With the empty skyscrapers behind him, the empty docks before him, and the empty blueness overhead, Gene Crispin turned to the only other human being in sight and said, “So what’s your perfect way to end a relationship?”

Carolyn Levy pretended not to hear him. She was watching the horizon.

Both of them were technically still at university, though they knew the campus was a mile away, lying dead with lack of use. In truth, most places had been quiet the last couple of days. News had gotten around the city. Only suckers and the bloody-minded had even shown up for work.

Gene drummed his fingers against his thigh: a sure sign of nerves. He needed to strum something. There were times when a lad like him needed to be locked away in his private quarters, having an intimate experience with sublime beauty. After all, he’d been playing the lute ever since he was young enough to call Mummy from his cot. Music was another parent to him.

Whereas Carolyn watched the place where the sea met the sky, and watched it like a hawk. A military hawk, trained from egg and nest to watch horizons. But she wasn’t tense; it was just that she was naturally angular, and so had the easy-going appearance of a sniper rifle not in use.

That was exactly why he could tell she was bothered by all this.

Between the skyscrapers, there’d been the constant sirens and car horns and rumbling engines. There’d been the smell of car exhaust as though the streets were a smoker’s bronchial tubes, occasionally relieved by the sizzling of hot dogs and potatoes and kebabs. Both of them doubtless remembered the bums they had to blank out and the cops whose sunglasses followed them and the angry shouting men and the inevitable bewildered tourists who asked them for directions to this-and-that bridge.

Now? No sounds: just cars lying abandoned or half-dismantled. The salty sea air, which, while less cough-inducing, was not the same smell they were used to. And they stood alone on the dock, with avenues and boulevards behind them free of any human life whatsoever.

It unnerved him enough to fill the void. “I said what’s your perfect way –?”

Carolyn’s head even spun round like a hawk’s, and he got a hasty shush for his trouble. As though realizing how rude she sounded, she followed this up with a much gentler series of shushes.

Wisely, he let her have the silence back. It took all sorts to make a world, and now it was just the two of them he would have to work hard to make that saying stretch far.

In truth, they were not friends: one too many drunk and giggly nights together had put paid to that platonic ambition. They were not lovers: he secretly felt they weren’t romantic or lovey-dovey enough to qualify, what with her “no kissing in public” rule and so on. They most definitely were not married: Gene was a man – boy? – no, man of modernity, and one of the first rules he’d learned in college was that marriage generally took second place to paying rent together and not tying each other down in case they wanted to pre-empt any costly divorce suits later. Harmless experimenting was fine; harmful commitment was an old man’s thing.

He looked up. No planes. Not even any traffic choppers. Just… sky.

“I feel so strange,” whispered Carolyn.

Polite as possible, Gene hummed with interest.

Without looking away from the distant dots on the sea, she went on. “By now, I’d be halfway through the archives section in the library.”

“I’d be rehearsing on my lute,” he said, testing the waters. “Pub gig,” he explained when she looked at him.

“And then I’d go home and play Epidemic with Patrick,” she whispered.

Gene winced; his last encounter with Patrick had largely involved having “STAY AWAY FROM MY SISTER” shouted in his face repeatedly. And a wrench waved at him. He’d avoided the car mechanic’s shop for days afterwards.

“That reminds me,” said Gene without thinking. “You finished my tax returns for me? Only you said you’d have it done in a week, and that was two weeks ago –”

Then his brain caught up with his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Still watching the boats fading away, Carolyn said, “I don’t mind.”

She probably didn’t, at that. Gene didn’t know of anyone else who used a calendar and personal organizer the same way Carolyn did. Most of the people he knew used the thing to vaguely remind them of birthdays or dentist appointments, but to Carolyn the things were Holy Writ. Force of habit was not really a force for her, because that implied effort. It was a ground state of being.

Habits…?

“No more sports on the radio,” he said. He always said the first thing that came to his mind.

“I preferred Classics Corner FM,” she said.

“Well, at least I don’t have to hear about the Cubs getting their asses kicked again. That’s some consolation, huh?”

They both watched the last of the boats vanish into the shimmering where sky and sea blurred together to sparkle. The last of the evacuation boats.

“No turning back now,” he said, trying to smile disarmingly.

She said nothing.

Gently – half-prepared to back off in case she protested – Gene guided his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the temple. She didn’t react. So far, so good.

“How do you feel?” he said softly into her ear.

“Ill,” she replied.

“Like the snakes of remorse and dread entwining around your soul?” he ventured.

Under his arm, he finally felt her shoulders and back go stiff. He couldn’t “read” her exactly – he objected to the idea that people were as simple as books – any more than he could dismantle a ten-minute melody down to its notes just by listening to it. Yet there were little things that told him her mood, the direction of her body’s song, and what kind of genre her mind was absorbed in.

