And maybe the girl.
Why are we on our own, exactly?
Bit early for questions, Lineker. Not even had breakfast yet.
I take my eyes from the sleeping waif and see Reg in the corner, slumbering in the armchair. He snores like a boar with its face stuck in a mud hole and great clouds of frost billow from his open mouth. I have no idea what he’s dreaming. But I remember that I love him.
Last night … all that movement, all that music, all that torchlight.
You unlocked it, didn’t you? Fire; it took you no time. Zip, straight in there, no messing, chink, chink, whoomf, lovely. Almost as soon as you’d bouldered down from the trees and shaken off that useless fur – drags you down, that stuff, cramps your style, you need to be bald and lean, right? – the flames sprang up all over the place. You bent your nimble fingers around that flint and gave it all you had, until your camps were filled with sparks, then flickers, then roars. And you leaped and cheered and gave yourselves a great big opposable thumbs-up. Fuck you, Nature. Fuck you very much.
We watched from the shadows, flames and Sapiens dancing in union, unsure whether this was the end of the world or the beginning of it. Turns out it was a bit of both.
Now you stayed awake at night eating cooked flesh and making noises. Freed from the chill you started chattering, and you got just as much warmth from the stories and the songs as you did from the flames.
We watched and listened, and we crept ever closer.
It’s still dark outside and the street is suspended in a silent, pre-dawn chill. I wonder how we’ll get up without the machine? I’m thinking this idle thought, wondering whether it matters, when suddenly I get that buzz and I’m up. Neck straight, eyes open, snout to the air. Something’s up, I can feel it. Something’s out there in the street. There’s no sound, no shadow, no smell, but something is different. It’s like the future is pressing against the present, two moments bulging, squeezing, straining for space. And then …
Something’s definitely up. I’m up, off the bed, paws at the window knocking over that telescope and barking my fucking lungs out. Reg jumps awake, throws his blanket off and screams at me. The girl’s squealing now and I’m still barking – nothing I can do about that I’m afraid, just got to let it out – and Reg pulls me down from the window.
‘Lineker!’ he shouts. ‘For Pete’s sake what are you barking at, you idiot dog?’
Huh. Right charmer, this one. I might not be fire-making material, but I’m no idiot. I know when something’s up, and something definitely is, but this is no time to be offended. I fidget, pad, growl, whine at him.
Reg looks back at me, eyes wild like dandelions. A door slams somewhere far away.
‘There’s nothing there!’ he hisses.
And then the moment bursts through. From somewhere outside there’s a resounding thump and Reg’s face changes colour from moonlight to buttercup. It stains lemon, canary, orange, and then, with a whizz and a whistle, the world catches fire.
The room gives a shudder as flames ignite outside and plumes of smoke unfurl like terrible black flowers. Reg falls to the floor with a cry that’s lost in the rumbling air, and I spin round to check on the girl. She’s curled in a ball at the end of her bed with dust shaking down on her from the ceiling. I leap across the twisted sheets and bark at her – Get up! – but she just shrinks further away.
From somewhere in the distance I hear cries of alarm, doors slamming and boots stampeding on old wood. Outside are other voices, clipped and taut over rapid gunfire. The peace of the night has been torn through and ripped apart with fear and fury. Reg is still sprawled on the floor, struggling to pull himself up the chair, and the girl is motionless, resigned to her fate like a pebble on the tide. There’s another thump, closer this time, and the floorboards bounce. It’s all too much and I dive beneath the bed.
It’s darker down here. My left ear is whistling and in the other one a siren screams like a drill bit boring into my skull. I whimper and I whine, feeling my courage drain like piss down a lamp post, and all at once I’m cold and shivering, and I don’t know what to do, or who’s where, or what’s up or down, or …
I hear another sound, a windward wail rising up like a distant storm, calling me on, calling me out. And I realise that it’s me; I’m howling. Howling like I’ve never howled before, with my snout pressed against the cold springs of the bed. And all at once it stops, and the siren stops too, and for a few moments there is quiet apart from the noise of people scurrying about downstairs.
