Afterlight (56 page)

The first dozen, Leona suspected, had been following them all the way from east London, but the newcomers, however, must have been survivors scratching a living amongst the streets either side of this road. She wondered how far the smell had travelled, how far word had travelled.

She wondered whether a far greater number of people had managed to keep going than anyone suspected. A hundred people or so from the immediate area. She wondered how many others like these, across Greater London, were still alive in their dark homes, living like rats.

‘We should make a move,’ said Harry. ‘Sir?’

Adam didn’t seem to hear that. ‘So many of them,’ he uttered. ‘Jesus. Apart from the wild children, we thought the city was just dogs, rats and pigeons.’

‘What’s kept them alive?’ asked Bushey.

‘Dogs, rats and pigeons, at a guess.’

Leona studied the silent crowd; old and young, all of them far thinner than Adam and his men; by comparison they looked like they’d been gorging themselves.

‘You from the guv’ment?’ a voice from the crowd echoed up the roadway, breaking the silence.

The men looked at each other.

‘We
can’t
take them with us,’ uttered Walfield. There were nods of agreement from the other men.

Leona finally decided to answer. ‘Yes, we’re from the government!’

Adam turned to look at her. ‘What? Why the hell you tell them that?’

‘If all that’s left is your Chief, Maxwell, and my mum, then I reckon that makes
one
of them the closest thing we have to “the government”, right?’

Adam and the others exchanged a glance.

‘And I know I’d rather it was my mum,’ she added.

‘When is help comin’?’ the same voice in the crowd asked.

Adam cocked an eyebrow. ‘Well? It looks like you’re the spokesperson now.’

Leona turned back to the crowd. Her first instinct was to tell them what they probably already knew. That there was no help coming from anywhere. But in that wall of malnourished bodies she saw the faintest glimmer of hope; more than just a feral existence. She saw braided hair on one or two, she saw mended and patched clothes, she saw a baby cradled in a woman’s arms, she saw an improvised wheel cart. Not people who had given up, gone wild or gone mad, but people who were struggling on, hanging in there . . . just about.

It was all too easy, too convenient, to write them off with a simple label:
scavengers.
They looked threadbare and grimy. Painfully thin, yes, and some had that lost haunted expression that Mum would be looking out for. But there were people along that cracked and weed-tufted road who were still a part of the old world; older people who could remember how to fit a gas boiler, drive a truck, wire a house, fix an engine. People who Mum could use, people who could add rusty but invaluable skills to their community.

Was it possible that in other cities in the UK, perhaps the rest of the world, there were people like this subsisting? Somehow finding a way to keep going just on what they could grow, hunt and forage for? Could so many have survived?

She realised they’d spent long enough out at sea on those rusting platforms. The large raiding parties, the roving groups of hungry-eyed young men with guns were gone now. They were history; died out like the dinosaurs. Except for Maxwell and his boys. And if that’s
all
they had to worry about, if they could beat those little bastards, then it seemed there was no one left that they needed to hide away from on the rigs.

If these pitiful beings could still be alive, then there really was hope. A better chance for them to be living on land; with soil, and easier access to fresh water, than on their artificial archipelago. She realised the time had finally come for them to live ashore once more.

‘When is help comin?’ asked the voice again. ‘Are you guv’ment help?’

She stepped forward. ‘No, I’m sorry, we’re not help.’ She looked back at the others before continuing. ‘But there’s a new start. A new government. It’s in East Anglia. The north-east coast. We’re doing fine there.’

‘Can we come?’

Adam whistled softly to get Leona’s attention. She turned back to him.

‘Leona, we can’t take them with us. Not now.’

‘I know,’ she whispered, then turned back to face the crowd.

‘Listen to me! In one year’s time,’ she replied loudly so that they’d all hear her clearly, ‘in a year’s time, we’ll be ready for you. You’ll be allowed in. It’s a place called Bracton. Look for it on an A to Z. We’re there.’

‘Shit!’ hissed Walfield. ‘You’re gonna be swamped!’

‘A year!’ she repeated, ignoring him. ‘No sooner, you cannot come with us now. You have to stay here, and do what you’ve been doing to keep alive. But when you come, you’ll find we have a doctor, we have an engineer, we have farmers, we have experts. We have rules, there’s order and you’ll be safe. We even know how to make electricity.’

She saw eyes widen amongst the crowd.

‘But you have to give us time to get ready for all of you. One year! No sooner or you’ll be sent away!’

She turned back to her companions and realised her legs were trembling. And yet her voice was steady and strong, steady enough that she felt she could even give these men something that sounded like a marching order. ‘Right, let’s get going.’

Adam’s dark beard revealed the slender line of a smile as he nodded supportively. ‘You heard her, lads. Let’s go.’

They grabbed their guns and the webbing, and the remaining cuts of venison, and slowly backed away from the crowd, weaving through the logjam of vehicles and out onto clear road on the far side. As they made their way along the motorway she resisted the insistent urge to keep looking over her shoulder.

‘Are they following?’ she muttered to Adam walking beside her.

‘Nope. Doing just as you ordered by the look of it.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘Ms Prime Minister.’

She laughed softly. The first time she’d felt capable of doing something as simple as that in quite some time. ‘Oh no, not me. That’s my mum.
She’s
the really bossy one.’

Adam made a face. ‘Really?’

 

They spent the rest of the day making their way north along the motorway, a journey she was familiar with in reverse. By the time the last of the hot and sticky day had deserted them they were just south of Cambridge. They found a campsite a mile off the motorway; rows of static caravans in a field, with a fishing lake at the bottom of it. There was nothing to eat, the camp shop had been picked clean of anything edible. They refilled their water bottles with green algae-tinted water, selected several caravans close together, and went to sleep.