And occasionally, off the top of his head, he’d give her the food of love by offering some poetic comment. He had views about poetry. To a mind like hers, a mind that whipped itself into shape and carted work, work, work night and day… To a mind like hers, he reasoned, poetry was as food to a starving workhorse.

“Yes,” she said.

After all, he wasn’t much good at riding a schedule like a train, whereas she wasn’t much good at flying wherever she wanted like a private jet. Together, they could go places without crashing.

Gene offered her a smile. Eventually, after some apparent cogitation, she reciprocated.

“Okay,” she said, “we’ve got three days. I’m open to suggestions.”

Behind them, the dead city watched. And waited. And dimmed under the sinking sun.

---

What WAS the perfect way to end a relationship?

That was what Carolyn thought that night, as the darkness within these walls hid away from the moonlight beyond. It was essential to pretend there was nothing wrong. To keep her mind occupied.

Carolyn lay on the mattress on the floor of the hotel room, looking up at the ceiling and listening to Gene’s snorting breaths beside her. Rhythmically, his hot breath blew a few locks across her ear. Despite the last few hours, and despite the fact that the only other human being besides her was as dead to the world as he could ever be while still breathing, she kept the duvet firmly up to her exposed collar. Once the giggly fun was out of the way, the disgust kicked in. Besides, she felt ill enough as it was. Just because they were going to end in three days, didn’t mean there was no room for decorum.

Worse than that, she anticipated trouble. In a city this size, it was unlikely she and Gene would be the only ones to stay behind.

Gradually, she became aware of the sounds of an engine. Outside the window. Way down at street level.

The engine stopped. Car doors slammed, echoing up through the canyons of steel and concrete to their window. This was why she’d refused to turn any lights on. This was why she’d scolded him, during their giggly fun an hour ago, when he’d yelled a little too loudly and made her jump.

Gangs.

Frozen with fear, her gaze darted to the main door of the suite. Piles of furniture – cupboards, wardrobe, chairs, the bed frame – blacked out the door reassuringly in the gloom. They both could scamper across the room and be out the visible fire escape within seconds; should anyone anticipate that, she’d raised the ladders and put down as many sharp objects as possible on the steel steps she couldn’t destroy. That still meant they’d have to shimmy across to the window of the washing room and take a chute – she’d carefully checked they were wide enough for people – down to the laundry room, which was locked from the inside but had an unobtrusive exit through the staff quarters round the back…

Carolyn swallowed.

In truth, she was relying on the sheer number of tall buildings in the city. A dedicated gang of hoodlums in three days, if they spent every single hour – and no more than an hour per building at that – systematically searching skyscrapers, could barely clear out a hundredth of all the available space. And they wouldn’t anyway; they’d come out at night, when they had an advantage in the dark and could sneak up on sleeping victims.

Ultimately, she was relying on luck.

That made her sweat from scalp to soles. Luck was the last hope. If you had to rely on luck, you were at the mercy of everything. You were not in control.

Despite herself, she began to breathe heavily.

Determined, she threw the duvet off – at once snatching up the nearby dressing gown where she’d thrown it, because even in the dark she had a keen sense of shame – and hurried over to the closet, bare feet slapping on the tiled floor. One hand tied the knot in the gown while the other threw back the door.

They’d stocked up during the day. Tins and packets left in the supermarkets. Food cupboards in random homes and apartments. Some rope she’d found on the dock. Knives from the hotel kitchens. For some reason, Gene had added a flare kit to his half of the collection. Apparently, he’d found it in the offices on the docks. She hadn’t argued. Experience had taught her to simply let his oddities run their course. After all, its trigger was broken. It didn’t work. And who’d be around to see a flare anyway? Who’d come for them?

At least they were well-stocked. It was good to be reminded, so she sighed with relief.

Outside, she heard a window smash.

The next sound could’ve been a car backfiring. Or it could have been a gunshot.

Hurrying, she scampered over to the mattress and threw herself below the covers. Then she cursed her childish impulse and shot over to the window. Very, very carefully, she opened it a crack and peered down.

Headlights. Shadows moving. Opposite, someone switched a light on.

Possessed by fascination, she was so relieved that she stayed and watched. Not that there was much to see once the shadows disappeared inside the building opposite – minutes passed, and nothing happened – but something in her mind was perverse. She knew she should hurry back to bed and get some sleep, keep her strength up, stop worrying about it, even remember that most of the gangs hunted each other before concentrating on helpless civilians simply because of too much competition, but…

Something ancient crept into her mind. Something that didn’t listen to common sense or reason. Something that would watch that house opposite… not because it was sick and twisted and wanted to see violence done to someone else for free, but because it was dumb.

She knew gangs didn’t work systematically. She knew they were so spoiled for choice as far as big, searchable buildings went. Yet the dumb part of her mind still said: Just in case…

It wanted to stay awake all night. It didn’t think about her state of mind tomorrow morning. It, in short, didn’t think about plans, even when the rest of her was trying to impose one. In a way, it was like having Gene visit her head.

