The Future of London: (L-2011, Mr Apocalypse, Ghosts of London)

by Mark Gillespie

  Walker smiled. He had a good feeling about this house. Maybe it was just the lack of a pungent odour but he allowed himself the luxury of thinking that he’d come to the end of the long and arduous road.

  The fridge looked perfect. It might as well have been sitting in a retailer’s showroom. There it was – a slim, stainless steel fridge-freezer, tucked in close beside the door that connected the hallway with the kitchen. At the end of the hallway, Walker saw the front door that they’d tried to open at the beginning of their adventure that day.

  He walked towards the fridge, shorn of that sense of impending doom that had accompanied him in all the other kitchens.

  He heard Barboza creeping into the house behind him.

  “It smells not too bad in here,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  Walker kept his eyes on the prize. “I’m hoping it means that whoever lived here switched it off before they buggered off,” he said. “That what we have here is a perfectly good working fridge-freezer, just waiting to be transported across the street into my kitchen.”

  “You think?” Barboza said.

  Walker shook his fingers loose. Then he reached for the dust-splattered handle.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  As he gripped the handle, he caught sight of a multi-socket adaptor lying on the kitchen counter. There were several plugs scattered around the adaptor – one that looked as if it was attached to a toaster. The other seemed to lead towards the kettle. But the one on the right, a long black lead – that seemed to be stretching up from behind the fridge. It was also unplugged.

  Walker felt a surge of hope. With his other hand, he reached over and fixed the right hand plug into the socket. Then he switched on the adaptor at the wall and heard the greatest sound he’d ever heard in his life. A thudding noise, a jolt of something, quickly followed by a monotonous hum.

  That hum was the miracle he’d been waiting for. The fridge was alive.

  Walker tightened his grip upon the steel handle and pulled it open. The fridge lit up, revealing its contents or in this case its lack of contents. The shelves were empty and clean, as if they’d been scrubbed that same morning.

  “It works,” Barboza said. There was genuine excitement in her voice. “Congratulations Walker.”

  Walker put an arm inside the fridge. The cool air soothed his burning skin and if he could have, he would have climbed inside the fridge and shut the door.

  He took his arm out and turned off the fridge at the main socket. Then he pulled out the plug. He was grinning and for the first time in a long time, there was even a hint of contentment in his heart.

  “I’ll take this one thank you very much,” he said. “Now we just need to drag it across the street.”

  He turned around but Barboza wasn’t there. For a moment, he thought she’d gone back into the garden, but then he heard something – a slight movement coming from somewhere inside the house.

  “Barboza?” he said. “You in here?”

  Why didn’t you bring a knife?

  “Yeah it’s me,” she called out.

  Walker breathed a sigh of relief. He followed her voice into the hallway, towards a large living room area on the left. Barboza was in there, standing next to an antique wooden mantelpiece, which was holding up several framed photographs running from one end to the other.

  Walker was impressed. It was a picturesque room with white walls. The antique mantelpiece was a perfect accompaniment to the overall theme of collectible furniture, the most notable of which was an old fashioned sofa made of oak, with a large padded cushion and arms. The floor was wooden and there were a variety of ornaments, such as ceramic vases and porcelain dolls, scattered throughout the room, on the window ledge and elsewhere. It was like something from another world – almost like walking into another century.

  “Look at this,” Barboza said.

  She lifted one of the framed photos on the mantelpiece. In the picture, an elderly looking woman was squatting in the grass, surrounded by three young children. They were all smiling and the kids were laughing and it looked like a summer’s day not unlike the day outside. Walker knew right away that the woman in the photograph was the owner of the house. Somehow it just felt right. He also recognised the steel shed at the bottom of the garden lurking in the background of the photograph.

  The same woman appeared in several other photographs. In each one she was smiling that same beautiful smile, whether she was with grandchildren or other adults who might have been her children. There was a dog in the majority of photos too – a healthy looking border collie, and it was always there, a constant companion at the old lady’s side.

  Walker stood beside Barboza at the mantelpiece. He picked up a black and white photo, which featured a much younger version of the woman. The smile was instantly recognisable. In this one she had a handsome young man locked onto her arm. He was dressed in an RAF uniform and with his slick black hair and pencil thin moustache, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a World War Two movie. There was no sign of the man in the colour pictures. Walker wondered whether he had survived the war or if the woman had been forced to go on without him.

  “This is a nice house,” Barboza said. “I like it. You should move over here.”

  Walker put the photo back on the mantelpiece. “Aye,” he said. “Might just do that.”

  “Maybe we should take a look around?” Barboza said. “I mean, there might be something else worth taking. What do you think?”

  Walker shook his head. “I think the fridge will do me. Antiques are nice, but useless.”

