Them or Us

18

INSIDE THE ROOM THERE’S a woman sitting on a double bed with her back to me. I’m fucking terrified. I’d turn and run if it wasn’t for the fact Hinchcliffe’s bound to be waiting around outside. He’ll want to be sure I’ve done what he told me to do.

I can’t do this. I can’t remember the last time I had a sexual thought or desire or felt anything even remotely erotic. I can’t remember masturbating since the war began, or even wanting to. Apart from the occasional, infrequent, involuntary early morning hard-on, the last time I had an erection was probably when I last shared a bed with Liz, just before the Change split us. Does everyone feel like this, or is it just me? I don’t want to share my body with anyone now, much less with someone I don’t know. I don’t want to do this …

The woman on the bed wearily looks back over her shoulder. How many times has she already done this today? Am I the first or the twenty-first?

“You coming in?” she grunts, her voice flat and unemotional. I take another hesitant step forward. “Shut the frigging door, then.”

“Sorry,” I mumble as I turn and push it closed. I lean my head against the door and try to relax or at least hide my nerves. When I finally turn back around I see that the woman has stood up. What does she look like? It’s just an unexpected, instinctive thought. Does it matter? The light’s behind her and I can’t actually see her face from here, can’t make out any details at all, and maybe that’s for the best. I sense her looking me up and down. What’s she thinking? Is she deciding whether or not I’m good enough stock? I start hoping she’s going to reject me, suddenly acutely aware of how I must look to her. Like most people, I rarely wash anymore. I hack at my hair and my beard with scissors and blunt razor blades when I have to. Can’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth … No matter, this isn’t a mating ritual. Like Hinchcliffe said, this is purely functional, and how I look and feel is unimportant—but I still don’t know if I can go through with it …

This horrible, silent standoff continues for what feels like forever, and I’m on the brink of backing out and running when she finally speaks.

“You healthy?”

“Pretty much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

What should I tell her? That I cough my guts up first thing every morning? That the skin on my back and neck is burned from the bombs? That sometimes there’s blood when I piss? I want to go into graphic detail and do all I can to put her off me, but I don’t.

“I’m okay.”

“You had kids before?”

“Three. You?”

“This isn’t a date. Your kids, what were they?”

“Two boys and a girl.”

“No, what were they?”

“My girl was like us,” I answer, realizing what she was actually asking and forcing myself to block out the faces of my dead children. “The boys were Unchanged.”

She nods and thinks carefully about what I’ve just told her, as if it’s going to make a difference. Then, with a weary sigh of resignation, she undoes the zipper of her baggy trousers and lets them drop down to her ankles in an incredibly unfeminine and asexual movement. She kicks them away, then lies back down on the bed, psyching herself up. The fine detail of her face is still hidden by the shadows, but I can see her a little more clearly now. She seems strangely expressionless, and it’s hard to place her age. Her limbs are bony and long, her muscles taut. Her skin is covered in scratches, cuts, and bruises, and I think for a second about how long Liz used to spend pampering herself each day to look good—using countless creams and lotions, waxing her legs, hunting down every rogue hair with tweezers, razors, or wax … My eyes are involuntarily drawn to the top of this woman’s legs and her unkempt bush of wiry pubic hair. Since everything changed, everybody—male and female, young and old—has become strangely sexless. How we look is unimportant; keeping warm and staying alive is all that matters. Everything’s different now. Back then, before all of this happened, men and women had frustratingly different sexual drives and desires that rarely coincided. Now no one’s bothered. I sense this is as much an ordeal for this woman as it is for me.

“Get on with it,” she says, looking up at the ceiling, not at me. I nervously start to undress, kicking off my boots, taking off my coat, and pulling down my trousers. Without thinking, I start to remove some of the layers of clothing I’m wearing on top, but she stops me. “No need for that. Just get it done.”