A shuffling behind her: he was waking up. Carolyn said nothing.

“Oh god,” whispered Gene, feet slapping on the tiles too. “They haven’t?”

Carefully, she shook her head. Now she felt his breathing tickle the back of her neck.

After a while, the light opposite still remained on. No shadows moved.

“Oh, thank god thank god thank god…”

“How are you feeling?” she whispered, never taking her eyes off the street below.

After a pause, Gene said, “I feel ill too.”

“Not nice, is it?”

“My stomach feels like a refinery.”

“Could be the champagne.”

“I told you it was awful crap.”

“Come on, let’s get some sleep. We won’t get any better standing in the cold.”

They hadn’t turned on the heating system. They didn’t want to leave any clues for invaders, and anyway she hadn’t been able to get the generator working again.

Slowly, she closed the window. Both of them groped their way back to bed, knocked bottles rolling along the floor.

---

“How about we end our time together in the place where we first met!?” said Gene excitedly.

Daybreak had taken what felt like hours to wake them up; last night’s scare had, it transpired, killed Carolyn’s sleep utterly. Even now, long after they’d checked that the car was gone and had shoved enough of the barricade aside to sneak out, long after they’d used the hotel’s back entrance to avoid being spotted in the streets, and long after they’d slipped through the fog and the rain and the alleyways full of discarded trash… Even now, she moved like a zombie.

So he looked around his favourite spot.

“The National Library!” he said, gesturing wide.

Shelves grew around him like baby skyscrapers. Overhead, the ceiling was a sky full of paintings and enough gothic flourishes to suggest a church turned inside out. The child in him was breathless beneath it.

Giggling, he spun around and held out a hand expectantly. Ah, it was all coming back to him now.

“May I be of some assistance, madam?” he said to her.

“Please,” she moaned, staring at him through bleary eyes. “This is not the time.”

“The music section!? For what, pray?” Gene threw off a theatrical flourish of his hand. “What a coincidence! I happen to play the humble lute myself. Might I suggest a few guidebooks personally?”

“Gene, please,” she moaned again, but a hint of indulgence tiptoed through her tones.

He dropped the act. “Come on, Carolyn. Who’s going to raid a library? Some book-loving thugs? Look, it was right on this spot by the desk. I was standing just…” He scurried to the other side of the desk. “Just here. And you came up to the desk like this… No, no. Not like that. That’s how you in sixty years’ time would do it. I’m talking six years ago.”

Patience nudged him to tone it down a bit. Yet already he could see the effect he was having on her; though her eyes remained red and raw, she did venture a small smile and shuffled a little more spryly this time.

“A library’s hardly the most romantic spot, is it?” she said. Her moan splashed with the vigour slowly pouring in.

“It’s where we both worked,” he said pleadingly. “Me first, then I talked you into it.”

“Oh, how you talked and talked and talked and talked.”

“It’s called the gift of the gab, sweetheart. I am part Irish, after all.”

“Baloney.” Sympathetically, she patted his hand on the marble counter. “You should’ve stayed a librarian.”

“Higher purposes called me away,” he said at once. Yes, he thought bitterly. Mum and Dad certainly count as higher purposes when they want me getting better salaries. “You know, since no one else is here, we could…”

“What?”

He licked his lips with barely contained excitement. “We could… We could go into the restricted sections. No one’s stopping us.”

A little life flashed in her eyes. “And then?”

“And then… then we read all the books they never let us read! Whatever we want! I bet they have some priceless musical scores in that section!”

To his disappointment, the life in her eyes dimmed slightly.

Then it occurred to him he hadn’t been listening out for a while. As much as the gangs preferred nights, there was – he realized with spine-tingling logic – no reason why they couldn’t try their luck during the day.

Both of them looked around.

Not a sound reached them.

Eventually, a doubtful hum escaped Carolyn’s lips. “Not sure. It’s a grand building, sure, and I guess it kind of fits…”

“It ends where it all began,” he piped up helpfully.

“Yes.” Dubiously, she nodded her head. “But… is it really the right way to end our time together? Surrounded by books? There’s more to me than books. I think we should do something more.”

“Look at the architecture! Isn’t it grand!?”

“Shh! Keep your voice down!”

“Well, what else is there? I’m hardly going to end it in a pub, and that’s the only other place I’ve ever worked at.”

Carolyn shuddered a full body shudder. “Definitely not a pub.”

Besides, he thought miserably, I don’t want to be surrounded by reminders like THAT. They didn’t just throw beer at me, and at least I wasn’t thrown out the library after a single day.

“I want it to be meaningful,” he said. “Anyway, I thought you’d like it to be job-related.”

