Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

  Chapter 22

  Crash Day + 27 weeks 5.45 a.m.

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Lieutenant Adam Brooks blew warm air into his cold hands as he stepped out through the dome’s main entrance into the still-dark morning. Both guards saluted; Gunner Lawrence paired up with one of the Met officers. Lawrence made a better job of it as Adam acknowledged the salute and strode quickly past them beyond the pool of light.

  His radio crackled again. ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m on my way over,’ replied Adam. ‘How many of them did you say?’

  Ahead he could see the faint glint of a torch beam flickering around in the darkness, picking out something beyond the wall of the barricade.

  ‘Hard to say, sir. I guess . . . I dunno, several dozen of ’em. Maybe thirty or forty.’

  That many? His pace quickened, standard-issue heels clicking noisily in the darkness. They’d not had a group that big turn up outside for months. These days they came in twos or threes, often alone; malnourished people who looked like scarecrows, faces rendered blank and immobile.

  As he approached the guard point he snapped off his radio and called out. ‘Lieutenant Brooks approaching!’

  The torch beam that had been lancing out over the barricade wall swung his way momentarily and picked him out.

  Adam winced and shaded his eyes. ‘You say thirty to forty?’ he called out to Gunner Huntley.

  ‘Yes, sir. Looks about that.’

  Adam jogged over to the base of the wall; six-foot-high panels of corrugated iron pilfered from the roof of the factory out in no-man’sland, welded together side by side, and topped with loops of razor wire. He climbed up onto a small crate and stood beside Huntley.

  What he was about to say to these people he’d already said to hundreds of groups before. And the response was always the same; the desperate pleas to be let in, hopeless sobbing. Adam took the torch off Gunner Huntley and panned it down across the small crowd of pale oval faces - smudged with dirt, expressionless, eyes narrowed from the glare of torchlight, and all of them shivering from the cool night air.

  ‘This is London Safety Zone Four,’ he announced with tired formality, a cloud of his breath danced brightly across the torch beam. ‘I’m afraid we can’t take in any more people at this time, unless you have a special skill, in which case you can be admitted for a probationary period.’

  There was an expected mewling of defeated voices amongst them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the way it is.’

  The voices raised in anger and frustration. Adam quickly counted. Forty-seven of them. He turned to Huntley. ‘Better get Sergeant Walfield and a section of men up here, to be on the safe side.’

  Huntley nodded, dropped heavily down off the crate, his webbing jangling, and scooted noisily off into the darkness towards the dome.

  Adam turned back to them. ‘Look, I’m sorry. We have barely enough supplies for the people already inside. We can’t spread what we’ve got any further.’

  Somebody’s voice cut through the chorus of protesting voices. ‘We’ve come from the Cheltenham safety zone.’

  Cheltenham? GZ-C?

  ‘Who said that?’ he asked, panning his beam across their flinching faces.

  A hand rose up. A woman; thin and dark-haired, her face almost as white as a ghost.

  ‘I’m a government worker. One of the emergency workers.’

  The others around her suddenly cast suspicious glances at her. Adam noticed a gap growing around the woman and a palpable sense of rage simmering amongst the others.

  ‘Have you got ID on you?’ he called down.

  She fished inside her fleece top as a woman standing next to her spat in her direction. ‘You fuckin’ bitch,’ she hissed, ‘you’re one of them?’

  The woman produced her laminated ID badge, dangling from a chain. From where he stood it appeared to be legitimate, the same as that worn by the workers in SZ-4; Home Office logo, name and details, passport photo . . . although from here Adam couldn’t really tell if that was the woman’s mugshot.

  ‘Okay, you better come in,’ he said waving her forward.

  Before the others rip you to pieces.

  He nodded down at the soldier manning the gate to slip the bolt. ‘Keep your shoulder against the door, though.’ His torch beam swung across the others. ‘The rest of you stay back!’

  ‘Fucking bitch!’ shouted a man. ‘You’re a guv’ment worker? And we shared our food with you!’

