Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

  But Hannah was gone now. Half, if not most, of her reason for staying gone.

  But there’s still me . . . and Mum, Leona.

  It stung that she’d just bailed out on them.

  ‘There’s Bracton!’ shouted Nathan; nothing more distinct than the pale, feathered silhouettes of rows of loading cranes, the outline of several small commercial freighters still securely moored at the quayside. William, Howard and Helen - those who’d hastily volunteered to come along and help Walter and the boys search for Leona - craned their necks port side to get a better view around the mast. There had been dozens more who’d offered to come, but Walter had been wary of overloading the boat with the well-intentioned and slowing it down.

  ‘See any sign of her ahead?’ shouted Walter.

  Nathan squinted and shaded his eyes against the glare of the white sky. ‘No.’

  Half an hour later, they were tying up at their usual spot, right next to where the dinghy bobbed and bumped against the concrete, secured to a mooring cleat by a careless half hitch and a loop that would have unravelled itself eventually.

  Jacob was the first onto the quay. ‘LEONA!!’ he shouted, his voice bouncing back at him off the warehouse walls across the way.

  ‘LEONA!!’ His echo filled the silent waterfront.

  Walter stepped ashore. ‘Right, there’s six of us. We’re not all splitting up and going in different bloody directions. Two groups of three, one gun each and we meet back here in one hour, all right?’

  The others stepped ashore.

  ‘Nathan, here you go,’ he said passing him the army issue SA80. ‘You and Jake and—’

  ‘I’ll go with them,’ said Helen.

  ‘All right.’ He turned to the other two men. ‘William, Howard and me then. Don’t go any further than the commercial area; the warehouses, the loading points, the offices. Okay?’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘And back here in precisely one hour. No later.’

  Twenty minutes later they were out of sight of the others, walking amongst the low industrial units of the port authority buildings, when it occurred to Jacob he knew exactly where his sister was; or at least where she was heading.

  ‘She’s going home.’

  ‘What?’

  Jacob turned to look at Nathan and Helen. ‘Going home. London.’

  Helen’s eyes widened. ‘London?’

  ‘Why’d she do that, Jay?’

  Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t know, just a feeling. She’s talked about wanting to see our old house again.’

  Both boys looked at each other in silence; an entire conversation within a glance. They’d discussed, fantasised many times about taking the opportunity one day. It was Nathan who spoke first. ‘Jay, what about now? What if we go now?’

  Helen had never been part of the plan though. He glanced at the girl. ‘Nathan, we can’t just leave her here, and she’s too young to come with—’

  ‘I know about it,’ she cut him off.

  ‘Know about what?’

  ‘The lights,’ she said. ‘I know about the lights in London.’

  ‘What? How?’

  She glanced at Nathan. ‘He told me.’

  Nathan shrugged guiltily. ‘Sorry, Jay, I know it was like a secret, but . . .’

  ‘I bribed him,’ she finished with a cunning smile. ‘I let him have a feel-up.’

  Nathan looked down at his feet, shamefaced. ‘She knew somethin’ was up.’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘Oh shit, Nathan!’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Helen, ‘I heard some of it, you two and Mr Latoc talking at the party. I know he seen something. I knew it. I knew he wasn’t telling us everything he seen. I saw him telling you two, and I heard some of it.’

  ‘Well it doesn’t matter, you can’t come, Helen,’ said Jacob. ‘It could be dangerous.’

  She snorted derisively at him. ‘Piss off, I can look after myself as well as you two idiots.’

  ‘Look, man, are we really going to go, Jay?’ asked Nathan. ‘I mean, really? Right now?’

  Jacob knew he was. He realised, for him, there was no choice in the matter. ‘She’s all I got, Nate. If Mum doesn’t . . .’ he bit his lip. ‘If Mum doesn’t make it, Leona’s all I got left.’ He turned and pointed towards the town. ‘She’s in there somewhere. Maybe she’s already on the road. I have to go and see.’

  ‘And then if we help you find her, we’ll go down and see London, right?’ asked Helen.

