Moving on

My eyes are stinging already. It’s happening sooner every day. The gasmask’s so battered now that it barely protects me from the outside air at all, but I keep wearing it for April’s sake. She’s got enough to worry about already.

Today I’m further than I’ve ever ventured before. A clump of trees in the middle of a field. It was probably an orchard once, when there were still people to look after it. Now it’s grown totally wild, and the branches scratch at my arms and clothes. The few tenacious apples I can find are tiny and misshapen, but I gather them anyway. There are barely enough to fill my basket. Not promising.

April will still be excited to see them of course. No matter how many times I fail, she never gives up her childish hope. Once I thought that was a good thing, but I don’t know how many more times I can handle watching her little heart break. There is no food. Nothing out here we can eat. The world is dead and so are we. Maybe it would just be better if we accepted it.

On the way back I forage some mushrooms from near an old bomb shelter, just to make my basket look fuller. I almost laugh at my efforts. Even if everything somehow turned out to be edible, it would still make for a pitiful meal.

Sure enough, when I climb back through the cottage window, April’s puppy dog eyes are glimmering with excitement in the candlelight. Worse, she’s hugging that damn radio again.

‘You'd better not have turned that on,’ I say.

Her little face falls, and shame washes over me. I’ve snapped at her already. I’ve only been back for two seconds - that must be a new record. Why can’t I be more caring? More sisterly? She’s just a kid, for god’s sake.

‘No Jenny,’ she says, earnest as anything. ‘I haven’t, I promise.’

She probably hasn’t, either. She’s probably just waited for me all day. I think that might be worse. When I was five years old I played with dolls. April cradles a radio and a locket instead. The locket I can’t bring myself to even touch.

I force a smile as I take off my mask. Trying to pretend I can share the same excitement after so many disappointments.

‘I’ve got apples.’

April’s eyes actually light up again. It’s like a punch to the gut. She’s unbreakable. That relentless hope against hope makes me want to cry.

She hovers eagerly at my side as I make a show of laying the food on the table. Our nightly ritual. I raise the knife above an apple and hesitate for a moment, like I always do. I used to cross my fingers in these pauses. Now I just brace myself for the inevitable disappointment. Beside me, April’s practically jumping up and down in anticipation.

I cut the apple open. The blade has barely touched it before the outside crumbles away, leaving that familiar little heap of black ash. Rotten. Dead. Like everything else in this world.

I can’t bear to look at April, so I just keep cutting open the apples one by one. Then the mushrooms. All of them dissolve into nothing. April’s lip will be quivering by now, but she won’t want me to see. So I don’t. I just take a deep breath and force myself to sound cheerful as I say ‘Never mind, we’ll try again tomorrow.’

I hate myself for that. Never mind? What a ridiculous thing to say.

April pours us drinks from the rainwater traps as I root through the crate our parents left us, deciding what tonight's delicacy will be. The rooting is all for show. There’s nothing left for me to root through. I choose the tin of beans, because that feels slightly less awful than lentils. Save that treat for our final meal tomorrow.

Because once the lentils are gone, that’s it. No more food. I haven’t told April - what would be the use? She’ll find out soon enough. Let her cling onto her hope a little longer. It’s all she has. Well, that and her locket.

We eat our cold beans in silence, the dread rising in my stomach. It’s nearly time for our other nightly ritual. I’m numb to the food now, but the radio still knocks the wind out of me every time.

When sunset comes, I steel myself and turn the radio on. April leans closer, rapt. I close my eyes. Somehow it’s easier if I don’t look.

The silence stretches on. There’s a gentle hiss of faint static, but it doesn’t so much as crackle. It never does. The five minutes feel like an eternity, but eventually the time comes and I turn the radio off again. My soul dies a little more.

Even April goes quiet. As I tuck her into her blanket bed she insists on opening her heart-shaped locket again to stare at the photo inside.

‘We’ll see them again soon,’ I lie, kissing her forehead.

They’re dead, of course. It’s been months. There’s no way our parents have managed to survive out there for this long.

But we still turn the radio on every night. Because we promised we would. And a small, stupid part of me can’t help clinging to the thought that maybe this time will be different. Maybe we’ll hear their voices again. Maybe they’ll come back here. Like they promised.

I should have moved us on ages ago, but like a stupid child I dared to hope. Now we’ve lingered too long. Mum and dad are gone, and there’s no food to be found. I’ve raided the whole area and found nothing.

I make the decision I should have made a month ago. Tomorrow we move on.

