Afterlight (53 page)

Snoop rapped the helm with his knuckles. ‘Chief says go, Jeff.’

Jeff had once been a truck driver. Said he could handle boats, too. He’d piloted the tug up the Thames several years ago when Flight Lieutenant Brooks and his merry men had been sent to reconnoitre the river up to Kingston. He’d managed not to wrap the thing around a bridge support or end up stuck on a silt bank. Jeff seemed to know what he was doing.

‘Right, here we go.’ With a hand that was all knuckles, veins and fading tattoos, he eased the throttle forward.

The diesel engine dropped a note and the tug lurched subtly as the engine engaged. At first Maxwell wondered whether they’d overestimated what this small ugly vessel could pull as it seemed to make no headway at all, the weed-tufted concrete quay beside them showing no sign of receding.

The engine chugged laboriously for a moment, but slowly the tug began to move.

‘Shit, thought we were stuck,’ said Snoop.

With several feet of slapping water between them and the quay, Maxwell finally let slip a barely audible sigh of relief, just as several dozen of the more foolhardy workers emerged out of the rear entrance of the dome to stand on the quayside and watch them pull away. A couple of his boys fired off opportunistic shots in their direction and the emerging crowd dived to the ground amidst the weeds.

Maxwell gave Snoop a glance. ‘Tell those fucking idiots not to waste their ammo.’

Snoop nodded and promptly left the cockpit.

As the tug strained and groaned and the train of one tug and three barges slowly eased away from the quay, Maxwell smiled grimly.

For the last ten years of his life this drab and increasingly threadbare over-sized circus tent had been his millstone. Many was the night he’d wondered whether the smartest thing he could’ve done was let
everyone
in on the first night of the crash and let all of those poor bastards get on with it. If they wanted to end up like Wembley Stadium and tearing each other apart for tins of corned beef and bottles of water twelve weeks in, they could be his bloody guests. He could quite easily have delegated the nightmare to Brooks to handle, or one of the Cobra-appointed civilian safety-zone assistants and just walked out the front and gone back home to his South Bank apartment, emptied his drinks cabinet and then emptied his gun. But he’d decided to stay and do the dutiful thing, to be the one to make all the hard decisions these last ten years.

The quayside had sluggishly slipped far enough away for Jeff to spin the wheel and steer the tugboat out towards the middle of the Thames.

Those poor bastards left behind probably weren’t going to make it; weakened by months, years, of malnourishment, many of them already falling prey to ailments due to vitamin and protein deficiencies of one kind or another. Anybody with half a wit should have known that the acres of parking tarmac they’d managed to cultivate out at the front was little more than an exercise in window-dressing; smoke and mirrors. What they were growing was just about enough to keep half of them going a while longer - but nothing there that would keep them going through winter.

They were all going to die.

Or maybe they’d end up like those wild children; eating rats, dogs. Eating each other.

He watched the warm afternoon sunlight play across the dome and wondered what moronic government pencil-necks had thought it a bright idea to locate
any
of the zones in the middle of a city. For that matter, what moronic government pencil-necks had thought the global oil crash would be nothing more than a three-month-long economic crisis that could be more than catered for by setting up a couple of dozen over-sized soup kitchens.

So obvious now . . . Of course, armed with hindsight, he admitted that the old world had been heading towards something like that; an end-of-times event. Not just a twelve-week-fucking-crisis, but The End. He remembered an economist once calling it ‘Petri dish economics’ - where a bacteria feeds on a growth solution, expanding to fill its grow space and finally, upon consuming the last of the free food, it turns on itself.

Eats itself.

He looked back at the pale faces of the workers, gathering in ever larger numbers on the receding quayside, and realised all he’d achieved these last ten years was to duplicate the old world on a much smaller scale; a twenty-acre Petri dish.

The boat chugged heavily and slowly out into the middle of the Thames. Ahead, across the foredeck and the bobbing, excited heads of his boys, he could see the bend in the river, and in the distance the row of shell-like hoods of the Thames barrier.

