“We thought it might be better coming from you.”
“I’ll speak to her.”
They stood in silence. The room only had a single small window that didn’t let in much light. There hadn’t been much space to build the bite ward and they had needed as many room as they could.
He found his mum on the Lawrence’s boat having tea with Mrs Lawrence. She was about the same age as his mum but looked years younger. The Lawrence’s had come to Sanctuary aboard a converted river cruise ship along with a dozen other families. They had been in Liverpool where they lived well but precariously. They had left the boat yards and the docks behind to find somewhere safer, which until six months ago had been Sanctuary.
His mum looked tired and frail. She had turned sixty five year looked closer to eighty. She had started to forget things and he had begun to worry she was suffering from a brain illness. In the old world there would have been medicine to help her and, while that still existed somewhere beyond the river, the knowledge of what she should be given had been lost forever.
“Hi Ben,” she said as he climbed down off the jetty onto the long boat that had been given to the Lawrence’s. Although they had arrived ten years ago he still thought of them as newcomers, as he did all of those that had come after his parents in the first wave.
“Can we talk?” he said.
Mrs Lawrence could evidently tell by his expression that something was wrong. “I’m just going to see what Vic’s up to back there,” she said and then disappeared inside.
“Is something wrong?” said his mum. “Are the twins okay?”
“The twins are fine,” he said. “I’ve just been at the Hospital.”
“Oh how is everyone?” she said. It had been a year since she’d worked there. She still hadn’t drawn the connection between the Hospital and death. It was unsurprising, until six months ago only the old and infirm had died there.
“Mum, it’s Cora.”
“Cora?”
For a moment he didn’t think she knew who he was talking about.
“Is she alright?” Her voice was neutral, unsure.
Ben shook his head and realised he was crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he couldn’t bring himself to look up. Then he felt his mothers arms around him, holding him tightly.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
Between sobs Ben told her everything he knew.
“Will there be a funeral?” she said when he was done.
He hadn’t thought about it but he supposed he would have to organise something. He nodded and when he looked up he saw the tears in her eyes. He knew then that she would cry when he was gone, that she had never gotten over the need to be strong for her children.
2
On the morning of the funeral Ben found himself in the Back Field. As more people had arrived at Sanctuary it had expanded until it began to encroach on surrounding land. There had been a lot of discussion about whether they should close the doors before it reached that point but they hadn’t.
They had always used the fields for hunting and in all that time no one had seen a vamp. So they assumed it must be safe, but they had assumed wrong.
He couldn’t remember deciding to go to the field and, now that he was there, he had no idea what he wanted to do. He decided that it was some need to see where it had happened, where his little sister had been killed. He walked towards the forest where it must have been.
He kicked at the long grass as he walked, revealing little clusters of mushrooms. The patches became denser and denser as he entered the darkness of the forest.
The birds twittered away in the branches above but otherwise it was quiet and still. He could hear his own breathing and for some unknown reason his heart was hammering in his chest. The place was tranquil yet he couldn’t seem to get over the fact that Cora had died there. A vamp that they hadn’t managed to catch had found its way there. Most probably was still there somewhere.
He walked on, saw mushrooms climbing up the moist tree trunks. He couldn’t believe she was gone. Cora and he had been close, at least until her marriage but even that he sort of understood: with their father gone she had needed someone to look after her, and their mum. She just hadn’t considered Ben up to the task.
Not that he could blame her. After their father had died he had taken over his job with gusto, roaming the waterways further than either his father or Frank before him. Looking for salvage and people.
He had spent little enough time walking on land over the last twenty years that the stillness of it felt strange to him. Without the rise and fall of the tide it felt fragile. He knew that for the first ten years of his life he had lived in a block of flats, the river only visible in the distance on a good clear day. The thought of that terrified him.
The forest wasn’t deep and soon enough he was on the other side of it. A feast of wild rabbits frolicked on the dew licked grass. The vamps weren’t interested in anything other than human flesh so wild animals had flourished. He reached to his side automatically and then remembered the funeral. He didn’t want to turn up in blood stained clothes.
He walked a little further through the new field but there was nothing much to see. It rolled into the distance, an infinite carpet of green. There were no vamps here and a part of him had known that would be the case.
The walk back to his boat seemed to take longer. He found he was in no great hurry to get back and attend Cora’s funeral. It would be a simple affair, a few words spoken by people that knew her before her body was placed on a raft and sent down the river in flames. If it was anyone else’s funeral he would have been tempted to skip it but she was his sister and he owed her that much, little though it was.
3
He watched the fire float languidly down the river. It was towed by a larger boat, somewhere out of sight, in order to prevent it drifting into a home and setting that on fire. His mum stood to his right, her hand in his seeking comfort, Mary to his left offering it.
They watched until they could no longer see the fire. The smoke drifted on the gentle breeze, into the sky, spreading her body across the water.
Ben didn’t cry but he could feel his mum shaking beside him as she tried to hold back her own tears. If his dad had been there he would have known what to do. His dad was the only one who had really understood her.
Later they went to the Village Hall where Nicholas had provided food and drink. All large gatherings happened at the hall and there were a large number of mismatched chairs and tables for the occasion.
“Where are the boys?” said Ben as Mary sat down beside him. She had given him two sons a year ago, Adam and Zack, non-identical twins.
“They’re with my parents,” she said and put a hand on his leg. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ve been better,” he said honestly. He was always honest with Mary.
She squeezed his knee.
He tried to smile at her but found that all he could do was not cry. She smiled sadly as if she understood, although she was an only child and both her parents were still alive. Mary and Cora had never been close but then no one had been close to Cora since her marriage to Nicholas.
Mary went with him to find his mother who was sitting at the council table with Nicholas accepting condolences from a steady flow of people. He stood back a little to watch and no one saw him. She seemed to be holding up okay, maybe in a few days she wouldn’t remember any of this and that would be for the best.
He took a bottle of whiskey from the bar and a couple of glasses. He found an empty table and sat down with Mary. She didn’t speak to him, seemed to know that was what he needed. He filled up a glass and handed it to her and she sat sipping the amber liquid while he did his best to get drunk.