Last Light (12 page)

One of the lads, Lamby, nodded towards the dug-in enemy gunmen. ‘How do we do that? They got a fucking good position. ’

‘If we sit here they have,’ replied Bolton grinning, ‘but if we take them by surprise and charge them - they’ll bolt like rabbits.’

Actually, he doubted very much that they would. He hit the press-to-talk button on his PRR. ‘Sir, we’re going to charge over and barrel-shoot the bastards.’

Lieutenant Carter’s reply was hesitant. ‘Okay, in that case we’ll give you covering fire Sergeant. Give me your shout and we’ll try and keep their heads down.’

‘Yes sir,’ he replied as he refreshed his magazine and then turned to the others. ‘Check your ammo, lads. On my command we’re going over there and giving those shits a good kicking. The other boys will give us covering. You ready?’

The six young men nodded in unison as they clambered to their feet, keeping low, but ready to charge on their Sergeant’s command.

Bolton smiled.

Good lads, all of them.

‘All right then.’

He spoke into his throat mic. ‘Sir, we’re ready to go.’

‘We’re ready to cover you.’

‘On “one” then sir?’

‘Understood.’

Bolton counted down loudly, ‘Three . . . two . . . ONE!’

He leapt out from behind the parked Rovers, his rifle held at the hip, and without a moment’s hesitation the six men with him followed suit. Simultaneously, Lieutenant Carter’s men opened fire on the dug-in militia and as sparks flew around them, they all hunkered down.

Sergeant Bolton found himself laughing breathlessly as he screamed encouragement at his men. They scrambled across thirty feet of open ground with gunfire whistling past them inaccurately from the mob outside.

As they reached the smouldering tangle that had not so long ago been a truck, the men dug in there were largely caught out, looking up at the screaming, enraged faces of the British squaddies with only a scant moment to try and swing their AKs up in response.

Bolton stumbled upon an old man who looked old enough to be his grandfather; a tanned face rich with laughter lines and framed with a white-and-grey beard, and big blue eyes opened wide with surprise. As he pulled the trigger and destroyed that face, he oddly found himself thinking in the heat of the moment that the man had looked a little like Santa Claus.

His section made quick work of the other half a dozen; firing down at the prone forms quickly and ruthlessly. He saw one of them drop his gun as if it were red-hot and quickly raise his hands. But the soldier standing over him made a snap decision to ignore that and fired a dozen rounds into his chest and head.

Bolton nodded approvingly, this wasn’t the kind of exchange where prisoners could be taken.

Lieutenant Carter led his men out from their position behind the stacked pallets and emerged into the open, dropping smartly into a firing stance. They unleashed a sustained volley at the mob that had begun to press forward through the wreckage to reclaim their toe-hold. As the first few of them dropped to the ground, the others quickly fell back and within little more than a dozen seconds Carter’s men had pushed them back out of the compound and on to the kerb outside, where a sense of panic swept through the crowd like wildfire, and the mob began to waver, then disperse. They turned on their heels and beat a retreat back across the boulevard to the shelter and safety of the buildings and walled gardens on the far side.

The ground around the gateway was littered with the bodies of many of them. Only a couple of the prone forms were still moving.

Lieutenant Carter waved his arm. ‘All right, cease firing!’ he shouted. He knew the section’s wind was up, but they desperately needed to conserve the ammo they had left.

He turned round to look for Sergeant Bolton, firstly to congratulate him on having the bottle to pull that charge off, and secondly to issue orders to seal that gateway somehow. They’d probably need to push one or two of the blast-damaged Rovers over to plug the gap. That would be enough of an obstruction for now.

And then he saw Bolton standing amidst the wreckage holding both hands to his pelvis and looking down at the spreading dark stain and the ragged hole in his tunic.

‘Bollocks.’ Bolton groaned angrily before dropping to his knees.

CHAPTER 21

8.55 a.m.
UEA, Norwich

Ash stepped silently over the stiffening corpse of Alison Derby. The blood that had gushed from her carotid artery last night was now a dry pool of dark brown gel on the linoleum floor. She was dead within two minutes of him slipping the narrow blade of his knife into the side of her neck - unconscious after only a minute. He had decided he couldn’t afford to be distracted by her shuffling and whimpering.

