Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘for a hundred years mankind has lived on the back of this free gift; learning how to be the lazy man, becoming fat, forgetting how to care for himself. We became like the drug addicts, dependent on our fix of heroin. Unable to do anything other than wait for the next fix.

  ‘Then God made the painful decision. That the world was wrong. The Devil’s offering was poisoned and the poison had spread into our veins and infected everyone. God really had no choice, you see? We should not be angry with Him.’

  Valérie dipped his head in thought for a moment.

  ‘When He stopped the flow of oil, the Lord knew that was to be the end for almost everyone. He knew that billions of people would starve, would turn on each other for whatever food could be scavenged. He knew that the powerful nations would fight over the places still producing oil until their fuel ran dry and they could fight no more. He knew all these things . . . and it hurt Him that He had to do these things.’

  His audience considered that in silence.

  ‘You know, I have seen London. I have seen Paris. I have seen Brussels. I have seen Berlin. I have travelled across much of Europe. I did this in the early days. And back then we all hoped that there would be places that survived and started to rebuild things, yes? I remember that I was heartbroken by what I saw. Burning cities, bodies everywhere. Roads thick with migrating people, all starving or sick with water-borne diseases.’

  ‘After a few years the world did finally become quiet. Most of the dying was done. Those that were left were the ones least poisoned by the evil oil. Farmers in far-off countries, uncivilised savages who could make life on a stretch of dust. And,’ he gazed down at them, ‘people like you.’

  ‘It was three years ago, walking through a city empty and crumbling, nothing but the wild dogs and cats. It was night time and completely dark. It was then that God spoke to me. He said to me, “Can you hear my voice now that it is still and silent?” I said “yes”. He said, “Can you see the stars in the sky now that they are not drowned out by man’s bright lights?” I said “yes”. It was then that I realised that this . . . this crash, it was no disaster. But a new beginning. Like the flood, God was clearing away all that was wrong.’

  ‘Then He told me there was a special place, a place out at sea, an ark. And on this ark were good people who had survived and learned good habits and old ways. He told me these people . . .’ he gestured with his hands, ‘you people were the ones He had chosen to rebuild the world.’

  The audience stirred; he heard an ‘amen’ down there amongst the upturned faces.

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘you had started to make mistakes, to make the wrong decisions, to adopt old bad habits.’

  He could hear some in his audience shuffle uncomfortably.

  ‘Yes,’ he said smiling patiently. ‘Yes, the generator and the lights. A return to the habits of the oil world. This is why I was directed here. He told me to hurry, to make my way as quickly as possible. So, that is why I came. To lead you back to the correct path. The simple existence God wants for us. Not polluted with lights after dark. Not cluttered with a million metal and plastic things that flash and make noises.’

  ‘Come on,’ he shook his head, ‘come on . . . do you remember how unhappy we all were? How unsatisfied we all felt? Yes?’

  A chorus of voices in his audience agreed with him. Thoughtful heads nodded.

  ‘Children could not play outside because we did not trust one another. We all walked around in lonely little bubbles with headphones in our ears to block other people out. We could not talk to each other any more, instead we typed messages through computers. We were unhappy with the possessions we had because the television showed us people who had so much more. We were unhappy with ourselves because we did not seem to smile as much as the beautiful people we saw on the television. You understand?’

  He lowered his voice, tempered with sadness. ‘That was never what God wanted for us. That was not living. It was existing, nothing more—’

  A door noisily squeaked on rusting hinges and a gust of wind stole into the cavernous chamber, setting the laundry lines aflutter. Valérie turned to his right and saw a blurred bar of daylight narrowing as the door swung shut again. He heard footsteps ringing out on the metal treads of the walkway, then, out of the dimness at one end and into a pool of daylight cast from a skylight far above, stepped Jennifer Sutherland.

  ‘Jennifer.’ He smiled warmly.

  She stared at him in silence, her eyes lost in the shadows cast by her brow.

