Empty World

by John Christopher

  Yet his mind was quite wakened now. Curiosity of a more ordinary kind suddenly beckoned. An empty world, and his, to do with it what he liked. The need he had felt to hide away, to cling to a small security, gave way to its opposite. There was a planet outside to explore.

  • • •

  As soon as he had decided, he was eager to be off. London, and the possibilities it offered, seized his imagination, but there was the problem of getting there. How far—seventy miles? He did not fancy walking, nor bicycling for that matter; and even if he could catch a horse he doubted his ability to master the riding of it. A motor car, though. . . . He was no longer disbarred by age, or the need to pass a driving test. And it was not the Queen’s highway any more, but his.

  The garage attached to the farmhouse held two cars—a new Rover automatic and a battered Mini. He found the ignition keys for both on a nail in the hall, and tried them out. He preferred the Rover, not because it was bigger and glossier but on the assumption that an automatic car would be easier to drive, and was pleased to find the instruction booklet in the glove compartment. He studied the instructions, adjusted the seat, and attempted to drive it out of the garage. The starter motor whirred, but nothing else happened. He tried several times before it occurred to him to look at the fuel gauge. It showed empty; what little petrol might have been left in the tank had clearly evaporated.

  The Mini’s gauge, on the other hand, registered half full. There was no booklet, but he did his best to recall what he had seen his father do. The engine roared into life, the din reverberating from the garage walls, and Neil pushed the gear lever into first and gingerly took his foot off the clutch pedal. The car bounded forward a few inches, and the engine stalled.

  This process, of starting and bucking to a halt, happened a few more times and eventually the car was halfway out of the garage. At that point it refused to start at all. He went on twisting the key with no more success, and was feeling like getting out of the car and kicking it when he noticed the choke knob still extended and realized he had probably flooded the carburettor. That, too, was something remembered from his father; along with the knowledge that the only thing to do was wait for it to dry out.

  A quarter of an hour later he tried again, and on his second attempt managed to get the car into gear and crawling across the yard. Fortunately it was very large and gave him room to manoeuvre. He drove round, mastering the steering and developing a growing sense of satisfaction which was lost the moment he tried to change up into second gear. The Mini stalled, and went on stalling whenever he attempted the operation.

  He was impatient to go, and reflected that even in bottom gear he could travel a good deal faster than on a bicycle, and in more comfort. He collected the few things he wanted, threw them in the back, and set off along the bumpy lane leading to the main road. Smoke still hung over Rye but much less densely: the fire had largely burnt itself out. Anyway, he was not going that way.

  He took the Winchelsea bypass rather than go through the town. At the foot of the hill on the far side he felt sufficiently confident to have another go at changing gears, and with a certain amount of grinding actually got into top. He was pleased with himself until he attempted to change down on the approach to Icklesham, and came to an ignoble halt.

  Re-starting, he crawled on in low gear. The outskirts of Hastings surrounded him with neat modern houses, stretching away in rows. He had a feeling that there must be someone living, behind all those doors and windows—that at any moment the sound of the Mini’s approach would bring a figure out, waving, into the road. But nothing moved; and rounding a bend he came on the scene of an accident, with a big transporter truck pinning down a small saloon car. Skeletons manned both rusting wrecks, shattering the illusion. The wreckage took up most of the road; there was barely room to get the Mini through.

  He did not go right into Hastings but took the road north. He had started late in the afternoon and by the time he got to Robertsbridge, at his slow rate of travel, the sun was behind the houses. He noticed that the fuel gauge was now on the quarter mark, and wondered what that indicated in the way of petrol. The road map he had taken from the Rover showed Lamberhurst as the nearest town, quite a long way north. He didn’t relish the thought of being stranded for the night by an empty tank, out on the open road.

  Self-Service was signposted at a filling station, and he pulled in there and tried to work the pump. There was no result and he realized he had been a fool to think there could be, since the mechanism would be electrical. The solution, he worked out, was to swap the Mini in favour of a car with a fuller tank. There were several in the forecourt, but none with an ignition key. He drove on, and stopped again beside a pub. It would be better to spend the night here, and find a car in the morning.

