by Andrew Tudor
They were driving along a section of isolated high-level road well west of Newcastle when she was startled awake by a shout from Jimmy.
“Lights up ahead. And there’s a van blocking the road.”
“Slow down,” Douglas told him. “It doesn’t look like police or military. Could be hijackers.”
“Shall I try to run the barricade?”
“No, too risky. Even if we got through they’d probably try to chase us down. Stop when we get there and we’ll see what’s what.” Douglas turned to Ali. “Get down in the hole with the others and lock the panel in place behind you. Best if they don’t see you. And keep quiet.”
Ali did as instructed, but held the panel slightly open so that she could hear what was going on.
“They’re armed,” Jimmy muttered.
“Yes, I can see,” Douglas replied. “I think there’s only two of them. Can you spot any more? There’s a car at the side of the road but I don’t think there’s anybody in it. Hard to tell in the dark.”
The lorry came to a halt and the two hijackers, weapons visible, stationed themselves by the cab doors on either side. Jimmy opened his window.
“Got a problem, pal?” he said.
“No,” came the reply, “but you have. What are you carrying?”
“Recycling stuff. Not of any value to speak of.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the man said. “Both of you get down here and open the rear doors.”
Jimmy glanced across at Douglas who gave him a meaningful look and, almost imperceptibly, moved his hand towards the inside of his jacket.
Jimmy nodded, and they both opened their doors and stepped down to the ground.
As they did so, Ali was carefully pushing the entrance panel back into place aware that Hugh was just behind her and Sarah had Charlotte in a hug with her hand over the little girl’s mouth. Then, just as Ali was easing the latches closed, there was a loud double explosion followed by the sound of Douglas shouting.
“Get back in, Jimmy. I’ll move the van out of the way.”
Ali pulled the panel open and looked out in time to see Jimmy throw himself into the driving seat and start edging the lorry forward.
“Shit!” she heard Douglas call. “It won’t start without the ignition remote. I’ll search them.”
“No, don’t bother,” Jimmy yelled back. “We don’t have time. There may be others nearby. Get in. I’ll push it out of the way with the wagon.”
The passenger door opened and Douglas hauled himself into the cab.
“Will it work?” he asked.
Jimmy grinned. “Sure,” he said. “This thing’s got a low gear that would shift an elephant. Here we go.”
There was a crunch of metal on metal and, its engine emitting a high-pitched whine, the lorry moved forward pushing the van towards the edge of the road where, with a final triumphant surge, it was tipped onto its side in the ditch.
“Go, go, go,” Douglas cried. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The lorry jerked forward, speeding off down the road.
“What happened?” Ali asked. “I heard gunfire.”
“We dealt with it. They were going to hijack us.”
“You mean, you shot them?”
“Yes.” Douglas turned to look at her. “If we didn’t do it first, they would have done it to us.”
Ali was distraught. “But you didn’t know that,” she said.
“No,” Douglas replied. “But we couldn’t afford to wait to find out. You’re going to have to get used to it, Alison. This is how the world is going to be as things fall apart. This will be the only way to survive.”
She looked at him uneasily, recognising the truth in what he said but not wanting to believe it. Two men had just been killed so that she and her friends could continue safely on their way. She sank back onto a cushion next to Sarah. How is it possible, she thought, how can the man I know as a gentle and considerate lover also be a ruthless killer? Is this where we’re all going?
The lorry drove on into the night with its shocked passengers occupying themselves as best they could in the cramped space available to them. Charlotte slept next to Hugh while Ali and Sarah, after a whispered conversation about what had happened, leaned shoulder to shoulder against the bulkhead. They continued in this way until, with no warning, the vehicle came to a halt. Douglas’s face appeared in the entrance to the compartment.
“Anyone need a pee? Now’s the time to do it. We’re in the middle of nowhere on a side road. Maybe worth stretching your legs for a few minutes even if you don’t need anything else.”
Obediently they clambered up into the cab and out onto the side of the road. It was dark, no light to be seen in any direction. Aided by a torch that Jimmy produced, Hugh took Charlotte to relieve herself in a nearby field.
“Where are we?” Sarah asked.
“We’ve had a change of plan,” Douglas replied. “I’ve received warning messages reporting trouble at the main border crossings. New soldiers brought in are disrupting normal operations. So we’ve left the A68 and we’re heading cross-country to join the road that finally reaches the border at Coldstream. We’ve got a secure hiding place for the lorry near there where it can be parked up for the night. Jimmy will stay with it and the rest of us will be picked up and taken across the Tweed by boat, well away from the official crossing points. Then tomorrow, when things should be easier in daylight, Jimmy will bring the lorry over the border and all your possessions with it. It means that the trip will take a bit longer tonight, I’m afraid. We can’t go very fast on these little roads.”