She gave him a pitying look. Sadly, he was familiar with this one and responded with his own stock dejected slump.

“I want,” she began, and then she paused, closed her eyes to think, and then said, “I want somewhere a little more… relaxed?”

“Huh. Is that all?” he said drily. “Excuse me while I unfurl the list.”

“Eugene?” she said at once.

A pause while he stared at her. Wide eyes. Small mouth. This was a new face to him.

“Yes, Carolyn?” he said.

Her lips wrestled with the words. “Did we make the right decision? Staying behind?”

Gene found his gaze travelling to the radio next to the desk’s computer. They always had it on in the afternoons, usually during a lull or whenever fellow Dave didn’t care what the supervisors thought. Yet he knew if he switched it on now – assuming it worked – he’d only hear the same radio announcements of the past couple of weeks.

As the city had emptied, he’d initially listened to the radio as a drowning swimmer clinging to a lifebelt. Only after he’d caught the same phrase “STATE OF EMERGENCY” repeating itself every five minutes had he grown fed up with it and switched it off. “EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY” had flown around the airwaves way, way too often.

Deep down, he knew it made no difference. Last night, he’d taken the flare gun. He’d told himself that it was pointless, that the last boat had left, that it was always going to be pointless, that the whole evacuation anyway would have been as helpful as evacuating from World War Three, with nukes exploding all over the place and fallout blanketing the rest.

Yet he’d picked it up. For a moment, he’d slipped back into his old idiot ways. He was as deluded as the evacuees. Worst of all, he’d thus let Carolyn down. She deserved brains from him, not just booze and sticky sheets.

“Yes, we did,” he said. The words hit the marble like he’d dropped granite slabs.

“But if we’d moved to a different place –”

“I’ve never left this city,” he confessed. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about, and he squirmed a little as he continued. “How could I? Everything I’ve ever needed was always right here.”

Anyway, I couldn’t afford it. Not a goddamn lute player who gets pelted with beer mugs every night.

Vaguely, he wondered if there were other people in the city. People who’d chosen to stay behind claiming they’d wanted to stick to their homes. Like kids around a tiny candle. In denial of the big world they’d never explored.

“So not the library, then,” he said, far more bravely than he felt.

“Sorry. Anyway, we should find a secondary hideout in case last night was just good luck. Maybe there’s some more food nearby too. Survival first, then we’ll decide.”

He shrugged. Always, he gave in. She had a way of speaking that made him think, That’s so sensible. Even if anyone else had said it and he’d disagreed with them, arguing with her was like arguing with the law of gravity.

On their way out, pausing only to give the columns one last familiar look, he said, “How’s your illness today?”

“Barely felt anything,” she replied. “You?”

“The same,” he lied.

---

Two days left, Carolyn thought.

Overhead, the stars waited to spring their trap. The moon watched with total unconcern.

She couldn’t resist it; tonight, she went right up to the edge and peered over the railings. Far below was darkness. Moonlight merely gave it a faint patina; all the power in this street had gone offline. Other towers in the distance had some lights on, though not many.

The sudden urge to vomit gripped her –

Instantly, she darted backwards, across the roof, and the aftereffects of shame slowed her down to an amble.

“I know,” said Gene, who caught her eye. “I can’t stand heights either.”

They lay down on the recliners, beside the abandoned shimmer of the pool, surveying the cosmos above. They’d vowed ahead of time that they’d spend some time on a rooftop. One of the nights, at least. Even though the hotel was among the tallest of buildings, they didn’t want to take too many risks. A distant creep might spot them with binoculars, or they’d be totally unprepared in case of an invasion by some lucky gang, or –

“Look at that moon,” Gene said happily. “It’s the serene eye of God.”

Carolyn said nothing. She had no intention of encouraging him.

“You know what I think?” He pointed up at the starlight. “I think when you die, you really do go up there. Your soul sort of wanders the universe, seeing everything. If you’ve ever asked whether there’s life out there or nothing at all, you’ll get your answer. Everything gets sorted out. It’s like… like when you pass a big audition and get told all the stuff the team couldn’t tell you before?”

As before, Carolyn said nothing. She felt her mind drifting off under his tempting speech, and the rest of her stiffened and fought it. There was no point speculating. Really, he was a child at heart.

A creak next to her told her he’d swivelled on his chair. “You know, if that’s the case, we could always figure out this ‘end-of-the-relationship’ thing later. If you get my drift?”

She did. Her teeth ground together.

“No,” she said coldly. “We’re doing this properly, and before the end, just in case there is no ‘after’.”

“Yeah, but you never know what’s gonna happen. One of those gangs could catch us tonight, for all we know.”

“They’re just opportunists! Cowards like them go after old men and women who don’t want to leave their homes. Anyway, we’re not giving up that easily.”

“But supposing we went through all this stress and it turned out we just come out the other side and could do it again anyway?”

