Zero Bomb

by M. T Hill

  Then he’s waiting at a heavy junction, caught in electric traffic. Sandstone brick surrounds, Georgian everything. You can tell a wealthy enclave by its heavy gates and partially exposed gun-turrets – is this really Mayfair, already? He scans the run of luxury shops while his bug traces a lazy helix above his head. He admires another rider’s cycle as it pulls alongside him at the lights, a sliver of a thing with a carbon-fibre frame. Next to the two of them, a driverless car paused so perfectly on the dashed nav line it could be screencapped from an advert. Remi and the other cyclist share a cautious smile as they notice simultaneously the passenger asleep on the car’s rear bench.

  Then to the traffic lights, foot on the front pedal, and back to his idle quantifying. What makes this city? What makes it breathe? Remi has some ideas: the crane verticals and cables; the old and new in visible sedimentary layers, history compressed and overflowing from the grids; blues and reggae and old-school jungle from open windows and passing cars; a grimjazz band practising in the middle distance, steady cymbal wash; a food courier arguing futilely with a driverless white van; a steaming coffee outlet selling weed and beta-blockers; lads outside a takeaway sharing shock-joints and quiet dreams; a mobile shop blinking deep cuts on stolen derms; hidden London delineated by the warm vanilla lights of bedsits above shops; sleazy-hot London with its shapeless blood-glow; sex bidding and street shouting; the wealthiest Londoners slipping by undetected in silent taxis—

  ‘Hear that?’ the other cyclist asks him.

  Remi pulls down his breather, wipes the condensation from his top lip. ‘Sorry?’

  The other cyclist nods. ‘That noise. You not hear it?’

  And then it comes again, and Remi does. A sad pop, like someone closing a door in another room.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ the other rider asks.

  ‘Tunnel works?’ Remi shrugs and looks at the ground. ‘I dunno.’

  The other cyclist shrugs back. Not cold, or even polite, Remi understands, but familiar. The death-spiral fraternity of cycling in London.

  Again comes the popping sound. A series of popping sounds. ‘Seriously!’ the other cyclist says. It does sound like it’s coming from beneath them, but it’s too clipped to be a passing Tube train, and Remi’s sure they stopped tunnelling work to repair the collapse at Tottenham Court Road.

  Once more the noise comes, this time much closer. Remi squints at the other rider. The lights turn green and the driverless car glides away. Remi and the other cyclist wordlessly mount the pavement, intrigued or unsettled enough to hang around. They both lean on their tiptoes, holding the traffic light post. Their bugs begin to fly in tight circles around each other, as if they’re conspiring.

  ‘Right then,’ the other cyclist says, gesturing to the bugs. ‘That’s no good.’

  Remi grimaces. The bugs often know.

  Then the smog draws closer, dry and sour, and the popping sound is all around them. The driverless car has faltered in the box junction, its motor screaming painfully. The passenger has woken up and is banging on the windows. Without saying anything, Remi dismounts his bike and props it against the post, and the other rider does the same. Together they approach the car, stilted by adrenaline. There’s a smell of hot wires. Other vehicles start to beep as the traffic lights turn red again. Remi’s bug emits a shrill alarm to warn him he’s abandoned the manuscript case.

  Remi heads directly for the car. ‘You all right?’ he calls, mouth sticky. Behind them, doors are hissing open, other voices rising. Pap-pap-pap from the driverless car’s front end.

  Closer, the offside window, and a pair of thick boot soles fill the glass. The passenger on his back, kicking at full stretch, because the car’s cabin is filling with smoke. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Remi manages. And now the car’s reverse note sounds, hazards glitching on and off. Remi instinctively steps away just as the driverless car accelerates, brakes to a pause, and restarts itself. Before he can react, the car swings away from the box junction and turns to face the mounting traffic. To face Remi.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Remi says.

  The passenger window glass gives and speckles the road, and then the car comes at him.