A shame; she had been nice, courteous and helpful.

But he needed it to be quiet inside, so he’d hear when Leona Sutherland came up the stairs and approached the door. He had waited all through the night, sitting on the stool in the kitchen, in the dark, patiently waiting. It seemed likely, after midnight, that the girl was staying over with her boyfriend. But he couldn’t afford to be asleep just in case she did turn up.

He’d had the dark hours alone, to sort through his thoughts.

We could have closed the door on the little girl, when she entered. I could have finished her there.

But no, that would have been needlessly reckless. Processing a body in an exclusive hotel, in the middle of Manhattan, would have been difficult. Yet, what she had seen was dangerous; three of The Twelve. Worse still, the three of them together in the same room.

He knelt down beside Alison Derby; her face was grey, her lips a bluey-purple, her eyes still open, dull and not quite focused on anything. Ash could kill a ten-year-old girl just as easily as an eighteen year old. The end always justified the means. And in any case perhaps it was a kindness. The next few weeks were going to be truly apocalyptic. A young girl like Alison, with no advance knowledge of what was coming, unprepared, no stocks of food, or water . . . reduced to living like a cave-dweller and at the mercy of a very brutal form of Darwinism? She’d not have lasted long. She almost certainly would have been one of those who failed to make it out the other side.

Ash passed several hours confessing to Alison everything he knew about the
plan
, and why
they
were doing it. Why it needed to be done. And then he told her all about himself. How lonely it was to live only within the shadows, to move from one pseudonym to the next.

She was a great listener. The dead usually were.

Dawn arrived early, a clear sky, a strong sun and Ash listened to the campus slowly wake up, the noises drifting in through the open kitchen window; an alarm radio snapping on, a kettle boiling, the laughter and to-and-fro from a couple of girls on the floor above, the thud of a dance track from someone’s stereo.

And then he heard footsteps on the stairwell outside. It could be her, could be someone else. Either way, he should be ready to pull her in and quickly deal with her as soon as that door opened.

Leona took the stairs up to the second floor of her accommodation block fogged with worry and jumbled thoughts. In the foyer she stood with the keys jangling in her hands. Coming down the stairs from the floor above she could hear someone’s stereo pumping out a bass line that made the stairwell window vibrate subtly.

Everyone seemed to be calmly going about their business.

‘. . . it’ll catch everyone by surprise, no one will know what’s happened until all of a sudden there are soldiers stationed around every petrol station and food shop . . .’

Dad’s words sent a shiver down her.

‘. . . you don’t want to be the last person to react to this . . .’

‘Shit, I really have to go home,’ she muttered quietly to herself.

But there were a few things she needed to get: some clothes, the house keys, her iPod; and then she’d have to see what time the first available train down to Liverpool Street station was. She shuffled through her keys and found the one for their door, hoping that Alison had the kettle on so she could grab a quick cup of tea before packing her bag to go home.

Of course, Alison was going to want to know why the hell she was going home all of a sudden, instead of sticking around for reading week like she’d promised. Leona wasn’t sure she was quite ready to come out with something like, ‘Oh I’m heading home because my Dad said the end of the world’s about to happen. He knows about that kind of stuff.’ Alison was pretty cool though. Unlike the four other girls they shared with, who spent most of their time talking
Big Brother
, she was quite switched on.

She was about to slide the key into the door lock when her phone rang.

CHAPTER 22

8.57 a.m. GMT
UEA, Norwich

It made her jump.

She looked at the number on the display, it was Dad again.

‘Dad, you okay? It sounded like something was going on over th—?’

‘Leona, listen to me. I haven’t got much charge on my phone. I . . .’

‘Dad, I was so worried about—’

‘LISTEN!’

She shut up.

‘Do
not
go to our home. It’s not safe! Do you understand?’

‘What? Why?’

