Last Light (29 page)

‘That your rig, love?’ asked the man. He looked to be in his early thirties and graced with a fading tattoo on his upper left arm; one of those swirling Celtic patterns that Andy had once, almost, decided to have. Until, that is, he’d spotted David Beckham sporting one on a TV commercial that had him dressed, for whatever reason, as some sort of gladiator.

‘Yeah, it’s mine. I’m pissin’ off,’ she grunted, inwardly cringing at her lame impersonation of a tough bitch trucker.

‘The roads are all blocked off, love,’ said the man. ‘The fuckin’ army and police have blocked everything off. You’re better just sittin’ tight, love.’

Jenny shrugged. ‘Yeah? Well I’m goin’ to try me luck. There’s nothin’ here. Just that bollocks service station over there, and they won’t let me in.’

The man cast a glance towards it. ‘Yeah. Selfish bastards inside won’t open up. Water’s stopped running now, and we’re all getting fuckin’ thirsty. Shit . . . I mean some people, eh?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Yeah. And there’s no way in. It’s all locked up tight. Pretty solid too. Bastards.’

‘We came up night before last askin’ for some food. There’s no fuckin’ food at all now on our estate. Just one corner shop selling fags and sweets, and that’s all cleaned out now.’

She offered a grim supportive smile. ‘Yeah. It’s crazy. What’s going on?’

The man nodded. ‘Just fuckin’ unbelievable. One minute it’s all normal, the next minute everyone’s going crazy. And now there’s no fuckin’ food anywhere, because the selfish bastards who got in first are hoardin’ everything what they took.’

‘I guess it’s the same everywhere, not just here,’ she replied.

‘Yeah, s’pose. Anyway. We sort of formed a co-operative, over on the Runston housin’ estate. There’s old ’uns and a lot of mums and kids that’re gettin’ hungry over there,’ said the man. He turned and pointed towards the pavilion. ‘There’s a shit-load of food in there they should be sharin’ out with us. But the fuckin’ manager of this place won’t give us a thing.’

‘Yeah, selfish bloody bastards,’ Jenny said, shaking her head disdainfully. ‘Look, good luck anyway mate. I hope you have better luck than I did.’ She began to wind the window up.

‘Hang on love,’ said the man, placing his hand over the rising rim of glass.

She stopped winding it up. ‘Yeah?’

‘You can help us out.’

‘I don’t see how. They wouldn’t let me in, so I guess I’ll see if there’s somewhere else—’

‘Listen love. You could just smack their front wall in. It’s only fuckin’ plastic. We thought it was glass last time we was here, it wouldn’t break. Things just kept fuckin’ well bouncing off it.’ The man pointed towards the pavilion. ‘You could just run your truck into the front, beside the entrance. Wouldn’t need to do it too hard neither, you could just reverse it in really. It wouldn’t do your rig any damage.’

Jenny made a big show of giving it some thought as the man warily kept his hand over the rim of the window. Behind him, the other people looked up at her hopefully; a cluster of very normal and very worried people, very much at odds with Mr Stewart’s description of the ‘gang of yobbos that had terrorised us’ earlier. Perhaps they had been kids that were passing through, or perhaps kids from the same housing estate as these people? Either way,
these
were just ordinary people trying to survive, no different to the lucky few inside who’d been working the evening shift here when things started to unravel.

Jenny wondered what right Mr Stewart had to decide who should receive and who shouldn’t, and why he’d been willing to let her, Paul and Ruth in, and yet not prepared to help these people.

It was all down to our appearance, wasn’t it? Ruth in her dark business trouser-suit, my smart interview clothes, Paul’s tidy, expensive looking casuals. Not a single tattoo between us, no sportswear, no trouble.

That’s what it boiled down to she supposed, at least to someone like Mr Stewart.

Those nice, smart-looking people can come in. But those bloody oiks from the estate? Let ’em starve.

Jenny looked up. She could see many, many more people emerging from the line of stunted saplings, coming down the slip-road and gathering in loose clusters and groups across the car-park. If there had been tattered piles of neatly ordered bric-à-brac on the ground and a row of sensibly parked Ford Escorts behind them, it would have looked like the early stages of a car-boot sale.

‘What do you reckon?’ prompted the man.

Jenny shifted uncomfortably. These people deserved to share what was in there, just as much as those inside. But, there were just too many of them - perhaps a hundred now, and, she suspected, there would be more to come. She could imagine the scale of this little siege growing quickly, as word spread to the various estates and villages around this nondescript piece of A road in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe Mr Stewart let us in simply because it was just the three of us, on our own?

Jenny looked around. In a matter of hours this car-park could be full of people pressed against the wall, hammering on it, pleading for food and water, and seeing them inside drinking tea and enjoying fried burgers . . . and that frustration quickly turning to anger, rage.

And if they found a way to smash in the front?

Jenny shook her head. ‘Look, sorry mate.’ She resumed winding up the window and stuck the key into the ignition.

