exiled and outcast. It had over thirty rooms, a maze where children could run amok. Suzanna's and James' father had bought it in 2010, before their mother died, and before he took the trip to Mars. He was a rich man by then—air force pilot, politician, writer. To be chosen as the sole European to join the joint US/Russian expedition to Mars was a great honour, and one he accepted instantly and publicly. His wife died in an air crash three weeks later. He was expected to stand down from the trip. Instead, he packed James and Suzanna, still grieving, off to boarding school, and threw himself into his training. James had been too young to fully understand it all. Suzanna had been more aware of the betrayal and abandonment, and had never forgiven him for it. Sometimes she wondered if this whole mess had not been brought on by her own curses and wishes, like some evil voodoo.

by Matthew Goodsell © 1999. All rights reserved.

      The parlour boasted a state-of-the-art watchwall, a huge television display that was completely incongruous beside the Victorian splendour when it was not hidden behind sliding oak panelling. It had become James' and Suzanna's sole window on the world they had left behind, after James smashed their radio in a tantrum one afternoon. James would sit in front of the watchwall, mesmerised, for hours, even as the nature of the programming changed from game shows and home shopping to constant news and civil defence broadcasts and endless streams of useless 'expert' advice. It seemed at times as if the whole world had caught fire.
      James was sitting watching it numbly. Suzanna, unable to at times to take it all in, got up and left. Guilt pangs stabbed her every time she saw someone die on the watchwall.
      She wandered into her father's study. James increased the volume on the watchwall and the commentary, strangely neutered of menace now it was detached from its visuals, followed her in.
      "…city of Berlin placed under martial law last night as supplies of vaccine perished in a rail crash en route from the Plague Centre in Vienna. Rioters took to the streets and burnt several buildings around the Bundestag until paramilitary police brought the situation under control…"
      The unmistakable sound of furious people burning their own city through frustration, the whoomph of petrol bombs, crack of bullets and gunning engines of armoured vehicles. They are fools, thought Suzanna, as she took a photograph from a dusty shelf. The photograph was a fuzzy digital one, snatched from a TV image, of nine spacesuited men standing in a group on a red desert terrain. She could make out her father in the group, even though the men were almost anonymous in their gold-mirrored helmets. He was the tallest, and he was giving a thumbs-up sign to the camera.
      They are fools, she thought, because the vaccine is a placebo. It alleviates the symptoms, the madness and the choking and the vomiting. It does not cure the disease. They would know that, these good people of Berlin, if they watched enough television, like James and she did. Then maybe the world would enjoy the last days of their lives in peace, and not burn down their beautiful city (and Berlin was a beautiful city, mother and father had taken her and James there the year before Mars—and mother's death). They think they must riot because they think they are being abandoned to die.
      The photograph was covered in a layer of dust. Grey dust, earth dust, not the red dust of Mars. That was in a little vial that normally stood next to the photograph on the shelf. It wasn't there—James must have taken it. Hadn't she read somewhere that household dust was ninety percent human skin? Was the red dust of Mars, then, all what was left of its former inhabitants, the canal builders and the alien princesses that had cleverly hidden themselves from the eyes of her father and his colleagues as they walked its surface? He had thought it a clever joke to leave her an old Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback under her pillow the night he left for Mars, with a post-it note stuck to the cover that read:

I will bring you back a gift from Barsoom, my Princess!
—love, Daddy

      She had found the note insulting, as if she didn't know what was really happening. She knew exactly where, what, and how far away Mars was, how it was dry and had a poisonous atmosphere that no human (except for John Carter, of course) could breath. Astronomy and Related Sciences was her favourite subject at school. If he had taken more interest in her, he would have known that. She found the flippant note when she woke and cried that morning as his rocket blasted off from Baikonur, on the other side of the world. Not because he had gone, but because he still thought she was a child.
      "…still no idea where this plague has come from. It resembles nothing I have ever seen before. It does not respond to any of our most sophisticated treatments and defies categorisation…"
      Ah, another rent-an-expert, preaching doom. She had yet to hear an optimistic word on the subject. Better for the scientists to claim failure and ignorance, then unleash their miracle cure, rather than give people false hopes to be dashed. She was sure they would get it under control. They always did, didn't they? But she had thought the same thought a year ago. A lot of people had died since then.
      The study had been left almost untouched since he had gone, properly gone. James had been in here once or twice—last time he appeared to have taken the vial of Martian dust. But it seemed to deepen his depression if he spent too much time in here, surrounded by the mementoes of his father's life. The photographs, the bits of Mars and detritus of former careers. A cased medal for valour in action over the former Yugoslavia, a UN citation as a member of a negotiating team in an African republic civil war, the books he had written on air combat and his work with the UN in far-flung conflicts. He had hardly been with them during their childhoods, always away, always turning up on television, tanned and confident. Suzanna often thought that she had seen more of him on the TV during the first ten years of her life than she had in the flesh. It had been like having a movie star for a father. Now all they were left with was this room full of legacies to the things he had done and the places he had visited and the people he had met, when he should have been with them. Then he would have known that she knew where Mars was, and none of this would have happened. She opened up a desk drawer and took the familiar, worn envelope from it, and put it in her pocket.
      "…someone is suffering from the symptoms in your family, contact a Civil Defence Patrol as soon as possible. Civil Defence patrol vehicles are painted yellow. Civil Defence workers wear yellow armbands. Remember, the sooner symptoms are reported, the more effective the application of the vaccine can be…"
      James was still staring glumly at the screen when she went back into the parlour. She decided it was not the time to rekindle the conversation they had had yesterday—he had been withdrawn and dullish ever since. It had given her fitful dreams last night, dreams where she had ridden a stallion barebacked and naked over the rough heath of the island's hilly interior. It had been exciting and erotic. She had woken this morning damp and hot and guilty.
      "I'm going down to the cellar," she said to him. He turned and for a second his eyes flared with something that could have been revulsion—this was something he could never bring himself to do. They had argued about it before, but she did it anyway. She thought he was about to protest, but he just nodded glumly, and returned his attention to the watchwall.

      They should have really buried him, she knew that. But this was the most time they had been able to spend with him in their lives. He couldn't go anywhere now, not to fight someone else's war or to an alien planet. Because he was dead, and they kept him in the ice cellar.
      They must still be drawing power from the mainland, Suzanna reasoned, as the island was unoccupied apart from their house and some abandoned crofter's cottages on the north side. All their electrical appliances still worked, giving them heat and light and supplying this huge walk-in refrigerator in the cellar. It was the sort of thing you would find in a large hotel or restaurant. Suzanna recalled when they first came here, all four of them. Their father had plans to raise cattle and make a living, self sustenance and all that. Their mother had complied with his plans, as she always did. He had intended to retire early and they could have all lived here, one big happy family. Then the call to Mars had come, and he could not resist. A bucolic future with his family faded into insignificance.
      James had found his body and it had struck him dumb. He had run to her, she was out on The Rock sketching, she remembered it clearly. He pulled at her arm and her sketchbook had fluttered from her grip and over the edge. She was angry but James ignored her, making grunting noises in frustration (it was several days before he spoke again), pulling her to the house.
      And there he was, in his study, propped up in his chair where he had planned to write his books and count his cattle, his eyes open and a line of vomit running from the corner of his mouth, empty bottles of pills scattered across the desk. Photographs cluttered the desk surface—the expedition shot of Mars, receiving his medal from a UN general, a portrait of their mother as a young woman. He had been sitting looking at them as he forced fistfuls of drugs into his mouth. In the corner of the room lay the modem from his computer and the household phone point, both deliberately smashed. All possibility of communication with the mainland was gone.
      Suzanna and James had clung to each other in the doorway, terrified to enter, the irrational fear of a dead body. Eventually, Suzanna had sent James away and she had approached their father, felt for a pulse. His skin was so cold. On the desk lay an envelope with JAMES & SUZANNA written on it in brisk, business-like script. She folded it and pocketed it, and read it later when James was asleep, and cried until she thought she would cry forever.

James had helped her drag his body down here, and as far as she knew, that was the last time he had laid eyes on his father. Suzanna, on the other hand, visited him regularly. She knew that his body would decompose eventually, even in here, so she cherished this time with him.
The ice cellar had a steel door and a large throw lever lock. A small panel outside the door measured temperature and power level. She opened the door and a blast of cold air met her. Thrusting her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans, she went inside. One hand curled around the envelope in her pocket.

