The Last of Us

Past World

Daytime. A man stands over me. He holds a mirror up to my mouth, then looks surprised to see me waken.

He holds a mirror over the baby’s mouth.

I notice there are three other blanket-shapes in the room. The man goes around them all with his mirror, coughing, doing the same thing he did with me.

When he leaves, a lady comes in. She takes away two of the blanket-shapes, then the baby.

She leaves more biscuits and juice, even though we didn’t eat much of the earlier stuff.

Use all my strength to sit up. Thought it was night, but it’s not: somebody just covered the windows.

I make a peephole. Window looking out on the school. Lorries keep coming. I see the ambulance flashing.

See the doctors, then just one doctor.

Nights and days come like a light switch going on and off. Then I wake up, to a smell.

A smell like the taste you get biting your finger: but all around me, in the air.

Another kid has appeared beside me, lying on a camp bed. Eyes puffed up so there isn’t any white or colour to see. Red bumps so his skin looks like pebbles. He stays for a while, but then goes off somewhere else.

I never see the faces of the adults, just their shoes.

Feet with blue shoe-covers on. The covers torn through. Spotted with black, red.

I want to see their faces, but they’re always way up in the sky, too far away.

No adult has come for two days. But someone beside me is singing – Huis, huis air an each. The words come cracked, then loud, then cracked.

When I wake up proper it’s a surprise to find that the singing voice is mine: was mine all along.

Dark. Then light.

Somebody calling my name. It’s a girl’s voice, maybe even older than me.

I recognise her from the school. She’s Elizabeth, the girl from Bristol who came to live on our island.

Her arm stretched out to me.

‘Don’t be scared,’ she says. ‘Come out from there. I’ve got some water. Come out.’

For now I’m too scared to come out: because that’s when my new life has to start.