by Mark Morris
He encountered the first corpse two floors down. Its arum was lodged in the banister rail, its body twisted into such an unnatural position that it looked more like a loose-limbed doll than a human being. Max thought it was the body of a woman, but it was hard to tell. It was covered in silt, its hair like twigs clumped with mud, its features obscured. He didn't examine it too closely, simply stepping gingerly by, telling himself that of course it wasn't going to come alive; of course it wasn't go-ing to shoot out a filth-encrusted hand and grab his ankle.
Though he was relieved to put distance between himself and the corpse, stepping over it was only the beginning of his nightmare. Max's hope had been that the fire doors into the stairwell would have remained closed during the flood, containing everything, including the dead-especially the deadinside the main body of the building.
However, he quickly discovered that in many cases the stair doors had been forced and then lodged open by silt and heavy movable objects-lockers, beds, tables, chairs, machinery, stretchers. These objects, together with a million and one smaller items, were strewn everywhere like toys discarded by an untidy child. Intertwined among them were dozens of corpses, most mercifully plastered in mud, which, together with the murky light, obscured many of the grisly details of their individual deaths.
Even so, Max saw enough to fuel a lifetime's worth of nightmares. He saw bodies missing limbs; bodies partially eaten; bodies rippling with tiny crabs that scuttled busily over the bloated flesh of the drowned like the starving given access to a food mountain.
Worse, the closer he got to ground level the more packed with corpses and other debris the stairwell became. Several times he had to clamber over mounds of bodies in order to progress. Whenever he did, crabs scuttled over his shoes and up the legs of his jeans as if crazed by the scent of fresh blood. On one occasion, climbing over a muddy pile of limbs and torsos, Max unwittingly brought his foot down on the stomach of a child. Instantly the mouth of the corpse gaped open, releasing a gout of foul-smelling water and several thrashing white eels. Max cried out in disgust, and in his haste to get away, slithered over the rest of the mound, dislodging one of the other bodies, which slid after hinm, limbs flailing as though in pursuit.
Glad though he was to reach ground level, Max quickly realized that his problems were far from over. The thick black silt that coated everything was deeper here, shin-high in even the shallowest of areas, which made progress slow and exhausting. Furthermore, the sheer devastation was utterly overwhelming. For a few moments after emerging from the stairwell, Max could only stand and stare. The hospital he had entered a few days before was now unrecognizable. The curving banks of silt that coated the floor and stretched up the walls to the ceiling made the place look more like a cave than a man-made structure. Loops of dripping weed hung from the mud-caked light fittings. There was so much wreckage, so much that was splintered and smashed and torn apart, that you might almost have believed a bomb had gone off.
And, of course, once again bodies were sprawled everywhere, many with limbs that were twisted and broken and mangled. Some were half buried, arms and legs poking from their shallow graves like macabre plants. Is this it? Max thought in despair. Is this my world from now on?
He thought of his ma, wondered whether she was out there somewhere, fretting about her boys. He had to get to her, had to make his way home. He trudged along the corridors, the mud clinging to his feet, each step an effort. By the time he reached the reception area, with its big desk and rows of bolted-down chairs, he was exhausted.
Last time he was here, there had been people behind the desk, people gaping at him as he fled the Nazis. There was no one behind the desk now, no one sitting on the chairs. There were just half-buried bodies sticking up out of the mud. Max waded across to the entrance door, and here was the drinks machine where he had bought the cup of tea he had thrown in the Nazi's face. Next to that was the snack machine. It was glass-fronted and resembled a giant, filthy fish tank in which floated chocolate bars, bags of crisps, packets of sweets. Max was about to walk past when it occurred to him that some of the food might still be okay. Wouldn't the packaging around the crisps and some of the chocolate be vacuum-sealed, watertight?
