don’t bother looking down
Moving to London was going to be a new start. She was going to see the sights, get a job, meet new people, and—importantly—move on from everything she left behind in America.
Instead, the days are blurring together; Jamie teaches her how to hold a hammer, swaggers easy in her baggy over shirts, and cleans her shotgun at the kitchen table. Hannah flits from one side of the house to the other, trying to keep the kids happy, distracted and away from the doors. Owen makes meager meals from fruit and vegetables Jamie’s been growing in the garden and stops talking about his mom. About what happened.
Dani feels more than a little out of her depth, and not just in terms of location. At night, she curls into Jamie’s arms and says silly things like when all of this is over and i was looking for you my whole life.
Jamie says them back, kisses her hard. Doesn’t seem to mind how naive Dani is about this whole thing, how optimistic about the next thing—if there’s a next thing at all.
“Maybe it’s a good thing you weren’t in America when it went dark, Dani,” Owen says while Jamie smokes a cigarette in the garden, considering their supply needs in the sticky summer heat.
“Maybe,” Dani says. She hasn’t heard from her mother in months—since long before she’d left London—but the news stateside had been bleak before it stopped broadcasting entirely.
She spends a lot of time with Flora and Miles, but they are not children in the same way she was. Especially not now. She has no point of reference for what they’re going through. She can only guess based on her own situation.
Mostly, she thinks she’s luckiest to have Jamie because Jamie shoulders survival like she’s used to its weight. She says things like we’ll need more food if we’re going to make it long term and stay behind me, stay close. When they sweep the closest houses for survivors, for food, for medicine or anything else that might help, her hands hold her shotgun steady and she speaks in gestures and gives directions with a nod of her head. When Dani reaches out to hold her hand, Jamie presses their palms together and squeezes.
There’s a corner store at the edge of town that they empty of canned goods, but they don’t come out unscathed. One of those things had come up behind Jamie and Dani had taken it down with her fire poker—jabbing it like a spear into the thing’s eye just in time and sending herself clattering to the floor from the force of the blow.
Later, Jamie presses ice to Dani’s bruised shoulder while they listen to the radio in the sitting room. They only get one station these days, and it’s some guy holed up in his house making his own broadcasts. He lost his family—his son and wife—to this new world order and you can hear the loss of it in every word he says.
“Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up,” she says softly. “That this will have all been a dream.”
She’s sitting between Jamie’s legs on the floor, the hand Jamie’s not using to ice her shoulder caught between both of her own. She plays with her fingers idly. Mindlessly.
Owen takes a long drink from the wine bottle he’s holding. “I do that, too,” he says. “Keep thinking I’ll hear my mum banging on the wall of my room, needing something.”
“I took a karate class when I was ten,” Dani says, more to herself than anyone else. “But I wasn’t any good at it. And my mom wouldn’t let me be a girl scout.”
“What’s that?” Owen asks.
“It’s like a club. They sell cookies every year.”
“I don’t think selling cookies would have helped you much, dear,” Hannah muses, combing her fingers through Miles’s hair. She’s taking up the couch, the children draped over her, asleep.
This is the room they all share. Owen takes the corner by the door and there’s a pile of blankets in front of the fire that belongs to Jamie and Dani both. When they need more privacy, they usually find themselves upstairs—in the bedroom of the former governess, who quit to work with the children’s uncle in London.
None of them have heard from Henry or her in a while, so they’ve mostly been holding their breath while they wait for the kids to stop asking.
It was meant to be Dani’s bedroom, too, and had been for around two days. Then everything fell apart.
Jamie kisses the side of Dani’s neck, making her shiver. “You can sell me cookies anytime,” she whispers, the sentence laced with an innuendo Dani doesn’t quite understand.
“Only if you teach me how to shoot rats,” Dani tells her, turning her head so she can see Jamie’s face out of her right eye.
“Lots of things to shoot that’re bigger than rats these days, love. But I’ll show you. Whatever you like.”
Jamie has a habit of making the end of the world sound romantic. Dani’s never loved anyone for anything the way she loves Jamie for that.
At the beginning of the whole thing, Jamie hardly spoke to Dani. It wasn’t until she started making jokes about Dani being interested in Owen that she understood why. So Dani flirted with her and Jamie flirted back and it seemed like that was maybe all it would be.
But then there was that lady that stumbled onto the grounds, bleeding from her stomach and looking like she should have been dead ten times over. Dani had approached her, trying to offer help, and then the lady lunged at her, teeth bared—something fleshy stuck to her lips and gums like she’d just finished eating.
Dani shrieked and Jamie ran over, pulled the woman away, slamming her to the ground and saving her and—
Unfair as it may be, Jamie looks attractive with blood spattered across her clothes. Dani had taken a few seconds to wipe Jamie’s face with her own sleeve before kissing her in thanks.
Now they’re mastering the art of making each other come as quietly as possible while the rest of the room is asleep at night.
Her entire life, Dani’s been the kind of person to plan out her every move—to make a pros and cons list before any major life decisions. But that changes when you’re having near-death experiences almost daily.
These days, her only attitude is: hell, life is probably going to be short now; might as well fall in love.
