Afterlight (63 page)

Nathan smiled back at him, hoping his cavalier grin gave away none of the twisting, churning emotions going on inside him.

Nathan wished he’d chugged another bottle of Froot-ka. He realised he was trembling from head to foot. He was hoping, desperately hoping, that they weren’t going to fall for this. That Maxwell’s plan to sweet-talk his way on was going to fall on deaf ears. And if he got Nathan to say hello there’d be a way to let them know, a tone of voice, a choice of words that would subtly warn them this was a trap waiting to be sprung.

He glanced at Notori-us, grinning like an over-sugared toddler. He knew exactly why the boy was on the foredeck standing right next to him.

A voice he recognised instantly echoed down from the main deck. ‘Hello?’ It was Mrs Sutherland. ‘I’m in charge here. What do you want?’

‘To talk. That’s all. We heard about this place. That it’s a safe place!’

A pause.

‘No! You should leave now! We have guns aimed on you!’

‘What?! I’m not armed!’ shouted Maxwell. ‘I . . . I was just hoping we could talk!’

Jenny Sutherland said nothing.

‘Look, I’ve got someone you might know down here with me!’

Nathan felt his bowels unknot and loosen.

A torch snapped on from above, lanced down eighty feet and dappled its way across their upturned faces.

‘Nathan?’ A syrup-thick voice that he recognised instantly echoed down to him. ‘Oh, God! Is it
you
, Nathan?!’

‘Hey, Mum!’ he called out limply. He couldn’t see where she was.

Maxwell touched his arm lightly. ‘There’s a good lad,’ he muttered quietly. ‘Talk to Mum. Let’s go up and see her, eh? I promise she won’t be hurt, lad.’

‘Oh, my!’ Martha cried. ‘Oh, Nathan, love! You all right?’

‘Nathan led us here!’ called out Maxwell. ‘Said you were decent people. He wanted to come home. So I brought him back!’

The torch beam flickered across their faces, across the deck onto the cockpit. Probing the boat for any secrets.

‘So, how many of you down there?’

Maxwell smiled. ‘Just us three . . . and there’s Jeff in the cockpit.’

Jenny said nothing in response, and they bobbed in silence for a few moments.

‘You can send Nathan up alone,’ called down Jenny. ‘Just him.’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Sure, okay.’ He made a show of smiling at Nathan like they were inseparable buddies; favourite uncle and favourite nephew. ‘That okay with you, fella?’

Nathan stared out into the dark, unwilling to say anything, even nod silently. Then he heard the cranking of a windlass above.

‘MUM!’ he blurted. ‘THEY’RE DOWN HERE! THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! THEY’RE GOING TO ATTACK YOU!!!’

Maxwell’s face split into a snarl. ‘Ah, for fuck’s sake, you little fucking shit!!!’

Nathan saw Notori-us reach quickly under his jacket and he heard his mum’s distant voice screaming down at them not to touch her baby.

God, she could be embarrassing like that.

He turned to face the boy next to him, hands held out in front of him to protect himself, but Notori-us was already on him. Nathan felt several rapid punches in his stomach - like a boxer furiously working over a punchbag, except he knew each blow was more than that.

He could still hear his mum’s voice, stretched thin and reedy, screaming down as his knees started to buckle beneath him.

 

Adam realised the conceit was over and all the talking was done.

He shouldered the gun, aiming through the SA80’s night-vision scope down onto the tugboat’s deck. If he could get Maxwell, maybe that would be enough to nip this whole thing in the bud.

Before he could get a bead on his target, dropping and rising on the gentle swell, Maxwell shouted something and a dozen of his boys emerged from the pilot’s cabin, their orange jackets glowing like beacons in the torchlight.

He glanced at Walfield, clearly thinking the same thing:
why the fuck are those morons wearing those glow-in-the dark jackets for a night assault?

