I opened my eyes, sat up and stretched. I let the white, starchy blanket slide off the leather bed. It had been threatening to slide away all night and only stayed because I’d held on to it. Like every morning, I wondered if today, might the day that something would happen. I jumped off the bed, the cool of the floor soaked into the soles of my feet. I took a couple of quick steps over to the basin. I put my mouth under the tap in the steel sink and turned on the tap, drinking my fill. I splashed some on my face, inhaling as the chilly water freshened me and then dried it with my dirty, greying t-shirt that used to be white. I sat in what I assumed was the doctors chair, it was padded and comfortable, it was on wheels, and it spun in circles. There had been a couple of times when I’d sat at this desk, faced the computer, pretended there was a patient sitting beside me and said, ‘now, what seems to be the problem today?’ I had to do something to keep myself amused sometimes. I reached for my boots and laced them on.
I’d chosen to sleep in the dermatology department the last night. Tonight, would be ophthalmology and then back to the day surgery unit after that. Day surgery was the best sleeping spot, the recovery beds had actual mattresses and were more comfortable than the exam beds in the other wings. I moved around because, as far as I could tell, The Herg were mostly blind and relied a lot on smell and hearing. If they ever found my hideout, it was better for my scent to be everywhere. Hopefully, it’d confuse them long enough for me to escape. The locks on the doors of the first floor and the sturdy block walls had kept them out, there were only a couple of windows left intact on the third floor but luckily, The Herg had top-heavy bodies, slippery looking skin and scrawny arms. They weren’t built for climbing. I’d called them that because ‘herg’ was the only sound I’d ever heard them make. ‘Herg, herg, herg,’ would come from them as they moved around or when they got excited over a scrap of food or something. The sound seemed to come more from the small flaps on the sides of their body, rather than their long mouths in the middle of their torso’s. Their head and torso were one in the same, they didn’t have a neck or defined head. At first, I’d thought the small flaps were ears, but they seemed to open and close with their breaths, so more recently, I’d decided they were the equivalent of a lung or gill.
Finding this clinic, was the only reason I was still alive. I knew that to be true. I was sure that if there were any other humans out there, that they wouldn’t have got as lucky as I did. If the power ever come back on, the clinic had computers and phones too but, in the darkness The Herg had created, they were useless. I still wasn’t sure what they wanted or where they’d come from but since they’d arrived, our world had no longer been ours. Even if the phones did come back one day, there was nobody left I could call. They really were all gone. I felt sadness creep in again, but I’d become pretty good at pushing it away, sadness was weakness, I had to concentrate on surviving. I was lucky, the others, they were the unlucky ones. I had to stay alive for them.
I walked the dark hall to the kitchen, passing the stack of plastic meal trays. There had been times I’d pretended with those before too, I’d put one each hand and say, ‘and what will be today, sir, the beef or we have this lovely homemade pasta.’ Homemade pasta, yum, it was something I’d not had in what seemed like forever, but I’d never forget the taste of. I had taped some torn up bed sheets to the bottom of my shoes, so The Herg wouldn’t hear me walking around on the linoleum floors. I didn’t know how good their hearing was, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d seen them make short work of a human they’d found walking around and I wasn’t keen for that to be me. That was more than a month ago, the last time I’d seen another human.
I opened the cupboard that I had sorted all the canned goods into. I’d gone through all the refrigerated food and for days now, I’d been surviving on the non-perishables. I was glad really, the last few scraps of refrigerated food I’d had to force down, the fridge wasn’t working with the power outage and the food was starting to spoil. I tapped my chin with my index finger, as I looked at the selection, I had aligned each type of food in perfect rows. There was a row of tinned corn, six tins of Spam, four small tuna tins stacked neatly, all labels facing front. There were beans, chicken soup, tinned beetroot, baby carrots, three tins of peas. I still had quite a bit, still, a time would inevitably come when I would had to look elsewhere for a meal. In another cupboard there was what I assumed was plain flour, in a plastic container, and there was salt and a big tin of Olive Oil. I had no use for them, at the moment, but I treated them like a back-up. Something I could potentially make emergency food out of, if I had to. The power was off but there was a gas stove. I hadn’t been game enough to try and turn it on yet.