  But Barboza was already walking towards the living room door. “Mind if I take a quick look anyway?” she said. “I’m curious.”

  Walker shrugged. He heard Barboza walking upstairs and then the sound of the floorboards creaking above him.

  As Walker waited, he went over to the living room window, which looked onto Stanmore Road. He saw his house – his sanctuary as Barboza had called it – directly opposite on the other side of the street. What a cold looking sanctuary it was. Strange to think he’d hidden in that little building for the last nine years of his life. And yet despite all those years, he felt like a stranger casting an eye upon the house for the first time.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Barboza coming back downstairs.

  “Look at this Walker,” she said, coming into the living room. She sounded excited, like a kid showing off her favourite present on Christmas morning.

  Walker turned around. Barboza was holding a vintage record player in her arms. It had the wooden base and most noticeably, the big horn that was most commonly associated with old gramophones. Walker had no idea whether it was a genuine antique or a replica but given the quality of the old woman’s living room, he had a feeling it was probably the real deal.

  Barboza was grinning from ear to ear, like she’d just found her heart’s desire.

  “I think it’s real,” Barboza said, as if reading his thoughts. “My parents had something like this when I was younger. We used to play records on it all the time.”

  She put it down on the floor and looked it over. After inspecting the needle, she checked the record that had been left on the turntable. Barboza lifted it up and then put it back down again, with the spindle of the machine going through the hole in the record. There was a brief cranking sound and then slowly, Barboza released the brake lever at the side. Then came the wonderful cracking sound of old vinyl, followed by the arrival of the music itself.

  “It’s ‘The Lark Ascending’,” Barboza said, as the music opened with a set of sustained chords from the string and wind section. “It’s very famous. Very beautiful.”

  Walker was intrigued. God knows how long it had been since he’d heard the sound of music. He stared at the gramophone as a violin entered the piece, ascending at repeated intervals and flurrying with a series of nimble and elongated arpeggios.

  Barboza sat down on the old fashioned sofa. She tilted her head
back, closing her eyes.

  “I like this old lady,” she said. “She has style, no?”

  Walker turned back towards the window. He looked at the house across the street and tried to recall his parents’ faces. They were always fading in his mind and he wondered how much of the images that he conjured up in his mind were real and how much his imagination had fabricated. The details were darker, less clear than ever.

  He only realised that his eyes were full of water when a single teardrop came rolling down his cheek. He slapped it away quickly.

  Damn music.

  He didn’t want Barboza to see him like that. He glanced over his shoulder and fortunately she was still reclining on the sofa, her eyes closed, her mind absorbed in the music.

  Walker hurried quietly out of the room.

  He walked through the kitchen, out the back door and into the sun-drenched garden. The hot air clung to his skin. But he was still walking, running almost, and he didn’t stop until he’d bounded through the tall weeds and was standing in front of the steel shed at the bottom of the garden.

  Walker stood there, dazed and confused. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. It was as if he’d just caught himself sleepwalking and now he had to figure out where the hell he was. It was by sheer chance that he noticed the bolt on the shed door was unlatched. Then something pulled him closer, forcing him to reach for the bolt and pull the door open.

  The smell hit him first, followed quickly by the fierce buzzing of the flies. And then he saw what was left of her. There was a pile of bones scattered on the hard floor, including a distinctive human skull positioned front and centre. Looking up, he saw where a scarf had been meticulously tied around one of the beams on the roof. But at some point her remains had fallen away from the knot. The flesh had long since been picked from the bones, but still the insects worked ceaselessly on whatever microscopic morsels might have remained.

  Hatchet. You did this.

  Walker’s heart sank like a stone. Behind him, he heard the violin of the ‘The Lark Ascending’, its sweet melody soaring to the sky, oblivious of the horrors that inhabited the world below.

  Then he saw something else on the floor of the shed close to the woman’s remains. It was a large dog bed. It was also full of bones.

  “Walker?”

  Barboza was at the back door of the house. He heard her footsteps, walking down the garden towards him. Towards the shed.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I opened my eyes and you…”

  She stopped talking and covered her nose.

  “Jesus,” she said. “What’s that smell?”

  Walker stepped outside and pulled the shed door closed behind him. Then he bolted it. After that, he trudged through the long grass towards her.

  “What is it?” Barboza asked. “What’s that smell?”

  “It’s her,” he said. “What’s left of her. The dog too.”

  Barboza winced. “Oh no,” she said. “That poor woman.”

  Walker gestured towards the door of the house. He wanted to go inside, or at least to get as far away from the shed as possible.

  “C’mon,” he said. “We’d better turn off that music.”

  Moving the fridge hadn’t proved as problematic as Walker had feared. Fortunately, the front door of the old woman’s house had unlocked from a catch on the inside and although there were many false starts, they’d managed to tilt the appliance at various angles and eventually ease it through the front entrance. Once it was outside, they took an end each and progress to their final destination was slow but steady.

