Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘I go now,’ he said quietly. ‘See if I find any other French here. You stay safe, eh?’

  Andy nodded, ‘Safe journey, mate.’

  They watched him walk away along the edge of the airstrip, past silent islands of soldiers, sitting, resting, some smoking, some sleeping.

  Lance Corporal Westley walked over towards his men and got them on their feet. He left Mike and Andy standing watching the planes come and go, listening to the roar of propeller engines turning, and the distant cries and chants of the civilians massing outside the perimeter of razor wire.

  ‘Well I guess this is where we part company, Dr Sutherland,’ said Mike.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll have to get together and do this again next year.’

  Mike laughed.

  Andy stuck out a hand. ‘I’d give you my email address, but I’m not sure there’ll be an Internet when we get back home.’

  ‘No, you’re probably right,’ said Mike, grabbing the offered hand and shaking it.

  ‘But look, if it turns out this isn’t actually the end of the world,’ Andy continued, ‘you can always get me through my website - PeakOilWatch.co.uk.’

  Mike nodded. ‘I’ll make a point of looking you up.’ He watched Westley’s men preparing to move off. ‘You know, for a guy that’s never handled a gun before,’ he said pointing towards the remnants of the platoon, ‘you did a good job leading those boys out of trouble.’

  Andy shook his head. ‘Not good enough. Telling Peters to turn off our lights—’

  ‘Shit like that happens, Andy. But you got the rest of these boys through, that’s what counts,’ said Mike, a grin flashing from his dark beard. ‘You did good.’

  They shared an awkward silence, not really sure what came next, but knowing there was more to be said.

  ‘We went through a lot of stuff, these last few days, didn’t we?’ said Mike.

  ‘Yes. I’m sure we should be talking it out or something, Dr Phil style.’

  ‘There never seems to be time enough to talk. It seems like all we’ve done in the last three days is fight, run and drive.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway,’ said Andy, ‘I’m not sure I want to revisit any of it right now. I’ve got a wife and two kids to get home to.’

  Mike nodded. ‘If they’re half as resourceful as you, they’ll be just fine, Andy. Trust me.’

  He shrugged. ‘What about you, Mike? You must have family you’re worried about.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Mike shaking his head, ‘it’s just me. The job always seemed to come first.’

  ‘I guess that makes things easier.’

  ‘A lot.’

  Andy caught sight of a smear of dry blood on the American’s forearm. ‘I’m sorry about Farid. I’d have liked him to have made it.’

  ‘Yeah. He made some sense, didn’t he?’

  ‘I think he did.’

  ‘And we lost some good men back there. Lieutenant Carter, Sergeant Bolton . . .’

  Andy nodded.

  ‘Good soldiers,’ said Mike casting a glance at Westley and his men who were beginning to head wearily down towards the end of the strip, ‘all of them, good men. You Brits can put up a good fight.’

  Andy smiled, ‘Ahh, except I’m not a Brit.’

  ‘You Kiwis too,’ Mike replied, slapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Take care Mike. I hope things aren’t as fucked up for you back home as I suspect they are for us.’

  ‘This mess will right itself eventually.’

  ‘I’m not so confident.’

  CHAPTER 68

  4.05 a.m. GMT

  Paul drove for several hours down the M6, bypassing Birmingham in the dark, marked not by city lights or the ever-present amber-tinged glow of urban light pollution bouncing off the night sky, but by the sporadic intervals of buildings on fire and the flickering movement of people around them.

  Parts of Coventry, on the other hand, seemed to have power; they drove along a deserted section of dual carriageway that was fully lit by the arc sodium lights along the central island. To Jenny’s eyes the distribution of power seemed almost haphazard, as if some central switchboard had been overrun by monkeys who were now randomly punching the shiny buttons in front of them. She’d thought there might have been an even-handed distribution of powered time-slots, or if not that, then certain ‘safe’ regions - a little unfairly maybe - which would be allocated a constant supply of power to the detriment of the lost-cause big cities.