“There’s the style to consider,” she went on, bowling over his pleas. “Whatever happens after we end this, I want to get it right before. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Uh huh? Like a performance?” His defeated tone was enough; her mind backed off.

“Yes,” she said, trying to sound polite.

Thankfully, the city was blissful and quiet tonight. In fact, with so many cold, black buildings in the shadows, she could forget everything that lay below the panorama of stars. With the light pollution gone, the sky was the dust of jewels from horizon to horizon.

Yes, she thought. We don’t have a choice about it ending at all, but we can choose HOW our relationship will end.

Even if she still had no idea what was appropriate. Her grandmother and grandfather had always gone on about their proposal during the war. Well, after the war, when he’d come back, blood and the smell of corpses still on his mind, and had kneeled before her and said, “It’s now or never, my love.”

Once, her heart had swooned when her grandmother had told her the story. Now…?

She didn’t dare tell him. Poor Gene was too used to stubborn, no-nonsense Carolyn.

She blamed him for seeing little else in her. Then she had to blame herself. After all, who’d worked so hard to cultivate that image before him? Frogmarched their conversations into agreement? Scheduled his band practices and commutes on the subway and basically everything in his life?

Anyway, to tell him now was too risky. They had less than two days left. If she rocked the boat before that happened, neither of them – him, her – neither would forgive her for saying it.

In that brief moment, she was the loneliest person in the world.

“Look!” she said, pointing up.

Gene gasped.

Through the still glitter of the heavens, streaks of blue blazed by. They were as ephemeral as slashes in the air, briefly streaking in little lines or arcs before fading away. First, only one or two braved existence, but then dozens, and soon what seemed like hundreds, danced and swam across the sky.

“Shooting stars,” Gene breathed.

“Heralding shooting stars,” she added.

“You know what I read once in the library? In olden times, they used to think these things were messages from heaven.”

Carolyn watched the blaze overhead. At this rate, the sheer numbers would turn the sky into an artificial day at midnight.

“They’re not wrong,” she murmured.

Eventually, the streams thinned. Hundreds shrank back to dozens.

“You know what?” she said on a sudden inspiration. Then she hesitated. But why not? she thought. Go for it! No harm in an impulse here and there.

“You know what?” she said again. “I think the old ways have got a point.”

“I’m sorry?”

Her head lolled to one side, catching the gleam of his eyes in the semi-darkness. “We should end our relationship the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh, you’re not going on about some hidebound old traditionalists, are you?” He groaned.

“Why not? We can still give it our own spin, if that’s what you’re objecting to. Really, Gene, you’re so quick to judge.”

“I’m nothing of the sort! I just doubt we’ll have a good time if our last moment’s –”

From the streets below came a screech of tyres.

Despite the warm evening, ice congealed along her spine. In his starlit eyes, she saw the wide shock. Neither of them dared to move.

From up high, they swore they heard the echo of a slam. Or a bang. The acoustics of the buildings battered and pulverized the sounds until they were shapeless echoes.

They wrinkled their lips at each other.

“Let’s both go,” they mouthed in unison.

As one, they slid off the chairs. They crept towards the railings. Taking deep breaths, they peered down, hoping that sheer distance would prevent their heads making easy silhouettes.

From down below, in the dark pit, flashes and bangs broke out. Both were too fast to register, too widely spaced out to process, but…

Then the street below became a fireworks display. Flashes and bangs and flashes and bangs, bangs and flashes, flash-bangs, bang-and-flash, flash-flash, bang –

Carolyn was all too aware of the empty space behind them, of how exposed the two of them would look to someone creeping up behind, and part of her imagined a bullet zipping up and then sudden darkness snapping her up.

“Crap, crap, crap!” hissed Gene. “A shootout!”

She hit him on the shoulder. “Retreat,” she whispered. “Now.”

Over the flashes and bangs, she didn’t bother about her footsteps smacking the ground. She just ran, down the hatch, down the stairs, along the corridor, through the crack in the door, and then throwing herself and feeling his weight hit the barricade waiting for them, she dived onto the mattress with him and only then panted and burned with exhaustion.

Furiously, she willed her lungs to steady themselves. Outside, the muffled bangs tapped at the window like a monster, searching for a way in.

---

In the morning, Gene peered out the window to see smoke rising from below. There was definitely at least one car there that hadn’t been there before.

Crowbar held high, leading Carolyn – who wielded a spanner – they crept down the stairs, always leaping out of corners in case of any would-be ambushers. Partway down, they crossed the corridor to check the outside.

Closer to the ground, they noticed the bodies.

About thirteen in all, once the pair of them stepped out onto the street. Mostly young teenagers, he guessed, judging from their build and size. Several wore homemade armour – tins, rope, bandoliers made from duct tape and whatever cartridges they’d scavenged – and handguns lay scattered about.

