Jimmy looked helplessly at the map. It wouldn't be hard for them to discover where the Titanic had started her voyage — it had been well publicised before the plague struck that she was bound for Miami for the first leg of her journey. So he pointed at it on the map. 'After that, I'm not too sure, there were a couple of stops, but I didn't pay a lot of attention.'
'I thought you were a reporter, Private,' said the President. 'Wasn't it your job to know?'
'We weren't told. The captain didn't want to upset the passengers and crew who had families ashore. I think the plan might have been to cross the Atlantic, you know, back to Belfast. I think that's where they've probably gone now.'
The President's eyes bored into him for what felt like an eternity, before he turned suddenly away and studied the map again. 'OK. Miami to Tucker's Hole, travelling north. If she's crossing the Atlantic she's going to have to fill her tanks. So the next major port she'll arrive at would have to be . . .' He traced his finger up the map. 'New York. Agreed, gentlemen?'
The officers nodded. 'Absolutely, Mr President,' said one.
The President clasped his hands behind his back.
'That is indeed fortunate. If we get the timing right we may have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Private Armstrong — that will be all. Gentlemen, we have a battle plan to consider.'
***
Jimmy tramped unhappily away from the White House. He had tried to mislead them, but it hadn't worked. From what he had overheard, from the maps and the pins stuck into them, it was clear that the President intended to lead his army into New York. But why were they discussing a battle plan? The plague had devastated all of the major population centres — who was there left to fight? And if a battle was brewing in New York, was the Titanic sailing right into it? And if the minister was really a soldier, what on earth was he up to?
Thought processes are rarely linear — they're a jumble of ideas and questions and half-formed answers, and Jimmy was trying to puzzle his way out of this maze when a voice to his right made him jump.
'Say, friend, you got a light?'
A boy of about twelve years was sitting on a bench outside one of the administration buildings, a cigarette in one hand and a lighter, which he was repeatedly flicking, in the other.
'Sorry, no,' said Jimmy.
'Damn,' said the boy.
Jimmy would have walked on, but in pausing to answer he'd caught a glimpse through the open door beside the boy and spotted an array of radio equipment set against the far wall.
'Are you not a bit young to be smoking?' Jimmy asked, but in a friendly way.
The boy shrugged. 'Am I not a bit young to be carrying a gun and learning how to kill people with my bare hands?' he asked. 'Times have changed, my friend.'
Jimmy smiled. 'Suppose they have.' He nodded through the open door. 'You the radio man?'
'One of them. I've pulled the night shift.'
'Cool.'
'You into radio?'
'A bit, yeah. I was on the new Titanic for a while, hung around with the radio operators.'
He hadn't, actually. But he had interviewed them for a feature article in the Times. Now he was desperately trying to remember what he'd learned.
'Titanic? Excellent. We had an amateur radio club in school — not very fashionable, but it got me out of gym. You want to take a look?' Jimmy nodded enthusiastically. The boy led him inside. 'They call me Ham, by the way.'
'Jimmy. Or Frankie. Whatever you like.'
The radio equipment on the Titanic had been state of the art. This stuff looked like it had been rescued from a museum.
'So is there much traffic out there?' Jimmy asked, bending to examine the equipment.
Ham pulled out a chair and sat down; he pulled on a pair of earphones, but secured them just above his ears so he could chat. 'Very little — mostly it's just communication with the other forts.'
Jimmy looked at him in surprise. 'Other forts? I thought there was only Fort Hope.'
'Oh no — there's five others. Fort Perry is the closest — it's about thirty miles away. They're all in a kind of semi-circle around New York. We're hoping to establish telephone communication soon, but in the meantime radio's the best we have. But we also use this little nightmare a lot.' He tapped a small machine beside the main radio transmitter.
'Morse code.'
'You know about Morse? Not many kids know about it.'
'I'm no expert, but I know a bit.'