  The boys looked at each other. ‘Jake, man? You wanna do that?’

  He realised he couldn’t think of anything beyond finding his sister right now. As far as he was concerned he could promise them a trip to the moon, just as long as he found Leona first.

  ‘Sure, all right,’ he muttered.

  Chapter 25

  10 years AC

  Outside Bracton, Norfolk

  An hour later, they were on the A road out of Bracton on bicycles they’d pulled out of a toyshop, at just about the same moment Walter must have found the scribbled note Helen had sneaked back and placed in the yacht’s cockpit.

  It was the only way Jacob could think she’d go, along the main road heading south-west, keeping herself to the middle of the road, and warily scanning the untidy gone-to-seed fields either side, the tall weeds and untamed bushes that threatened to encroach on the road from the crumbling hard shoulder.

  He prayed she’d not been so lucky to find herself a bicycle to use, or if she had, that at least she wasn’t pedalling as hard as they were. He kept finding himself drawing ahead of the others, desperate to eat up the road ahead of him and find her.

  Mid-morning he’d stopped yet again to wait for the others to catch up and to take a swig from a bottle of water in his shoulder bag, when he thought he saw some movement up ahead.

  He squinted, trying to make sense of the uncertain distant dark outline on the road; something low and round. Glancing back he could see the other two, broaching a low hill, struggling to catch him up. He put the bottle back in his bag, lifted his feet off the road and cautiously rode a little closer until his useless long vision gave him something more to work with.

  A wooden chair in the middle of the road and someone slumped on it, back to him.

  Even from this far he recognised the slope of her shoulders. ‘Leona?’

  She didn’t stir.

  Please no . . . please no . . .

  He pedalled furiously forward. ‘Leona!’ he whimpered, finally clattering to a halt a dozen yards away and tossing the bike down at his feet. ‘Leona?’ he called out again softly. ‘It’s me! Jake!’

  This time he thought he detected the slightest movement.

  He was taking the last steps toward her when she slowly turned to look round at him. ‘Hey,’ was all she said.

  Jacob was about to reach out for her when he saw one hand resting in her lap, holding a knife, and on the wrist of her other arm the light and unsuccessful scoring of the blade; nicks and scratches that told of squeamish attempts at a decisive incision.

  She laughed humourlessly. ‘You know me . . .’

  He nodded.

  ‘Chuck my guts at the first sight of blood.’ She sighed and turned back to look at the road ahead, straight as a Roman highway. ‘I thought I’d just wait here a while.’

  He knelt down in front of her; her eyes were over the top of his head and they remained on the flat horizon.

  ‘Lee,’ he whispered, reaching out for the knife in her lap. ‘Lee, can I have it?’

  Her fingers tightened around the handle until her knuckles bulged white.

  ‘Lee?’ She was still far away. ‘Lee!’ Her eyes finally dropped down to look at him.

  ‘Sis,’ he squeezed her hand, ‘I . . . I need your help.’

  She said nothing, but a lethargic curiosity made her cock an eyebrow.

  ‘I . . . my bike chain came off, Lee. Do you know how the shitting thing goes back on?’

  She closed her eyes slowly and sighed. ‘Jesus, Jake. Can
’t you do anything?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘No.’

  She eased her grasp on the knife and he gently took it from her. ‘Not without you, I can’t. I’m rubbish without you.’

  ‘Always a dork,’ she uttered, and pressed out a wan smile.

  He grinned, tears on his cheeks. ‘And you were always a stroppy cow.’

  ‘I know.’

  Jacob glanced back up the road. Nathan and Helen had stopped their bikes a hundred yards short; sensibly figuring they ought to hold back for the moment.

  ‘Lee, you were always the strong one. You were strong for me once, do you remember? Back in the house?’

  She nodded.

  Oh, yes . . . she remembered cowering in the darkness of their London home, the small suburban street outside dancing with the light of burning cars, several dozen kids drunk on what they’d looted from the off licence around the corner and on the end-of-the-world party atmosphere. For them it was the rave to end all raves. Fun and games. Looting and raping.

