Afterlight (36 page)

 

The one thing Leona feared the most was not doing it properly. She wanted a clean drop, one impact and it was all over. Dying slowly, dying painfully; the thought of that terrified her. Which is why she wanted somewhere high enough to be absolutely certain.

She pushed the maintenance access door open and stepped out onto the roof of the Westfield shopping mall. It stretched out before her like a football pitch, criss-crossed here and there with pipes that ended with AC outlets. At the far end was a spiked brush of antennae and satellite dishes.

By moonlight the pale weathered surface reminded her of the helipad back home. An island alone in a dark sky. With the stars scattered above, she could just as well have been standing on a platform in the middle of space, drifting through the universe for eternity.

She made her way across the broad expanse, seeing her dark moon shadow cast before her. As she neared the edge she saw it was rimmed by a safety rail - not enough to put off someone determined but enough to protect a hapless worker from an unfortunate tumble. She ducked down and climbed between the bars and then gasped as she caught sight of the sheer drop below.

All of a sudden she felt dizzy, her legs wobbled beneath her and she quickly sat down, wrapping one arm around the rail. Her stomach churned, she wanted to throw up - her body’s reaction. It had finally woken up and realised what she was intending to do and was now doing everything in its power to convince her otherwise.

She cursed herself for being a weak, silly cow. Cursed whatever deeply-bedded survival instinct was making this last task so bloody difficult for her, making her hand clutch the rail tightly.

‘Just a little jump,’ she whispered. ‘And then we’re all done.’

Her body remained unconvinced.

‘Just another step,’ she urged. ‘And then . . .’

She imagined letting go and leaning forward; just five seconds of air whistling past her ears, chilling her face.

Leona looked up at the sound of the little voice and saw Hannah, chin resting on the railing, a leg swinging impatiently, scuffing the tarmac with the tip of her sandals.

She smiled at her daughter. ‘Hello again, trouble.’

Hannah rolled her eyes and offered a long-suffering smile. The gesture was so her. Leona laughed softly at the vision of her daughter, hanging on the railing and gazing out at the dark horizon. She could quite happily indulge this fantasy for a minute or two.

Please don’t be a silly gonk,
said Hannah.

‘I’m tired, Hannah, love. Tired of struggling along.’

She frowned.
Why be so tired?

It was hard to explain to a child who’d never known anything other than life on the rigs. Hard to explain how difficult it was to get up each and every day and work ceaselessly to squeeze such a meagre payback out of life. When once upon a time it was effortless; a meal was the mere opening of a fridge door, the three-minute wait for a microwave. Warmth was the flick of a switch. Skin-tingling luxury, the twist of a hot water tap.

‘I’m just tired,’ she replied. ‘I miss the way things were.’

‘Yes, they were.’

She remembered there were those who moaned about how materialistic and selfish the world had become; people on late-night TV chat shows, people who wrote columns in newspapers. She wondered how many of them were still alive today, getting on with practising what they’d preached. And for those of them who were still alive, she wondered what they’d happily trade for just one steaming hot shower, for a freshly grilled cheese-on-toast, for an ice-cold beer.

The small things.

It’s still very silly,
said Hannah thoughtfully.
I didn’t need all those things that you miss so much.

Leona was about to mutter something about it being better to never have had than to have had and lost, but it seemed unkind and dismissive. She wasn’t sure how much longer it would take to convince her hand to let go. And there were things to say.

‘I love you, Hannah. I’m sorry I was a crap mum.’

Mum. Leona felt her aching heart tighten. Why hadn’t she insisted Hannah call her that instead of Leona? Something in the word, in the bond that it implied. She’d missed out on that. They’d been more like sisters than mother and child.

Leona wiped her damp cheek on her shoulder.

Another regret. Something else to ponder on her way down.

Leona laughed weakly. Her fantasy Hannah, it seemed, was every bit as bossy as her real one had been. ‘But I’m ready now. I want to.’ Her hand loosened its grip on the rail.

