Last Ones Left Alive Read online

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  For Mama and Papa

  Chapter One

  My toenail has blackened, and I have to pull to get it off. You’d feel it, so you would; it’s painful enough. I douse my foot in water, and I leave the nail by the side of the road, and on we go.

  This road, this hungry road, eating us up.

  We’ve been walking already for a long time, the three of us together.

  Where are the trees and stone walls? Where the abandoned cottages and burned-out bridge, where the waterfall and the hidden skiff? Where the signposts to lead us back home? I mark them, scraping old metal with jagged rocks, an X that’d mean something only to Maeve and me, one line a little longer than the other for direction. I go over it, making sure I’ll remember, while the muscles along my neck and in the small of my back swell and creak with pain. I keep watching all around me.

  The blisters I got on my hands from rowing to and from the island fill with fluid, burst, fill again.

  When we rest, I take leaves of mint from the herb pouch. Mam’s herb pouch. My eyes are tired from the glare of the sun. My feet are sore from the too-hot road.

  Around us the landscape changes constantly. The road shifts beneath me, twists and slopes, and every time I look up, the world presents me with something new and I feel fresh too. Despite myself, despite everything. The world ended a long time ago, but it is still beautiful.

  We are moving.

  Looking at her lying slumped in the barrow makes my chest feel like it’s collapsing in on itself. She is so small—“scrawny” is the word. She never used to be small. I look away, and twenty paces later I’m at it again, watching the closed-up face with the sweaty sheen.

  We move. We rest again. The dog beside us, the nails on his paws clacking against the road. I can feel the hesitation off him. He’s asking me do I know what I’m doing and don’t I want to go home.

  I do, I tell him. But I can’t.

  Maeve’s lined skin is being burned by the sun underneath its grayness. I take off my hat and put it on her lightly, so most of her face is in shadow. I can pretend she’s asleep. I stop again and rearrange her so she’s facing forward, facing into whatever’s coming at us. She’d feel better that way. I feel better. Maeve wasn’t one for looking too often at me anyway, unless for a fight.

  I’ve a new pain, then, the sun pounding down on one spot at the top of my forehead.

  We move. My fear so big, so palpable, that it could be an animal walking beside us. I try to make friends with it.

  * * *

  We pause to drink. I shadowbox to show that maybe we’re on the road now, but I can keep to my training. I nearly feel that I still have some control over what’s happening to us, with my fists in the air. I stare at my map, guessing how far we’ve come from the beach, from home. My eyes and ears are strained long past comfort, waiting to catch the first sign of a skrake bearing down on us.

  We get going and we keep going.

  I keep an eye on her.

  Our road joins a bigger road, and that joins a bigger road again, a straight road, and we see more houses, and the villages begin to clump together. The road curves upward and the land thickens into hills. The trees are getting bolder and greener, the landscape transforming every few clicks into shapes and colors I’ve never seen before. I leave Maeve in the barrow to walk off the road, my back giving out as I straighten, and pull some sticky pine needles to make the tea. It’s cooler in the woods, the air smells more the way it does on Slanbeg. Cleaner. I rub the needles in my hands and breathe in deep, letting my eyes stay closed a moment.

  Vitamin C, Maeve says in my ear, so clearly that I start, take in a sharp breath. I go quickly back to the road.

  Her body is prone in the barrow, her lips closed in a disapproving line.

  Every now and then, there’ll be a tree growing right up in the middle of the road, and I have to unpack the barrow and carry everything round. Food, blankets, the chickens squawking. I try not to breathe when I lift Maeve. I try not to feel her bones.

  Progress is slow, slower even than I thought it would be. Danger lies down to watch me and pant in the shade of a stone wall standing all on its own. He waits till I’ve slogged past him, and then he gets up and shakes himself and lollops along again.

  It’s viciously hot till the sun starts to sink, then suddenly it’s cold. The clouds come down on us, obstinate and dour.

  When the storm comes, it lights up the darkening sky with violent intensity. I stop and lift my head to watch, my hands in the small of my back to stretch it out. It feels dangerous, pausing, but I linger and even let my stinging eyes close, and when it starts raining, I take the hand-wraps off and hold my palms up and offer them to the deluge.

  * * *

  We’re moving east, striking out opposite to home, but sometimes the road takes us north or south or even west again for a while. I don’t know if we’re going along the path we should.

  I look to Maeve and ask her again which way. She has nothing to say to me.

  * * *

  I think about food; I think about Mam’s old way of saying it: The hunger is on me. That’s it. I’ve lost condition, and the dog was skinny enough starting out. The chickens are subdued in their makeshift crate. Around me the sky crackles and combusts.

  I do nothing but walk, and we get nowhere. Sometimes we pass road signs that are still legible: DOOLIN, LISDOONVARNA. I tick them off the tattered map. I’m not watching out around me enough, I know that without Maeve telling me, and so every fifty steps, I take one careful look in all four directions. It’s good to stretch out my neck, to take in the landscape, a balm for my eyes still. Then I’m back watching the top of her head, and I begin the count again.