I open my eyes and see feet moving beneath the bed, making for the door. Two little shoes and torn stockinged calves turn to face me, and large boots shuffle behind them. The door opens and the feet depart, and in the relative quiet my senses return. This is my only chance; I have to go. So I do, I spring forward and scatter down the staircase behind them.
They’re already through Mira’s living room, and the smells of last night’s glorious curry are now ruined by ash, wet stone and panic. There’s urine too, and as I fly past Her Majesty, struggling with her coat again, I realise it’s coming from her. Out in the corridor it’s lighter somehow, and I see faces and bodies running everywhere in various states of undress. Men and women in pyjamas, pulling on robes and shepherding children with bears and bunnies clamped to their faces, others pulling on black jackets and helmets, ushering the rest down flights of stairs. I see a bleeding woman in a nightdress stumble from the pack, hands out, lost, before a man, just a youngster in black fatigues, puts her right and she rejoins the downward exodus.
Crowds are now gathering at the stairs on each landing. Reg makes for the nearest one and the girl follows close behind, but before I can join them I get caught in a fresh stampede. I jump this way and that, dodging feet, ignoring the clips to my chin and the whistling in my ear, trying to find them. This is a bad bit, a bad bit, a bad bad bad bad – What’s that? Reg’s trouser leg, there, get it, go. I make a dive for him. I need to be in front, ahead of them, leading them, not behind.
There’s another sickening thump and a wall comes down. Amidst the shrieks and rumbles the sky opens and for a second I get a glimpse of the bright moon spinning above in a white halo. It is impossibly distant and full of quiet, like an eye peering down upon all of our mess. Then the sky closes in again and I feel weight pounding against my hind quarters. The whistling in my ear becomes a scream that takes over all thought until, finally, there’s nothing left.
I’m gone. For a second I’m lost, just like when I’m lost in the long grass of The Rye. There’s no whistle, no panic, no movement, nothing.
But it returns, and when I open my eyes I’m outside. At least, the inside I was in is now outside. The roof is gone and all that’s left are triangles of brickwork, scorched and torn, with that big old moon looking on, whitewashing the world and making sharp shadows out of the broken brickwork and torn girders.
It’s quiet here and the air is cold. My arse is stuck beneath the edge of a pile of rubble. I wriggle and squirm my way out, giving a yelp as my hip catches on something sharp. When I’m free I turn to inspect the wound, where a dark well of blood has sprouted. I lick it clean, then do my paws and give the old arsehole a once-over, before limping away from the rubble.
Just me and the old moon now, and the whistle now joined by a strange, angry buzzing. I try to get my bearings, work out which end is up, and after a few sniffs I realise where I am. I’m in the generator room – the place where Reg did his magic the night before – only now it’s chaos. The wall to my left has collapsed in a landslide of brick and mortar, and the three generators are now black and smoking, with little flames flickering here and there. The tangled cables are raised up in a net, and one has come loose and split, its naked end sparking and twitching. Water pours from somewhere, flooding the floor.
Not a safe place to be.
I look for an escape route behind but I’m blocked by the pile of rubble, and to my left is a drop I would not survive. Ahead is another staircase, but it’s on the othe
r side of a gap. I pick my way over to it and look down into a pit of stone and sharp, twisted iron. I assess the jump; it’s a little more than I’m comfortable with.
Another distant thump shakes the walls and the room drops, sending me sliding towards the drop on my left. I skitter back to safety, but the jolt has disturbed the broken cable and it’s now thrashing about on the wet floor like a python spitting sparks. In one rotation it whips out at me and I slide back again. My eyes turn to the gap, which, I am somewhat pissed off to notice, has widened. There’s no way I can make it. So I’m left with a choice: succumb to this electric beast, fail to leap an impossible distance and impale myself upon a metal skewer, or let myself fall and shatter my tiny skull upon a thousand bricks below.
I’m done, I think. This is how it feels to be done.