‘Why?’

Leona turned to gaze out across the still, dark skyline of London. There was nothing to see.

‘What?’

She looked again. Dark. Nothing. Dead dark London, that was all.

Leona so far had seen nothing. But then the faintest flicker. A beam visible for an instant, gone the next.

‘Oh, God!’ she whispered. She saw the beam again, so faint, like the solitary thread of a spider’s web catching sunlight from an angle, then gone.

Leona’s eyes had lost the beam. She looked to the left a little and her peripheral vision detected the faint lancing movement once more, but turning to look at it directly, it was lost. It was east of Shepherd’s Bush, quite possibly along the river as the boys had suggested; Canary Wharf, perhaps the O2 Arena.

The shimmering lance of light seemed to have gone now.

She turned to look at Hannah but she, too, had gone. Where she’d stood the pale roof remained unscuffed. A soft breeze whispered along the dark street below teasing a pile of dry leaves to race each other along the kerb, and a shutter somewhere creaked on rusty hinges, clattering against a frame.

 

 

 

I
t was midday when Leona finally approached the dome. She emerged from the Blackwall Tunnel, leaving her bicycle behind in the darkness and picking her way through a barricade of razor-wire hoops long ago abandoned and left to sag and rust. She crossed an empty dual-carriageway and walked up a shallow grass embankment towards the giant blister of vanilla canvas crowned with its distinct ring of canary-yellow support spars.

It was at the top of the embankment that she noticed a perimeter of corrugated iron panels six feet high, topped with spools of more of that hatefully sharp razor wire; a cobbled together Hadrian’s wall that stretched left and right in front of her.

The faint spotlights she’d seen had to have come from here; this was the right direction, east of Shepherd’s Bush, easily nine or ten miles away. She emerged from the overgrown grass embankment and slowly approached the perimeter wall’s main gate, wondering one more time whether Jacob and Nathan were already somewhere inside. It was a hope.

 

Dizz-ee watched the workers as he slurped lukewarm river water from a scuffed old Evian bottle and relaxed in the deckchair in front of the gatehouse. Although the boys called it the gatehouse, it was nothing more than an IKEA garden shed erected for those on duty on a rainy day to shelter inside.

This afternoon felt like it was going to be a really hot one; first proper summer’s day of the year. He cursed his misfortune at being given this morning’s perimeter guard duty rather than the afternoon shift. Apart from the fact that he and his guard posse had to rise early with the workers - and most of his boys were still nursing sore heads from last night - this afternoon, outside, it was going to be lovely. Inside, on the afternoon rota, standing guard on the entrance turnstiles to the central arena, the praetorians’ and Chief’s quarters, it was going to be hot and stuffy.

Snoop, being the completely selfish shit that he was, liked his lie in, especially after party nights. Privilege of rank. So he made his number two dog get up and take the morning shift instead. Dizz-ee could quite happily have passed the job onto the third dog, Jay-zee, but he was already assigned to the canteen watch.

Dizz-ee screwed the cap back on his water bottle.

He was stuck at being second dog. Stuck for ever, or stuck until Snoop screwed up somehow and pissed off the Chief enough. Maybe that was going to happen eventually. He knew Snoop saw himself as being the Chief one day; fancied the idea of no longer taking orders from the wrinkled old snowflake bastard.

That ate at Snoop. Said it was old-world racism all over again that some rich, middle-aged
white
fuck should rule the roost once again.
They had their go,
Snoop kept saying
. Had their go and they fucked the world up. Should be a brother runnin’ the shit here.

Mind you, Dizz-ee could see his point even though he was white; even though Snoop was an arrogant fuck that he’d like to see screw up badly. Maxwell looked just like all those stiff old farts who’d collectively fucked-up the world between them: bankers, politicians, government types . . .
suits.
It didn’t sit well with him either that some suited old twat should be in charge. It should be someone younger.

