The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  “I’d better go. You need to get moving.” She had cracked some kind of impasse, and Marcel opened the door, stepped out to let her alight. Geoffrey clambered over the seat to join them on the pavement, and Justin, too, walked around the van. They shivered in the consistent rain.

  “Sorry you had to die. Because of me, I mean.” Said Justin. He reached out a hand awkwardly, but she pulled him to her and hugged him.

  “Bye, Justin. Don’t be a dick all of your death.”

  Geoffrey, she was sure, was in tears, but since he was sodden by the rain it was hard to tell. He had managed to spill coffee down the front of his tank top and the turnip protruded worryingly from his trouser waist, but she pulled him to her and hugged him too. Despite the new clothes, his smell was the smell of the control room, of ancient graft, of blind panic.

  “M-m-m-Mary.” He mumbled, “I don’t know if we can do this.”

  She whispered in his ear, no more convinced than was he. “You’ll be fine, Geoff. Really.”

  She pulled away and looked at Marcel. He was unperturbed by the rain, dark glasses hooked in the top pocket of the suit which thickened with the downpour.

  “Should have worn the sharkskin.” He said, with the trace of a smile. He held out his hand, as though to pre-empt any attempt at an embrace. Mary held it for a moment in an unconscious parody of a handshake.

  “Look after Geoffrey.”

  “Why?”

  “And yourself.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that.” He signalled with his chin to the others, released her hand, and jumped back into the van. The engine rumbled into life, in the gathering gloom an orange light blinked, the tyres hissed on the wet road and the van disappeared into the distance.

  Mary stood and stared as the tail-lights disappeared around a corner and the side road fell into silence. She touched her hand, imagining that it still felt warm from the contact, shook her head and shivered before stepping off the kerb towards her flat.

  The emergence of four people from the freezer that morning had completely erased itself from the mind of Deniece Murray, who had endured a day of mind-numbing ordinariness. Relieved in mid morning from the task of slicing processed meats to be eked out in the kitchens of the local elderly, she had then passed a couple of hours becoming attuned to the steady monotonous blip of the barcode reader on the checkout. The only moment of light relief had been the kid who mistook condoms for chewing gum. Or perhaps it had been the other way around? The consequences would certainly be potentially different.

  After a flavourless lunch comprising past sell-by date tuna sandwiches and a milkshake, she had spent the afternoon listlessly replenishing the shelves with macedoine of vegetables, which she took to be from Eastern Europe, asparagus spears, which she thought might be a weapon of some kind, and marrowfat peas, whatever marrowfat might be. Her brother Shayne texted her at 3pm on awakening from his solvent-induced haze to say that her car had been towed due to having been parked in the alfresco dining area of an Italian restaurant. He thought his mate Dwayne may have been responsible but couldn’t be sure. She thought with dread of the bus journey home.

  The store was only half an hour away from closing its doors when she returned to her morning post at the cold meats counter to ensure that the exacting standards of cleanliness dictated by Head Office and the local Trading Standards people was being met. In the main those who had worked there during the day had managed to maintain a hygienic patina, but Deniece faced a showdown with a piece of gristle in the slicing machine which had overcome challenges from several of the junior, even less motivated staff. It was grey and white and jammed between the guard and the blade. Deniece glanced to the chilled counter but could not identify the guilty slab which had so casually left the deposit.

  What did catch her eye, however, was the gradual appearance of three people, pushing with difficulty some of the store’s shopping trolleys laden with printed circuit boards, cables, and boxes of computer equipment of some kind. It was the first instance she had met of people trying to smuggle goods into the store. Their faces were familiar, and when the buffed one with the shades nodded towards her she recalled from what seemed like years before their emergence behind this very counter.

  The three calmly pushed the trolleys around the back of the counter and headed towards the huge freezer. Deniece stepped determinedly in front of them.

  “Where do you think you are going?”

