Skin Read online

  After they died, a group of neighbours broke in at night and doused their apartment in petrol before setting it on fire, presumably in the misguided belief they could burn away the virus. If it wasn’t for the sprinkler system, the entire building would have gone up.

  Peering in at the blackened, smoke-damaged shell, I could almost see Lucy standing in the doorway. Could almost hear the high-pitched gurgle of Wei’s laugh as he and Charlie swapped toys or babbled to one another. I swallowed hard. Blinked away the ghosts. Kept walking.

  When I reached the ground floor, I saw the main entrance was blocked off. This wasn’t unusual. Despite crime being virtually non-existent these days, some of the older residents here are still convinced we are about to be ransacked by a post-apocalyptic biker gang, or something equally ridiculous. Although I have posted a number of polite messages on the online communal message board requesting that people keep the exits clear, I still regularly come down to find a ramshackle assortment of furniture stacked in front of the main doors, as if this easily disassembled barricade might somehow deter the fearsome zombie hordes who are allegedly lurking around each and every corner.

  It took me a couple of minutes to clear a path to the door, and as I stepped out onto the front steps, I found I’d broken into a sweat. Still, the moment I looked up, I forgot all about the unnecessary exertions. Even though it had only been a few weeks since I’d last been outside, the world had transformed completely. Colourful explosions of flowers sprang from the cracks in the concrete. Crocuses. Daffodils. Lily of the valley. Bumblebees bobbed and flies flittered and butterflies beat their quivering wings. Somewhere above me, a pair of amorous squirrels scampered across the drooping line that somehow still clung between telegraph poles. Everywhere there was life.

  Hitting record on the camera, I crept forward into the crisp morning. To my surprise, I felt an unexpected pang of sadness as I realised the visceral thrill of my very first patrols was already a distant memory. Now that the novelty of just being out here had faded, I’d begun to feel frustrated with the limitations of the set-up. From behind my mask, everything seemed muted. The colours less vibrant. The details blurred. The sounds muffled. It was like watching a wildlife documentary on TV. Or staring at video footage of Niagara Falls. It was pretty. But it wasn’t the same as actually being there.

  It’s funny. In the old world, I had suffered horribly with hay fever. My eyes and nose streamed at the first sniff of spring. The whole season filled me with dread, as I looked forward to months of crumpled tissues and scrabbling around in my bag for blister packs of antihistamines. This morning, though, I would have given anything to peel off my mask and breathe in the sweet, spring air. Just for a second. Just to feel the sunshine on my face one more time. Just to be truly outside again.

  But of course, I didn’t.

  No. I kept my mask firmly in place, peeking out through the protective screen. The only thing I could smell was warm plastic and the faintly astringent sting of disinfectant spray that I use to keep my respirator clean.

  In the courtyard outside our apartment building, there had once been a large ornamental fountain, the pump of which had long since broken. Peering into it this morning, I saw there was now an entire shoal of silverfish living there, scattered like a handful of loose change through the murk. I wondered how they had got there. It didn’t make any sense. The pond was totally cut off from everything else. And yet there they were, clinging on in their own self-contained bubble. Defying the odds to survive.

  I pressed on, moving out of the courtyard towards the wide road where my patrol begins. Five years ago, this stretch of concrete was one of the major routes in and out of the city. Traffic would thunder along here day and night, an endless procession of noise and fumes. This morning, though, the only thing I could hear was the chatter of birdsong. Even muffled by my mask, it was louder than I ever remember it being in the old world.

  Years ago, I watched a documentary about the dramatic resurgence of wildlife inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Without humans to hunt them down and destroy their habitat, the animals there had apparently thrived, despite the supposedly deadly levels of radiation. Where once workers had spilled from factory gates, now bison and boar snuffled through the tangled undergrowth that had consumed the buildings. Where decades earlier schoolchildren had lined up for class, wolves and wild horses roamed across the crumbling playgrounds.

