Chapter 5: Tangled in Sleep
The concrete floor leached the warmth from their bodies, a constant, silent theft. Milly had drawn the first watch, her back against the cold wall of the apartment they’d broken into on the seventh floor. It was a bleak space, smelling of damp plaster and someone else’s lost life—a child’s crayon drawing still taped to a cupboard, a single worn slipper by the bed.
Jim was already asleep, his breathing a steady rhythm in the dark. The distant, familiar sounds of the dying city filtered through the boarded window: the skitter of debris, the occasional, gut-twisting cry that was neither human nor animal anymore.
She watched the line of light under the door, her knife balanced on her knee. The memory of the supermarket, the ridiculous race with the trolleys, the weight of a can of peaches in her hand—it felt like a dream from another century. Not just the food, but the laughter. The way Jim had looked, tossing a bag of cotton wool balls into her cart with a mock-bow. “For your wounds, milady,” he’d said. She’d thrown a bag of mint humbugs back. “For your breath, peasant.”
A smile touched her lips now in the dark. Then faded. Joy was a flare in this darkness; it drew attention, it burned fast, it left you emptier.
Her eyes grew heavy. The adrenaline of the day’s scavenge had ebbed, replaced by a deep, bone-aching fatigue. She repositioned herself against the wall, trying to find a knot of plaster that didn’t dig into her spine. The silence stretched, thicker than the darkness. She just needed to rest her eyes for a moment. Just to listen to Jim breathe. It was a good sound. A living sound. She focused on it, letting it pull her down, a anchor in the quiet.
She woke to a different kind of quiet. The pre-dawn grey was seeping through the cracks in the boards, turning the world into a charcoal sketch. And she was warm.
Not the stale, trapped warmth of a sleeping bag, but a living, encompassing heat. She was on her side, but not on the cold floor. Her head was pillowed on something firm yet giving. An arm was draped heavily over her ribs, a hand splayed against her back, holding her close. She could feel the steady, strong beat of a heart against her cheek.
Jim.
She hadn’t slid down the wall in her sleep.He had moved. In the deep, unknowing reaches of the night, he had shifted from his own spot and drawn her into him. Her back was fitted against his chest, his knees tucked behind hers. For warmth. It was just for warmth. The concrete was a thief, and their bodies were the only furnaces left.
Milly didn’t move. She lay perfectly still, parsing the sensations. The rough texture of his jumper against her cheek. The scent of him—soap long gone, replaced by dust, petrol, and the clean, salty smell of sweat. The undeniable, solid weight of him surrounding her. A decade ago, this would have been a Saturday morning. Now it was a vulnerability so profound it stole her breath.
Her first instinct, honed over twenty-eight months of solitude and terror, was to freeze, then bolt. To elbow him in the gut, scramble for her knife, and put ten feet of empty space between them. Touch was danger. Touch was a prelude to a grab, a bite, a demand she couldn’t meet.
But this wasn’t that.
This was Jim, who’d shared his last protein bar without a word. Who’d taken the worst watch shifts without being asked. Who’d laughed with her over canned sausages. His hand on her back wasn’t grasping. It was… keeping. Holding the pieces together.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. The tension seeped from her muscles, and she settled infinitesimally closer. The heat was a drug. The solidity of another person, not as a threat or a resource, but as a fact, was a forgotten language her body still understood.
Outside, a bird sang—a rusty, questioning sound in the stillness. The grey light brightened by a degree.She felt him stir. The arm around her tightened for a second, a sleepy, reflexive pull. Then it went rigid. The heartbeat under her ear quickened. He was awake. And he’d realized.
He didn’t snatch his arm away. That was the thing. He didn’t jerk back with a gasp or an apology. He just went very, very still, as if he too were assessing the landscape of this new, uncharted territory. His breath was warm in her hair.
Milly decided to make it easy. She feigned a sleepy murmur, turned her head as if just waking, and shifted gently onto her back. His arm slipped from her side, and she missed its weight immediately. She blinked up at the stained ceiling.