He knew a reasonable amount, again from writing about it for the Times. It was a nearly two-hundred- year-old method of transmitting messages, using a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numerals and punctuation. These short electrical pulses were originally sent along a wire between two points by being tapped into a hand-operated device called a telegraph key, but after the invention of radio these were transmitted over the airwaves as a high-pitched audio tone — it was, he recalled, the only form of digital communication that could be used without a computer, which made it ideal for emergency signalling. Jimmy had never physically written or sent a message by Morse code, but he had watched it being done. And now Ham was busy sending one himself.
'This is what I have to do all night,' he moaned. 'Tap tap tap — it drives me mad, but they insist on it. And now I can't even light a cigarette to see me through.'
'What's the big important message? And who's it going to?'
'It's going to anyone who can pick it up, my friend — we broadcast on all the old amateur radio bands — LF, MF, HF, UHF and VHF — and what we're basically saying is don't give up, the President is alive and rebuilding civilisation. The catch is that we don't give our location. That's the way he wants it done — he thinks that only the best people will find their way here. But he also gets idiots like me.' Ham sucked on his unlit cigarette. 'I'm not convinced that one single person has ever heard it. I mean, who the hell listens to Morse code these days?'
Ham began to tap in the coded message. There was a chart showing the Morse letters and numerals pinned above the transmitter, but Ham didn't refer to it once.
'Do you not have another lighter, or matches?' Jimmy asked.
'Yeah, but if I leave my post, they'll shoot me.'
'Seriously?'
'Well, I don't really want to find out.'
'What if I stand guard and you nip out?'
His eyes brightened considerably. 'I shouldn't.'
'If anyone looks in the window, I'll be sitting in your seat, earphones on, pretending to transmit.'
'I . . . really shouldn't . . .' He took the cigarette out of his mouth and rolled it back and forth between his fingers. 'I smoke seventy-five of these a day. My dad got me started. I was the only one in my class at school who smoked. They all died of the plague, and it never touched me. Far as I'm concerned, smoking saved my life.' He took a deep breath — then coughed raggedly. 'Sorry . . . OK, deal — my barracks is just around the corner. I'll be like, two minutes, tops.'
'No problem,' said Jimmy.
Ham hesitated. 'So why exactly are you helping me out?'
'Because soldiers help each other. We're all in this together now, aren't we?'
Ham nodded enthusiastically. 'We sure are, friend.'
Ham hurried to the door while Jimmy took his seat at the transmitter and slipped on the earphones. He gave Ham the thumbs-up and the young radio operator winked and hurried out, closing the door firmly behind him.
Jimmy immediately stood and ripped the Morse chart off the wall. He propped it up in front of him and with his left hand gripped the top of the telegraph key and began to tap out his message as his eyes repeatedly flicked up and then down again . . .
— . . . .— . . . .—.. .. ...— . . . —.—.— —
He was tapping as fast as he could, but he was still frustratingly slow. He couldn't be completely sure that he got the dots and dashes completely right. As soon as he finished his short message he began to send it again.
—... .— . . . . .—.. .. .
..— . . . —.—.— —
He was just starting through it a third time...
—... .—
. . . when rapid footsteps announced Ham's return. Jimmy jumped up, stuck the Morse chart back on the wall and rapidly sat again just as the door opened. Ham entered, slightly out of breath, and closed the door behind him. He slipped his cigarette between his lips, removed a shiny red lighter from his pocket, tossed it up into the air, caught it, flicked it and lit up. He inhaled deeply, held it for ten seconds, then exhaled.
'That feels soo goooood,' he said.
Jimmy slipped the earphones off and stood away from the transmitter. 'You found it then?'
'Sure did.' Ham happily flipped the lighter into the air again, but before he could catch it Jimmy stepped smartly across and grabbed it.
He held it up and nodded admiringly. Then he abruptly dropped it to the floor and before Ham could move or protest he brought his heel down on it hard, crushing it.
' What the .. . ?'
As Jimmy stepped away from it Ham dropped to his knees and tried to pick up the shattered pieces.
'Why the hell did you do that?'