  The one in the oversized suit, of which one leg was somewhat shredded, gave her a look as though the answer were obvious.

  “We thought we’d just put this lot in the freezer for you.” he said calmly.

  “We don’t do storage, we’re not Big Yellow, you know. I can do you some nice stuffed turkey roll.”

  One leaned forward and took in the girl’s badge.

  “Deniece. Thanks for the offer, but it is really important that we get into your freezer. For reasons too ludicrous to explain.”

  Deniece was unmoved. She met their pleading gaze and flicked her eyes meaningfully to the turkey roll, as though it were the key to the door. She wondered whether the messy older man was going to pay for the turnip and beetroot he was clutching so determinedly.

  “We’ll take six slices of turkey roll please.” The hunk removed the shades and stared at her with limpid eyes. She slapped the unappetising meat onto a piece of cellophane with all the incongruous lasciviousness she could muster, bagged it and stroked the ticket onto the plastic.

  “There you go,” she said, huskily, “anything else?”

  Marcel looked for all the world as if he were considering some crumbed ham and then looked at Deniece and cracked a dazzling smile. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a brooch, in the shape of a fleur de lys, outlined by a string of sparkling white stones. He gently pinned it onto her nylon overall next to the name badge.

  “We’d like you to have this, Deniece, and let us into your freezer with these trolleys. Just for a minute.”

  She gazed down at the sparkling stones and then back into his dreamy eyes, which held her gaze as the trolleys squeaked past her, the heavy door swung open, and then he was gone as the metal clanged shut.

  Inside, it was both dark and cold.

  “What do we do now?” asked Justin, beginning to shiver, “we’re in a freezer in on the Edgware Road with three trolley loads of electronics. Is this when I wake up?”

  “From the increasing amount I know of you Justin, I am not sure you’ll ever wake up.” Marcel’s voice came from the darkness, through which he reached over to a small orange light glowing dimly on the wall and pressed it.

  They blinked in the flood of light. They were standing at the end of the tube through which they had travelled from the Afterlife.

  “Can I have that turkey?” said Geoffrey. He tore the package open and began to distribute the compressed substance between his mouth, hair, and clothes.

  “This is it, then.” Justin looked around at the seamless walls. “Nice trick with the fake brooch, Marcel.”

  “It’s not a fake.” Said the Frenchman.

  There was a loud whoosh.

  CHAPTER 22

  The flat was cold, and Mary, having stepped over the pile of mail inside the door, gave a shiver as she walked into the small galley kitchen and turned on the heating. She cast a disgusted glance at the sink, which still held the dishes from both the breakfast she had eaten the morning before her meeting with The Reaper, and the frozen lasagne she had heated up the night before that. It occurred to her that she had no idea how long she had been away, but opening the fridge told her that it was long enough for the half-full bottle of milk to turn. She went around the flat turning on all of the lights, pulled the curtains back to her lovely view of a flat roof, on which gathered pools of water rippled by the falling rain.

  Mary walked back into the cold kitchen and put on the kettle, then walked into the hallway and scooped up the pile of items which had been thrust through her letterbox in her absence. She dropped them o
nto the table next to a radiator which was inching towards warmth, and made herself a cup of black coffee (which she hated, but the pustular consistency of the milk dictated that this was what she would have), before dropping wearily into the worn armchair she had recovered from her parents house and looked through the mail.

  Given the barren state of her fridge, much of it was torture. Pizza Hut were on a charm offensive, offering excesses of cheese in any number of combinations through the medium of any number of leaflets; she could, at any moment, obtain a delivery of curry from several sources, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Sushi, or, improbably Moroccan Lamb Barbeque. English chefs were clearly reluctant to trust their battered fish or crusty pies to foil containers and a youth on a moped. She realised, however, that she was starving, and took the time to call Ahmed’s Star of India and placed a lengthy order.