  It didn’t matter – Walker had a fridge.

  The early afternoon heat was brutal. Walker’s t-shirt was soaked through and he knew he was going to have to force himself into a cold bath later. But at that moment, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

  When they were close to Walker’s house, he asked Barboza to put her end of the fridge down. They stopped in the middle of the street and Walker turned back and took another look at the house they’d just come from.

  It had been a victory. He had a fridge and yet how could he enjoy the moment after what he’d found in the garden shed?

  “I wonder if they turned her away?” he said. “From the M25.”

  Barboza looked at him from the other end of the fridge.

  “What? You say something Walker?”

  “Was she too late?” Walker said. “Had the first barrier already gone up by the time she got there? Or did she even go at all? Maybe she chose to stay here and take her chances in her beautiful antique home.”

  “She didn’t deserve to die like that,” Barboza said, looking at the house. “And she seemed like a nice person, no? From the photographs I mean.”

  Walker turned back to the house. There was no way he could leave it at that. She had given him a fridge after all – a lifeline in this hellhole and what sort of person would he be if he didn’t thank her for it?

  “Walker?” Barboza said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll go back later,” he said quietly. He was talking to himself. “I’ll bury her in the garden. Her dog too.”

  Chapter 15

  Transcript of a video uploaded to Immersion 9 - posted on July 9th 2020

  * * *

  The broadcast begins with ‘Death or Glory’ by The Clash. The song is playing over a montage of bloody and brutal clips showing the violent aftermath of the 2011 event known only as ‘Piccadilly’. It was on this day that Chester George was murdered in cold blood on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. It was on this day that the streets of London descended into the worst widespread violence that any major city has ever seen in living memory.

  * * *

  Then silence. A black screen.

  * * *

  Moments later, the lights go up.

  * * *

  Three people are sitting in a dark room, staring back at the camera. They are all disguised in the same manner – one that is instantly recognisable to those who can recall the last days of the old London before the superwalls. The black skull hoodie zipped all the way over the head, the luminous yellow and ghostly face leering back at the camera – it is the look made famous by Chester George.

  * * *

  The silence lingers.

  * * *

  The masked figure in the middle begins to talk and it is a woman’s voice. The voice is well spoken, but cold and detached. Almost metallic.

  ‘It has been nine years since our last broadcast. As we all know, that broadcast – the last ever made by Chester George – was interrupted by a single gunshot. After that, the founder of the Good and Honest Citizens lay dead on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain and the promise of Phase Three and a better world was in ruins.

  * * *

  Nine years have passed.

  * * *

  We have returned, better late than never.

  * * *

  Our first duty upon returning is to warn you – the people of the United Kingdom and beyond. You are being fooled and if you already know this then you are as guilty as the ones doing the fooling. Why? Because you have done nothing to fix the problem. People equipped with a social conscience – a rarity in this day and age – have been telling you for years that the money you donate to charity – hundreds of thousands, millions of pounds – will never make it past the atrocity that is called the M25. This is the truth and there is a very good reason behind it. Not only do Rudyard Campbell and his goons at SKAM Media want to keep people behind those walls forever, but they also want their prisoners to suffer and to remain as uncomfortable as possible.

  * * *

  Why?

  * * *

  Because otherwise it’s boring.

  * * *

  Some of you are beginning to listen, to hear, to wake up and recognise the truth. Some of you do nothing but others have declared a willingness to fight. This willingness to fight is of grave concern to the people who do receive the bulk of London’s charity money – namely Rudyard Campbe
ll and his friend Aileen Ure, the Prime Minister.

  * * *

  So how have they responded to these rising concerns? How have they managed to distract you from making further enquiries?

  * * *

  They call it the Knife Bucket Challenge.

  * * *

  The speaker pauses.

  * * *

  ‘Here is the great smokescreen of our times. People all over the world are taking part in the Knife Bucket Challenge. Your favourite movie star is doing it. Your favourite rock star is doing it. And let’s not forget all those talentless Z-list celebrities that you love so much. I even hear that a group of British students are currently organising hundreds of people into attempting the largest Knife Bucket Challenge in the world. And they want to do it in sight of the M25 – as if the walls were nothing more than a pretty backdrop to this viral circus.

  * * *

  Yet it continues. And no matter how much money it raises, it will do nothing to alleviate the suffering of those trapped within the remains of London.

  * * *

  The work that we began in 2011 is not over. Phase Three is still a reality.

  * * *

  The first order of business is to bring down the M25. This will not be easy but The Good and Honest Citizens pledge to free the people of London – many of who are the original Good and Honest Citizens, who have been conveniently out of action since 2011.