  ‘Jennifer, have you finally come to join us?’

  She pulled something out from beneath her cardigan. He recognised the dull metallic glint of a gun in her hands.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ she hissed under her breath.

  He took a step backwards. ‘Jennifer, I am very sorry about the vote this morn—’

  ‘Shut up!’ she snapped.

  ‘You are still welcome amongst us. Welcome to join—’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ She shouldered the shotgun.

  Valérie bit his lip and nodded. Several voices called up from below. Pleading voices.

  ‘Jenny!’ cried Martha. ‘What’re you doing?’

  The side of her face scarred with a spiderweb of knitting skin gave nothing away. The other side, unblemished, hardened as her jaw clasped; lips tightened like purse strings. The gun wavered unsteadily in her hands.

  ‘Jenny?’ cried Martha again, ‘please, put the gun down, love!’

  ‘You,’ she hissed at him. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  Valérie shook his head. ‘I do not know what—’

  ‘Natasha . . . and Hannah.’

  ‘Those poor sweet girls,’ replied Latoc. ‘They are . . . they are in a far better place now, Jennifer. They sit with our L—’

  ‘SHUT UP!!’

  He slowly backed up another step. ‘You know it was Walter who killed them. You know that . . . but I think you cannot accept that, no?’

  She racked the gun. ‘I know Walter! I know Walter. But you . . . I can see what you are now!’

  Valérie smiled. ‘I am what?’

  ‘You’re fucking dead,’ she whispered. The chamber echoed with the deep boom of the shotgun.

  Chapter 64

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  ‘He’s definitely up to something,’ replied Adam Brooks quietly. ‘I think he’s getting ready to go. He’ll take who he needs and be gone.’

  Leona could see his face through the gaps in the shifting veil of leaves, fumbling amongst the bamboo canes and pea vines for the few remaining pods. He was in the next aisle going through the motions of working but actually keeping a lookout for any jackets walking the perimeter nearby, or any other workers inching their way along the aisle and getting close enough that they could listen in.

  ‘When they leave,’ Adam continued, ‘things will fall apart quickly, Leona. No jackets around, it’ll suddenly be everyone for themselves. Complete bloody chaos. And that bastard Maxwell, I’m certain, won’t be leaving any food supplies behind for us. It’ll turn ugly very quickly. This place will fold just like the other safety zones.’

  ‘Then we should be sure our escape happens before that,’ whispered Leona. ‘I mean . . . as soon as we possibly can.’

  Jacob’s words haunted her. Don’t let them hurt Mum.

  ‘We have to get back home before they arrive there.’ She reached through the leaves for a pod, wincing at the pain along her bruised arms and ribs as she stretched for it. ‘Brooks, you told me there were one or two other soldiers like you?’

  ‘Adam,’ he smiled. ‘You can call me Adam.’

  Leona stared at him silently. ‘The others?’

  ‘Just the three of us now. They put us in different work groups, so we hardly see—’

  ‘Would you trust them?’

  ‘They’re good men.’

  ‘But do you trust them?’

  Adam hesitated a momen
t. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  Leona nodded. ‘Then they can join us if they want. Could you go find them? Talk to them?’

  ‘Sure. I think they’re over the other side this morning, but I could arrange for us to meet somewhere at a break time.’

  ‘Do that then,’ she replied.

  They continued working in silence. The air filled with the fidgeting of leaves and the trickle of water poured from watering cans nearby, the quiet murmur of conversations and the far-off echo of someone hammering.

  Leona looked a lot worse than she felt. The swelling around her eye had gone down, now it was just a black eye, a shiner. The bruises over her arms and legs, mottled dark patches that only hurt if she pressed against them. And thankfully, no broken bones or internal damage, as far as she was aware. Her jaw still ached when she spoke at length, but that too was better than it had been.

