Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

‘I love you, Hannah. I’m sorry I was a crap mum.’

  Mum. Leona felt her aching heart tighten. Why hadn’t she insisted Hannah call her that instead of Leona? Something in the word, in the bond that it implied. She’d missed out on that. They’d been more like sisters than mother and child.

  Leona wiped her damp cheek on her shoulder.

  Another regret. Something else to ponder on her way down.

  I don’t think you should . . . not yet.

  Leona laughed weakly. Her fantasy Hannah, it seemed, was every bit as bossy as her real one had been. ‘But I’m ready now. I want to.’ Her hand loosened its grip on the rail.

  Not yet.

  ‘Why?’

  Look.

  Leona turned to gaze out across the still, dark skyline of London. There was nothing to see.

  Jacob was right.

  ‘What?’

  Just look, silly.

  She looked again. Dark. Nothing. Dead dark London, that was all.

  Lights.

  Leona so far had seen nothing. But then the faintest flicker. A beam visible for an instant, gone the next.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered. She saw the beam again, so faint, like the solitary thread of a spider’s web catching sunlight from an angle, then gone.

  Go and see.

  Leona’s eyes had lost the beam. She looked to the left a little and her peripheral vision detected the faint lancing movement once more, but turning to look at it directly, it was lost. It was east of Shepherd’s Bush, quite possibly along the river as the boys had suggested; Canary Wharf, perhaps the O2 Arena.

  You have to go see.

  The shimmering lance of light seemed to have gone now.

  She turned to look at Hannah but she, too, had gone. Where she’d stood the pale roof remained unscuffed. A soft breeze whispered along the dark street below teasing a pile of dry leaves to race each other along the kerb, and a shutter somewhere creaked on rusty hinges, clattering against a frame.

  Chapter 49

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  It was midday when Leona finally approached the dome. She emerged from the Blackwall Tunnel, leaving her bicycle behind in the darkness and picking her way through a barricade of razor-wire hoops long ago abandoned and left to sag and rust. She crossed an empty dual-carriageway and walked up a shallow grass embankment towards the giant blister of vanilla canvas crowned with its distinct ring of canary-yellow support spars.

  It was at the top of the embankment that she noticed a perimeter of corrugated iron panels six feet high, topped with spools of more of that hatefully sharp razor wire; a cobbled together Hadrian’s wall that stretched left and right in front of her.

  The faint spotlights she’d seen had to have come from here; this was the right direction, east of Shepherd’s Bush, easily nine or ten miles away. She emerged from the overgrown grass embankment and slowly approached the perimeter wall’s main gate, wondering one more time whether Jacob and Nathan were already somewhere inside. It was a hope.

  Dizz-ee watched the workers as he slurped lukewarm river water from a scuffed old Evian bottle and relaxed in the deckchair in front of the gatehouse. Although the boys called it the gatehouse, it was nothing more than an IKEA garden shed erected for those on duty on a rainy day to shelter inside.

  This afternoon felt like it was going to be a really hot one; first proper summer’s day of the year. He cursed his misfortune at being given this morning’s perimeter guard duty rather than the afternoon shift. Apart from the fact that he and his guard posse had to rise early with the workers - and most of his boys were still nursing sore heads from last night - this afternoon, outside, it was going to be lovely. Inside, on the afternoon rota, standing guard on the entrance turnstiles to the central arena, the praetorians’ and Chief’s quarters, it was going to be hot and stuffy.

  Snoop, being the completely selfish shit that he was, liked his lie in, especially after party nights. Privilege of rank. So he made his number two dog get up and take the morning shift instead. Dizz-ee could quite happily have passed the job onto the third dog, Jay-zee, but he was already assigned to the canteen watch.

  Dizz-ee screwed the cap back on his water bottle.

  Fuck him.

  He was stuck at being second dog. Stuck for ever, or stuck until Snoop screwed up somehow and pissed off the Chief enough. Maybe that was going to happen eventually. He knew Snoop saw himself as being the Chief one day; fancied the idea of no longer taking orders from the wrinkled old snowflake bastard.