  I make lists as I push—of all the things I’m afraid of. Going back to the island. Never going back. Skrake. People, especially men.

  While we walk, and then when I can walk no more, I try to get my brain to linger over home. In case I haven’t another chance at it, I try to think of Mam. Her smell, like warm herbs. She used to sing. I hum to myself, trying to remember a tune. The noise that comes out of me sounds nothing like her songs, and I should be keeping quiet. I don’t want to be adding to the noise my feet are making on the road, the roll of the barrow’s wheel, the racket of me pushing and pulling through trees and over debris. Skrake are attracted to noise. Noise and fire and movement. Their vision is good and their smell is exceptional, and they’re afraid of nothing. And they’ve a taste for us, so they do.

  I wonder instead what Mam’d be at now, if she were me. She wouldn’t have stayed on the island either. Mam would be proud of me.

  Wouldn’t she, Maeve?

  My throat is dry, and all I want is to stop and drink and then collapse and lie still for a long time, days and nights. We press on. Danger lags so far behind, his lithe black-and-white coat a dark smudge against the horizon. I wonder if he’ll bother to catch up at all.

 
It is the first day of our walk.

  Chapter Two

  I had a childhood and it was happy, and the fact that my mother and Maeve were able to do that for me while the country was ate around us says probably everything anyone needs to know about them.

  The sun rises on Slanbeg and us with it. I hear the soft noises of the hens, the rooster making a racket no matter what the hour. Stretching in the bed while Mam cooks eggs downstairs. The smells and the sounds and the feeling of warmth even in the winter while the panes of glass had frost the whole way across and the ice storms went on for days.

  Farming in the heat. We wear hats with brims against the sun. Mine is too big and keeps falling down over my ears. The lazy sound of a bumblebee and over that, singing. The sun warm on my shoulders, the smell of wholesome things growing, of grass and peas and ripening tomatoes. Maeve passes me with her bucket full of weeds and puts her rough hand on the back of my neck for a moment, and I feel like my chest could heave full open, spilling red happiness on the hot, thirsty earth.

  One happy memory is a million when you’re growing up, one summer afternoon a decade of them. How many days spent by the sea, making dams and collecting shells and seaweed. Lying on a rug in the warmth with an arm thrown over my eyes against the sun, smelling the salt on my skin and digging my toes into the sand. Straying over to watch the creatures in rock pools, only to look up with a question and see Mam and Maeve talking quietly together, stopping to kiss, fingers touching.

  Or later, watching them spar, showing me the holds and pressure points and the right curve in a hit. Sitting in the wild grass watching, the chickens bawking and eyeing me to see if I’ll find a slug for them.

  The water nearly warm in the big plastic basin she put before the fire. Winter again, the rain raging against the windows, and I nearly feel sorry for it being so cold and lonely and wanting to get in. There’s a towel warming for me on a rack before the hearth, and I know when I get out of the dirty water in a minute, Mam will wrap it around me, from ears to feet. She’ll tell me I’ll be as snug as a bug.

  Making up stories for me once I’m in my nightclothes and we’ve finished stretches. Maeve says not to be filling that child’s head with rubbish, the half laugh that used be in her, the light the both of them gave out.

  The point being, in any case, that I had a home and I was loved and that was really fucking obvious even if everything else was a mystery.

  Chapter Three

  Stay clear of tall buildings. Maeve’s advice. There is no way around that I can see, not unless we go back, unless I unload and load up the barrow all those times again to get over the trees and gaps and cracks. Going back never seems the right thing to me.

  I shade my eyes against the sun and look on ahead of us at the town, trying to see if anything might fall on top of us.

  “Is it the right way?” I ask Maeve, and I ask it out loud, my voice a tremble, in case she can hear me. I’m nearly afraid she’ll answer, and then when she doesn’t, I feel a swell of pure rage.

  We’ll go through. If these were going to fall, they’d have fallen already, they would. And I want to look, anyway; I want to see a bit of the lives that were led in the towns here in Ireland.

  We go on straight, and the buildings get bigger the way the trees did before till we’re surrounded by them. We go slow and we go quiet, I’m awake now and looking around, and my stomach is in my throat. Glass crunches beneath us. I see shadows and reflections.

  I see a dark shape out of the corner of my eye, and a half turn, a breath, is all I manage before it is on top of me. The barrow goes sprawling, and the back of my head is smacked into the road. One hand comes up reflexively toward my belt, but the other is pinned behind my back as I fall.

  I can do nothing at all. I can’t think or breathe or blink or move. I’ve no answer for this thing on me.

  Move!

  Maeve. It’s the edge in her voice in my head that gets me going.