He grabbed a metal waste bin and with asucking sound tugged it free of the mud. He hefted it. Half filled with mud it was heavy enough to make his biceps tighten. He was weak and hungry. Despite the burger Noel had given him, the crisps and chocolate inside the machine were making him salivate. Snarling with the effort, he swung the bin at the glass, which shattered, releasing a cascade of water and food. Max jumped back to avoid getting drenched, but slipped in the mud and ended up on his backside.
Soaked and muddy, he clambered back to his feet. He wearily set about picking up the bags of crisps and bars of chocolate with wrappers that had not succumbed to the salt water. He wiped them clean on his clothes and stuffed them into his pockets. He knew the chocolate and crisps would do nothing to slake his thirst and wished there was a machine that sold cans of Coke or bottled water. Despite that he wolfed down three bags of crisps and two chocolate bars, and then was abruptly and copiously sick. Once his stomach had settled he tried again, and this time was able to keep the food down. Then he left the hospital.
Max had seen a whole bunch of movies where the world had ended-blown up in a nuclear war, hit by a meteorite, overrun by zombies or aliens or robots-but none of them could have prepared him for what he witnessed on his slow and terrible journey through south London. The sheer scale of the destruction was mind-boggling. Everywhere he looked he saw mud, seaweed, dead people, dead fish, wrecked cars, uprooted trees, collapsed buildings, splintered wood, smashed glass and tangles of metal and plastic. There were more personal items too-books, shoes, toys, paintings, tools, chairs, clothing, crockery, kettles, bicycles-myriad bits from myriad lives, collected and kept and used and treasured, and now, like their owners, scattered and broken and dead.
Ten minutes after leaving the hospital, Max came across a general store that-aside from a crumpled post office van lying half in and half out of its shattered front window-had remained relatively intact. Though his mind felt battered by the terrible sights around him, it hadn't allowed him to forget how thirsty he was. He crossed the road, picking his way through the ankle-high silt and across several mounds of debris, and entered the building. Inside, a mass of perishable foodstuffs-cereals, flour, sugar-had combined with the silt to create a strange-smelling porridge that accumulated in nooks and crannies where the water had not easily been able to swill it out. Lying in this was a jumble of food tins-a little rusty, their labels soaked away-and jars, some smashed, some not. At the back of the room was a glass-fronted fridge, leaning askew and half filled with muddy water. Max opened it, stepping smartly back as the water and most of the fridge's contents gushed out. When it had reduced to a trickle, he stepped forward and plucked a can of Coke and a couple of plastic bottles of water from the swamp that had formed on the floor.
The can was seeping so much rust that he discarded it, but the bottles seemed okay He cleaned one as best he could on his filthy clothes, then broke the seal and brought it to his lips. The neck of the bottle tasted salty, but the water inside was clean and fresh. Max gulped two-thirds of it straight down, then stood for a moment, eyes half closed, relishing the sensation of the liquid sluicing through his system. He picked up as many bottles of water as he could carry, weighing himself down with them, and then continued on his way.
He saw the lifeboat another mile down the road. Even in this incredible new world it looked incongruous, jammed in the branches of an oak tree ten feet in the air. The tree was in a small park, between a bandstand and a children's play area. The trees, the swings, the railings around the park, the bandstand itself, all were strewn with slimy, dripping seaweed. A once-white SUV, crumpled as if made of tin, was lying on its roof in the bog that the ground had become. Max thought he could see a shape inside that might be a body, but the vehicle was so packed with mud that he wasn
't sure.
He was about to walk by when he heard a groan. It was so faint that he doubted he'd have heard it at all under normal circumstances. Now, though, the city was so silent that every sound-each drip of water, each minute creak of shifting debris-seemed eerily amplified.
"Hello?" he called, a little freaked at the way his voice was instantly gulped by the hungry silence. However, he was rewarded by another sound-not a groan this time, but a creak of movement. His eyes turned to the boat again. Could someone be up there? It seemed crazy, but what didn't right now? Forcing the gate open against the thick black lake that the park had become, Max approached the tree.