  He had brought some food with him, but did not need it. In the kitchen of the pub there was a deep freeze, which he was careful not to open, but a stock of tinned foods as well; and in the bar he found two tins of potato crisps packets, and racks holding bags of nuts and cheese biscuits. He spent the night on a huge imitation leather settee in the lounge, with a curtain to cover him. He had seen no rats, and thought the menace might be over, but he was careful about securing doors and windows before he settled down.

  • • •

  Neil had a bath next morning in the guest bathroom, a spacious white-tiled room with lozenges of stained glass set in the window and a long Edwardian bath raised on a dais and approached by a couple of wooden steps. Although the morning was quite warm, he shivered a little as he washed himself; at the farmhouse he had been in the habit of taking the chill off with a kettle of boiling water.

  Later, he hunted through the town for another car. Most he examined were lacking an ignition key, and where he did find one the petrol tanks were either empty or too low to be worth the risk of setting out. A couple of cars had both key and petrol, but would not start. Those two stood out in the open, and he discovered their batteries had dried out in the summer heat. He concentrated after that on garaged cars, which had been protected from the sun.

  When his luck turned, it turned properly: a Jaguar XJ automatic, looking as though it had just been driven from the showroom, and in fact with less than 2,000 on the clock. Neil climbed in gingerly, awed by the splendour, and found keys in place and a fuel gauge registering nearly full.

  He was almost afraid of driving it, and studied the controls a long time before making the attempt. Despite that he was taken by surprise by the automatic drive, and dented a wing getting out of the garage. He was angry with himself. There was no-one to criticize or blame him, but he felt bad about damaging so beautiful a machine. On the road, though, his annoyance evaporated in the pleasure of driving. The smoothness of it was amazing after the Mini, and there was the exhilaration of speed when he got on to the open road. A squall of rain blew up, and he pressed buttons in search of the wipers. The first he tried filled the air with music from a cassette player. It was not entirely to his taste—a classical ­symphony—but after so long hearing only the sounds of nature it seemed like magic.

  He drove on through the morning, and was in the outer London suburbs before he halted. It was a shopping centre, transfixed in a Sunday morning that would never end. The blank fronts showed fading signs—Four Hour Cleaning . . . This Week’s Special Offer . . . Frying Tonight. . . .

  That one was a fish-and-chip shop, and out of curiosity, Neil went inside. Someone had gone through a familiar routine of preparations, before crawling away to die. There was oil in the vats, a tray containing a dried-up pulp that still smelt fishy, a bucket full of the withered remains of chipped potatoes. He prowled on, and in a back room found sacks of potatoes, somewhat soft and wrinkled, but apparently edible. He could not work the burners in the shop, but he should be able to find an open hearth somewhere and make a wood fire. He stuffed potatoes into his anorak pockets, and filled an empty milk ­bottle with oil; but after sniffing poured it bac
k. It smelt rancid, and there would be no difficulty in finding more. This was a land of plenty, after all.

  • • •

  He made his fire in the back parlour of a shop nearby, where he also found a frying pan, an unopened bottle of corn oil, and a tin of sausages which he fried up with the potatoes. The result was greasy and not particularly nice, but it filled his belly.

  When he went out again he looked over to where he had parked the Jaguar, not very neatly, in the road opposite. It had rained while he was making the meal, and the windscreen was covered with raindrops which dazzled in the renewed sunlight. He could see the interior only indistinctly, but he had a crazy impression of someone sitting behind the wheel.

  It would vanish as he approached, he thought; but it didn’t. A figure, hunched and motionless. . . . He felt a hot prickle in his scalp, and the even crazier thought that it was the owner, come back from death to reproach him for the dented wing. He hesitated; then walked forward.

  The figure was real. The window, which he had left closed, was wound down. When he was within a couple of yards, a voice spoke.

  “Nice wheels you’ve got here.”