  There were cheaply printed ‘newspapers’ advertising the purportedly well-meaning policies of Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrats candidates in the forthcoming local council elections. Another from the Greens was on paper recycled so many times it was illegible, and one from the British National Party espoused views which would mean that Ahmed would not be able to provide the feast she had ordered. He would be on a plane to Bangladesh (a country he had never visited) with ten pounds in his pocket, and she would have had to suck in some massive slab of a heated cheese-like substance instead.

  She had a reminder that her driving licence renewal was due, as was her car tax, along with a notice of a statutory speeding penalty and plastic envelopes from the Salvation Army, St Peter’s Hospice, and Help The Aged asking for her old clothes. Her bank statement showed that she was overdrawn by more than her monthly salary, her Visa bill told a tale of a misguided spree buying clothes which would end up in the plastic bags, and her telephone, gas, electricity, and council tax bills had been spat out by computers in offices somewhere programmed with sardonic humour to generate the demands at the same time.

  On the upside, she had six pounds and change-worth of Tesco Clubcard points and those gracious retailers were offering double rewards on tampons and feminine hygiene products for the next two weeks. Cards and paper fliers exhorted her to take up Saroc, personal training, massage therapy, plumbing, and the bongos. She had a pile of stuff perhaps four inches deep and not one item had been sent to her by a person.

  Suddenly aware of the silence, and by its absence the constant noise and discourse which had characterised the last few days, she flicked on the TV. She sipped the black coffee, grimaced but determined to persevere, and watched the report of a mudslide in a northern state of India which had swamped an entire village. She knew it must be bad because Orla Guerin was doing the reporting and she only went to the most miserable of all circumstances, eschewing any news item with less than ten thousand deaths. She intoned monotonously about the severity of the disaster, the deaths of whole families, the mud and ooze covering a school.

  More trouble coming your way, Geoffrey, she thought.

  The light on the ansafone was blinking and she pulled herself from the chair, flicked the switch. The machine told her with extreme chirpiness that she had three messages.

  The first was from Brenda, the closest thing she had at work to a friend. Brenda hoped she was okay, suggested that Mary give her a call, and that she would report her in as sick. She said she had the name of the bloke with whom Mary had left the pub and in the eventuality that Mary was lying in a ditch somewhere not to worry she would make sure the police got the information.

  The second was from the HR department at work, saying that she should have called in, and not just to Brenda, to report herself as ill, and could she call as soon as possible to let them know when she would be back.

  The third was from the boss, who said that he was sorry to hear about her attack of gingivitis as reported by Brenda, and that the company was ‘restructuring’ and that he would need to have a chat with her on her return about her ‘options for the future’.

  Mary gave up on the coffee and on Orla Guerin, and flicked through channels. She stopped on a programme about a fat family with fat kids and a fat dog who were complaining that the Government wouldn’t pay for digestion control surgery for all of them, including the fat baby and a goldfish which could have been obese or merely made to look so by the effect of the convex bowl. It was called ‘Gastric Band Aid’. In despair she flicked to MTV, where a number of men in shiny tracksuits and themselves in desperate need of some diet restriction techniques had nevertheless managed to find a large number of pneumatic woman with almost no clothes who found this attractive and were prepared to enthusiastically simulate sex with them.

  The doorbell rang just in time to stop her throwing the control at the screen. Instead she just turned off the distasteful scene.

  Ahmed’s representative, tall and thin with his baseball cap on backwards, didn’t bother to stop listening to the unspeakably loud music leaking from his headphones in order to offer any customer service other than the delivery itself. He nodded in time to the insistent beat, held up two bags full of foil trays, which Mary took from him somewhat shamefaced, and placed them behind her in the hall. The aroma rising from them was fantastic.

  She looked back to the nodding youth. Chewing some visible wad of gum he held up a piece of paper with the price, and continued to jerk on the spot as she fumbled through her purse, finally coming up with the right money and pouring the notes and coins into his hand. He stuck it into a bum bag adorning his yellow velour jacket and, still nodding, held out his hand.

