Ice Diaries (16 page)

“That was the cut on your side?”

“Yes. I got mad, which was
stupid. You shouldn’t get angry when you’re fighting. I
broke his arm, deliberately. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Silence while I compared his version
with Mike’s. Eddie had looked as if that story was untrue, the
way he’d gone red and hadn’t met anyone’s eyes. I
believed Morgan. And I didn’t like it. The more I found out
about Mike, the worse he seemed, and everyone else except Greg
thought he was a nice guy. They’d been eating out of his hand
at Nina’s, all of them. Eventually I said, “Then what?”

“Mike kicked me out, like I told
you. I don’t know what happened to Red. He wasn’t any use
with a broken arm. My guess is they left him behind, with no
transport, in the middle of nowhere. Mike’s a cold-blooded
bastard.”

I didn’t say anything for a
while. Morgan might sneer at our little group, but it was a hell of a
lot nicer than the one he’d been part of. I couldn’t
imagine any circumstances in which we would leave an injured man to
die alone. I wondered whether he’d told me everything.

“Why didn’t Mike like you
talking to Serena? Was there anything between you?”

“Not really. She hadn’t
been with us that long.”

“I thought you’d all set
out together a year ago?”

“Six of us did. Mike and five
fighters who worked for him. But he had eight sleds, space for two
more. He thinks people are disposable; he ditches them when he
doesn’t need them any more, or falls out with them. Serena’s
the third girlfriend he’s had this year. He dumped each one
when he met her replacement. That’s why Serena does what she’s
told. She doesn’t want to be left behind with some random group
of people existing at subsistence level like you lot. If Mike had
been able to get his hands on guns Eddie wouldn’t be with him,
he’s too thick to be a good fighter, he’s only fit to be
a bouncer. Mike wasted a lot of our time trying to find guns. We dug
down to two police stations, but the cops must have taken them when
public order started to break down. That’s what you’d do
with civilization collapsing round you like a house of cards. I told
him at the first one that’s what had happened, it wasn’t
worth trying another, and I was right.”

The thought of Mike with a gun was
chilling. I hoped he didn’t come across any in London. Morgan
was still talking.

“Then there’s BJ; he’s
an upgrade on Ben, the paramedic we had before. We left him in
Birmingham, and as soon as Mike comes across a doctor BJ’ll be
toast. Mike’s terrified of catching some bug or getting hurt, a
real wuss.”

Morgan hadn’t answered my
question about him and Serena, so I went back to it. “What does
‘not really’ anything between you mean?”

Morgan smiled at me under his lashes.
“I always knew you cared, Tori.”

He lifted my foot and kissed my toes. I
snatched my foot back and put on my sock. It had been thawed for a
while but I’d been focused on what he was saying … plus
who doesn’t like having her foot rubbed?

“Serena was the only woman
around, so you kind of noticed her. If we were alone she used to
stand a bit too close to me – I don’t flatter myself, I’m
sure she did it to everyone. She knew the effect she was having all
right, but she’d act shocked if you tried to take it further.
It was partly to up her value in Mike’s eyes, having all of the
guys wanting to shag her, but I don’t know how loyal she’d
be to him if he wasn’t top dog.”

Serena had fancied him, she’d
told me so. In vino veritas. Interesting he hadn’t noticed. But
she’d have been too scared of Mike to do anything about it.
“You tried to take it further?”

“I’m only human.”

I let that go. “Why was Serena
the only woman? Travelling from place to place, you must have come
across lots of groups of people like us.”

“Yeah, there were women. Never
had time to get to know them. Some of them saw us as their ticket
out, but Mike didn’t want passengers. He said they’d slow
us down and use up supplies. He was the only one allowed to bring a
woman along.”

I sipped my brandy and considered all
this. Morgan might not have told me everything, but what he had said
I believed, and it seemed to me the situation was rife with hazardous
possibilities.