  I try to push myself up and can’t, but get a breath in at least. The smell of rotten meat hits me, and I hear, nearly feel, teeth clacking together, trying to snatch a mouthful out of me. I throw an elbow up and thrust. It’s flimsy and I go again, harder. The weight on me shifts a little. I smash, my elbow bruising, and again, and then both my hands are free, and the weight lifts enough to let me get up as far as my knees. Danger is barking hoarsely. It’s everywhere, snapping its teeth furiously, and it’s the most I can do to push the head away with both hands. The teeth are just a whisker off my ear. I can feel the skin and hair shift beneath my palms, its flesh coming away from rotting sinew and muscle and bone. Its dead breath is overwhelming. I fall backward, and the skrake doesn’t break for a second before it comes at me again fast, so fast, but I get a foot under it and pitch hard upward as I land (Sacrifice throw, Maeve says. Good.) and with a desperate thrust, I get it most of the way over my head.

  I get up to my feet to put more space between us, and I crouch low and ready. I’ve an anger in me now that I have my breath, now that I’m not so panicked. I feel it all the way up from my toes. My fingers go to my belt and I let fly.

  My hands are shaking with the fright, but the knife gets into the skrake’s chest and I feel like I’m going to win. I feel like I’m getting something back; I’m clawing something away from the dread I have in me. I can see it gather itself together for another attack, and without looking for it, my second knife is in my hand. I back up a few steps more as it reaches for me, aim for the skull, and I throw. The knife glances off.

  Danger has the skrake’s lower leg in his mouth. I think I shout while I pick another knife, toss, catch, and throw again, aiming again for the head. I’m wondering stupidly if I can even pierce a skull from this distance. I’ve spent all my life bloody training and really, I have no idea. I know nothing. The head moves to the left as Danger pulls harder on its leg, and the knife glances off again.

  I take a breath through my nose. I try to calm down. I reposition myself with one knee beneath me on the ground and one knee forward. The skrake is going to shake off Danger, or he’ll get hurt. I move my hand to my knife belt again, bring it up, let fly. This one catches it full force in the throat, but the skrake doesn’t stop, and I get my hands out nearly as it lands on me. I roll sideways, get to my feet, and crouch low, trying to gather myself before it comes at me again.

  Syrupy black blood is oozing from its injuries, but the skrake keeps coming. It grabs my hair and an arm, whatever is in reach, and pulls me apart while its teeth go for my head. I arch my back, try to get a knee between us, and loose a hand so I can get hold of the knife still lodged in its neck. I pull it out, and the skrake gives a deep gurgling noise. Blood throbs out much faster now, drenching my clothes. I stick the knife in again and feel it weakening at last. I don’t stop. The knife meets soft flesh and gritty muscle and bone, and when I pull it out, the blood spurts onto me. It’s all I can do to keep my face out of the flow. I worry about the sores on my hands.

  I push it off me, feeling the shakiness, the weakness in my arms. I don’t let myself lie there even for an instant. I move.

  I’m on my feet, in a guard position, watching.

  I breathe, in and out.

  Blood—dark, viscous, clinging—is everywhere. I do my best to wipe it from my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the skrake incredibly—predictably—making to get up. Ruined eyes roll in decayed sockets and its proboscis, pink smeared with black, throbs in the dark cave of its mouth.

  The fear is gone, and I feel revulsion and then anger. I use it: I rush at the skrake, low and fast. I gather its legs and keep pushing till it’s on its back, and I land on it as hard as I can, pinning with my knees. I reach for my ankle knife and go for the eyes and the mouth.

  It seems like a long time again till the skrake goes still, but in the end it gives way.

  It’s small, I can see now.

  It was just a child, half the size of a full-grown one. Half the strength. I try not to look too hard, but at the same time
I don’t take my eyes off it. The body isn’t far gone. There’s jeans, tied with a belt that somehow hangs on to that skinny waist. It has a jumper, shoes on it still. One lace tied and the other trailing and filthy.

  I lie quiet again until my breathing is more normal, and then I get up and tie the lace.

  Maeve lies in the barrow, just the same, dustier maybe from being inside the buildings. I nearly thought something would stir her and she’d be up.

  * * *

  We go on, quick and quiet, just like I’ve been trained, and soon we’re through the town and back out onto the lonely roads, and I push hard.

  I want to put distance between us and the corpse before the light starts to go. I’d half thought, I’m only realizing now, that maybe I’d get all the way east without seeing any skrake at all.

  I think again about turning around and going back and doing the thing I’m supposed to do instead of striking out this way. My mind does the same sums and comes to the same conclusions, though, and on I go.

  You’d nearly expect skrake to be outlined in red or something the way I was told about them. With pictures Maeve had drawn, badly, targets for knife practice, with long descriptions, repeated till I knew them by heart. They’d been half-mythic, half-nonsense. But they’re just gray and ordinary, kind of, part of the background, human-shaped and unobvious. Till they’re going for your throat.

  When the afternoon’s storm comes, I put the tarp lightly over the barrow, and we keep walking. I turn my face up to the sky and wipe it with a cleanish bit of my shirt. Danger walks almost on top of my heels with his tail between his legs.

  I move so fast now, my feet nearly trip over themselves. My fingers grip the handles of the barrow till they cramp and I have to shake them loose, but I hardly get them unclamped before I pick it up again and get us on our way.