  6

  THE SOUND OF A HUMAN voice was even stranger and more startling than the music from the cassette player had been. As though in comment on that, the figure leaned forward and switched the player on. He listened briefly, before turning it off.

  “Dullsville,” he said. “But you expect that with Jags. Either Beethoven or Frank Sinatra. I picked up a load of really great stuff last week—Oscar Peterson, Mugsy Spanier, Art Tatum. But that was from an Aston-Martin.”

  Neil stared, trying to take it in. He said hesitantly:

  “I thought. . . .”

  “You were the only one left?” The other looked up, grinning. “So did I, to begin with. And there aren’t many. I’ve been around, and I can tell you.”

  He was about Neil’s age; within a year or eighteen months, anyway. He was smaller, but looked older. He had a thin pale face, very black hair sleeked back, and heavy gold spectacles which had, Neil realized with surprise, no lenses. He wore expensive-­looking clothes—pale blue slacks and a white polo neck silk shirt, and had a gold chain round his neck. He went on:

  “Saw the smoke from a fire, and then this little number sitting waiting. She wasn’t here the last time I came through, couple of days since. So I thought I’d hang about. OK?”

  He clicked open the door and stepped out. He was a couple of inches shorter than Neil, and looked frail. He put out a hand, and Neil saw that every finger carried at least one ring, some as many as three. Diamonds winked in the sunlight.

  “Clive D’Arcy,” he said. “Viscount D’Arcy, that is. My old man was the Earl of Blenheim. But call me Clive.”

  The hand was warm, under the rings. This was what it felt like, Neil remembered, to touch human flesh. He said:

  “I’m Neil. Neil Miller.”

  Clive put a friendly hand on his arm. “Great, Neil. Come and let me show you my heap. I’m parked just round the corner.”

  He chatted as they walked—something about a castle, ancestral estates, horses. He’d had to let them out, to run loose. Prize bloodstock, every one an Arab . . . but what could you do without grooms? Neil listened in silence, dazed. What was momentous to him seemed to mean little or nothing to the boy at his side. But he had said there were others; it was not a first meeting for him. He was on the point of asking him about that, when Clive stopped, grasping his arm again.

  “There she is. What do you think?”

  Neil saw the caravan first, a long luxurious ­vehicle with curtained windows, gleaming white except for its silvery chrome. His gaze went to the car to which it was attached. It gleamed as brightly, but black instead of white—unmistakeably a Rolls.

  • • •

  Clive produced a key-ring and unlocked the door of the caravan. He went in, beckoning Neil to follow.

  “Come aboard. Rest the feet. Feel like a cup of tea? Orange Pekoe, Lapsang-Souchong, or Tetley teabags? Or how about coffee? Just renewed my Rombouts yesterday.”

  They were in a compact kitchen, with a Calor gas cooker and refrigerator, and stainless steel sink. Clive opened a cupboard and took out a tin of ground coffee.

  “Or would you sooner have Blue Mountain beans.” He gestured to a gadget beside the cooker. “That’s the grinder. No power problems. She carries a nice little generator. So does Bessie, of course.”

  “Bessie?” Neil asked helplessly.

  “The Rolls. Bonny Black Bess. No, I think we’ll have the Rombouts—it’s quicker.”

  He poured water from the tap into a percolator, added coffee, lit one of the rings with a gas-lighter, and set the percolator on it. Neil was looking around. Although it was so evidently a kitchen there were puzzling additions: a stand-up mirror with a heavy silver surround that looked antique, an old-fashioned goblet on the draining board with the soft sheen of gold, a cross on the wall, outlined with what seemed like rubies.

  The black eyes, deep-set in the pale face, missed nothing. Clive said:

  “Pretty, aren’t they? But wait till you see the real stuff.” He opened another cupboard. “We’ll use the Royal Doulton. I’ve got proper coffee cups—Sèvres—but they’re not big enough for a decent drink.”

  Neil asked: “Where did you get it all?”

