For a few moments there was silence, and I had a sense of him sitting in a similar darkness, staring at a light.
‘Do you ever wonder how you’re going to die, Beth?’
My throat tightened.
‘I do,’ he went on, ‘all the bloody time, if I’m honest. People don’t talk about it, but they should. Do you know, I read that there are people alive today who will live to see a thousand. Medical science, drugs, treatments and what have you, will ensure that their ends are violent. A thousand, Beth, can you believe that? What would that do to you, I wonder? Eh?’
He broke off. There was heavy breathing, something liquid in the background. His voice deepened.
‘How do you think … you’re going to go, Beth? Be nice to be able to choose, wouldn’t it? Me, I’d choose the ocean any day. Ker-sploosh, just like that – succumb to it all. The slow drag of the deep, drowning, or maybe … maybe being eaten. Sharks. Lots of them in the Atlantic. They have razor-sharp teeth, so I’ve heard, and sharp blades don’t hurt as much as blunt ones. Apparently if you’re stabbed with something sharp enough you won’t even feel it … ’course, sharks would pull you apart as well, so I suppose that would be painful, but –’ he exhaled long and slow ‘– pain, once you’re in it, you become it, don’t you? Are you in pain, Beth? How’s that leg of yours?’
He broke off, and once again I heard the same wet sounds in the background, punctuated by the odd word, like an old man mumbling to himself. I thought he’d finally given up and was about to leave the radio when he spoke again, this time with an angry shudder.
‘You took everything from me, Beth. Everything. And I—’
A hand reached over my shoulder and snatched the receiver.
‘You talk too much.’
I spun round. ‘Ed?’
Ed breathed furiously into the receiver, finger on the button. ‘In fact you sound like an old boss of mine. He talked too much as well. He could talk for hours and never say anything, he just loved the sound of his own voice. Just like you.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Who’s that, then?’ A smile had crept into Tony’s voice. ‘Is that … is that the smoke man? The Great Soprendo?’ He cackled. ‘Yes, I think that’s who it is. Who are you, then, and where do you fit into all of this?’
‘Put it this way,’ said Ed, ‘you want to know how you’re going to die? You’re listening to the answer if you get in the way of us finding our children.’
A long pause. ‘Us? My goodness—’
‘Yes, us. Me and my wife, and believe me, mate, you do not want to get in her way right now.’
I could almost feel the smile slip from Tony’s lips. ‘I remind you of an old boss, do I? Well, I’ll tell you something – I got a look at your face in that gully, right before you threw that smoke canister, and you remind me of someone who used to work for me too. Feeble around the gills, weak in the jaw, just the kind of man who has a boss. Not a man who can do things or exert any influence the world, not a man who can change the tide.’
‘I don’t want to change the tide, dickhead, I just want to find my kids.’
Ed slammed down the receiver and flicked off the radio.
‘I think it’s best we keep that switched off from now on, don’t you? Now, are we going to use that storm or not?’
The others took little convincing. We woke them – Maggie, Josh, Dani and Carmela; Bryce’s absence was now taken as read – and they listened in silence as Ed and I told them our plan. They did not need to follow; they could stay, or sail north or south to avoid the storm and hopefully lose Staines in the process. But we were going in.
It was clearly a dangerous plan, but it was also the only rational one. Behind us lay danger and old water; ahead lay our children, and an atmospheric cauldron boiling with the energy that might deliver us to them.
When we had finished, Dani and Josh shared a look and began wordlessly preparing the ropes. Richard slapped Ed on the shoulder and Carmela kissed my cheek. Maggie went below deck to clear the cabin, wincing as she descended the ladder. It was clear that her shoulder was troubling her, and on the last rung she offered me a hollow smile that only bore out her reluctance to be there.
I’m sorry for what happened, truly I am, but what else could I have done?