 

Nathan watched London drift slowly past them. It reminded him of a riverboat tour of the Thames he and his cousins, mum and auntie had once been on. A warm day like today, ice-cream dripping onto his fist and pigeons pestering them.

From out here in the middle of the river, London really seemed to look no different to the way it had then. The buildings still stood. The tower blocks of Canary Wharf still glinted and shimmered proudly. This far away from the river’s edge, all the small telltale details of dead London were lost; the weeds, the cracks, the broken windows, the overgrown lawns, the rusting cars, the cluttered streets. From where he stood on the stubby aft of the tugboat, Nathan imagined he was nine years old again as the vessel strained its way past Victoria Docks. London bustling in the distance.

He spotted the roof of the ExCel Centre beyond a row of giant freight cranes and dockside warehouses and shuddered at the memory of what had happened inside. He wondered if Leona actually did manage to escape, or whether - the thought turned his stomach - her bones had been added to that pile.

Coming to London had been a mistake. A huge mistake. But he knew they’d had to do it. Not knowing for sure, one way or the other, would have gnawed away at him and Jacob until they finally couldn’t stand it any more and had to go see.

He shook his head sadly. Both he and Jake had thought the dome was nirvana. The beginning of the future; an epicentre of recovery and hope. But, despite all the lights, the arcade machines, the pounding music of party nights, he realised it wasn’t a beginning, it was an end. It was denial, a last blast party with whatever could be scooped together out of the ruins.

He looked around at the other boys stretched out amongst the coils of diesel-stinking rope; all of them excited at their brand new adventure, smoking their cigarettes, stroking their guns with fingers heavy with gold.

Here they were off to some place they knew absolutely nothing about other than Snoop had promised them it would have endless electricity and lots of women to play with. A new playground for them. A new party to go to. And as long as there was somebody coming along who was going to make sure there’d be booze and smokes they seemed content.

They were all heading to a place he’d called home. Where his mum lived. Where other people whom he’d considered extended family lived. And they were going to have a party there. Oh, yes, it was going to be a party. He could imagine any one of these boys, fired up with excitement, pissed or stoned, cornering his mum in some small cabin . . . his mum pleading.

Nathan felt something in his chest flip and turn with guilt, suddenly realised guilt.

The cold sick feeling spread down into his stomach and started to churn there. He realised Snoop had talked him into believing this was a friendly visit; a pooling of resources, a combining of personnel. And he’d hinted, hadn’t he? Hinted that the rigs would be a new kingdom, under their shared rule. Maxwell ousted and the praetorians in charge with Snoop and him as kings. These boys had been promised someplace even better than the dome . . . and they were going to have it.

‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered under his breath. ‘Oh, shit.’

 

 

 

V
alérie Latoc stood beside the railing and watched Howard and Dennis march Walter, hands bound behind his back by loops of gaffer tape, up the last flight of steps and across the helipad. They held him tightly between them - not that there was anywhere for Walter to run to if he broke free.

The wind gusted in an uneasy way this morning, rattling the protective plastic sheets so they snapped like canvas sails, stirring the field of tomato plants, sending white horses galloping across the restless sea far below.

Only about fifty members of the community were assembled up here to pay witness. The rest of them were lining the railings on the decks below.

Howard and Dennis finally came to a halt in front of Valérie. The old man between them looked surprisingly calm, given the fate awaiting him. Valérie had been hoping Walter would’ve started kicking and screaming on his way up here, pleading in an altogether undignified way for his mercy. Instead, he stood sullenly in front of him, eyes narrowed with bitter hatred and rage that was almost palpable.

‘Walter Eddings, you understand why you are up here, yes?’ asked Valérie loudly, his voice carrying across to the witnesses gathered on the helipad.

Walter’s lips quivered slightly but he said nothing.

‘It was decided collectively by these people - people who know you far better than me, people who trusted you - that you should be put to death for what you did to Natasha Bingham.’

‘You know I did nothing,’ Walter replied, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘I didn’t touch her.’