At once, Gene looked away. That was about as much diagnosis as he was willing to give before his mind said no.

A gentle hand gripped his own. Carolyn led him down the sidewalk, away from the smoking car. Two more cars were randomly stranded, all with doors open. Judging from the bodies slumped half-in, half-out of the seats, the gang had naively believed car doors were impenetrable shields.

At the very least, there didn’t seem to be much sign of posthumous activity – missing weapons, bodies stripped of useful items, or the like – and for a while, Gene hoped the gangs had wiped each other out completely. Only hoped, that is, because he didn’t feel like pushing his luck trying to find out for sure.

In any case, now they were a block away from the sight…

Grunting, he gripped his chest. Lungs burned under his ribcage.

“How… are you feeling?” he managed to say.

She was still leading him by the other hand. After a thoughtful pause – or possibly a shell-shocked one – she said, “I feel fine. You?”

“Awful.”

Her gaze swung round, hawk eyes piercing his own. Such was the pain that she blurred; he was weeping. Ashamed, he wiped his face on the back of a sleeve.

“Come on,” she said. “We need somewhere to stop for a moment.”

“There,” he grunted, pointing with his free hand and then instantly returning it to cradle his chest.

Coming up on their right was the café.

Café Grouch! Oh, he knew it well. They’d come here every day, midday exactly “and not a minute later”, and he always, no matter how much time he tried to give himself, always had to run to make it. Once, he’d sprained his ankle and she’d gotten a plaster out of her backpack –

They sat down at their usual table.

They listened to the complete lack of chatter and the absence of the pinging till. They felt the space drawing away from them. At least, he saw her shrink as though drawing away from something pulling her skin.

He looked at his hand resting on the table. It was shaking.

Swallowing, he got up – winced at his lungs – stumbled over to the counter, and in total defiance of her rules switched the radio on. It was always on. He felt better. He felt normal, for too short a moment, and he wanted, somewhere in this living nightmare, to feel normal again. To be someone who rehearsed badly on the lute, and who didn’t just talk about it while listening out for mad gunmen.

He looked across at her when he sat down. No objection met him. Not even a look.

Two weeks ago to the day – maybe to the hour – the news came from the radio. A voice crackled to tell them that the city was declared a “DOOM ZONE”. Anyone who chose to stay was not the government’s problem. Then the docks had started to throng. He’d noticed fewer and fewer customers coming in. He’d ignored his family’s small talk every evening in the hope that no one brought up the evacuations.

This was a large city. It took weeks to get the majority of people out, and then there were the last crowds.

Every day until the last, his parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters had served dinner and chatted around the table. At the time, he’d wondered why. Surely, the smart thing to do was get out ASAP.

Yet he hadn’t spoken up.

Perhaps all of them had thought like me, a voice said in his head. It was a little Carolyn, visiting.

Yes…

After all, he’d always hoped that the radio would declare “FALSE ALARM”. Every day.

But it never did.

Now he listened to the update coming in. It said: Everywhere is now declared a “DOOM ZONE”.

He sagged in his seat, nursing the pain across his chest.

“There are more on the way, aren’t there?” Carolyn said. To his concern, she hadn’t looked up.

“You just feel… so… abandoned,” Gene said gamely.

They finally met eyes, as they had done so many times, right here, right at this table, in this café, which on any other day was a thriving hub of reminders that they were alive.

“I never did ask,” said Carolyn. “What did your family say when you told them?”

“That I wanted to stay behind with you?” Gene clenched his teeth for a moment; a pain stabbed his chest, and it had nothing to do with the illness anymore. “They came around. I’d never talked so much in my life.”

“No arguments?”

“A few. But Dad turned around to me, he said, ‘Son, even if you’re not family by blood, you’re family by deed. This young lady means that much to you?’ And I said, ‘That much and more.’ So he said, ‘Okay, if that’s what you think you should do.’ And then I gave everyone a goodbye and waved them off.’” He shrugged. “There was hardly any arguing. I was luckier than I deserved.”

She was silent for far too long, staring past him.

“You?” he prompted.

When she met his eye again, there was not a trace of life there. “I didn’t even get a chance. Mom locked me in my room. I had to break out to find you. That was the last time I saw them.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gene instantly.

She shook her head at him.

Her voice was carefully listless: “Don’t apologize. They wanted the family together. Patrick swore he’d hunt me down if I tried to run away. Can you imagine that being the last thing you hear from your brother? My own flesh and blood.”

“If I’d known –”

“I’d have insisted you go ahead exactly as planned.” Now the fire burned in each eye and her voice began to crack. “I just wish I knew what happened to them. They could have disowned me, left me, come looking for me, got killed by one of those gangs. They could be halfway across the Atlantic right now, thinking I’m dead.”

