A/N: a much sadder au than i ususally write. inspired by the tone of 'Us and Them', a fic that was written for me by the lovely, the amazing SevenDragons. At any rate. warnings: major character death, lots of vague implications about character death, illness, dead bodies and really a rather gloomy tone overall. poor Charlie and Mattie. enjoy (if at all possible) and leave a review if ya liked it :-)
They'd already been driving all day when they saw the car. Not that it was unusual for them to be doing that, they were driving most of the day every day, bar for a few stops at old, abandoned rest stops. Funny how fast things degraded without human care. But they'd already been driving since dawn. Or, Charlie was driving. Mattie had only been awake for about fifteen minutes, still wrapped up in her coat, scarf pulled up over her mouth.
It wasn't that cold, but the less ways that they could get infected the better in her mind. Charlie didn't blame her, she was a nurse she thought like how nurses did. He didn't bother with the scarf, he was pretty sure if he was going to get it through the air he would have gotten it by now. He did use gloves on the infrequent occasions that he had to handle the dead if only to ensure he was still kicking if Mattie needed him. She could probably tough it out on her own, but there was no reason for her to if she didn't need too.
But it was almost noon, at least, according to his watch, when they saw the car. The front was crushed in up against a tree, shards of the windscreen lay in scatters around it, and the air smells like smoke. Inside the car, he could see two outlines. A man behind the wheel and a woman. He cast a look at Mattie, who nodded. He pulled the car to the side of the road and put it in park. They sat there for several moments, just looking.
They spent a lot of time sitting in silence. Charlie was never much of a conversationalist and it wasn't like there was much to talk about anyway. He didn't know how people could be married for fifty years and still find things to talk about, because he and Mattie had only been on the road for a few months and it seemed like they were out of ideas. Neither person in the car moved, so it didn't seem that there was any imminent danger. Lately, Charlie had noticed a spike in people who were dead from other people by the roadside. It was a change in scenery from the bodies of people dead from sickness.
"Should we go look?" He asked, finally. "Maybe we can siphon their petrol?"
They already had two big tins of the stuff in the boot, covered by a blanket but so far as Charlie could see if they were going to keep driving than it was important to have that under control. Mattie drew her eyebrows together in thought before she opened her door and put her boots on the ground. Charlie followed a step or two behind, tugging his black work gloves up over his sunburned hands. Turns out that was a side effect of having your hands on the wheel when driving into the sun. When it got too uncomfortable, Mattie had decided it was in his best interests to keep them wrapped in bandages. And he had. For a while.
Gloves on, he put one hand on the gun that was tucked into the waistband of his pants. Not exactly good gun safety, and he was probably more likely to shoot himself in the junk than he was to shoot someone. He never did have good aim. The Doc was always on his back about getting his eyes checked but he never got around to it. There was always something else to do before he could put the time aside to look after himself. But, if they were playing the long con he could at least wave the gun around and pretend that he was going to shoot them. He probably wouldn't unless Mattie's life was in real and true danger.
These two would have to be the best actors in the world, he was pretty sure that they were dead. Mattie approached the front of the car, her hands in front of her defensively. He stood a couple of steps behind, watching as she slid her arm in through the broken window and put her fingers onto the neck of the driver. She pulled her hand away and turned to look at him. The shake of her head was minuscule. He dropped his hand and stood close while she walked around the back of the car to check the passenger. Now he was closer, he could see the blue colour of her skin. She was long gone. Mattie completed the circle and came around the front of the car to stand by him.
"They don't look infected." He said, and she nodded in agreement.
"Well, you can't always tell from the outside."
"Hm."
With that, he walked back to their car to collect the gear needed to siphon petrol. He never thought that he'd use that skill in real life. Just something he'd learned to look out for, so he could arrest them. Funny how things turn out sometimes isn't it? Mattie hadn't moved by the time he got back. Her hair isn't curled anymore, there were no beauty parlors left to go to and no reason to do it herself. It fell on her shoulder in greasy red streaks. Her eyebrows were as contemplative as ever as Charlie popped open the fuel catch.