‘She was on your boat, Walter. Do not try and lie about that. What things you did to her, how she died, I am afraid we will never know. Perhaps it is better that way—’

‘I never fucking well touched her!’

‘You are also being punished for what I suspect you may have done to the other girl, Hannah.’

Walter shook his head. ‘I know it was you! I know that was you, you dirty bastard!’

‘Walter . . .’ Valérie said, reaching a hand out and placing it amicably on his shoulder. ‘Why are you lying now? It is too late to change things, really. At least if you were to admit it now, and ask God for His forgiveness you could leave the world unburdened.’ He smiled. ‘You see, God really does love
everyone.
Even you. If you open your heart to him, this will not be the end for you. But the beginning of a period of redemption.’

Walter lurched forward and spat at Valérie, but the gusting wind carried his spittle away.

‘You’re a fucking lying pervert! You’re a fucking sick bastard!’ the old man screamed at him. ‘I never touched either of them!’ He twisted round to shout over his shoulder at the women gathered on the helipad behind him. ‘Do you see what he’s doing!! DO YOU SEE!!’

‘Shut up!’ shouted someone in the crowd.

‘Why?’ Walter’s voice broke. ‘Why me? Why don’t you believe me? I’d never hurt Hannah. I’d never h-hurt anyone!’

‘Shut up, shut up!!’ screamed Mrs Bingham. ‘JUST DIE!!’ Her voice trailed away into a wash of burbling tears as Alice folded a protective arm around her. ‘Why don’t you just go, Walter.’

Walter’s temper flared. ‘You fucking bitch! After all I’ve fucking done for you lot!! Why? Why??? Why are you doing this to me?’

Valérie had hoped he’d crumble. Make a scene. Plead. Accuse. Snarl. Every word he spat at them only made him sound more guilty.

‘Don’t you see? Doesn’t anyone see? It’s him! HIM!! Latoc! I’d never hurt our girls! I didn’t hurt Hannah!! I loved her for God’s sake!!’

‘She was like my
own.
Like my own daughter!!’

Valérie gently squeezed his shoulder. ‘Walter.’

The old man turned back to him. There was spittle on his cheeks, caught in his beard, his eyes wide and his face was mottled and crimson with fear. He couldn’t have done a better job of looking like the right man to face the charge.

Thou protesteth much too much, sir
.

‘Walter,’ said Valérie softly, just for his ears. ‘I could spare you, you know? But these people feel betrayed by you. They are angry and hurt. Why not admit now what you did? Perhaps I could use that to help you. Show them that you understand what you have done is wrong. Perhaps then I could persuade them to settle for you just being evicted? Yes?’

Walter shook his head. He even managed to sneer. ‘What? So you can be in the clear? Fuck you!’

Valérie let go of his shoulder. ‘Then I am so sorry. I really cannot help you, if you will not help yourself.’

‘Jenny knows,’ he hissed breathlessly back at him. He turned to shout over his shoulder again. ‘Jenny knows I never did anything!! That’s all that fucking matters to me! That she knows!! Ask her!’

‘Let us pray for this man’s soul!’ called out Valérie, dipping his head.

‘Jenny knows I’m innocent!’ Walter screamed, his voice ragged and breathless. ‘SHE KNOWS!!’

‘Lord, hear our prayer. This man has sinned against his family and his friends. He has taken the lives of two innocent young girls in moments of madness and selfishness. There can be no—’

‘I DIDN’T DO IT!! IT’S
HIM
!!’

‘—room aboard our ark for one who would take a young life for his own needs—’

‘HE KILLED NATASHA! HE KILLED HANNAH! I’M NOT A PERVERT!!’

‘—we hope, in this final moment, that he can understand the hurt he has caused to those beautiful children, to their mothers, to all of us. May God have mercy on his soul.’

Valérie dropped his hands and looked up. He nodded to the two men and they proceeded to wrestle Walter towards a narrow gap in the railing at the edge of the helipad.