Work Text:
Most of the pubs had been destroyed when the Network went down, but Gary’d found that if you went into enough people’s basements you could scrounge up abandoned alcohol: vodka, rum bottles that miraculously hadn’t shattered, white wine—although he left the wine because he wasn’t about to drink with one pinky up. In one such basement, Gary shone his burning torch into the gloom. The hand tremors were back. He handed the torch to Blank Steven, who’d accompanied him down to the basement. He always left Blank Andy upstairs to keep guard because nobody could bludgeon the guts out of anybody like Blank Andy. Scrappy fuck.
“Anything there?” Blank Steven said.
“Nah, nothing.” He tried to sound casual. On the road he’d picked up a flask, dented on the side, perfectly functional otherwise, except empty. He reached into the pocket where he kept it and ran his hand along the screw top. He turned back to Blank Steven, but as he moved, he spotted the glint of glass in the corner. “Oh, this could be very promising.”
He hurried across the room and crouched in front of the glass. Jackpot! A bar cart. Half-full bottles of Jameson, Patron, some kind of rum. And off to the side, a crystal-clear skull. Full. He picked it up in one hand.
“Look, Stevie, I found Yorick!” he announced. He looked the skull in the eye sockets. “I knew you once, and I’m about to know you again.”
Blank Steven shifted from foot to foot. “Hamlet?”
“No, Hamlet doesn’t turn into a skeleton,” Gary asked. “Catch!” He lobbed the skull to Blank Steven, who almost had to drop his torch to catch it. “Careful with that. Looks valuable.”
If each of them carried a bottle, it would last them until the next village over. Little dilapidated towns all along the countryside. Sad bastards, everybody who’d been stuck in those towns up till the end.
He regarded the remaining bottles and opted for the Jameson. Took a swig straight from the bottle, closed his eyes as he swallowed, hissed at the burn.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” Gary said, grabbing as many bottles as he could by the necks. “Right then, let’s go,” he said, and hauled them up the rickety cellar stairs. Holding the skull, Blank Steven followed after him. They emerged into the ramshackle former living room: Blank Andy at the door, Blank Oliver sitting on the couch, Blank Peter perched on the piano bench. “Oi! Look what we found!”
Blank Andy, Blank Oliver, and Blank Pete all stared at him.
“Look here,” said Gary, hoisting his findings. “This’ll last us all a week. Where are your backpacks, come on, load up, I’m not carrying all of this myself.”
“Maybe you should, though, mate,” said Blank Andy.
“What? Why? Live a little,” said Gary, and lobbed one of the emptier bottles at Blank Andy. Blank Andy caught it, considered it for a moment, and looked back at Gary, who said, “Not a lot of it, but it’s good. Go on, give it a whiff.”
Blank Andy unscrewed the lid, stuck his nose over it, and took a deep sniff, nostrils flaring, not breaking eye contact with Gary.
“See?” said Gary.
“Smell, more like,” said Blank Andy. “Smells like rum. So what? You should still carry it.”
“But there are five of us, and seven bottles. That’s—” He counted on his fingers. “One each, and two for somebody else.”
“Three for somebody else,” Blank Peter piped up.
“Right then,” said Gary. He pulled out the flask from his pocket and opened one of the bottles, took a whiff to make sure he wasn’t being tricked. It was tequila, the real deal. His hand shook a little as he poured it into the flask and the tequila sloshed on his fingers. When the flask was full, he took a swig, then topped it off. He sucked the tequila off his fingers with a pop, stood up, tucked the flask in his pocket. “Who’s taking the three?”
They all looked at him.
“Don’t all beg for it at once,” he said. “Petey, you know how to count. You do it.”
“No,” said Blank Andy. “You take them.”
Blank Steven walked up to Gary, held out the skull. “All yours,” he said, pressing it into Gary’s hand.
“I’m not carrying all this,” Gary said. “What if it breaks? It’s heavy. I need to move through life unencumbered.”
“And we don’t?” said Blank Andy. “We don’t mind carrying stuff, it’s just, we don’t drink.”
Gary almost dropped the skull. “You don’t what?”
He peered at each of them in turn, trying to suss out the joke. Blank Oliver coughed lightly.
“It’s like water to us,” said Blank Pete. “No difference.”
“But you’ve been—when we’ve found—” They’d all done shots the very first night. He pointed an accusing finger at nobody and everybody. “I’ve seen you drink!”
“Sure, we do it,” said Blank Pete, a little apologetically. “It tastes nice. But it doesn’t do anything. We can’t get drunk.”
He goggled at the lot of them. “All of you?” He pointed at Blank Andy. “Was this your idea?”
“It wasn’t an idea,” Blank Oliver cut in, clasping his hands together. “It’s simply a matter of physiology.”
“If I wanted to talk about physiology I’d put myself back on the therapist couch,” Gary said. He took another swig from the flask. His hands were steadying. He tucked the flask back in his pocket, cracked his neck, straightened up. “Right then, Andy, give me that duffel.” Blank Andy brought it over. Gary packed in the rum, and the tequila, and the Jameson. He could make do without the other bottles in the basement.
He was left with the skull. He held it in his palm. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
---
Sleeping in houses was risky because they were liable to collapse at any minute without warning, as they’d learned in the first few weeks when a caving roof was their alarm clock. Instead, they camped out on the outskirts of the towns they came across. The blanks didn’t really need to sleep, but when they did, they used their fingers to close their eyes manually.