I let my paws go loose and I feel myself sliding back, and I think, This is how it might feel to be done, if there wasn’t this other feeling too; the feeling that, maybe it’s not quite as simple as that, that something else has a say in this decision too, or someone …
Sliding, sliding, sliding, thinking, thinking, thinking, and then – whoops! – I’m off my feet. But I’m not falling, I’m flying. There’s an arm about my tummy, holding me tightly – Reg! My hero! I’m straining to see him, trying to claw my way around to get a view of that lovely mug of his, tell him that he saved my life, and that I’d do the same for him, any time he wanted, just say the word, my old fella, and suddenly we leap and we’re flying, weightless, with the moon gazing down upon us, and it’s a happy old satellite because this right here, this is the shit, not all that noise behind us, not all that shouting and blood and fear, it’s this, a dog being saved from certain death by his best friend, this diamond geezer, this beautiful man, this … this …
In mid-air I look up. Soaring across the night and lit up in amber and bone is a pale face streaming with black hair. Her eyes are bright and fierce and I feel the familiar poetry of that heart fluttering beneath her coat. As we free fall, I hear the echoes of her dreams again, and I swell with the aromas of deep pine, warm grass and ancient rock. We land with no stumble and she pulls me to her chest, letting me bury my snout in her warm neck as she scampers down the staircase, through corridors and doors until I smell fresh air.
She puts me down and I sneeze the dust and soot from my nose. Outside, things make more sense. My ear’s still whistling and there’s smoke billowing in the dark, but the ground is straight and the sound of guns is further away. Reg is there too, talking with Mira in urgent voices. I hear words like north and safe and the number 9 repeated again and again.
There’s another bang from up the street that rocks the watch tower, and two men fall, one after the other in slow arcs. Mira shouts – Go now! Go on! – and pushes us to a door on the other side of the street. She hugs the girl and we’re away, back into a dark corridor and out the other side, away from the fray and running down dark, empty streets into the night. I try to find Reg’s side, but all I can think of is this fucking whistling in my ear, and all I want to ask him is, Where were you? When they attacked and Aisha saved me? Where were you when I needed you?
Where the Day Begins
REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL
11TH DECEMBER 2021
After an hour of stumbling through dark streets, chasing the fading beam of the flashlight Mira had thrust in my hand as she pushed us away, we found ourselves on a green and misty common, and the din of the ambush far behind. I fell down by a worn tree and closed my eyes, gasping. The frost crackled as the girl joined me on the grass, her own breaths short and tight. She raised a hand to Lineker, as he limped from the mist and dropped down beside her.
Dawn was breaking and I switched off the struggling flashlight. Dim orange pulses of whatever we had just fled from played out against the southern sky, and daylight seeped across the common. Soon the outline of a building appeared ahead. Turrets and towers grew from the mist as if some hidden quill was scratching them from the murky ink. The shapes darkened with red brickwork and at one end an enormous, onion-shaped bulb materialised.
‘The Royal Observatory,’ I said, still gulping for breath. ‘This is it.’
According to Mira, my warning had primed Collective 17 for an attack, but they were not expecting one so soon. In the confusion and noise of the street, she had shoved a small bag in my hands and told us to go north, aiming for Greenwich Common where another Collective, 9, had assembled in the observatory. They were smaller but also more mobile and well armed. Perhaps they could get the girl to safety, and she would try to get word to them before we arrived.
Lineker gave a shuddering sigh. The girl ran her finger along the thin ridge of bone in the middle of his head and he responded with two dull whacks of his tail. It was hard to piece together what had happened in there, but I know we lost Lineker and I know that she had found him. I don’t know how, but she had.
I had called her name when that wall came down and the crowd had screamed in the fresh tide of rubble, pushing itself down the staircase.
‘Aisha!’
I had been carried down with them backwards, struggling to get back up, but she was out of sight. All I could see was the sky breaking through the crumbling brickwork. I believe I had mentioned those load-bearing walls to Mira.
