Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

  Bushey snorted drily. ‘The stupid twats have no idea what it is, though.’

  ‘They think they’re going to some sort of bloody castle.’

  ‘I heard one of them say Alton Towers, for fuck’s sake.’

  They were laughing, but it made sense. The jackets were children really, big children with guns, but children nonetheless. That’s how Maxwell was treating them - telling them what they wanted to hear, letting them believe what they wanted to believe.

  ‘They’re planning to leave tomorrow night,’ said Adam.

  Her heart stuttered. ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, God, then they’ll get there first!’

  ‘Not necessarily. If we leave now and push hard—’

  ‘There’s no time to waste,’ she finished for him.

  They looked at each other, quicksilver faces, eyes lost in dark shadows.

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  Adam led the way up to the end of the aisle, taking them to the quayside and the river’s edge. They turned right, staying close to the end of the plantation, all of them dropping down to a back-aching scooting run as the tall rows of pea and bean vines gave way to a waist-high field of tomato plants.

  Finally, they arrived at the eastmost end of the barricade wall, where the patchwork sheets of corrugated iron overhung the quay and a spiral of razor wire looped over the edge and down onto a river bank of glistening silt.

  Ahead of them, over the six foot high barricade, stretched a no-man’s land of crumbling concrete and fading lines of paint marking out coach parking bays. Beyond that, the long dark warehouse outline of a building that had once been the Beckham Football Academy.

  Adam spoke in a low murmur. ‘All right. We could go over the wall here, and we’re out or . . .’

  ‘We need more guns,’ said Leona.

  The men looked at her.

  ‘We need more guns,’ she said again. She pointed along the wall, in the direction of the gate and the low hump of the garden shed.

  Adam nodded. ‘She’s right.’

  Harry jabbed a finger at the wall. ‘Sir, we can be over this and gone in—’

  ‘We need the guns,’ replied Adam. ‘And a hundred yards that way are five more we could grab.’

  Walfield nodded. ‘S’right.’ He grinned. ‘And a chance to give the little shits a farewell kicking.’

  Chapter 69

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  She stood up, emerging from between the rustling rows of leaves twenty yards away from the gate. She called out almost immediately, not wanting them to spot her and fire before she had a chance to talk.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice carried across the stillness and she watched the five boys, standing in a circle in murmured conversation, suddenly spin on their heels. She heard the click and clatter of their guns, swung off shoulders and pointed in her direction.

  ‘Please . . .’ she said quickly, ‘don’t shoot. I just need to speak with you.’

  There were two taller, older boys and three smaller ones.

  Second Generation. That’s what Adam called the younger ones; boys more recently recruited and trained by the boys that he, Walfield and the other two had originally trained. The older two would be in charge. Leona took several slow steps forward, her hands instinctively raised. She addressed herself to the taller of them; a straggly-thin black boy wearing a bandanna on his head.

  ‘I want to join the girlfriends,’ she said. She felt a twist of nausea in her gut as she spoke.

  Bandanna’s posture subtly shifted, his head tilted over on one side, his shoulders squared as he puffed himself up. She recognised the body language; all the boys did it when they wanted to make a show of bravado in front of their comrades.

  ‘You wan’ join our girls?’

  Leona nodded.

  A torch snapped on. Instinctively she covered her face from the blinding light.

  ‘Drop your hands, lemmesee yo’ face,’ said the boy with the bandanna.

  She did so and heard from somewhere behind the glare of the torch one of the younger boys chuckle. ‘Ahh, man, she’s all beat up.’

  ‘You ugly,’ said one of the boys. ‘Piss off back inside.’

  The torch wavered off her face for a moment, down and up. ‘Face ain’t all that, love,’ said Bandanna, ‘but the rest looks tight. Show us your tits an’ we’ll see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Show me your tits,’ repeated Bandanna.

  The other boys liked that, a ripple of giggles amongst them. ‘Go on, make her show all the pooty,’ one of the smaller boys egged him on.

