At the Edge of the Game (28 page)

Anyone standing
down on the quay would have been washed away. The distribution centre was
surely destroyed. Probably the canned food was recovered later, but all the
perishables, and the computers, and the paper records – all that was taken away
by the destructive waters.

Half an hour
later and the diluvian spasm had exhausted itself, spread further towards the
sea, leaving behind it an expanse of wet, debris-strewn ice.

Someone’s
knocking on the door. Better answer it  before Helen orders me to. She’s manic
today, scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom with rags and cleaning products from
under the sink. She won’t listen to me, won’t sit down and relax, won’t stop
and face her own thoughts. She often told me, way back when, that I spent too
much time brooding. Well maybe, but at least I’ve been able to maintain some
sort of psychological equipoise throughout this.

It’s Ray Smyth
at the door, not happy at all.

‘That bastard
would as soon slit our throats,’ he says.

Not one for
small talk, is Smyth.

‘I know.’

‘Jesus, if it
wasn’t for the children I’d have nothing to do with this.’

‘But you’ll do
it.’

 Better to have an
ally, to outnumber Heathshade.

‘Yes.’

The word is
bitter.

‘We’ll go now,’
I tell Helen.

She mutters
something without looking and keeps on cleaning.

We trudge up the
old stairs to Heathshade’s flat.

‘Ready for
action, fellas? Give me a couple of minutes. Wait here.’

He shuts the
door, leaving us on the draughty landing with a view out over grey walls, icy
rooftops, gloomy murk beyond.

Smyth lets out a
long, unhappy breath. He suffers from fairly advanced tooth decay.

‘I said to Donna
three years ago, I said we should emigrate. There’s nothing left here for us.
But she didn’t agree, so we stayed.’

The thought of
it seems unbearably painful to him. To have seen the danger, and not acted on
it, to have come to this pass when it might have been avoided.

‘It’s the scum
that’ll survive.’

He agrees
vigorously.

There’s an
argument going on inside, a lot of clattering and stomping around. It ends with
a yelp from the woman.

The door opens.
Heathshade’s wearing a greatcoat, carrying a bag over his shoulder.

We make our way
carefully down icy Gracedieu Road.

‘Any sign of
rations today, lads?’

No answer.

‘I saw you head
down there, Smyth. Any sign of life?’

A long pause.

‘No.’

‘I told you,
didn’t I? You won’t be getting any more help from that quarter.’

He leads us down
to the quay, across the windswept bridge. This vicious cold would kill you if
you stood still in it.

Left at the
railway station, further down along the riverside, cliff face on the right. He
leads us to the walled water’s edge. There’s a hole in the wall, where it looks
like something smashed through.

‘Look,’ he says.

Can’t see
anything, except for a narrow hole in the ice, the water inside it rippling and
spraying in the turbulent windflow. But now I discern through the barely
translucent surface the shape of a truck on its side.

Heathshade hops
down and makes us follow. We stand in against the wall for the tiny amount of
shelter it provides. He has no desire for shelter.

‘It’s full of
canned stuff, lads. I made a good haul last time I was here, but I nearly got
fucking killed. Daisy ain’t no help in this, so that’s where you two fellas
come in.’

Hang on a minute
-

‘No, I’m not
asking you to go swimming.’

‘What do you
want, then?’

 ‘I want you to
spot for me.’

He takes a
rolled up length of garden hose from the bag and throws it at our feet. Then he
drops a long length of rope on top of it. He talks as he strips off.

‘I’m going to
tie the rope around me, right? I want one of you to keep it taut at all times.
Got it? I’ll be breathing through the hose. Whoever’s not got the rope, make
sure the hose doesn’t get twisted or blocked.’

Finally
completely naked except for swimming goggles and the empty bag on his
shoulders, hairless skin pallid like a plucked chicken’s, genital apparatus
retracted, bare feet shuffling on the hard ice, he balls his clothes up in a
big bath towel.

‘George, you do
the air pipe.’

He lowers
himself into the water, gasping at the coldness of it, but with a kind of grim
relish.

‘Get it right,’
he says, and goes under, inflicting on us a foul momentary flash of blotched
buttock.

Now he’s
wriggling down into the dark cab of the submerged truck. We struggle stupidly
to perform our appointed tasks. Smyth lets out the rope, foot by foot. Then for
intervals there’s no evidence of activity at all down there. I fancy that he’s
been overwhelmed by the profound cold, or otherwise suffered a mishap. What a
pity that would be.

Then he yanks on
the air hose, and I deploy a little more of it. Maybe he’ll overreach and
drown.

We could do the
world a favour here. If I were just to place my thumb on the end of the hose,
or pinch it blocked, or just yank it back up out of the water…

After all,
there’s nothing to stop me. Akin to excising diseased tissue, pulling a bad
tooth. The Universe would not come to an end. The human continuum would not be
perturbed. No extant law (let’s face it) would be violated. I catch Smyth’s
look – the same thing has occurred to him.

A long moment of
possibilities weighed up.

But
possibilities are all they really are. No, we’re not going to do it. He’d do
it, but not us. It’s not in us.

Anyway, I bet
he’d manage to swim back to the surface anyway. Then he’d come after us.

The opportunity
passes, not that we were ever going to take it. Heathshade bursts through to
the surface and throws a laden bag skimming across the ice. He hauls himself
out.

‘Towel.’

He dries himself
off against the wall.

He has a blithe
stupidity that insulates him against peril.

We trudge back
over the bridge, eyeing Heathshade’s heavy bag.

Payment comes on
the landing outside our front doors. He hands each of us three wrapperless tin
cans.