  But no. There seemed to be no discernible pattern at all to it.

  South of Coventry, the lights along the motorway went out and they once again adjusted to the pitch-black of night. Paul spotted a sign for a Travelodge ahead and swung Mr Stewart’s car down the slip-road as it came up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘I need to sleep. I’ve not slept since Monday night. It would be stupid if having made our escape earlier, we end up wrapping ourselves around the central barrier on the motorway.’

  Jenny nodded. It made sense.

  ‘Let’s give it a look. If it’s surrounded by a baying mob, then we’ll push on, all right?’

  They drove off the slip-road into an empty car-park in front of the motel. There were tell-tale signs that similar things had happened here as at Beauford Service Station; bits and pieces scattered across the parking area, some broken windows in the lobby at the front of the building, but that was all. The Little Chef next door to it on the other hand, looked like it had been more thoroughly seen to, every window smashed and a trail of detritus and trampled goods strewn in front of it.

  ‘Well, seems like whatever happened here has been and gone,’ said Paul.

  ‘I suppose everywhere that can be looted for food and drink has been emptied by now,’ said Jenny. ‘I wonder when all that’s been gobbled up, what people will do for food?’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll start seeing troops or police on the streets sometime today. It’s got to happen today,’ he said with less conviction than the last time he’d bullishly asserted things would right themselves quickly. He swung the car round and parked it just outside the entrance to the motel.

  ‘It seems okay to me.’

  Jenny looked up at the two floors of dark little curtained windows. It would be nice to have a bed to sleep on, and the chance of stumbling across any wandering bands of thirst-maddened crazies here appeared to be acceptably remote.

  There was no sign of anyone here and she wondered where exactly everyone was. Sixty-five million people on such a small island and since leaving Beauford Services, she’d seen hardly any.

  They’re all tucked away in their homes waiting this out. Only fools like us and those with bad intentions are outside, roaming around.

  Paul climbed out of the car and led the way inside. It was dark, of course. Pitch-black inside, with no ambient light from any source at all coming in through the cracked smoked-glass at the front.

  ‘Hang on,’ she heard him murmur, and a moment later, a pale square of light lit the foyer up dimly.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘My organiser.’

  ‘Clever.’

  In the absence of any other light, it was surprisingly bright.

  ‘Okay . . . stairs,’ said Paul. She watched the pale square of light float across in front of the reception desk towards a doorway, ‘Over here,’ she heard him say.

  She followed him through, up one flight of stairs, through another door, and then they were standing in a corridor.

  ‘You seem to know your way around this one,’ she said.

  ‘They’re all very similar. And I use them quite a lot. Right then, first floor rooms. You choose.’

  Jenny walked down the corridor, passing a door that was open. Jagged splinters of wood jutting out from the door-frame told her the door had been forced. She didn’t want to sleep in a room that had been picked over by someone. That just somehow felt . . . clammy. The next door along had also been kicked in, and the next. Finally towards the end of th
e corridor, she found a door that remained intact, locked. ‘I’ll have this one,’ she said.

  ‘You’re okay being alone? I spotted another locked one on the other side, up the far end. I can take that one.’

  Jenny stopped to think about that. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to spend the night sleeping in the same room as this guy, but then . . . being alone down one end of the corridor, in a deserted motel.

  ‘Okay, maybe we should share this one.’

  ‘I think that makes sense,’ said Paul.

  He lifted his organiser up towards the door to read the room number. ‘How does Room 23 sound?’

  With one well-aimed kick at the swipe-card door lock, the door swung in and banged off the wall inside; the noise echoed disturbingly down the empty corridor.

  Inside, it was how she hoped she’d find it, undisturbed, cleaned, bed made for the next customer. She opened the curtain and the blind behind it, then swung open the window. The room was hot, and a faint breeze wafted in.

  In the sky the grey light of dawn was beginning to provide enough natural light for them to find their way around. Paul quickly turned his organiser off and pocketed it.