  That ate at Snoop. Said it was old-world racism all over again that some rich, middle-aged white fuck should rule the roost once again. They had their go, Snoop kept saying. Had their go and they fucked the world up. Should be a brother runnin’ the shit here.

  Mind you, Dizz-ee could see his point even though he was white; even though Snoop was an arrogant fuck that he’d like to see screw up badly. Maxwell looked just like all those stiff old farts who’d collectively fucked-up the world between them: bankers, politicians, government types . . . suits. It didn’t sit well with him either that some suited old twat should be in charge. It should be someone younger.

  It wasn’t about race; black, white, didn’t mean shit to him. Rankled with Snoop though. Stupid arrogant fucker was bound to challenge the Chief head-on one day. Snoop could go and do that if he wanted. And see what happened. Chief would probably win out.

  And then I’ll be top dog.

  It was going to happen one day. Snoop’s temper was going to get the better of him sooner or later. Serve the selfish lazy bastard right.

  His ill-tempered gaze returned to the swaying rows of plants, and the workers toiling quietly amongst them. They were all oldies - twenty-five and older. No babies, no kids amongst them. Chief Maxwell forbid that; making babies. It was one of his emergency laws. The bloke might once have been a rich white fat-cat, but he was smart enough. No baby mouths to feed. Not for the foreseeable. Girls got themselves pregnant? They just forced it and got rid of the baby-gunk that came out. Far better that than eviction.

  He watched the workers. Some of the boys called the workers ‘dome-niggers’. Seemed about right, they slouched about with sullen slave-faces. Good for nothing more than digging, planting, picking and muttering.

  Dizz-ee called them ‘serfs’. There was a picture book he’d once read: Look Inside A Medieval Castle. It had excellent cut-away illustrations showing all the things that went on inside, little labels and explanations on everything. He remembered there was a king, or a duke or baron in the middle of the castle. And then in the great hall, his knights, there to protect him in times of battle and in return for that a share of the king’s privileges. And outside in the fields . . . the serfs.

  He liked the idea that he was a bit like one of those knights of old. If he ever became top dog - shit, when he became top dog - he fancied the idea of coming up with a logo or a coat of arms or something that the praetorians would all have to wear on their jackets. They’d all have to pick a knight name, like Sir Kill-a-lot, or Sir Frag-enstein.

  About a billion times cooler than walking around with rapper names and the word ‘staff’ stencilled on them.

  ‘Yo! Dizz-ee!’

  Dizz-ee turned to Flav, standing a dozen yards away and jabbing a finger towards the ground beyond the perimeter wall.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over there . . . girl coming over.’

  Dizz-ee turned round, shaded his eyes. He was right. Striding towards them, a teenaged girl. She didn’t move like the wildies, all furtive and edgy, ready to break and scamper like startled rabbits at the sound of a single gunshot. She looked clean, scrubbed and well fed, too.

  Dizz-ee waved at Flav to follow him and jogged across to the gate section of the barricade. He pulled open the wire gate, just wide enough to step outside. Twenty yards away the girl stopped and stared at the gun he had levelled at her.

  ‘So, what d’you want?’

  ‘I
saw the lights of this place, last night,’ said the girl. ‘You got power?’

  Dizz-ee silently appraised her. She looked more presentable than most of the girls in the ‘cattle shed’; many of them were looking the worse for wear, skin purple and mottled from bruising, most of them unpleasantly thin and malnourished. There hadn’t been any new girls in the pen for quite some time. Some fresh ass would be sweet.

  Keep her for myself.

  ‘Hey, Dizz-ee. What do we do?’ asked Flav quietly.

  Thing is, he knew Snoop would bag the girl for himself just as soon as he clapped eyes on her. The selfish shit-fuck would pull rank on him and have her himself.

  ‘Shall I go tell Snoop we got a girl coming in?’

  Dizz-ee shook his head. ‘No, hang on. I’ll take her in myself,’ he replied under his breath.

  Flav looked at him uncertainly. ‘You know Snoop’ll want the girl,’ he whispered.

