It’s Daniel.
“Jeremy!” His neighbor looks so happy to see him; Jeremy’s heart leaps before he remembers it’s probably not personal. “You made it!”
“So did you.” It’s a stupid reply, but there’s something about Daniel that always made Jeremy feel stupid. His looks, maybe, which are impossibly handsome. Or maybe just the way he is: always positive, always cheerful, with a kind word for everyone, all the time. Even for Jeremy, who rarely saw him before all this and even more rarely stopped to chat. “Is your partner…” Jeremy trails off when he realizes that might not be a polite question to ask.
Daniel frowns, those lovely thick eyebrows of his furrowing. He looks mostly the same as he did two years ago. A little thinner, a little more haggard, but all of them can say that. “My partner?”
Daniel lived with an older man, someone Jeremy saw even less frequently than Daniel himself. The man seemed as ill-tempered as Daniel is friendly. They didn’t appear to be a very good match, but that’s the story of Jeremy’s life. The men he fancied are inevitably attached, usually to people who are so much less than they deserve.
“Do you mean my father?” Daniel asks, and, in an instant, Jeremy is happier than he’s been in two years. “Well, stepfather, but we don’t need to get into all that. Did you really think he was my…” Daniel trails off, grimacing. Jeremy had, but he’d never taken the time to ask. They had never been particularly close. Jeremy hadn’t been that close to anyone. “He’s fine. We went to stay with a friend of his in the country. He’s still there, but I needed…”
“A break?” Jeremy puts in when Daniel trails off.
Daniel always had the most beautiful smile. Jeremy’s pleased to see it hasn’t changed a bit. “Something like that.” The silence stretches. “I’m very glad to see you again,” Daniel adds, at last.
“You, too.” There seems to be nothing more to say. Jeremy gives him a nod and retreats to his own flat.
There has been no mobile service for the past eighteen months. Still, as he sits in his dark flat later that evening with an open tin of mandarin orange slices in front of him, Jeremy gives it a try. He dials his mother’s number, then Laura’s. Nothing, of course.
Jeremy has no idea how things are going to progress from here. How are they going to rebuild the world? Where are they even going to begin? He had a good career before, in management at an investment company that was always looking to discover the next big thing. Would he go back to that? Jeremy can’t imagine caring about investment opportunities now that he knows what it’s like to steal food for his sister’s children, to continually be on his guard, to wake up every morning not knowing whether he was going to die that day, or, worse, whether he would lose someone he loved.
He can’t think about it. It’s too overwhelming.
The dark comes early. Jeremy changes his bedsheets by the light of his otherwise useless phone, shakes the dust off a pair of long-unworn briefs, and climbs into bed. He’s barely there ten minutes when he hears a knock on the door.
“Sorry,” Daniel says, when Jeremy answers. He’s also holding up his phone like a torch. Jeremy can see his cheeks redden a little. Even though Daniel keeps his eyes politely trained on Jeremy’s face. Jeremy wonders, belatedly, whether he should have put on some more clothes before he came to the door. “I think there’s only you and me in the building right now. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.” He’s not. But Jeremy doesn’t know anybody who is. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Right. Okay. Anyway, sorry to bother you.”
Before, Jeremy would have let him go, then lain awake most of the night cursing himself for it. Jeremy is different now. “Areyouokay?” he asks.
Daniel swallows. “It’s…I’m used to being around people. There were a lot of people in the house I was at.”
Jeremy understands. “Do you want to stay here?” Jeremy expects him to sayno, thanks for the offer, I’ll leave you alone.
“Please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No problem,” Jeremy replies automatically, before processing that Daniel, in fact, accepted. “I mean, it’s fine. Great. Sounds good.” He hopes it’s too dark for Daniel to see him cringing.
Daniel goes back to his own flat, and returns wearing pajamas. Actual pajamas, a grey T-shirt and red flannel bottoms, with a navy-blue dressing gown over top. It makes Jeremy feel even more under-dressed. Daniel helps Jeremy put sheets on the sofa, tucking in the corners with a precise, professional eye.
“What did you do?” Jeremy asks, suddenly aware he has no idea. “I mean, for a job. Before.”
“I’m a psychologist,” Daniel replies. Jeremy’s not sure what he was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Addiction counselling, mostly, but I do general therapy as well.”
“You’ll have a lot of work now.” It’s meant to be a lighthearted comment, but Daniel looks at him, face serious in the light of his phone.
“I want to help where I can,” he says.
So does Jeremy, he finds.
* * * *
The closest encounter Jeremy ever had with one of the creatures was in the woods behind his parents’ house.
He was no hunter. He’d never shot anything before all this, but a lot had changed. Jeremy was stalking a rabbit, wanting to put some food in the kids’ stomachs, when there was a telltale moan and a crash in the trees behind him.
