Brother in the Land (16 page)

Branwell called us together in the chapel. He looked tired and sad and somehow smaller than before.

‘There is no food,' he said, ‘Because like a fool I let us eat it all last night. There are no weapons either. Mr Rhodes and some of his men and women have offered to go out and find both. They will have to go on foot, because the Swiss took the rotor-arms out of our vehicles. They do not know how far they might have to travel, nor how they will protect themselves along the way. Nevertheless they are prepared to go, and I must let them try because it is our only chance.

‘While they are gone, those of us who remain must hang on as best we can. We have clean water. We must forage for food and fashion makeshift weapons. We must give priority to feeding the children, and the sick. It may be that the Swiss will return soon, but if not we must work together, so that when Mr Rhodes and his party return, we can start all over again.'

Kim hissed something I didn't catch.

‘What?'

‘I said, they won't come back, will they?'

I glanced at her. ‘Who? The Swiss?'

She made an impatient sound. ‘No. Rhodes and that lot. Why should they?'

I couldn't answer straight away. Her words had brought an icy pain to my guts, because suddenly I saw that she was right.
When I got control of my vocal chords I said, ‘You're right. Why should they? They don't go in for this lame-duck stuff, looking after kids and invalids and that. I'm going to say something!'

‘No!' Her fingers gripped my elbow and she glanced about her. ‘Let them go. I might be wrong, and anyway we can't stop them. If they've decided to go they'll go, and they'd probably kill anyone who got in the way.'

She was right, of course. They left – Rhodes, the pick of his guerilla band and some of the soldiers, and they never came back. The rest of us hung on, scratting for edible roots, burying our dead, growing thinner. The weeks went by. The weather became colder and Branwell tried to hold us together. He really tried. ‘They'll come,' he kept saying. ‘They had a long way to go, on foot, but they'll be back, you'll see.'

The roots we gnawed on were probably contaminated. They were certainly hard and bitter. Our gums bled and there were griping pains in our stomachs. School stopped. The kids wandered about, clutching their guts and whining. I found myself watching Ben all the time, his blown-out belly and matchstick legs. Maureen lay moaning in her hut. Mike sat all day beside the bed with his hands dangling between his knees, staring at the floor. Kim spent a lot of time there too. Renton looked in from time to time and mumbled something, but he had only words left to treat people with.

I suppose it was a couple of months before Branwell finally gave up on Rhodes. He got us in the chapel and told us, and everybody could see he was ill. There were only about a hundred of us left, and we fitted into the place easily. The old man said Rhodes and his party must have met with an accident, but you could tell he didn't believe it. He urged us to hang on and wait for the Swiss, but his heart wasn't in it.

A thin wind whipped flurries of early snow across the compound. People started to slip away. I suppose they thought they'd have more chance in twos and threes, fewer mouths to feed, more territory to forage on. Those of us who stayed, stayed through fear, or because of old Branwell. Kim stayed because of Maureen and I couldn't leave Kim.

The baby came one December afternoon. It had no mouth, and it died almost as soon as it was born. Renton hurried straight from Maureen's bedside to Branwell's. The old man died that night. I went to the stable to tell his donkey, and because I knew Kim would be there.

The donkey stood, a worn grey bagful of bones, chewing away at nothing while Kim wet its flank with her tears. I sat down well away from them. I didn't speak, but I think the donkey knew. I sat there with my back against the wall, listening.

At first I didn't know what I was listening for. Then I realized I was hoping the helicopter would come, like the last time we were here. I made a small, involuntary sound and Kim turned her head.

‘Danny?' Her voice was a fragile thing.

‘Yes. You all right love?' Stupid, meaningless question. She turned away, resting her forehead on the donkey's flank.

‘We're leaving, Kim. Ben and me.'

‘Yes.'

‘I expect you'll stay. With Maureen.'

‘I don't know. It doesn't really matter where we are, does it? We'll all die in the end, wherever we are.'

‘Everybody dies in the end.'

‘You know what I mean.'

I ran my fingers through my hair. It was stiff, matted. We'd all stopped caring for ourselves weeks ago. The phrase pre-Neanderthal passed through my mind, followed by an overwhelming feeling of sadness. After a while I said, ‘There's a place I know. Holy Island. There's a causeway to it that's cut off when the tide's in, and a castle. It's a long way from anywhere else. We might be all right there.'

‘We might,' she said wearily. ‘But I doubt it. And anyway it's hundreds of miles away.'

