‘What? What are you … no, no!’
His family were now restrained at the front of the flat bed. The woman screamed in horror as they lowered the hook of the crane and attached it to her husband’s harness. Then they gave him some slack, laughed, and shoved him away from the truck.
The engine revved and the Purples jumped up on the flat bed, grinning as they rolled away down the street. They were slow at first and the man walked behind, keeping pace. Then, as the wheels turned faster, he broke into a jog. I watched them crawl down the street. Again, hope dawned on me as it clearly did with them, perhaps this was just some humiliation, something to show him off. The Purples jeered and egged him on, and the man played along with a nervous laugh, tripping as he jogged.
But the jeers stopped and one of them banged the roof of the cab. The engine spun and the truck shot away down the street, wrenching the man forwards. His head whipped back as he fell and I heard thumps, laughter, squealing brakes and two screams – one high, and one higher still.
When the street was quiet again, I pulled the curtain closed.
This is what happens, is it not? This is what happens when you try to live together. Something always snaps. Someone like that man with the bank manager’s smile comes along and puts an end to things. It is not as if it is the first time.
It is change that does it; change and people. So steer clear of them both, I say. Stay out of the way, up on the hill.
Purples
REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL
5TH DECEMBER 2021
We found the bearings, as I expected, in a huge, flat-roofed warehouse lined with pallets of dead plants and rusted barbecues. A society of pigeons had sprung up in its rafters since I had last visited. We took our spoils and wandered homeward, keeping to the smaller streets and avoiding the main roads.
I found a good stick so we could hack through the parklands, and we came across some brambles in Belair that still had a few withered berries deep within the thorns. I plucked them out and threw a couple at Lineker, but he dropped them in the dirt with a cough. I ate mine. I was never much one for my five-a-day in all honesty, but it is foolish to pass up fresh fruit now.
It turned into rather a nice day as we neared home. Something I had never appreciated before London emptied out was the sound of no sound. If you have lived here all your life then your ears grow accustomed to the noise of it all: the traffic and roadworks, sirens in the middle of the night, thieves hammering the speed bumps, next door’s sex and shouting, planes and trains spinning by all day. It never stops. Then, suddenly, you wake one day to this; no sound at all. Just birds and animals and the sound of the day rolling beneath it.
I had only once heard silence like it.
I can remember it, if I choose to – the warm sun on our faces and that dreamy roar of quiet broken only by the buzzing of a bicycle chain and the gentle ripples of water beside us. It was a long time ago. A whole other before.
As we approached the turning to our road, I must say I was feeling pretty chipper. My dog was at my feet, zipping about in the foliage, the sun was high and we were safe. What’s more, I had my bearings, and I was looking forward to working on Bertha. For men like me of a practical bent, there is nothing quite like a closed door, a full set of tools and an endless project with no distractions. Absolute bliss.
It would give me a chance to clear my head, I thought, and take my mind off that bloody book.
This Duchess, see … no, forget it.
But as we reached the corner I heard a noise. There were more voices; shouts from ahead.
Again? I thought. Surely not. No sign of anything remotely purple for over a year and then two come along at once. What rotten luck.
I held Lineker’s collar and peered around the corner. Exactly 208 yards away (I knew because I had walked and measured the road home a great many times) parked outside Seton Bayley Tower, our block – right outside it – was a truck. I pulled my head back and huffed to myself. This was too much. I mean, out in Brixton, fair enough, but here? What were they doing here, in Peckham, in my domain?
I extended my neck to get a closer look. Odd, I thought. It was a truck all right but it was not BU. It was green, an old army truck, and standing behind it were – I could hardly believe it – soldiers.
I almost pinched myself. Soldiers. There had been no sign of them since the tanks, and those chaps had not stuck around for long.
One of the tanks is still there, as it happens, lodged in the betting shop window with its turret burst open like a tin of beans speared with dynamite. Five days – one week, maximum; that’s how long they lasted before they retreated from those Purple swarms. They left beneath volleys of bullets, hoots and jeers and never came back.
