Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘Like the arcade machines outside?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got all sorts of things for my boys; arcade machines, Xboxes and PlayStations, a little cinema. Other treats. Every other Saturday night I crank up the second and third generators and they get all that.’

  Jacob and Nathan exchanged a glance.

  Maxwell’s lips stretched far enough to almost call it a smile. ‘If you’re a good pair of lads then you might be able to join them. I’m always after boys I can trust. Young lads I can rely on.’

  They both grinned. ‘We’d like that,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. For now you can stay on probation until I’m sure you’re not going to be troublemakers.’

  ‘Oh, we ain’t troublemakers,’ said Nathan. ‘We came looking for something exactly like this. That’s why we came to London, isn’t it, Jay?’

  He nodded eagerly.

  ‘We just knew there had to be something like this here. Somebody getting things sorted. A new beginning an’ stuff.’

  ‘Yeah and we were—’

  Maxwell silenced them both with a hand. ‘You’ll be on probation. And I’ll talk to Edward about you . . . see what he thinks. See if you’ve got the stuff to make it as praetorians.’

  Both boys grinned.

  ‘But for now you’ll remain with the civilians outside. Edward will find you somewhere to sleep and assign you to a work group.’ He waved a hand towards the doors. ‘Off you go then. We’ll talk again soon, I’m sure.’

  Jacob and Nathan rose from the seats.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jacob again.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Maxwell impatiently. ‘Go find Edward, he’ll take you back to the workers’ area.’

  Chapter 47

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Maxwell watched the doors swing to, shutting out the annoying din coming from the arena. The noise reminded him of the cheap seaside camping holidays his parents used to take him on when he was a boy; amusement arcades, slot machines, bumper cars, two-penny-push machines. The incessant blinging and flashing lights; simpletons all around him quite happy with that.

  He shook his head. The world was full of simpletons.

  Although somewhat less full now.

  He returned to the task at hand. An audit of the supplies left downstairs on the mezzanine floor. That floor had been full once. Now the subterranean space was mostly bare green linoleum, dotted with islands of pallets of goods; shrinking islands.

  Day to day life for Alan Maxwell had become a precarious balancing game; a very complicated game, the principal goal of which was to eke out what was left downstairs as long as possible without his people realising how little of it was left.

  So far he’d played the game very well; lasted much longer than he thought they would. Some food was being grown outside; the basics, dreary vegetables of one kind or another, some fruits too. But nowhere near enough to keep over two thousand people alive indefinitely. What it was doing was helping to pad out the supplies of tinned foods, making what they had go a lot further.

  Most mealtimes his people were served thick broths and soups, of which their freshly unearthed vegetables constituted most of the volume. The few dozen tins of corned beef added to the mix made it almost palatable. This summer’s crop had been better than last, but come winter, when there was very little left to dig out of the troughs of earth outside, they were going to be once again wholly reliant on these dwindling islands of canned food.

  Month on month, year on year, the game he played was about reducing the amount of stored food he handed out. An accountant’s game of allocating calories per head; lowering the calorie count in a carefully controlled way. Giving less to those deemed least useful to the community; managing everyone’s expectations and morale . . . keeping the sinking boat as steady as possible.

  Because sink was what it was eventually going to do.

  The Zone simply wasn’t capable of being turned into a giant farm-stead capable of producing forty thousand calories of food every single day. The workers - two thousand men and women of all ages and a hundred or so children - were eventually going to starve very slowly. Not this winter. Maybe not even the next. But it was going to happen eventually.

  Maxwell’s job had become one thing; managing the decline.

  Keeping order on the decks as the good ship slowly slid under. The boys - the praetorians - were going to be his rearguard. As long as there was fuel for the generators so they could play their games and have their noisy music and flashing lights once a fortnight, as long as he had a store cupboard of privileges to offer them, as long as he kept them on his side . . . they’d do absolutely anything for him.

  One day soon he was going to have to rely on them to evict large numbers of the workers, to make that food downstairs last a while longer. And then again, eventually, he’d have to rely on the boys he most trusted to evict other boys. Until one day, it was just going to be him and Edward ‘Snoop’ Tindall. Then he’d ask Edward to leave. And finally alone here in Safety Zone 4, he’d pull out that rather fine bottle of Bordeaux he’d liberated from the basement of Harrods, kick his shoes off and get comfortable on one of these leather couches. He’d take his time, make sure he enjoyed the entire bottle before blowing his brains out.

  See, that was the long game. Divide and conquer, and divide again. Until he was the last man standing.

  But now . . . the glimmer of an interesting plan B existed.

  He pushed aside the paperwork on the coffee table.

  He had allowed himself a little fantasy. A fantasy in which some going concern existed, a going concern big enough to sustain most of his people. In his fantasy, he’d imagined some castle or stately mansion in the countryside outside London. Surrounded by a network of cultivated fields, and farm animals - all that difficult set-up work already done for them. There just for the taking. He’d even managed to gild that little fantasy by casting himself as some sort of jovial medieval baron in his keep surrounded by bountiful fields and dutiful peasants working them for him.