  It seems a similar phenomenon has also occurred here. Indeed, as I cut across the forecourt of a derelict petrol station, I glanced up to see a colossal colony of black-feathered birds scowling down at me from the faded awning. It was an eerie sensation, to be watched like that. There must have been four hundred of them up there, slowly tilting their heads to track me until I’d safely passed. I’m not quite sure what they were. Crows, maybe. Or ravens? Rooks? I never learned the difference. One of the other members of my team is a keen twitcher, his reports littered with breathless descriptions of the latest formally elusive breed he’d spotted that day. Wood warblers. Goshawks. Willow tits. Nightjars. They’ve all bounced back apparently, their populations thriving now that we are the endangered species.

  It’s not just birds that have enjoyed a resurgence in our absence. Now that they pretty much have the land to themselves, the mammals have crept back from the fringes, too, claiming the streets for their own. Even in the daytime, I’ve lost track of the number of foxes I’ve seen, far fatter and redder than any of the pitiful grey things I remember prowling around our bins at dusk and at dawn. Huge colonies of rabbits sit grazing at the jungle-like lay-bys and traffic islands, utterly unbothered by my presence. There are badgers, too. And hares. I’ve even read reports of polecats and pine martens padding through the overgrown parks, though I’m yet to see them myself. Down by the canals there are stoats and voles and shrews.

  The city crawls. It slinks. It glides and slithers and gallops.

  And then there’s the livestock. Meat is a rare commodity these days, mostly confined to just poultry and pork. Animals that can be bred indoors, processed more or less autonomously. The other animals were simply left to die when the farmers abandoned their fields. The cows and the sheep and the goats. And while presumably many of them did indeed starve, many more escaped, crashing through their pens and leaping over fences and out into the world. I’ve read stories of vast itinerant herds of cattle lumbering down the motorways in search of food. Of entire suburbs invaded by sheep. Shopping centres overrun with goats.

  These aren’t the only rumours I’ve heard.

  There are whispers of other, non-native animals, too. Wild and exotic species.

  Dangerous beasts.

  After the outbreak, the various zoos and safari parks around the country were supposedly ordered to euthanise their stock. According to some reports, though, many of the keepers simply opened the cages, releasing the captive animals into the wild. Elephants and rhinos. Monkeys and zebras. Lions and tigers and bears.

  Oh my.

  Of course, I’m not sure how much truth there is in these stories. Even with the media up and running again, you still tend to hear all sorts of crazy things on the Internet these days. Even so, I find myself freezing at the slightest flicker of movement, certain that any second a hungry leopard will launch itself from the shadows and tear me to pieces.

  Fortunately, the most threatening animals I came across that morning was a pride of scrawny kittens, a dozen or so of them strutting through the gardens of an old office block as I turned right off the main road to avoid them. These days, pets of any kind are strictly forbidden. They are deemed a risk of spreading potentially fatal allergens. While we were instructed by the government to dispose of them humanely, like the farmers and zookeepers, many pet owners across the country simply turfed their animals out onto the streets. Millions must surely have perished, too domesticated to feed and fend for themselves. Some pets, however, did make it. These days packs of feral cats and dogs are a common sight in the city, though I make sure to give the
latter a wide berth, for fear of being bitten.

  ON MY FIRST few expeditions into the city, I kept religiously to my designated patrol route, terrified that deviating even an inch or two would somehow flag me up to the authorities, and that my newly minted freedom would be snatched away from me. As the weeks and months wore on, however, I began to grow a little bolder, especially once I realised that I could simply pause the camera strapped to my chest if I decided to explore somewhere further afield. While, I still didn’t dare to wander too far from the main road, it was fun to visit some of the places I remembered from the old world.

