by Mark Morris
We had breakfast-jam sandwiches, using the last of the bread, which had started to go a bit dry round the edges (boo-hoo, bye bread)-and set off. Dad plotted a route in the A-Z, which would have taken us up Kingsland Road through Shoreditch and Hoxton, and then up Stoke Newington Road, towards Tottenham. It seemed straightforward, but when we tried it, it was impossible. If it had just been me and Dad we'd probably have found a way through, but there were so many wrecked cars and collapsed buildings that there was no way we could get Mr. B through with his wheelchair.
So we had another look at the map and Dad decided that we should head west along the river, past St. Paul's Cathedral and towards the houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. It was a bit of a roundabout route, but he reckoned that if there were any other survivors they might have headed somewhere like that, or if there was any kind of rescue operation that might have been where it was tak-ing place-somewhere big and well-known. So that's what we did, but because we'd wasted so much time earlier, by 4 o'clock we'd only gone about a mile from where we'd set off that morning. We were all shattered and fed up, so we decided to bed down for the night and set off again the next (i.e. this) morning, so that's what we did. It was tough going like before, but we made a bit better progress. Dad wanted to make it to the A5 cos he thought the road would be clearer, and from there we could stick to the main roads, at least until we were out of London. Mrs. B plodded on, and Mr. B slept a lot, even when the wheelchair was being jolted along, sometimes even when me and Dad were having to lift him over stuff. We were kind of getting used to things like the crabs and the birds eating all the dead bodies by this time. I mean, it's still horrible, but we just try not to look at it.
It was about 5 o'clock when Mrs. B saw the smoke.
"Do you think someone's done it to attract attention?" she asked.
"Could be," said Dad.
"We've got to go there, Dad," I said. "We've got to see."
"I agree," he said, "but let's be careful."
We decided to go to where the smoke was, because Dad said if there was a chance of meeting up with people who could help us we should take it.
"What if the people there are nice and everything, but they don't want to come to Scotland?" I said.
"Then we'll go on without them," said Dad. "But at least it'll give us more options.And it'll give Mr. and Mrs. B more options too."
I hadn't thought about that, but he was right. I couldn't really see Mr. and Mrs. B making it to Scotland with us. So if we could find someone nice to take them in, then that would be best for everyone.
By the time we got to where the fire was it was dark, and I mean REALLY dark, not just getting dark. We hadn't traveled in the dark before and it was freaky without streetlamps and lights from buildings and cars and stuff. We all had torches, but when you shone them around you couldn't help thinking that things were moving in the shadows just outside the light. The thing was, wherever you looked there was movement. The little red crabs were everywhere, and they made a horrible noise that I hadn't noticed in the daytime, a sort of rustling. The sound of lots of little legs scuttling about.
The dead bodies looked worse in the dark too, but that was probably because we couldn't help looking at them, because until we shone our torches on them we didn't know where they were. It was their faces that were the worst, their open mouths and eyes, the way they looked all sort of slack. And most of them had these awful purpleyblack blotches on them where the blood had collected under their skin, and they had crabs crawling all over them, over their faces and through their hair.
Okay, I'm going to stop writing this stuff about the dead people now cos I'm REALLY starting to freak myself out. I'm writing this by candlelight, and there are brown shadows moving on the walls, and the hotel keeps creaking, which Dad says is cos it's drying out.
One GOOD thing about the dark was that the blacker it got the more we could see the glow of the fire in the sky. We followed it, a bit like the wise men following the Star of Bethlehem to Baby Jesus, but we weren't sure how close we were until we actually came round a corner and there it was.
We could tell straightaway that the fire had burned down a lot since it had been lit, but it was still crackling away. It smelled weird, kind of meaty, like the hog roast we have at school every Bonfire Night, but not as nice. I didn't really think about it until Mrs. B sud-denly said, "Are those people?"
I thought she was talking about somebody standing behind the fire, and then I noticed she was looking into the fire, and so I looked INTO the fire too, and you know when you look at something, and at first you can't tell what it is, and then suddenly you can? Well, I looked and I saw this charred stick sticking out of the flames, and suddenly I realized that the stick had a hand on the end of it, the fingers all black and curled up like the legs of a dead spider. And once I'd seen the hand, I suddenly saw other things too, skulls and legs, and I realized that what I'd thought were logs were bodies, and they were all burning and giving off this smell like burned meat.
I could taste smoke in my throat, and I thought about swallowing tiny bits of all the bodies in the fire, and suddenly I puked my guts up all over the road.
"I know it's horrible," Dad said, "but at least someone's decided to make a go of it. 11
I was bent over with my hands on my knees. The rucksack felt like an animal sitting on my back. "What do you mean?" I said.
"I mean it looks as though someone's decided to lay down roots," he said, "otherwise why would they clear the area?You certainly wouldn't do this if you were just planning on staying for a day or two."
Suddenly I realized what he was on about. Seeing all the bodies had made me think that something really bad was happening here, like someone was killing people and burning them or something. Dad must have realized what I was thinking, cos he smiled and said, "I think you've been watching too many horror movies."