  There’d been patrols around London, around the outskirts of London, even into the countryside, but they’d found nothing that could support a wholesale relocation. Just a few small family-sized farms that had been barely coping. Farms they’d stripped clean, of course.

  So that’s what it remained, his fantasy. No medieval fiefdom. No Baron Maxwell.

  But those boys . . .

  Those two well-fed boys and their four hundred-and-something community living on . . . what did they say? An oil rig? And they had power, too?

  He sat back and pinched his bristly chin gently between thumb and forefinger.

  Chapter 48

  10 years AC

  Shepherd’s Bush, London

  Leona had lost count of the days. She guessed maybe fourteen or fifteen of them had gone by. Obviously Jacob and Nathan weren’t coming. Obviously, they hadn’t made it.

  It’s time.

  She’d decided that this morning was going to be her last, but had spent the day in a fog of ridiculous procrastination, pondering how best to do it. Pills in bed had been the plan. But then an awful thought had occurred to her that she might not do it right; not enough to kill her outright, but leave her alive with a failing organ, or paralysed. In any case, the chemist on the corner of Uxbridge Road had been stripped of every single medicine.

  She’d found a knife and had a trial run at seeing whether she’d have the courage to push it through her skin, all the way so that it severed an artery. Just like last time, she’d baulked at doing it, heaving several times, her forearm marked and scratched with a dozen aborted attempts.

  As the afternoon waned into evening she realised the only certain way of doing this was a drop. A drop high enough to ensure she wasn’t left dying in agony with ruptured organs and shattered bones.

  She knew a good place.

  One last trip upstairs to say goodbye to their bedrooms. Leon
a had always considered a person’s bedroom to be the ‘negative space’ they left behind, like an impression of a coin in a blob of Blu-Tack - it was them, or at least a negative of them, and it was the closest thing she had to saying goodbye in person.

  Jacob’s room, north-facing, was dim. She smiled at the wallpaper of pirate ships, the shelves still stacked with Playmobil and Games Workshop figures, and books and rubber-banded packs of trading cards.

  She whispered a farewell.

  Out on the landing, dark but cut by a golden lance of sunlight across the floor, she hesitated beside the only closed door. She didn’t need to open it again. She’d done that several days ago and wished she hadn’t. Several panes of glass had smashed, leaves were dusted across the room and piled up in one corner. A bramble of some kind was growing on the bed, taking root in the quilt and feeding off nutrients that had long ago soaked into the mattress. Feeding off her dad. She’d angrily wrenched the damned thing off the bed and tossed it out through the window and not been back in since.

  Bye bye, Dad.

  Then she was down the stairs, tiptoeing across the hall. She opened the front door and stepped outside. A quiet still suburban street. She realised how beautiful the world could look on an evening like this; the russet and green leaves of the horse-chestnut trees on fire in the sunlight, red poppies in the opposite garden like discarded M&Ms. The summer green of tree branches almost meeting each other now across the narrow street, sweeping and hissing in the breeze and the broken tarmac road, dappled with shifting light.

  Really quite pretty.

  Jacob and Nathan watched the dome from the outside. It was warm enough that they sat out in T-shirts on the edge of the vegetable plantation, on the quayside overlooking the Thames.

  In the middle of the dome’s canvas roof, multicoloured lights marbled the surface from inside, and out of the very apex, twin spotlights lanced up into the night sky. They could just about hear the gentle thud of music drifting across the rustle of leaves, and the murmuring of quiet conversations from groups of people nearby.

  ‘It looks amazing, doesn’t it?’ said Jacob.

  Nathan nodded. This was the first time they’d come outside to watch the lights. Better than staying inside the dome, where the pounding music made it impossible to sleep anyway. Pretty much all the workers spent Party Night outside, some dragging their bedding with them, happy to sleep outside until dawn.

  A fortnight ago, as Snoop had escorted them out of the central arena, he’d told them that Party Night normally lasted into the early hours. He’d not been wrong. As well as the machines, he’d said, there was alcohol . . . and the girlfriends, too. He’d winked at them both as he shooed them down the stairs and out through the turnstile. ‘Play your cards right and you bros be joinin’ the fun soon enough.’

  ‘It’s going to be cool,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He imagined it was going to be a bit like the rock festivals Leona used to go to. She always used to say she had a well-bangin’ time at them. After-gig parties that lasted until dawn in a field somewhere. People still dancing hypnotically as the sun came up. Others zonked out in tents or eagerly discussing the meaning of life in hushed voices around smouldering campfires. She told him once, before the crash, that he had all of that to look forward to at college; parties, music, stage-diving, girlfriends, his first proper hangover, his first joint . . . all the cool things she was enjoying . . . between occasional essays, lectures and course work.

  Except, of course, she’d been wrong.

  His teen years had been spent watching the North Sea pound relentlessly at the rigs’ support-legs; watching migrating Vs of birds and every few weeks - a special treat - picking through warehouses and cargo containers on Bracton’s freight storage quay.

  ‘We’re going to stay here, then?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Shit, I know I am.’

  He nodded after a moment’s consideration. ‘Me, too.’