  Clive shrugged. “Just bits and pieces, salvaged from the ancestral home. They weren’t kept in a cara­van in the old days, of course. Let me show you round, while the coffee’s brewing.”

  There was a shower next to the kitchen, and a toilet beyond. The water tank was in the roof, Clive explained. He kept a couple of spare Calor gas cylinders for the heating, and knew where to get as many more as he wanted.

  Opposite the toilet units were cupboards. Clive carelessly pulled open a door, to reveal a large quantity of clothes, among which Neil saw two evening suits and a camel-hair overcoat with a fur collar. A drawer which he opened held a pile of silk shirts. In a smaller compartment to one side were several sets of cuff-links, all of gold, some jewelled as well. A rack at the bottom held shoes—black, brown and suede—and a pair of long riding boots. Another rack at the top had dozens of silk ties.

  “My wardrobe,” Clive said in explanation. “And this is the salon.”

  A door slid to one side, showing a room partitioned about a third of the way along. The smaller section, as Clive demonstrated, had a pull-out table of polished oak.

  “There was a set of stackable stools, as well,” he said, “but I threw them out.” He indicated a pair of upright chairs against the facing wall. “Chippendale, those.”

  The main section had pull-out beds on either side, but because of the furniture only one lot could be used. There was a black and gilt writing desk with swelling gilt legs ending in claw-and-ball feet, a small table, intricately inlaid with marquetry, carrying a large portable cassette recorder, and a very big club armchair in green leather. A carpet on the floor glowed dully in reds and blues and amber.

  “Persian,” Clive explained.

  That was far from being all. Built-in shelves were crammed with all kinds of treasures. Neil saw various silver and gold vessels, a set of gold and silver chessmen, an ostrich egg mounted on a golden base, a gold and ivory carving of three Chinamen fishing beside a silver pool. . . . On one wall was hung a curved sword in a gilded scabbard, and on another an ornately decorated shot-gun with a chased-silver butt. There were paintings, too: very little blank space showed at all. Clive pointed to one.

  “Rembrandt. I could only bring the smaller canvases, of course.”

  Neil said, with a feeling of inadequacy:

  “It’s amazing.”

  “Not bad.” Clive nodded with approval. “I think that’s the sound of the coffee percolating.”

  The coffee, with Coffeemate in place of cream, was very good. As
they drank it, Neil tried to find out about Clive’s recent experiences but did not get far. The answers to the questions he put were vague. He had been travelling around—here and there. One place was like another. Survivors? Yes, he’d seen three or four. What ages, Neil asked? Clive shrugged: different ages. Any adults? He shook his head: they’d all been younger than himself. But hadn’t he thought of joining up with them? Clive looked surprised. He was all right on his own, he said. The caravan didn’t have room for more than one—not for comfortable living, at any rate.

  He was rather more forthcoming when asked about supplies. He had all that very well organized, he claimed. He had found a place that had been the main supply depot for a chain of supermarkets: everything you could possibly want, and enough to last a lifetime. He only smiled knowingly, though, when Neil asked him where.

  He had good access to petrol, too. He kept the boot of the Rolls full of cans, which gave him a range of seven or eight hundred miles, even at twelve miles to the gallon. He had two spare sets of tyres put by, and chains for the winter.

  Although he was obviously proud of his personal provisions for the future, when Neil started talking in more general terms of what things might be like in a world stripped of all but a handful of people, Clive’s interest slackened again. He was similarly uninterested when Neil talked about the Plague. Neil pointed out that the resistance-factor, whatever it was, that had been responsible for their survival was obviously age-dependent. The younger you were, the more chance you had. On the other hand, below a certain age the survivor would not have been able to cope with the basic problems of living. You needed to be young, but old enough to look after yourself.

  Clive nodded indifferently. “I saw one kid about three or four.”

  “What happened to him?” Clive shrugged. “You didn’t bring him with you?”

  Clive took off the lensless gold spectacles and twirled them. Instead of replying, he said:

  “Something I forgot to show you. Come see.”