Afterlight (65 page)

‘Sir!’

‘I see ’em. I see ’em!’ replied Adam.

He caught the pale flicker of a baseball cap, a head poking around the corner of the module to check the lie of the land ahead, then ducking back. He saw more heads now, emerging from the maze of buildings, pipes and exhaust bells. Cautious steps forward towards the open area of deck and the walkway.

Bushey fired first. Half a dozen quick shots that appeared to find one of the boys. Adam joined in and all the heads and shoulders dived quickly out of sight.

A moment later return fire sputtered out from a dozen places, several shots whistling up the walkway between them. Adam hoped the others were all out of there now, although he thought he could still hear the distant rattle of feet on the mesh.

‘That’s it, I’m out!’ hissed Bushey.

Adam was on his last clip. ‘All right, fuck it, we’re done here. Go, Bush. I’ll cover!’

Bushey nodded, scuttling low out of his niche and across the open deck towards the walkway. Adam waited until he saw heads had begun popping up again, and fired another half a dozen shots to keep them down a while longer. Then he, too, was on his feet, a low loping sprint across a few yards of open deck, then his boots clanged all too heavily onto the walkway. He could see Bushey up ahead, jogging to catch up with the last of the civilians.

Adam ran sideways, like a crab, keeping his assault rifle hip-aimed backwards down the wire cage, waiting for one of the boys to be stupid enough to press the pursuit too closely.

Twenty yards along and starting to feel sure he was going to make it over without incident, his foot found something soft and he stumbled.

‘Shit!’ he gasped.

He looked down. It was that relentlessly cheerful black woman who was Jenny’s friend. She seemed to be alive, but whimpering pitifully.

‘You’re wounded? Can you walk?’

The woman moaned. ‘Can’t feel my legs.’

He reached down with his spare hand and grabbed a fistful of damp clothing. He tried dragging her along the walkway, but she shrieked with pain. ‘No! Please! Stop!’

‘Come on, love. You’ve to got help yourself!’

‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I can’t!’

He knelt down closer to her. He remembered her name now. ‘You’re Martha?’

She nodded. He looked down at what she was cradling in her hands; a mess of tattered skin around an exit wound and dark coils of soft tissue from inside. ‘Dr Tami can’t fix this sort of mess,’ she whispered. ‘You go.’

‘I can drag you,’ he said, shouldering his weapon and getting his other hand under her armpits.

‘No!’ she spat. ‘Please, no! Hurts!’

‘Just shut up and let me—’

‘I want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘My boy, I know he’s gone . . . I just wanna go an’ see him now.’

He could see her face; damned if there wasn’t something that looked like a smile on there. ‘He’s such a good boy,’ she whispered. ‘Did you hear him? He warned us.’

Adam nodded. He had heard the shout from the tugboat’s foredeck just before everything kicked off. ‘Your boy? That was brave.’

She grinned, grateful it seemed, that someone had noticed.

A shot rattled off the wire cage a dozen yards down, sending sparks onto the walkway.

‘Go!’ hissed Martha. ‘Go now . . . an’ you tell Jenny . . . say “sorry” from me?’

‘Sorry? Yes, okay.’

‘I let her down . . . so badly.’

Another shot rattled against the wire and he could see down the far end the boys were beginning to cluster around the entrance.

‘Martha . . . I better . . .’

She nodded, let go of his hand and shoved his shoulder. ‘Go! Go, go, stupid!’

He stepped away from her as torchlight from the boys’ end flickered down the walkway and onto them both. Adam dropped down quickly on to one knee and aimed a shot at the torch. He heard a cry and the torch spun and dropped, lancing light in all directions. There was a clattering sound as the boys ducked backed behind cover.

‘Yeah!’ Martha cheered weakly. ‘Now go, go,’ she said again, shooing him away with a flapping hand.

‘Sir?’ It was Bushey’s voice calling down from the far end. ‘Better move it!’

‘Take good care of her . . . she
needs
you,’ whispered Martha still smiling. ‘She likes you . . . now go!’

He turned to abandon her, feeling like the lowest form of life for doing so. Then he stopped. ‘Martha, do you want to . . . to leave now? Right now?’

