The voice is soft, feminine and extremely sarcastic. It suits its owner extremely well, because the owner of that voice is definitely feminine, definitely sarcastic and appears to be very soft.

‘Hi Gale.’ I say and turn around. I try to sound like I knew she was there all along, like I had been expecting her and therefore I had the upper hand in this situation. I held my back stretch while turning and gave a mock yawn. It was a good thing my hands were holding on tightly to each other, otherwise the adrenalin burst I’d received seconds earlier might be showing.

Gale was leaning nonchalantly against the closet leading towards the bathroom. She gave a snort which clearly said “if you didn’t just crap your pants for a second, then I’m the reigning king of England,” but I held on to the uncaring act.

‘Why did you take such a long road to get home?’ she asks, her long blonde fringe hanging in her eyes. She’s very short, probably 5”2, but I’ve learnt the hard way that you shouldn’t base any of your interactions with Gale on her length.

‘I decided I wanted to take a stroll through the park. You know the flowers are truly beautiful this time of the year.’

She snorts again, this time adding a chuckle to the mix, laughed with her head shaking. ‘Well next time you decide to stop and smell the flowers you might want to do it a bit more quietly, there are a lot of unsavoury characters out there, you know?’

I walk over to the large king size bed, plop myself down and start undoing my shoelaces. ‘So what are you doing this side of town? Last time I saw you, you were heading for France, in search of baguettes, croissants and frog’s legs?’ I stare up at her with a smile on my face.

‘I was actually on my way to Germany, but then my hideout got raided from all the provisions I had stored for the trip, along with my hunting gear, so it really became impossible for me to go. Which brings me knocking to your door…’ She stands with her arms folded and tries to look confident and assured that she will get what she’s looking for, but I see something different in her stance from the last time I saw her.

Gale has always been small, even from back when we’d been together in school. She had always been skinny and frail looking, but now I could see her once vibrant blue eyes were sunken. It was as if a mist had drawn over them. I could also see her clothes were hanging very loosely on her frame. Her cheekbones were protruding from her face and her jaw looked like it was nothing but bone covered with pale white skin.

I try to pretend like I hadn’t been inspecting her for a couple of seconds before I say, ‘Well, if you’re looking for hunting gear, you know I don’t do that kind of thing, but on the other hand I do have a small supply of Heinz Baked Beans from some doomsday prepper’s house I found last week. We can share a can if you want?’

‘That all you got?’ She replies, but I can see her words are struggling to cover the screams her stomach must be making. ‘I was hoping for at least a three course meal, maybe with some burgers somewhere in the middle, but I’ll settle for some beans just to keep you company.’

I laugh, get up from the bed and walk over to her. I tousle her hair like I’d often done on the playground, and she replied by hissing like a cat like she’d always done, just like when she’d insisted she was old and tall enough to play basketball with us. And for a second, it was almost as if the world we knew hadn’t disappeared completely.

0o0

The first can of baked beans went quite quickly. Gale was even hungrier than I thought and I remembered a week into the end of the world the hunger I had felt, so I opened a second can. Secretly I was glad I had put most of my stockpile in the cellar, because Gale was going through the second can as if there had never been a first.

‘So tell me, how have things been since the last time you’d been trying to avoid me?’ she asked through muffled mouthfuls of saucy beans.

I smiled at the memory that showed up in my mind. It had been a month ago, while I had been looting a vending machine at Twickenham stadium. For some reason most of the people that had stayed in the city didn’t think the big attractions were places with food. They just thought of them as grand empty halls. But I’d been pilfering from Old Trafford, Wimbledon tennis club, Wembley stadium and almost every other main arena in the city for weeks with great success.

I had just smashed the glass of the machine and had my hand wrapped around a packet of wine gums, when something stung my hand. It was Gale, standing with a custom made slingshot made from inner tubing, smiling as if she’d just won the golden medal for best female archer in the Olympic Games.

‘Hey Wells,’ she’d said.

‘Hey girl who’s name I can’t remember,’ I lied. I had always liked teasing her.

‘Good. I wouldn’t want my name being dragged through the mud by the likes of you.’ She replied, always ready with a comeback.

‘You need a hunter in your little wolf pack of one? I’m quite a dead shot with anything that needs to fly.’ She said matter-of-factly.

But I wasn’t planning on having anyone else around to care for, it hadn’t worked for me before and wasn’t going to work for me now, and that was about as much as I’d told her at the time.

‘I remember,’ I say with a laugh as she swallowed two spoons full of Heinz without chewing. ‘I actually specifically remember you aiming for my ear, but hitting my hand from something like 10 yards. Not very professional of a hunter in my opinion.’

‘Not very…’ she chokes on the beans not going down, tries again, swallows hard and throws me in the face with her spoon. ‘Sorry, I was aiming for your knee but your massive head got in the way of my shot.’ I laugh as I wipe the sauce off my forehead where the spoon struck me. ‘Well at least now I know your aim has improved slightly.’ I throw the spoon back at her, which she catches effortlessly and continues eating.

‘I’ve actually been quite busy since then if you have to know,’ I say with more earnest. I had been finding new places to sleep, new hidey-holes, a decent food stash that someone had left behind, prepared escape routes and plan B’s, C’s and D’s.

‘Reapers have been getting more and more vicious, clubbing together and shutting down parts of the city completely. It’s only a matter of time before they realise they can’t all band together for a limited amount of food, but that day can’t come soon enough.’

Gale licks the spoon clean of the last remnants of sustenance before looking up at me with a serious look on her small face. ‘Is that why you didn’t want me to join you? Afraid I’d eat all your supplies?’

‘Well it’s too late for that, now isn’t it?’ I say with a laugh and this time I was ready to duck as she throws the empty can at my head. It hits the wall behind me with an empty clang, not a drop left to make a mess on the pearly white tiled wall.

‘You didn’t always want to be alone though Shaun. At school you had tons of friends. You were hardly ever alone. Why do you want to be alone now that you actually need someone to help you?’ she asks, bright blue eyes shining.

‘Who says I need help? I seem to be getting along just fine.’ It’s true that I had had many friends when the world was still working. But that wasn’t the world anymore. Everything had changed, completely and irreversibly. Nothing would ever be the same, and the Shaun Wells sitting here right now was the only one left, and he didn’t keep any company.

‘You definitely need help if that’s what you think? You’re silly rocks on the roof and knife in your belt. You think that’s going to save you if the Reapers find you? There are too many of them. And besides, your little stockpile of canned food in the cellar is only going to last so long before someone steals it. You can’t wait here forever in the hope that all of them will kill each other off, that’s not going to happen soon enough and you know it.’ She glares at me defiantly as if daring me to contradict her.

‘Is that so? Maybe I do know that, maybe I know that all too well. And maybe I also know that no matter what we do, we are going to die in this empty godforsaken city, so either way it doesn’t really make a difference what I choose, does it?’

I glare back at Gale, my eyes trying their hardest to get her off the topic. Of course she knew of all my hideouts and hiding places. She must have been following me for the past two weeks, looking to point out my weaknesses and force me to let her join me. But she didn’t know me before, and she definitely didn’t know me now. Everything changed when the world ended, and whatever she thought I had been, I wasn’t the same person anymore. I was the same as everyone else, and that was someone only looking out for their own best interests. Nothing else in this world survived.

I let Gale sleep in the guest bedroom, which also had a large bed, but not as large as mine. We had ended the night with a curt “sleep well” and made our ways to our different rooms. I snuggled into the massive duvet, closed my eyes, said the same prayer I’d said every night for the past 6 months, and tried to go to sleep. It probably took about 3 hours before it finally happened.

Next Chapter: The Great British Museum