With a can of beans and a fork in hand, I started my day. I needed something to occupy my mind, so each day I climbed the concrete stairs to the third floor. On the second floor, there was a laboratory, of sorts. There was a lot of different machines but the one I visited daily was a green safe. It must have been battery operated, because the little red light on its keypad was still on and the buttons still beeped when you pressed them. Each day, on the way up to the third, I tried a different code, today 10068. Sixty-eight days, that’s how long I’d been here. Of course, today, like every other day, the door didn’t budge. It didn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the safe held, so I would keep trying until I couldn’t anymore.
There were a few blown-out windows on the third floor and shattered glass through most of the short, hardy carpet. The third looked more like it used to be offices, rather than part of the actual clinic. I guessed it may have been where the staff came to write patient notes. There was a small kitchenette, a bathroom and six workstations with chairs. I’d been lucky enough to score a couple of packets of biscuits, chocolate chip, from the cupboard up here. I’d rationed them, I had four left, tightly wrapped in their plastic packaging and stashed in a desk drawer. I was so excited when I first found them that I had one per day but now, I only allowed myself a biscuit on rainy days, it hadn’t rained in more than a week. I grabbed my grey blanket, that was draped over an office chair. I needed cover, the wind was cool today. One of the blown-out windows, looked out over the city. I lay on my belly, in the only spot I’d bothered to eradicate the broken glass from. I threw the blanket over me, covering everything except my shoes. I even wore it like a hoodie over my head. I opened the beans and grabbed the fork, stuffing the first forkful of salty, tomato flavoured beans into my mouth. I would eat half now and keep half for dinner. I picked up the binoculars that waited for me at this spot every day and started to scan the streets. The Herg sniffed around the abandoned buildings and through piles of debris. Sometimes, I just watched them. Sometimes, I counted them, the most I’d seen in a day was nine. Sometimes, I pretended I was a sniper, picking them off from above. Mostly, I just tried to learn about them, I watched their behaviour and tried to see if they had a weakness. I hadn’t seen one yet, except for the fact that they didn’t seem very intelligent and couldn’t climb. They were more like animals than people. Still their strength and savageness had definitely gotten the better of us.
Through the close-up view of the binoculars, I left the scrummaging Herg for a while. I checked the sky for clouds, wondering if today might be a biscuit day. I scanned in a well learned pattern, making sure I didn’t miss an inch. I followed each street and checked each building. Suddenly, something caught my eye, my breath caught in my chest. A flash of light, one… two… three… times, in the fourth-floor window of an adjacent building. It was a small light, like a torch or something. My mouth dried and my heart raced. I pushed the beans aside and watched the window again. Minutes passed. Nothing. Had I imagined it? I almost gave up, when again I saw it, the light… one… two… three flashes. My heart quickened again. It had to be someone, but who and why hadn’t I seen them before?
I watched the window the light had flashed in for a while, until I saw a white piece of paper in it, being flattened against the window. The words were small from back here but with the binoculars I could make them out. It said, “two arms up for yes, one for no”. I kept watching, these people were smart, I thought. They knew I could see them well enough with the binoculars and they were finding a way to communicate with me by asking questions and making me do big movements so they could see the answers. A question appeared in the window. “Do you have medical supplies?” I flicked the blanket off, stood tall and then put two arms up in the air enthusiastically. All the while thinking about the medicine I’d found on the second. It was locked but the doors were glass. I’d never needed to try and get into it but I was sure I could if I had to. I’d often examined the bottles through the glass, there were some while plastic ones and some amber glass bottles. There were different sized bottles and they all had sticker with names on them, most were long words I didn’t understand. I knew there was a drawer with bandages and dressings too.
I picked up the binoculars again and watched that question disappear to be replaced with another. “Food?” I let the binoculars go, they had a strap that looped over my neck so they could only fall as far as my chest. I went to put two hands up but hesitated. How many of them were there? Was it smart to let humans in that I didn’t know? Would opening the doors for them, alert The Herg to my existence?
I was relatively safe, and I had been successfully hiding from The Herg for a while now. The clinic would keep me going for a while longer if I didn’t have to share what I had. If there was a few of them, my food supply would dwindle quickly. I looked again with my binoculars, the question was still pinned against the window, they awaited an answer. There was an obvious problem with this system, they could ask me what they wanted, while my questions remained unanswered. My windows were blown out so they would probably see that there was only me here. Their windows were intact, blocking any hint of who might be writing the questions and putting them up.
I paced the floor for a moment or two, rubbing my thumb nail on my bottom lip. I looked with the binoculars again, sure enough, “Food?” was still in the window.
Food & Fiction 