  ‘Fuck him. We’ll put her in the cattle shed with the others. He don’t go there much now, since they all looking so rough. I’m having her myself.’

  The girl was watching them whispering from twenty yards out. ‘Can I come in?’ she called across.

  She sounds well posh.

  ‘So, what about me, Dizz? Do I get a piece of her?’

  ‘Maybe, when I’m all done.’

  Flav considered that for a moment. ‘A’ight,’ he said, smiling.

  Dizz-ee winked at the younger lad and then pulled the gate wider. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he called to the girl waving her forward. ‘You better come in.’

  She hesitated. Dizz-ee cocked his head at the girl. ‘Come in,’ he smiled. ‘It’s safer inside than out. Safe zone, this.’

  The girl stared at him for a moment. ‘Okay,’ she said and stepped slowly forward through the gap in the barrier, her eyes darting warily between Dizz-ee and Flav, the guns in their hands and their official-looking orange jackets.

  ‘Bit young aren’t you?’ she said to Flav. ‘To be . . . like, “staff”?’

  Flav stiffened and for a moment she thought the young lad was going to slap her in the face. Dizz-ee didn’t want his fresh meat all puckered and purple on the first night, so he stepped forward. ‘Oh, Flav’s man enough,’ said Dizz-ee, ‘bro’s thirteen, aren’t you?’

  Flav nodded.

  ‘Come on.’ Dizz-ee smiled warmly, offering her a hand. ‘Come, I’ll show you round.’

  Chapter 50

  10 years AC

  Excel Centre - Docklands, London

  ‘If I’d known he was some sort of bloody preacher,’ said Jenny.

  Dr Gupta nodded as she replaced the dressing on her shoulder. ‘He does seem very good at it.’

  A gusty day today; wind moaned softy at the porthole of her cabin, anxious to be let in. Clouds scudded across the blue sky. The dark-grey sea below them was frosted with lively white horses.

  ‘Five times a day now he holds prayer meetings over there,’ said Walter, nodding through the glass at the outline of the drilling platform. ‘You can see when it’s prayer time, the north walkway’s thick with his groupies making their way over.’

  ‘I should have evicted him,’ uttered Jenny, wincing as Dr Gupta gently rubbed some antiseptic cream onto her shoulder and neck. She should have realised then, when he’d turned up at her request to discuss the matter of prayers at mealtime, that the only way to sort the problem out was promptly returning him to shore with a bag of supplies to help him on his way.

  She hadn’t realised how quickly support for him was going to grow. It looked like fifty to sixty people were part of his ‘church’ already. Every time she heard that football whistle being blown from the far platform she turned to see which of her people started to put down their tools and make their way over; more every day, it seemed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Walter quietly. ‘He’s nothing but trouble.’

  ‘The problem is, Jenny, people want their faith,’ said Dr Gupta. ‘And that’s what he’s offering them.’

  Jenny nodded. Tami was right. She’d worked so hard to ensure that there was nothing divisive such as religion to add to the numerous difficulties with living out here. She remembered back in the early days, in the first few years after the crash when things were at their darkest, all manner of bastardised, radicalised hybrid faiths had begun to emerge. Faiths that justified the most brutal treatment of those who begged to differ, brutal treatment of strangers or people who just didn’t look or sound right.

  Even the community they’d been living with deep in the woods outside Newark had begun to develop its own twisted version of Church of England Christianity. There was an ex-parish vicar who opened their community meetings with a sermon and a prayer. The prayer Jenny could even go along with, occasionally murmuring the words with everyone else. But the sermons were gradually becoming more and more hate-filled and poisonous; blaming the Taliban, al-Qaeda and some pan-Arabic, pan-Islamic plot to destroy the decadent West. The words were beginning to make sense to some of the people there. It gave them someone to blame, an ethnicity to universally despise and a justification to turn away many of the faces who emerged from the woods asking for food and shelter.