She was half-in-love with Jamie after that first kiss, all the way in the first time Jamie shoved a hand down her pants in the greenhouse. You learn to take what you can get when you have blood staining your skin.
Flora turns half her dolls into monsters, uses red food dye as blood to stain their clothes and faces. Miles writes letters to his uncle that never get sent out because there isn't any post anymore. Dani tries to teach him long division to keep his mind off of it. Flora learns about the different types of weather and starts calling every minor inconvenience a “cumulonimbus” of a problem.
It’s better than them having to run or fight or do anything besides stay inside. However long it takes for things to return to normal, Dani thinks they should all be safe as long as they don’t stray too far.
Jamie has another take:
“We can’t keep them sheltered. They need to be ready to defend this place if they have to.”
Dani does not ask: From what?
She is scared of the answer.
She just reaches out and curls her hand around the curve of Jamie’s spine, runs her thumb up and down its bumps. Jamie accidentally steps on her foot as they move to get closer to one another—to meet in the middle. Sometimes, it’s hard for Dani to remember what her life was like before all of this. If this thought hits her while she’s in Jamie’s arms, it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.
The windows upstairs go un-boarded. The ones in the bathroom are flung open to the late July air as Jamie and her curl up together in the bathtub. She scrubs the dirt from beneath Jamie’s nails, the blood caked up her forearms from their trip even further into town today. She kisses the bruises on her back, slides her fingers beneath the water, resting them on Jamie’s thigh.
Jamie leans back into her, like they’re made for one another, and it’s peaceful moments like these—the burning world still spinning them around in circles somewhere beyond the quiet cocoon of them—that Dani thinks they might be. Her skin and hands and lips are magnetized to Jamie’s and she would love her in any world, but this is the one they’re sharing right now.
She slips her hand further down, the water rippling with the movement of her arm, and Jamie’s head falls back against her shoulder. Her hot breath bathes the side of Dani’s face as she tilts, trying to press their lips together.
That night, they eat soup in the kitchen and listen to Owen tell a story from his boyhood that makes the children shriek with laughter. Dani tilts her chair so she can lean back against Jamie’s chest and closes her eyes to the sounds.
Still, they press further into town—getting greedy, or perhaps just paranoid. Owen comes with them, an old hunting rifle of Dominic Wingrave’s held unsteadily in his hands. There are monsters ambling up and down the streets most days, and it’s strange how it can be so quiet despite this. They walk through gardens and keep to sides of buildings as much as they can to avoid being seen.
Sometimes it doesn’t work and Owen will throw his body weight into one of them, pressing it into a wall so that Dani can stab her fire poker through its skull with clumsy movements.
In the old grocery store, they find more food than they can carry. Owen grabs things to can some of their homegrown food and vegetables, stuffs jams and yeast and flour into his bag until Jamie tells him to stop. Save some for later, or risk not being able to run.
If there are people in Bly who are still alive, they have not found any of them yet. Dani isn’t sure what will happen when they do. If they do. She knows how this world has changed the people around her, but cannot guess what it might have done to strangers.
Out in the rainy afternoon, trudging through the muddy grass back to the house, Dani lags behind so she can watch Jamie up ahead. The hold of her shoulders, the way she turns her head back and forth to make sure the way is clear. The way her hair curls in the humidity.
“It’s good to have someone,” Owen says. “She’s been alone as long as I’ve known her.”
“I’m lucky to have all of you,” Dani tells him and it’s true, but she’s thinking about Jamie the night before—the press of her palm over Dani’s mouth as her hand moved between Dani’s legs; trying to keep quiet; ears perked for the slightest sound or movement from the others, still sleeping in the darkness.
“We’re lucky, too,” Owen says next and Dani doesn’t ask him to elaborate.
It starts raining the moment they get back and Hannah helps Owen unload their bags in the kitchen. It’s a good day—a good find—and Dani tastes the salt of Jamie’s sweat as they collide into one another in the dining room, free from the gaze of the others. Dani kisses her like relief and victory and good enough for now, which is more than enough to be thankful for.
Jamie is the kind of person Dani always wanted to be. She fits into her own skin so easily, so readily, and the sprawl of her on their makeshift bed that night, Dani’s university jacket hung loosely around her shoulders, makes it feel like the die she’s holding these days is just the slightest bit loaded in her favor.
“We’re not dying, you know,” says Flora one night, as the summer begins to fade into fall. “We have each other.”
So the world ended, but its people didn’t. Couldn’t ever. Not even if they tried.
Miles agrees with her. Says things like our parents and our uncle and wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Grose?
Something sparks in his and the eyes of his sister. There’s not much that can be done that they’re not already managing somehow. Together.
Everyone is silent for a very long time after they speak. Jamie looks between them all, wary of what might come next; one of them has to be, should be planning ahead. Hannah has the children and the windows she doesn’t look out of. Owen has Hannah and a working stove.
Dani has Jamie. She has the others. Most of the time, she is scared. The rest of it, she’s trying not to be.
Maybe it is romantic, holding Jamie’s hand under the table while the monsters amble through the trees outside, through the streets; the wind whistles through the boarded up windows and shifts through the grass and the leaves.
“We have each other,” Dani agrees and Jamie squeezes her hand.
Not a new start exactly, but close enough.
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