She looked at him. ‘You mean . . . die?’

He looked up at the far end of the walkway. ‘You don’t want those boys to get hold of you alive.’

She gave it only a heartbeat’s thought, then nodded. ‘Oh, yes, please.’

‘Close your eyes, then,’ he said, reaching for her shoulder and squeezing it affectionately. She did as she was told and then clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘Mum’s coming, Nathan,’ she uttered softly. ‘Just hang on for me, baby.’

Adam shouldered the gun, aimed at her forehead and closed his eyes as he fired.

Then he was running; running with the sound of his boots making the walkway ring and rattle in his ears. Sparks chased him and he felt the air on one side of his hunched-over head and shoulders hum as a solitary shot narrowly missed its mark.

He was out of the other end and lying on his back next to Bushey less than ten seconds later, gasping ragged lungfuls of air and looking up at shifting clouds above haloed by the moon. The silhouette of Bushey’s head leaned over him and he was saying something. Adam felt like he was a thousand miles away, watching the moon above, the skimming silver-haloed clouds, the dark outline of head and shoulders and the muffled bellow of a faraway voice. Watching it on a telly; a storefront telly through the plate glass of a window.

‘Sir!’ Bushey’s voice was getting louder, cutting through, pulling him back, reluctantly, from this odd sensation of calm detachment.

‘Sir! Adam!! You okay? You hit?’

Bushey was shaking his shoulder. Adam took in another breath of cool night air and finally managed to sit up. ‘I’m fine,’ he grunted. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I thought the bastards’d got you.’

He turned over, propped himself up on his elbows to look back down the walkway. There was plenty of movement on the far platform. The boys gathering their numbers again. Probably stacking up bodies on yet another supermarket trolley, getting ready to run the same tactic again.

Bushey leaned closer to him so he wasn’t overhead. ‘We’re fucked now. We’re out of ammo.’

Adam said nothing. If they tried the trolley trick again that was going to be it for them. In fact, even if they just ambled over without any cover at all, that was pretty much it for them. He was down to half a dozen rounds left in his clip.

‘Maxwell will make an example of us,’ said Bushey. ‘I know he will. The bastard’s going to let the boys rip us to pieces.’

‘So let’s make sure we hold back a couple of rounds, all right?’

Bushey pressed out a scaffold-smile. ‘Yuh. Just don’t fuckin’ fire ’em by accident.’

Adam felt an arm on his shoulder. He turned to see Jenny settling to a crouch beside him. ‘I thought we’d lost you,’ she said.

‘I’m all right.’ He mentioned nothing about Martha. If there was time later, if there was a later, he could pass the message on then.

She bit her lip. ‘My lot want to surrender. They’re all talking about surrendering.’

‘And you?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe that Maxwell won’t be quite so bad? Maybe—’

‘He’ll do whatever he needs to do,’ said Adam. ‘That means keeping his boys happy.’

She stared at him. ‘You mean—’

‘Whatever those boys want, they’ll have.’ He gestured at those around them, cowering, crying, waiting for the boys to make their way across. ‘All these women? Do you understand?’

She looked back over her shoulder at them; women young and old and children . . . all of them so vulnerable. She couldn’t bring herself to visualise what this place, their home, would become once those boys came across; a charnel house of raped and broken female bodies, and those thugs dancing like wild savages around them. And, yes, there’d be an element of revenge to whatever those boys did to them; revenge for their fallen comrades - in their minds it would justify doing just about
anything
they wanted to them, wouldn’t it?

She shuddered at the thought. Five, nearly six years of endless grinding effort to build this safe haven, only to have it picked apart by a feral gang of boys . . . just for the fun of it.

She gritted her teeth and turned to face the people nearby, faces full of hope that she had an answer, a plan. Something up her sleeve.

‘I’m not surrendering,’ she said. Whispers rippled and spread amongst them. She saw them stir, shoulders slump with despair. She decided if her tenure as their community leader was finally at an end, then her last leadership decision wasn’t going to be to surrender her people to whatever entertainment those little bastards had in mind. ‘We can’t let them over here,’ she announced to them. ‘There’ll be raping . . . and worse. We can’t let them over. We have to fight.’

