Forecast (27 page)

The next day, Dunmore was taken away to serve punishment elsewhere, but he didn’t go quietly. “Every night, for the rest of ya life, I’ll be there.”

From that day on, he slept with the light on.

The dim light outlined a human shape moving in front of him. Felix Dunmore! The thug put his hand around his throat to strangle him. Burch couldn’t even muster up the energy to fight back. Then the features of the silhouette began to materialise in sharp gradations of grey. The monster was not Felix Dunmore, but Claris Faraday. She had her hand on his neck, feeling his glands and checking his pulse. Disappointed with himself for succumbing to the insidious torment of the past, he tried to disconnect his waking thoughts and, weak from the turbulence of his own emotional vulnerability, started to cry.

With an impatient gesture, Matthews banished his insulation blanket and stomped about the room in a huff. “Can we please put this hypochondriac in the toilet? I can’t sleep with him in here.”

Sutcliffe slammed his fist down on the bench in anger. Sensing his big mouth had overstepped the mark, Matthews stepped back in surprise. Then he reacted as though he was under attack, quick to administer a defensive reflex. “Can’t you see what he’s doing to the group? You know what, fuck this shit!”

Sutcliffe held out his palms. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m sick of this shit! I’m sick of you.”

Matthews made no attempt to hide his feelings, his solitude more than just a matter of frustration, but also the belligerence of resentment. And it all came out in explosive bursts. He flat out told Sutcliffe how much he hated him making sole decisions when it had come to Fable
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1, and even now, in the White Room. He hated the fact that Hennessey had warmed to him, the hero, he put it. Not because he had feelings for her of his own, but because she was a traitor and she didn’t belong there. A look of something bordering on disbelief appeared on Sutcliffe’s face. So shocked was he by Matthews’ outburst, he didn’t know what to say in reply. Matthews stared through Sutcliffe, on the point of saying something else, then turned his back and walked away, aware that he had said too much and, feeling a pang of regret, went to the other side of the room where he buried himself under his blankets and pretended to go to sleep.

Hennessey waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to Sutcliffe. “He’s losing it.”

Sutcliffe was aware of Matthews’ building irritation and knew he was an irritable person from time to time, but what else could he do? “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be alright.”

“He’d better be.”

“People deal with traumatic stress in different ways.”

“Not like that they don’t.”

Hennessey walked away and left Sutcliffe to chew over her concerns. It got him thinking. If that was a simulation of grief, then Matthews was undoubtedly a man to fear. His instincts told him that, although Matthews was strong and capable of violence, he was not by all accounts a violent man. Then again, if he really thought about it, did he really know the man that well? He hadn’t socialised with him unless it had concerned the balloon. He knew business Matthews. Did he know private Matthews? No, he didn’t believe he did and that made him wary.

Matthews passed the helmet to his cousin. He helped her strap it on. He took her by the hand to the shaft and assisted her across the door bridge and up the stepladder in the elevator. Following behind, he emerged beneath a pale grey sky where his eyes were drawn to the decaying cliffs of St. Ives and he marvelled as he always had done at the view.

Faraday hadn’t been out since arriving back at the White Room and the sight of the land profoundly shocked her. She stared dis-believingly at the colourless ocean and a background of unending smoke where little white explosions gave the sky a defining shape. A storm was approaching and a sturdy wind was blowing.

“My God,” Faraday remarked, rotating her head to observe the ruined country she had once called her home.

“Not anymore he’s not.”

“Look at it,” she said. “It’s all gone.”

Matthews looked over at the grave at the top of the hill where the mystery intruder, Fred Farrell, had been laid to rest. The frail wooden cross rattled in the wind. Beyond the gravesite was nothing but a featureless plane of frost-covered land. Nothing had survived the explosions. Nothing. The force at the epicentres must have been incredible, Matthews thought. He looked down at the area where he had crafted the HELP sign and he felt his heart sink. Sheets of ice camouflaged his message. He looked towards the gully where he had been witness to the horrific bonfire of human bodies. Smoke no longer reached for the sky and he presumed the acidic rain had extinguished the fire.

“It’s good to get out of the White Room,” he said. “Brad is driving me crazy down there.”

“So that’s why you volunteered to look for Trev?”

“Of course. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the little rascal. I just couldn’t stand another minute of listening to Moses. What’s your excuse?”

“I want to look for Trev.”

“Yeah, right, you care as much as I do.”

“I’m not as heartless as you,” she rebelled. “I actually have feelings.”

Sutcliffe had mentioned that Gable had headed west, so that’s the way they went. The ground, hardened with frost and ice, was slippery and they battled constantly with the hard wind as it buffeted against their suits. The horror of the land confronted them – the twisted bodies, the levelled buildings, the gloom of death on an exorbitant scale. Thunder boomed in the distance, the storm worsening and soon there would be rain.

Precariously they moved forward. The further they trekked, the darker the sky became. They tacked left and right across the land, passing through flattened townships and villages, soon coming to a river and a bridge that had snapped at its middle. The river water was murky and fetid. A corpse sailed down-current on its front. They didn’t try to cross the bridge and stayed on the one side of the river in their hunt for Gable, searching under ruins, behind hills, on every horizon. Faraday felt that being out and being active was doing wonders for her body. Her headache had abated and her circulation had improved. In contrast, the more attention Matthews gave to finding Gable, the more impatient he was becoming, but he couldn’t convince Faraday that they were wasting time.

“I reckon he ran away, to be honest.”

“Why would he run away?”

“Why would he stay? Brad was obviously bitter at him for being in that toilet when he thought his son was in there. And he practically bullied the boy to go looking for food. I reckon he found some in a good place and decided not to share it. I don’t blame him either.”

