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The apartment is lit when Wilbur finds it. The third floor, a can sat in the middle filled with newspaper scraps and old books that hold no meaning now, burning.
There isn’t anyone around for a decent while, other than the three men sat in silence that he comes to face. No smiles are shared, no welcomes or introductions. There isn’t time or hope for that anymore.
Each one carries an instrument, or close as they can to one. Glasses has a bass and small speaker, Button Down has a pair of drumsticks beneath the hand he’s using to steady himself. The guy in the corner has a Guitar case, and it looks quite similar to Wilbur’s own.
There’s nothing for it. Fire is rare, and it’s not like he knows which one of them has the lighter that lit the can keeping them all warm, so he can’t just steal and get out of here. He’ll settle down for the night and hope he isn’t dead when the sun comes.
It’s silent, in this old apartment, and the hole in the wall is right behind the coffee table he’s chosen to sit on, but he was the last here, so he gets the cold spot. Only seems fair.
Wilbur doesn’t like the silence, and he’s wishing against fucking everything that Button will start tapping his sticks, or Guitar will start strumming, or Glasses will start tuning, and Wilbur can leap on it.
It only takes a spark to start a flame.
Wilbur starts humming.
-
They join in.
It’s light ‘nyowns’ from the guitar, and deep tones and tiny little noises as Button picks up on the energy, and starts tapping his drumsticks on the cola cans littering his feet. It’s an energy that’s forming and growing, and suddenly there’s an electric feeling building. Everyone’s in on it, so Wilbur tests the waters.
”Under the weight of a broken nose. It’s not that simple, but he won’t seem to notice.”
“There must be more to this.”
Each man immediately responds in kind, eyes firmly fixed on their instruments, though Glasses’ are closed. They don’t mind the messy sound, instead blending, making do with their instruments that really don’t work like this and drums built from a shattered piece of kitchen counter and a few pieces of wood and cans. It’s slightly off, and slightly wrong, but it’s theirs, and it’s a few seconds of solace in the mess that they’ve found themselves in.
“So leave those sink estates and, let’s book a holiday. We’re painting all the counties in blue.”
Something in this is bitter resentment, the few hundred people remaining from the millions that died, the plans that were supposed to protect their damn country causing the ruins he now stands in with these men. While Boris and his lot fuck off somewhere safer. A ‘new britain’ while his home falls into ruin and is taken back by the land if the growing radiation doesn’t kill them first.
“'Cause we're already boring, and we're already hoarding. What else have we got left to accrue?
And sure, maybe his anger is ill directed, didn’t those people lose family too? But there isn’t mercy for the man pulling the trigger when so many people are hurt. Really, Wilbur should be headed away from London, towards Wales or Scotland or even the coast, praying for a rescue boat to arrive at one of the barely standing ports, but what does it matter? There’s nothing out there for him, nothing waiting across further waters. Wilbur’s family have never left Britain, and there’s no-one hoping he’ll come home.
“And the ramblers will say, “It’s got a marvellous view.”
His voice drops, and with it comes the music, slowing to a lull, quiet and calm, and Wilbur leans in towards the fire can, as if about to tell a secret to these other men. To his surprise, Glasses leans in too, and their eyes dart around the room as the two of them almost pretend to be telling state secrets, as if they’re speaking something that shouldn’t move beyond these walls. His seat on the coffee table elevates him slightly above the rest, like a town crier sharing the news.
”But we don’t know how many lives it took, no. They’ll never know what you knew.”
Wilbur didn’t attend the survivor’s meet. Globally, his name will appear on the list of the dead. He wonders if anyone will question who he is, who he was. If kids will go into museums and make stories up about that random name on the walls of the British Monument, if they’ll even make one at all. Perhaps too many people died to carve that many names into marble, constructed high like obelisks.
“And we’re so calm but we’re-“
”FUCKING SCARED, FUCKING SCARED!”
A voice joins at Wilbur’s break and raised hands, croaky and unused, so unlike his own, that’s sang a different tune in every day that’s passed.
”And we’re so calm but we’re-“
“FUCKING SCARED, FUCKING SCARED!”
Another voice échos through the apartment, joining his and Buttons’ in their angered shout, and Glasses looks up to smile at the three of them.
“And we’re so calm but we’re-“
“FUCKING SCARED, FUCKING SCARED!”
Glasses looks at them all, and he seems to be debating whether or not to join their frenzied shouts, creating noise where there used to be only their tense silence. Maybe his voice simply doesn’t work. Regardless, there’s an exasperated affection.
“And we’re so calm but we’re-“
”FUCKING SCARED OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU!”