She turned back to Adam. ‘Let’s give them all we’ve got left when they cross.’

Adam nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’

 

Maxwell could see the boys had had enough. This wasn’t the pushover they’d been promised. To be honest, this wasn’t the pushover he’d hoped for either. He’d expected nothing more than several hundred wobbly-kneed women fool enough to welcome them aboard and offer their complete submission at the first sight of a gun.

He looked at the boys, many of them spattered with blood, some of it their own. A headcount showed about twenty of the praetorians were down; most of them dead, a couple of the wounded probably weren’t going to last the night, their pitiful cries weren’t helping morale at all.

He’d sent Jeff to pilot the tug back to where the barges were moored at Bracton and then to tow them back over to the rigs. There were supplies aboard for the boys. Food and water and a few more crates of that cheap booze to get them back into the mood for the final push.

A top up of vodka and adrenalin . . . that’s what they needed now.

Several hours ago ashore at Bracton he’d had them roaring with excitement, jumping up and down like over-sugared birthday boys on their way to a Laser Quest party; convinced they were invincible and everyone was going to get as much sex as they wanted tonight.

In truth, a break for several hours was no bad idea. Those people across the way weren’t going anywhere, and given enough time to mull over their predicament, they might just decide they’d had enough and wave a white flag.

He gave Snoop orders to set a dozen lads on watch over the walkway, the others could get whatever rest they could. He handed out cigarettes to them all, with a word of encouragement to the youngest lads, and for the older boys, whose eyes betrayed the beginnings of distrust, he reassured them that tomorrow, after they’d tidied up the mess, fixed whatever damage had been done, and the barge with their girlfriends and games consoles had been unloaded, they were going to have one hell of a party; lights, music, games . . . and plenty more ladies to choose from.

Finally, he sat down with his back against one of the deck lockers, suddenly feeling like he’d run a marathon over the last twenty minutes.

Tomorrow morning, dawn . . . as soon as it was light enough, Maxwell decided. If they’d not waved a white flag, he’d better get out there and sort this out himself.

At the very least it was another chance to show his little soldier boys just who was in charge. Not Edward
Snoop
Tindall, but him,
The Chief
. . . the fella responsible for feeding them all this time, handing out the booze, the fags, finding the means and ways so they could enjoy their privileges; the fella who kept Safety Zone 4 going ten years after every other one had gone belly-up.

 

 

 

‘H
ello?’

The voice echoed across the silent blue-grey light of pre-dawn.

‘Hello?’

Leona’s leg jerked. She couldn’t believe she’d actually fallen asleep. She turned on her side, propped herself up and looked over the top of the rusting hulk of the storage drum she’d been sheltering behind. There was a man on the walkway, about a third of the way across. He held a rag of white cloth in one hand.

‘Hello? Can I speak to your leader, Jennifer Sutherland?’ he called out.

The praetorians were all awake and crowded along the edge of the platform opposite - she could see flashes of their orange vests, the glint of gold chains here and there.

Next to her, Mum stood up.

‘Mum!’ hissed Leona. ‘Get down. It’s a trick!’

She ignored Leona, stepping out from behind cover. ‘I’m Jennifer,’ she replied.

Leona looked at Adam. Her face said
can’t you stop her?

He gave her a shrug. Too late.

‘I’m Alan Maxwell, by the way!’ shouted the man. ‘Can you and I meet in the middle?’

Jenny stepped onto the walkway and slowly made her way a dozen yards along and finally stopped. ‘Just here is fine for me. I can hear you well enough.’

‘So.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘This is a bit of a bloody mess, isn’t it?’

Jenny said nothing.

‘Thing is, it’s not exactly a stalemate. We’ve got a whole load of guns over here, and, well . . . you’ve got these,’ he said, holding up one of their improvised bra-slingshots. Some of the boys laughed at that. He scratched his salt and pepper beard. ‘So, if we have to come over there and get you it’s just that you’re going to annoy my lads even more if your lot decide to carry on throwing things at them on the way over.’