Sister

My sister is dead. I wrapped her body in her best bedsheets and left her in her bedroom. A note simply read, 'Hope I stay dead.' There are dozens of bottles of pills on her bedside table. All empty.

I never envisioned this. I had thought about our reunion, my being the hero, rescuing my older sister, getting away together. I can feel her embrace. Feel her warmth and joy as we swap stories of this disaster.

But she died, alone.

I don't even know if there was a boyfriend. I haven't found anything that that looks like it belongs to anybody else. There are even some of my old things here from my last visit.

Is this self-loathing and emptiness what Craig feels?

Getting in proved to be easy. The ladder was easy to find. Getting the Infected to follow us in the car was no problem. Getting back to the terraces and up the ladder before more returned was nerve wracking. But we managed it. We lost the ladder. Lost as in it's on the ground. An Infected tried to climb it and just would not let go. Throwing roof tiles down at them was rather cathartic, even fun in its own way. Craig continued after I made the initial hole, practically stripping the roof over the end terrace. Didn't know then what I do now of course.

For whatever reason (perhaps its how they are always built) there was no partition between the roof spaces of the different houses. That meant access was simply no problem. It also meant that we didn't have to risk making too much noise breaking through whatever a partition might be made of. I freely admit now that I had little idea how we were going to break through beyond kicking the wall in. A crowbar is something I need to keep an eye out for.

All the water tanks were empty. Wishful thinking. There's so much junk in the roof space. We'll go through it later. I hope there is camping and travel gear up there more than anything. When we do finally leave here we need to be very mobile.

Craig used a knife I hadn't seen him with before to make holes in the ceiling. Under the insulation it's just plasterboard. Need to make sure we keep to the beams. One misstep and we are straight through. It didn't happen, but its something to remember. Industrious kid, made holes so that we can see into all the houses, and where possible all the rooms.

Death is cruel to the flesh. Looking down on my sister I was not even sure it was her. She looked ancient. Nothing on TV prepares you for a real dead body. Lifeless means just that. She was laying on her bed, face up. There was a book under one hand, still open. And all those empty bottles.

What we did next still makes me feel sick. We had to be sure she was dead. Certain that the moment our presence was felt that she was not going to leap up and attack us. So we dropped things into the room to make noise. Then we even dropped some lighter items onto her body in case that jolted her awake. She was dead of course. Nobody remains to forgive our sacrilege.

 

The noise we made would have alerted anybody else in the house, so we were more than careful in making our way down and searching for others. But she lived alone. Died alone. Alone alone alone. While my sister lay there I snuck around like a thief. Finally after being so afraid of everything I went to her. Jane Eyre, that's what she had been reading. That's what she wanted her last thoughts to be. And in the pages, her bookmark; an old photograph of me. Something inside me broke.

 

I have said my goodbyes. And my apologies, useless as they are. Tidying up, I leave her with her book. We will not disturb this room again.

 

I hurt inside, a deep twisting ache that threatens to overwhelm me constantly. Craig gives me space. He knows. And he envies me her final rest.