It wasn’t about race; black, white, didn’t mean shit to him. Rankled with Snoop though. Stupid arrogant fucker was bound to challenge the Chief head-on one day. Snoop could go and do that if he wanted. And see what happened. Chief would probably win out.

It was going to happen one day. Snoop’s temper was going to get the better of him sooner or later. Serve the selfish lazy bastard right.

His ill-tempered gaze returned to the swaying rows of plants, and the workers toiling quietly amongst them. They were all
oldies
- twenty-five and older. No babies, no kids amongst them. Chief Maxwell forbid that; making babies. It was one of his emergency laws. The bloke might once have been a rich white fat-cat, but he was smart enough. No baby mouths to feed. Not for the foreseeable. Girls got themselves pregnant? They just forced it and got rid of the baby-gunk that came out. Far better that than eviction.

He watched the workers. Some of the boys called the workers ‘dome-niggers’. Seemed about right, they slouched about with sullen slave-faces. Good for nothing more than digging, planting, picking and muttering.

Dizz-ee called them ‘serfs’. There was a picture book he’d once read:
Look Inside A Medieval Castle.
It had excellent cut-away illustrations showing all the things that went on inside, little labels and explanations on everything. He remembered there was a king, or a duke or baron in the middle of the castle. And then in the great hall, his knights, there to protect him in times of battle and in return for that a share of the king’s privileges. And outside in the fields . . . the serfs.

He liked the idea that he was a bit like one of those knights of old. If he ever became top dog - shit,
when
he became top dog - he fancied the idea of coming up with a logo or a coat of arms or something that the praetorians would all have to wear on their jackets. They’d all have to pick a knight name, like Sir Kill-a-lot, or Sir Frag-enstein.

About a billion times cooler than walking around with rapper names and the word ‘staff’ stencilled on them.

‘Yo! Dizz-ee!’

Dizz-ee turned to Flav, standing a dozen yards away and jabbing a finger towards the ground beyond the perimeter wall.

‘What?’

‘Over there . . . girl coming over.’

Dizz-ee turned round, shaded his eyes. He was right. Striding towards them, a teenaged girl. She didn’t move like the wildies, all furtive and edgy, ready to break and scamper like startled rabbits at the sound of a single gunshot. She looked clean, scrubbed and well fed, too.

Dizz-ee waved at Flav to follow him and jogged across to the gate section of the barricade. He pulled open the wire gate, just wide enough to step outside. Twenty yards away the girl stopped and stared at the gun he had levelled at her.

‘So, what d’you want?’

‘I saw the lights of this place, last night,’ said the girl. ‘You got power?’

Dizz-ee silently appraised her. She looked more presentable than most of the girls in the ‘cattle shed’; many of them were looking the worse for wear, skin purple and mottled from bruising, most of them unpleasantly thin and malnourished. There hadn’t been any new girls in the pen for quite some time. Some fresh ass would be sweet.

‘Hey, Dizz-ee. What do we do?’ asked Flav quietly.

Thing is, he knew Snoop would bag the girl for himself just as soon as he clapped eyes on her. The selfish shit-fuck would pull rank on him and have her himself.

‘Shall I go tell Snoop we got a girl coming in?’

Dizz-ee shook his head. ‘No, hang on. I’ll take her in myself,’ he replied under his breath.

Flav looked at him uncertainly. ‘You know Snoop’ll want the girl,’ he whispered.

‘Fuck him. We’ll put her in the cattle shed with the others. He don’t go there much now, since they all looking so rough. I’m having her myself.’

The girl was watching them whispering from twenty yards out. ‘Can I come in?’ she called across.

‘So, what about me, Dizz? Do I get a piece of her?’

‘Maybe, when I’m all done.’

Flav considered that for a moment. ‘A’ight,’ he said, smiling.

Dizz-ee winked at the younger lad and then pulled the gate wider. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he called to the girl waving her forward. ‘You better come in.’