‘Fuckin’ hell, love,’ shouted the man through the glass, his matey, we’re-in-this-together demeanour quickly replaced with a flash of aggression. ‘Just askin’ for a little fuckin’ help!’ he shouted over the throaty rumble of the truck’s diesel engine, idling noisily. Jenny stabbed the accelerator and the truck growled deafeningly and belched smoke.

‘Sorry!’ she shouted apologetically back, and with an awkward backward lurch that almost pulled the man’s tattooed arm out of its socket as he hung on to the driver’s side door-handle, she reversed away from the knot of people that had gathered at the front.

The truck bunny-hopped manically, rocking alarmingly on its suspension as she struggled to get a feel for the pedals. The clusters of people that had gathered in the car-park had to quickly leap out of the way.

She guessed her crude bluff that she was the regular driver of this particular rig was well and truly blown now. Not that she had any illusions that the tattoo guy had been convinced in the first place.

Clear now of anything, or anyone, she might hit, she spun the large steering-wheel and swung the truck round towards the service station. Almost immediately, above the loud rattle of the engine, she heard a chorus of voices cheering her on.

They think I’m going to ram it for them
.

The pavilion was only about seventy-five yards ahead of her. She drove slowly towards it, unsure how well she could control the vehicle - how quickly this monstrous bugger would come to a halt after she’d applied the brakes. It would be the definition of bloody irony if she
accidentally
rolled through that wall. Jenny needed to park it parallel to it, and as snugly close to it as she dared.

Thirty yards away she swung the truck to the right, taking it off course for a few moments, before turning it sharply left, back towards the entrance, swinging it round in a large loop so that now it was coming in at a tangent towards the front of the pavilion. Seconds later, the wheels beneath the cab rode the curb surrounding a stubby bush planted out front, then knocked aside an uninspiring children’s little wooden climbing-frame and some picnic benches before riding up on to a small paved pedestrian area in front of the pavilion.

Jenny slowed the truck right down, gently rolling forward until the cab, and the trailer behind it - carrying a freight container - more or less covered the entire front wall of the pavilion. She then jabbed the brakes which spat and hissed loudly like a giant serpent. She swung open the driver-side door.

It thudded heavily against the front of the pavilion, scuffing the perspex and only half-opening - not quite enough to squeeze through.

Oh great.

She realised she’d done too bloody good a job of parking snugly against the front of the pavilion.

CHAPTER 60

6.11 p.m. GMT
Beauford Service Station

Jenny turned round to look over her shoulder, out through the passenger-side window at the car-park. Those people were coming this way; many of them walking swiftly, some jogging. She sensed there was some confusion amongst them over whether the truck had managed to knock a hole through, or was preparing to reverse and try again . . . or something else. Either way, people were gravitating towards it, curious to see what was going on.

They were going to be upon her in less than a minute, perhaps that tattoo man would be amongst the first to arrive, and she was sure he’d be mighty pissed off with her, when he sussed her intention had been to blockade the front with the articulated truck.

She guessed there was just about enough time to climb out of the passenger-side door, run around the front of the truck, squeeze into the narrow two or three foot gap between the side of the truck and the front wall, and hope to God the revolving door - which protruded a little - wasn’t blocked, or obstructed by the truck in any way.

You’ve got to immobilise the truck.

Shit, yes she had to. It was a fair bet there was someone out there who’d know how to get this thing going without the need of the ignition key.

The approaching crowd was converging. Many of them now jogging towards her, perhaps hoping she’d broken through. She could see still more people emerging from the distant tree line around the edge of the car-park, and coming down the slip-road. It was as if some jungle drums, playing on a frequency beyond her hearing, was summoning the thirsty and the hungry for miles around.

Oh Jesus . . . get a move on girl!

She grabbed the steering-wheel lock-bar off the passenger seat and fumbled with it, trying to work out how it fitted on to the steering-wheel. She looked up again.

They were running, sprinting towards her now - only forty or fifty yards away. She spotted the tattooed man leading the charge. Clearly he
had
twigged that she’d fooled him, that she was one of
those bastards inside
. . . one of the
selfish bastards
.

He was going to beat the crap out of her for sure.

‘Oh shit! Come on!’

Jenny had used a locking-bar on her little Peugeot many years ago; a dinky little bar that, to be honest, could have been jimmied loose and opened with a two pence piece and a little patience. It looked nothing like this heavy-duty thing that looked like it belonged in a gym. But, she could see a groove cut into the thick side of the bar, where obviously it was designed to rest across the wheel. Placing the groove against the steering-wheel, everything quickly fell into place, and she could see how it closed and locked. With a reassuring click, the bar secured around it, and protruded two feet out, preventing the wheel turning more than halfway round. One might be able to turn the truck around with many backward and forward steps, with this lock still attached but it would have to do.

She clambered across both seats, cursing her calf-length cotton skirt as it caught momentarily on the gear stick, and then, pushed open the passenger-side door, just as the first of those people - the tattooed man amongst them - were bearing down on her, no more than a dozen yards away. His face was stony, rigid with anger, she thought she could hear him calling her all sorts. Jenny knew she was in big trouble if they got a hold of her.