I suppose it was kind of weird, him smiling when he was standing right next to a load of burning bodies, but hey, this is the kind of world we live in now.
"I reckon all these stiffs came from yon hotel," Mr. B said.
We all looked at the hotel he was pointing at. It was a big posh place, surrounded by office blocks, which sort of stood back from it, as if the hotel was a king and they were its subjects.
"Could be," said Dad.
"I'm sure of it," said Mr. B. "It's the tallest building round here, ain't it? If anyone had survived in these parts, where would they likely have come from?"
I looked up at the hotel and saw that, like all the other buildings, the walls were covered with greeny-black slime that had been left behind when the water went down. But the top floor wasn't. There was a tide line and above that the walls were white again.
Dad nodded. "We'll check it out. Mrs. B, would you mind wait-ing with Mr. B in the lobby?"
Mrs. B nodded and gave us a tired smile, and we went into the hotel, Dad pushing the wheelchair. Then me and Dad went up the stairs. They were wet and muddy, but you could see from the way the mud had been squashed down in the middle that they had been used a lot in the last few days. It was hard going, especially with the rucksacks, and after a few flights the tops of my legs were aching. It was creepy too. Dad kept calling out hello, but nobody answered. Our torch beams kept overlapping, making circles of light in front of us. It reminded me of Mulder and Scully investigating some deserted old building in The X-Files.' I kept expecting to suddenly shine my torch onto some horrible face in the darkness-the face of a demon or something.
At last we got to the top, and cos no one had answered Dad's shouts I wondered whether the people here were lying in wait for us. Maybe they were mad like the man in the supermarket, I thought. Or maybe they just thought it would be easier to kill whoever came by in case that person was out to steal what they'd got.
It turned out there was no one around, tho. There were 6 suites on the top floor and they were really luxurious. Each one had a bed-room, a sitting room, a bathroom and a little kitchen. We work
ed out pretty quickly that 2 of them were being lived in and the others weren't.
"Must have gone for a night out," Dad said. "Nice meal, perhaps a visit to the theater."
"And a taxi home?" I said.
"Oh, I think so, don't you?" Dad said with a grin.
We went back down to tell Mr. and Mrs. B what we'd found. But just as we got to the bottom of the stairs, the hotel doors opened and 3 people came into the lobby carrying a woman on a stretcher made out of a door.
For a few seconds we all just looked at each other, shocked. At one end of the stretcher was a black guy, quite nice-looking, a few years older than me, and at the other end was a tough-looking man of about 25 who had an Italian look about him, like Joey from `Friends.' The third man, who was holding the door open, was tall and thin with a gray beard. He had glasses on a chain round his neck and was wearing a gray jacket and a shirt and tie, as if he still had a job to go to or people to impress.
It was the man with the beard who spoke first. "Good evening," he said.
I started to giggle. It was so freaky hearing someone say something in such a polite voice. I put my hand over my mouth, but I couldn't stop.
Everyone looked at me. "I'm sorry," said the man with the beard, raising his eyebrows. "Did I say something amusing?"
"You took us by surprise, that's all," Dad said. "We haven't seen anyone to speak to for nearly a week."
"Yes, there are few of us about," said the man with the beard, "but I'm afraid formal introductions will have to wait. This young lady is suffering from hyperthermia and dehydration."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Dad asked.
"We need to transport her to the top floor, so I'm sure an extra pair of hands will be most welcome," said the man with the beard.
I'd got over the giggles now and felt bad that the man might have thought I'd been laughing at him. "We've just been up there and seen where you live," I said. "It's very nice."
The Italian-looking man said, "Been poking around, have you?"
I looked at him and he stared back at me, and the look in his eyes made me uncomfortable. I know I'm only 13, but I'm not as innocent as older people usually think. I recognized the look he gave me, like he hated me, but wanted to sleep with me at the same time. I looked away from him and tried not to shiver.
"Not at all," said Dad sharply. "We saw the fire and worked out that someone must be living here. We just came by to say hello and perhaps suggest pooling our resources."
Dad, Marco and Max (we didn't know their names then, but it makes it easier) carried the girl upstairs. Me and Greg (that was the name of the man with the beard) followed, and Mr. and Mrs. B stayed down in the lobby, tho Dad told them he'd be back for them in a minute.
"What's her name?" asked Dad, nodding at the shivering girl on the stretcher.
"Libby," said Max.
"Is she your girlfriend?" I asked.
He laughed as if he was embarrassed. "Nah, I just found her. She was in a boat up a tree."
"Really?" said Dad.
"Yeah, man. She must have been floating about for a few days. When the water went down, she went down with it," said Max.
"So how did you get her down?" Dad asked.
"It wasn't easy," said Max. "She was too heavy to carry, so I found a load of mattresses, yeah, and piled them up under the tree, and then I just dropped her onto them. They were soaking wet and muddy, but they broke herfall, you know?"
"Very resourceful," said Greg.
"How long have you been looking after her?" Dad asked.