Feeling increasingly awkward and embarrassed and now half naked, I climb onto the bed and kneel next to her on the mattress, heart racing, barely able to think straight, too nervous even to reach across and touch her. My pathetic, flaccid cock hangs down between my legs, shriveled up to virtually nothing by the bitter cold. Can’t get hard. Starting to panic. Maybe erectile dysfunction will save me tonight? I try to remember all the things I used to think about to get myself aroused, but they’re hard to remember and they all have the opposite effect. Each image I dredge up from the past, each buried memory that slowly returns, they all hurt too much. It’s obviously not the first time this woman has been faced with someone like me. She reaches up and cups my balls with her hand. She doesn’t speak, she barely even moves, but just the touch of her skin against mine is enough, and my cock finally starts to stiffen. She gently runs her fingertips down the length of my shaft, touching me more tenderly than anyone’s touched me in almost a year.

My head’s clear now, empty of all thoughts but one. I look straight at the woman but I don’t even see her face. There’s a sudden burning, insatiable need low in my gut and I sit astride her and force myself into her. Hard and dry, then warm. It hurts for a second as my foreskin snags, but then it gets easier as I start to move. I don’t think about what I’m doing, I just do it. Again and again, harder and harder, faster now, not giving a damn about what she thinks or feels … harder still, balls banging against the inside of her thighs, hands gripping the headboard.

Then it happens.

A split-second pause filled with something that used to matter, then I feel myself empty into her.

I groan with effort and drop down, our bodies finally close, head next to hers, panting hard. She shoves her hands up under my chest and pushes me away. I roll over onto my back as she slides out from under me. We lie there in silence, side by side for several seconds until, without warning, the most brutal and unforgiving wave of postejaculation regret I’ve ever experienced comes crashing over me. I turn my head to one side and finally look into the woman’s face, and I’m filled with shame and remorse. She just stares up at the ceiling, waiting for me to leave.

“Go,” she says, and I do it without a word. I can’t wait to get away from her. I virtually fall off the bed and scoop up my clothes and my boots from the floor in haste. I have to get out of this room. My cock is still dribbling thick, sticky strings of warm fluid down the inside of my leg as I struggle to hold on to everything and get the door open. I crash out onto the landing and slump back against the wall, freezing cold and still only half dressed but not giving a damn, content to let the darkness of the musty hotel swallow me up, happy to disappear. I look around, half expecting Hinchcliffe to be there, nodding his approval and giving me points out of ten.

I sit down on the ice-cold, threadbare carpet and dress myself. I feel humiliated; empty and defiled. If I could stay in these shadows forever, I think I would.

The shame and regret mutate into anger, then the anger turns to guilt. I can’t understand how I’m feeling but every new thought just adds to the confusion. I think about Lizzie and the pain increases massively. Do I feel so bad because I’ve been unfaithful to her? Am I really feeling remorse because I’ve just fucked someone other than my dead, Unchanged ex-partner? Fucked. Wrong word. That wasn’t even fucking. It wasn’t anything like that. As Hinchcliffe made clear, it was a business transaction: a way to keep him happy and for that woman in there—Christ, I don’t even know her name—to earn herself some extra rations. Have things really come to this? Is this the pinnacle of Hinchcliffe’s vision for the future? Is this what we’ve been reduced to?

I start trying to justify and rationalize what I’ve just done, making excuses and looking for reasons why it doesn’t matter. My irradiated sperm’s probably useless, I decide. Even if it isn’t, maybe that woman’s body has been damaged by the war. I remember hearing about kids born after the nuclear bombings in Japan—increased numbers of stillborns, cancers, and deformities …

Who the hell am I trying to fool? I pick myself up and slowly stagger back down the stairs, my mind now filled with memories of sex before the war that I’d tried to keep buried deep down. I remember the last time Lizzie and I made love. We were both terrified that night, but being together was spontaneous and instinctive, powerful and reassuring. We did it to make ourselves and each other feel wanted and protected. In spite of everything that was happening right outside our door, the feelings we shared that night were as intense as they had ever been.

Now, as I push my way out into the dark, freezing-cold night, I’m left thinking about the kids, about Ellis, Josh, and Ed, remembering when each of them was born and the good times we had together before the bad …

What have I become?

Sex used to be something that dragged us out of the daily grind and took us somewhere else. Something that transcended all the bullshit and connected Lizzie and me on every level imaginable. How could I have just allowed something as precious as that to become as brutal and insensitive as everything else?

I feel like I’ve just lost something I’ll never get back, like Hinchcliffe’s just taken what was left of my soul.