Afterlight (19 page)

She nodded, eager to believe that, and then her face was in her hands, her shoulders shaking; her firm resolve to appear the strong woman in front of them had lasted as long as it could; she weakened and crumbled.

‘There’s food and water for you. We have an urn of heated water downstairs in the main piazza. Go down there and one of my people will sort you out a cup of tea.’

She stood up, pushing the chair back. ‘Th-thank you,’ she managed to sob. ‘I . . . I . . . was—’

‘That’s all right, Ms Rajput. You go and sort yourself out now. Morgan here will show you down and take your details. Help you settle in.’

‘You . . . you’re a kind man,’ she smiled weakly. ‘But how . . . how have you . . . ?’

‘Coped so well?’

She nodded. ‘I heard . . . from someone . . . I think I heard, that every last one of our safe zones ended in a mess.’ She managed a haunted smile of relief. ‘I really thought it was all . . . all gone.’

‘We’ve held out because difficult decisions were made early on.’

‘What?’

Maxwell gazed out of the office window looking down onto the rows of cots below. Dawn had broken and pallid grey light slipped across the entrance plaza. The people were stirring, roused by the clatter of a ladle on a metal catering pan.

‘Morgan will tell you,’ he continued, ‘I made the call to let in a lot fewer than I was told to.’ He shook his head. ‘Hardest decision I ever made, but I believe it was the right one.’

She nodded. ‘Yes . . . yes, I suppose it was.’

Morgan led her out of the office. The door closed behind them leaving him alone with Brooks.

‘My God,’ uttered Brooks eventually. ‘Then, what? It’s just us now?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘Us, and I suppose a few small groups here and there.’ He laughed.

‘The sort of survivalist nut jobs who’ve been hoping for something like this for years. I imagine they’re like pigs in mud.’

‘Jesus.’

‘The thing is, Brooks, this dome, those people out there,
that
is the UK now. That’s it. We’re what’s left of law and order, what’s left of the chain of command.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘And I suppose by default that’s going to make me . . . well, that makes me the Prime Minister, doesn’t it? The Big Cheese.’

Brooks looked down at him sharply but said nothing. He swallowed noisily, shuffled uncomfortably.

Maxwell stood up and stepped towards the window, looking down at Starbucks’ outside seating area, at Morgan leading the woman through the chairs and tables. He sat her down on an unassigned cot, produced a clipboard and began asking her questions, scribbling down her answers.

If this is all there is now, just us -
he shot a glance at Brooks - t
hen I need to think about the future. Who I can trust . . .

‘Brooks,’ he said, ‘I think I’m going to have to make some changes round here.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
acob watched Walter silently scanning the horizon as he helmed the yacht, all the sails out and fluttering, the diesel engine chugging and spitting; turned on to make better time.

He knew the old man was desperate to find Leona; desperate to find her for Jenny. Behind the gruff mask he’d kept on his face since the explosion, Jacob knew he blamed himself for Hannah’s death, for Jenny’s injuries . . . and now, unless he could find her and persuade her to come home, he’d blame himself for Leona’s departure, too.

Jacob returned his gaze to the sea. The small dinghy she’d taken had only a sixty-horsepower outboard motor on the back. With the sea as choppy as it was this morning she was going to make painfully slow progress. There was no knowing exactly when she’d set off, other than sometime before first light; so there was no knowing how much of a head start she had on them.

Nathan’s eyes were far better than his. He stood on the foredeck beside him, probing the gently rolling sea for the telltale line of white trailing suds, or the dark outline of the small dinghy.

Jacob couldn’t believe she could do this. Just up and leave him, leave Mum. He couldn’t believe it, but had somehow half expected it. Hannah had always been her argument for not returning to the mainland yet. Hannah was the reason she wanted to make their life aboard the rigs. And she’d never needed to explain to Jacob why, because they both remembered that winter morning the men came and did what they did.

But Hannah was gone now. Half, if not most, of her reason for staying gone.

But there’s still me . . . and Mum, Leona.

It stung that she’d just bailed out on them.