“Morning,” she said, her voice raspy with sleep.
He was propped on one elbow beside her, his dark hair messier than usual, his blue eyes wide and slightly alarmed. “Morning. I, uh… the floor. It’s Arctic.”
“Tell me about it.” She sat up, stretching her stiff neck with a genuine wince. She offered a small, crooked grin. “Thanks for not letting me turn into a Milly-sicle. Strategic cuddling. I approve.”
The tension broke. He ran a hand through his hair, a relieved, almost boyish gesture. “Strategic cuddling. Right. That’s what they call it.”
“Survival manual, chapter six,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. Her body ached, but a different, deeper part of her felt inexplicably rested. “Right after ‘How to Hotwire a Citroën’ and before ‘Identifying Non-Toxic Fungus.’ Come on. I saw a tin of instant coffee in that kitchen cupboard. It’s probably 2032 vintage, but I’ll risk it.”
As she boiled water on their little camp stove, watching him roll up the thin blankets, she felt the ghost of his arm around her, a phantom line of warmth in the cool air. It wasn’t just the heat. It was the terrible, wonderful silence of it.No demands. No past.No future. Just two people, in a concrete shell, holding the dark at bay for a few hours.
He caught her looking and raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, pouring the dark, suspicious liquid into two chipped mugs. “Just thinking. You snore a bit, did you know that?”
He accepted the mug, his fingers brushing hers. “And you steal the blankets. I’ve been too polite to mention it.”
She took a sip of the bitter, grainy coffee.It was terrible. It was perfect. The sun, a pale and watery thing, finally found a crack in the boards and laid a single, bright stripe across the dusty floor between them.
The sun, a pale and watery thing, finally found a crack in the boards and laid a single, bright stripe across the dusty floor between them.
Milly rummaged in her pack and pulled out a small, dented tin. “Beans for the champions,” she said, cracking it open with her multi-tool. The smell was immediate, salty and rich, cutting through the flat odor of dust and decay. She divided the contents carefully between their two tin plates, the sticky sauce glistening in the weak light.
“A feast,” Jim said, accepting his portion. He shoveled a forkful in, then gestured around the room with it. “Think we should push on? Try for the river today?”
She chewed slowly, considering. The memory of the snarling pack they’d narrowly dodged two days prior, the way the sound seemed to come from everywhere in the open streets, echoed in her bones. Here, the walls were solid. The door was sturdy. “The river’s not going anywhere. And this place… it’s a tomb, but it’s our tomb for now. No windows to smash. One choke point.”
He nodded, swallowing. “Safer.”
“Exactly. Let the world have its tantrum out there. We’ll sit it out for a day.” She poked at her beans. “Besides, my feet are killing me. Those running shoes you found are two sizes too big and full of gravel.”
“You said you liked the ventilation.”
“I lied. For the sake of morale.”
They ate in a comfortable silence, listening to the building creak and settle around them. The stripe of sunlight widened, crept across the floor, and found a forgotten action figure lodged under the radiator. It held a tiny plastic gun, frozen in time.
After they’d cleaned the plates with bits of old newspaper, Jim leaned back against the wall. “So. A day off. What did people do on days off? I genuinely can’t remember.”
Milly stretched her legs out, wiggling her toes in the oversized shoes. “Well, they didn’t just sit in an empty flat staring at a dead kid’s toy, for starters.” She followed his gaze to the action figure. “Probably watched a box set. Argued about what to get for a takeaway. Scrolled through pictures of other people’s slightly better days.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It was, kinda. But God, I’d take that exhaustion now.” She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “I used to work in a bookstore. You?”
Jim was quiet for a long moment. His eyes lost their focus, looking at something far beyond the concrete walls. “I was a bike courier. Just starting out. I liked the wind. The speed. Feeling like I was weaving the city together, all those little threads of paper and parcels.” He blinked, coming back. “Then I woke up and all the threads were cut.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words feeling inadequate. They always did.