“He’s scared. We’re the only people he knows. We’re the only people full stop. I bet he’s out there looking for the White Room, lost somewhere. So, stop your whining and keep looking.”

Matthews heaved a large sigh. He wouldn’t have gone at all if Faraday hadn’t volunteered. Because, truthfully, she was the only person he felt comfortable around. She had an easy personality and was genuine, never dictatorial. Sutcliffe was bossy and bigheaded, Burch a hypochondriac and a nuisance and Hennessey a liar and a cheat. He stared at his cousin as she walked. He figured it was the closest they had ever been, even as young kids exploring childhood. She was the only person left in his world and he held a newfound respect for her.

After a while, they came across a collection of burnt trees wilting in the wind. One of the trees had a faint stroke of paint on it. Gable had been there. On the other side of the woods, they found a cottage with a collapsed roof, the front door wide open. Matthews entered first with Faraday close behind him. The fallen roof had dislodged walls, knocking them askew. Burnt tiles and guttering littered the floor and the walls were cloaked with black smoke stains and damp growing fingers. They entered what they presumed was the kitchen partly barricaded by fallen beams and offering a low awkward clearance. Ducking beneath it, they entered the kitchen and found an old
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fashioned fridge-freezer on its side beneath a mound of bricks. Clearing the bricks, they opened the heavy door with a handle that operated much like a large stapler. Empty, except for an old block of cooking lard. At the other end of the kitchen, a cupboard nailed to a section of wall that had collapsed was also empty, apart from a pepper pot and a box of old toothpicks.

“Either nobody lived here before the bombs, or…” Matthews paused, looking around.

“Or what?”

“The place has been looted.”

“Looted? By who?”

“Good question.”

“Come on, Simon, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

“No argument there. Watch that fallen beam, it doesn’t look stable.”

No sooner had Faraday ducked beneath it than an emphatic gust of wind brought the beam down with the weight of the roof. The force of it pummelled Faraday into the floor and covered her from the waist down. She screamed. Matthews turned to see his cousin buried, her legs trapped out of sight beneath the ceramic roof slabs. He didn’t remove them for fear that the roof would collapse further. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll have to go and get help.”

“No, don’t leave me.”

“I have to.”

“Please!”

Matthews paused and reassessed the situation. “Do you think you’ve broken anything?”

“I don’t think so. I’m just bruised, I think.”

“Alright, I’ll be right back.”

Squeezing through a narrow passage, he entered what had once been the lounge. Justifying his presumption of looters, he found the room completely devoid of furniture. All except a table constructed of maple, immensely heavy, explaining why it hadn’t been taken. Dragging the table through to the kitchen where Faraday lay pinned beneath the roof, he positioned it by her side, then lifted one end over her head and set it down so that the centre of the table sheltered her body from the damaged struts and support beams.

Matthews ducked under the table and embarked on removing the large, ceramic slabs. The damaged roof above them shuddered. When most of the slabs had been taken away, he shifted the beam crushing her right thigh, but the entire roof came crashing down onto the table. Dust and ceramic debris showered around them. Matthews stared up through the gaping roof where he saw black clouds opening up for rain.

“You alright?”

“I’m okay.”

Pulling her out, she threw her arms around his neck, butting visors. For a brief moment, he forgot they were related by blood and wrongful images appeared in his mind. She drew back and brushed herself down.

“Let’s head back to the White Room,” Matthews said, looking for the way out.

“But we haven’t found Trev yet.”

“You want to continue looking for him? Why?”

“That’s what we came here for. He might be stuck under a fallen roof as well.”

“He might be back already.”

“He might not. While we still have oxygen, I want to keep looking.”

They had penetrated a good few miles inland when they saw people emerge from a spot in the hill that was scattered with building ruins. Two men moved across the hillside and a third hurried to catch them up. Faraday was about to wave when Matthews blocked her rising arm and pulled her to the ground.

“What?” she asked.

“See what they were carrying?”

“No.” She raised her head up over the hill. “Weapons. Guns?”

“I don’t think so. Baseball bats, maybe metal bars.”

“Who do you think they are?”

“Vigilant survivors. Or violent ones.”

“Let’s go another way.”

“No, I want to see where they go.”

“Why? Let’s just get out of here.”

“I want to see where they go because I want to find out where they came from.”

As the men cut across the hillside, Matthews studied them. They were all wearing green parkas with the hoods pulled up over their heads and he couldn’t see their faces. They walked hurriedly and Matthews presumed they knew where they were going.

When they disappeared on the horizon, Matthews stood up. “You coming?”

“Where?”

“To take a look.”

“Are you mad? Those men had weapons.”

“What harm will a couple of sticks do to a spacesuit? I think we’re pretty safe. Besides, they are probably just scared and being cautious. If we speak to them, they’ll see we’re not a threat. They might have seen Trev. Better still, they might have food and water.”

“I’m going to stay here. Be quick, okay?”

She watched as he trudged off down the hill, breaking into a forced jog. A few minutes later, he vanished into the ground.

Matthews had located a set of rickety steps leading to a darkened area with a door. Large access hatches were missing, he determined, noticing four giant hinges on either side of the shaft. He entered a steel door and found himself in a dark room, so he flicked the switch on his headlamps. He saw, on a metal gurney, blood and torn flesh and the remains of a rib cage, that of an animal – a deer or fox maybe. A single metal cabinet was the only other furniture inside the room and even that was bare apart from a pair of bloodstained scissors. A large drum plonked in the corner with a nozzle at the bottom contained several litres of water. Scattered across the floor were hundreds of empty food tins. He spotted a second metal door, streaked towards it and pushed through.