They sat in silence. Gene had absolutely no idea what to say. Largely by Carolyn’s own design, he’d never had a chance to cross paths with her family all that often.

Across the table, both of them reached out and delivered an embrace neither fully believed in. At least, he felt he couldn’t. He didn’t deserve to.

On the way back to their hideout that evening, Carolyn broke off to pick up two stray handguns in the street. Gene neither objected nor commented.

---

That night, Carolyn had to refrain from tossing and turning like a child, but even then she still couldn’t sleep. Beside her, the lack of breath suggested Gene wasn’t sleeping either. Occasionally, she heard him whimper.

“Is it your stomach?” she whispered.

“The pain’s… getting worse…” Her heart cried out in its own pain; now she heard him groan. “I need a distraction. Talk to me, Carolyn. Please.”

At first, she pressed herself up against him instead, turning him towards her so they could meet chest to chest. For once she didn’t feel the leftover disgust of knowing there was nothing between her and him.

In the gloom, she saw his head incline forwards and felt his forehead against hers.

“I wish we hadn’t had that talk,” she whispered while he trembled under her grip. “I can’t stop thinking about my family, and I don’t want to. Of all the ways we had to part… I wish I could go back and try again.”

Briefly, he stopped trembling, though his voice was strained. “You used to tell me there was no point worrying about the past. What’s done is done. You mess up a musical note on the lute, tough luck.”

Yet she felt his arms wrap around her waist and draw her closer. Uncomfortably, they became a tangle of limbs. She was far too aware of him pressing against her, and of her pressing against him when she slid from a grip to an embrace.

“I don’t wanna sound selfish,” he whispered, fighting to sound cheerful, “but I think you did the right thing. What’s done is done. Besides, you’re brave. I know I’d have caved in if I’d been you. Patrick scares the crap out of me.”

“I wish I had a family like yours. They’re so loving.”

“Is it corny for me to say they always considered you family?”

“Ridiculously corny.”

“Then I won’t say it?”

“Good idea.”

“Right. Good thing I didn’t, then. That would have been embarrassing.”

She felt his arms desperate to cling more tightly, and her own squeezed back. If they did it long enough and with enough determination, perhaps there’d be no need for clumsy talk. Perhaps they could simply merge, and know instantly and shamelessly what the other thought or believed. Yet for all the time they lay there, it never happened –

Footsteps.

Outside the door.

Coming towards them.

They both broke apart and froze. Listening.

The occasional half-bang suggested someone throwing doors back as they went along. Testing them: possibly looking for occupants.

Their own door rattled.

Footsteps stopped.

Behind the massive barricade, the doorknob rattled and the locks shuddered. Whoever was trying to get in was rapidly becoming impatient. A locked door was, in its own paradoxical way, an attraction for thugs. They wanted to know why someone was trying to keep them out.

Remembering her own plan from earlier, Carolyn slid out of bed. Despite her best efforts, she heard the sticky patter of her own bare feet. Another patter suggested Gene was getting into position. All the bottles had been carefully set aside earlier, precisely so that they could move about without disturbing anything.

On her way past, she bent down and picked up the reassuring weight of the handgun.

Someone else fired.

So loud was the blast that she jumped and almost screamed. In the gloom, she fancied she saw Gene’s silhouette flinch.

Whoever was behind the door fired again. She heard wood splintering.

It seemed to take minutes for the person to bash their way in. One by one, locks failed under the battering. Occasional blasts of gunshots knocked holes in the wood, and spotlights of yellow speared the air. Next to the door, Carolyn was careful to stay away from the lights of the corridor.

A final blast. A curse. Their mystery assailant was clearly a novice with guns; firing at a metal handle must have ricocheted a bullet right back.

The door handle fell off.

And the gunman barrelled into the room, sending the pile of the barricade collapsing and blinding Carolyn with the light of the corridor.

He was wearing a hoodie and jeans, and that was all she noticed before he turned to her and instantly moved, raising a revolver –

The room exploded with the gunshot.

A second later, the gunman hit the floor. Gene stood, half-shadowed, and lowered his own handgun.

“Crap,” he said.

Both of them froze, listening. From the corridor outside, someone was trying not to breathe. They could hear the faint wheezing of one nostril.

To her shock, Gene yelled. He clutched his stomach, dropped the gun, fell onto his knees, didn’t notice the second gunman leap out and fire at a spot inches over his head, blink, look down, re-aim –

Carolyn’s arm moved of its own accord. The next few seconds were a blur.

Eventually, she stopped firing only because the gun had run out of bullets and was clicking uselessly at a second corpse on the floor.

Both she and Gene breathed heavily, trying to recover the last few seconds of their lives. Her head felt dizzy. She already felt like she was drifting through a dream.

Quickly, she checked the corridor outside. No one else. Still, she didn’t dare step out to switch off the light.

Instead, she retreated and helped Gene to his feet, letting him wheeze and cough his way up. His arms shook under her hands.