The next day they found a storeroom behind the camp shop in which several dozen hire bicycles were chained up. They worked on the padlocks with a hacksaw. All of them needed their tyres pumping, and a couple needed an inner tube replacing. But by midday they were off the motorway, and coasting along the A-road heading north towards Thetford. On foot it would have taken them ten days or more. On bicycles, another two or three days at most.

Mid-afternoon she suddenly stopped pedalling and applied her squeaky brakes.

‘What’s up?’ asked Adam.

She swung her leg over the bar and laid the bike down on the road. ‘Yes! It’s right there,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘I wasn’t sure if I was going to spot it.’

‘Spot what?’

‘Raymond’s enviro-dome!’

Walfield sat back in his saddle, wiping droplets of sweat from his forehead with the back of a hairy forearm. He looked at Adam. ‘Raymond’s dome?’

Adam shrugged. ‘No idea what she’s talking about.’

‘Someone we came across on the way down,’ she replied. ‘He lives down that track. I’m going to go in and say hello. He might let us stay tonight. But I should ask first.’

Adam looked where she’d pointed. ‘Track?’

She stepped across the road into tall grass and then rooted around in some bushes until she found the hidden trellis. She pulled it aside. ‘This track.’

He climbed off his bike and laid it down, joining her in the long grass and looking down at the twin muddy ruts leading into the dark forest. He slung the rifle off his shoulder.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s probably best if I go up there alone. He knows me. If he sees you and the gun he’ll panic and shoot. I’ll be all right, he knows my face. And it’s just down there. Not far.’

He held out the SA80. ‘At least take the gun.’

She shrugged and took it from him. ‘A few minutes and I’ll be back.’

She stepped into the opening and out of the sunlight, down the track which was almost as dark as a man-made tunnel. The branches above her were busy with the endless conversation of birds and the gentle hiss of shifting leaves.

She wondered how Helen was faring here. If this really was everything she’d wanted or whether she was now pining to come home. The girl could be so fickle.

Leona caught a glimpse of pale perspex reflecting bright sunlight in the glade ahead. A moment later she emerged into the clearing, the dome before her. To the right were several small turbines spinning excitedly in the breeze with a
whup, whup, whup.

Raymond’s truck was parked in front.

She knocked heavily on one of the dome’s perspex panels and called out their names. Neither answered. Gingerly she pushed her head through the plastic slats and immediately felt the warm, humid tropical air envelope her face. All seemed well; the palm trees either side of the walkway, the exotic chirruping of insects and birds, the seductive sound of pumped water trickling down through waxen leaves.

‘Hello?’ she called out again. Her voice was caught by the dome and bounced around. ‘Helen? Raymond? Anyone home?’

There was no reply.

Feeling like an unwelcome trespasser she made her way along the walkway until she reached the cluster of cabins. And she smiled. There were signs of Helen’s feminine touch dotted around; flowers in pots, her clothes on a washing line alongside his, music CDs splayed untidily in a way that she imagined Raymond would find annoying. A thousand other little signs that all was well, and that if anyone needed rescuing, it was probably Raymond, from Helen.

‘Raymond? Helen? Anyone home?’

No answer. They might be in the woods, foraging for chestnuts, mushrooms, berries. Raymond had said Thetford Forest was a larder of free food if you knew what to look for.

She studied the cabins, all with their doors open, apart from the one Raymond used to sleep in. She stepped lightly across the wooden decking and rapped her knuckles gently against the door.

‘Guys? It’s Leona.’

Still no answer.

She really didn’t want to walk in on something she’d rather not see. So she knocked again, waited another few seconds, then slowly opened the door. It was dark inside the cabin. The diffused light that filtered down through the opaque plastic roof was blocked by a drape drawn across the cabin’s window.

‘Hello?’ she said softly.

She could hear music playing and saw the pale square glow of Raymond’s iPod in a docking station beside the cabin’s double bed. And there they were, huddled together, like lifelong sweethearts, like two spoons in a cutlery drawer.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered.

Both quite clearly dead, mottled with purple blotches where stilled blood had settled under the skin. Dead for a few days, a week maybe.

She stepped a little closer and saw that they’d gone peacefully; their eyes closed as if they were napping, Raymond’s arm draped protectively over Helen’s narrow shoulders.

‘Oh why, guys?’ she muttered. ‘Why?’

On a chest beside the bed she saw half a dozen pill bottles, opened and emptied, and a folded sheet of paper pulled from a pad and scribbled on. She saw her name scrawled on the corner.

Leona emerged into the sunlight five minutes later and carefully replaced the trellis barrier behind her so that the entrance was once more all but invisible.

‘Well?’ asked Adam. ‘Did you find your friend?’

‘No one’s home,’ she replied, handing the gun back to Adam. She picked up her bike and nodded down the long straight road, flanked on either side by the evergreens of Thetford Forest. ‘Another couple of hours will get us to Norwich. Then tomorrow, I guess, if we start early we’ll be in Bracton before it’s too late.’

She led the way.

 

 

 

M
artha gathered his dirty laundry. Valérie hadn’t asked her to do that; she did it because it was a pleasure to do something for him. Because she felt closer to him than any of the others. She connected with him in a way she was sure no one else did; the others merely followed him but she actually cared for him - brought him meals and water. To do this as well . . . to take what few clothes he had to the ladies up on the top deck doing laundry duty and see that they were properly soaked and scrubbed, it was a small gesture really. After all, his time was stretched so thin now between the prayer meetings and giving instruction to the newcomers, explaining his message. He had precious little time for such banal things as seeing to his own comforts.