Dear Suzanna and James,
My dear children, what have you done to deserve such lives? The answer is nothing, you must not blame yourselves for any of the terrible events that have taken place as a result of my actions—

He lay on a long wooden table loosely covered by a sheet. She gently peeled it back from his face. It had taken on a bluish tinge and was becoming puffy. She knew there wasn't much time for them to be together.

I was never the kind of father you deserved. Always too wrapped up in my own world, never having time to be part of yours. I feel so guilty about the loss of your mother. If only I had never invited her to Baikonur, she would still be alive today, and you would still have her, and not be alone.

"You know we loved you," she whispered, "even if you never gave us the chance to show it."

This terrible, terrible disease. They know we brought it back and spread it to all corners of the Earth, why will they not admit it? It is their fault, and not mine, yet I am the carrier and I feel the blame. You seem to be immune, protected, just as I am—our genes are the same, of course. But do you carry and spread, just as I do? I do not know, and that is why we have come here. You must never leave this island, children, and you must never allow others to come here.

"James has taken your dust," Suzanna said conversationally, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. "I don't know what he wants with it. It could carry the disease, couldn't it? Perhaps that is how it came back. Perhaps you were not the carriers! I must get it back from James. If he releases it into the wind it could carry to the mainland and infect them, if they're not already."

      I always thought taking one's own life was impossible. I was a pilot and a soldier, my survival instinct was often all I had to keep me alive. Some of us have very strong survival instincts. But too much has happened, I am to blame for too much death, too much misery. It eats away like cancer in my gut, each morning as I wake, each day as I try to work, each sleepless night. I have chosen the coward's way out, children.

      Forgive me. I love you.

      I have always loved you.

      Forgive me.

      Daddy.

      "Goodbye," she said, and kissed him on his cold cold lips. "It was nice to talk to you again." She replaced the sheet carefully.
      She paused in the doorway before sealing the steel door behind her. He was a faceless lump under the sheet.
      "I love you, Daddy," she said.

Summer's heat faded into autumn on the island and the question that Suzanna had put to James on his birthday remained unresolved. There had been a brief encounter when he had fallen against the door while watching her bathe, and had tumbled into the room. She had stood up, naked and dripping suds, facing him brazenly with her hands on her hips. He had frozen, mesmerised by her body like a rabbit in a spotlight, then fled into the house. He did not speak to her for several days, and the incident was never mentioned.
The television stopped broadcasting some time before the first flurries of snow had begun to waft down from the north. James had become even more withdrawn and was often to be found in one of only two places—tending the vegetable patches that the bowling-green lawns had been sacrificed to accommodate, or in the parlour staring at the incessant visual static on the watchwall, as if willing the transmissions to return. Suzanna, by contrast, was glad to be rid of them. It was obvious to her, if not to James, that the world was dying. They and their tiny island had been spared. It was the eye of the storm that was engulfing mankind. Meanwhile, almost all communication between James and Suzanna had ceased. By the time the snow lay thick on the ground and they had turned to the canned supplies in the cellar to get them through their second winter here, she suspected he had even stopped watching her bathe.

      And then the power failed. It happened quite suddenly one night. Suzanna was reading and her light blinked out. James had been watching the static of the watchwall and it too cut out. The house was plunged into darkness. Suzanna was abruptly reminded of the tenuous nature of their position. The world outside her bedroom window was white death. The electric heaters clicked and popped ominously as they cooled down.
      James bumped and cursed his way through the house to her room. She waited for him and was surprised when he climbed on to the bed next to her, and put his arm around her. It was the first time there had been physical contact between them in months.
      "I'm scared, Suzie," he said. "I was praying this wouldn't happen."
      "It's going to be all right," she said with as much confidence as she could muster, but the big sister act was thin. The truth was, she had no idea if it was going to be all right or not.
      They slept together that night for the first time since they were very small children, James spooned against her back for warmth as the house cooled around them. He was embarrassed the next morning when she awoke with the pressure of his erection against the small of her back. He vanished shame-faced into the cold house to dress and prepare some food.

