Afterlight (22 page)

Nathan bent down, fumbling for a lump of loose tarmac.

‘What’re you doing?’

He grinned. ‘Gonna smash it.’

‘What?’

‘It’s all ours, Jay. No one’s did it in all this time. So it’s, like, ours to smash.’ He prised loose a crumbling chunk of parking lot which he tossed from one hand to the other with gleeful anticipation. ‘Come on, Jay, we’ll smash it together, on three.’

‘No.’

‘One . . . two . . .’

‘I said NO,’ Jacob barked, stepping away from his bike and letting it clatter to the ground noisily.

‘. . . three—’

Jacob clumsily punched Nathan’s shoulder and the tarmac dropped from his hand and clattered noisily to the ground.

‘Hey! The fuck you do that for?’

‘I don’t want to smash it. I mean, why? Why break it? It’s lasted this long.’

‘It’s a fucking window, man! That’s all. Just a fuckin’ window!’

Jacob’s face hardened. ‘It’s just . . .’

‘What? Just like it was before?’ Nathan looked at him. ‘Shit, Jay, what’s the matter with you?’

‘I just . . . I don’t know . . . it’s done so well to survive this far, you know? It just seems wrong.’

Nathan’s scowl vanished and his faced creased with a bemused grin. ‘Jesus, man. It’s a piece of glass that didn’t get broke. That’s all it—’

He stopped and frowned.

Jacob turned to look towards the glass frontage they’d been discussing.

‘Someone in there.’

Jacob saw it too. Movement in the dark interior beyond. The faint flicker of torchlight and the pale shape of a yellow T-shirt moving between the shelves and stacks of boxed printers and PCs.

‘That one person you think?’ asked Nathan. ‘Or more?’

Jacob squinted. ‘Dunno.’

A moment later the flicker of torchlight snapped off and then they saw the T-shirt grow more distinct as it approached the front of the store with the late afternoon light streaming in through the glass front. The pale T-shirt seemed to be carrying something in its darker arms. As it squeezed through a checkout and emerged through an open door that, once upon a time, would have slid aside with a compliant whoosh, they saw the T-shirt was on a man with pallid skin and a scruffy mop of long ginger hair who was whistling to himself cheerfully.

He was outside and in the sun when he stopped in his tracks, studying them intently. The whistling ceased.

‘Leona!!’ shouted Jacob. ‘There’s somebody out here!!’

‘Hey!’ barked Nathan. ‘All right?’ he said, taking several steps forwards.

The man in the yellow T-shirt lowered the boxes to the ground carefully - boxes with ‘5.1 Bose Surround Sound System’ printed boldly on them. He reached up to his ears and pulled out a pair of small earphones, hissing music loudly in the stillness. His eyes warily appraised Nathan.

‘Uh . . . look, I don’t have any food,’ he said, licking his lips nervously and shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Honest, bro, I’ve got nothing you want. No food or water. I just—’

‘Hey, don’t worry,’ said Jacob stepping forward to stand beside Nathan. ‘It’s all right, we’re not going to rob you or anything.’

The man’s eyes were drawn to movement from the Halfords’ entrance.

‘Who’s there?’ came Leona’s voice across the car-park, echoing off the storefront like a gunshot.

‘A man!!’ Jacob yelled over his shoulder. He turned back to him. ‘Are there other people with you?’

The man’s face flickered anxiously. He looked relatively young, perhaps Leona’s age; on his pallid face the meagre tufts of a trimmed ginger goatee. He pulled a Jesus-long cord of lank, greasy hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind one ear.

‘No . . . uh . . . it’s just me.’

Jacob offered him a friendly smile. ‘Well that’s all right then.’

The man watched Leona and Helen approach, his eyes on the gun she was holding.

‘Hey! No need to shoot me. Look, I’m leaving!’

Jacob shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s okay.’

‘You want this stuff? Fine, take it. There’s loads more inside—’

Nathan shook his head. ‘Relax, man.’

‘Or jack my truck?’

‘Shit. You got a workin’ truck?’ exclaimed Nathan.

He nodded, his eyes darting to a blue Ford Transit pick-up truck across the car-park.

‘I’ve got a little diesel,’ he replied cautiously, his eyes still on Leona; still on the gun in her hands. ‘Not a lot. Just enough that I can run into town every now and then.’