  I remember a few months ago standing outside a supermarket, the same store I used to visit religiously each Saturday morning. While the front windows of the building were all smashed, probably during the initial wave of lootings, the structure still looked in reasonably good shape. Of course, I didn’t dare venture inside. Still, if I squinted past the dirt and the plants and the rusting trolleys that lay scattered across the car park, it wasn’t hard to remember the store as it was before. The weekly trudge up and down the heaving aisles. The impromptu meal planning and mental arithmetic as I juggled various promotions and special offers. The staccato bleeps and the stilted conversations at the checkout. So dull, so drab, so everyday.

  Until suddenly, it wasn’t.

  This morning, however, I was in no mood for nostalgia, instead deciding to stick to my official route. I kept walking, deeper and deeper into the city, abandoned apartments giving way to derelict shops, before I finally reached what used to be the financial district. This marked the halfway point of my patrol. I paused, peering up at a tall, modern office block set back slightly from the road. By some quirk of programming, my route took me directly past the place where I used to work. Even though I’ve seen it a dozen times now, I still never quite got used to the sight of it. Where once teams of acrobatic window-washers abseiled down its sides, buffing the glass and chrome frontage until it gleamed, today it is a scuffed, grimy mess, more like a gravestone than the headquarters of an international social media conglomerate. Near the front entrance, someone had scrawled a message in red paint, the huge letters still just about legible all these years later:

  The end is nigh!

  And then beneath it:

  Repent, ye sinners, else hell awaits thee!

  I turned my gaze upwards, counting until I found the fourteenth floor. My old office. I could still picture it all so well. Water-cooler gossip with colleagues. Meetings with my boss. Lunch with friends. It’s hard to get my head around what it must actually look like up there now. The carpets rotten. The walls peeling. The computers strung with cobwebs. Everything happened so quickly, there was no time to pack anything away. I left work one Wednesday lunchtime and never went back. Presuming the floor hasn’t caved in, or that it hasn’t been ransacked by animals, my desk must still be there. A layer of dust thick enough to write my name in. A half-drunk mug of coffee still beside my monitor, the surface blistered with spores of mould. One of my old blazers still hanging over the back of my chair, the fabric decomposing, eaten away by moths. Paperwork. Pens. Diaries. All of it faded and forgotten.

  I shook away the memories, ready to carry on my route, when suddenly I froze. There was something there, a little way down the street. A trickle of movement. A shifting in the shadows. I struggled to keep my breath steady, fighting against the surge of adrenaline to stay calm. Rational. Telling myself I was being ridiculous. That a ferocious big cat definitely wasn’t about to appear. A tiger or a lion. A jaguar or a leopard. That it was probably nothing more than a straggling kitten. Or perhaps nothing at all. My tired eyes playing tricks on me.

  Only it didn’t look like a kitten.

  And it didn’t look like nothing.

  I pushed my glove up to my mask, wiping away the layer of grime that had settled on the visor, then squinted again into the distance.

  And then I heard it. Not from the direction I’d been looking, but from right behind me.

  Close.

  And getting closer.

  The unmistakable slap of rubber on concrete. The swish of fabric.

  I turned.

  Just in time to see someone sprinting.

  They were heading right towards me.

  PART TWO

  SIX

  I TURNED AND ran. My body a jangle of disjointed limbs. My protective suit crackling with static. It had been years since I’d moved so fast. It would almost have been exhilarating if I hadn’t been so scared. The jolt of hard tarmac on my toes. The sudden burn in my chest. The rubber band twang of my hamstrings stretching.

  But then, seconds later, it all went horribly wrong.

  I hadn’t appreciated quite how much the suit constricted my movement, and within a couple of seconds I felt the fabric pulling taut around my knees, knocking me off my stride. For a split second I flailed helplessly, clawing at the air as I tried to regain my balance, before my momentum sent me sprawling to the ground.

  For a moment I lay there, too stunned to move. Then the pain arrived. Though my suit was miraculously untorn, my knees and elbows were grazed, the sharp sting bringing with it a fleeting memory of childhood falls in the playground. Balls of cotton wool dipped in witch hazel. Cold compresses. Sticky beige plasters.

  Then I remembered where I was.

  Why I was running.