Suzanna and James are still alive, if anyone else is.
Suzanna did not visit her father very often during that winter. It was far too cold to roam through the house unless it was absolutely necessary, and she had delegated herself the task of keeping the fires permanently lit while James was responsible for the supply of the wood, which he gathered with the strength and energy of someone ten years older than his fifteen years. She went down to the ice cellar once to open the door, to prevent the air inside from stagnating now that the refrigeration system was off. The temperature inside seemed to be no different—her father's body had not decomposed any further. She left him there, covered by the sheet. She would have to bury him, come the spring, if the power did not return.

      James blamed the smoke—thin black lines of it had risen from two of the chimneys ever since they had lit the fires. Now there was a ship on the horizon, and what were they going to do about it?
      They sat on The Rock, huddled in their jackets in the biting winter wind and watching the sea with a mixture of excitement and fear. Suzanna had on a big army-issue parka while James wore a flight jacket adorned with tour-of-duty patches, both taken from their father's study.
      James had spotted the ship an hour earlier through a pair of binoculars and summoned Suzanna to the cliff. It had got much closer since then, but it was not moving very fast. It was a big white ship, the sort that is a peacetime cruise ship and a wartime hospital ship. This one had no visible markings and flew no flags. Its course appeared erratic, it was not on a direct heading to them, but it was definitely closing with the island.
      "Maybe we should put out the fires," said James. "Maybe they haven't seen us."
      "Of course they've seen us," snapped Suzanna. "They're coming ashore, there's nothing we can do."
      They watched in silence for a while longer. They knew what this meant, but neither voiced it. Were they allowed to be happy, because people were coming at last, after their long isolation? Or were they carriers of the plague, and would infect anyone who came ashore?
      "The ship is too big," James commented, watching through the binoculars. "They won't be able to come ashore, unless they swim."
      "There are lifeboats on the side," Suzanna noticed, pointing. "They can use those." James nodded.
      "You know what father told us," James said suddenly. Suzanna turned, startled. "That we should never let anyone on the island. To drive them away if we must."
      Suzanna swallowed hard. The suicide note had never been mentioned before. She had left it for James to read shortly after the event and he had returned it to the study later, tearstained.
      "How can we do that?" she asked.
      "Father had a gun," James replied. "A rifle, in a locker under his desk. Ammunition too. I can fetch it—"
      "No." She put her hand on his. "We can't do that. Why kill someone if they're doomed to die anyway? What's the point?"
      "Death from the plague is terrible," he said, his eyes wide with television imagery. "We'd be doing them a favour."
      "Do you think they'd give up because one person is shooting at them?" Suzanna was almost raging at his stupidity. "They've probably got guns themselves. They'd probably kill us."
      "Stop," he said, grabbing her hand. "Look."
      The watched the ship. It had come close enough to them now for them to read a nameplate on is bow—SS Thunderchild. They could also hear sharp reports from the deck of the ship which they took to be gunfire. Stars twinkled along the decks in time with the noise.
      "They're fighting amongst themselves," James observed. "Some must be sick, trying to—"
      James sucked in air as the stern of the ship erupted in a dull, resonant explosion that rocked them on the shore a split second after a gout of flame had shot a hundred feet into the air. A second blast tore through the decks of the ship and they felt the heatwave reach out and touch them on The Rock. Suzanna vibrated with fear, James stared open-mouthed in awe.
      "Someone's blown it up," he said. "She's sinking. So fast."
      The ship sank stern first, water bubbling and foaming around it, dragging down the diminutive figures that leapt defiantly from its crazily-tilted decks. Suzanna and James watched in silence as the ship took all of three minutes to disappear completely from view, leaving behind nothing but an oily slick on the surface of the water and a strange stink in the air—hot diesel mixed with something worse, like burnt pork.
      And a single, scorched lifeboat bobbing in the wake of the vanished ship, a figure in the lifeboat struggling with a single oar, striking out for the shore.
      "I'll get the rifle," James said, and started to rise from The Rock. Suzanna dragged him back down and slapped him hard across the face. He was so shocked he made no attempt to retaliate. His face glowed, from the slap and from embarrassment.
      "If we drive that man away, he will die in the sea, or he will put ashore on another part of the island, and still find us," Suzanna said. She had hold of both James' hands and was effectively pinning him down to the Rock. "He may already have the plague, or we may not be carriers. Maybe maybe maybe. We don't have the right to make the choice for him, James. Now help me get him ashore. If nothing else, we will find out what has been happening out there. Don't you want that? Isn't that better than your precious television?"
      James struggled out from her grip and snorted. He thought she was making a bad decision. He told her so. But yes, he would help her.

