Last Light (40 page)

She turned round, and looked back.

Even 200 yards away, her face just a distant pale oval, Leona recognised her.

‘MUM!’

The woman looked around, uncertain where the cry had come from. Leona let go of the wheelie bag and waved frantically. The movement caught the woman’s eye, and a second later, Leona heard what sounded very much like her mother’s voice; a mixture of surprise, shock, joy and tears.

‘Leona?’ she heard the woman ask more than say.

‘Oh my God! . . . It
is
Mum, Jake! It’s Mum.’

Jacob dropped his basket as well, some of the tins and bottles bounced out on to the road - unimportant to them now. She grabbed her brother’s hand and ran forward down the road towards the roundabout, completely unaware that her face had crumpled up like a baby’s and she was crying a river of tears, just like her little brother.

They collided into each other’s arms a moment later, a three-way scrum of flailing arms and buried faces.

‘Oh God, oh God!’ sobbed Jenny, squeezing them both as hard as she could. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’

Leona struggled to reply, but her words were an unintelligible syrupy mewl.

‘Mummy!’ cried Jacob, ‘I missed you, I missed you.’

‘God, I missed you too, sweetheart. I was so frightened for both of you.’

‘We’ve been in a battle,’ said Jacob. ‘It was frightening.’ Jenny looked into Leona’s face, and her daughter nodded, her lips curled, tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘Leona? Honey?’

She swept a sleeve across her face. ‘Yeah, they attacked the house. We nearly . . . we nearly . . .’

‘We nearly died Mum,’ Jacob finished helpfully. ‘But we’ve got a real gun now,’ he added brightly.

CHAPTER 81

11.35 a.m. GMT
Heathrow, London

It could almost have been any normal midsummer’s morning there in Terminal 3’s departure lounge, thought Andy. It looked unchanged since last time he came through here two weeks ago, on his way out to Iraq to make that assessment on the northern pipeline and pumping stations. However, this time round, the shops and places to eat were closed, the metal shutters pulled down, and beyond the large floor-to-ceiling viewing windows, the tarmac was a hive of activity.

He could see soldiers streaming wearily out of military and civilian jets; a jumbled mess of units, some in desert khakis, some wearing the temperate green camo version. With so many men in uniform, looking lost, weary and confused, it was what the ports along the south coast of England must have looked like on the morning after Dunkirk.

In the departure lounge with him, Andy guessed there were about two hundred people; civilians - mostly men, a few women and a handful of children. They were mainly businessmen caught out by events and some holidaymakers; a mishmash of the lucky few British nationals abroad who had managed to stumble upon the various efforts being made to repatriate military personnel. Most of them looked exhausted, dehydrated, and many of them lay stretched out and sleeping on the long, blue couches.

They had been kept waiting in the lounge for several hours without any information. If they weren’t all so exhausted, he suspected a ruckus would have been kicked up before now. They had been promised that someone would come and talk to them, and tell them what would happen next.

Finally some people arrived; a woman, accompanied by a couple of armed policemen, and a young man carrying a clipboard. She wore a radio on her belt, and had an official-looking badge pinned to her chest.

‘Excuse me!’ she called out. ‘Excuse me!’

The people in the departure lounge, including Andy, quickly roused themselves and gathered round her.

‘We’re sorry for keeping you all waiting so long.’ She looked harried, flustered and almost as exhausted as the anxious people surrounding her. ‘We’re going to be moving all of you to a safe zone where we can supply you with food and water rations whilst the current situation continues.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ asked someone behind Andy.

The woman, he could see from her name badge, was an emergency manager with the Civil Emergency Response Agency. She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid things are a bit of a mess out there, across the country. The emergency authorities have been establishing several safe zones where we can control things more easily and sensibly distribute rations. Outside of those, it’s . . .’ she shook her head again, ‘. . . well, it’s not good.’

‘Where are these “safe zones”? How many, how big?’

Her head spun round to face the direction from which the query had come. ‘I don’t know how many exactly. But in the capital, the Millennium Dome is being used as an emergency mustering point and supply centre. We have another major supply and distribution safety zone based in Battersea and another at Leatherhead. These zones are being guarded by the police and the army to ensure . . .’

‘Guarded? From who?’ Andy raised his voice from the back.

She turned to face him, and took a moment to think before answering. ‘We have supplies in the safe zones to keep some of the population going for the foreseeable future. But I’m afraid not all.’

The crowd stirred, he heard voices murmuring, whispered concern amongst them.

‘Are people dying out there?’

That’s a stupid bloody question
, thought Andy.