The tugboat’s floodlight blinked out and then all of a sudden its foredeck was illuminated by the strobing light of a dozen muzzle flashes. Sparks danced along the rim of the deck and the railing and the torch that someone further along the deck had been holding tumbled down spinning end over end into the water where it glowed greenly for a moment beneath the froth before disappearing.

‘Shit, shit!’ hissed Adam, ducking back as he felt the warm puff of a shot whistle past his ear, too close for comfort.

Walfield popped his head over the side of the main deck to look down. ‘Bollocks!’ he shouted. ‘They’re all over that bottom deck already!’

Adam snapped his teeth angrily. The bastards must have sneaked in some boys underneath. They were swarming the spider deck now and there were too many stairwells and rung ladders from there up to the cellar deck, then the main deck, for them to risk making a stand here. He realised he should have had everyone on watch up
this
end of the string of platforms instead of spread out amongst them all.

The spider deck was the big hurdle he’d been hoping would stop them. Clearly Maxwell’s parley had been intended to be nothing more than a distraction whilst the rest of them found a way to scramble up. Never mind, they still had the choke point of each connecting walkway.

‘All right, screw this, Danny, they’re on. We’ve already lost this platform.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Bushey? BUSHEY!’

‘Over here, sir!’

‘First horn! Everyone back across the walkway.’

‘Right.’

A moment later the horn belched a loud football terrace honk above the clatter of gunfire and the heavy metallic ringing of boots on the stairwells below them.

‘Go, go, go!’ he said, slapping Walfield’s arm.

He waited until the last of those who’d been stationed on this platform scrambled past him, then set off after them, stumbling a moment later over the prone form of somebody. He didn’t know her by name, but recognised her: a mature woman with long grey hair in plaits. He’d listened to her strumming a guitar a couple of nights ago. Presumably she’d been the one holding the torch aimed down on the tugboat.

From below he could hear the boys whooping with delight as they charged up stairwells on the decks beneath them, a multitude of heavy feet clanging on metal rungs.

He looked around and saw Harry still firing over the rail in controlled three-shot bursts. ‘Harry! We’re pulling back! Move your bloody arse!’

‘Right!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I’ll cover you, sir!’

Adam nodded. He sprinted back across the deck picking out, by the flitting moonlight, the obstacle course of redundant junction boxes and cable conduits ready to trip him up, listening for Harry’s pounding footsteps behind him. He heard chattering gunfire. Short double taps - Harry’s . . . and long undisciplined pray-n-spray bursts - the boys.

A moment later his feet clattered onto the mesh floor of the walkway, it rattled and rang beneath his boots. He turned back, looking for the lance corporal, listening for his following footsteps.

‘Come on, Harry!’ he shouted.

The silly bugger must have got himself lost. Even on this small deck, a third of an acre of it, it was all too easy to get lost amidst the maze of rusting metal pipes and Portakabins. Especially in the dark.

He heard another couple of double taps, then a volley of return fire from several guns that seemed to go on for ages.

Jesus
.

Then it was quiet.

 

 

 

L
eona tripped, stumbled and spat a curse as she rubbed her barked shin. She could hear the distant rattle of firing and voices screaming. Where she was, at the opposite end of the row of rigs, standing on the main deck of the primary compression platform with Rebecca and Claire, they’d spotted the flicker of a floodlight lancing up from the sea. Leona had decided they should stay where they were, keeping a vigil at this end of their archipelago. Just in case. But then things had suddenly kicked off all the way over there and she cursed the fact they were too far away to be able to help out.

Her feet slammed down the walkway, Rebecca behind her clutching her bra-and-bungee cord catapult - for what it was worth - in both hands. They emerged onto the main deck of the accommodation platform, turned right, skirting the edge of the deck to avoid tangling with any obstacles.

People were spilling out of their cabins, brandishing their home-made weapons, and heading towards the noise. Leona converged with them, pushing and stumbling along the walkway cage towards the second compression platform, towards the sound of gunfire.