He barely even grimaced as his feet sank into foul-smelling mud up to his shins. His sneakers were top-range Nikes, sturdy and strong, but they were wrecked. He could feel water squelching between his toes with each step. Sooner or later he'd have to dry them out or get new ones (though where he'd find a new pair of shoes in this drowned world, he had no idea); otherwise he'd get that trench foot thing soldiers got in the first world war.
But he'd think about that later, once he'd got home and found out what had happened to Ma. He circled the tree cautiously noting the damage to the hull of the boat where a tree branch had punctured it, working out a possible route up to it should he decide to climb.
"Hey," he called. "Anyone up there?"
There was no answer this time, and Max sighed. He had to go up there. He guessed he'd known that since he'd heard the groan. Anyone who groaned like that wasn't likely to sit up and say hi. Max peeled off his jacket, heavy with water bottles and chocolate, and hung it on a low, slime-smeared branch. He lifted his right foot from the mud around the base of the tree (shlup!) and planted it in the crook of a low branch. He grabbed another branch a little higher and hauled himself up.
It was a short climb and relatively straightforward (three days ago Max could have scampered up there in a minute or less, agile as a squirrel), but by the time he came within touching distance of the boat, he was exhausted. He sat for a moment on a jutting branch just beneath the boat itself, clinging to the trunk and trying to blink the dizziness out of his head. "Max Green, you are a fucking pussy," he told himself; then he stood up on the branch and hauled himself the last few feet. He looked into the boat and saw the woman.
"Hey," he murmured.
She was pretty. Slim. Long sandy hair. She was wet and evidently cold, judging by the way she was shivering. She was sprawled across two parallel benches, her feet trailing in several inches of scummy water that filled the bottom of the craft. She was dressed in khaki cotton trousers, a blue sweatshirt and a life jacket. On her feet she had only pumps that had once been white, which made Max think that maybe she had scrambled aboard with little time to prepare for the rigors ahead.
She was alive, but she looked in a bad way. Her ankles, hands and lips were blue; her eyelids were fluttering as if she were having bad dreams.
"Hey," Max said again. "You okay?"
He saw her lips move, but no sound came out.
He leaned forward on the slippery branch and took hold of the boat. The tree creaked alarmingly, as if warning him of dire consequences should he attempt to upset the equilibrium established here. He didn't want to send the two of them plummeting to the ground, but if he left the woman here she'd die, simple as that. Then again, how the fuck was he going to get her out of the boat and down the tree if she was barely conscious? Swaying on the branch, he looked from the woman to the ground and wondered what the hell to do.
Less than three miles in half a day. At this rate, thought Abby, it would take then not weeks but months to reach Scotland. The problem, of course, was Mr. Beamish and his wheelchair. It had been a nightmare trying to maneuver him through the silt-clogged, debris-strewn streets. She had lost count of the number of tines they'd had to stop to clear the path ahead. On a few occasions-when they had encountered fallen trees or partially collapsed buildings-they had even had to double back to find a different route altogether.
Not that she or Dad would ever consider abandoning the Beamishes. If they did, they'd die, simple as that. All of a sudden the world had become a scary, cruel place. It had never really occurred to Abby how cosseted she was, how much she took food and drink and warmth and health care and housing for granted. She felt ashamed now of all the petty things she used to complain about (if it was too wet to play tennis, say, or if Muni refused to increase the monthly credit on her mobile, or if they'd run out of skinny raspberry muffins in Starbucks), thought what a spoilt brat she must have been. But it hadn't just been her; it had been everybody. No wonder poorer countries regarded places like Britain and America with a combination of envy and hatred.
Of course, Abby had seen programs about famines and earthquakes in other parts of the world, but she had never seriously thought what it would be like to be starving or homeless. It was terrifying to realize that from now on they had only themselves to rely on. If one of them had an accident they could no longer call an ambulance or go to a hospital. Or if they were attacked by people who wanted to steal their stuff, they could no longer ring 999 and ask for the police.
If she thought too much about what her life might be like from now on, Abby found her heart starting to thump really hard, found her mouth getting dry. For this reason, therefore, she tried not to think about it, tried to concentrate only on the present. Because if the future didn't exist, she reasoned, it couldn't possibly frighten her.
