The Bedroom

Nowhere are we more vulnerable.

The next door led to the bedroom. She held her breath, slowly dipped the handle and pushed. The axe she had reclaimed from a log pile weeks ago was rusty but reassuring in her right hand.

Bedrooms were the best and the worst.

They were the crucible, the centre of our vulnerability. They were the places we slept, got naked, felt safe, lived our most intimate moments, kept our treasures, chose clothes, prepared ourselves in mirrors or retreated to in sickness. These days the smell of sickness was often just blended with the damp, unkempt weight of decay that sat heavy in every empty house. She never went near the beds anymore. If she spotted a quiet mound under a mottled quilt, it needed no investigation.

The door opened quietly into a dimly lit room and nothing moved inside. That didn’t mean there was no-one there, just that they were patient enough to wait until she was inside and had started searching before making their move. Ten slow breaths. So far, houses on this street had been empty. So did that make it more or less likely that this one was the same?

Before, in the early days, she had seen a city burning on the horizon - an orange glow, like a smoky reflection of the blood moon. Some gang war over a fuel station gone wrong perhaps? Who knew. As she had stood there for a moment watching a cold wind had rushed past her down the hill, eager to fall upon and feed the flames. She had watched for a while, as the fire smudged its wicked light across streets and through buildings. The last of her hopes of salvation were burned up that night. Her tears were cold on her cheeks as she slunk back into the trees. That was when she had decided to aim low and head for somewhere remote, somewhere small. Fewer survivors, she reasoned, would have less to fight over and less reasons to stick around.

It had taken nearly seven weeks to walk here. A couple of times she had though it would be the end.

The food she had carried ran out after three weeks and she went five days with nothing to eat. She had started imagining that when she became too weak to walk she would have to choose two trees to sit down between and just watch the sky through the canopy until death came. When she spotted the small cabin, she couldn’t help laughing out loud - before clapping her hand to her mouth in fear that someone might have heard. She wanted to rush to the door, throw it open and search frantically for anything to fill the ache in her stomach, but instead she made herself settle down into the undergrowth to wait and watch. After about an hour a man opened the door and stood on the step, looking around carefully. He was maybe in his fifties, dressed in a drab green jacket. The thing that made her heart race was that he had a gun, a rifle, over one arm. She stayed very still, her jacket pulled up over her mouth to avoid sending puffs of giveaway steam into the cold air. Something in the way he stepped out and closed the door without a backward glance or word of farewell made her think he was alone.

A long time after he had walked away into the trees, she crept to the cabin window and peered into the dark, empty interior. Inside, it was sparse but clean and neat - such a contrast to the ransacked houses she had come to consider normal. She let herself in and crept quietly from doorstep to table to kitchen sink. On a set of shelves, tins were neatly stacked as if on display, with all the labels facing outwards. Reaching carefully over the front row, she took a few from the back of each shelf and slipped them into her pack. She refilled both her canteens with water from the sink and took one of three torches from another shelf.

As she crept back towards the door, her eye was drawn to the only splash of colour in the cabin, a posy of carefully tied fresh purple flowers in a drinking glass beside a framed picture of a smiling couple. She crept forward and recognised the man with the gun next to a smiling, blonde haired woman in a yellow blouse with white flowers picked out around the hem. They were standing in a well kept garden and had their arms around each other’s waists. They looked happy. Hanging on the corner of the picture frame was a small, open, silver locket. A picture of a boy in a blue shirt had been carefully cut into the shape of a heart to fit inside. He was about 12 years old and looked a lot like his dad. He looked younger than her own brother had the last time she had seen him coughing in his hospital bed, but he had the same serious eyes. A sob bubbled up inside her and she ran from the cabin, deep into the trees.

The second time she had thought it was the end was much worse. They had spotted her cutting across a road. She had looked carefully before setting out but just been unlucky. As she reached the middle of the road, three men came out on the opposite side a little further down and immediately spotted her. It had been a short and desperate chase. They had caught her, forced her down and taken turns until they were spent. They had turned out her pack, taking the rest of her tins and the torch then left her. She did not move for a long time afterwards. She found the axe a couple of days later and it now felt constant and reassuring in her palm.