‘Thanks for the
help, lads.’

‘What’s in
these?’

‘Pot luck. Same
time again tomorrow, eh?’

Inside, Helen’s
spell of hyperactivity has played itself out. She’s sitting on the floor close
to the fire, back against the armchair, knees drawn up close to her face.

I put the cans
on the worktop, expecting her to ask me about them, but she doesn’t. She looks
at me, though, in a sorrowful way that makes me go to her. I try to rub the
tension out of her shoulders. This she accepts, closing her eyes, rocking
slightly back and forward. For a while I think I’m doing some good, but now I
can see that her face is wet, tears dropping down onto her rounded abdomen.

‘It’ll all be
okay.’

I think I
sounded halfway convincing.

It’s important
to try to comfort her. All the more so because it would be bad to have the
baby’s blood supply awash with depressive endorphins.

The world is
coming to its end. The knowledge of it can no longer be denied or evaded. Fire
falls to earth without cease, striking the ground sometimes far away, sometimes
close by. Always present in the distance is a deep, loud rumble, like a
heavy-artillery barrage, which I suppose is what is actually occurring. But we
have been lucky thus far – there has been no impact close enough to us to
endanger our lives since the strike that destroyed Hippo Regius.

The Shapes have
spread around the world and prey on those of us still living. Without my force
weapon, we would surely be dead by now. Helen and I have trudged further
westward along the northern edge of Africa until, at last, we have reached the
region of the Pillars. We are at the foot of Mons Abyla itself, weatherworn
marker of the Atlantic Falls. Just visible in the haze to the north beyond the
raging torrents of the many-staged Falls is Abyla’s sister promontory, Mons
Calpe. The ocean water pours past the Pillars, down a steep gully many stadium
lengths wide until it reaches the floor of the Salt Desert. There it spreads,
merging and mixing in a poison marsh until the daytime heat evaporates it. The
sea-salt left behind becomes part of the ancient desert.

The Pillars - in
Sapient legend rent in twain by Hercules - are also sacred to the Neanderthals.
Many thousands of them are here now, from all the tribes of Africa, congregated
around Mons Abyla. A kind of general council is being held. Through smoke
signals they have made contact with their cousins in Europe. A similar council
must be taking place at the other side. The African tribes are awaiting
permission to return to the ancient homelands; whether in search of refuge or
merely to find a better place to die is not clear.

They have taken
us in as guests, perhaps because of our dreadful physical state. After the
deaths of Ammatas and his family at Hippo we trudged through the most desolate
country, and we have been reduced to a pitiful state. The ribs show through my
skin. My limbs are skinny like a child’s. Helen was sustained only because I
ensured that she ate all the food we procured along the way here. I have gone
hungry so long that now food no longer entices me. A great blessing: the
Neanderthals let us share in their communal meals, so that Helen now can eat
her fill again. Twice a day they gather in groups of ten or twenty and pass
around carved wooden bowls containing pieces of dried meat and fruit, and loaves
of a sort of black bread so tough that it is almost impossible to chew it. They
drink a mildly alcoholic, hot brew called ezrefir, which looks like milk, gives
off a sickly rosewater aroma, and burns the throat. Adults and children alike
partake of it out of leather gourds. Helen and I drink when the gourd reaches
us, aware of the importance of appreciation and courtesy to these people.

When they first
took us in, the Neanderthal warriors showed great interest in the force weapon.
The elders took it away to an ornately decorated tent, outside which I was made
to wait with only the entranceway totems for company. An hour later they had me
give a demonstration of its use against some shapes drifting close to the edge
of the encampment. Impressed with its power, they presented me with a warrior’s
metal helmet, which on my head was much too loose. To my great surprise, they
allowed me to keep the weapon. It may be a matter of honour among warriors to
them – I don’t know. On the other hand, they would not have much use for the
weapon, whereas it is critical to my survival and Helen’s. The inexplicable
fact is that the Shapes show no more interest in Homo Neanderthalensis than
they do any other species apart from Homo Sapiens. The Neanderthals fear the
falling stars but not the Shapes.

A troop of
elders climb onto a carriage and address the crowd. Helen and I listen, but
understand nothing. Excitement mounts, and when the elders complete their short
address, the throng disperses quickly. All are packing up and moving westward. We
must go with them along the wide, white flats. But we are so tired. In our
tent, I raise my garments and poke at my shrunken abdomen. In my previous life,
if I saw someone as thin as I am now, I would have assumed they were about to die.
A famine victim is what I am. Something from newspapers and TV reports. But no
TV crews have come here to report on the deepening crisis. There is no outside
world.

Our cans
contained processed peas. Smyth was no so lucky. He knocked on our door later.
His face was red with rage. His hands were trembling. He thrust an open can
towards me.

‘Dog food,’ he said.

‘What?’

 ‘The bastard
has us feeding the kids dog food.’

I swapped that
can with him for one of ours. It seemed the honourable thing to do.

Heated dog food
with some of the peas and a few other bits and pieces we had left, conjuring a
passable broth then enhanced by seasoning I found in the kitchen. It seemed
palatable enough to me, and  Helen ate it too, without complaint.

Can only think
a few hours into the future now. That’s what it’s come to. The food will last
another day or two. What’ll happen then?

 Not sure if
there’ll be any more trips to the van in the river either. We tried that
yesterday. Heathshade came calling, rounded us up. But at the bottom of the
road we almost got caught in the crossfire between two groups of soldiers, had
to retreat back here.

Now it seems
that some military faction has decided to base itself down near that end of the
bridge, and undoubtedly will soon spot the bounteous potential of the truck.
Haven’t heard from Heathshade since then.