By the time they stopped in front of the big Sainsbury's north of the Thames, just off Tower Bridge Road, Abby was exhausted. She wondered whether every day would be as knackering as this from now on.
They had tried to keep to the main roads as much as they could-up Peckham Park Road, on to Old Kent Road, and from there on to Tower Bridge Road, where they had crossed the river-but it hadn't always been possible. It had been Steve's idea, once it became clear that the first part of their journey would be conducted at a snail's pace, to use the supermarket on Prescot Street as their first "base camp."
"We can rest up there for a while," he had said, "have a bite to eat and replenish our supplies."
They still had enough food for a few more days, but Abby knew he was worried that once they moved out of London the pickings might become slimmnmer-especially if there were other survivors about. The problem, of course, was that they were limited as to what they could carry.
"I could have one of those rucksack thingies," Mrs. Beamish said. "I might be ancient, but I've got the constitution of an ox."
Despite her determined words, however, both Steve and Abby had noticed the old lady becoming increasingly weary as the day had progressed. Over the last half mile, in particular, her pace had slowed considerably. Even so, Steve said blithely, "If we had another rucksack we'd let you have it like a shot, Mrs. B, but unfortunately, we don't."
"We'd best look for one then, hadn't we?" Mabel said. "I do want to do my share, you know."
"Tell you what," said Steve, "if we do find a rucksack we'll stuff all the bedding and clothes in it and you can carry that. How does that sound?"
Mabel frowned, but before she could respond, George said, "What the lad is trying to get at is that you're no spring chicken anymore, dahlin'. You're not as useless as me, I'll grant you that, but if you tried to carry what these young 'uns are carrying, there'd be two of us in wheelchairs, and that'd be no bloody use to anybody"
Mabel planted her hands on her hips and scowled at her husband. Steve and Abby exchanged a glance, anticipating fireworks, but then the old lady's face softened. "You're right, as usual, you old bugger," she said. "I just want to do my bit, that's all."
"And you shall, Mrs. B," said Steve. "Believe me, we're all going to have to do our bit if we're going to get through this."
"Yup," said Mr. Beamish. "Group stuntman, that's me. If you want someone to jump off a tall building or dive through a burning hoop, I'm yer man."
Abby gave the old man a hug. "You're our inspiration, Mr. B.You keep us going
with your jokes," she said.
George winked at her. "Why are bakers deformed?"
"Don't know," said Abby.
"'Cos they're all inter-bred," George said, and cackled.
In Abby's opinion the worst thing about the journey so far was not the lack of progress, or even the physical exhaustion; it was the bodies. They were everywhere, snarled among the wreckage like so much flotsam and jetsam. They were a gruesome sight-white and bloated and mud-streaked, many miss ing limbs, most leaking silt from mouths and eye sockets. Even worse, however, was the knowledge that all these deaths would go unmourned, that these people would rot here, unidentified and uncared for, picked at by birds and crabs and insects.
People as rubbish. Yes, that was what was most shocking. It was hard to look upon this battleground of a city that only a few days ago had been teeming, and think of Life Everlasting, of souls ascending to Heaven, of God's creation and love.
The entrance porch at Sainsbury's was a glittering beach of broken glass. The trolleys chained together in their bays were a tangle of metal, coated with slime and weed. Stacked against the side wall of the building, jutting from great drifts of silt, was a crumpled heap of cars, intertwined with a small forest of uprooted trees. As they crossed the mud bath of the car park, Abby's eye was snagged by a variety of objects among the debris-a waterlogged TV; a scattering of what appeared to be office files; part of a billboard, the now pointless advertisement bleached by the sea; a heap of what appeared to be rags, but on closer inspection proved to be a baby in a onceyellow romper suit, one of its hands and half its face missing.
Abby turned away, sickened. Mabel put an arm around her.
"We saw some sights during the war," she said, "but this..