  The woman eased herself through the snarling faces towards the door, grimacing as someone spat in her face; another man, barely more than a lad, mimicked headbutting her. So close, in fact, that Adam thought he’d actually done it as she recoiled, raising her hands to protect her face.

  ‘Fucking fat-cat bastards like you an’ the guv’ment left us outside to starve.’

  ‘Taking care of their own, again.’

  ‘Go on, then, fuck off . . . bitch!’

  She reached the rough rusted metal of the gate and looked up at Adam. ‘Please! Open the gate! They’re going to kill me!’

  Adam swung the assault rifle off his shoulder and cocked it noisily. ‘Please, everyone, back off . . . right now. Or I will shoot.’

  The crowd made some space, reluctantly drawing away from the base of the wall.

  ‘Please! Let us in!’ someone called out. ‘It’s dangerous out here.’

  He ignored the voices. ‘All right, open it,’ he uttered down to the lad by the gate. It cracked open on thick rusty hinges that creaked noisily. The woman saw the gap and squeezed hastily through it, just as the others, yards away, instinctively stepped forward, some of them no doubt hoping to file through in her wake.

  ‘I said stay back!’ Adam shouted.

  The woman was in and the soldier swiftly rammed the thick bolts back in place.

  ‘The rest of you,’ said Adam, ‘should disperse. I’m sorry, there’s nothing here for you.’

  There was abuse hurled back. He could deal with the ‘fuck-you’s, the ‘fascist bastard’s . . . what he struggled with was those who desperately tried to appeal to his humanity.

  ‘What do we do now?’ an elderly woman asked. ‘Please? I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You should get out of London,’ he replied. ‘All of you! Get out whilst you’re still fit and able enough. The city’s dead space. You’ve got a chance out in the country.’

  He heard the heavy clump of boots on tarmac and jangling webbing approaching. Sergeant Walfield and a section of their boys emerged from the dark.

  ‘Everything all right up there, sir?’ Walfield bellowed.

  ‘You people really should go now,’ he said to the others outside. ‘We’ve got orders to fire upon civilians if they attempt to get over the barricade.’

  The people drew a few steps back into the thick darkness; a pitiful mob that he suspected were all going to die sometime over the coming winter. If the cold or bad water didn’t get them, then one of the many armed gangs would find them.

  ‘Good luck,’ he called out. Someone replied that he should go fuck himself.

  Sergeant Walfield stood below him, eyeing the woman suspiciously. ‘Don’t we have standing orders to let no one in, sir?’

  Adam stepped down off the crate to join them. He panned his torch across the woman’s ID card again; the mugshot in the corner looked like her.

  ‘Yes, Danny, but I think Mr Maxwell might be interested in talking to this one.’

  Chapter 23

  Crash Day + 27 weeks 6.15 a.m.

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Alan Maxwell stared impassively at the woman. The name on her ID card was Sinita Rajput.

  ‘You say you’re from GZ, Cheltenham?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  He steepled his fingers beneath his bearded chin, deep in thought, his bushy brows locked together like two links of a heavy chain. The emergency contact line he’d had with them had finally failed
eight weeks ago. If he tried dialling now he didn’t even get the busy tone, just static. In the weeks leading up to that, his calls were only being answered with a pre-recorded message informing him that all communication officers were otherwise engaged and that he should call back at another time.

  Maxwell offered her a warm smile by the light of the lamp on his desk. Its glow flickered slightly as the solitary generator hiccuped momentarily. Come dawn it was turned off. Daylight they got for free. For an hour in the early evening he allowed two of the four generators to turn over, giving them enough power for cooking and to run a couple of flat-screen TVs and DVD players. One of Lieutenant Brooks’ foraging patrols had brought back a supermarket trolley full of DVDs from a ransacked HMV. It was something to keep his people distracted for a short period every day.

  ‘So, Sinita, tell me what’s going on over there.’