Chapter 24
I had never realised how different the same ocean could be before. I don’t know why. The land shifts with the seasons, after all. Hillsides bloom and die, summer-dulled cities ignite in winter sun; weather changes everything. That’s why strangers talk about it. ‘We’re living within a beast,’ they’re saying, when they remark upon the wind tearing at the orchard, or the rain soaking the fields, ‘a beast with its own mind and feelings, and we’re at its mercy. How do you think the beast is feeling today?’
The same is true of the sea. It has its own mind and feelings, and on this particular day its mind was distracted, its feelings muddled. We moved through still, uncertain water in a sticky yellow haze. There was a sweltering density to the air, like a car’s heater stuck on full during a heatwave.
We itched and fanned ourselves, aware that we were drinking more water than our rations allowed. But there was something else too – an occasional sharp smell that made me nervous. It felt as if we were inside a fever, and this is what I put my own symptoms down to. But the truth was the sweat on my brow was as much due to what was going on inside my body as outside.
The haze worsened. I steered, keeping close to the Buccaneer’s starboard side. Maggie stood at its bow, frowning, chest out like a figurehead.
I called up to her.
‘Can you see something?’
‘I think so. I don’t know what, though. Some detritus floating ahead. I think we should slow down.’
Richard shut off the Buccaneer’s engine and Ed did the same with the Elma.
‘Take the helm,’ I said to Ed, and made my way to the bow.
The water was treacle thick and marbled with oily rainbows. There was a gloop. At first I thought it was a fish, but from the haze I saw something turn upside down and bubble from a hole. Lying on my front, I reached out with my broom and lifted it from the water.
‘What is that?’ said Ed.
I stared at the loose fabric, wilting over my crutch like a lily. ‘It’s a hat. For a wedding or something.’
‘There’s more,’ said Maggie, pointing. ‘Look.’
I let the hat fall and looked ahead, where more objects were becoming visible. Plastic bowls and cutlery, an ornate bathtub, an upturned child’s chair and countless sheets of paper that stuck to our hull. There were numbers on them, and scribbles down their sides.
‘Do you think this is from a wreck?’ said Ed.
‘No,’ I said. Tin cans and empty plastic bottles bobbed between the larger objects, and countless crisp and sweet wrappers clung together beneath the surface like plastic weed. ‘It’s rubbish. Trash.’
‘We need to find a way round it,’ said Richard. His voice was distant. ‘Too dangerous to motor through it – that stuff could mangle our props. Where are you going?’
I looked across, noticing that the Buccaneer had drifted from our side.
‘Nowhere,’ said Ed. ‘We’re dead ahead. Where are you going?’
‘We’re not – oh, fuck.’
Below the littered surface, a slow stream of rubbish was moving right to left.
‘There’s a current,’ I said. ‘Heading south.’
The Buccaneer was now ahead of us. We were moving further apart.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Richard. ‘Maybe it’ll take us out of this mess.’
As he spoke, his voice grew ever more distant. The Buccaneer became a mustardy outline in the haze, and before we knew it, it was gone.
‘Richard?’ I called. ‘Maggie?’
But there was no answer. We bobbed alone in the stagnant water.
‘We should follow them,’ said Ed. ‘Why hasn’t the current taken us too?’
‘Because
we’re stuck in this stuff.’
A dam of paper and plastic had built up against our hull. I tried to push it away with my crutch.
‘Maybe motor just a bit to get us ahead?’
But as Ed reached for the starter, we heard a roaring noise ahead. It started quietly, from starboard, and grew as it moved towards us.
I hobbled back from the bow.
‘What is that?’
‘I don’t know but it’s coming this way.’
With a sudden crescendo, a huge shadow pulsed in the distance and disappeared to port. Soon the noise was gone, but a wave rippled out from the wake of whatever had passed, knocking away the rubbish at our hull. Now free, the Elma drifted ahead, and the current took us too.
‘I don’t like this,’ I said. ‘Ed?’
‘I know, I know, I’m going to back us out.’ He started the engine, but there was an almighty thud and the boat rocked. The engine spluttered and wheezed, smoke streaming from its cavity beneath the deck.