  Then they’d decided to play treasure hunt and invade the homes one by one.

  Leona still awoke at night reliving their desperate fight to keep the Bad Boys out of the house, hitting, swiping, scratching and biting through broken downstairs windows then finally running and hiding upstairs as they broke in through the barricaded front door. Hiding beneath the sink unit in the bedroom. Jacob, only eight then, trembling in her arms. They could hear the boys laughing, braying as they searched for their prize to rape, hunting for the ‘smurfette’ they knew was hiding somewhere inside.

  We can sme-e-e-ell you-u-u-u-u . . . come out!

  ‘Me, Nathan and Helen, we’re going down to London.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The lights have come on in London.’

  She frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Latoc said he saw them . . . from a long way off. A big glow over the Thames.’

  Leona stirred in the chair. ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Across London?’

  She missed the hesitation in his reply. ‘All along it, all over, that’s what he said.’

  Some sense of possibility tingled inside her. An alternative to sitting here in the middle of the road until she could muster enough willpower to push that stupid blunt tip all the way into her wrist.

  An alternative.

  ‘They’ve been rebuilding quietly,’ continued Jacob. ‘Nathan reckons they wouldn’t be radioing out and telling everyone that they’re rebuilding things ’cause it might draw too many people at once. Swamp them, you know?’

  Hannah loved the stories you told her of the past, didn’t she? She loved the idea of shopping malls, ten-pin bowling, IMAX cinemas, fun fairs . . .

  ‘That’s why we haven’t heard about it on the radios,’ Jacob continued. ‘It’s a secret. They’ve been doing it bit by bit. Otherwise there’d be people coming across from other countries too, probably.’

  . . . she liked the idea of Piccadilly Circus, the Trocadero, all glittering lights and neon signs; ice-skating at Queens and then a pizza afterwards; disco dancing to naff Abba songs till the early hours and then Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for breakfast.

  ‘It’s one of those safe zones, I reckon, Lee. One of them that’s come to life after all this time, and now it’s rebuilding the city. It’s remaking our home.’

  Home. Hannah wants you to find home. The fairytale home, real home; not those five rusting platforms in the middle of the North Sea.

  ‘What about Mum?’

  Jacob was quiet for a few moments. ‘Dr Gupta reckons she’ll pull through. She’s strong. We left a note. Telling them we’re going to see what’s happening in London. Then we’ll come back.’

  She could hear a lot more pain and conflict in his voice than he was prepared to own up to. As for herself, right now, Leona felt nothing for Mum but a dim sense of regret, clouded by blame and anger; some of it deserved, most of it not. Every ounce of grief she’d cried out in the last few days had been for Hannah. But then this kind of pain mostly flowed that way, didn’t it? Downwards - mother to child. Mum knew that, she’d understand.

  ‘If it’s all getting fixed up, we can come back and get everyone to join us and return to London. How cool would that be?’

  Leona nodded.

  ‘Just a scouting trip,’ he added. ‘That’s all. We’re going to go find out and report back.’

  London. Home.

  Perhaps there’d be a chance to revisit their abandoned house in Shepherd’s Bush. To lie on her old bed once more, look at the faded posters on her pink walls. And if this glistening promise of lights turned out to be an empty promise, a mirage that came to nothing, then she could think of far worse places to come to a fitting end than in her childhood room, snug beneath her quilt, and Dad - Andy Sutherland, oil engineer, father, husband - lying still in the next bedroom, undisturbed these last ten years.

  Going home.

  ‘Can I come along with you?’ she found herself asking.

  Jacob hugged her clumsily. He was always clumsy, her little brother. He mumbled something into her shoulder. She stretched an arm out and hugged him tightly. Not just a sparrow-chested little dork any more, but a young man with broad shoulders. He was big enough that they could look after each other now.

  ‘Thank you, Jake,’ she whispered, planting a kiss on his head amidst the tousled hair.