  She looked up at him sitting behind his desk, flanked by Brooks on one side and Morgan - Maxwell’s deputy supervisor - on the other. Alan insisted they both remained on their feet when they had their daily briefing with him; a small thing really, just a gentle reminder that he was the one in charge here. The Chief . . . as it were.

  ‘Things went bad there,’ she said, after gathering her thoughts for a moment. ‘I . . . I was one of the medical team. A ward nurse before the crash . . .’

  ‘Good. That will be useful. Please . . . carry on,’ said Alan patiently.

  ‘We took in roughly sixty thousand at Cheltenham. Plus the thousand emergency workers, soldiers and government people. There was talk from the first day the safety zone started taking people in, that this . . . this crisis would blow itself out within a month. So they told us to distribute standard maintenance allowances—’

  ‘How much?’ Alan was intrigued.

  ‘Fifteen hundred calories per adult female, two thousand calories for men. It was about nine weeks after the crash that my supervisor was telling the government people that it was better we started lowering the allowance.’

  Alan nodded. His people had been on twelve hundred calories from day one.

  ‘They agreed a while later,’ she continued. ‘But then it had to be a big cut. We were handing out eight-hundred-calorie nutrition packages for a month before they suddenly started rounding people up at . . . at gunpoint and removing them from the safety zone. They . . .’

  She shook her head and closed her eyes, clearly willing herself not to cry, or appear weak in front of these strangers. Her jaw clenched. She took a moment before continuing. ‘They . . . the soldiers were selecting non-essential workers. Old people, unskilled people. It was awful. Then, there was news from . . . from, I think it was Heathrow first, then Wembley.’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘The riots. Riots inside.’

  Alan frowned. He’d heard rumours from several groups of people who’d tried their luck here. But nothing confirmed by GZ-C.

  ‘They lost control in those places,’ the woman continued. ‘The soldiers were overrun by the refugees, the storage areas ransacked . . . completely gone in just a few minutes. The news made the government people at Cheltenham panic. One morning they started evicting the civilians that were left, just pushing them towards the exit. And then I think someone heard that all the other safe zones were rioting, and that news spread like wildfire . . .’

  Her lips trembled, curled - her chin creased and dimpled.

  ‘It’s okay, Sinita,’ said Alan. He got up, walked round and sat on the edge of the desk and patted her shoulder reassuringly.

  She took a deep breath. ‘It was a massacre. I saw hundreds of women, children, and boys and men . . . lying on top of each other. Those that didn’t get killed . . . they ran.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I . . . I’m an essential worker,’ she said with a humourless smile. ‘I got to stay.’

  She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘We lasted another two weeks, I suppose, on what was left. Then the soldiers turned on everyone else.’

  ‘On the emergency authorities?’

  ‘Oh, yes, the civilian emergency volunteers, the civil servants, the cabinet members . . . everyone not in their unit.’ She looked up at Lieutenant Brooks, her wet eyes narrowing ever so slightly. She reached for her ID card and held it up. ‘This piece of plastic didn’t mean anything all of a sudden. Several other women I was working with were raped and . . .’ Her words ground to a halt. ‘I . . .’ She started and faltered.

  ‘It’s okay, my dear, take your time.’

  ‘So,’ she wiped her nose on her sleeve, ‘so, I left before they did the same to me.’

  Alan stifled an urge to turn around and study Flight Lieutenant Brooks’ expression. During the first few weeks he’d been haranguing Cheltenham to send him more soldiers to help guard the dome. Now he wondered whether he’d actually been fortunate not to have a regiment of troops sharing the dome with them. Too many men in uniform and a more senior ranking officer than Brooks might have been something for Alan to worry about if supplies eventually began to get tight here.

  Not if . . . when . . . supplies become tight, Alan. When. They’re not going to last for ever.

  Maxwell shuffled uncomfortably. They had quite a few years’ worth as things stood. But he wondered if Brooks and his two platoons of RAF gunners might one day decide to take matters into their own hands, decide who was essential and who wasn’t.

  Something to keep in mind.

  Maxwell offered the woman a kindly smile - one he hoped was comforting, fatherly. ‘Well, Ms Rajput, let me assure you that you’ll be safe here.’