He tucked the tube into the tank and was surprised to see that there was actually a lot of petrol inside. Given the state of the car, he was surprised to see that it wasn't on fire but he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Who could afford it in these trying times? He put the tube in his mouth and sucked in deep. When he was a kid, they had a petrol fridge, once his father accidentally inhaled a lungful of petrol getting it to start and he got sick, so sick he had to go to the hospital. Charlie had been very little, little enough to sit on his lap in the hospital bed and hear his gasping breaths as he ran his fingers through Charlie's hair, seeking comfort.
The thought inspires him to be as careful as he can, his father had access to medical intervention, even if they were poor there were hospitals for poor people. There were no hospitals left, they were all marked off with huge quarantine ribbons. The builds sat abandoned, a monument to man's feeble attempts to save who they could. Saving them. That was a joke; there was no way to save anyone infected. That they'd learned the hard way. Lucien called them all in, masked and gloved, to watch one of his patients die. A warning. He'd gone to great lengths to teach Mattie, his little protege and him by extension, how to identify the sick. How to make them comfortable while protecting them.
Lots of people went to him to find safety. They were the only two left, the last of his patients had died a long while ago now. Even though his watch was still ticking, it was hard to keep track of long, silent days driving in the same direction that bled into one another. The sun was ahead of them, then behind. Then ahead, then behind. He drove, she drove. He drove, she drove. They had no real destination in mind, but moving on seemed to be a good way to keep themselves safe.
Fuel canister now full, he turned the tube back in on itself before removing it from the tank. There was still some left for the next person who came across this car and its lonely inhabitants. Mattie would call him soft at heart, for thinking like that. He should be focusing on their survival but he was instead thinking about other theoretical people who might come down this bumpy dirt road? Once a cop, always a cop he supposed.
When he straightened up and started lugging the canister and the tube back to the car Mattie put a hand on his arm to touch him. She drew it back right away like he'd burned her with his exposed arm, and at the same time, his skin tingled strangely at the now foreign feeling of a hand on his arm. She stuffed her gloved fingers into her pockets and cleared her throat.
"Hm?" He encouraged, trying not to show on his face how badly he wanted her to put her hand back. He never used to consider himself a tactile person; he never needed to be. All the other people he knew were seemingly enough for the both of them. His brothers always wanted him to carry them around, his mother was always offering hugs. Lucien was always putting a hand on his shoulder when he passed. Even Bill Hobart would occasionally nudge him with his shoulder. Things weren't like that now. Mattie was scared to touch him, lest he be a carrier and not know it. Sometimes, when she was asleep he wanted to twist a strand of her hair around his finger. He used to that with his mother when he was little, and his grandmother too. Rose as well, when she was lying still in bed, smiling at him that smile of hers. He would reach out for her face and wrap her hair around his finger once or twice in loops. She would smile and kiss him.
But Rose is gone now, has been gone from him for some time before word got back to them that she'd taken ill. His mother too. When the two of them had first set off, there was enough of civilization left for them to travel to Melbourne. But his family was gone, leaving only a note to point him in the direction of his estranged grandparents. He didn't know much about them, hadn't even seen them since he was sixteen, when they crossed paths at Church and his mother ushered him away from them before he could get off more than a 'good morning'. They never went back to that church, and he never saw them again. They went to his grandparents home and found it empty. Turns out Mattie's family was nearby so they went there next.
Nothing. No notes. No goodbye. Just a big old empty house. Lots of ugly art on the walls, and a living room that looked to have never been used. Mattie picked up a few bits and pieces she wanted to keep and they left. She didn't seem to broken up about it, so he tried not to be either. Perhaps that was just a sign of how much loss they'd already endured, that one more piled on top hardly seemed to make an impact.
He was just grateful to not have found his family in the end stages, eyeballs turning purple and lungs collapsing.
"It doesn't seem right, to just leave 'em here." He followed her eyes back to the two dead people in the car.
"We can't take 'em with us."