  3

  In the moment – syrupy, elastic – London reveals to Remi its starkest face: a blanked sky, impassive glass, reflections of ancient buildings that will long outlast him. Remi needs to move but his limbs won’t have it, and then the second cyclist is there, clamped to Remi’s arm, rotating him, and the driverless car passes so close it draws a hiss from Remi’s rain-shell. Remi and the second cyclist tangle and hit the road. The tarmac is bright black and wet. A wrench. A lucky roll. The driverless car is still pulling away when it hits the traffic lights, and the whole fixture tilts out of its base. The pole collapses, sparking, and gouges chunks of masonry from the nearest building. The car digs in and tilts backwards, driving wheels lifted away from the road and spinning furiously. Thick smoke rises from the arches, the bonnet seams, and on the street the exposed mains start crackling.

  Finally, the crowd. London’s white cells rushing to the site of attack. The passenger’s arms and head emerge from the smoke as he clambers out. The other cyclist is back on his feet. Remi’s sitting up on the road with his head pounding, purple blotches in his vision. His hands and knees are studded with grit.

  ‘The bikes,’ the other cyclist says.

  The bikes. The package. And a roiling panic. From his seated position, Remi just about sees what’s left of his bike: the wheels creased and tyres off, the frame wedged against the base of the traffic light pole. The panniers have been folded in half. The manuscript case is in the mix.

  As if to offer sympathy, Remi’s bug descends to his shoulder and stops flapping.

  ‘I’m insured,’ Remi says, mostly to himself. He shields his eyes to survey the mess. ‘Hang on. Is that—’

  ‘Wait!’ the other cyclist calls. ‘Oi!’

  Because the car’s passenger is sprinting away down the road.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Remi manages. He’s getting up. Unsure but apparently without serious injury. A semi-circle of concerned faces. An older woman holding out a flask. ‘Jesus,’ Remi adds, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got the lot on tape – how’s that his fault?’

  ‘You all right, though, love?’ the older woman asks. A cup of tea now. ‘Could’a done ya, that! And to say them cars are clever!’

  Remi doesn’t argue with her. It’s difficult to say much at all. He waves away the tea and stumbles towards the other cyclist, who’s doing his best to separate their bikes from the tangled car and post.

  ‘The bikes,’ the second cyclist says, forlorn.

  ‘I know,’ Remi says back. He kneels down to free the package from the panniers. Its reactive protection layer means the innards will be fine, possibly creased – but the agent will already know something’s wrong, because the tracker will show it as stationary for longer than Remi’s service-level agreement permits. Worse still, she might think Remi’s tried to tamper with it, get inside.

  ‘This has to go,’ Remi tells the other cyclist. ‘I’ve got to get it somewhere…’

  Their eyes meet briefly. Both of them stinking in their armour-panelled Lycra, panting like dogs. The other cyclist looks lost. No – he looks bereft.

  ‘It was a present,’ the cyclist tells Remi, as if he might know. ‘From my late wife. What the bloody hell do I tell the kids?’

  And with this arrives a vision, white-hot and livid: Martha’s body.

  Remi stoops low to offset the dizziness. Not here. He closes his eyes. He’s dragging it up. The smell of burning. He’s dredging again. He plants one hand on the road, the manuscript case clutched against his chest. A voice from an old room, a memorial. His first and failed attempt at therapy: Remi, I want you to imagine you are standing before a cove. You have rowed ashore and tied the boat to a slimy post. You can hear the sea. It is different from shore – flatter and stiller than when you were out there. There is a tall figure in the breakers. There
is a lighthouse on the hill. You can walk towards the lighthouse, if you like. You can ignore the figure and walk along the ridge towards the lighthouse. You don’t have to look back. You don’t have to look down. Inside the lighthouse you find a table set for one. You sit before a bowl of light, and in the light is the colour blue, which you can taste and swallow and feel yourself digest—

  Remi grips the package. He straightens it as well as he can, and the action brings him back from the edge. He checks his watch. He clears his throat. Without another word to the other cyclist, he pockets his bug and tries to run.