It doesn’t matter, said a part of her. We’ll both be dead by tomorrow anyway. Even if we ran now, there’d be nowhere else to run to. It’s just like the astronomers predicted, but even the government didn’t believe them. Evacuations!? We’re all doomed! Why fight it!?

No, she thought. Every second was worth fighting for. The end can be delayed, if never denied. It’s always worth spending effort for that extra time.

Finally, Gene looked her up and down.

“You know you are completely starkers?” he said.

Surprising herself, she looked him up and down without shame. What did it matter? Disgust was a waste of time.

“You too,” she said.

Childishly, they exchanged giggles and said no more about it.

The barricade took a while to restore, and they decided to shove the bodies in a spare closet to leave no trace outside, and frankly to hide the smell inside. There were better ways to spend a last night.

---

Finally, the last day was upon them.

Gene gritted his teeth against the knots tying his stomach in pain. This was no time to be ill.

Impact Day.

The day when, according to the news broadcasts, a giant comet the size of a county would come streaming out of nowhere and collide with Earth. The combined explosive force would be enough to make a nuclear bomb look like a birthday candle. Certainly any city in its path would be instant vapor.

The world had only spotted it roughly two weeks before the predicted collision. According to Carolyn, meteor-spotting wasn’t an easy science. Anyway, there was no formal means of countering it. Definitely no chance of erecting one on short notice.

And that hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part was that this comet was merely the vanguard of a shower, every single member of which had been partially obscured by its tail. Earth would swing right into the path of a cosmic bombardment. World War Three, except waged by Nature against Man. There wouldn’t be a fourth.

Gene swallowed. Changing his clothes, letting Carolyn lead him out of the hotel room and onto the empty streets, he couldn’t think of much else. He’d secretly wanted to hear that it had all been a FALSE ALARM. Part of him still insisted on it.

Time to face the music.

Nonetheless, they’d talked last night. They knew the perfect place to end their relationship. The tricky part had been making sure they lived long enough to do it.

And there it was: the central park. The one green area in the whole of the city. A moment of peace with Nature. The site of their first true date.

They went for the same hill. Last time, the place had been crawling with picnickers. Now it was inspiration for a budding musician, with the complex branches of the fir trees and the rolling vistas leading to the reed-crowded lake.

In the sky overhead, a white dot appeared.

The instant they sat down on the grass side-by-side, he took up his trusty lute and strummed the strings. With no clue as to the melody, he improvised. His bars dipped and rolled and rose and fell, capturing the colours raining through his mind as he trembled, as he unknotted the pain in his stomach, as he defied the consumption killing him and told the world that this hour was theirs, they would claim it, they would conquer it, and they would die with history unable to change their victory, for what was done was done.

Carolyn gave him a one-woman standing ovation. Throughout his whole lifetime, his only appreciative audience.

Tears flowed from his eyes, and for once he wasn’t ashamed.

---

As the dot overhead grew, Carolyn laid out the old-fashioned picnic blanket and they had them an old-fashioned picnic, executed to perfection.

As more dots appeared in the sky, she patted the handgun beside her reassuringly, as though its mere presence were a loyal guard dog. But try or die, she thought. Try or die.

She looked across, knowing she had killed. Knowing Gene had killed. It had been war. A never-ending war, bigger than the one her grandmother and grandfather had talked about. The war for every second of their lives. The war against Nature.

As per Carolyn’s plan, Gene got up and strode down the hill. She counted in her head.

Then he strode back. For a moment, she imagined the smell of blood and death about him. Certainly, his face winced as though suppressing the trauma of firing at a live enemy.

He kneeled before her. He said, “Now or never, my angel.”

“You changed the line,” she whispered.

“Well, I’ve always thought of you as my guardian angel. Guess we’ll find out in a minute.”

She frowned at this blemish on her plan… only to relax and let it fly past. Disgust was not needed when the rest was going so well. What was one stain against a fabulous moment?

While the sky became brighter and brighter, he held up a ring. They’d had to raid a jeweller’s en route.

“My word, this is old-fashioned,” he said.

“But it works, doesn’t it?”

He winked at her. “Do you, Carolyn, take me to be your husband, in sickness and in health, till death do us part?”

Again, she ignored a few liberties he’d taken. Memorizing things wasn’t one of his strong points.

“I do,” she said, raising her own ring. “And do you, Eugene, take me to be your wife, in sickness and in health, till death do us part?”

“I do. And beyond, if I’m lucky. I may now kiss the bride?” Overhead, the sky screamed.

She leaned forwards. “And I the groom. How’s that for a way to end a relationship?”

“Old-fashioned but with modern sensibilities,” he said over the rising scream.

Her lips met his. The screaming broke through so painfully that it transformed into pure light.

The kiss lasted the rest of their lives.