But now this.
What was this?
I lifted my marvellous binoculars, adjusted the focus – lovely action on that dial – and there they were, large as life in helmets and full combat uniform. I counted one, two, three, four, five, six of them, each with a gun and a nervous expression. The back of the truck was open and they were scanning the street. One of them was talking in a quiet, controlled voice, as if he was trying not to sound too frightening. I crept out to take a look, and almost dropped my binocs in shock. There, along the wall, was a row of children going to the toilet on Seton Bayley Tower.
Children.
Half of them were little boys, bending their knees in an effort to make the streams of their urine reach as high as possible. The rest were girls searching the rubble for a safe place to squat. All wore brown coats, shorts and hats.
‘Quick as you can, quick as you can,’ I heard the soldier say, like a nervous father on a school run. I turned my binoculars towards him. He was young, late twenties perhaps, fit but hungry-looking. He exchanged glances with the others, and I could tell he did not want to be there any longer than he had to.
Children being transported by soldiers. And they were relieving themselves on my home. How dare they.
‘Come on, Lineker,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’
We edged out into the middle of the street and made our approach. About halfway down, as I had expected, one of them saw me.
‘Halt!’ he cried, dropping to his knees with his gun raised. The children cried in alarm as their six protectors jumped into a well-rehearsed defence formation; three of them lining up to face me down, with two others guarding the truck’s sides and the last gathering the youngsters. Lineker barked, but then reconsidered and let out a submissive whine.
‘Stay where you are, hands in the air!’
I stopped.
‘This is my home,’ I ventured.
‘Stay where you are,’ he repeated.
‘I live here.’
We stayed like that for a while. The children were proving difficult to shepherd, some still in mid-flow, and a couple of the girls unwilling to leave the privacy and safety of their doorway. One of the other soldiers went to help but they still seemed a long way off getting them on board. That had to happen before I reached them; I did not want to risk the chance of contact.
‘I just want to get to my flat,’ I said.
‘Stay. Where. You. Are,’ he insisted.
‘Please—’
As I spoke, two of the soldiers popped their heads up to see past me. I heard a familiar rumbling and doom prickled on my neck. I turned to look, afraid of what I would see, but sure enough, speeding up the main road about half a mile behind, was a purple truck. A crane hook swayed in its wake. Something was still attached to it.
I turned back, eyes wide, now eager to move. The soldiers were now directing orders between each other, my mark edging towards me with his gun still raised.
‘Stay where you are!’ he shouted.
I shook my head and took a step forward. The sound of the truck’s engine grew behind me.
‘Sir! Do not take another step!’
But I did. I took another step, and another, until I was not just walking but running towards them with my ha
nds still high above my head and Lineker nipping at my heels. By this time, many of the children were safely aboard the truck, but there were still some stragglers; boys crouched with their heads between their knees, girls squealing, fists by their sides.
Now, I am no Linford Christie, but I do not lie when I say that I had already halved the distance between us and the truck when the soldier made his feelings about my actions known.
‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ he said. There was sweat on his brow. ‘Stop!’
I shook my head and maintained my pace, closing my eyes and expecting him to follow through with his threat. But he and the rest of his troop had now turned their attentions to the machine thundering behind me. I could almost feel the heat of its grill as it screeched to a halt, and the soldier’s eyes seemed to slide away from me. He swung his gun to the truck and I jumped to the left, landing in a heap within a small alleyway.
Lineker fell in beside me and I squashed myself against the wall. We were midway between the two trucks – Greens on the left, Purples on the right – and all we could see through the slim opening of our alley was the rubble-strewn ground between them. I heard doors slamming, children crying, and orders to stand down from both directions. Then there was quiet, nothing but snivelling, murmuring and feet on the concrete.
A megaphone whistled.
‘State your business!’ crackled a voice from the right, the Purples.