‘I haven’t got time to explain. It’s going crazy here, my phone could cut off at any time. Look, I might be wrong. I probably am, but just to be safe . . . get Jake, get some food and water, you know what kind of food. Tins. And then go to Jill’s.’

Jill was a friend of Mum’s, she lived alone three houses down on the opposite side of their leafy little street.

‘Jill’s? Why?’

‘Just do that will you? Stay away from home. Go to Jill’s instead.’

‘But why Dad?’

‘I haven’t got the time. Where are you right now?’

‘I’m just letting myself into my digs, I was going to pack some—’

‘Oh for Christ’s . . . Leona, get the hell away from there!’

‘What?’

‘Please, do me a favour and leave right now.’

‘Dad? What’s going on ? You’re scaring me.’

‘Leona, leave RIGHT NOW—’

The call disconnected.

She stared at the door in front of her for a moment, suddenly very wary of what might be inside. Her key had been poised inches from the lock when the phone rang. It was still hovering inches away now. There was no ambiguity there. Dad said to ‘get the hell away’ from her digs. If he’d said that in any other way; a nagging, hectoring tone, a snotty irritable voice, his softly-softly
do it for me
voice, she would probably have decided to tune him out.

But he’d said it in just the right way to scare the shit out of her.

Leona put the key back in her pocket, turned as quietly as she could on her heels and took the stairs quickly down to the front door of the building.

He was still splayed out on his bed, dead to the world, fast asleep.

She crossed the room and knelt down beside him. ‘Dan. Wake up, Dan,’ she said quietly.

He stirred almost immediately, stretching, squawking out a strangled yawn and then rubbed his big blue eyes with the backs of his hands.

Baby eyes.

Leona had to ask him a favour. She had to try. Walking briskly back across the centre of town she had tried the Virgin ticket line only to find out that for some unspecified reason, there were no trains down to London. She’d had the same luck with Express coaches. Oh God, she hated that she had to ask such a big favour, with them only being an item for what . . . no more than 24 hours? Not that they were officially an item yet. It’s not like any of it was
official
- they were both sort of still finding their way through whatever it was they had going together.

‘Dan?’

‘Yeah,’ he muttered sleepily, reaching out with one hand and cupping her small chin in it. ‘Ask me anything you want, sexy babee,’ he added.

‘Dan, I need a favour. A really big favour.’

Oh crap, here goes. And if he says ‘NO’ you know you can’t really blame him
.

‘Could you drive me to London?’ she blurted, wrinkling her face in anticipation of his answer. It really was unfair to ask him like this, and she really did feel like a selfish, needy cow for—

‘Sure,’ he muttered sleepily.

They drove the first half an hour in silence, some music blaring from the van’s cheap stereo. Leona wasn’t really listening to it; instead she was wondering how she was going to explain this sudden, desperate need to head home, without sounding like a total doomsday propeller-head, like Dad.

Daniel drove on quite happily nodding his head to the music, trundling uncertainly along in the slow lane as his van, an ancient-looking rust-encrusted Ford given to him by his foster mum, struggled doggedly to achieve a steady sixty miles per hour.

As the A11 merged into the M11, they managed to overtake a surprisingly long convoy of army trucks. Daniel counted twenty of them, all of them full of soldiers, some of whom had spotted Leona in the passenger seat as they passed by and waved, grinned and made some crude and suggestive gestures towards her. She stared rigidly ahead, determined to ignore them.

It wasn’t until they eventually hit the M25 and the outskirts of London that either his patience finally ran out, or the idea occurred to him to actually ask. He turned the music down.

‘Why
are
we going to London anyway?’

Leona sighed. ‘Dan, you’re going to think I’m a bit mad.’

He smirked, ‘I know you’re mad.’

So
, she wondered,
how do I begin?

‘Have you seen the news?’

Daniel shook his head, smiling goofily. ‘Uh . . . no, not recently. It’s all ugly old members of the government humping office staff, and losing lots of money, isn’t it?’

Leona ignored his joke. ‘Well, give me an idea of the last news you saw or heard?’