‘No,’ says April the next day, folding her arms. ‘Mummy said wait here.’

She has a full on meltdown when I insist: screaming, stamping her feet and even throwing things. I try to mollify her using the radio, saying mum and dad will be able to find us that way. Even that doesn’t work, and in the end I have to show her inside the crate - that single, lonely can of lentils. That shuts her up.

We pack a bag in subdued silence, and put on our gasmasks. April’s still sulking when we leave, but at least she doesn’t put up more of a fight. Her mask thankfully seems to work far better than mine.

I try not to cough too much as we walk, and April doesn’t say anything. Perhaps she’s still upset. The walk is gruelling enough without trying to talk, so I don’t push it. A single tin of beans doesn’t provide much energy.

We pass any number of overgrown houses, but they’re all too far gone. There’s nowhere sheltered enough to hide from the outside air. I try scavenging supplies from a few but the cupboards are all bare, no doubt raided long ago.

There’s no sound or movement except for the two of us. Everything’s dead. We must have travelled hundreds of miles when we were still with mum and dad, but we never came across a single other living soul. April and I are the last two people in hell.

As night falls we finally find a shed that offers enough shelter. I try to ration out the lentils. April wolfs down her meagre portion, but I go without. Maybe that way they’ll last until we find somewhere new.

We keep moving, but each day brings the same as the last: no food, scarce shelter and the awful, deafening silence of the radio at sunset. I manage to make the lentils stretch for four days, but even with only April eating they’re gone all too soon.

We keep moving. There’s nothing else we can do. The days and nights blur, and the hole in my stomach grows heavier. I can barely move. April keeps going as best she can, but eventually it’s too much for her. She collapses, too weak to even walk. Hope can only carry you so far.

Our journeys become shorter by the day. I have just enough strength to carry April in short bursts, but only brief, mad surges of desperation can spur me on. My mask feels increasingly tight, like it’s choking me. Every breath is a struggle, every step a victory. Even talking is too much.

‘I’m sorry,’ I manage one night. ‘I’m so sorry. You were right, April. We should have waited.’

April doesn’t reply. She just stares at the photo of mum and dad blankly as we listen to the static of the radio. She’s taken to clutching the locket at all times. Her tiny fist clasps around it day and night, clinging on for dear life. Still, even now, clinging to some kind of hope.

I give up wearing my mask. April doesn’t protest. Her eyes seem bigger than ever in her bony face. She’s gaunt now. Brittle. When I pick her up I worry I might snap her.

We sleep holding hands. Often under the stars now, I’m too tired to find shelter. My only thought is for food.

The hunger is everything. The faint shadows of the world are vague and blurry. Sound is muffled. My arms feel like they belong to someone else. But still, somehow, my legs carry me forward.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, but I can’t abandon April. Not like her parents. I have to keep going.

I finally collapse surrounded by trees. This is it. My body is lead; it won’t stand again.

April seems to know. She shuffles closer and hugs me close, like she’ll never let go. She turns the radio on, and I let the gentle static merge with the darkness as it slowly engulfs me.

A crackle breaks the silence.

The sudden sound brings me back. My eyes snap open, and as I stare at the radio, it does it again. A sharp burst of actual noise.

I can scarcely accept what I’m hearing. I fumble for the radio to try and tune it better, but my grip is too weak and it clatters to the floor.

The radio lands with a clunk. Even as the speaker keeps hissing and crackling, I stare at it in disbelief. That wasn’t the sound of something landing on mud. That almost sounded like -

Metal? A wave of energy I didn’t know I had lets me clamber to my knees, and with April’s help I clear the dirt and leaves from the forest floor. Sure enough, there’s something beneath the mud. Something metal.

A door.

It’s a bunker. One of the old bomb shelters. My heart pounds, and for the first time in months I cross my fingers. It takes everything we’ve got, but between us we eventually manage to wrench the door open.

We struggle down the ladder, and I burst into tears. It’s too much. After all this time, it doesn’t feel real.

There are rows and rows of shelves, stacked high all the way to the back of the shelter. Every one of them is full of tinned food.

I stab a knife into the first tin I get my hands on, and we both wolf down the lentils inside. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. We pry open more, gorging on countless mouthfuls of who knows what until we’re ready to be sick.

April’s face breaks into a broad smile, and I can’t help it - I smile too. She hugs me close again and I hug her back, relaxing into the comfort of each other’s arms, gazing up at the towering shelves of food around us.

The crackling static filters down again from outside. It's faint, but I can almost make out a word.

‘Hello?’