She nodded. ‘There’s a lot of instability, riots, chaos. The water system stopped functioning several days ago. People are drinking unclean water, they’re becoming sick, and yes . . . some will eventually die. We’re seeing what we’ve seen on the telly in the aftermath of disasters like the tsunami; infectious diseases, spoiled food and water . . . those sorts of things. Until the oil flows again, supplies of sterile water and food are the critical issues.’

‘When will the oil flow again?’ shouted another in the crowd.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t have the answer to that.’ She put on a reassuring smile for them. ‘But when it does . . . we’ll be on our way out of this situation. And every effort will be made to distribute medicines and emergency supplies of food and water to those who need it most. In the meantime, we’re working hard to ensure we can help as many people as possible ride this out in, like I say, these safe zones.’

She gestured towards the young man standing beside her with the clipboard. ‘We need to take all of your names, a few particulars, look at your passports if you have them . . . and then when we’re done, there’s a couple of army trucks which will be taking you to either the Leatherhead or the Battersea safe zone. So if you can form an orderly line here, we’ll get started.’

The crowd of people around her shuffled compliantly into a long queue, and the young man pulled up a seat to sit on and another stool to use as a makeshift desk. The two armed policemen, wearing Kevlar vests and casually cradling their machine-guns, took a step back, perhaps sensing this crowd was too beaten and tired to pose any sort of security risk.

The woman, meanwhile, disengaged from the process and found a quiet space between two large potted plastic plants and, ignoring the sign on the wall behind her, lit up a cigarette.

Andy wandered over towards her. Closer, he could see how tired and drawn she was; there were bags beneath her eyes, and a nervous tremor shook the hand that held the cigarette shakily to her lips.

Her eyes fixed on him as he closed the last few yards. She almost bothered to put her ‘we’ve-got-it-all-under-control’ smile back on for him . . . but clearly decided it was too much trouble.

‘Help you?’ she asked, blowing smoke out of her nose.

‘Do I get a choice?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Do I get a choice? I mean, if I don’t want to be taken into one of these safe zones?’

‘You don’t?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘Why the hell would you not?’ she said, and then took another long pull on her cigarette.

‘I need to get home to my family.’

She shrugged, ‘I can understand that.’

Andy turned round. ‘These people,’ he said gesturing at the queue that had formed in the middle of the departure lounge, ‘are going to die in your safe zones. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘How many people have you rounded up at Battersea, Leatherhead, the Dome?’

‘Look, I don’t know off hand . . . I’m just a sub-regional coordinator. ’

‘Guess.’

‘Shit, I don’t know,’ she shook her head, too tired and strung out to want to get sucked into this kind of conversation.

‘A hundred thousand? A million?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe half a million around London, and in other places too. Look, we’re doing our best—’

‘I don’t doubt you are. But do you have enough food and water to feed them for six months? Nine months? Maybe even a year?’

‘What?’ she said, her eyebrows knotted with confusion. She blew out a veil of smoke. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Recovery.’

‘Listen,’ she said flicking ash into one of the pots beside her and glancing casually at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on a wall nearby, ‘it’s not going to take a year for the oil to get flowing again. Some pipelines got blown, some oil refineries got damaged, right? That’s what happened.’

Andy nodded.

‘So how long does it take to fix that? I’m sure there’re people out there working on it right now. We’ll have oil again in a couple of weeks, okay? So look, why don’t you give me a break, join the queue and let me have a fag in peace?’ She offered him an apologetic shrug. ‘It’s been a really long, fucking day.’

Andy took a step closer and lowered his voice. ‘Somebody up there, in charge of things, is being very naive if they think it’s all going to be hunky-dory again within a few weeks.’

‘So . . . what? You want us to let you go?’

Andy nodded, ‘Yup. I’ll take my chances outside one of your safe zones.’

She stubbed her cigarette out and tossed it into one of the pots. ‘Okay then, your funeral. I’ll have one of our lads escort you out of the perimeter.’ She pulled the radio off her belt and talked quickly and quietly into it. ‘Somebody will be along shortly to take you out,’ she said to him.

‘Thanks,’ said Andy and then turned to go and sit down again.

‘Wait,’ said the woman.

He turned back to face her.

‘You really think this is going to go on that long? Six months?’

‘Sure. The oil might start gushing again next week, but where’s our food going to come from? The Brazilian farmer growing our coffee beans, the Ukrainian farmer growing our spuds, the Spanish farmer growing our apples . . . think about it. Is his little business still functioning? Is he still alive, or is he injured, or sick? Or how about this . . . has his crop spoiled in the ground, uncollected because he didn’t have fuel to operate his tractor? And what about all those crop-buyers, packagers, processors, distributors . . . all the links in the chain that get food out of the soil around the world and into the supermarket up the road? Can those companies still function? Do they still exist, or are their factories looted, burned down? And what about their workforce? Are they alive still? Or lying in their homes puking their guts up because they’ve been drinking the same water that they’re shitting into?’