“Don’t be. You weren’t the one who crashed the bike.” He offered a thin smile. “What’s the weirdest thing you miss? Not people, not the big stuff. The tiny, stupid thing.”
Milly didn’t even have to think. “The sound of a ice cream van. That jingly, completely manic tune. It would make you feel like a kid again for three seconds, even if you were just going to buy a miserable diet yogurt.”
He laughed, a real, warm sound that bounced off the bare walls. “Mine’s the smell of petrol stations. That specific petrol-and-coffee-and-cleaner smell. It meant you were going somewhere.”
They talked like that for hours, as the sunbeam traveled its slow arc across the room. They traded meaningless memories: favorite crisp flavors, annoying jingles, the feel of new socks. They didn’t touch the deeper wounds, not directly. They just sketched the outlines of the people they used to be around the edges of the two survivors they’d become.
As the light began to fade into a soft, orange dusk, Milly nudged his foot with hers. “Right. We’re staying. This floor is a crime against spines. We are building a bed.”
“With what? There’s no mattress.”
“Use your eyes, Courier Boy. Materials are everywhere.” She stood up, hands on her hips, surveying the room like a foreman.
They worked together, moving with a quiet, efficient synergy. They pulled the hollow-core door off its hinges in the small bedroom and laid it flat on the floor as a base. From the skeleton of a collapsed wardrobe, they pried thin slats of particleboard, arranging them across the door to create a more even plane.
Jim found a nest of old, yellowed curtains in a cupboard. They shook the dust out the boarded window, the motes swirling in the last of the light like fractured gold.
“Probably full of moth larvae,” Milly said, laying them out over their creation.
“Extra protein. You said you missed a balanced diet.”
“Har har.” She unrolled both their sleeping bags, zipping them together to make one wide, if lumpy, surface. They piled the scavenged blankets on top.
They stood back, inspecting their work. It was a ridiculous, makeshift thing, perched on a door and boards. It was also the most deliberate act of comfort either had undertaken in over a year.
“The Ritz,” Jim stated.
“Exactly. Try not to hog the penthouse suite this time.” She sat on the edge, testing it. It creaked ominously, but held. The layers of fabric softened the unforgiving surface underneath. It wasn’t soft. But it was theirs.
Darkness filled the room, deeper now without the single sunbeam. They lit a single candle, its flame painting warm, dancing shapes on the ceiling. The world outside was a void, a silent pressure against their fragile fortress.
Milly lay back on the bed, staring up. Jim lowered himself beside her, keeping a careful, respectful few inches of space between them. The candlelight flickered in his blue eyes.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “we go to the river. We find water. Then what?”
She turned her head on the bundled curtain that was her pillow. She could smell the dust, the faint chemical tang of the old fabric, and underneath it, the clean, living scent of him. “Then we keep going. One day at a time. One horrible, beautiful, stupid day at a time.”
He didn’t answer. He just reached out, his hand finding hers in the space between them. His fingers were rough, his grip sure. She laced her own through them, and they lay like that, two points of warmth in the vast, hungry dark, anchored to each other and to this simple, crafted piece of ground. Outside, something metal fell, a distant, lonely clatter in the night. They didn’t speak. They just held on, listening to each other breathe.
The candle guttered, drowning the room in a thick, velvety blackness that felt solid enough to touch. Their hands remained linked, a dry, warm point of contact in the cool air. Milly’s breathing eventually slowed, matching the deep, even rhythm of Jim’s beside her, and the deliberate grip of their fingers softened into the loose clasp of sleep.
The cold seeped up through the layers, an insistent tide. In the utter absence of light, instinct took over. Milly shifted, turning onto her side, seeking warmth. Jim murmured something unintelligible, his body curving instinctively around the space she occupied. The careful distance they’d maintained dissolved.
He pulled her back gently against his chest, his arm settling over her ribs, his hand finding the solid plane of her stomach. She sighed, a sound of pure unconscious relief, and melted into the curve of him, her head finding a hollow beneath his collarbone. His breath stirred her fringe. The night deepened around them, a silent witness.