"I know." She said, "Do you still have Matthew's shovel in the boot?"
And so, it fell to Charlie to dig the grave.
Sweat ran down his face in trickles, getting into his eyes and clinging to his eyelashes. His arms hurt from the repetitive motion of moving dirt. Not to mention he really wasn't dressed for this kind of work in his white checkered shirt and tan pants. He'd taken the gloves off, and the skin on his hands was cracked and weeping. But, the hole had to be dug. So he dug. Mattie stood at the top, looking down at him, scarf still pulled up over her mouth. If it was someone else, it might be ominous but she's not.
He'd dug the hole, so she dragged the bodies here from the car much to her disgust. He'd dug a lot of holes back in Ballarat. Every time one of Lucien's patients died. He'd go outside and dig a hole to put them in. Sometimes, Danny would help him or Bill but mostly it was just him. This was kind of like that, but the soil was hard bush ground, not Jean's manicured lawn.
It was a shame, to ruin such a nice lawn. But they couldn't very well keep the bodies around and burning them was an uncomfortable image that Lucien and Matthew were not ever going to be ready to confront so bury them it was. Jean would stand by her plants and frown at him, but she never told him to stop and she always put a little wooden cross on each one. Sometimes, at night, he could hear her crying up through the floorboards.
Lucien was determined to help whoever he could until Matthew got sick. When Matthew died and the mourning period commenced he seemed to lose all interest in fighting the useless battle. Charlie didn't blame him, it was hard to see someone he respected so much, someone he cared about so much, with his eyes wide open, full of fear when he finally stopped being able to breathe at all. Charlie isn't much of a crier, but in a moment of weakness, he sat with Mattie in the living room dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief before she hugged him close. She smelled like antiseptic and shampoo. That was the last time he was hugged by anyone.
Everything was different after Matthew was buried. His little wooden cross had his name on it, the only one. Lucien didn't care about finding cures or fore feeding his patients antibiotics, desperate for something to work. Mattie took over the work from him, his little protege. Charlie started the work of cleaning Matthew's bedroom down with antiseptic in water. It was hard, and the water left his hands cracked and dry. But the room was cleansed of even the scent of him.
The hole was dug, so he tossed the shovel up by Mattie's feet and scrambled out. She looked at his work over and nodded to herself. He shoved his burning, blistered hands into his gloves. The leather clung to the raw patches of skin that insistently wept sticky clear fluid. Then, he took hold of the man by his shoulders and tossed him in. Not very graceful, but it got the job done. He was their age, on his ring finger, there was a ring. He didn't look too close, didn't want to see. Then, the woman. She landed ungracefully, with her legs spread, so he jumped back into the hole and closed them before climbing back out.
She might be dead, but that didn't mean she didn't deserve her dignity, he thought. Mattie kept looking down into the hole, at the two people down there. Two nameless souls. Charlie started the process of filling the hole back in. Mattie moved away and sat with her back to him. He didn't know why and he also wasn't in the mood to find out. He kept the gloves on this time, not sure he was ready to fight his angry, irritated skin by taking them off. Dirt landed on the couple in clumps, at first rolling off but eventually piling up and over.
He didn't try and trample it down. Just let it pile up. Jean told him about that. She used to tell him if he trampled it down than she'd have divots in her lawn. He thought that was a weird thing to care about, but he knew now she was just clinging to the last bastions of normalcy they had. There wasn't much else to cling too. He didn't blame her, for leaving. She wanted to find her children. Try as they might, he and Mattie were not her children. They were someone else's children that she was just looking after, she wanted the ones she'd carried inside her and watched grow up. If he was being honest, he didn't even blame her for taking Lucien with her. He was her husband. Her lover. Her world.
"I made these, for them." He turned to face Mattie, she was holding two wooden crosses. She'd torn strips of gauze and used them to secure the crossbar. She gave him one and then stuck hers in the Earth. He followed in suit. "Maybe we should say something."
"You got a Bible?" He asked, sarcastically.
"You're the Catholic." She replied.