Leona stepped past Nathan, discreetly lowering the barrel of the gun so that it wasn’t levelled at the man any more.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Raymond.’

‘I’m Leona.’

She appraised him in much the same way she’d seen Mum silently judge newcomers. The man seemed well-fed and practically dressed with clothes either washed or recently pulled from a shop. He didn’t appear to be a shambling loner draped with tattered rags and a dangerously haunted look in his eyes. He looked like he might have come from a community better furnished than theirs, actually. She noticed his earphones hissing music and dangling around his knees, wires snaking up to an iPod poking out of a hip pocket.

‘How many of you?’ Leona asked finally.

Raymond shrugged. ‘Not many. Just me, actually.’

She pointed at his iPod. ‘You’ve got electricity, right? I used to have one of those . . . they don’t take batteries, you’ve got to recharge them.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a few things running at my place,’ he conceded warily.

‘But it’s just you?’ said Leona.

Raymond nodded. He studied them in silence for a while. ‘You’re all young. Just kids—’

‘I’m twenty-nine,’ she replied flatly. ‘What’s your point?’

‘Sorry. Thought you were younger,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that, occasionally, I come across groups of survivors. The younger groups, your age and younger, they’re more dangerous. Well, to be honest, almost like wild animals sometimes. I try to steer clear of them.’

‘We’re good ones,’ said Helen.

He nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘We’re headed south to London,’ said Leona. ‘Apparently they’re rebuilding things there. You heard anything about that?’

He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

Helen took a step forward, entranced by the hissing still coming from Raymond’s headphones. ‘Is that . . . like, proper music?’

He shrugged. ‘I got hip-hop, some garage, some rock . . . all sorts really. Just listening to a bit of Jay Dilla right now.’

Nathan cocked his head. ‘Shit, I remember! My mate’s brother had his stuff,’ he uttered, approving. ‘Dilla was well cool.’

‘Yeah. I cleaned out a record shop and ripped all their CDs onto my hard drive. I’ve got pretty much everything, more or less.’

‘Hard drive?’ said Nathan. ‘You got a computer?’

Raymond shrugged. ‘Yeah, several, actually.’

‘We have loads of spare food,’ blurted Helen, ‘could we come stay the night at your place?’

‘Helen!’ snapped Leona angrily.

The girl shut up, her face flushing crimson as Leona glared at her. She turned back to Raymond. He didn’t look the dangerous schizo type; he had a slight build, looked like the kind of guy you’d see working in a comic store, or turning up at some Star Trek geek-a-thon, dressed as a Klingon.

‘There’s just you?’

He nodded.

Leona considered Helen’s blurted suggestion quietly for a moment. ‘All right then. Could we stay the night? Just one night, if we, you know, shared our food?’

Raymond’s eyes darted from one to the other, warily returning to the gun dangling from her hands.

‘Sure . . . uh . . . sure you’re not going to rob me or something?’

‘Would it help if I promised you we won’t?’

He shrugged and wrinkled his nose. ‘Okay,’ he answered. ‘Why not?’

 

 

 

W
ithout any warning Raymond swung the pick-up truck off the road onto a gravel lay-by and put the brakes on.

‘Why’ve we stopped? asked Jacob.

‘You’ll see,’ Raymond replied, climbing out of the truck and stepping across the gravel towards an overgrown cluster of blackberry bushes spilling out beneath the shadow of a mature oak tree.

‘Maybe he needs a pee?’ said Helen.

They watched him approach the brambles and fumble amongst the foliage. He stepped back and the bushes appeared to come with him.

‘Uh?’ gasped Helen.

‘Oh, that’s cool,’ said Nathan. ‘A disguised entrance.’

Raymond moved aside a six-foot panel of trellis through which the bushes had eagerly grown, twisting through the cross-hatches of plywood. Through the newly made gap they could see a faint track of twin ruts, running deep into the woods, dark beneath the thick summer-laden canopy of oak branches.

He rejoined them in the truck.

‘Props, man,’ grinned Nathan. ‘Like the secret entrance to Batman’s cave.’

Raymond smiled. ‘Yup. Just like that.’