  Leona felt nausea inside turn quickly into a barely suppressed gag response. For a fleeting moment she thought she was going to chuck up this evening’s gruel right there.

  ‘I said show us the fucking tits!’ snapped Bandanna.

  She saw Dizz-ee’s snarling face on his; an almost identical sneer.

  Come on. Come on. They’re distracted enough now, surely?

  ‘We do like the old tell-ee-show X Fat-ryy on you, bitch,’ said Bandanna. ‘You give us all an audition, right? You show the pooty an’ dance for us. An’ I’ll decide.’

  A peal of excited laughter spread amongst them. The torch was off her face again and down on her chest, on her torso. She could see that Bandanna had slung his rifle on one shoulder. Although the other four were no longer pointing their guns at her, they still had them in their hands.

  ‘Come on! You heard. Take your fuckin’ clothes off!’

  Bandanna took a step forward, one hand already down and fiddling with his flies. He stopped and turned to the others. ‘Forget the dance. Let’s just do her. Me first, then it’s Biggz’ turn. Then you three can ’ave a go. ‘Kay?’

  The other boys nodded. She noted the other older boy - presumably Biggz - set his gun down on one of three plastic garden chairs by the gate, getting ready for his turn.

  For God’s sake. Come on!

  Bandanna turned back to her and closed the distance between them. ‘S’up? Why ain’t you undressin’, bitch?’

  She smiled tightly. ‘I’m a bit . . .’ she nodded at the others. ‘Not in front of everyone, please? We could go over th—’

  ‘You wanna be a girlfriend, then you gonna do it anywhere we wan’ it. Now show me some titties an’ bush right now or I’ll have to slap you up.’

  Her hand slowly reached down for the hem of a tatty and faded purple sweatshirt that had been donated to her in the infirmary.

  It was then she heard a scrape of feet on the ground and a stuttered breath drawn in surprise.

  Bandanna flashed the torch over his shoulder back at the boys, just as Biggz’s long legs began to slowly buckle, his eyes wide and rolling, his hands scrabbling at something sticking out of the side of his neck.

  ‘What the f—?’

  Movement. Bandanna swung the beam of his torch to the left, catching a last-moment blur - Adam Brooks and Bushey both racing towards him. They careered heavily into Bandanna, knocking him to the ground and sending the torch spinning into the air. She heard the three of them struggling and scraping on the floor. The boy let out a startled high-pitched scream that was quickly muffled as a hand clamped heavily over his mouth. She could still hear his gagged voice, screaming, and the oooff of exertion as either Adam or Bushey punched their knives into him.

  She could hear the other three boys, clinking and rattling in the dark.

  Loading their guns?

  Someone scooped the torch off the ground and shone it in their direction.

  ‘Drop your fucking guns!’ snapped Walfield. The three younger boys, to Leona’s eye, surely no more than thirteen, stared at the light, wide-eyed and startled like rabbits caught on a back road.

  Huey, Dewey and Louie, she found herself thinking.

  One of them shook himself out of the momentary stupor and resumed fumbling a clip out of his pouch, arrogantly certain by the determine
d look on his face that he could load, cock, aim and fire his assault rifle before some stupid old peasant.

  Walfield didn’t bother repeating his warning. The single shot cracked loudly, filling the torchlit space between them all with a billowing cloud of blue smoke. The boy slammed back against the barricade wall, rattling the wire at the top and loosing sheets of corrugate. He slid to the ground, already lifeless and bleeding out from what was left of the back of his head.

  The scuffle on the floor with Bandanna was over now. Adam appeared within the loom of light from the torch, blood spattered in ribbons across his shirt.

  ‘You boys drop your guns and webbing and go!’ he snapped.

  Dewey and Louie nodded vigorously, placing their guns quickly on the ground and sliding effortlessly out of the loose webbing designed for grown men. They stepped back uncertainly, their eyes glued to the gun in Walfield’s hands.

  ‘Now piss off!’