      The man was exhausted by the time he reached the shore, and had collapsed in the lifeboat. Suzanna and James negotiated the narrow icy track from the Rock down the cliff face to the shale beach below. James took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers, and waded out to drag the boat ashore.
      He was a big man, as tall as their father had been but heavier. He had long dirty-blond hair tied in a pony tail, and he had been burnt on his face and hands by the fire on the ship. It took them more than an hour to get the man up the track to the house. He drifted in and out of consciousness and was unable to stand so Suzanna and James had to support him all the way back to where they put him in Suzanna's bed. Suzanna kept a watch on him while James went to make some coffee.
      Suzanna watched the man while he slept. He was in his mid-twenties and handsome despite his facial injuries. He was dressed in sloppy green fatigues, as if he was a guerrilla soldier of some kind, or an army deserter. While James was making the coffee, Suzanna went through the pockets of the jacket they had taken off him before putting him to bed. There she found a government ID card with his photograph on it. His name was Erik and he was a university student.
      "You must leave," a thin voice croaked. Suzanna jumped and dropped the card and the wallet she had it taken it from. Erik struggled upright in the bed.
      "What? What did you say?"
      "You must leave me," Erik said, grimacing and blinking away tears of pain. "I have the plague. We were put on that ship, sent off to die. Some started fighting. Then there was an explosion—a bomb in the engines. We weren't meant to survive."
      Suzanna pressed him gently back into the bed. His chest was hard and muscular beneath his shirt, burning with a fever she could feel through the shirt on the palm of her hand.
      "Don't worry," she said. "We're immune. We'll help you. Try to rest. Trust us."
      Erik was in no fit state to argue. He sank back into the mountain of pillows, groaning. He tore at his shirt with one hand, pulling it open.
      "I'm burning up," he said. "I have to get these off."
      Suzanna leant over the bed and helped him undress. He was fit and tanned beneath the scruffy fatigues. Hair spread across his chest and down the centreline of his flat belly, disappearing into the waist band of his trousers. She found her touch lingering on his body. She became aware of James in the doorway behind her, a tray in his hands.
      "I've made coffee," he said redundantly, meeting her eyes evenly. He set the tray down on a side table. "I'll be getting wood, if you need me."
      He left before she could think of something to say, some excuse for what he might have thought she was doing. She returned to undressing Erik, who was drifting in and out of consciousness. He was beginning to spasm occasionally, an early symptom of the plague, she remembered from the TV reports. She shut her eyes and pulled off his trousers.

      Suzanna kept a lonely vigil by the young man's bedside. Night drew on and James had not returned. She was not too worried, on other occasions when he had been annoyed with her he had stayed out in one of the crofter's cottages all night, building a fire to keep warm. Where else could he have gone?
      Erik regained consciousness for minutes at a time. He asked Suzanna to undo his pony tail and she spread his hair out in a damp halo on the pillow. Guiltily, knowing he was near death, she quizzed him about the mainland and the rest of the world. He painted a grisly picture of the most ferocious plague mankind had ever known. There was a working vaccine, he said, but people were dying far faster than it could be manufactured. If you and your brother are immune, he told her, smiling weakly, all you have to do is sit it out. Someone will come for you, eventually.
      "Maybe it's for the best," he said resignedly. "There were too many of us, anyway, wasn't there?"
      He slept again and when he woke later his fever was ferocious and he asked her to remove the bed covers. This she did, and he lay there naked and sweating in the guttering light from the candles she had placed around the room. His penis lay flaccidly on one thigh. She could not take her eyes off it. Erik's eyes fluttered open and noticed her watching him. A brief smile crossed his face, and he felt her touch upon him, cool in his fever heat.

      The next morning she found James squatting beside a flickering fire in the nearest crofter's cottage, warming his hands over the flame.
      "He's dead, isn't he?"
      She nodded and crouched beside him.
      "It's going to be all right, you know." And she really believed herself this time. She told him about the vaccine and the news Erik had brought. He absorbed the information glumly. She put her arm around him and he made an attempt to shrug it off. She held him closer.
      "Come on," she said. "We have a job to do that will keep us warm."

