#Inktober2019 - Day 08, 'Frail'

As originally posted at https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854958/chapters/49573574

Society is only as strong as the people in it.

On that basis, you’d probably expect a society based around a retirement home to be pretty damned fragile. The youngest in our little commune is Jill, at the spry age of fifty-nine. Before all this started she was in the merchant navy, shunted off to a backwater like most others who made their living on the sea once we gave up on the coast. A woman at sea is rare, and a woman marine engineer even rarer, but she’s kept her shape well and can swing an axe as well as a wrench. With what’s in the pipes these days, the two overlap more than you’d think.

In the other direction, the oldest is Malcolm, who’s less than a year from his hundredth. We like to tell him that he doesn’t look a day over ninety, which is half true. The half comes into it because whenever he has a weapon in his hand, he moves like he’s thirty and aims like he’s been shooting for two centuries. To watch him at rest, dozing beneath that scratchy old tartan on his favourite evening chair, you’d never suspect that he’d done two dozen tours in the SAS and can snap a lobster’s head clean off its neck bare-handed.

It’s true, we can’t move as fast as the youngsters. Maybe we’re short a few eardrums and hips here and there. It doesn’t matter one bit. Running slowly doesn’t matter when you’re holding your ground, and we had nothing left to live for out there, even before there was nothing out there.

So yeah, a society is as strong as the people in it. And a people who laugh at death as he knocks, overdue, make for a society as stubborn as it is strong.

Malcolm hands me a cigarette, grinning through blackened gums and his single, ‘lucky’ tooth as we stare out over the courtyard below. “Shit on your mind, Trish?”

I take the cigarette and puff once before handing it back. “Just thinking.”

He reclines, takes a draw. The blackened end of the cigarette falls away, revealing life below as it begins to glow brighter. “Radio?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugs, tapping the cigarette against the side of the chair to get rid of the ash. “Just an old distress, probably from out at Clyde. The place’ll be crawling with lobsters, I’m guessing they chewed through a cable and shorted a circuit or something.”

“Still, sixty miles”

“Don’t be surprised.” He draws from the cigarette again, embers dancing on the edge of his chin. “Powerful shit, go a hundred or more. I ever tell you about the time we were on patrol outside-”

“The scud base, yeah, you’ve told me. And that’s not what I meant,” I reach out for the cigarette, enjoying the warmth and glad that I don’t have any taste buds left to ruin. “I was going to ask why he sounded like a yank.”

“It’s what we would have done. Much better to hear someone calling for help when it’s an American and not one of ours.” He smirks, holding out his hand for the cigarette. “Less likely that the bastards would hear and shell you for your trouble, too. I ever tell you about-”

“Yeah, yeah, you, Americans and friendly fire, that’s twenty stories there.”

“Twenty-four.”

I snort, shaking my head as I stare across the courtyard and toward the loch. “I don’t know, Mal. It didn’t sound pre-recorded.”

He sighs, sits forward in his chair. “Spit it out, Trish.”

I don’t answer straight away. Instead, I glance around - at the home we’ve built for ourselves here. Once, it was oppressive, gloomy, death’s waiting room - a place where people were left when the time came to be forgotten. Over the last year and a half, it’s become somewhere that I care about - a place of its own. We’re not here now because we’ve been forgotten, we’re here because it’s the one place left that’s worth remembering. I know that if I say the words, there’s a good chance I won’t see it again.

“I think we should investigate.”

Mal doesn’t reply for a few moments. He knows that I won’t ask him to come along - if only because I know that he’s going to volunteer. We have to go through the dance first, though.

“It could be a hundred miles if it’s not at Clyde. And if it is Clyde you’ll be arse-deep in lobsters before you can pull your fishnets up.”

I shake my head. “And someone else might already be that deep in them. You don’t fancy it, say so.”

He smirks, raises the cigarette again. “Well, I am in the middle of potty-training Jill, but I’m sure I can find someone else to take over. Count me in, Trish.”

I hold out my hand for the cigarette, glance at it as I exhale a moment later. Though it’s burned almost to the filter, there’s still enough left for one more good draw.