  They turned and sprinted off into the dark, down a walkway between sections of the plantation towards the dome’s main entrance, their feet slapping noisily in the darkness.

  ‘We gotta go now, sir!’ said Bushey. ‘They’ll all be coming this way!’

  ‘The guns!’ said Leona. ‘And all the bullets. We need to gather them up.’

  Adam nodded, scooping up the discarded orange jackets and several pouches of army webbing. ‘Pick up everything they dropped, everything. We can sort through what’s crap later.’

  Harry appeared in the cone of light, carrying an armful of plastic bottles. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m . . . yeah, I’m okay.’

  She bent down to scoop up the weapon that Bandanna had dropped. She saw the pale glow of his trainers sticking out of the darkness, and from the dancing light from the torch one of his hands palm up, fingers looped with chunky gold rings, slowly, reflexively curling open and closed as if beckoning her over.

  She wondered why she felt nothing at all. Not for him, not for the other boys. She wondered if that made her as sick and empty inside as them. Impulsively, she stepped forward into the gloom and swung a leg at where she guessed his head was. She made contact, dull, cushioned and heavy.

  ‘You bastard,’ she spat through gritted teeth.

  She swung another kick at him. And another.

  You bastards.

  She felt the bile in her throat, a stinging acid burn that threatened to bubble up and leave her retching.

  ‘Come on, Leona,’ said Harry softly, reaching for her and pulling her away from the body. ‘He’s dead now.’

  ‘Right then,’ Adam announced. ‘That’s everything. We should go.’

  As if on cue a floodlight near the main entrance flickered on and she thought she saw a flurry of movement in the entrance foyer through the glass wall.

  Adam swung the torch on her. She winced at the bright light.

  ‘You good to go, Leona?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, swinging the assault rifle onto her shoulder. ‘I’m ready.’

  Chapter 70

  10 years AC

  O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London

  Maxwell watched the last of the workers being herded aboard the third barge - the end of the daisy chain; if it looked like they were running tight on fuel, or the load was simply burning too much diesel, they could easily just unhook the rearmost barge and let it drift. There were no supplies on that barge to lose, none at all; just a hundred of those malnourished scarecrows standing cheek by jowl in the hold. And if they had to cast them adrift it wouldn’t be the end of the world, they’d be able to recruit more workers from amongst those people living on that rig.

  Four hundred-and-something of them living on there, that’s what the dead boy had said, wasn’t it? Depending on how much food was being grown there - if there was only enough to sustain four hundred-and-something, then he’d have to jettison that sorry-looking lot in the third barge anyway.

  Better they were all on the last barge anyway - those workers might take it into their heads to try overpowering the dozen or so praetorians he was going to put on there with them. Since the breakout the night before last of a group of them - that officer, Brooks, and his comrades - news had seemed to spread amongst the peasants that Maxwell and his boys were packing up and leaving. The scheduled work routines had broken down. This morning a worried crowd had amassed in the entrance foyer just in front of the turnstiles into the arena. Some of the workers had attempted to make their way around the outside of the dome along the narrow quayside towards the rear to see what was happening back there. His boys had fired their guns into them, leaving several dozen bodies and the rest scattering back the way they’d come.

  More of the workers had managed to push their way into the arena and down to the mezzanine floor to help themselves to the last few stacks of supplies; pallets they’d not managed to find space for aboard the second barge.

  Well, you’re going to be disappointed, folks. There ain’t a lot left.

  It had been something of a hectic morning so far.

  The tugboat’s diesel engine chugged noisily, transmitting a thudding vibration that rattled through the small vessel’s deck, through his feet. The tug bobbed on the choppy water like a stir-crazy dog on a leash as the last dozen workers shuffled across the boarding plank and down into the third barge’s hold.

  ‘That’s it I think, Chief,’ said Snoop.

  ‘Thank you, Edward.’