I shrugged in the dark. ‘If Ben could make it, you could.'

She sniffed. ‘How d'you know Ben could make it, though?'

‘I don't, but I'm not staying here. Not now.'

‘It's winter, Danny. You'll …'

‘Die? Better to die doing something than to sit here waiting for it. Will you come with us, Kim?'

‘I – I don't know. I don't know if I can go on any more, Danny. I don't know if I even want to.'

I didn't say anything for a while. Kim stroked the donkey's knobbly spine and I sat watching her, remembering something Branwell had said a long time ago. They haven't killed that, have they, with their bombs and their hunger and their cold. They haven't killed that.

He'd meant love: my love for Kim, and he'd been right. They hadn't killed it. They couldn't. I got up and went over to her.

‘Kim,' I said. ‘I love you. You know that, and old Branwell knew it too.' I told her what he'd said, that day when Dad died and I'd felt like dying too. I told her I'd probably have given up long ago if it hadn't been for her. ‘I can't stay here,' I cried, ‘But I won't go without you. Come with me, Kim. Let me try to make a place for us, somewhere.'

She was silent for a while, and then she nodded. ‘All right, Danny,' she whispered. ‘We'll give it one more try for Ben and the old man.'

We slipped away that night, Ben, Kim and me. Ben rode, clinging half-awake to the bundle of spare clothes on the donkey's back. We left without saying goodbye, because you can't just say goodbye. You've got to say other things too, and there was nothing else to say. Morning found us in the rolling hills, going north.

‘Why not try one of our chip-butties?' said the fading sign in the café window. My guts yearned. We'd been five days on the road and this was Osmotherly. There was no damage here, no bomb damage, I mean. People had been through looting, because all the doors were kicked in and most of the windows smashed, but nobody would waste a bomb on Osmotherly.

I looked across the donkey's neck at Kim. ‘Why don't we try one of their chip-butties?' I said.

‘Shut up, Danny.' Her feet hurt and it was cold as hell and coming on to sleet.

Ben, perched on the animal's back, said. ‘Can't we stay here, Danny? I'm tired and my feet have gone funny.' I laughed. ‘Your feet have gone funny? What about mine and Kim's? We've been walking all day.'

It was probably about three in the afternoon. We'd spent the previous night in a farm building and had found a pile of rock-hard swedes in a corner. We'd gnawed some for breakfast. They were like doorknobs. The donkey had polished off about twenty of the things and its sides had blown out like a flaming balloon. It was the first decent meal the poor creature had had in months. I grinned up at Ben.

‘Aye, I reckon we can spend the night, kiddo. Doesn't look like anyone's around.' We'd come halfway down the main street by now, Kim and me gripping our cudgels, peering in
doorways and down alleys. Nothing stirred, not even a cat. I could have fancied a nice bit of cat. I nodded towards a house with windows still intact.

‘We'll kip down in there. Hang on a minute.' I left them standing in the middle of the road and approached the house, my club at the ready. No smell of occupation reached my nostrils, only the damp, flat odour of decay. I did a quick tour of the rooms. There was a beat-up suite, a rusting gas-cooker and some junk on the floors, broken cups and that. Two upstairs rooms had beds, but looters had taken the mattresses and bedding. I called Kim across.

‘Unload the donkey,' I said. ‘And get Ben bedded down. I'm off back to that café to see if there's any grub.' I started back along the empty street, head down against the sleet.

It had been a pretty rudimentary café, a hikers' place with a juke-box and cheap plastic furniture. The juke-box stood rusting in a corner and somebody had smashed all the furniture. The display counter was glassless, the tea and coffee machines ripped out. I hadn't expected to find anything here; it was the cellar that interested me. I found the steps, pulled a torch from my pocket and went down.

It was single cellar, whitewashed, with tiers of shelving round the walls. I flashed the torch about. The shelves were bare, except that on the top one, in a corner, stood the gas-meter I'd been looking for. I went over, reached up and thrust my hand behind it. As I had hoped, there was something in the cobwebbed space between the meter and the wall. On tiptoe, I pulled out two rusty tins and a damp, disintegrating packet. If you pile stock on a shelf near a meter, something is bound to fall down behind it now and then. It was always happening at home.

The packet had contained breakfast cereal, but now held only a lump of mould. I dropped it on the floor and examined the tins by torchlight. The labels were damp and spotted with black, but enough of the print remained for me to see that one held soup and the other spaghetti. I grinned, and was heading for the steps when I heard something. I stopped, dead.