‘Fuck,’ said Ed, shutting it off.
‘What’s happened?’
‘The propeller’s jammed.’
The Elma’s speed slowly climbed. We swung our heads to starboard, from which another sound was approaching. This time it was closer. There were voices.
‘Is that …?’
‘It can’t be, they went port.’
But the Buccaneer burst from the fog, and Maggie, wild-eyed and waving, screamed at us. ‘Get back! Get back!’
They swept past. Dani and Josh were flat against the deck, and Richard and Carmela strained at the helm, fighting to steady the wheel.
‘Motor out!’ yelled Richard. ‘It’s not—’
But they had disappeared into the haze once more, and the Elma was following.
‘Ed, try the engine.’
‘I am, it’s not starting.’
‘Keep trying.’
I clung to the guard rail as Ed turned the starter, watching our helpless passage into the swirling current. It seemed to stretch ahead, lanes of rubbish moving in different speeds but all in the same direction.
‘It’s no use,’ called Ed. ‘What about the sail?’
‘There’s no wind.’ I turned and faced him. ‘It’s too late. Ed, hold on to something.’
He grabbed the helm and I wrapped my arms around the mast. The Elma suddenly swung to port. My broom fell and span across the deck, where it balanced on the side. I reached for it but the distance was too great. The current surged and I gripped the mast with everything I had as water sprayed across the deck, showering us with dirt, plastic and all manner of sodden, stinking debris.
‘What the hell is this?’ screamed Ed above the roar.
‘I’ve no idea!’ I closed my eyes as a plastic bag hit me square in the face. I pulled it away and squinted ahead, but as I did the mast tilted starboard, and I had to brace myself against the cabin wall. I glanced at the guard rail.
‘My crutch – no!’
But the water had already taken it. I watched it spin away, lost in the refuse through which we were now thundering.
‘We’re banking starboard,’ said Ed. ‘Hold on!’
The Elma’s mast pitched ever more to the right. Gravity pulled me and I prepared for what I was sure would be a plunge into the mess below, but we steadied at a 45-degree angle.
As the little boat sped on, the haze began to clear and a searing shaft of sunlight hit the deck. It spread, pushing its way through the murk until it had illuminated the water around us and everything beyond. With a lurching horror, I saw what was causing the current.
‘We just need to hold on until whatever’s causing this stops,’ said Ed. ‘It can’t go on forever.’
‘I think you might be wrong about that – look.’
We were clinging to the outer rim of an enormous whirlpool, a vast man-made maelstrom of plastic, metal and cardboard heaving clockwise around a deep vortex.
Ed renewed his grip on the wheel and stammered: ‘Shit.’
The world spun around us. I tried to get a sense of the scale of the thing. Was it fifty metres across? Double that? I couldn’t fathom it. That box bobbing in the foam could have been a truck, that splayed book could have been floorboards for all I knew.
All I did know was that, whatever it was, and however big it was, we were heading directly into it. The swirling centre was a deep black hole sucking everything into it.
I scrabbled against the mast, kicking from the drop.
‘Ed! Hard to port, hard to port!’
Ed slammed the helm and the Elma obeyed with a plucky spring to the left. The mast straightened a little, but we were still within the lip of the basin.
‘More, Ed!’
‘There’s no more, that’s it! We need something to pull us out.’
‘Try the engine again.’
He tried. A stinking foam sprayed over us, and I wiped the putrid film from my face.
‘It’s still jammed,’ said Ed. ‘Can you raise the sail?’
‘I told you, there’s no wind.’
I tried anyway, easing myself down towards the cleat where the rope was tethered, its loose end flopping like an eel in the brown froth rapidly covering the deck. I reached down for it with one arm looped around the mast. My leg screamed under the extra weight and another wave of dizziness overwhelmed me. For a moment gravity seemed to disappear and I thought I’d let go, but my senses returned and I found that I was still there, hanging on with my left arm as my right swam unsteadily beneath.