  Several days since those things happened. She’d lost track of exactly how many days. The time she’d spent in the cattle shed had felt like months at the time, years even. But since then, since meeting Brooks - Adam, she corrected herself - there’d been a surprising convergence of purpose, and with this man even a possibility of escape.

  She had only one single goal; thoughts beyond that were just noise.

  I have to warn her.

  Adam was right. There was something going on in the middle of the dome. Yesterday they’d watched about a hundred workers, many of them work-group leaders - the ones who’d earned the Chief’s trust and been awarded McDonald’s plastic name tags - being herded through the entry kiosks and up into the central arena. Panic rippled amongst those looking on as a rumour spread that this was some sort of an act of punishment, that one of the praetorians had been assaulted by a worker and an example was going to be made of them all. Beaten in batches. But no more people were herded through, and the young boys in jackets barked orders at them to go back to their jobs.

  Today’s rumour-mill was spinning with stories that the workers were building something in the middle. There were certainly noises coming out, of things being shifted and dismantled, the sound of scaffolding poles clattering heavily on the ground. The idea that something was being built seemed strangely reassuring to everyone else, but Leona knew it could only be the noise of approaching departure.

  How soon, though, that was the question.

  ‘We’ll need a gun,’ she said quietly. ‘Can you get a gun?’

  ‘The only way we’ll get one is wrestling it out of the hands of one of those boys,’ said Adam. ‘What about food and water?’

  ‘Water’s not a problem. Any river or stream will do,’ she replied. The waterways were no longer a thick soup of nitrates, heavy metals and used condoms. You could scoop a handful of water from the Thames now and drink it without doing yourself any harm. It tasted like pond life but it wasn’t going to kill you. Best thing that could ever have happened to mother nature, she decided. Mankind screwing himself over for a change. There were canals and rivers up through Norfolk. They could easily find some plastic bottles, rinse them out and fill them with the Thames. Water wasn’t a problem.

  ‘If we can find some bicycles from somewhere,’ she said, ‘we could be back up in Norfolk in three or four days. We won’t need food.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘We will. None of us have any fat to burn. Seriously. A day or two without food and we won’t be able to walk, never mind cycle.’

  ‘We’ll find something,’ she replied. ‘There’s still food out there.’

  ‘And what if your mum won’t let me and my lads on? We’d be in poor shape to go anywhere else. We’d be fucked.’

  ‘She will.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘They’re going to need you, aren’t they? To fight off Maxwell’s little army.’ Leona dropped a handful of pods into his bucket. ‘So how do you think they’ll travel there? They got trucks?’

  ‘The barges,’ said Adam. ‘Thames barges. We used them a few years back when—’ He stopped talking for a moment as an elderly man came down his row, sprinkling water from a can into each grow trough. Adam let him pass by before continuing. ‘There’s a tugboat moored up on Thames Wharf with a nearly full tank of diesel. Hasn’t been used since the last time. He’ll use that to tow the three barges.’ He looked at her through the leaves. ‘That’s how he’ll get there.’

  Leona caught his eyes. ‘Can those barge things go out on the open sea?’

  ‘If they hug the coastline and as long as the sea’s calm, yeah, they can do it.’

  ‘How long will it take them?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Your place - did you say it’s off the north coast of Norfolk?’

  ‘Not really. It’s not far from Great Yarmouth. Do you know th—’

  ‘I know Great Yarmouth. My grandparents used to live there.’ Adam pinched his lips in thought. ‘Lemmesee, that’s what? A hundred and fifty . . . two hundred miles of coastline for them to follow?’

  Leona shook her head. She had absolutely no idea.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he continued. ‘Maybe it’ll take them a day or two if the weather stays good.’

  She felt her heart quicken. ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered. ‘I thought it might take weeks! Then . . . shit . . . then we have to go—’

  ‘Don’t say tonight.’

  ‘Yes, tonight.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Tonight, Adam. Can we arrange to go tonight?’