It was a familiar sound, a sound I'd once thrilled to and never
thought to hear again, the snarl of high-powered motor-bikes.

There were several of them. I couldn't tell how many, but they were approaching at speed. The roar of their engines swelled till I fancied I felt the vibration. I doused the torch and stood, gazing at the ceiling.

The din reached a crescendo and began to recede. I sucked in some air. Whoever they were, they'd gone straight through. I moved, and as I moved the fading note changed. There was a coughing, a series of rapid detonations and some revving. The bikes were coming back, moving slowly. They'd seen something.

I thrust the tins in my pockets, grabbed my club and was halfway up the steps when a pair of legs in black leather appeared at the top.

‘Stop there!' I stopped, feeling myself go cold. The legs were not familiar, but the voice was. It was Rhodes.

A second man appeared with a torch, which he shone in my face. I jerked my head aside, screwing up my eyes, and Rhodes said, ‘Well, well, well, if it isn't young Lodge. What're you doing roaming about the countryside, eh? When I saw that mangy animal up there I thought it was old Branwell, come to show me the error of my ways. Now there's a sanctimonious old wassock for you!'

‘You shut up about him!' If he hadn't had a gun I'd have gone for him. I was scared, but I was blazing mad as well. ‘You're not fit to say his name. Why the heck did I have to run into you, of all people?' I knew I'd had it, I suppose. I only hoped he'd think I was alone.

He smirked. ‘It goes to prove the old saying, doesn't it, Lodge: all roams lead to Rhodes.' He laughed loudly, nudging the man with the torch.

I stood, forcing myself to gaze levelly into the glare, hoping Kim and Ben would get away. Rhodes' laughter stopped, like somebody had switched it off.

‘All right Lodge,' he snarled. ‘So maybe it wasn't the world's funniest gag. You should've made the most of it anyway, because it's the last you'll ever hear. Drop that club and start backing down. Slowly.'

I'd forgotten I held the club. I opened my fingers and it went clattering down the steps. I didn't care, as long as Kim got away with the kid. You're not hungry when you're dead, and you don't feel the cold. I backed down, as slowly as I could. Every second was precious. Rhodes and the other guy started down, keeping the same gap between us.

‘Right.' I'd reached the damp flags. ‘Over against the wall. Turn your pockets out.' He'd seen the bulges. I pulled out the tins and my torch, and his mate came and took them from me. I leant my back against the wall. A few flakes of whitewash fluttered down and settled on my jacket. My hair brushed the underside of a shelf. I felt tired.

‘Goodbye then, Lodge.' I closed my eyes.

The submachine-gun made a terrific racket in the confined space. They say you don't hear the one that gets you, but I wouldn't know about that. All I know is, there was this hellish clatter and I sort of stiffened and nothing hit me and I opened my eyes and Kim was on the steps with a gun, and Rhodes and his pal were lying in these very relaxed postures on the floor.

Before I had a chance to say anything, a motor-bike started up outside. There were a couple of shots, and the sound of the bike departing. Kim let out an oath and started up the stairs. I grabbed the tins and Rhodes' gun and followed her.

I found her, fists on hips, glaring down the road. Two bikes stood nearby, glugging petrol onto the ground. The donkey was cropping grass some yards away, oblivious to the driven sleet.

‘What happened?' I said. Kim gave up gazing after the vanished machine and kicked one of those that remained. ‘I heard 'em coming,' she said. ‘I was just getting Ben wrapped up. I ran outside and they were coming back towards the café, three of them. They'd seen the donkey, I suppose. I forgot to tie him up and he'd followed you. I saw two of 'em go in. They left the other one watching the bikes. They hadn't seen me. I got my club, sneaked up and belted him over the head. I thought I'd killed him. I took his gun. He must have come round, heard the firing and scarpered, after shooting holes in these things so we couldn't follow. I should have hit him harder.'

‘Why?' I wasn't thinking straight. ‘What's it matter, Kim? He's gone.'

‘Yeah, but he'll be back. There were twenty-five in Rhodes' party, and I bet they've all got bikes. We've got to get out of here, Danny. Now!'

There's a sort of instinct for self-preservation that goes on operating long after you've stopped caring. As I followed Kim back towards the house, a part of me was wishing she'd left me to die and when, a few moments later, I shook that poor kid awake and saw the handfuls of his hair on the blanket, I knew that half of my reason for living was dying.