‘Careful,’ said Ed. ‘Hold on.’
He jammed a boat hook in the helm to lock it and clambered along the port side towards me, the Elma’s camber requiring him to hang from the guard rail, slipping his feet against the slimy wood.
‘Hurry, Ed.’
‘Hold on.’
I reached for the rope again, the tendons in my neck and shoulders straining. I felt a twang above my collarbone, and at the same moment a fleet of boxes were suddenly whipped up from the water and hurtled across the boat. One struck me in the head. Luckily it was empty – just a rhombus of damp cardboard – but the impact was enough to daze me again, and this time I lost my grip on the mast.
‘No!’ I screamed. The world slowed as gravity took me. I slipped down, flapping with my arms, trying to find anything to hold on to. The mast was out of reach. My fingers found taut rope, but it was greasy with foam and it sprang uselessly away. My eyes locked on the Elma’s stern as a shadow passed over me; I was beneath the basin’s rim now and into the darkness of the maelstrom. I scrabbled at the deck, fingernails scratching, clawing, breaking, bleeding …
‘Got you.’
The shadow disappeared and I was in sunlight again. With his other hand looped over the guard rail, Ed had caught my wrist and hauled me up. My neck felt like it was on fire as the recently shorn tendons now found themselves yanked in the opposite direction. Dizziness again, and a rush of bile this time, but I pushed it down and wrapped my other arm around the mast, locking on.
‘I’m up,’ I said. ‘You can let go.’
He released me and clung on with the free hand. For a moment I registered the shape of the Black Buccaneer on the opposite side of the whirlpool, bucking and jolting like a toy.
‘I’m going to untie the rope,’ said Ed.
‘Ed—’
‘Just hold on.’
‘Everything’s slippy, the rope, the deck, everything.’
‘It’s OK.’
He let himself slide towards the cleat. Without thinking I stuck out my boot. ‘Hold on to my ankle.’
He did so, and I screamed at the sky. The flesh of my foot felt like soft clay being squashed in an anvil, as if muscle and bone were no longer connected. But there was a border to the pain that chilled me. Everything around my toes had a dreadful, empty numbness.
‘Are you all right?’ said Ed.
‘Just do it. Untie the rope!’
Ed whipped the rope from the cleat and clambered back up with one filthy end be
tween his teeth, lunging for the mast. He clung there as we both caught our breath.
‘Pull together,’ I said, the taste of my own stomach contents now forming a terrible cocktail with whatever foul sludge the ocean was hurling at us. ‘OK?’
He nodded, and we both fumbled for the rope with our free hands.
‘Ready?’ I said. ‘Heave.’
Together we pulled, but our palms slipped down the slick surface. We each let off a curse.
‘Try again.’
But it was no use. It was like trying to open a jar smeared with oil.
‘We’ll need to use the winch,’ said Ed.
We looked down at the starboard deck where the winch was positioned, not more than a step away from the water.
‘I could reach it,’ he said, desperately scanning the deck for a safe route down.
‘You’ll never make it. There’s nothing to hold on to.’
He looked at me. ‘I could hold on to you.’
Our faces were inches apart, and as the water roared around us and the sea hurled its endless, salty filth, a strange intimacy hung between us. I looked into his one good eye, lashes dotted with foam, imagining I could see the whirlpool behind me reflected in its iris, and moved my hand slowly up the mast towards his. Our fingers were almost touching. There was barely a spider’s leg between them.
With a sickening thud, the boat lurched and I gripped the mast with both arms. Ed did the same. The Elma’s bow had hit something, and now she was sliding like a car on ice.
Ed opened his mouth to speak, but before he could something dark seemed to flap above us and there was an ear-splitting crack.
‘Watch out!’ I yelled, ducking as we were showered with splinters. A machine-gun of snaps, whips and twangs sounded above us, followed by a groan and a screech as half the mast was torn away.
‘Shit, no!’ cried Ed. ‘No, no, no!’
The End of the World Survivors Club Page 22