He drove the truck through the gap and got out to replace the trellis, sealing the entrance behind them. Back behind the wheel, they rolled down the track, bouncing uncomfortably where the ruts ran deep and puddles splashed muddy water in their wake.

Leona warily studied the shadowy trail ahead. The farmhouse they’d lived in for several years after the crash had been a bit like this, lost deep in the woods where one hoped never to be found. But, of course, they had been.

‘How much further?’ she asked.

‘Just up here,’ he replied.

She noticed a sliver of sky ahead, a break in the canopy, appearing, disappearing, appearing amidst the thick veil of leaves. Then, rounding a bend, dipping down through deep ruts, splashing droplets of muddy water on the side windows, she saw it.

‘Home,’ he said casually as he rolled the truck up beside the service entrance to what appeared to be an enormous inflated geodesic dome.

‘Wow!’ gasped Jacob, with wide-eyed amazement. ‘It’s like a space station!’

Raymond switched off the engine and they sat in silence, looking up at a web of triangular panels of semi-opaque plastic curving above them as the engine softly ticked.

‘My humble castle,’ announced Raymond with a casual twang that had more to do with a faint Scottish burr than any sense of arrogance. ‘It’s called The Emerald Oasis.’

Leona opened the door and stepped out of the truck, marvelling at the domed structure. Through the panels she could see tall dark forms inside.

‘What’s in there?’

He grinned. ‘Paradise.’

He reached into the back of the truck for the Bose speakers he’d foraged from PC World and led the way in, pushing through the side entrance, a row of thick plastic flaps that slapped noisily to one side. ‘Come in,’ he beckoned to Leona, holding open a gap for her.

She led the way and immediately felt the warm moist air on her face. It reminded her of childhood holidays abroad - stepping out of the cool air-conditioned interior of a plane into the warmth of some simmering hot holiday location. Then her eyes registered the tall fronds of a host of exotic plants.

‘My God, it’s like a . . . like a rainforest in here,’ she gasped.

‘Well, actually, that’s exactly what it is.’

The others entered behind her and the calming sound of chirruping insects, the gentle trickle of flowing water, the tap, tap, tap of moisture dripping from one broad waxy leaf down onto another was disturbed by a chorus of their muted voices, respectfully hushed to awed whispers.

‘This place,’ he said, leading them along a wood-chipped walkway, ‘is, or I should say, was,’ he corrected himself, ‘an exclusive holiday spa.’

They passed a cluster of purple gourds above which several brightly coloured butterflies fluttered.

‘Emerald Oasis. It’s a temperature- and humidity-controlled one-acre bubble of tropical rainforest.’ He stopped and turned towards them. ‘Basically it was a bloody expensive version of Center Parcs.’

Leona looked at the others, they were grinning like simpletons. She supposed she would have been as well if, at the back of her mind, she hadn’t also been wishing Hannah could be with them to see this too.

‘It wasn’t quite ready when the crash hit us that summer.’ Raymond shrugged. ‘Bad timing really. It was due to open for Christmas. They had celebrity guests booked in - a whole waiting-list of celebrities actually.’

The woodchip pathway curved past a luxury swimming pool and, beside it, a whirlpool spa.

‘I keep fish in there now.’

He led them through another curtain of plastic flaps into a pinewood cabin. It was cooler here, the same temperature as outside. She could feel the moisture that had settled on her skin walking through Raymond’s paradise begin to chill.

‘There are eight chalets like this one, each sleeping a family of four. You lot can share this one, or spread out and use the others if you want. Up to you.’

Leona smiled. ‘This is good, thank you.’

Raymond shrugged, a self-effacing gesture across his narrow shoulders that reminded her of a comedy actor Mum used to like. Woody someone.

‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘You want to get your stuff out of the back of the truck? Meanwhile . . .’ he grinned at his Bose speakers, ‘I just want to wire up these little fellas to my sound system.’

He turned and left, pushing his way through the flaps.

They turned to each other. Helen ended the wide-eyed silence. ‘I so-o-o-o want to live here.’

 

The smell of freeze-dried tomato and pasta meals being heated up in the microwave attracted everyone from exploring different corners of the intriguingly landscaped jungle floor. Raymond brought out a large steaming bowl and placed it on a picnic table set out on wooden decking that overlooked the pool and soon they were all seated, hungrily tucking into their dinner.