Jimmy pulled the door open, but then paused and looked back. 'Ham,' he said, 'you seem like a good kid. But take my advice. I'm the big chimney, you're the little chimney. You're too young to be smoking. Understand, friend?'
Jimmy winked at him, and strode out of the room.
22
The City
The column snaked forward through the ruined city, the passengers flanked by the armed crewmen. The passengers, many of them labouring for breath, thought the crewmen were going too fast; the crewmen, anxiously eyeing the surrounding buildings, thought they were going too slow. Jeffers was at the front with Jonas Jones; Dr Hill stayed at the back, encouraging those who were finding the going tough.
Claire moved back, and forth: sometimes at the front, aware of the tension; sometimes at the back, using her telescopic camera lens to scan the way they'd come.
Ty shadowed her all the way, aware that she was jittery. 'What's Jeffers so scared of? Monkey enslavement?'
Claire grinned at him. 'Something like that.'
But when he looked away the grin faded and her eyes flitted up the sides of the concrete valley they were passing through.
The devastation was immense. The plague must have struck New York very suddenly — so many cars were crashed off the road; hundreds of skeletons lay on the sidewalk and in stores, as if they had just dropped down dead rather than becoming ill and lingering for days the way they had on the Titanic. It reminded Claire of the many tourists they'd found dead on their deckchairs on the beach in St. Thomas, but on a hugely greater scale. Millions of people had died in this city, but some had survived — and apparently the only way they'd been able to feed themselves was by . . .
She could barely contemplate it.
Cannibals.
When Dr Hill had shown her the bone her immediate reaction was to laugh. Surely they were just cremating the bodies to cut down on disease? But then he'd shown her the grooves and chips in the bone where the meat and flesh had been cut away.
'OK,' she'd argued, 'so a couple of people went mad. It doesn't mean that every survivor is—'
'Claire,' Dr Hill said gravely, 'I've checked all of the bonfires and there are hundreds of bones, maybe thousands. This is cannibalism on a massive scale . . .'
Jeffers nodded beside him. 'Presuming that they've now developed some kind of a taste for human flesh, and if they're not eating each other, then they're going to be constantly on the lookout for fresh meat.'
'That's us,' said Jonas Jones.
Now they were walking through the ruined city, getting further and further away from harbour, the inflatables and the safety of the Titanic.
'I get the feeling we're being watched,' said Dr Hill, as Claire fell into step beside him.
'Me too,' said Claire. 'I wonder what human flesh tastes like?'
'Chicken. I'm told it tastes like chicken.'
Claire grimaced.
Five minutes later, First Officer Jeffers called a rest halt. Bottles of water were passed. As the crewmen formed a loose perimeter, guns ready, Jeffers warned everyone else not to wander off; despite this some poked into stores on either side of the broad avenue. Jeffers then checked in with Captain Smith. When he was finished Claire asked to use the radio and was patched through to Andy in the newsroom.
'Has Brian turned up yet?' she asked.
'No,' said Andy.
Claire tutted. 'I should have given the story to someone else. He may have an IQ off the scale, but it doesn't mean he knows how to write a decent—'
'Claire. We found his cell-phone. He was using it to tape his interview with that minister guy.'
'What do you mean you found it? Did he lose it or . . .' There were several long moments of speechless radio static. 'Andy?'
'We found it on the top deck at the very back of the ship by the rails. It was smashed to pieces. We've searched every inch of the ship, Claire. There's no other sign of him. If we found it there, then maybe he . . . you know, fell . . .'
Claire was momentarily stunned.
I sent a shy kid to interview someone who might be a killer, and now he's disappeared. I should have confronted Cleaver myself, not sent some green kid to do it.