"Not a very good one." But, he combed his mind for something he'd heard someone say at a funeral anyway. He'd been too many funerals and not enough weddings. Maybe that was just a job hazard. Not that it mattered now, there was no one left to police. The station had held on valiantly, but eventually Matthew just started sending them home to be with their families. Charlie had spoken to his on the phone but made a choice to stay in Ballarat. He wanted to help Blake and Doctor Harvey. He wanted to stay with Mattie. He wanted to keep doing his job. Sometimes, he wondered if he regretted that.
But it was difficult to. When Doctor Harvey died, he was there for Matthew. He felt bad for her because she'd only been doing her job when she was exposed to it. Even when she was quarantined to the back of the house, she kept working, reading books and writing down all her symptoms for future use. She was brave, and she didn't want anyone around her, not even after Matthew begged her to let him in.
He'd never seen Matthew beg before. Never saw it again either, except in his eyes at the last moment. If he was begging Charlie to put him out of his misery or begging to live he didn't know. He also didn't know what Doctor Harvey was thinking in her last moments, as she lay where they found her. Lying alone, facing the door to the house where she no doubt knows Matthew was waiting for her. After her footsteps stopped, per her request, they waited fourteen days and then entered the room. When Matthew had finished his silent prayers, and her body was in the yard, Charlie began to cleanse the room with antiseptic. Until even the scent of her was gone. Much to Matthew's dismay. He wished he knew what Matthew had been saying in his head, so he could repeat it now.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," Mattie said, finally.
"If you believed in God, I hope you're returned to his loving arms." He added. Satisfied, the two of them left. They walked out of the bush, past the car and Charlie grabbed the abandoned tin of petrol. He shouldn't have left it out like that, and they shouldn't have left the car alone but it didn't seem as though anyone else had come down this lonely country road.
He put the tin in the boot, but he noticed Mattie had taken his position in the driver's seat, and her scarf was around her neck then her lips. They were heart-shaped and chapped. But still pleasantly pink. He doesn't see them much anymore. He used to wear his mask sometimes too, but he was quite sure if he was going to get it through the air he would have it by now.
He slid into the passenger seat and then buckled himself in. He looked down at his watch, which was claiming it was about four-thirty in the afternoon. Maybe one day he'd make a sundial. Then he'd know for sure. Until then, he'd just have rely on his maybe broken watch. It was better than nothing. Sometimes, that was all he could think about things. It's better than nothing. Like himself, for example. He surely wasn't the knight in shining armor Mattie needed, but he was better than nothing.
They set off, moving forward, as always. The tree-dotted roads were a common sight. Sometimes, they'd pass little ghost towns and take what they could from abandoned homes and stores. Once, they'd found a whole palette of undrunk Coca Cola and made themselves sick off it just because it'd been so long since they'd had something so sugary and sweet. They were better cold, though. He knew that now.
"I hope someone does that for us when we die." She said, breaking the silence that perpetually settled over them.
"I'm not sure there's anyone left to."
"There has to be." She said, clutching the wheel tightly. "Do you remember what Lucien said? About people being immune?"
"I do. Do you think that's us?"
She didn't answer him, too scared. He doesn't really want her to answer. He fiddled with the radio like he thought most of the stations were playing static. One of them, which plays twenty-four-seven, if just a pre-recorded message giving instructions on how to prevent infection. Make sure you wear a mask when outdoors. Please use gloves when handling the dead. Remove the dead from your home as soon as possible. Boil all water before drinking it. Blah, blah, blah.
Another is playing rock and roll. He leaves it on, but after a while, Mattie turned it off.
"Do you think that they ever found Jean's sons?"
"I think so."
"Why?"
"Because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about."
"That's a good way to think." She bit her lip and peeled up a piece of loose, dead skin. "I'm glad you're with me. How are your hands holding up?"
"Not too well." He admitted.
"Well, hang on. I'll pull over and take a look at it. If you get an infection, that might spell then end of you. And I want you around."
"I'm happy to be around." He said, "For as long as you need me."