She woke to a slow, spreading warmth. Grey dawn defined the window boards. Her mind surfaced slowly, thick with sleep, registering the weight and the heat first. Her head was pillowed on Jim’s chest, the worn cotton of his shirt soft against her cheek. One of her arms was slung across his waist, her fingers curled loosely against the small of his back.
His arms were wrapped around her, solid and real. And he was awake. She could feel the alert stillness in him, different from the lax heaviness of sleep. His thumb was moving, just barely, tracing tiny, absent circles against the fabric of her top where it rode up at her waist. It was a mindless, tender motion, the kind you’d use to soothe a child or comfort a pet.
She didn’t move. Didn’t open her eyes. She just let herself exist inside the sensation, cataloging it with a thief’s precision: the steady drum of his heart under her ear, the rise and fall of his breathing, the rough-smooth texture of his thumb on her skin. It was an intimacy so profound and unasked for it made her throat tight. This wasn’t strategic. This was something else.
He must have felt the change in her breathing.The tracing stopped. His entire body tensed, the safe, sleepy embrace transforming into a rigid bracket. He’d been caught in a private act.
Milly solved it by letting out a long, deliberate sigh and nuzzling her face against his chest as if chasing sleep. She felt the frantic beat of his heart under her cheek. Slowly, incrementally, the tension bled from his muscles. His hand, which had frozen, relaxed again, settling firmly on her waist without resuming its pattern. He let his head fall back against the bundled curtain with a soft, almost inaudible exhalation.
After a count of ten, she stretched, a theatrical, limb-by-limb awakening. She lifted her head, meeting his gaze. His blue eyes were clear, watchful, a little wary.
“You’re a furnace,” she said, her voice morning-rough. “A really useful, human-shaped furnace.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You steal blankets and use people as radiators. Your survival tactics are deeply selfish.”
“They’re effective.” She made to sit up, and his arms loosened, letting her go. The morning air felt shockingly cold on the skin his hand had covered. She rubbed her eyes. “We should get moving. River day.”
“River day,” he agreed, sitting up and running a hand through his chaotic hair.
They packed the sleeping bags in a silence that wasn’t awkward, but was thick with something unspoken. The memory of his thumb on her skin hung between them, a ghost of a touch. As Milly tightened the straps on her pack, she looked over at him.
“For the record,” she said, her tone casual, “I didn’t hate it. The furnace thing.”
He paused, a can of beans in his hand. He didn’t look at her, just gave a single, slow nod. “Noted.”
“Good.” She hoisted her pack. “Now come on. I’m thirsty, and I want to see if the ducks are still as vicious as I remember.”
The streets were a gallery of ruin, each broken window a gaping mouth frozen in a silent scream. They moved through the corrosive quiet not like predators, but like ghosts, their footsteps the only sound besides the wind worrying at a loose sheet of corrugated iron. Jim kept his crowbar low and ready, his eyes constantly scanning the upper windows, the dark doorways. Milly’s hand kept drifting to the knife on her belt, her fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against the grip.
She stayed closer to him than usual, her shoulder almost brushing his arm as they navigated around the carcass of an overturned bus. The memory of the morning—his arms, his thumb on her skin—was a live wire in her chest. It made the desolation around them feel sharper, more personal.
“Think the rats have unionized yet?” she whispered, eyeing a pile of garbage that seemed to shift of its own accord.
“Probably. Demanding better cheese rations.” His voice was low, a hum that blended with the ambient decay. He angled his body slightly, subtly placing himself between her and a shadowy alley as they passed. It wasn’t a grand gesture, just a shift of his weight. She noticed.
An hour in, they hit a wide intersection. The open space was a trap, all exposed concrete and zero cover. Jim stopped at the edge, the muscles in his jaw tightening. Last time they’d crossed something like this, a pack of infected had boiled out of a car park, moving with that horrifying, jerking speed.