But then she thought, no, that's jumping to conclusions. There could be a dozen reasons why Brian had disappeared. Maybe he'd dropped the phone by mistake, realised he'd lost the interview, and was too embarrassed to show his face in the office. Andy might well have claimed to have mounted a thorough search, but that was impossible in the short time that had passed — the ship was massive. It would take an organised team weeks to check every nook and cranny. Brian could quite easily just be hiding out. Or, if by some chance he had gone overboard, it didn't mean he'd been murdered. He might have been in some kind of freak accident — or he might even have killed himself. It wasn't unheard of for people to throw themselves off the Titanic. Losing loved ones, your home: even losing treasured mementoes had been known to drive people to suicide. There was no way of knowing if Brian was 'the type' to kill himself, because there was no type. It could affect anyone. One moment they were there, the next they were gone.
Claire sighed. 'OK — look, we need to keep looking. Inform Captain Smith, he'll organise a proper search.'
'Will do. What's it like out there?'
'Interesting,' said Claire.
She talked for a few more minutes, while Andy wrote her observations down. It looked like they were going to be ashore for several days, and there was still a daily paper to produce, so she would have to take opportunities like this to file her reports. When she was finished she handed the radio back to Jeffers, grabbed a bottle of water for herself, and was just turning to look for Ty when she jumped suddenly.
The Rev. Calvin Cleaver was right beside her. Centimetres away.
'Sorry,' he said, his voice a cold rasp. 'I didn't mean to frighten you.'
'You — you didn't. . .' Claire took a step back. She glanced around to make sure someone was watching.
'We haven't been introduced . . . apparently I shot you.'
His eyes were pale and tinged with red, his teeth sharp and crooked. Claire had time and again counselled herself not to judge a book by its cover, but it was impossible. Cleaver might as well have had evil bad guy printed on his head. It just seemed that nobody else was aware of it.
'Yes. . . yes . . . you . . .'
She found herself involuntarily rubbing at her arm. It ached. Like it knew that the monster responsible was right there.
'I'm really dreadfully sorry.'
He reached out, and before she could do anything, he had taken hold of her hand. He clasped it between his own. His flesh was cold and clammy.
'I wish I could make it up to you.'
'No . . . no . . . it's quite . . .'
She wanted to run, but he wouldn't let go.
'I couldn't help bu
t overhear . . . has something happened to that little fellow sent to interview me?'
She was trying to read his eyes. Were they cold and gloating, or were they just like that?
'We're . . . not sure — he seems to have disappeared.' She took a step back, and in so doing managed to free her hand from his grasp. It just slipped out. 'The interview — you did it with him?'
'Oh, yes. He asked all sorts of interesting questions. He was really awfully smart. Nervous, but intelligent, I thought.'
'His cell-phone was found on the top deck, smashed.'
'Really? How odd. He interviewed me in the restaurant on the eleventh. Do you really think something has . . . happened to him?'
'I . . . don't know.'
At that moment Cleaver was distracted by First Officer Jeffers calling on them all to get ready to move out again. There were groans from some of the older passengers as they got to their feet. Claire hurried towards the front of the column. She felt odd — unclean. The hand he had held was moist with her cold sweat and his. She wiped it on her jeans. He had acted pious and innocent, but he knew something, she was sure of it. But again, it was just a feeling — intuition, no cold hard facts.
They were just about to move when one of the passengers cried out: 'Not yet — my wife isn't here.'
Jeffers shook his head impatiently and hurried down the column. 'Well where is she? We haven't time to hang around.'
The passenger, a bald man with a paunchy belly was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and standing in the doorway of an optician's store. 'She was looking for a new pair of sunglasses. She was thirsty, I went to get her another bottle of water . . . I only left her for a minute . . .'
Jeffers studied the store for a moment, before moving past the passenger and into the interior, removing his pistol as he did so. Two crewmen followed him in. Claire peered through the front window at display cabinets full of designer glasses caked with thin layers of dust, before following the passenger inside. She immediately noticed a slight breeze coming from the rear of the store where a door lay open. Jeffers cautiously approached this and looked out into the alley beyond. It was empty. He bent and lifted something from the ground. He held up a pair of glasses, with one cracked lens. The passenger hurried up and examined them.
Titanic 2020: Cannibal City t2-2 Page 13