  He bit his lip. ‘Jesus. I . . . that’s no time at all to—’

  ‘They could leave at any time. They could be leaving tonight!’

  He raised a hand to hush her down. ‘Shhh! Okay, okay. Look, I’ll see if I can find the lads this afternoon and arrange to meet at the evening meal break.’

  ‘Please, do that,’ she nodded. And then almost as an afterthought she smiled through the vines at him. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘Maybe we should be thanking you. The only reason nobody’s yet bothered trying to sneak out of here is . . . well, we thought this place was it; all that was left.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll try and get back to you before the mid-morning whistle goes, okay? With a time and place to meet the lads.’

  She nodded but he was already gone. She resumed half-heartedly picking undeveloped pea pods, hardly even petits pois; food that would end up being thrown into whatever was being boiled to a watery pulp for this evening’s meal.

  For a moment she wondered where her strength was coming from to be doing this; she ached all over, she ached inside. She couldn’t make sense of the calm detachment she was feeling; Jacob gone, Hannah gone, and she felt nothing.

  Her eyes followed the arrogant swagger of two orange jackets patrolling along the perimeter wall, chatting animatedly, excited about something; both sporting matching white baseball caps perched on their heads at a jaunty angle. Their hands and fingers flicked with exaggerated street gestures they could only have picked up from films or from the older boys. Even the crotch-grabbing swagger both boys were attempting to pull off was a poor affectation of something they must have seen on a DVD or a computer game.

  No, she did feel something; a determination, an angry determination, that those vicious little bastards weren’t going to get on the platforms and have their fun. She was going to see those child-tyrants die before she allowed herself to shed another tear for Jacob, for Hannah, for Dad. They were no different to the White City gang who’d tried to break into their home and rape her ten years ago. Only some stupid bastard had decided to give this lot guns and tell them they were righteous in all that they did.

  Before she shed another tear, she vowed, she was going to see them die, tumbling like lemmings into the North Sea.

  Chapter 65

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Nathan watched them loading up the second barge; a human chain of workers leading out of the dome’s rear service entrance across twenty yards of gravel and weed to the concrete wharf. The barges bumped and scraped
impatiently as the Thames stirred softly and a fresh breeze rustled through loose corners of cellophane half wrapped around catering packs of Fray Bentos corned beef and Heinz baked beans.

  In his hands he held an army issue assault rifle; an SA80. The very same weapon the old man, Walter, had once allowed him to test fire briefly; a small piece of his old life. Around his waist, beneath the orange staff jacket, webbing dangled, pouches stuffed full of thirty-round clips of ammunition.

  A real soldier now, eh?

  Not for the first time he could feel the magical power that holding a weapon like this gave you. He remembered watching the news one night before the crash, when he was about eight or nine. Some American kid had ambled into his high school with a similar weapon and proceeded to kill every kid in his class. He’d asked Mum why the kid did it and she’d said it was because he was evil.

  He knew why the kid had done it now.

  It was that sense of invincibility, of immortality, one felt holding the cold steel weight of a weapon like this. One tiny pull on his trigger and he could mow down those workers like skittles at a bowling alley. It was almost God-like power and all of it contained within the impulsive twitch of one finger.

  That’s why, Snoop had quietly confided in him last night, only the older boys carried fully loaded guns on patrol. The younger ones were issued with the same weapons, but with an empty ammo clip.

  It’s the moment of pause, bro. That’s what he’d said . . . the moment of pause.

  The young ones had ammo in their pouches, of course, but the time it took to eject an empty clip, unbutton the pouch, pull out another clip and ram it home was the time a younger mind needed to decide whether it was actually necessary to shoot a worker or simply bark an order at them.

  Killers, said Snoop, they’ve been educated by me and Maxwell to kill without mercy. Child warriors, Nathan, the best in the world. Ruthless motherfuckers, bro, but they need grown-ups like you and me to lead them.