  ‘So,’ he replied, letting her go and swiping at his face with the back of his hand, ‘we need to find you a bike and stuff.’

  Chapter 26

  10 years AC

  ‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea

  Jenny stared at him, sitting on the end of her cot. His face was still young, still thirty-nine, still carrying that tan he’d picked up last time he’d returned from a contract abroad; his fine buzz-cut strawberry-blond hair, a goatee beard and several days of stubble catching it up: Andy Sutherland, her dead husband, exactly as she remembered him.

  You did well, Jenny, he said, a smile tugging his lips. I’m so proud of you.

  ‘Oh, God, Andy,’ she cried, knowing he couldn’t really be sitting here. Knowing, at best, this was her fevered mind playing games with her. But it didn’t matter. It was a good, lucid hallucination. Right now she was happy to have that.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ her voice cracked painfully.

  I’ve missed you, too. His voice, his soft Kiwi accent . . . but she knew they were her words. She reached out for his hand, wincing at the pain from the burns up her arm and across her shoulders, her neck.

  Don’t, Jenny.

  She knew he was right, her mind - or perhaps it was the drugs - had given her this much. She should be thankful for that.

  ‘Andy, your granddaughter . . . Hannah, she was beautiful.’ Her voice failed, leaving just a whisper. ‘You should have seen her.’

  She was a pickle, wasn’t she?

  ‘She was. Just like Leona was at her age.’

  Andy smiled. Yes. Stubborn.

  In her dream, she could feel tears rolling down her cheeks. The saltiness stung her left cheek where the skin was open and raw and trying desperately to knit.

  Andy looked so young; thirty-nine still.

  ‘I feel old, Andy. Since you died it’s been so bloody hard. So many days that I’ve wanted to curl up somewhere with a bottle of pills and just admit defeat.’

  Survival is a hard business, Jenny. We got lucky over the last century and a half. Like a lottery winner, we all grew fat and lazy. You know what I’m talking about.

  We. He was talking about mankind, talking about oil - the subject had obsessed him over the final years of their marriage. He’d become a Cassandra on the subject. An engineer who could see the fracture marks in the engine casing; the lookout who could see the approaching iceberg where no one else could, or even wanted to.

  Andy had once told her that the twentieth century was the oil century; every major event, every war, every political de
cision had oil behind it. A century of jockeying for position, musical chairs to see who ended up sitting on the biggest reserves when the music stopped.

  I could have done more, he said. I could have warned more people.

  ‘We knew, and what did we do?’ They’d talked about moving out of London, as far from a population centre as possible, but they never did. It ended up being just talk.

  You did well to survive the crash, he said. Got our children through the worst of it alive. You’ll never know how much I love you for that.

  ‘But they’re gone, Andy,’ she whispered. ‘Gone. I heard Walter and Tami discussing it over my bed.’ They must have thought she wasn’t hearing them. But she had, and many other harried conversations between them, filtered and disordered by the drugs, the fever, until it was almost impossible to untangle and make sense of. But this she knew - her children had left her.

  He leant forward, close enough that if she dared dispel the illusion, she could have reached out and touched his tanned face.

  They’re grown up now, Jen. Not children any more, but strong young adults. They know how to survive, Jenny, because you showed them how to do that. Out there now, on the mainland it’s just deer and dogs, and survivors like them.

  Survivors, not scavengers. People who’d carved sustainability from the ruins around them. People like that minded their own, kept themselves hidden away. Good people essentially. Andy was right, there were no more bands of uniformed scavengers, or migrating hordes of city folk. They were long gone.

  ‘Maybe . . . maybe I can’t survive without them,’ she said.

  You have to, love. The people out here rely on you. You’ve made this place work. You’ve built a safe haven. It’s sane here, there’s fairness, kindness; it’s like an extended family. That’s a projection of you, Jenny, of your personality; firm and fair, just like you were with the kids. Somebody who could never stand that corporate arse-talk at work, any kind of bullshit, injustice, prejudice. He grinned. That’s why we got it together at college. You remember? You stopped me talking bullshit.