Her sobs slowly subsided, but the wheezing continued. “I’d ask if you were angry… but I guess it doesn’t matter, at this point I really don’t care….”
She was overcome by a coughing fit, I could hear her gasping for air. Breathe, I encouraged her in my mind, and with a shudder remembered the panic I’d been feeling in the last few days, whenever I was coughing so much I couldn’t breathe.
“What do you not care about?” I asked when her breathing returned.
“What people think. I intend to spend my last days the way I want to.”
I would also much rather spend my last moments in her company than on my own, so I understood her need to be with her family.
We didn’t speak for a while and I was wondering if she’d fallen asleep.
“Can I call you again?” I whispered after a while, hoping that my words somehow got to her consciousness. I was surprised when she answered.
“Anytime you want.”
Then the line went dead and I was alone again.
For the first time in my adult life I didn’t wish I hadn’t been born. I wished I could go back several years and persuade The Collective to give humanity another chance. What would my attitude have been like if I hadn’t already been longing for the end of the world? If I’d had someone to love and saw a purpose in my life, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted the end to come. Maybe I would have found some inner strength to keep helping others, and made Grandma’s motto my lifelong mission.
Pay it forward.
Such a simple idea, and so effective. People selflessly helping others, that would have been a good start. Many others would then wake up, learn to work with the system, do their bit, and create a sense of togetherness around them. You help me, I help somebody else. Selfish, cruel people unwilling to do anything for others without personal gain would automatically be filtered out.
The Association must have had enough financial resources to promote it. How much money and energy was spent watching the selected targets to make sure they were really worth saving? And how much had gone towards securing the best possible conditions for the hideouts and the eventual meeting place of the survivors? We could have used these resources to research more people, test them one by one.
Looking for a needle in a haystack, I recalled the phrase Connie had used to sum up my explanation back then. I also remembered something I’d told her: People will only change if you hold a knife to their throats.
What was I trying to trick myself into? How could I want yet another chance for humanity? I was only delirious from dying alone.
I picked up the phone again and typed in a number. Andrew picked up at once.
“So you’re still alive. I wasn’t sure.”
The greeting was so morbid it made me laugh. Andrew joined in. It only took a moment for us both to start choking.
“We don’t have much left…” I managed. According to the doctor, three weeks were the longest possible time, which gave us a few more days, at most.
“I hope so,” he groaned quietly. “I don’t want to be here a second longer than absolutely necessary.”
This was obviously why The Collective mainly accepted those for whom suicide wasn’t a foreign concept. Our negative emotions, unwillingness to forgive past hardships and desire to end everything and everyone had sealed the fate of the planet. It was so humanly hypocritical.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if it didn’t work out?”
Andrew cleared his throat. “Actually, I never thought it would all work out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just think how many people all over the world were a part of it. Did none of them get cold feet and want to back out? Save their own skin?”
A memory of my recent meeting with Ross flashed through my mind. According to him, I wasn’t the first person who’d wanted a vaccine, and I wouldn’t be the last. I wondered if Andrew had approached him too, but somehow I doubted it.
“I guess we got lucky,” I replied, and he chuckled.
“What do you mean, lucky? Did you think that they’d leave us unsupervised?”
My eyes bulged out. “They were watching us? I mean, after we joined The Collective?”
“Of course they were. We needed to be looked after like babies. You can’t just trust people to keep cool and not go to the police. Self-preservation instincts are stronger than some oaths.”
I could attest to that.
“And what about Connie?” I wondered after what he’d said. “Weren’t they concerned that she’d turn us in, back when she was still going to the station?”
“Obviously. I informed them that you’d told her everything, although they probably already knew. Lana dealt with her,” he mentioned our psychologist for whom body language was as clear and legible as x-ray images.
Who was guarding our guards? I thought but didn’t say it out loud.
“Did you ever want to back out?” I asked in the end.
“No,” he replied, stern. When he spoke again, he sounded conciliatory. “But I can understand that others might have. If the girls were still here… I’d never have joined The Collective.”
The mention of his wife and daughter brought Connie back to mind. What if I’d met her under different circumstances? Maybe I would never support this thing either. The plague would have happened even without me or Andrew, but we would be blissfully unaware. He would be enjoying family life with “the girls” as he called them, I’d be with Connie. The time with her, however short, would be a thousand times better than this loneliness.
“Mark?” Andrew interrupted my thoughts. “You were the best colleague I could ever hope for.”
“That’s an honour,” I responded. At least someone was affected by me. I just wished it had been someone else.
Connie
I couldn’t bear the idea of Ruby’s last memory of me consisting of me suffocating in a coughing fit, gasping for air, with a scary rumble in my
