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There were two types of newspaper report before the day of the injection. Most of them were written by journalists paid by the World Government to make everything seem fine, to tell the world that it had been properly tested and there was nothing anyone needed to worry about, because they did care about everyone. If they didn’t care they wouldn’t have gone to all the effort of making a long-lasting, gender neutral, contraceptive. A few told what turned out to be the truth. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, my parents believed the reports that said the injection was dangerous due to a lack of testing, and that belief is the reason they sent me to one of the old nuclear bunkers, where they thought I would be safe enough if any Government officials did happen to come looking for the people who didn’t turn up. Neither of them cared about having to pay the fine.

It makes sense that they didn’t care. Before it happened we had a long conversation about what I should do if the worst did happen, even though I didn’t believe it could. Not then. Maybe it was stupid to want to believe the World Government, but I didn’t want to accept they would do something quite so stupid, and yet they obviously were. The morning I walked into the house, four days after the injection, I already knew something was wrong, because they hadn’t been answering the phone. Every time I’d heard Dad’s voice before that I knew he was doing his best to seem as normal as possible. He didn’t need to tell me there was anything wrong – by then I knew he was at least partially right when he told me that the World Government had no idea what they were doing.

Sadly that didn’t mean I was ready to find the bodies of my parents. Mum was in bed, probably where Dad had put her, while he was sitting in his study, looking as though he’d been going to call me. He hadn’t managed to. A tear trickled down my cheek as I stared at him, unable to believe that he really was dead. It took me longer than I thought it was going to, but eventually I managed to gather the courage I needed to touch his body, and that was when I had no option but to accept that he really was dead. Rigor mortis was beginning to set in. I shuddered. I shudder every time I think about it. Before the injection I believed my parents would die of old age and I would be much older, much more able to cope, instead of being twenty-one and still living at home.

Even though I didn’t know for certain what had happened to the other people who’d been given the injection I had a good idea it was the very same thing that had happened to my parents. Panic set in then. We’d talked about what might happen if the worst, the very worst, did happen, and something he’d really worried about was the possibility of the World Government gathering the children, and young adults, who were left behind. If that happened the last place I wanted to be was home. The World Government would look in our homes first. Without really stopping to think then I went upstairs, to my room, and gathered everything I thought I would need. Knowing the world was going to change rapidly I tried my best to think ahead, to the winter, to next year, because if I didn’t I might well end up dead.

Being a survivor meant I had to think of how I was going to survive. A part of me didn’t want to be a survivor, even though that was obviously what Dad had planned for me. Unless, of course, he hadn’t truly believed he was going to die, but had planned for it, just in case, because that was the sort of person he was. That thought had brought tears to my eyes. He really was gone. I wouldn’t be able to ask him for advice on how to get through the next day, let alone the rest of the year. Breathing deeply I tried to calm myself. Calm was something I needed to be, because otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to make the decisions I had to make. Staying at home would be a mistake, so I needed to pack everything and be ready to go as soon as possible.

Winter was coming. Normally it would seem like there were months to go, but the food in the supermarkets wasn’t going to last, so I was going to need to figure out how I’d grow the food I needed to live. And clothes… and electricity, gas, running water… we were going to have to start again, from the very beginning, without the knowledge we really needed. I hadn’t been taught how to grow my own food or make my own clothes, if that was even going to be possible… Feeling more lost that I had done before I stood in the middle of my bedroom and tried to work out what I needed to do next, instead of letting my thoughts drift off to the distant future, because it wasn’t helping at all. It was just making everything worse. Once again I calmed myself as best I could, telling myself to focus on one thing at a time.

The first thing I needed to do was gather together enough clothes to last me. Clothes weren’t really made to last, but maybe I could learn how to fix them if something happened to them, as it probably would if I was going to have to start growing my own food. Dad’s clothes should also fit, even if the jeans might need to be belted a little tighter than mine, so I’d take them as well, because he wasn’t going to need them, no matter how guilty that made me feel. If I was going to survive I was going to need to act differently to how I would have before. The decisions made by the World Government had transformed the world I had known into something entirely alien and that was something I was going to have to come to terms with as best I could. Everyone else who’d survived was going to have the same problem, whether they’d survived for the reason I had or if the injection simply hadn’t killed them.