They took watch at night in shifts of two. They’d started out with one, but one night Gary had fallen asleep on watch and they’d been ambushed by a crew of scavengers with tasers, which the blanks hated, because it took a while for them to come back from being shorted out. They ganged up on him, told him, “One of us is staying up with you,” which he agreed to, because if he fell asleep, at least somebody else was awake. So then it was Gary-and-someone on watch. On the night of the vodka skull, it was Blank Andy.
It was a warm night considering how close it was to winter, but the fire gave them something to look at. Gary, bottle of Jameson hanging from between his fingers, stared into the flames. Blank Andy was sitting cross-legged on the ground next to him. He had the same kind of good posture Andy did, casual but straight-backed. Came from athleticism, Gary figured. All that rugby.
“Not as fun as cloud watching, is it,” said Gary.
Blank Andy shrugged.
Gary held out the bottle. “Want any?”
“No, thanks,” said Blank Andy.
Gary scoffed, then shrugged, drank, set the bottle down on the ground. He shifted, crunching a dead leaf with one scuffed boot. “So, the drinking. You really don’t feel anything? Not even a little twinge? A buzz?”
“No, not really.”
Gary regarded him in the firelight. “But you remember it, don’t you?”
“What, drinking?”
“Yeah, mate,” Gary said, “you know, the good times.”
Blank Andy frowned, face pinching up. “I remember getting sick a lot after.”
“You got selective memories and those are the selected ones?”
“Not just that—I remember the good nights, too. All of us, together.”
Gary nodded. “The Golden Mile?”
“Of course,” said Blank Andy. “Best night of my life.”
“And you don’t want to go back to it?”
Blank Andy gestured at himself. “Doesn’t matter really, does it? You heard Oliver. We can’t do it.”
“So, if you were to drink this”—he brandished the bottle—“what would happen?”
Blank Andy shrugged. “It would taste like liquor. That would be it.”
“Well, that’s just a fucking waste, isn’t it. It doesn’t make you feel anything? Loose of limb? Loose of lip? Inhibitions out the window?”
“Maybe a little happy,” said Blank Andy. “I think that’s just because it’s all of us. You know, friends. What does it feel like to you, drinking, I mean?”
“Oh, where to begin,” said Gary. He didn’t want to say he didn’t know. He squished one eye shut, considering. “Better than not being drunk.” He laughed, but Blank Andy didn’t.
And besides, it was true: there was a reason he’d given up sobriety in his early teenage years. What was there to like? Him getting sober had been someone else’s idea. He’d been in hospital for the worst of it, the pounding headaches: they hadn’t let him have any of the heavy-duty painkillers even when he’d made a very heartfelt case to be given them. First thing he’d done before going to see Peter was stop at a pub. That inaugural drink: he couldn’t remember what it was, but it had grounded him instantly, like a bolt of lightning straight to the soles of his shoes. Usually it was a drink to keep his eyes open, or to help them close: to fuzz his thoughts, or to sharpen them, to relax, to get loaded, to loosen up, to have a perpetual excuse on hand for just about everything. To make it through to the next good time.
He eyed the Jameson bottle instead of meeting Blank Andy’s gaze. Even-keeled, considering, maybe a little judgmental. Not defiant, like Andy had been, back in The First Post with that bloody glass of water, eyes boring into Gary’s across the table. A dare. That was what being drunk felt like. A bet you were always winning, until the next bet.
“It’s an unparalleled feeling,” Gary said. “But I don’t want to make you feel left out. Besides, you grew up to be a teetotaler. You’re just starting a little younger.”
Blank Andy hesitated, mouth open, then said, “I did?”
“Yeah, I mean, human you.” Gary sat back up, took another sip of the Jameson, screwed on the lid.
“What? Why?”
Gary scrunched up his face, watching Blank Andy out of the corner of his eye. “They didn’t give you that memory?”
Blank Andy shook his head.
Gary shrugged. “Who can say, really?” He shifted forward, reached back for the bottle, unscrewed it again and took a generous gulp. “You had your reasons. I’ll… tell you when you’re older. Just stay away from me and cars, got that?”
“What, both at the same time?”
“Exactly.”
“Gary?”
“The one and only.”
“You should try it sometime,” said Blank Andy.
“Try what?”
“Being a teetotaler. It’s not so bad.”
Gary looked at him. He seemed to be serious. Gary looked away, let out a bark of a laugh. Started to unscrew the lid again, then set the bottle back down. Blank Andy was still staring at him. Gary opened his mouth, about to tell him to screw off, go back to being Andy, his best mate, side by side with him till sunrise. But it was the dead of night, and Blank Andy was just a fucking kid, gawky glasses that he hadn’t managed to lose, letterman jacket with one elbow ripped. Gary’s new left-hand man.
“Tell you what,” said Gary, stretching out to lie down with his arms behind his head. “We find a real pub, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” He closed his eyes, already imagining it. Coat trailing behind him, Blank Andy on his left, Blank Steven on his right, Blank Pete and Blank Oliver flanking them. “Go up to whoever’s tending bar, and I’ll ask him”—Andy’s face, stubborn and defiant over his glass. He opened his eyes. “Five fucking waters, please.”