He was silent for a moment, giving the question serious consideration. ‘Last time I was home, I guess,’ he pursed his lips, counting silently, ‘yeah . . . about five weeks ago, I saw some.’

Leona shook her head. ‘My God, we could be facing the end of the world, and you wouldn’t have the first idea, would you?’

Daniel thought about that for a moment, before turning to look at her, still smiling. ‘Are we?’ he asked.

Leona shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

The last track on the CD came to an end, and he reached out to restart it.

‘Can we put the radio on?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I s’pose I better find out if the world is ending, huh?’

As they began to negotiate the increasing traffic heading west across the north of London, Leona hopped from radio station to radio station, dialling through inner-city urban stations pumping out R&B without a care in the world. They caught several news bulletins on Radio 1, and then she tuned to Radio 4, a station she wouldn’t normally touch with a barge-pole, except today. They had some experts in the studio talking with great solemnity and concern about the developing global crisis and more specifically, about the lunchtime announcement the Prime Minister was scheduled to make.

Leona’s navigation left a lot to be desired and they struggled to find the correct way off the M25 to head down to North Finchley, where Jake’s prep school was located, doubling back on to the ring road several times before they found the right junction to come off at.

‘So, what . . . we’re suddenly going to run out of electricity or something?’ asked Daniel, after listening to a heated exchange between a couple of guests on the programme they were listening to.

‘Yeah,’ she replied, ‘I think that’s what’ll happen.’

He hunched his shoulders, ‘Oh, okay. Not so bad then, I suppose. I thought we were—’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me?’

Go easy on him, Dan’s not had the five-year oil paranoia crash course, that you have
.

‘Uh no, I’m not kidding . . . am I?’

‘Dan, running out of electricity is just one thing. Do you know what else it really means - running out of oil?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Hospitals and stuff? Shit, UEA would have to close as well, right?’

She gestured towards a road sign. ‘There, left at the traffic lights. That takes us south towards North Finchley. Anyway, no it means much more than the university closing. God, much more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘No oil means so much more than no petrol for your car, or power for your . . . for your guitar amp.’

With a sudden realisation it occurred to her that she sounded so much like Dad. Even her barely detectable inherited accent was coming through more strongly.

‘Dan,’ she continued, ‘it means no bloody food, no water—’

‘Uh! No food? No water? How’s that then? It’s always pissing down in England, there’s water everywhere! And food, shit, there’s loads of it around.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I mean, it’s all farms and fields out there, once you get out in the countryside. That’s all food isn’t it?’

‘
Some
of it is food. But not nearly enough.’

Daniel laughed out loud. ‘What’s this all about? There’s some, like, riots on the other side of the world and suddenly you’re telling me we’re all going to be starving over here?’

Leona said nothing and looked at him.

Daniel laughed some more, and then turned to look at her. His smile slipped quickly away when he saw how intense she looked.

‘Oh come on,’ he said after a while.

‘Daniel, my dad’s an oil engineer. And for the last few years, you know what? All he’s talked to me and Mum about, is how one day the oil might suddenly be stopped from flowing. At first it was a little frightening. He’d be telling us this stuff, how easily, you know,
society
would fall apart, what could start it all happening . . . the warning signs. And he was so paranoid too, Dan. Talking about all this crap and then saying we should keep it to ourselves.’

Leona laughed. ‘As if I was going to spout that stuff to my mates at a party. He was so secretive about it all, he . . .’

‘It’s our little secret, Leona. Forget about those boring old men . . .’

‘Well anyway, it all started getting very boring. And for the last couple of years I started to think of Dad as a tediously paranoid dick.’

She looked out of the window at the street, clogged with cars nudging slowly forward amidst a soup of exhaust fumes shimmering in the mid-morning warmth, pedestrians passing by seemingly without a care in the world and enjoying the sun, the shop fronts on either side full of goodies at bargain-basement prices . . . an electronics store, with several forty-inch plasma screen TVs in the window all showing some monster trucks racing around a dirt track.

‘And this morning I discovered, after all this time . . . that maybe he wasn’t.’