A soldier’s voice replied immediately from the left.
‘Negative. Stand down, place your weapons on the ground where we can see them and take twenty paces back with your hands on your heads.’
There was some laughter from the right.
‘Negative,’ mocked the voice. ‘You stand down, and state your business. This is a BU-controlled zone.’
No it bloody well isn’t, I thought. I tightened my grip on Lineker’s scruff. This is my home.
The megaphone squealed with feedback.
‘Who are you transporting?’
‘Repeat, stand down, place your weapons on the ground where we can see them and take twenty paces back with your hands on your heads. Do it now.’
I must admit that the soldier’s tone was highly convincing; most masterful. No problem with dogs, I shouldn’t wonder.
There was a pause. In the silence I heard one of the soldiers speaking quietly.
‘Come out, it’s all right, come out, we have to go.’
And on the right, the click, click, click of the megaphone’s trigger. On, off, on, off, on …
‘Negative.’
There was a wild report of gunfire from the right, and shot after shot whistled past us. I pulled in tight against the cold brick wall as the Greens returned their fire. Their shots were slow and controlled in neat intervals. I heard the cries of men on both sides, then quiet again, and children wailing. Lineker had escaped my grasp and found a safe place to hide behind a bin. In the quiet I crawled to the end of the alley to see what was going on. To the right I saw two Purples drag an injured one behind the truck. To the left, one of the soldiers was face down, another lying against the truck, holding his stomach. Almost all of the children were on board now but three had become separated and were standing in a terrified huddle in the no-man’s-land between the trucks. One of the soldiers ran out to pull them back, but before he could reach them the Purples opened fire again. I just had time to see him spin as a slug hit him in the shoulder, before I retreated back inside the alley.
Silence again. Then the nervous whimpering of the three children as they edged further into danger. I saw small, scuffed shoes shuffling past. Then the megaphone whistled once again.
‘It’s OK,’ said the voice. It was female, wavering, trying hard to be sweet. ‘Come here, it’s perfectly safe.’
‘Put your weapons down!’ screamed a soldier to the left. The children jumped in fright, scattered and regrouped until all three were standing before me, halfway between the two trucks.
‘Weapons down!’
One of the children, a boy of maybe five, was facing me from the huddle. He had both hands to his mouth, nibbling his fingernails and trying to lose himself in his feet. I must have moved because he looked up, and when he saw me his eyes flashed. It was either fresh fear or hope, or both at once. He looked back at the soldiers, then up at the Purples looming above, then back at me.
‘Perfectly safe,’ came the megaphone. ‘Come here, come on.’
‘Weapons down! Now!’
The boy wobbled between his feet, still chewing at his nails and staring at me. I stared back at him. Then I shook my head, just once.
Boots stamped, metal shook and gunfire filled the street again. One bullet hit the wall of the alley and a brick exploded above my head. One child dropped like a rag doll and the other two crouched with their arms over their heads as a Purple ran in from the right, snatching them up and leaving the third lifeless on the ground.
A few moments later, amidst the shouts and shots still being fired, the engines of the truck to the left growled into life and roared away. The Purples followed, bumping over the body of the child, and I just had time to see the torn form of the man still hanging from the crane before the two trucks disappeared, tracing the broken, overgrown streets north.
I sat there for at least an hour watching the dead child with my hair and face covered in red brick dust. It was the boy, I think. He had one arm stretched out above his head, and his chin tucked down. Like Freddie Mercury, I thought. In that picture. We will rock you. We are the champions. That tribute concert, when was that? ’91, ’92, something like that. We watched all of it around her mum’s house.
Lineker came over and put a paw on my belly, but I pushed him away. All I could think of was Freddie Mercury dressed up like a housewife and pushing a Hoover.
Eventually I took a breath and looked around. The sun was dropping and the trucks were long gone so I got to my feet and banged the fizz from my legs. No use dwelling on it, I thought. What’s done is done.