The bedroom was open. She held her breath and listened. Still no sound from inside. With the axe half raised, slowly and carefully she crossed the threshold with one step, then another. The room was dimly lit. Drawn curtains over the windows tinged everything with a dark green light. This house had seemed pretty secure when she had broken the kitchen window to climb in and the bedroom seemed undisturbed. A double bed, thankfully flat and empty, a dresser with a mirror on it and, like others on this street, a doorway on the far side of the room probably led to a dressing area and a bathroom. She quietly crept across the carpet to see from the centre of the room whether anyone was lurking in the bathroom. Ten slow breaths. Not conclusive, but still no movement.

The dresser was a few feet away but even in the dim light the dust covered mirror still stared back at her. Who was that? Her hair was tied back tight, her face much thinner than she remembered and she looked tired. In the silence, in the waiting, they stared at each other; trying to recognise someone they knew. Standing in a stranger’s bedroom, waiting to see if they were alone - they looked at each other. Eventually she broke the gaze. Looking down the short corridor between two sets of wardrobe doors, her heart sank wondering how to deal with the possibility that someone was waiting for her behind one of those doors. At least they were solid doors. Slatted doors allowed someone inside to peek out and choose their moment. With a solid door, a would-be ambusher had to pick their moment and blindly commit to it.

Without taking her eyes off the doors she reached behind her for a pillow from the bed. A short throw down the corridor and it landed with a satisfying thump in-between the doors. Ten slow breaths. Still nothing moved. Probably alone. One by one, she opened the doors. Dresses hanging from rails, skirts, trousers and tops, shoes and bags on one side. Suits, jeans, shirts and what looked like scuba gear piled up on the other. She turned back to the first rack. These clothes might fit her. Whoever this woman was, she had been more concerned with bright colours and things without sleeves than surviving outdoors. There were some that might be useful though and she took two t-shirts, a pair of jeans and a zip up fleece. The shoes were useless unfortunately, at least two sizes too small and most of them had heels anyway.

If the house had a gun she reasoned this is where it might be. She always looked but hadn’t found one yet. Most houses had been ransacked and she imagined that guns would be highly prized and amongst the first scavengers’ trophies. Over the suits, on a shelf, she found a locked box. It was certainly big enough for a pistol and with a bit more searching a box of bullets was buried among some magazines behind it. Her heart raced. Maybe - if she could get the box open. Back in the bedroom she searched for a key. Bedside table? Car key and house keys on a fob on the top - but nothing small enough for the box. She pulled open the drawer underneath and laughed. Perched right on the top of everything else was a keyring in the shape of a pistol with a small black key on it.

Hands shaking, she sat on the bed and tried the key. It turned! As the lid lifted she saw the dull glint of gunmetal and at the same moment a whiff of oil filled her nose. A blunt, short pistol and various cleaning clothes and brushes sat on a bed of black foam. Despite having searched many times and longed for this moment, as she sat and looked at it she was suddenly unsure. She had never even held a gun before and certainly never fired one. Was this really what she wanted? Would taking this thing make her more afraid or less afraid?

Ten slow breaths. She locked the box again and put it in her pack along with the key.

The bathroom was a grimy gold mine. The ceramic surfaces were matt and discoloured under a layer of dust and orange mould was creeping in between the tiles in the shower cubicle. She had been hoping for some basic medical supplies. The mirrored cabinet flipped open to reveal half a dozen bottles and packets of pills, antiseptic and toothpaste. It all went in the pack. In a cupboard under the sink there were toilet rolls and sanitary towels. She crouched down and picked up a slightly wrinkled, slightly damp toilet roll in one hand and a plastic wrapped towel in the other and just looked at them. She had thought she might be more excited to find them. What was it? Perhaps having survived without them for so long, they looked strangely excessive and wasteful. Everything in her pack was precious and rationed. Even the thought of using something once and throwing it away seemed suddenly alien and disconcerting. She slowly loaded them into her pack but without being really sure she wanted them anymore.

Behind the sanitary towels was another, smaller box. She knew immediately what it was. Like the wind rushing out of a crumpled bag she sank to her knees and stared at it. This was the one thing she did not want to confront but had been unable to shake ever since that day in the forest. This was the thing that would change everything. This was the whirlwind, the end, the beginning, the unthinkable and hope and terror and everything too awful and bright and terrible to name. It was too early to know, wasn’t it? She thought back.

No. It wasn’t.

Please let it be a little longer. Please don’t make me know this.

Trembling she reached for the box.