The woman was silent.

‘Just a few questions off the top of my head that somebody up the chain of command needs to be asking right now,’ said Andy dryly. ‘It’s not just a case of handing out water bottles and high-energy protein bars for the next fortnight. The oil being stopped . . . even for just this week, has well and truly fucked everything up.’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ she replied.

‘System-wide failure. It’s all stalled. The world was never designed to reboot after something like that.’

‘And you’d rather take your chances out there? There’s no food, nothing. Whatever there was to loot has been taken by now. Do you not think you’re being a bit stupid?’

‘Six months from now, the Millennium Dome and all those other safe zones? They’ll be death camps.’

The woman looked at him incredulously. ‘Oh come on.’

Andy noticed a couple of armed police officers enter the departure lounge and walk towards them.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘here they are.’ She reached a hand out and placed it on his arm. ‘Look, why don’t you join the queue like the others? I can send them away. It’s dangerous in London right now.’

He could see her plea was a genuine act of compassion. She meant well.

‘Thanks, but right now I’d rather find my family and get as far as I can from
anyone
else. The last place I’d want to be in six months’ time is crammed into a holding-pen with thousands of other people.’

The police escort arrived, and the woman instructed them to guide him out of the building and through the guarded security perimeter around the terminal.

She wished him good luck as they parted.

CHAPTER 82

2.32 p.m. GMT
Shepherd’s Bush, London

‘Why?’ Jenny asked, looking at her daughter. ‘Why is it so important that we don’t go back to our house?’

Leona shook her head. ‘It’s what Dad said.’

‘I know it’s what he said, but he thought Jill was going to be here to look after you. I thought that’s why he said to come here.’

Jenny stared at the two bodies in the kitchen, at the pool of blood and splatter streaks on the walls and cupboards. ‘We can’t stay here. I don’t want Jacob having to see any more of this than he has alread—’

‘We
have
to stay away, Mum,’ said Leona. ‘We can’t go home.’

Jenny grabbed her shoulders and turned her round. ‘Why?’

Leona shook her head. Jenny could see there was something she wanted to say.

‘Come on. We can’t talk in here,’ said Jenny looking down at the corpses. She led her children through to the conservatory at the back of the house, where things were a little less topsy-turvy. She sat Leona down in a wicker chair, and pulled up another. Jacob climbed on to Jenny’s lap, holding her tightly. She rocked him without even thinking about it.

‘Come on Lee, this isn’t making any sense.’

Leona was silent for a while, watching Jacob. His eyes quickly grew heavy, and after a couple of minutes the even sound of his breathing told them both that he was fast asleep.

‘It’s dangerous at ours,’ said Leona, in a hushed voice.

‘What?’ Jenny shook her head, confused. ‘It’s no more dangerous than here.’

‘Mum,’ Leona looked up at her, ‘I think Dad tried to tell me on the phone . . . tried to tell me someone’s after me.’

‘What?’

‘A man, or men - I’m not sure.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Leona slumped in the chair. ‘You remember our trip to New York?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Of course, who could forget such an extravagant Christmas?’

‘It was a business trip for Dad, as well as a treat for us, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Dad had written something important, and was giving it to someone very important.’

Jenny nodded. She’d known there was an issue of confidentiality surrounding the work, and that had definitely put Andy on edge throughout their trip. She remembered thinking that there was perhaps something about this business that was . . . somewhat
unusual
.

‘I think it had something to do with
that
,’ Leona said, gesturing with both hands, ‘what’s been going on.’

Jenny shook her head again. Jacob murmured, disturbed by the movement. She wanted to say that was crazy. But something stopped her. What Leona was suggesting sounded ridiculous . . . and yet, so many things over the last eight years began to make some sort of sense, if what she said was true. Andy’s paranoia - if she thought about it, yes - it did really start with New York; his obsession with Peak Oil, with privacy, his gradual detachment from the world . . . it all began then.

And let’s not forget his very special area of expertise, Jenny, it’s always been specifically THIS - the choking of global oil . . . what’s happening right now
.

‘Mum,’ said Leona. ‘Dad was never meant to
see
the important men he was dealing with, it was that big a deal. That’s what he told me.’

‘
That’s what he told you
? Why didn’t he tell
me
any of this? Why the hell am I finding out about this now?’

‘Because it wasn’t Dad who saw them . . . it was me.’

‘What?’

‘In that really posh hotel? Remember I went up to get something? I walked into the wrong room, the one next door. I saw some men. And I knew even then they were important, like . . . running-countries kind of important.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘And now this whole oil thing is happening, I think they . . .’ Leona’s voice quivered, ‘I think they might need me to be dead.’