  She nodded, eager to believe that, and then her face was in her hands, her shoulders shaking; her firm resolve to appear the strong woman in front of them had lasted as long as it could; she weakened and crumbled.

  ‘There’s food and water for you. We have an urn of heated water downstairs in the main piazza. Go down there and one of my people will sort you out a cup of tea.’

  She stood up, pushing the chair back. ‘Th-thank you,’ she managed to sob. ‘I . . . I . . . was—’

  ‘That’s all right, Ms Rajput. You go and sort yourself out now. Morgan here will show you down and take your details. Help you settle in.’

  ‘You . . . you’re a kind man,’ she smiled weakly. ‘But how . . . how have you . . . ?’

  ‘Coped so well?’

  She nodded. ‘I heard . . . from someone . . . I think I heard, that every last one of our safe zones ended in a mess.’ She managed a haunted smile of relief. ‘I really thought it was all . . . all gone.’

  ‘We’ve held out because difficult decisions were made early on.’

  ‘What?’

  Maxwell gazed out of the office window looking down onto the rows of cots below. Dawn had broken and pallid grey light slipped across the entrance plaza. The people were stirring, roused by the clatter of a ladle on a metal catering pan.

  ‘Morgan will tell you,’ he continued, ‘I made the call to let in a lot fewer than I was told to.’ He shook his head. ‘Hardest decision I ever made, but I believe it was the right one.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes . . . yes, I suppose it was.’

  Morgan led her out of the office. The door closed behind them leaving him alone with Brooks.

  ‘My God,’ uttered Brooks eventually. ‘Then, what? It’s just us now?’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘Us, and I suppose a few small groups here and there.’ He laughed.

  ‘The sort of survivalist nut jobs who’ve been hoping for something like this for years. I imagine they’re like pigs in mud.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘The thing is, Brooks, this dome, those people out there, that is the UK now. That’s it. We’re what’s left of law and order, what’s left of the chain of command.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘And I suppose by default that’s going to make me . . . well, that makes me the Prime Minister, doesn’t it? The Big Cheese.’

  Brooks looked down at him sharply but said nothing. He swallowed noisily, sh
uffled uncomfortably.

  Maxwell stood up and stepped towards the window, looking down at Starbucks’ outside seating area, at Morgan leading the woman through the chairs and tables. He sat her down on an unassigned cot, produced a clipboard and began asking her questions, scribbling down her answers.

  If this is all there is now, just us - he shot a glance at Brooks - then I need to think about the future. Who I can trust . . .

  ‘Brooks,’ he said, ‘I think I’m going to have to make some changes round here.’

  The Journey

  Chapter 24

  10 years AC

  Bracton

  Jacob watched Walter silently scanning the horizon as he helmed the yacht, all the sails out and fluttering, the diesel engine chugging and spitting; turned on to make better time.

  He knew the old man was desperate to find Leona; desperate to find her for Jenny. Behind the gruff mask he’d kept on his face since the explosion, Jacob knew he blamed himself for Hannah’s death, for Jenny’s injuries . . . and now, unless he could find her and persuade her to come home, he’d blame himself for Leona’s departure, too.

  Jacob returned his gaze to the sea. The small dinghy she’d taken had only a sixty-horsepower outboard motor on the back. With the sea as choppy as it was this morning she was going to make painfully slow progress. There was no knowing exactly when she’d set off, other than sometime before first light; so there was no knowing how much of a head start she had on them.

  Nathan’s eyes were far better than his. He stood on the foredeck beside him, probing the gently rolling sea for the telltale line of white trailing suds, or the dark outline of the small dinghy.

  Jacob couldn’t believe she could do this. Just up and leave him, leave Mum. He couldn’t believe it, but had somehow half expected it. Hannah had always been her argument for not returning to the mainland yet. Hannah was the reason she wanted to make their life aboard the rigs. And she’d never needed to explain to Jacob why, because they both remembered that winter morning the men came and did what they did.