  4

  Remi can’t remember how to do this. Two steps, two breaths in; three steps, three breaths out. Wasn’t this the pattern whenever he went out back home, back in the other time, his first life? Something about maximising oxygen flow to needy muscles. A pattern he internalised and made automatic, once so natural that it became his response to any pace beyond a brisk walk. Within minutes he’s hitting the chest burn, early fatigue. Wanting to stop. It’s natural, he tells himself, remembering old pains at least. This is before you settle in for the long haul. Don’t be too harsh on yourself – you haven’t run anywhere for so long. Doesn’t he remember? How he used this to free himself from having to think? Two in – one, two. Three out – one, two, three. The uneven pavements and cold down his neck. Towards the meditative state that saved him each and every time he went under.

  Except it isn’t working. Remi’s tearing through West London’s back streets, and everything seems volatile and disconnected. The city is shifting around him, becoming unknowable.

  He pulls up, staggers a little. A starburst overlay. He could’ve been killed back there, injured at the very least. Yet it’s not even the idea of a malfunctioning driverless car that fazes Remi most. Despite their advancements, hiccups happen, albeit rarely. Batteries can fail, and without due care, circuits corrode. No – what really bothers Remi is that the passenger fled. You can’t even start a car these days unless you’re comprehensively insured, with a subdermal chip to prove it. Can’t pass a traffic signal without your car being immobilised if your licence is about to lapse. And casualty rates for car occupants are the lowest they’ve ever been. The passenger wasn’t injured by the impact, nor rendered so shock-stupid that running made sense. So was it the smoke? With an electrical fire you might panic, seek to clear your lungs… but why would you run?

  Another plausible motive is shame. Not wanting to be seen. Because, Remi considers, given the media’s fatalistic obsession with driverless anything, today’s incident could well make the nine o’clock bulletin.

  Or – what if the car was hacked? What if it was deliberate? What if it was to do with the manuscript?

  Remi clutches the case to his hip. He checks his watch, whose screen displays his job rate dwindling in real time. He unpockets his bug, which bobs in circles around him. If he doesn’t land the manuscript on target, he’ll lose half a day’s wages, and possibly the next contract. He retches. Running all the way to Walthamstow just isn’t an option.

  * * *

  Remi descends the stairway at the nearest Tube station, Green Park, and jostles his way on to the eastbound Piccadilly Line platform, trying to remember the name of his contact, of his issuing agent. In the moment it’s hard even to recall the name of the editor he’s delivering to. The address. Given the sensitivity of the documents they move, a courier’s memory is their lifeblood, and Remi’s is scattered, failing. Then the train is in the platform and he’s being pressed into a heaving crowd, blood and plasma still damp on his knees, sweat running freely from his brow. He winces inwardly as his knees rub on someone’s long woollen coat. He finds a gap, a pocket of air. He gulps it.

  The stops filter past. Remi stands with his hand on the bar, woozy and distracted. Fading in and fading out. Then it hits him: Walthamstow. Fucking Walthamstow! Why is he on the Piccadilly Line and not the Victoria? How’s he even managed that? He swivels to the live Tube map scrolling down the carriage, questioning himself. Okay, so he’ll just change at King’s Cross, or even Finsbury Park. He retightens his grip on the handle. He wipes his wet face down his other arm.

  At King’s Cross, the carriage empties at an impressive speed, leaving plenty of empty seats. The chance to rest makes Remi’s decision for him. As he sits down, the people on the opposite row gawp at his torn knees, his clammy skin. He tries to ignore them. He closes his eyes. He attempts to tot up the value of his lost bike, and the faff it’ll take to replace it. He squeezes the bug in his pocket, and it gives a tiny haptic response. Some attempt at reassurance.

  At the next station, Caledonian Road, two heavyset men seat themselves either side of Remi. He notices them because they’re wearing near-identical tracksuit bottoms, fleece-lined cardigans and heavy-looking work boots. They carry a stink of ethanol. Labourer-grubby: the lemon sourness of a urinal cake. Between them they casually muscle Remi’s elbows into submission, his torso frail by comparison. The man to his left has long, dirty fingernails, and a tin of beer concealed in a degrading plastic bag.

  ‘Want me to swap?’ Remi asks the man on his right, tilting his head sideways to his friend.