“Left or right?” Milly asked, her breath a shallow cloud in the cold air.
“Straight across. Fast.” He glanced at her. “You ready?”
“Always.” The word came out automatically. But as he took the first step, her hand shot out and caught the strap of his backpack, just for a second, just to feel the connection. He paused, looked back, and gave a short, sharp nod.
They ran.
Their boots pounded the asphalt, a frantic, vulnerable drumbeat in the silence. Every shadow was a threat, every echoing sound a potential trigger. Halfway across, a plastic bag, caught in a sudden gust, erupted from a doorway with a loud, flapping snarl. Milly flinched so violently she stumbled. Jim’s hand was there immediately, closing around her elbow, steadying her without breaking stride.
“Just trash,” he breathed, pulling her along.
“Sounded pissed off,” she gasped back, her heart hammering against her ribs.
They didn’t let go until they were deep in the canyon of the next street, backs pressed against cool brick, lungs burning. His hand slid from her elbow, but the ghost of his grip remained, a warm brand on her skin. They stood there for a minute, just breathing, listening. The silence rolled back in, heavy and complete.
“Thanks,” she said, finally.
He just nodded again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes never stopped moving. “Not much further.”
The scent of the river reached them before they saw it—a thick, organic smell of wet mud, rotting vegetation, and something else, something chemical and wrong. It wasn't the fresh, brackish scent Milly remembered from before. It was the smell of something sick.
They found a break in the buildings, a narrow access path choked with weeds and rusting bicycles. The Thames lay ahead, sluggish and the color of tarnished lead. The far bank was a hazy outline in the damp air. It was utterly, profoundly still. No duck flotillas. No swans. No life at all.
"Christ," Jim muttered, his shoulders slumping a fraction.
They picked their way down to a concrete ledge that sloped into the water. Milly crouched, peering at the opaque surface. A thick, rainbow-hued film of petrol or algae clung to the edges."Well. The ducks were smart. Got the hell out."
"Can't blame them." Jim dropped his pack and pulled out two empty plastic bottles and a frayed length of rope. "We'll need to boil this for an hour. Maybe two."
The routine was familiar, a survival ballet they’d performed a hundred times. He tied the bottles together; she cleared a small circle of concrete of debris for their little stove. But their movements were synchronized in a new way. When he reached for the stove, she was already handing it to him. When she unfolded the pot, his water bottles were already waiting beside it.
As he bent to fill the first bottle from the least-scummy patch of water he could find, his free hand came to rest, just for balance, on the small of her back. She didn’t startle. She just steadied herself, feeling the solid pressure through her layers, and passed him the second bottle without a word.
The clink of the pot settling on the stove was loud in the quiet. A bitter disappointment settled over them, heavier than their packs. This wasn't a respite. It was another chore, another mile marker on a road leading nowhere good.
Milly sat back on her heels, staring at the polluted water."Remember that summer? The one where they said the Thames was clean enough to swim in? All those politicians in their suits, pretending to paddle?"
Jim lit the stove. The blue flame hissed, a tiny, defiant heat in the vast grey. "I remember the headlines the next week. A kid found a shopping trolley and a human foot."
She snorted."Right. So maybe this is an improvement."Her smile felt brittle. The silence stretched, filled only by the gentle hiss of the flame beginning to heat the metal. The closeness of the morning in the flat felt a million miles away, crushed under the weight of the leaden sky and the poisoned river.
"We'll find a way," Jim said quietly. He wasn't looking at her. He was watching the water in the pot, his expression grim. "We always do."Yeah." Milly pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She was cold. The damp was seeping up through the concrete. Without thinking, she leaned her shoulder against his. It was a small tilt of her body, a seeking of shared warmth and shared gravity. He didn't pull away. He adjusted his posture, just slightly, to take her weight.
They sat there like that, two figures on a concrete slab, watching contaminated water boil. The city rose behind them like a tombstone. The river flowed past, indifferent. But where their shoulders met, a line of warmth persisted, a quiet, stubborn signal in the silence.