  Jenny had vowed to keep this place just as free of that kind of bigotry as she had of vulture-eyed young men who might want to turn this refuge into their own personal harem. So, there were the rules. Jenny’s Laws. No public prayers, no preachers, no organised faith and no prayer room, to list but a few of them. Those who needed to commune with God were at liberty to do so, but quietly and privately.

  Dr Gupta was right, though. She never realised how many of the people here wanted to hear Latoc’s Old Testament nonsense; needed some sort of spiritual guidance. Someone to tell them once a week that God was smiling on them, that they were doing the right thing, pleasing Him, that everything, one day, was going to be all right. They wanted to be reassured that the loved ones they’d lost in the chaos, the riots, the fights for supplies, or died from drinking bad water or spoiled food, were in a better place now and would one day be reunited with them.

  This was a shit world everyone had inherited. Completely shit. Every day a tedious and repetitive grind for survival. The lights that Walter had managed to power with his generator had been their only luxury - a glimpse of the wonderful past and a promise from her, and Walter, that the future was going to get better.

  It’s no wonder they were turning to someone like Valérie Latoc. From what she’d heard second-hand, he was telling them all the things they craved to hear; that this was all for a reason, part of a bigger plan and they were a big part of this bigger plan. If she’d been a little smarter about things, she could have done the same; moulded some version of a faith to suit their ends. Just enough to give them all some comfort and certainty that they were right to be out here, struggling together for some future goal and that God was jolly pleased with them. And, of course, that God was quite content with the community being run by Jennifer Sutherland.

  That’s all she’d have had to do. But she’d have felt like a fraud.

  Instead, like a stupid tyrant, she’d laid down the law, and now someone had arrived who was feeding on that need like a hungry mosquito on a bare forearm.

  ‘So why don’t we just say his probation is over, Jenny?’ asked Walter. ‘Tell him his time’s up and you’ve decided to let him go.’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I can now, Walter. I think if I told him to go we’d have a riot on our hands.’

  ‘So what can we do?’

  She looked out of the window at the far platform. Perhaps there’d be a cap to this? So what if near on sixty, or even a hundred, members of their community appeared to be regulars now at Latoc’s prayer service? There were over four hundred and fifty people here. He still only had a minority. Provided his church-goers continued to do their bit on the work rota and there were no silly dictums from the man that said women had to shroud themselves from head to foot, or they could only eat fish on a Friday, or some other bizarre and
illogical article of faith, then perhaps they might not need to turn this into a confrontation.

  Maybe the novelty would wear off. Maybe Valérie Latoc wasn’t as polished a preacher as he thought and his turnout would eventually begin to wane. It was early days yet.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do other than see how this goes,’ she said finally. ‘If he’s a whacko, some kind of radical nut, then he’ll trip himself up eventually. He’ll end up preaching something that someone doesn’t like. They’ll fall out over it and then I’ll have to step in to soothe some egos. Far better that, than I appear like some sort of brutal bitch dictator that they can all rally against. Right?’

  ‘And if he’s not?’

  ‘Not a religious whacko?’ Jenny shrugged. ‘Then we don’t have a problem, do we? As long as we’re all getting on nicely then I suppose we have a manageable problem.’

  Dr Gupta nodded slowly. Walter was tight-lipped.

  It was a plan of sorts, but not one she was entirely sure about.

  Chapter 51

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Maxwell paced slowly along the base of the perimeter wall, looking inward across the endless rows of plants. His modest kingdom, tended by hundreds of workers dutifully wearing their turquoise armbands. Under other circumstances, in a different time, some might have called this a work camp . . . perhaps even a concentration camp. But then, Maxwell mused, they’d have missed the point and judged it unfairly. This wasn’t a place to punish people or to annihilate a subset of the population. It was what the ruthless bloody business of survival tended to look like; some had to work the fields, some had to guard the walls, and some had to administrate.

  Get used to it.

  He shook his head.

  ‘So anyway,’ he said, aware that both the boys had been walking with him a while and were still none the wiser as to why he’d had them brought out here to tour the perimeter with him. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking since I spoke to you last. When was that? Two, three weeks ago?’