She emerged from the cage moments later, and then weaved her way across the platform’s main deck until she could see the far side, and the next walkway. Across the dark empty space between platforms, she watched for a moment. Trying to make out the situation. She saw some flickers of light, and the occasional flash of gunfire, but nothing that clearly explained how things were. She suspected the shots were coming from the furthest platform.

Rebecca hunkered down next to her, wheezing from the sprint thus far.

‘Can you see anything?’

‘I think they’re on drilling. Come on,’ she said, stepping onto the walkway taking them across with the sound of her heavy steps ringing in her ears.

They emerged twenty seconds later onto the firm deck of the production platform into a confusion of panicking people, some scrambling past her to head back along the cage away from the fighting. She pushed her way through the mingling confused bodies and crossed the deck, catching sight of the skirmish going on ahead of her.

Along the edge of the deck she could see Adam and his men, and one or two of the old men - Howard, Bill, Dennis - firing potshots across the void between platforms at the boys on the far side. They, too, were firing back, sparks erupting from the deck, from the vent stacks and deck lockers the men were huddled behind.

She felt a puff of air on her cheek, heard a metallic clang against the metal wall beside her head and a hot spark jumped onto her bare arm.

‘Ouch!’ she yelped before instinctively dropping to her hands and knees. She crawled across the deck until she was huddled beside one of Adam’s men.

She recognised his outline. ‘Bushey! It’s Leona.’

He turned and grinned manically at her before turning back to aim down the barrel of his assault rifle. ‘The little shites surprised us!’ He fired two aimed shots one after the other, the hot bullet casings almost landing in her lap.

‘Where’s my mum?’

‘Dunno, she’s somewhere along here,’ he said, firing again.

Leona craned her neck, looking down along the row of people cowering behind assorted cover, in two groups either side of the walkway cage. She picked out the huddled forms of Walfield, Howard, Sophie and one of her sisters and Dennis. She saw Alice and her friend Rowan both blindly flinging walnut-sized rivets across the void with their catapults. She picked out Adam in the group to the right of the walkway entrance, aiming and firing methodically, Martha loading up a dainty lace bra cup with another projectile.

She looked down the length of the walkway and thought she could pick out the detestable orange flash of those jackets, several of them, lying prone along the first thirty feet of it.

Bodies. They’d already made a first attempt to force their way across it and failed.

On the far side of the walkway, amongst the clutter of the drilling platform’s deck, she saw the strobe-flicker of muzzle flashes from their guns and heads bobbing in and out of sight.

They’re stuck.
She found herself grinning. Adam was right. The caged walkways were turning out to be perfect choke-points.

The firing on both sides began to ease off.

She looked around for Rebecca, assuming she was still with her, but she must have gone to ground somewhere else. Leona decided to press on. See if she could find Mum. Taking advantage of the lull in firing, she crawled on hands and knees, from one huddled person to the next, then, waiting for a moment of calm, she leapt across the open space beside the walkway’s entrance and a second later joined the others, hunkering down behind a long and low mechanical store locker, gasping for breath.

Jenny looked down at her, panting on the floor beside her. ‘Lee! Christ! I thought I told you to stay back! Are you all right? You okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ Leona huffed, trying to catch her breath. She swallowed, sucked in more air. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They pulled up in a boat,’ replied Adam. ‘Maxwell tried distracting us. The rest of his boys were already waiting underneath. Then it all kicked off.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘We should have had
everyone
on that far platform instead of spread out. We might have spotted the rest of them sneaking under.’

Leona pulled herself onto her hands and knees and stole a look round the edge of the storage locker. ‘But they’re stuck there now, right?’

Adam nodded. ‘For now.’ Adam turned to Jenny. ‘There’s no way up onto the other platforms, right?’

She shook her head. ‘The other platforms are much, much higher. They’d need us to lower them
something
to get aboard.’