But still, there it was again – that feeling of something approaching and its terrible breath upon my neck.
As I stepped out onto the street I heard a noise: a tinkling followed by brisk taps on concrete. My eyes shot to the open gate leading to the steps up into Seton Bayley, and I saw a shadow disappear inside.
I froze.
Lineker growled and barked, then flew across the street.
I chased him up the stairs, letting him follow his nose with his paws clattering on the stone and his barks and yelps echoing like springs against the breeze-block walls.
I found him a few flights up with his snout pressed into the corner of a door and his tail wagging, double quick.
‘What have you found?’ I said.
He growled and pushed his snout further into the corner. The door squeaked as a gap appeared and he jumped back, looking up at me and licking his chops.
I’d been in this place long ago on my first outings. An old lady called Joyce once lived there. She had her meals delivered. The hallway still smelled of gravy, even though she was long gone, and I’d taken all the food from her shelves.
And I remembered that had I closed this door when I was done, as I did everywhere.
I pushed it open and he darted in.
‘Hello?’ I called.
I heard a scuffle and another tinkle as something broke in the front room. Lineker led me through and stood, pointing at the sofa with his nose. He gave three loud barks, tail still going like the clappers.
The curtains were closed and the air was dark and damp. Something moved from behind the sofa.
‘Is someone there?’
I edged closer, crossing the room sideways like a crab, avoiding unseen furniture.
‘I’m coming round,’ I said.
My leg caught the edge of a table. A glass fell and smashed on the floor and there was a terrific scream. Lineker howled, countless barks crossing over the last, as a cat jumped out from behind the sofa, screeching and spitting with its claws out
. It flew past Lineker in a blur and he chased it out into the stairwell.
I shook my head and left the old place, shutting the door firmly behind me.
It was too dark to work on Bertha and by the time Lineker had slunk back in with his tail between his legs and a few new scratches on his face, I had lit some candles and was tucking into some cold stew, straight from the tin. He sprang up on the sofa next to me and I let him have the dregs of it. I watched him cleaning every last morsel, and when he was sure there was nothing left, he dropped down on my lap with a weary sigh. I thought that I should do some writing, but it was too dark, and I was too tired.
No use dwelling on it.
Worry
LINEKER
You worry too much, you do. You always have done. Not that I’m saying you haven’t had a lot to worry about, because, yeah, you have. I mean you were born into worry, alone on a rock full of horrible beasts and worms and things that wanted to kill you and you had nothing, nothing to protect yourself. No proper claws, no proper teeth, shit at running, shit at climbing, shit at fighting, no fur, no horns, no armour, skin that would tear at the scrape of a daisy. You were an ape, granted, but every other ape had something sharp or strong going for it. Never fuck with a monkey and never try it on with a gorilla – that was the advice whispered through the jungle. But you? You had nothing. You were a joke. You sat there shivering in your cave, naked and cold and hungry.
‘Fuck me, what have we here?’ bellowed Nature, as the bears, snakes and lions closed in.
But, ah, what Nature didn’t know …
You can take an ape, strip it of fur, pull out its claws, file down its teeth, dock its tail and make it slow and weak, but give it a brain? Give it a brain and that ape will fuck a lion right up its arse.
Now you’ve got Mother Nature wrapped around your little finger – apart from the odd hurricane and tsunami, of course, lovers’ tiffs, you might call them.
And still, you worry.
If the history of planet Earth was a day then most of that day was just bollocks. Sloshing and swirling, big, grey, biblical seas moaning and groaning all over the place. BORING. The party only really got going at 6pm, and by the party I mean the fucking (copulation, screwing, sexual reproduction, all that) and even then, it wasn’t really what you’d call good sex, just weed and lichen mashing themselves together for a few billion years like a pair of sweaty teenagers. No, the good stuff happened a bit later on, about twenty to twelve, when the mammals turned up.
The Last Dog on Earth Page 6
