The Last of Us. Rob Ewing

She tries it, then gives me some.

      ‘Maybe OK?’ I say.

      We find chocolate bars called Maxifuel Protein. In a big box. Meal replacement, it says. Hooray! We can eat just bars! No more tins! But they don’t taste much like chocolate, more like bad fudge. I don’t like them.

      Me: ‘They safe?’

      Elizabeth: ‘I think they are. Still in date.’

      We find the person upstairs. I was expecting a man, but it’s a woman. She’s a mystery. She’s on the toilet floor. The floor has fallen through to downstairs. Her mask has slipped to her neck, with lots of brown spots on it: sick, or blood. There are towels laid out on the floor. The towels are dirty. There’s broken glass. There’s little red and white pills spilt in the bathroom. They’re stuck to the tiles like they got glued on. She’s wearing clothes like an Olympic runner. There’s mushy spots on her skin.

      We gather our shopping on the front step. Elizabeth takes her blue spray-can and sprays a B on the door.

      Alex: ‘No more New Shopping. Please. Can we not just stay outside now? I don’t want to do any more.’

      Elizabeth: ‘You’ve done really, really well. Thank you. No more for today. We’re done.’

      Alex: ‘Are you being truthful?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Yes.’

      Alex: ‘Why do we have to bother?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Because we need to do all we can to survive OK? Remember? Anyway, I didn’t ask you to come upstairs with me. You should’ve stayed downstairs.’

      Alex: ‘It was too late. I was there.’

      I fill my backpack while Alex frets, and while Elizabeth adds the house to our map of food-stores.

      People are mostly dead in bed, or in the toilet, or between the two. They smell the worst of all things, worse than cats or dogs. So you get in and out fast. And you don’t look at them in case the memory of the way they look becomes long-term.

      Mum always said about bad stuff on the internet: ‘Never look for bad stuff because you can’t unsee it.’

      On the way back home we stop at the cool box. For the past month, since the world started to feel warm, Elizabeth has kept Alex’s injections in a cool box in the stream beside our village.

      Now she takes the foil packet out and stares at what’s left inside. When I try to be nosy, she shuts the box.

      As soon as her back is turned I sneak a peek inside.

      Me: ‘There’s hardly any!’

      Elizabeth: ‘You … We’ve loads. OK? Enough for months.’

      Me: ‘But just one packet …’

      Elizabeth: ‘Shut up about it.’

      Then it’s sandwich time: crackers, corned beef. Corned beef is the opposite of a Wow Word as it doesn’t taste of corn or beef. Today Elizabeth has made jelly-water. Our water on its own tastes of coal and chlorine, but add a packet of jelly cubes and it tastes like sweets.

      After this she gives us each a tablet, which she says is a vitamin. Alex looks very suspicious about his, and so do I.

      Me: ‘Where – honestly – did you get these?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Shopping.’

      Me: ‘New or Old?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Just shopping.’

      Me: ‘Did you get them from a bad house?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Just because something comes from a bad house doesn’t mean it’s actually bad.’

      Me: ‘I’m not keen.’

      Alex: ‘Is it safe for diabetes?’

      Elizabeth looks surprised, like she hadn’t thought of this. She digs out the boring book she always carries and reads it, frowning. In a long time she looks up.

      ‘It doesn’t mention vitamins … truthfully then, I don’t know. I think it’ll be all right.’

      Me: ‘Polar bears have too many vitamins in their livers. You should check it isn’t made of polar bear.’

      Elizabeth: ‘I think it would say on the packet. Like with cod liver oil for instance.’

      Me: ‘And hot dogs, for instance.’

      Elizabeth: ‘Smart arse.’

      In the end we flick our vitamins into the stream. Elizabeth looks sad about it, but doesn’t stop us. It’s good fun, and I want to flick more, but she won’t allow.

      ‘We’re not getting enough fruit,’ she says. ‘I did a project last year about sailors in the olden days. They got something called scurvy. That’s where you need vitamin C. Your gums and skin start to bleed. Well, Calum Ian and Duncan have very red mouths, don’t they?’

      Me: ‘That’s because they’re always sucking petrol for their stupid bonfires that never work.’

      Elizabeth doesn’t disagree.

      Me: ‘Know something? I got reminded there about our hot dogs. Remember, that the boys took? Well I want them back. It still gets me fed up that they stole them.’

      Elizabeth: ‘Best forgotten.’

      Me: ‘No it isn’t. I bet they have hundreds of stuff in their house. I bet they eat all night until they’re sick.’

      Alex: ‘If I get sick the thingamabob that hangs down my throat comes out.’

      Elizabeth: ‘Rubbish, it only feels like it does.’

      Me: ‘I think we should go to war with them.’

      Elizabeth: ‘Nobody’s going to war. We all need to stick together. Remember – what’s going to work?’

      We deliberately don’t say – teamwork.

      When Elizabeth and Alex go back home I lie and say I’m going for a walk.

      It’s not usual for me to go alone, but she looks fed up or in a sad mood again so I get away with it.

      I know their garden right away. I know their street even, because of all the black bits from fires.

      Six of the posts along one fence, charred and burnt. Burnt black spots of grass, like a spaceship landed and bounced. A whole front garden, burnt in a square. A kid’s plastic go-kart half-melted into glue.

      They haven’t burnt their own garden. The nameplate says R. MACNEIL. I spy around the windows like Ruby Redfort on a mission. They must be upstairs.

      A sprinkled heap of coats in the hall. The carpet looks worn, but then I see it’s dried mud. Two pairs of wellies, neatly together. There’s a family smell, stronger than Duncan’s even, sort of like gammon crisps.

      The living room’s a mess. Bits of fishing rod, nets, lines, lumps of metal. There’s a lot of empty cereal packets. Standards are slipping, Mum would say. There’s shopping baskets on the floor full of games, DVDs. Some of the DVDs have been melted, by Duncan I guess.

      A jar on the table, full of brown muck, with darts in it. What’s that all about? It smells bad.

      They must be out. I do an actorly halloooo up the stairs, but nobody shouts back.

      I go upstairs. The first room must be Duncan’s: it’s a mess across the floor and smells of socks. The next room is very tidy, with even the bed made. Posters of football players, blue bedsheets, boxing gloves.

      But then I realise that they’re not sleeping in either of these rooms because there’s another room: with a big bed for adults. On top of this bed are two sleeping bags, with a pillow at one end and a pillow at the other.