‘There’s Bracton!’ shouted Nathan; nothing more distinct than the pale, feathered silhouettes of rows of loading cranes, the outline of several small commercial freighters still securely moored at the quayside. William, Howard and Helen - those who’d hastily volunteered to come along and help Walter and the boys search for Leona - craned their necks port side to get a better view around the mast. There had been dozens more who’d offered to come, but Walter had been wary of overloading the boat with the well-intentioned and slowing it down.

‘See any sign of her ahead?’ shouted Walter.

Nathan squinted and shaded his eyes against the glare of the white sky. ‘No.’

Half an hour later, they were tying up at their usual spot, right next to where the dinghy bobbed and bumped against the concrete, secured to a mooring cleat by a careless half hitch and a loop that would have unravelled itself eventually.

Jacob was the first onto the quay. ‘LEONA!!’ he shouted, his voice bouncing back at him off the warehouse walls across the way.

‘LEONA!!’ His echo filled the silent waterfront.

Walter stepped ashore. ‘Right, there’s six of us. We’re not all splitting up and going in different bloody directions. Two groups of three, one gun each and we meet back here in one hour, all right?’

The others stepped ashore.

‘Nathan, here you go,’ he said passing him the army issue SA80. ‘You and Jake and—’

‘I’ll go with them,’ said Helen.

‘All right.’ He turned to the other two men. ‘William, Howard and me then. Don’t go any further than the commercial area; the warehouses, the loading points, the offices. Okay?’

Everyone nodded.

‘And back here in precisely one hour. No later.’

 

Twenty minutes later they were out of sight of the others, walking amongst the low industrial units of the port authority buildings, when it occurred to Jacob he knew exactly where his sister was; or at least where she was heading.

‘She’s going home.’

‘What?’

Jacob turned to look at Nathan and Helen. ‘Going home. London.’

Helen’s eyes widened. ‘London?’

‘Why’d she do that, Jay?’

Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t know, just a feeling. She’s talked about wanting to see our old house again.’

Both boys looked at each other in silence; an entire conversation within a glance. They’d discussed, fantasised many times about taking the opportunity one day. It was Nathan who spoke first. ‘Jay, what about now? What if we go now?’

Helen had never been part of the plan though. He glanced at the girl. ‘Nathan, we can’t just leave her here, and she’s too young to come with—’

‘I know about it,’ she cut him off.

‘Know about what?’

‘The lights,’ she said. ‘I know about the lights in London.’

‘What? How?’

She glanced at Nathan. ‘He told me.’

Nathan shrugged guiltily. ‘Sorry, Jay, I know it was like a secret, but . . .’

‘I bribed him,’ she finished with a cunning smile. ‘I let him have a feel-up.’

Nathan looked down at his feet, shamefaced. ‘She knew somethin’ was up.’

Jacob shook his head. ‘Oh shit, Nathan!’

‘Anyway,’ continued Helen, ‘I heard some of it, you two and Mr Latoc talking at the party. I know he seen something. I knew it. I knew he wasn’t telling us everything he seen. I saw him telling you two, and I heard some of it.’

‘Well it doesn’t matter, you
can’t
come, Helen,’ said Jacob. ‘It could be dangerous.’

She snorted derisively at him. ‘Piss off, I can look after myself as well as you two idiots.’

‘Look, man, are we really going to go, Jay?’ asked Nathan. ‘I mean,
really
? Right now?’

Jacob knew
he
was. He realised, for him, there was no choice in the matter. ‘She’s all I got, Nate. If Mum doesn’t . . .’ he bit his lip. ‘If Mum doesn’t make it, Leona’s all I got left.’ He turned and pointed towards the town. ‘She’s in there somewhere. Maybe she’s already on the road. I have to go and see.’

‘And then if we help you find her, we’ll go down and see London, right?’ asked Helen.

The boys looked at each other. ‘Jake, man? You wanna do that?’

He realised he couldn’t think of anything beyond finding his sister right now. As far as he was concerned he could promise them a trip to the moon, just as long as he found Leona first.

‘Sure, all right,’ he muttered.