  The man flashes Remi a bored glance. He might as well be in another carriage, another universe. Then the man drops his sports holdall on the carriage floor. From this the man produces a pad of paper, an old fountain pen – instantly curious to Remi because he does it so delicately, and because it makes no real sense: a labourer with a fountain pen between his thick, dirty fingers. Besides, who doesn’t watch their fellow passengers from the corners of their eyes? Who doesn’t try to peer into another life and imagine, briefly, what it might be like to occupy it? The stolen glance is a transaction from unwritten London. It’s another way the city trades its secrets.

  The man’s pad contains reams of squared paper. An artefact in the same way the pen is, given this day and age. Perhaps Remi’s first impressions were wrong: he might well be a labourer, comfortably scruffy with it, but he might also be a man for whom organisation matters. A foreman, or engineer, old-fashioned to the point of being contrarian about technology. Is the pen really his? Is it an heirloom? Remi marvels at the possibilities. A whole life story spun from an object out of sync. And as the man begins to write on the pad, a silky motion, arched hand, Remi follows what he can of the fresh ink, refocusing his gaze as the man reaches the end of the first row of squares and drops down to the next.

  There the man stops, as if sensing Remi’s gaze in some unknown, atavistic way. Remi turns away too obviously. He locks eyes with the woman opposite, whose scolding expression says his movement, however minor, has pulled her out of her book.

  The train rattles northwards towards Finsbury Park. Less than five. The carriage lights strobe through dead spots in the tunnels. And the big man goes on writing furiously in his squared-paper pad, corner to corner, his forearm rippling with each stroke, every point of exerted pressure. Next time Remi glances over, his guts shift with surprise. In so little time, the man has filled half a page – and not with any real words. Instead, the man has plotted an unbroken string of figures and letters, seemingly at random, into every square. Something about the pace of it, and the hand’s steadiness, gives Remi the impression these letters and numbers have been learned and repeated here by rote. Unnerved yet fascinated, Remi continues to follow as the man completes a new line of characters, and then another. Is it a puzzle, Sudoko-like (remember those)? Or a calculation, some bizarre theorem—

  ‘Hey,’ the young woman says to Remi over her book. ‘You’re bleeding pretty bad you know.’

  Remi shrugs with one shoulder. As he does, the train brakes to a sharp stop in the tunnel. The carriage lights clank off. The man next to Remi stops writing and taps the page three times with his pen. Remi keeps his eyes front. The man taps more insistently, and Remi finds it irritating. Tap. Tap. Tap. Remi glances across the way, startled to find the man staring back from the reflection opposite, lighted and dimmed as the lights flicker; fully,
surreally there when the light floods, and then a blank mass in darkness, facial features absent entirely.

  The man is smiling.

  A second jolt as the train lurches forward half a metre. And more tapping, each time in the same place. Remi looks now, and this time he notices the word on the pad, the word under the pen, with the sensation of insects climbing his neck. The squared page, for all its apparent randomness – hundreds of tiny letters and digits – bears a name. Four little letters, right at the end of the man’s pen, that spell it out:

  R E M I

  Remi squeezes his eyes shut. It’s the strobing. He’s overtired. He’s shaken up.

  He opens them, and the man’s pen has moved to the top of the page:

  L O R R Y

  S P R A Y

  The pen moves to the middle of the page:

  T A L L O W

  G R E A S E

  The page like some abstraction of a word-search puzzle. The page full of messages:

  W O O D

  P I G E O N

  C O L L A R

  The train driver gives an apology for the delay and announces Finsbury Park as the next station. The big man leans forward over the pad, as if to better study Remi’s reflection.

  ‘What is this?’ Remi hisses, breaching the silence of the carriage, and with it the gravest rule. ‘What are you doing?’

  The pen taps:

  O I L E D

  P U D D L E

  The pen taps:

  M A R T H A

  Finally Finsbury Park is sliding across the windows. The two big men rise and push forcefully up the aisle towards the carriage doors.

  Without a thought, Remi gets up to follow them. Shoulders first up the platform, scattering, a half-jog, half-stumble, keeping in sight the writing man’s pattern baldness; the figure and scene already etched on his bones should he ever try to forget them, double-exposed with the shattered image he tries to maintain of his daughter.