I packed a suitcase with all the useful clothes that I could find, as well as the blanket my grandmother had knitted me when I was six and wanted one so badly. From the time I turned twelve it all it done was sit in a wardrobe, occasionally being washed when Mum felt it needed it, because then I’d believed I was too old for it. When I noticed it I was grateful Mum had kept it, but then she was the sort of person who kept all sorts of things I wouldn’t. Biting hard on my lip I went into their bedroom, trying not to pay too much attention to the body in the bed, even though that was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, because Mum had also kept three other blankets that Nan had knitted us, including one for the sister I never had. Mum and Dad has passed the exam, bought the license, but, for some reason, the baby just didn’t happen.

One afternoon I came home from school, I think I was about seven at the time, and Mum was crying on the sofa. I’d overheard a conversation the night before I realised quite quickly I shouldn’t be listening to, because they’d been talking about how she was feeling. She’d cried then as well, certain it hadn’t happened, so I knew why she was crying then, which is why I didn’t ask. Instead I made her a cup of tea and just sat with her until Dad got home from work. At one point she’d wrapped her arms around me, holding onto me tight, in a way that would normally have had me squirming away, but I realised she desperately needed to remind herself that she did have a child. I was there. Not having another one, although painful, wasn’t the end of the world.

Mum probably shouldn’t have been given the injection. She might well have been incapable of carrying another baby to term, for some reason. The only reason she was never classed as infertile was the tests she would have undergone in order to prove it were, in her words, inhumane. If she had chosen to go through them… I turned and looked at her. Although I could understand why she made the decision originally I had difficulty understanding why she hadn’t gone through them later, unless it was simply a timing issue. It seemed likely that a number of middle-aged and elderly women might have chosen to have the tests in order to save their lives, which meant Mum couldn’t, and that had led to her having to have to the injection. Blinking away tears I turned back to the wardrobe, telling myself once again to focus on the present and the future, because thinking about the past wasn’t going to do me any good at all. There was no way of changing it.

When I finally decided I had enough clothing, although I had a feeling that it could never be enough, not when there was a chance that I might never have anything new, I made my way downstairs. The bag on my back was heavy, but not so heavy that I wasn’t going to add whatever preserved food we had to it. Preserved food would give me the time I needed to be able to make a start on growing food for myself. I did have to work out where I was going to go, and how I was going to get the seeds I would need, because I was going to survive, no matter how hard it was. Maybe, if I was lucky, a couple of my friends would also have survived, so we could work together on building some sort of community, as I knew the World Government wasn’t going to be the only thing we needed to worry about. During my journey from the bunker I’d realised that people were going to gather together for safety and there was a chance those groups might become violent.

I needed to find other people. Working alone wasn’t going to do me any good, not if I really did plan on surviving. At the same time I couldn’t help worrying, because there was no guarantee that the people I found would be the right ones, but that was something I was just going to have to learn as I went. Staying, hiding, wasn’t a choice I was going to make, even though it was really tempting. My decision was to try to make a life for myself, as best I could, with a group of people who I trusted, because nothing would work if we didn’t trust each other. If we were really lucky we might be able to find other groups to trade with… and again my thoughts were getting ahead of me. One day at a time, I told myself. Focus on living one day at a time, otherwise you’re going to get ahead of yourself, and getting ahead of yourself isn’t going to do you any good.

There was a knock on the front door, which surprised me. “Matt, you there?” a voice asked through the letterbox. “I hope you’re there. Your dad said you were going to one of those bunkers when they had the injection.” The person there sounded like they were crying, which made it hard for me to recognise who was speaking. “If you are there open the door. I need your help.”

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The Many Worlds of K. A. Webb

July 2022

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