“So to sum up: Mike is a psycho
in a world without law, where might is right, and he has three cage
fighters on his side. You tried it on with his girlfriend, and stole
his gold and his best sled. Then you broke Eddie’s nose. He is
now living a two minute walk away from this flat. You are not
possessed of superpowers. You have no way as yet of getting away from
Mike,” and here I fixed him with a stern eye, “and even
if you did, you would not go leaving Mike dissatisfied in case he
makes all of us who do not have sleds so we can escape from him stand
outside till we have no noses or toes or fingers any more. Because
that would be a mean and shitty thing to do, even worse than what
happened to poor Red, and it would prey on your mind and stop you
sleeping.”

I took a breath; I hadn’t
finished, but before I could continue, he interrupted me.

“I’ll be able to get away
from here tomorrow, as soon as Mike hands over the sled. He’ll
do that because else he won’t get his gold. When I said I
couldn’t trust him, I meant he’d want to get back at me.
No reason for him to pick on your lot. Come with me.”

He said this in such a throwaway manner
I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Come with you?”

“Out of here. On the back of my
sled. Go south. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes, but …” I
prevaricated. “I thought you didn’t like carrying people
on the back of your snowmobile?”

“Depends who it is. I liked you
holding out on Mike for me, and I liked that you told me you wouldn’t
have kept it up much longer. You’re not a fool, Tori, and
you’re honest. And not bad-looking either.” He
scrutinized my face. “You scrub up well.”

I paused. “Would there be
a … sexual element to this arrangement?”

“A sexual element?” He
laughed. “Yes. I can definitely promise you sex would be
involved. But I think you might like that too.”

He reached out and put an arm round me,
and my skin tingled and my stomach fluttered at his touch. I didn’t
resist when he pulled me to him and his lips nuzzled my neck, nor
when his mouth met mine in a lingering kiss. I shut my eyes. His
muscles felt hard as he held me to him. His face tasted of salt and
he smelled good – sweaty, but good. His fingers found the zip
tag on my top under my sweater and I pulled away.

“I’ll think about it.”
My voice sounded husky, my heart was pounding. After a year of
drought, my body was waking up and flowering like a desert after
rain. David came into my mind, as insubstantial as a ghost, as far
away as a friend from childhood.

Morgan murmured, “D’you
have to start thinking about it right now? Can it wait?”

“No. That wouldn’t help me
think.” I got up and moved away.

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

I fell asleep ten seconds after my head
hit the pillow. It had been a long day. In the small hours I woke to
the sound of the wind howling round the building, and snow spattering
intermittently on the windows. I’ve never got used to how black
the nights are now. For most of my life, the streetlights’
orange glare meant it was never completely dark; awake at night, I
could see well enough to go to the bathroom without turning on a
light. These days, unless a full moon shines, the blackness is
absolute.

I lay rigid, eyes open seeing nothing,
heart beating fast, listening for sounds of people creeping about and
trying to force an entry, hating being a sitting target. Imagining
how much safer I’d feel if Morgan was lying beside me, I was
tempted to light a candle and go and fetch him. He wouldn’t
mind being woken; I was certain he’d make the move with
enthusiasm, and then proceed to take my mind off my fears. That idea,
and the memory of kissing him, made my heart beat in a much more
agreeable way … But I hadn’t decided whether to travel
south on his sled, and didn’t want to sleep with him then say
goodbye, leaving me an emotional mess, yearning for him as well as
David. And after all, he was only a few metres away over on the sofa
if anyone did break in. He hardly stirred, either lacking imagination
or confident in his theory that nothing would happen yet.

His proposition ran through my mind. It
would be a gigantic leap into the unknown; not just because I didn’t
know Morgan well, but because no one knew what was happening where
the ice stopped, or where that was – the Mediterranean, North
Africa? It could be full of warring factions mowing each other down
with machine guns. But at least it wouldn’t be under twenty
metres of snow … I tried to imagine what it would be like to
travel south on the back of his snowmobile, camping in abandoned
buildings on the way. The journey would be dangerous – we might
die slowly of cold or hunger if anything went wrong, if the
snowmobile broke down, for instance, or we ran out of supplies. How
was he planning to cross the Channel? Would it be frozen over, or
would we need a boat? I realized I no longer believed David might
come to find me. I had to accept he was dead, and leave him out of my
plans. I had a cautious faith in Morgan; it seemed to me, little as I
knew him, that beneath a guarded, sometimes churlish exterior he had
a basic decency one could rely on. And God knows I found him
attractive.

