The End of Men(35)
“I’m not going to stop moving. This is my house. You shouldn’t be here. I have the virus. My son has the virus. If I so much as breathe near you, you’ll catch it and you’ll die. If you touch me, you’ll catch it and die. If you break my skin and my blood is near you, you’ll catch it and die. If you don’t want to die, get out.”
“Fucking crazy bitch!” he says, his voice choking on a sob. He is desperate, but I don’t care. That is not my concern.
He turns, there are a few scuffling sounds of objects being thrown around and then the back door mercifully slams shut. I stand in the hallway breathing heavily for a few seconds before breaking into a smile. I have never felt so powerful. This must be what men used to feel like. My mere physical presence is enough to terrify someone into running. No wonder they used to get drunk on it.
I put on a pair of hiking boots by the front door and go through to the kitchen where the door’s glass pane is lying all over the floor. Methodically I pick up the pieces of shattered glass and put them in the bin as my heart stops thumping in my ears and slowly, slowly goes back to normal. I clean every surface with bleach I find under the sink just in case that awful man touched anything. Eventually, the floor is clear and brushed, the room sterile and safe. I stand up and hear the blissful silence of the house, the cat purring as it winds its way around my legs.
I can’t help but check on Theodore. I have this belief, based on nothing but my own fear, that he’s traumatized by the events of the last few months but not expressing it during the day. I hate the idea that his nights could be tainted by fear and horror. I know he is exhausted, my poor baby. He was drooping by seven this evening and out like a light by eight. Life is exhaustingly different at the moment, and I panic about what it’s doing to Theodore. He’s eating different food in a different house with a different garden, and a desperate, grieving mother. His father is gone. I can’t even imagine what’s going through his head. Or maybe I just don’t want to. I’m so focused on him surviving I barely think anymore about the future. Will he be scarred forever by this nightmare? Will he know what it is to be happy and safe and calm ever again? Will he even remember Anthony? At the thought of Anthony, I get a blinding headache. There’s only so much I can think about at once.
“Hello, lovely,” I whisper to him as I perch on the side of his bed, looking down at him sprawled out on his sheets, deep in sleep. I drop a quick kiss out of habit on his forehead and take a second to realize what is wrong. I expected the warm, soft skin of a sleeping toddler. Instead my lips reached hot, sweaty skin with a fever raging just under it.
He is burning up.
TOBY WILLIAMS
Somewhere off the coast of Iceland
Day 105
February 15, 2026
I’ve never journaled before but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been on this ship for fifty-one days. I don’t know if I will ever leave it. This may be the only record of this horrible experience and of my existence here. I want someone to know what it was like.
Let’s start at the beginning. My name is Toby Williams. My wife, Frances, is a librarian at the Barbican Library in central London. I’m an engineer, which now that I write it down makes me seem boring but I really like my job.
I’m an identical twin. That’s an important thing about me. Always has been. If you’re an identical twin it makes you special. Mark, my brother, is the reason I’m here on this godforsaken boat. We turned sixty on January 2 and it seemed like a nice idea to go to see the Northern Lights like we had always talked about as children. I wondered at the time when we left in December if we should really be doing this with the Plague becoming such a problem but Frances was insistent. She said, “You’ll be safer there than here. Besides, it’ll all blow over.”
My wife is usually right. Almost always. It’s one of the things I love most about her but she was wrong about that. It has not blown over. Although maybe she was right that I’m safer here.
Four days after we left Reykjavik there was an outbreak in the city. Within days, it was in crisis. The Plague was making its way across Europe day by day but the captain was clear. He didn’t put it to a vote. He gathered everyone in the Cinema Room and said, “We will stay on the boat until we know it is safe to return. We have good stores of food and we will request for more to be delivered to us. We are not returning yet.” One woman on the boat is particularly furious. Bella Centineo. She’s from Italy and she’s on this trip with a friend, Martina. Martina is catatonic, Bella is enraged. She screamed at the captain that he couldn’t do this. Her children are waiting for her in Rome. Her son and her husband might die and then what will happen to her daughter? Her daughter, Carolina, is only eighteen months old. Bella has no sisters and her mother died two years ago. I understand her distress. The communication is getting patchier now between us and everyone back home. Her husband and son might die, leaving her daughter to starve to death in a Roman apartment, all on her own. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
I empathize and yet I could have cried with relief when the captain told her: “If you manage to escape death by a few days, I consider it rude to refuse such good fortune.” And then he turned around and left the room.
My last message from Frances was weeks ago now. We’re not getting reception anymore. She said, “You have to stay on that boat, Toby. I don’t care what happens or who wants to go back, you stay on that boat.” Which is exactly what I intend to do.