  ‘Okay then, sleep,’ said Jenny, sitting down on the bed; a double bed.

  Paul pulled open a cabinet door to reveal a drinks fridge. ‘A-hah. We’re in luck.’ Inside he found it decently stocked. ‘There’s several cans of Coke, ginger beer, tonic water, and a pleasing range of mini-liquors: vodka, gin, rum, whisky. Some beer even.’

  Jenny smiled in the pale grey gloom of dawn. After the recent hours, the last few days, a single stiff rum and Coke would be absolutely what the doctor ordered, even if it was going to be warm and without ice.

  ‘I’ll have a rum and Coke, please.’

  ‘Good choice, Ma’am,’ said Paul. She heard the pop and hiss of the Coke can, the click of a lid being twisted off and the gurgle of the rum being poured.

  ‘Here.’

  The first one was a strong one. The second drink she asked for she wanted weak, but Paul’s definition of ‘weak’ didn’t seem to square with hers.

  ‘So, you mentioned something a while back,’ said Paul, ‘about your hubby predicting this?’

  ‘Well, sort of. He wrote a report a while back . . . lemme see, yeah it was back in 1999, because that was the year we did Christmas in New York. It was an academic paper really, he wrote most of it when he was at university in the States, but then when he got commissioned to write it again, he did some new research and updated chunks of it with new data he’d managed to track down.’

  ‘And it was about this whole thing?’

  ‘Well, sort of I suppose. Andy was very secretive about it, client confidentiality kind of thing. But I know it had something to with Peak Oil, and our growing reliance on fewer and fewer major oil reserves, and how that made us much more vulnerable to someone needing only to disable a few places around the world to hold us all to ransom. He described how it could be done . . . which were the most vulnerable places . . . that sort of thing.’

  And that’s where Andy’s obsession had truly began. Wasn’t it?

  The people who’d commissioned his work had paid him good money for that. Very good money - enough that they bought that house of theirs outright, and money left over that they were able to put both kids through fee-paying schools.

  ‘But after doing that job, you know . . . he started changing. Became I guess . . . edgy, very serious. He spent too much time obsessing about the whole Peak Oil thing. And a little paranoid too. Just silly little things like worrying about viruses on his computer that might be spying on him, noises on the phone line. Daft really. I don’t know, he used to be so much fun. Great company. And then, like I say, he changed after New York. And it’s been a slow steady roll downhill ever since. So much so, in fact, I was actually in the middle of organising our big split-up when this happened.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Paul. ‘So, where is he now?’

  ‘Somewhere in Iraq. He’s been getting regular assignments there for the last few years. He was over there when this started. And my kids are alone in London.’

  Jenny’s voice caught.

  Shit, I should know by now drink does this to me.

  ‘You okay?’ Paul asked, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently.

  ‘Of course I’m not. I just want to get home. They need me.’

  His arm slid across one shoulder, across her neck to the other. ‘Don’t worry Jen, I’ll get you home safe and sound. I’ve got you this far haven’t I?’

  She felt the tips of his fingers slide under her chin, lifting her face up to look at him, and it was then that she knew where this was going.

  ‘Look, I . . . errr . . . I think I’ve had enough to drink.’

  ‘You’re kidding right? There’s loads more, and Christ we deserve it after the shit we’ve been through together. What do you say?’

  ‘I think we’ve probably both had too much. We need to keep our wits about us, right? Who knows what might happen tomorrow? ’

  Jenny swung her legs off the bed. ‘And you know what? I might try one of the other rooms—’

  A hand wrapped around her forearm. ‘Why? What’s up?’

  It was a tight, urgent grip, and it hurt a little.

  ‘Look, I just think it’s a good idea, okay?’

  ‘What? Come on. We’re just talking here. No harm done.’

  ‘Can you let go please?’

  His grip remained firm. ‘I’ve been looking out for you these last few days. It’s not too much to bloody ask is it? A little . . . conversation?’