Once they had restarted and the others appeared to be dozing, Ali settled herself on some cushions in a corner of the compartment and tried to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come, her thoughts constantly returning to what had happened. Was Douglas right? Were they inevitably drifting into anarchy and violence? She had to admit that the evidence from England suggested as much. Even before Zeno there had been many years of growing unrest, fed by a widely held belief that those in power cared little for ordinary people and understood less, being only interested in maintaining their own comfortable world and their position within it. The flu epidemic had provided a focus for this deep-rooted discontent, buttressed by the realisation that it had been caused by the very people whose notional job it was to protect the population from such disasters. And, of course, once the legitimacy of those in authority is constantly questioned, dissent finds its own channels in which to flow.
But did this necessarily lead to violence and disorder? This was the question that was exercising Ali. She wanted to believe that it was not so, that however terrible the circumstances people would always find ways of joining together in mutual support. But what if that proved impossible? Although she had studied science, and then philosophy of science as a graduate student, her father had always encouraged her in more general philosophical interests. So she was all too aware that there was a danger here of tumbling into Thomas Hobbes’s infamous ‘war of all against all’, the condition that he had described in a famous passage which, eager to please her father, she had learned by heart in her teens. Now she recited it silently to herself.
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
It was those last few words that everybody knew – solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short – but it was what came before them that was truly terrifying. If social order failed, then so too would our capacity to create, to produ
ce, to survive as humans in any meaningful way. Was this what was happening now? The beginning of a war of all against all? What had hitherto been for Ali a rather distant piece of seventeenth-century philosophical rhetoric suddenly seemed all too real.
Haunted by such distressing thoughts she at last fell into a strange state of suspension, neither fully asleep nor awake, a condition in which she remained until they were all aroused by Douglas calling softly into the compartment.
“Wake up. We’re near Cornhill, close to the border. Time to leave the lorry.”
“What time is it?” asked a sleepy Sarah.
“Almost four o’clock. We need to get a move on and cross the Tweed before it begins to get light. Gather your things and let’s go.”
For Ali the next hour passed in a blur. First they were driven a short distance in a farm utility vehicle and dropped at the edge of some woodland. Then they were led through the woods by a shadowy, unidentified figure with a tiny torch, who, after giving a low whistle and hearing a response, left them crouching beside a wide pool in the river. A few minutes later a large rowboat appeared out of the darkness, and in no time at all they were deposited by the border fence on the far bank. From here yet another anonymous guide took them through a locked gate and, finally, to a road where a vehicle awaited them.
Dawn was edging over the eastern horizon as they were driven north from Coldstream, allowing Ali to recognise the familiar Borders countryside. At last, she thought, we’re safely here in Scotland. To which a small insistent voice in the back of her mind added, but safe for how long?
The Llano de Chajnantor group of astronomical observatories sit at an altitude of around 5000m in Chile’s Atacama desert, its dry unpolluted air ideal for peering out into the universe. On this particular night, as always, the sky was blazing with stars, but the observatories were all but deserted. The flu had taken its toll on the scientists and technicians. A solitary figure, Dr Esperanza Guzman, well wrapped up against the fierce cold, stood in the midst of the surreal forest of radio telescope dishes. She was staring up at the spectacle above, reminding herself, as she often did in such circumstances, that the light filling the sky came from deep in the past. On the timescale of the stars human beings were no more than the tiniest moment, yet they had built this remarkable shrine to their desire for knowledge of the universe. Perhaps, she thought, that tiny moment was over, and in consequence of its own arrogance and stupidity humanity was sinking back into a doomed struggle for survival. In the bone-dry air of the plateau the dishes would survive well beyond their creators, gravestones marking human ambition and human folly. Esperanza looked up at the night sky one last time, shedding tears which promptly froze on her cheek in the icy desert air.
9
In the weeks of Irene’s convalescence she and Julie fell into an undisturbed domestic routine. Although she had recovered from the infections themselves, the after-effects of her illness rendered Irene extremely weak leaving Julie to take on all the tasks requiring physical effort. In particular, this meant scouring the local area for food. Since Julie didn’t dare reveal her own presence by using her designated food rations, they both had to survive on Irene’s allocation and on anything that Julie could find in the burgeoning black market. Fortunately, neither of them were huge eaters so they were getting by on a single main meal a day plus the occasional treat that Julie turned up on her foraging. Irene insisted on doing the cooking – one experience of Julie’s culinary skills had been enough to ensure that division of labour – and otherwise they spent much of their time talking, reading, and listening to music. To their mutual surprise, they found that they shared a taste for string quartets and Irene had the necessary audio equipment, as well as a collection of scores, to allow them to indulge themselves in serious listening and in even more serious argument about which was the superior interpretation.