 

 

 

A
n hour later, they were on the A road out of Bracton on bicycles they’d pulled out of a toyshop, at just about the same moment Walter must have found the scribbled note Helen had sneaked back and placed in the yacht’s cockpit.

It was the only way Jacob could think she’d go, along the main road heading south-west, keeping herself to the middle of the road, and warily scanning the untidy gone-to-seed fields either side, the tall weeds and untamed bushes that threatened to encroach on the road from the crumbling hard shoulder.

He prayed she’d not been so lucky to find herself a bicycle to use, or if she had, that at least she wasn’t pedalling as hard as they were. He kept finding himself drawing ahead of the others, desperate to eat up the road ahead of him and find her.

Mid-morning he’d stopped yet again to wait for the others to catch up and to take a swig from a bottle of water in his shoulder bag, when he thought he saw some movement up ahead.

He squinted, trying to make sense of the uncertain distant dark outline on the road; something low and round. Glancing back he could see the other two, broaching a low hill, struggling to catch him up. He put the bottle back in his bag, lifted his feet off the road and cautiously rode a little closer until his useless long vision gave him something more to work with.

A wooden chair in the middle of the road and someone slumped on it, back to him.

Even from this far he recognised the slope of her shoulders. ‘Leona?’

She didn’t stir.

He pedalled furiously forward. ‘Leona!’ he whimpered, finally clattering to a halt a dozen yards away and tossing the bike down at his feet. ‘Leona?’ he called out again softly. ‘It’s me! Jake!’

This time he thought he detected the slightest movement.

He was taking the last steps toward her when she slowly turned to look round at him. ‘Hey,’ was all she said.

Jacob was about to reach out for her when he saw one hand resting in her lap, holding a knife, and on the wrist of her other arm the light and unsuccessful scoring of the blade; nicks and scratches that told of squeamish attempts at a decisive incision.

She laughed humourlessly. ‘You know me . . .’

He nodded.

‘Chuck my guts at the first sight of blood.’ She sighed and turned back to look at the road ahead, straight as a Roman highway. ‘I thought I’d just wait here a while.’

He knelt down in front of her; her eyes were over the top of his head and they remained on the flat horizon.

‘Lee,’ he whispered, reaching out for the knife in her lap. ‘Lee, can I have it?’

Her fingers tightened around the handle until her knuckles bulged white.

‘Lee?’ She was still far away. ‘Lee!’ Her eyes finally dropped down to look at him.

‘Sis,’ he squeezed her hand, ‘I . . . I need your help.’

She said nothing, but a lethargic curiosity made her cock an eyebrow.

‘I . . . my bike chain came off, Lee. Do you know how the shitting thing goes back on?’

She closed her eyes slowly and sighed. ‘Jesus, Jake. Can’t you do anything?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘No.’

She eased her grasp on the knife and he gently took it from her. ‘Not without you, I can’t. I’m rubbish without you.’

‘Always a dork,’ she uttered, and pressed out a wan smile.

He grinned, tears on his cheeks. ‘And you were always a stroppy cow.’

‘I know.’

Jacob glanced back up the road. Nathan and Helen had stopped their bikes a hundred yards short; sensibly figuring they ought to hold back for the moment.

‘Lee, you were always the strong one. You were strong for me once, do you remember? Back in the house?’

She nodded.

Oh, yes . . . she remembered cowering in the darkness of their London home, the small suburban street outside dancing with the light of burning cars, several dozen kids drunk on what they’d looted from the off licence around the corner and on the end-of-the-world party atmosphere. For them it was the rave to end all raves. Fun and games. Looting and raping.

Then they’d decided to play treasure hunt and invade the homes one by one.

Leona still awoke at night reliving their desperate fight to keep the Bad Boys out of the house, hitting, swiping, scratching and biting through broken downstairs windows then finally running and hiding upstairs as they broke in through the barricaded front door. Hiding beneath the sink unit in the bedroom. Jacob, only eight then, trembling in her arms. They could hear the boys laughing, braying as they searched for their prize to rape, hunting for the ‘smurfette’ they knew was hiding somewhere inside.