Before I had known it I was outside in a heap of dust with the interior street lit up in orange from the flames. My head was still pounding from the shock of the first impact and I staggered about in the smoke, trying to find her, calling her name as faces streamed around me in all directions. And then, there she was at my side again with Lineker at her feet and her fingers plugged in her ears.
What now? she seemed to be saying to me, and I thought, Maybe you’re the one who should be telling me that, young lady.
I opened the bag that Mira had given us and found some water. The girl’s expression leaped and I handed her the open bottle, finding another for myself. She immediately poured the water in Lineker’s mouth, but I reached across to stop her.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You first.’
She gave me an uncertain look and, with a slight shake of her head, continued to fill the dog’s throat until half the water was gone. Only then did she take some for herself.
‘You have to look after yourself,’ I went on. ‘That is how you survive.’
With one last gulp, she turned and fixed me with a frigid glare. I do not believe she could have made herself any clearer. Eyes still flat with disdain, she rose and marched away up the hill with Lineker bouncing beside her.
‘Aisha!’ I called.
I got creakily to my feet and followed.
‘Aisha, wait!’
As I climbed the steep bank the sounds of distant gunfire and explosive thumps ceased behind me. I might have wondered what state Mira’s little Collective was now in, but right then I was more concerned with matters closer to hand.
As we reached the top of the hill, I could sense something wasn’t quite right. A tall fence had been erected around the observatory, run round with barbed wire and plastered with Rising Star emblems, but the gate to it was open, creaking on its hinges. It was far too quiet, and where were the guards?
But again, I had more pressing concerns.
‘Aisha, please,’ I said as I entered the gate.
She was standing in the middle of a wide concourse outside the main building. Lineker scurried along the base of a wall.
‘So you do understand me,’ I said, stopping before her.
She raised her chin ever so slightly and, as if she had called it into being, a low breeze blew from the west and scratched the cobbled ground with dead leaves. I took a step nearer and worked up the will for what I was about to say.
‘I am sorry, Aisha,’ I said. ‘For … what happened at the fence. I behaved with great cowardice and I shall be for ever ashamed of myself, truly I will.’
Another breath of wind blew a lock of hair across her face. Within the protective blink I witnessed her expression so
ften. Wincing, I knelt at her feet.
‘But I shall not fail you again, young lady. On that you have my word. I will make sure you get to Wembley, somehow. I promise you, and they will look after you there. You shall be safe.’
A glimmer of a frown, a tremble in her mouth. Sensing her retreat, I searched for the words to pull her back, my fingers all aflutter.
‘I … I … I have certain neuroses, you see. It’s hard to explain …’
I stopped as she took out her envelope and presented it to me. I cradled it, unopened, like a long-awaited letter. Reaching inside with the tip of her finger, she pulled out the photograph of the woman at the gate by the farm and held it up for me.
‘Your family,’ I said, taking care with my words. ‘You still believe they’re alive, don’t you?’
She turned the photograph and tapped the words on the back twice.
Gorndale, Bistlethorpe, Yorks.
Magda. x
Something occurred to me, curious and chilling.
‘You … you did not get separated from that van, did you? You escaped.’
She said nothing, just stood there swaying.
‘You escaped to find your family? In Yorkshire? That’s where you want to go?’
She gave me a slow blink, which I took to mean ‘yes’, and waited, as if she had asked me for nothing more than a pony ride.
Yorkshire. A galaxy away.
I sighed.
‘I had a family once,’ I said. The words seemed normal, though they had not been uttered for a long time. I was still kneeling at this point and the pain in my knee was wretched. With great difficulty I rose to my feet, one leg at a time, and looked around the cobbled square. Beyond the wall, fog-smothered parkland stretched out beneath us, and suddenly I realised something and laughed.
‘Of all the places,’ I said. ‘We came here once, Sandra and I. We used to like coming into town on Saturdays and sitting in parks with ice creams, making fun of the tourists. That was one of our favourite pastimes, if you can believe that.’
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