She jumped down to the ground and immediately dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl under the truck; it seemed the quickest way. Behind her she could hear the thud of trainers against tarmac, and the frustrated bellow of a winded voice.

‘You fucking bitch!’

As she crawled on her belly beneath the lumpy grime and oil-encrusted chassis, she felt her ankle suddenly being squeezed by a vice. Looking back down, she could see a hand wrapped around it and the start of a tanned and muscular forearm. Then
his
face dipped down into view; tattoo-man.

‘Fucking cow! You’re with those bastards inside,’ he snarled as he pulled hard on her leg. She felt the coarse pebbly paving slabs grate painfully against her stomach and chest as she was being dragged out roughly from beneath the truck.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No please!’

Jenny wrapped her forearm around a support strut on the side of the chassis and held as tightly as she could. The man tightened his grip on her leg and redoubled his effort to pull her out.

‘Come on out, bitch!’

Jenny could now see several pairs of legs had joined those of Mr Tattoo. She felt another pair of hands on her shin, and as they settled into a rhythmic jerking action, she felt her grip weakening with each successive pull.

‘No, please!’ she screamed pointlessly.

Another hard pull and Jenny found her armlock on the strut had been broken. She flailed around for something else to grab, once again feeling the rough paving slabs scrape away at her skin as her body was being pulled out into the open.

And then he was standing over her, flanked on one side by a short squat man who looked to be ten years older, and on the other, by a woman, perhaps the same age as Jenny, her platinum-blonde hair pulled back tightly away from a hard, lean, humourless face, into a ponytail.

Tattoo shook his head. ‘Fuckin’ selfish bastards like you always seem to do all right when things turn to shit,’ he muttered angrily.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Jenny whimpered, ‘I was just—’

‘Yeah. I thought you was talking a load of
pony
. Bloody truck driver, my arse.’

Jenny tried again, ‘I was just—’

‘Yeah, we know what you was just doing, love,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve got three fuckin’ kids and a baby at home all crying because I can’t find anything to fuckin’ feed them. And there’s you, you stuck-up bitch, making sure you and those selfish bastards in there get to keep it all for yourselves.’

Oh God, they’re really going to hurt me.

‘Fuckin’ do this bitch, Tom,’ said the platinum blonde. ‘I can’t stand stuck-up cows like this - think they’re better than everyone else.’

Tattoo looked down at her. ‘I bet people like
you
are doin’ all right. People like
you
who got the spare money to have extra food hidden away, to make sure you come out all right. Whilst us poor bastards are left on our own to fuckin’ starve.’

‘It’s only been a couple of d-days,’ Jenny muttered, her voice wobbling, ‘n-nobody’s s-starving yet.’

‘Yeah? You think? My kids are!’ screamed the blonde. ‘There’s nothin’ where we live . . . nothin’. And no one’s come to fuckin’ help us.’

I’ve got to keep them talking.

‘But they will,’ replied Jenny. ‘It’s j-just like that New Orleans thing. Help will arrive. The p-police will be back.’

The woman leaned down and slapped Jenny across the face. ‘Just shut up! SHUT UP!’

Tattoo shook his head. ‘Police aren’t fuckin’ coming, ’cause they’re too busy guarding important shit. It’s just us. And we’ve got to look after ourselves.’

Jenny wiped the blood from her lip. ‘You’re right, we need to work tog—’

The blonde slapped her again. ‘SHUT IT!’ she screamed.

‘Let’s do her!’ said the woman, ‘Show those bastards inside that we mean business.’

Tattoo looked around at the growing pack of people. There was a knot of perhaps twenty or thirty gathered around Jenny looking down at her, and more were joining the crowd with every second. She could see they were all emotionally strung out - frightened, hungry, thirsty - desperate for someone to take the lead and point the way forward. She could see there were some who just wanted a share of what was inside - no violence please - just a fair share.

And there were some who wanted to rip her to shreds.

She knew it was those of the latter kind who tended to make the biggest noise, the
hidden sociopaths
, the ones who cried loudest and longest for a lynching when some paedophile, benefit-defrauding immigrant, or disgraced minor celebrity was being outed by the red-top press.

The witch burners.

‘Pull her out where those shits inside can see her. Then let’s do her!’ goaded the blonde again. Voices in the crowd shouted approval at that.

Tattoo-man perhaps hadn’t intended to take things that far, but Jenny could see him looking around at the crowd, the blonde bitch was baying for blood, and that was swaying the crowd.

‘Okay!’ he shouted above the noise. ‘We’ll do her where they can see!’

She saw a flicker of metal, a penknife in someone’s hand.

Oh no, please no.

Jenny flushed cold, and her bladder loosened. She closed her eyes with shame.

She heard a younger man shout, ‘Hey! She’s pissed herself! Look!’

And then she felt hands all over her, on her arms and legs, and where they didn’t need to be . . . pulling her roughly off the ground.

The fear of the knife she had seen pushed every other thought out of her mind.

Don’t cut me, don’t cut me, don’t cut me.