  Maybe he’d give it a year or so then check with Mr Maxwell that it was all right for him to go back home and pay the rigs a visit. Maxwell seemed like a decent enough bloke from what he saw. A bit grumpy, but somehow that was reassuring; like they were seeing him warts and all. No pretence. Far better than somebody, all smiles at first, that you just knew was going to turn out to be someone else entirely later on.

  He watched as the dancing spotlight beams panned across each other, producing a giant X in the sky. He lay back on his elbows and looked up at the stars.

  He’d go back and tell Mum, and Leona, and Walter about their time here. How good they’d got things at the Safety Zone. Maybe he’d even be able to persuade them to come back with him and see for themselves; merge the communities together. There was certainly space enough for everyone here.

  ‘Hey, Nate?’

  ‘Uhh?’

  ‘You reckon being one of these praetorians is a bit like being a soldier?’

  Nathan gave it some thought. ‘S’pose. More like being a policeman, I think.’

  ‘But they get guns.’ He’d seen them patrolling outside in pairs, watching the workers, guns slung over their shoulders.

  ‘They gotta have guns, mate. I mean, them wild kids that attacked us? They’re out there, Jay. Reckon they’ve got to patrol the perimeters like border guards or somethin’.’

  On patrol . . . just like for-real soldiers. A uniform as well.

  Jacob looked around and saw a cluster of men watching them silently from a dozen yards away. He’d noticed an undercurrent of resentment from some of the workers towards the praetorians. He decided to lower his voice a little.

  ‘I hope Maxwell does take us on.’

  Nathan settled back on his elbows and joined him looking up at the stars.

  ‘Me, too. It’s gonna be props, man.’

  ‘Yeah, really props.’ Jacob sighed. It always sounded naff when he tried using some of Nathan’s cool words.

  ‘It’s going to be good.’

  The one thing Leona feared the most was not doing it properly. She wanted a clean drop, one impact and it was all over. Dying slowly, dying painfully; the thought of that terrified her. Which is why she wanted somewhere high enough to be absolutely certain.

  She pushed the maintenance access door open and stepped out onto the roof of the Westfield shopping mall. It stretched out before her like a football pitch, criss-crossed here and there with pipes that ended with AC outlets. At the far end was a spiked brush of antennae and satellite dishes.

  By moonlight the pale weathered surface reminded her of the helipad back home. An island alone in a dark sky. With the stars scattered above, she could just as well have been standing on a platform in the middle of space, drifting through the universe for eternity.

  She made her way across the broad expanse, seeing her dark moon shadow cast before her. As she neared the edge she saw it was rimmed by a safety rail - not enough to put off someone determined but enough to protect a hapless worker from an unfortunate tumble. She ducked down and climbed between the bars and then gasped as she caught sight of the sheer drop below.

  All of a sudden she felt dizzy, her legs wobbled beneath her and she quickly sat down, wrapping one arm around the rail. Her stomach churned, she wanted to throw up - her body’s reaction. It had finally woken up and realised what she was intending to do and was now doing everything in its power to convince her otherwise.

  She cursed herself for being a weak, silly cow. Cursed whatever deeply-bedded survival instinct was making this last task so bloody difficult for her, making her hand clutch the rail tightly.

  ‘Just a little jump,’ she whispered. ‘And then we’re all done.’

  Her body remained unconvinced.

  ‘Just another step,’ she urged. ‘And then . . .’

  She imagined letting go and leaning forward; just five seconds of air whistling past her ears, chilling her face.

  Please don’t jump.

  Leona looked up at the sound of the little voice and saw Hanna
h, chin resting on the railing, a leg swinging impatiently, scuffing the tarmac with the tip of her sandals.

  She smiled at her daughter. ‘Hello again, trouble.’

  Hannah rolled her eyes and offered a long-suffering smile. The gesture was so her. Leona laughed softly at the vision of her daughter, hanging on the railing and gazing out at the dark horizon. She could quite happily indulge this fantasy for a minute or two.

  Please don’t be a silly gonk, said Hannah.

  ‘I’m tired, Hannah, love. Tired of struggling along.’

  She frowned. Why be so tired?

  It was hard to explain to a child who’d never known anything other than life on the rigs. Hard to explain how difficult it was to get up each and every day and work ceaselessly to squeeze such a meagre payback out of life. When once upon a time it was effortless; a meal was the mere opening of a fridge door, the three-minute wait for a microwave. Warmth was the flick of a switch. Skin-tingling luxury, the twist of a hot water tap.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ she replied. ‘I miss the way things were.’

  Was the old times really that good?

  ‘Yes, they were.’

  She remembered there were those who moaned about how materialistic and selfish the world had become; people on late-night TV chat shows, people who wrote columns in newspapers. She wondered how many of them were still alive today, getting on with practising what they’d preached. And for those of them who were still alive, she wondered what they’d happily trade for just one steaming hot shower, for a freshly grilled cheese-on-toast, for an ice-cold beer.

  The small things.

  It’s still very silly, said Hannah thoughtfully. I didn’t need all those things that you miss so much.

  Leona was about to mutter something about it being better to never have had than to have had and lost, but it seemed unkind and dismissive. She wasn’t sure how much longer it would take to convince her hand to let go. And there were things to say.