"Couple of days," said Max. "I've tried to keep her dry and give her food and water, but she was in a bad way when I found her, and she don't seem to have improved much. She's come round a few times, spoken to me a little bit, but every time I think she's getting better, she'll go off again, you know?"
The men got Libby upstairs and Greg crushed up some paracetomol in water and made her swallow it. He said she was feverish, but thought she'd be fine.
"We're going to have to be very careful about illnesses from now on," he said to us all a bit later. Dad had unpacked the camping stove and we'd made some coffee and were sitting in Greg's suite. "We can't take coughs and colds and minor infections for granted, like we used to. We'll need to really look after ourselves, raid as many chemist shops as we can find and build up a good supply of drugs, as well as things like vitamin supplements to complement our diet. It's unlikely we'll be eating very much-if any fresh fruit and vegetables in the coming weeks and months. Our immune systems are going to take quite a hammering and there will be greater risk of contagion and infection. Diseases suppressed for years are likely going to rear their heads again before too long. If we're going to develop communities, which I think is inevitable, we're going to have to have quarantine ar-eas for the sick." He rubbed a hand across his face and I could see it was trembling. "I don't want to be alarmist," he said. "It's just some-thing I've been thinking about a great deal. We're all in shock at the moment, trying to cope the best we can. But in a strange kind of way this is actually the honeymoon period. The real trials are ahead of us. Long-term survival is going to be very tough. Very tough indeed."
Greg seemed pleased to have us around and said we were welcome to stay in the empty suites. He and Marco and now Libby all had one each, so Max took another, me and Dad shared one and the Beamishes shared one. Once we were settled and we'd changed our wet socks and Dad had cleaned our boots and stuffed them full of bits of an old T-shirt to soak up the damp, we got some food on the go. The tins had no labels so we opened some at random and ended up making a sort of stew with corned beef, baked beans, sweet corn and lentils (a bit weird but quite nice). After we'd eaten we told our stories-Dad first, speaking for us and the Beamishes, then Max, then Marco (who hardly said anything-Ifound out his family had owned a restaurant and that he'd been a hotel porter and that was it) and then Greg. When it was his turn he was a bit quiet at first and then he said, "All right, cards on the table. I don't suppose any of it matters now anyway."
(Before I start I ought to say that Dad helped me a lot with this next bit. I couldn't remember some of what Greg said or what words he used, so Dad helped me fill in the gaps.)
"If the flood hadn't come I'd be dead now," Greg said. "It's ironic. Maybe millions have died because of this awful disaster, and here I am, possibly the only person who is still alive because of it."
We all looked at each other, but nobody said anything. We were sit-ting roughly in a circle, apart from Marco, who was sitting on the win-dow ledge, looking out at the blue lightning.
"That's right," Greg said, nodding, `I came here to kill myself. I know what you're thinking. What a bloody selfish bastard, leaving the mess for somebody else to clear up. B ut I didn't want my wife to find me, and so I came here. Might as well go out in luxury, I thought, rather than in some grotty place with rising damp and cockroaches. Besides, I wasn't planning on leaving much of a mess, or even one at all. It was simply going to be a bottle of w hisky and a few dozen sleeping pills. I'd have been found tucked up in bed in my pajamas. Nothing too alarming for the maid. Nice and peaceful.So why was I going to do it? The simple answer is that I didn't uunt to cope with my life anymore. I used to have a good life. I was happy and rich. I had a good job, a wife who I loved and who loved me. We had marvelous friends, holidays abroad, wonderful dinner parties. We went for walks in the country and played golf at weekends. No children, but that was something we'd accepted long ago, and as we'd grown older it had actually become an advantage. It had given us more time for ourselves.
Then about 5 years ago, my wife, Iris, began to forget things. Words for everyday objects. Or she'd go out and leave the front door wide open. We joked about it, but in the back of my mind I suspected it was Alzheimer's, and of course I was right. I won't go into details, but s ince those first symptoms presented themselves she's become progressively worse. When I took her to the residential home on Sunday, the day I checked in here, and said good-bye to h
er, she had no idea who I was. The woman with whom I had spent 35 mostly happy years was dead and gone.
All in all, the last 5 years have been a bloody nightmare, but Iris's illness is not the real reason why I decided to kill myself.. I'd be a pretty poor doctor, and an even worse human being, if it was. No, her illness was simply the catalyst for a whole series of events-or at least one particular aspect of it was. You see, Iris has never been much of a sleeper. Even when she was well, she would be a night owl, pottering until the early hours and still up before me each morning to put the kettle on. But since her illness she's been worse, sometimes getting up several times a night.And if I wasn't there to put her back to bed she would eventually find her way outside. So, as you can imagine, I was on tenterhooks all the time, far too anxious to get anything like a good night's sleep. The upshot of all this, of course, was that I was being ground down, both physically and mentally.
This latter stage-the chronic sleeplessness-has been particularly bad for about a year now. Because of it I was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate, and starting to make mistakes at work. Only little ones, but in my job there is no room for error. I'm a consultant pe-diatrician, you see. WAS a consultant paediatrician."