  She could hear the slightest slur in his voice. He wasn’t pissed as such, just a little tipsy. No worse than the couple of come-ons she’d fended off at the last office Christmas party she’d been to; harmless enough somewhere crowded, but a little disconcerting, alone like this.

  ‘I’ve been looking out for you,’ said Paul again. ‘Not asking much, for Chrissakes.’

  ‘I think Ruth looked out for me a little more than you did,’ she replied, and almost immediately wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he snarled.

  ‘Would you mind letting go please?’

  He let her go, and she headed for the door. ‘I’ll see you in a few hours, when you’ve sobered up.’

  She stepped out into the corridor, and strode through the darkness of it, the only light, the faintest pre-dawn grey coming in through a window at the far end. She picked a doorway halfway down on the right. It was a door that had been forced by someone, and as she stepped in, she could see that the room had been hunted through and the drinks cabinet emptied.

  Good, hopefully all the other cabinets in this place are empty too.

  She’d hate to see what Paul was like when he was fully loaded.

  Jenny pushed the door shut behind her. And as an afterthought, she pulled the armchair in the corner of the room across the doorway. Not that she thought it was entirely necessary. Paul was like the other office Romeos; emboldened a little by the booze, but still essentially a coward. A sharp ‘no’, or a ‘piss off ’, did the trick for the likes of them . . . most of the time.

  No . . . he’d probably drink himself into a stupor and fall asleep trying to whack himself off.

  She lay down on the bed and then felt the tears coming - worried about Jacob and Leona, and Andy too, realising she’d been so wrong in the way she had treated him. She wished the robust, no-shit-taken Ruth was here with her right now, talking some good plain common sense, probably making her laugh too. If Ruth were here, they’d probably be raiding the drinks cabinet together right now and shamelessly taking the mickey out of Paul.

  Jenny closed her eyes and was asleep within a minute.

  CHAPTER 69

  6.29 a.m. GMT

  It was lighter when she opened her eyes again, fully daylight now. Jenny guessed she must have managed to get over an hour’s sleep. A shard of sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtain, acros
s the bed and on to the carpet.

  Her head ached slightly, the mildest of hangovers, and more probably attributable to her general fatigue than the two generous rum and Cokes she’d had earlier. Paul would be feeling a lot worse this morning, deservedly. She was going to have to drive this morning instead.

  The smell of alcohol on her breath seemed to be strong, very strong. There must have been a hell of a lot of rum in that drink for it to still be on her breath like that. She decided she was fit enough to get up and start rousing Paul. That was probably going to take a little time.

  She started to sit up, and then saw him.

  He was standing beside the bed, silently staring down at her.

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Took me ages to find you,’ he said, his voice thick and slurred. He was swaying slightly. ‘Thought you’d gone up a floor, didn’t I? But here you were all along, just down the way from me.’

  He was pissed out of his skull. He must have found another cabinet full of booze.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  He reached a hand out and grabbed her. ‘For fuck’s sake! Why d’you have to be such a stuffy bitch!’

  Jenny pulled his hand off her shoulder, his fingernails raking across her skin. ‘We were havin’ a nice drink, we’re both grown-up. There’s no bloody law against you and me, you know . . .’

  ‘Paul. Look, I’m grateful for you finding a way out of that service station . . . but it doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you, okay?’ said Jenny, shifting slowly past him towards the end of the bed.

  Paul watched her moving, his head slowly turning, one hand reaching out for a wall to steady himself. ‘Well what about what I deserve? I’ve been good . . . looked after you. Could’ve jumped you anytime . . . but I didn’t. Been a perfect bloody gentleman, actch-erley.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ Jenny replied slowly, beginning to rise from the bed. ‘And you don’t want to ruin that good behaviour now, do you?’

  ‘Just want a shag . . . that such a big fucking crime?’ he announced loudly, angrily.

  ‘It is a crime Paul, if the person you want to shag, doesn’t want to shag you.’