  “-ip?” he yelled.

  “What?” He chewed and threw in a bump and grind.

  “Tip!” This a bellow. She looked at him, jerking and chewing open mouthed, and as a reflex reached back to her purse.

  “Fuck off.” She said, and slammed the door. As she walked down the short hallway with the bags the letterbox flipped open and she could hear the music even then. “Bitch!” he yelled.

  Mary took the bags into the kitchen and put them on the counter and then wandered back to the only sitting room. Tired, confused, she slumped into the worn armchair, threw her head back and closed her eyes for a moment. In her head she had a strange vision, as though everything in the room had aged, including her. She snapped her eyes open and looked around at nothing changed. The arms of the chair were worn; it had been her father’s favourite seat and was now hers; the gate-leg table still had a hint of patina, strewn with the junk mail she had picked up from the hall. She looked to the mantelpiece. There was a photo of her mother, hair whipped by the wind as a grey sea roiled behind her, and one next to that of Mary in the same spot, taken by her father. She was smiling, hunched against a cold wind. Her mind flicked to Marcel, Geoffrey and Justin, the manual, the Gods (God, The Gods!), Devil’s Docks, the ancient machine trying to send people to their just desserts. The Visigoths, and her promise that they wouldn’t be sent to a certain hell; Ron and Ethel and their dream of a paradise together. She closed her tired eyes. The room was silent.

  “Sod it!” She said, and jumped from the chair. She took the photo of her mother from the mantelpiece, walked briskly into the kitchen and picked up the bags of curry, and rushed out of the gradually warming flat. Her keys sat behind her on the gate-leg table.

  CHAPTER 23

  They had pushed the trolleys through the corridors, cursing the wobbly, squeaking wheels which forced them repeatedly into the walls, to find that nothing much in eternity had changed. There was still a hole in the Control Room wall, the interior décor was still late-nicotine period pub, and the screens still flickered the ineffectiveness of The Afternet. The system appeared to have been caught in a loop since they had left, trying to compute whether Himmler was only following orders, and if so whether this was an adequate defence.

  Even more depressingly, particularly for Marcel, who had little respect for the so-called upper echelons, both the light and dark side of the Afterlife were taking an unhealthy interest in restoring the processing system to its f
ormer efficiency. The Control Room wasn’t a generous working space, but it had passed muster when Geoffrey and Marcel had been sited there alone, feet up on the table as the computer did its work, occasionally called upon to play One potato Two potato over a marginal decision. Since the system had ground to a halt, however, it was if it had become a drop-in centre for tertiary Gods and Demons. They should have got in a pool table and someone in a cardigan to talk about self-worth.

  So it was, when they finally managed to manoeuvre the errant metalwork back to their domain, that they found interested parties already in residence. It was a bit of a stand off, in fact. Hermes and Ganesh pacing impatiently on one side of the room whilst Krake, the vicious imp so clear in Marcel’s muscle memory, and a nasty-looking gargoyle called Rotherham were basically just throwing things onto the floor to pass the time. For all four of them the return of the travellers was a welcome relief from low-level disputes over whether white or black was the nicest colour. All four, however, were unified in their barely controlled hilarity as Justin, Marcel, and Geoffrey squealed into the room with their pyramids of electronics.

  “This is it, is it?” said Krake, casting a conspiratorial smile at Rotherham, “you three will be solving the problems of the Afternet with this pile of junk?”

  “You do know there’s a bit of a rush, time-wise?” said Hermes, adopting the pose of a sprinter in his blocks.

  Ganesha sauntered over and desultorily lifted a few cables with his trunk. “Is this edible?”

  Geoffrey and Marcel began to unpack the trolleys, piling up things which looked vaguely similar, and ignoring the catcalls from Krake and Rotherham, who had somehow convinced themselves that they were a comedy duo.