  Seconds later, a shadow fell over me, and I looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of a suited figure bearing down.

  I braced myself and waited for the end. Then the figure called out.

  ‘Mum? Mum? Angela .’

  It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on. That rather than being attacked, someone was calling my name.

  I unfurled myself cautiously, then sat up, trying to make sense of the face that was staring back from behind a mask identical to my own. A warm flood of relief crashed over me. ‘Amber? Is that you?’

  As I climbed to my feet, Amber suddenly threw her arms open, embracing me in a tight squeeze.

  Instinctively, I thrashed to get away from her, shoving her so hard she almost toppled over. ‘Jesus! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was just so pleased to see you that I wanted to… I’m sorry.’

  Having recovered slightly from the shock of physical contact now that I’d put some space between us, I forced a smile. ‘It’s fine. I understand how you feel. But you can’t just go around hugging people. It’s too dangerous. You know that. Even in our suits, it isn’t worth the risk. All it would take is one microscopic rip and… Wait a minute. What am I saying? What the hell are you even doing out here?’

  Amber shrugged, staring at her feet.

  ‘Hey, I’m talking to you, young lady. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be out here without permission? And how in the world did you squeeze into that old suit? Are you sure it’s still airtight?’

  ‘It fits fine.’

  ‘What if somebody had seen you then? Did you think about that? You could have been picked up by the police or anything. What then? You think life in your bedroom’s bad? Try a prison cell.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said, still refusing to meet my eye. ‘You’re the one always moaning about how there’s no one out here.’

  ‘That’s not the point. You deliberately disobeyed me. What do you think your father’s going to say when he finds out?’

  Amber shook her head defiantly, but when she finally looked up, I saw her eyes were glossed with tears. When she spoke again, her voice sounded thin and pinched. ‘I just couldn’t take being in there any longer.’

  ‘So what? You thought you’d run away?’

  ‘What? No! It was nothing like that. I was just going for a walk around the block. Just for a couple of minutes. But then this dog started sniffing around me. And at first it was kind of cute… but then it started barking and I started to run… and then I saw you… and I thought… I thought…’

  Amber trailed off, dissolving into a dry retch of
tears. As she did, she took a step towards me. I flinched. For an awful moment I thought she was going to try and hug me again. Instead, she just stood there, her arms hanging pathetically by her sides.

  ‘Hey. Come on.’ I took another discreet step backwards. ‘Being cooped up in that house is hard on all of us. I know that. But it’s not safe for you to be out here. That’s why I don’t let you come with me. It’s not because I’m mean, or I want to keep you locked up. It’s because I care about you and I don’t want anything bad to happen. I mean, there are worse things than dogs. Trust me. What if your mask malfunctioned? I have to say, that suit does look a little tight, sweetie.’

  I smiled at her, conscious to keep my tone level. Reasonable. Rational.

  Naturally, Amber exploded.

  ‘If it’s so unsafe, then what the hell are you doing out here? Why take the risk? It’s not like there’s any point in your stupid little group anyway. Who the hell do you think you’re protecting us from? You said it yourself, there’s no one out here. Or perhaps you’re secretly hoping that something terrible does happen to you. Maybe you want your mask to break, so that you’ll die out here and then you won’t have to go back to your stupid room in the stupid apartment. To your stupid family—’

  ‘Now you’re just being hysterical. I come out here because I believe it’s important to look after our local community. And you’re right. It is a risk. But it’s a risk that I’ve weighed up and decided is worth taking. That’s what adults do. And when you’re an adult you can make your own decisions. But until then, it’s my job to keep you safe.’

  ‘When I’m an adult? I’m seventeen, Mum, but you still treat me like I’m a little kid. You keep saying that I need to take responsibility for my actions, but how can I if I never get to make my own decisions? I never get a choice in anything, and I never will. I’m going to be stuck in that fucking room until I die.’

  ‘That’s enough, Amber. Do you have any idea how lucky you are? The sacrifices we made so we can carry on living?’