  The late-afternoon sun burned off the glass and steel sides of the distant office towers of Canary Wharf. He’d so very much wanted to get off at first light this morning without a fuss . . . without having to post cordons of guards, without having to waste valuable rounds of ammo keeping them back. And, of course, to make a day’s travel whilst the weather looked so calm. But wheeling the last of the stacked pallets of food and supplies up from the mezzanine, and the comforts and gadgets and perks the boys enjoyed and expected to bring with them, had taken much, much longer than he’d anticipated.

  ‘Your little trollops are all on?’

  ‘Yeah, we got all our girls,’ replied Snoop.

  He spotted the last of his boys backing out of the north-east entrance, some personal possessions under their arms. Those that had been guarding the narrow quay around the sides doubled back swiftly, keen not to be left behind.

  Snoop cocked an anxious eyebrow. ‘Chief? We ready?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s not waste another bloody second.’

  Snoop rapped the helm with his knuckles. ‘Chief says go, Jeff.’

  Jeff had once been a truck driver. Said he could handle boats, too. He’d piloted the tug up the Thames several years ago when Flight Lieutenant Brooks and his merry men had been sent to reconnoitre the river up to Kingston. He’d managed not to wrap the thing around a bridge support or end up stuck on a silt bank. Jeff seemed to know what he was doing.

  ‘Right, here we go.’ With a hand that was all knuckles, veins and fading tattoos, he eased the throttle forward.

  The diesel engine dropped a note and the tug lurched subtly as the engine engaged. At first Maxwell wondered whether they’d overestimated what this small ugly vessel could pull as it seemed to make no headway at all, the weed-tufted concrete quay beside them showing no sign of receding.

  The engine chugged laboriously for a moment, but slowly the tug began to move.

  ‘Shit, thought we were stuck,’ said Snoop.

  With several feet of slapping water between them and the quay, Maxwell finally let slip a barely audible sigh of relief, just as several dozen of the more foolhardy workers emerged out of the rear entrance of the dome to stand on the quayside and watch them pull away. A couple of his boys fired off opportunistic shots in their direction and the emerging crowd dived to the ground amidst the weeds.

  Maxwell gave Snoop a glance. ‘Tell those fucking idiots not to waste their ammo.’

  Snoop nodded and promptly left the cockpit.

  As the tug strained and groaned and the train of one tug and three
barges slowly eased away from the quay, Maxwell smiled grimly.

  Good bloody riddance.

  For the last ten years of his life this drab and increasingly threadbare over-sized circus tent had been his millstone. Many was the night he’d wondered whether the smartest thing he could’ve done was let everyone in on the first night of the crash and let all of those poor bastards get on with it. If they wanted to end up like Wembley Stadium and tearing each other apart for tins of corned beef and bottles of water twelve weeks in, they could be his bloody guests. He could quite easily have delegated the nightmare to Brooks to handle, or one of the Cobra-appointed civilian safety-zone assistants and just walked out the front and gone back home to his South Bank apartment, emptied his drinks cabinet and then emptied his gun. But he’d decided to stay and do the dutiful thing, to be the one to make all the hard decisions these last ten years.

  The quayside had sluggishly slipped far enough away for Jeff to spin the wheel and steer the tugboat out towards the middle of the Thames.

  Good riddance to all of it.

  Those poor bastards left behind probably weren’t going to make it; weakened by months, years, of malnourishment, many of them already falling prey to ailments due to vitamin and protein deficiencies of one kind or another. Anybody with half a wit should have known that the acres of parking tarmac they’d managed to cultivate out at the front was little more than an exercise in window-dressing; smoke and mirrors. What they were growing was just about enough to keep half of them going a while longer - but nothing there that would keep them going through winter.

  They were all going to die.

  Or maybe they’d end up like those wild children; eating rats, dogs. Eating each other.

  He watched the warm afternoon sunlight play across the dome and wondered what moronic government pencil-necks had thought it a bright idea to locate any of the zones in the middle of a city. For that matter, what moronic government pencil-necks had thought the global oil crash would be nothing more than a three-month-long economic crisis that could be more than catered for by setting up a couple of dozen over-sized soup kitchens.