He fucking does. He joins their final yell, fists raised away from his bass to raise them high in the air, full of power and energy and a mix of anger and happiness as his voice joins theirs, and then they crash back into the song.
“Under the weight of some Sertraline. A couple Prozacs and now I'm pumping dopamine”
Unfortunately, there isn’t actually too many places that do antidepressants anymore. All pharmacies were pretty much Hit-and-Run hotspots. No need to pay attention to what they were taking, just grabbing the tablets and sorting them out later. Wilbur had snagged a couple of his own prescriptions, and a heck load of paracetamol, but at the end of the day, he’d run out two weeks ago, and adrenaline levels die quick when hope gets slaughtered a few days in.
“There must be more to this. We've got a country house now, old dog has been put down now.”
Wilbur did have a dog, before all this. Black and White Sheepdog named Tess. She was young as well, maybe six. It wasn’t even the bomb, the nuke, that did her in. It was the noise, that horrid, terrible noise. She’d heard it far before him. Whining that hadn’t made sense, and then the panic as she’d clutched her paws to her ears, lept beneath the sofa, tried anything to block the noise out. Then the bomb had hit, and when he’d woken, Tess’ remains, her ruptured ears, were almost too much to look at. He’d grabbed the longest tuft of her fur, and began to pack.
“Oh, it's nice to be your entry. Custom licence plate on our Audi R8. How many grocers does one county need?”
Wilbur can feel It building, knows exactly what’s coming. Feels the power at his fingertips and creeps up his spine. Something else is taking host of his body, and he lets It flood through him, energy and power thrumming. It leans them forwards, hands outstretched towards the center of the room, and allows his voice to drop. It has as much of a flair for the dramatic as he does.
“And the ramblers will say. "It's still a marvellous view," But the treadmill still loops. Your hedonic misuse.”
It comes. It rises, and He leans forth to the flames and erupts.
“So come on, one and all and see the apathy”
He is aflame, highlighted by the can before them, stood up like a revolutionary to the revolters, a president speaking to his followers, he is a force undefined.
“The reems of grey stencil that fills the tapestry”
He feels unstoppable, powerful, his drive realised and his limits far beyond that of any man. Where he steps, passion ignites, his spine straightens, his eyes light up, his voice grows louder.
“I look to all of you and see a different fucking species”
But there is betrayal in that passion. There is fear, a loss of conciousness and a loss of soul. People and ideas leave, and the coldness seeps in, and the fire before him cannot fill it, cannot fight it.
“Aspiration for a different destination to me”
He thinks he might be drowning, here in the thin air and smoke. There is something like water in his lungs, but it thickens, bubbles through his throat and forces it’s way out. His breath leaves as they did.
“Across the Pennines there's a thin blue line, a knife and a mall”
He leans forth, so that flame tickles his chin, and the others look at him with awe, not fear. He speaks to them, and it is so reminiscent of another time, surrounding a campfire, speaking of glory.
“I would do something if it wasn't all so effortful”
And there is a moment of peace. For a second, there is happiness, there is a finality. Everything is okay, and they will build again. The world will be built again, and happiness and peace can stand.
“Cause I'm so high my brain can't even look at the fall”
But it cannot, because Wilbur reaches up with his own frail fingers and drags the world down with him, because a man cannot fall if he does not take something with him.
“And when you've reached the top, there's nowhere else to go but-“
Wilbur barely remembers his collapse to the floor, barely remembers them carefully laying him down to rest.
-
Joe is the first to leave in the morning.
He rises with the sun, and it’s barely five minutes to pack his coat away and grab his guitar, and hop out the window to the grate outside it, and the ladders to the ground.
Ash is next, maybe ten minutes after. He doesn’t even have a bag, just grabs that shiny blue bass and the portable speaker, patting down his pockets and taking his exit through the back room.
Wilbur rises, half asleep still, but the unfamiliar place makes it hard to feel completely safe, and he swoops out of the apartment’s front door (if the hole in the wall can be called that, both ignoring the man still asleep on the floor, and the way his messenger bag smacks the can that kept them warm.
When Mark wakes, it’s to an empty room scarce of the men he’d shared the evening with. A couple of minutes confirms he’s unharmed, and nothing has been stolen.
-
Riding solo is the only way to survive. Groups mean attachment, robberies, backstabbing and death.
Perhaps in another universe, they could have been friends, but not now. Not in a world where 99p pocket lighters are worth killing for.
Had it been another circumstance, they could have stayed longer than odd humming and trash cans in an apartment, but Death follows London, and her merciful hand waits for no man.
They walk on.