It was an idyll that could not last of course, they both knew that. The world outside their little retreat was riven with conflict, supplies were becoming increasingly unpredictable, and as winter came to a close there was no sign of the hoped for decline in the epidemic. They counted themselves fortunate to be living through their peaceful interregnum if only for a few weeks, so when it did come to an end one Thursday in mid April it was not entirely unexpected. The event that changed things was the arrival of an unforeseen visitor. Irene was at home resting, though becoming a little stronger every day, while Julie was out hunting down whatever supplies she could find. After so long with no callers, Irene was taken aback when the doorbell rang and even more amazed when she found herself confronted by Jonathan Hart, smiling tentatively and carrying a large shopping bag.
“Hello Irene,” he said. “May I come in?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, noting as she did so that he now looked even more pale and drawn than he had on the last occasion that they had met. Remembering that the kitchen table still bore the remnants of two breakfasts, she led him into the living room. No point drawing his DSD attention to the fact that she was not alone.
“So, to what do I owe the honour this time?” she asked.
“Well, I wondered how you were doing now that the Science Advisory Executive has closed down. You must have time on your hands.”
Irene smiled at the thought. “Oh, I find plenty to do. But you’re still busy I guess?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. Though I don’t have many staff left. People have got ill or, in some cases I think, just given up on the job. Can’t blame them really. Trying to maintain security is a thankless task right now and not likely to improve any time soon.”
“Last time we met I recall that we spoke about Operation Homestead. Has that gone into action? I suppose it must have.”
He nodded. “Yes, the government apparatchiks are tucked away in various safe havens. I could still get you into Northwood, you know. It’s where I’m based.”
“No thanks, Jonathan.” She smiled and gestured to the room around her. “I’m really much more comfortable here than I would be in a confined space with all those career politicians and bureaucrats.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t really think you would have changed your mind.” He paused, looking down at his hands which he was nervously clasping together in his lap. “There’s something I ought to tell you. About why I’m here.”
“OK, I’m listening.”
“I’ve had an agent keeping an eye on you, off and on. Well, I say ‘agent’ but he’s barely that. More of an office junior really.” Seeing Irene’s frown of dismay, Hart hurried on. “It was in your interest really. The government wanted you watched because of your opposition to the Zeno project – they thought you might be a source of the leaks – so I volunteered my agency. It was that or allow them to set MI5 on you, and you wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Nor would you!” Irene’s response was acid. “They might have turned up evidence of your involvement.”
“That too,” he said, doing his best to look suitably contrite. “Anyway, my guy didn’t actually see much of you and he was only here now and then. Too many other jobs and too few staff. But he did report one interesting thing. A young woman was coming and going quite regularly. Initially I thought maybe it was your daughter, but then he got a photograph. Not a very good one – he really is an amateur – but good enough for me to recognise Julie Fenwick.”
“Really,” Irene said, ignoring Hart’s expectant look. “I wonder what she was doing around here.”
“Come on, Irene,” Hart laughed. “He saw her coming out of your house.” He held up his hands palms outwards in a gesture of surrender. “I assure you, I don’t want to do her any harm. Quite the opposite in fact. I want to feed her some more information. But I’ve not been able to contact her. I know she was in Brixton, but since the pacification campaign she’s been off the network. Not using her CommsTab, no public profile at all.”
“I wouldn’t call it pacification,” Irene
replied, her irritation obvious. “More like invasion from what I hear. But yes, Julie came here running from the soldiers. Just as well for me that she did since I was very ill. If she hadn’t arrived you wouldn’t be talking to me now.”
Hart looked at her with concern. “You had the flu?” he asked.
“Yes, and probably pneumonia as well. When Julie found me I was unconscious and could barely breathe. She nursed me through it, so as you can imagine I feel quite protective of her.”
Hart remained silent for some time. “Yes,” he said at last, “I can understand that. But I really don’t want to harm her. Apart from anything else, she’s much more valuable to me if she’s free to do her work. Because of her record people believe her, while they don’t believe the official sources.”
“But what is it that you’re trying to do, Jonathan? What do you expect to achieve by giving her more information at this late stage?”
Hart sighed then looked her straight in the eye. “It’s as I told you before, Irene, I want to hold them to account. I want them to answer for what they’ve done. The only way I can do that is by feeding public opinion, by telling people what’s really happening.”
“But won’t that just cause more trouble, more unrest, lead to more deaths?”
“Maybe. But it could also clean out the Augean stables, give people a new start without the pernicious influence of these irresponsible bastards.”
Irene looked doubtful. “Sounds pretty apocalyptic to me. Have you suddenly become a revolutionary?”
“No,” he replied. “Unfortunately I’m too much a product of their world for that. But I think something drastic is needed or whatever’s left of England will just get into a worse and worse mess. At least this way there might be a chance of recovery.”