I got up early and made breakfast,
yawning. Morgan joined me. He didn’t say anything about the
night before. I brooded about how ineffectual I’d been in my
brief struggle with Mike and Big Mac; how I’d hated being held,
unable to move let alone get away. Realistically, I’d never
defeat a cage fighter, but I hadn’t even left a mark on either
of them. We sat side by side, spooning porridge silently until I
said,

“Can you teach me some
self-defence moves?”

He gave me a sidelong look and smiled.
“After breakfast.”

We did a warm-up session first which
left me sweaty and panting and wondering if I’d have the energy
to learn to fight. Morgan was cool and breathing normally.

“I’m not as fit as I
thought I was.”

“You’re using different
muscles, that’s all. You’ll get used to it. Okay.
Surprise, speed and ruthlessness. Remember when you’re up
against someone who’s bigger and heavier than you your main
weapon is surprise, and you can only surprise him once. So make the
most of it. You need to hit him as fast and hard as you can in a
vulnerable area, and don’t worry about hurting him badly –
that’s the idea. You want to disable him. Never pull your
punches, try to hit right through him. Commit to the move. I’m
teaching you to fight dirty, and the only rule is to win.”

Morgan stood facing me. Snow whirled
past the windows.

“Let’s do some basic moves
in slow motion. I go to grab you.” His right hand came towards
my left arm. “You raise your left to knock my hand out of the
way, and chop the side of your right hand against the side of my
neck, carry through, bend your arm and hit me in the face with your
elbow coming back.”

He made me practise until he was
satisfied, then moved on what to do if someone grabbed my hand –
you twist out of it and get them in a wrist lock – and also
showed me how to avoid being grabbed in the first place.

“You’re doing well.
Intelligence gives you an edge in MMA. A journalist once said it’s
like chess for the abnormally tough. Oh, there’s one low trick
you can try if a cage fighter’s got you in a lock on the floor
– tap out. He’s so used to it in training, he might just
release you from force of habit, then you can hit him and run away.”

He moved on to thumb strikes, showing
me the location of the most vulnerable points. He was a surprisingly
good teacher, and I told him so. Without mentioning my surprise,
naturally.

“To get a Jiu-Jitsu black belt
you have to teach.”

“How did you get into it?”

“I went to a crap school where I
got picked on. I used to bunk off most of the time. Then I came
across a free Jitsu class for kids, and thought if I joined I could
beat them all up.”

“Did you?”

“Just one of them. Kyle Jackson.
I got excluded for that. Worth it, though. When I went back they left
me alone.”

I wanted to ask why his parents hadn’t
helped, but didn’t like to. I suddenly felt curious about his
past. “But you kept it up.”

“I’d got into it by then. I
liked the discipline – it was the only place I did what I was
told. When I got older I did some Muay Thai, because Jitsu’s
purely defensive, and that got me into MMA. Try that last move
again.”

We’d just about finished when a
figure at the window indistinct in the falling snow
made me jump. It was only Archie. Before he even stepped over the threshold he said, “Are you all
right, Tori? Greg’s been round and he told me Mike made you
both stand outside without a jacket.” He sounded shocked. “I
came straight over.”

“I’m fine. It was scary at
the time, though. I was pleased when Morgan turned up.”

Morgan nodded at Archie, put his
sweater back on and went and fed wood into the stove.

“Thank goodness he was here.”
Archie lowered his hood, took off his spectacles and cleaned the snow
off them, peering anxiously at me. “Nina didn’t believe
Greg, she said there must be some misunderstanding, Mike wouldn’t
do such a thing.”

“I know he didn’t seem like
that last night. But when he’s not turning on the charm, he’s
a psychopath.”

“He can’t treat people the
way he treated you. It’s appalling. As a practising Christian,
he must see he’s wrong.”

Over by the stove, Morgan snorted. “He
told you he was a Christian? First I’ve heard of it. He’s
about as Christian as Genghis Khan.”