The earth was partially frozen beneath the layer of snow. Suzanna broke it up as best she could with a pickaxe while James dug it out. By midday, two shallow graves lay close to The Rock.
They buried Erik first, fashioning a cross from two wooden staves and stapling his laminated ID card to it. Then they carried their father from the ice cellar and laid him finally to rest. Before they filled in his grave, James rummaged in his jacket and brought out the vial of red dust. He cracked the top and scattered it into the grave, over his father's shrouded body. They marked his grave with his old flying helmet, weighed down by a rock.

      They survived to the spring on firewood and canned food, and before James' sixteenth birthday came around, a military vessel had moored offshore and sent a spacesuited decontamination team ashore in a speedboat to examine them. They were interrogated, prodded and poked. Suzanna was terrified they would be taken away to be experimented upon, or worse. She breathed a sigh of relief when the team commander finally took off his helmet, and ruffled her hair.
      As they waited for the launch to come and pick them up, Suzanna hugged James and reached into her pocket to touch something she had placed there. It was the tear-stained letter. It was the only thing she took from the island that day, and she never went back.
      Some of us have a very strong survival instinct.

Parlour Games

by Matthew Goodsell © 1999. All rights reserved.

I will bring you back a gift from Barsoom, my Princess!
—love, Daddy

Dear Suzanna and James,
My dear children, what have you done to deserve such lives? The answer is nothing, you must not blame yourselves for any of the terrible events that have taken place as a result of my actions—

I was never the kind of father you deserved. Always too wrapped up in my own world, never having time to be part of yours. I feel so guilty about the loss of your mother. If only I had never invited her to Baikonur, she would still be alive today, and you would still have her, and not be alone.

"You know we loved you," she whispered, "even if you never gave us the chance to show it."

This terrible, terrible disease. They know we brought it back and spread it to all corners of the Earth, why will they not admit it? It is their fault, and not mine, yet I am the carrier and I feel the blame. You seem to be immune, protected, just as I am—our genes are the same, of course. But do you carry and spread, just as I do? I do not know, and that is why we have come here. You must never leave this island, children, and you must never allow others to come here.

      I always thought taking one's own life was impossible. I was a pilot and a soldier, my survival instinct was often all I had to keep me alive. Some of us have very strong survival instincts. But too much has happened, I am to blame for too much death, too much misery. It eats away like cancer in my gut, each morning as I wake, each day as I try to work, each sleepless night. I have chosen the coward's way out, children.

      Forgive me. I love you.

      I have always loved you.

      Forgive me.

      Daddy.

      The loss of power was not quite as catastrophic as they had first imagined. The house was equipped with a solid fuel central heating system that bypassed electric power and roared throatily into life once James had broken up enough firewood from old furniture and crates in the outbuildings, and stoked up two of the house's several fireplaces. Heating the entire house would be impossible—Suzanna found a plan of the heating layout and they went around together, turning off stopcocks and radiator valves to channel the heated water into specific radiators. They succeeded in heating their bedrooms, the study and the parlour, and abandoned the rest of the house, which had become as cold as the ice cellar. The only problem would be finding sufficient fuel to last them through the winter, which they knew could last until March or even April—it had the previous year. James gathered as much from the outbuildings as he could, removing doors and window frames, and began to examine the antique furniture that filled the house. Suzanna balked at this and ordered him out to forage amongst the crofter's cottages and the small woods that dotted the northern part of the thinly-forested island. The chimneys of the house streamed smoke for the first time in decades, sending an unwitting message to the world.
      Suzanna and James are still alive, if anyone else is.
      Suzanna did not visit her father very often during that winter. It was far too cold to roam through the house unless it was absolutely necessary, and she had delegated herself the task of keeping the fires permanently lit while James was responsible for the supply of the wood, which he gathered with the strength and energy of someone ten years older than his fifteen years. She went down to the ice cellar once to open the door, to prevent the air inside from stagnating now that the refrigeration system was off. The temperature inside seemed to be no different—her father's body had not decomposed any further. She left him there, covered by the sheet. She would have to bury him, come the spring, if the power did not return.